Neophyte / Adept (5 page)

Our magical training isn’t over.
It’s beginning.
We start combat and
fight mechanics. Real sword and sorcery. Where have you been?

------------

From

To

Becca, all that I can say is one, congratulations,
we knew there had to be some point to all of this, right? And that, secondly, I
have been undergoing the same kinds of shocks to the system myself.

I am
not
coming back. I’m sorry if that hurts, or if I sound like I’m being a bitch or
something, but––that was then.

I’m changing. I’m a different person now. But I’ll
tell you what. You keep practicing. And make sure you get good. We will see
each other again. I’m almost certain of it. When we’re both Virtuosos and we
can cross oceans in our minds.

I will fly over the countryside with you one day.
But I think we need to go our separate ways. Tell those bitches I said hi and
that I miss them.

I miss you too, Becca. But what I’m doing here is
so, so
important. I could no more let it
go, walk away from it, than you could stopping the continuation of your own
self-discovery and magical education.

We were born with Powers. It’s time we learned to
start using them. Blessed be. I love you.

Halsey

------------

From

To

Sisters forever. Your bitch for all time. Go do your
thing. It’s a date, kiddo.

Wherever. Whenever.

You know where to find me. This is Becca signing
off.

------------

I had tears in my eyes. I missed those bitches. But we each
had things to do. I think I got up and washed my face in the bathroom, and then
I stepped out, and looked out, over the street, and the shops below. My balcony
afforded spectacular views. I could see the sun, risen more fully. Fingers of
light crept into my room.
Becca.
She
was off, learning how to duel. Real magic. The things we had only heard of, but
never actually seen.

I realized my time had come as well. I would not be learning
in a safe environment. I was three days from a reckoning. I was three days from
the end of my world, and the start of something More.

* * *

Ballard’s email was waiting for me, when I came back in. It
just said, “I’ll be here, waiting for you, when you get back.” I sent off a
quick reply. It was time to go see him. The only problem was, word had gotten
out about me. Not that I was a witch with unexplored supernatural powers. That
was still secret.

The fact was, the Vespa I had rented had been destroyed last
summer, in an attack by zombies. Lennox’s mentor’s house had nearly gone up in
flames; it was still being restored. Which meant that my ability to lease a
motorini
had been compromised, I feared,
forever.

There was no way around it. I had to go out and ask my
landlady to call me a taxi. I slipped her next month’s rent, and the month
after; I had no idea how long the Gathering would be taking place. She jabbed
me with mind darts. Why did I feel like I owed her a thousand apologies?

It would be ten minutes. She put her hand through the tray
under the plexiglass, and grabbed me by the wrist. I felt a jolt go through me,
that had nothing to do with any kind of spiritual connection. “I know why you
are here,” she said, in her strange, eerie voice.

I shrugged obtusely and tried to pull away, but she wouldn’t
let me go. She just held on, with her fingernails digging into my skin.

“I need a room,” I said. “That’s it. I swear.”

She released me and her eyes blazed with a fiery light; I
left the moth-eaten hallway, in the Belle Époque style, and waited in the
street. She shouted after me to watch my back. I think that’s what she said.
She could have been placing a curse upon my head. Something in her countenance
suggested it. As if she had a magic all her own: to creep me out, or at any
rate to put me on my guard. But from what?

All I could think was her; she seemed protective, yet evil.
The cab came and took me over the river. I forgot about it.

Trastevere had the happy habit of
making
me happy; it was the section of Rome that Ballard’s family
resided in, a family, I had come to learn, that was bigger than I expected, for
it also encompassed the street gang, I Gatti. They rode around on motorcycles,
protecting Rome. I was one of the few people who knew this.

Part of having a supernatural identity was keeping it
secret, and we––or, that is to say,
they
––were very protective about who they let in on
their little secret. If anyone got their hands on my diary...

I had stowed it away in my room, underneath a pillow. But it
was guarded by
her
. My own
fire-breathing dragon lady. And a four-story window.

Lennox liked it because it meant vampires could not get to
me. They had to be invited in. He had stood on the balcony, before I knew what
he was. But what about those things that did not need an invitation? What about
the thing that was hunting me?

I shivered, feeling a tingle of fear. Whatever it was could
not get to me while I was here, in Trastevere. Trastevere was like a bulwark
against outsiders. It kept its own secrets. And it was also a repository of the
past. For only here were mortals that knew of Immortals. Besides witches and
wizards, I mean.

Had that been why Lennox could tell me? Because he knew I
was a witch? I tried to remember having ever shown in front of him, but I
couldn’t. I was sure he had made it all up, perhaps to trick himself into
thinking we could ever be equals. He was so far beyond me it was not even
funny. Maybe he thought we couldn’t be together unless I was somehow supernatural
like him. Otherwise the Lenoir would try and kill me, wouldn’t they?

That gave me something else to think about. What if I were
exposed to these tests and nothing happened? What if I were not magical at all?
What if they made a mistake? There I would be, walking around with knowledge of
Immortals, not to mention Magic, but decidedly not one of them. The Lenoir
would take me out back, wouldn’t they? They would drop all this nonsense and
eat me right there. And the magicians would applaud.

I needed to get away from these thoughts. Luckily Ballard’s
uncle’s motorcycle shop was coming into view, around the chamber of high, stone
buildings, that blocked out all but direct, midday sun.
Risky
had known the Rookmaakers; he was Ballard’s uncle, and it had
been he who had suggested to Ballard––rather,
required
––that he contact me. I wanted to know why.

The cabbie let me out, and I paid up. I was left staring at
the
autofficina
, that doubled as the
Trastevere Motor Club. The home of
The
Cats
, Ballard’s dubiously-named biker gang, I happened to know were
werewolves, and not the innocuous felines that prowled in remarkable numbers
through a city as old and lineaged as they were. That was a Wiccan word. It
meant they could trace their roots back to Rome’s twin founders, Romulus and
Remus.

Romulus and Remus who were werewolves; anything else just
didn’t have that same authenticity of my cobbled-together history. I tripped
across the stones to go say hi, and hoped the time apart had not done to my
relationship with Ballard what it had done between Becks and me. Namely, for
all intents and purposes, made us just two people on opposite ends of
increasingly dispassionate emails, who had grown apart.

Chapter 5
– Gambalunga

Out front, a collection of all manner of broken-down
automobiles had collected in the month, or so, since I had been gone. An old
and crushed-in ape van, that looked like it needed a ton of work, sat parked in
pride of place, in front of a huge and dented in roll up door, through which I
could hear the sounds of someone hard at work. There were sparks flying out the
door, a stereo was blasting.

The Trastevere Motor Club was empty except for a single
employee with a welder’s mask covering his face, bent over a beautiful red bike,
the likes of which I had never seen before. Part of me attributed freedom and
responsibility to the machines, that I saw everywhere as I traveled through
Rome; they meant safety, and to be part of a gang. The stereo was an old boom
box with a broken-off antenna and cassette player.

I paused the tape.

“Lia... I don’t have time for this,” he said, turning to
face me. His hands were covered in thick leather gloves. The welding torch he
was holding cut off in his hands. He raised his visored helmet to me like a
salute. We stood like that for some time, staring past one another, at our own
shadow reflections.

“Halsey?” he said.

“I sent you an email,” I said.

Ballard had an old PC in the corner of the shop, he used to
communicate with the outside world. There were brothers in California, and
parents in Greece. I marveled at the work around him. A collection of bikes on
racks, all of which needed his attention. He was the go-to mechanic for the
street gang responsible for safeguarding all Rome. That was some responsibility.
Did it at least pay well?

I looked at all the thingy-what’s-its littered across the
floor. “Shouldn’t you be in school?” I said, realizing it was mid-September. I
had gotten so used to not having to think about St. Martley’s Academy, I forgot
he was still underage.

Ballard shrugged. “Everything has gotten so much more...
complicated
,” he said.

He put down the oxy acetylene torch, and took off his
gloves. He was sweating slightly. I could see faint splotches of oil, where he
had cleaned his face with a dirty rag. He came forwards to give me a hug. “I
missed you,” he said.

“Ballard? What is that?” I said. It came out muffled,
because I had my face pressed into his chest. He was big, almost as big as
Gaven, I Gatti’s leader.

“Huh?”

He looked where I was pointing. On the floor, next to the
bike he was working on, in among the crescent wrenches and other ancient
well-used tools, was a letter with a dripping, red wax seal. The kind I had
seen before and knew so well. The kind of the Gathering.

Ballard had received a letter. Was it from the Lenoir, too?
Did they know he was a––whatever he was?

He saw what I was staring at. There was no hiding anything
from Ballard. We had worked together, all last summer, figuring out there were
vampires in the world, and that witchcraft existed. He knew just as much as I
did. In some respects, more. He had grown up with it, face-to-face with the
fact that there were unexplained phenomena, not least because his own family
included shape changers.

I had never seen Ballard transform. Standing in his presence
now, I could not be sure I hadn’t invented the whole thing. What had that
enormous creature been, that had come to my rescue, when Marek, possessed by
the necromancer, had tried to end my life? For certainly it was not a figment.

It was as real as the sixteen-year-old with the curly black
hair. But not a werewolf.

Then some other shape changer, then.

I was so certain it was Ballard who had saved me. He had
never denied this. I remembered confronting him with a theory that he could be
a wolf. He categorically denied it. His explanation, then, had been that he was
too old, that somehow he had come through puberty without showing.

This exposed some knowledge on his part. A familiarity with
the fact that there
were
werewolves.
He was just not one of them.

The only problem was, if he wasn’t a Supernatural, what, oh,
what, was he doing with a letter I could only assume was an invitation to a
meeting with all the Supernaturals? An invitation I had received myself.

“Ballard....”

I waited for what his reaction would be. He picked up the
envelope with dirty fingers and left paw prints on it.

“It’s not what you think,” he said. “It’s for Lia.”

* * *

So many questions went through my mind. Every time I turned
around I seemed to be asking the same thing: What did I really know about
anything?
Lia...?

Lia was Ballard’s sister. She was several years older than
he was, and she also happened to be a world-class frenemy.

My
world-class
frenemy.

Lia had received a letter to the Gathering, and Ballard had
not? It didn’t make sense.

“It’s ten times worse,” he said. “You should’ve seen her.
She’s been insufferable. Strutting around.”

“Worse than normal, you mean?”

“Ever since this letter showed up, and they asked I Gatti to
get the meeting place put together... Gaven and the rest of the crew,
and some warlocks
, have been working on
it overtime, trying to get it ready–– I’m stuck here, fixing
motorcycles. Not that I’m complaining. Hey, check this out.” He had been so
busy yakking, he hadn’t noticed that I was undergoing a major life change.
“It’s a Gambalunga.”

“Ballard...” He caught me before I hit the floor.

* * *

While I was out, I had composed a very pretty speech. It
went something like this. “This pussyfooting
must
stop. I am a witch, Ballard. One of the Three. There are also
vampires, and now you, The Sons and Daughters of Romulus.
Whatever you are.
In case you missed it, I have been looking for
some sign of a larger world.”

Well, it was throbbing inside my forehead, that sign, in bright,
shiny lettering, that gave me a headache. I came out of my faint, and felt
Ballard brushing aside a wild lock of my hair. I still felt groggy. When I
could finally open my eyes, and focus, he was smiling at me. “There’s no easy
way to talk to you, is there?” he said, and then laughed. It sounded like a
bark.

Grr.

“Not funny. You should have told me,” I said.

“You were gone,” he said. He helped me to my feet. I was
suddenly standing face-to-face with the red motorcycle. There was no point,
really, telling Ballard I had also received a letter, he seemed to take it for
granted.
But Lia.
It was a kind of
weird moment. Was she a witch too? I thought she was a werewolf. We were almost
sisters.

Did that mean I would have to be working with her?

According to Ballard, the Gambalunga I was looking at was an
Italian motorcycle made in the late-forties, early-nineteen fifties. It was
designed for racing, alone. It looked to be a very fast red rider. It hunkered
low and had a single red headlight, round as a circle of magic.

“I want
you
to
have it,” he said.

I looked at Ballard like he was joking. “I can’t, Ballard.
It must’ve cost a fortune,” I said.

“Ordinarily. But I happened to find it in a scrapyard
friendly to
our
kind,” he said. “That
is to say, my family and I. We are werewolves, Halsey Rookmaaker,
ailuranthropes, and other shapeshifters. Therianthropes for long, and therians,
or Shifters, for short. Dog Shifters, by some. It is my pleasure to meet you.
The door’s right there, if you can’t stand to stay a moment more, which, by the
way, I completely understand. I am as freaked out by this as you are. Heaven
knows, if I could run from it, I would, but I
can’t
. I’m stuck. I––”

I kick-started the engine. The Gambalunga puffed and
snorted, like a dragon with a cold, before it caught fire. The throttle stuck
some, but it just needed a little TLC, and some oil. That was like what being
hit with revelation was like. You just needed to work out the kinks.

“Acceptance is the first step to awesomeness,” I said.

Was that what Ballard was so worried about? That I might not
approve if he was Supernatural like me? As far as I was concerned, it was the
best day of my life.

“I feel like I just got my best friend back,” I said. “If you
like howling at the moon, and running around humping people’s legs, I don’t
mind.”

“Do you mean it?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

Ballard unstuck the throttle, and I flicked it. It demanded
to be taken out.
Now.
This very
moment.

* * *

As we wheeled the bikes out, and started
them––Ballard on his own that he had fixed––I could not
help feeling like my dreams were an elaborate ruse I had rigged up to persecute
me for some unknown reason. Ballard handed me a helmet and kicked his own ride
into life. I could see Mistress Genevieve, if she knew what I had been up to,
scolding me for my reckless behavior. (“Fraternizing with a vampire! Your
parents would never have approved!”)

I wondered what she would think of a werewolf, when I
slipped on my helmet, and then it was like the voices were all shut out. I
followed behind Ballard on my Gambalunga; his motorcycle charged recklessly
through the Trasteverean chambers, metallic black, to match his helmet. We were
soon cruising through an open square. I noticed people stop and wave, and
Ballard return the gesture. He motioned and I pulled alongside him. “Follow
me!” he said.

We left through an opening with a lion over the archway and
accelerated south, until we reached countryside, when Ballard
really
opened her up.

My Gambalunga had no difficulty keeping up with him through
the twists and turns. We made a long circuit through the hills. My stuck
throttle undone, I put the motorcycle through a quick series of paces. It
answered every challenge.

While that was happening, I couldn’t help feeling like I had
mastered, in a way, at least one aspect of my dreams; it was
I
who was chasing Ballard, this time,
not the other way around. He came to my rescue, when it was dark and I was all
alone, and there was no one else to help me. Here on this motorcycle, I was
keeping up with him; two pack members, running for no other reason than to feel
the wind on our backs, and the miles pass beneath our feet. I felt alive with
the joy of it.

“You should come riding when we’re
all
together,” he said. We had stopped on the side of a hill.

In the distance, the
campagna
,
as it was called, rolled out in fields of grass, and mounds of exposed rock. It
had that sweet smell I attributed with cypress trees, which rose over the
terrain, in interesting shapes.

If anything Ballard sounded like he was running to catch up,
instead of running from his responsibilities. I got the sense that he was
plagued by demons not unlike my own. That he had chosen to meet them. And that
he had come here to show me more than just how excellently awesome my new
motorcycle could be. Already I felt the shackles of having no ride fall to the
wayside completely.

The
campagna
,
which was simply the countryside surrounding Rome, was where the Gathering was
going to be taking place––out there somewhere.

“Remember,” said Ballard, “when I took you to
Via Appia Antica
, and the burial
grounds?

“There are catacombs littering the
countryside––some so old that no one even knows they exist,” he
said.
“But we do.
They’re being
built, hidden away from prying eyes,
with
Magic
.” He raised his eyebrows to me. We were clearly on my turf... but
wherever these magic catacombs were being built, I certainly didn’t
know––all I saw was wildlife.

He seemed depressed by that. “Oh well,” he said. “I thought
for sure you’d be able to
see
them,
or else feel them or, I don’t know,
use
your magic powers...”

“I’ve never crafted, Ballard. Sorry. Shouldn’t you try Lia?
She sounds like the magic one...”

“I already did.”

“And?”

“We’ve all been invited. I’ll see them anyway,” he said.

“You mean you’re coming too? I thought it was just her.”

“Oh, she got a letter all right, but as a member of the
Pack––or the Pride or whatever––I have certain
inalienable rights. Among them, that I’m invited along with everybody else. At
least, that’s what they said. I wasn’t invited. It’s going to be one big
harmonious group freakfest. Witch, Immortal, and Shifter kind. Which reminds
me.”

I didn’t like the bitterness in his voice.

“We’re having a get-together tomorrow night. It’s White
Night. Everybody stays up late.
La Notte
Bianca,”
he said in his flawless fluid tongue. “You can be my plus one.” He
didn’t say anything more, and I followed behind him, on his way back to Rome,
the temporary reprieve from loneliness punctuated by the thought that there was
something troubling Ballard, to which I could provide no assistance. If he was
busy with his own problems, how could he ever help me with mine?

* * *

When I got home, I got on the Internet. I had a lot of
studying to do. But the only Wicca I could find was the stuff Becca and I had
been so sure was hocus-pocus. Year and a day, and telltown marriages. They were
mostly fraudulent covens, presided over by unscrupulous individuals. We were
leaving the cross-quarter days, and entering Mabon, one of the Lesser Sabbats,
the time of the Ingathering was upon us. You could tell by the moon. It was a
Harvest Moon, and it fell, strangely enough, upon the time of the Gathering. I
stayed up late into the night, researching Wiccan esbats––for any
gathering that was not a Sabbat, was an esbat. They were mostly sexual in
nature. At other times, they were used to train in Wicca. I remembered what
Becca had told me about fight training. They were doing it in New England right
this minute.