Neophyte

by T. D. McMichael

  I had lost Lia. I continued to look at the Ravenseal brochure, but really I was thinking about something else.

  * * *

  It didn’t escape me that certain marks (X-amount out of such-and-such) had been awarded to the Initiates, based upon their performances at the Wiccaning, and the marks had been posted for others to see––just not us; and just not our Marks, but our futures were in the balance. Who would go where was more important than anything else.

  Lux snapped his fingertips like a pair of dull flints, trying to spark a blaze; finally he seemed satisfied because his band of Virtuosity glowed brilliantly, and he said, “I can only show it to you. I don’t go there myself. Unless in a moment of absolute need.”

  The aether, he meant––the bad kind.

  “It really is much easier if we all form a circle,” he said.

  So, with Lux directing us, the other Neophytes and I formed a circle, linking our hands; it was just my luck I had Vittoria for this handfast, gripping my palm with her own, sweaty one. Lia was on my other side.

  “Your hand feels like a dead fish, V.”

  “If you say so, H.”

  “Ladies...” Lux closed his eyes. I could see something curl down from his delta, but if he whispered magic words or only thought them, I couldn’t tell. Next second my eyes were closing and it was like we were being linked, the other Initiates and I.

  Everyone was pushing everyone, except it was all in our heads.

  When Lux spoke, it echoed in that distant, internal-external, near-far, weirdo wacko way, which meant that we were all talking to each other without speaking, using only our minds to communicate. I also had a sense like I was in a vast mansion with hundreds of locked doors, and also, huge, open, breezy places; the places the Initiates did and did not want others to see.

  “That is why we are called Houses,” said Lux, eliciting a number of oohs and ahs from the excitable Neophytes. Any kind of secret explanation for anything to do with magic sent a thrill down my back. “And, really, why twelve is all we can ever be. Any more and it doesn’t become a House, so much as a train station.”

  “Choo choo...” said someone.

  The other Neophytes and I spent a few minutes running in and out of each other’s bedrooms. All good-naturedly. Then Lux said: “Let me show you one of the basements.”

  I saw it. Like a dark nebulous cloud. When I went to reach for it, I could not touch it.

  “That is the aether. The dark aether,” said Lux. “Some of you may have experienced it during your Wiccanings.”

  I went for it.

  “Selwyn had it,” I said.

  Somewhere I could feel two people’s hands in my own, but it was really far away.

  “He used it to hide from me. I couldn’t get through it,” I said.

  “We all have a little dark aether,” said Lux.

  “You said the Mark is positive aether. Can it not reside in the body where the dark aether is?”

  “A trenchant and profound question-slash-observation, Vittoria, of soon-to-be-Ravenseal,” said Lux. “You may think about studying Marks at some later date. To answer your question, I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Veruschka said there were some places she couldn’t go, when she was in my mind. Was this what she meant by that?” Vittoria continued.

  “Yes,” said Lux.

  I didn’t tell them that this must’ve been what Maria had seen in me, when she said I had dark powers lurking there. The negative aether.

  So Vittoria had it too.

  “I got the sense that negative aether was like ‘dark magic;’ that it was really bad,” said Vittoria.

  “Some would think...” said Lux.

  That went into my memory bank; I would have to look at it further.

  “All forms of energy can be abused,” said Lux. “Let me see if I can just tap into it for a sec.”

  One of the Initiates panicked. “Won’t it race into us, Professor?”

  “If I do my job right,” said Lux. The next second, I felt it.

  It was like another world opened up to me. Like I was me, but not me. Like whoever I was, was over. I was someone new.

  And the miraculous thing was, I felt really powerful. I mean death-defyingly jump over whatever impossible thing to jump over powerful.

  Lux pulled out and the connection was lost. “Any questions?” he asked.

  Hands went up, before, reflexively, going back down. The other Initiates didn’t want to give away what Virtue they had become, you see.

  Lux said, “It is attractive and forbidding; and it is powerful and addictive, the dark aether. Better you see it from me, than a bunch of aetherheads, out on the street.”

  Chapter 20 – Seeing Paris

  “You told me, yesterday, that you would show me certain things. I want to know what things. And, above all, how Lennox is doing. I have been so busy and self-absorbed that I have practically forgotten that he exists,” I said. “And that’s another thing. I feel like our relationship was all some magic spell, but I can’t craft, can I?”

  Asher said, “Tell me what you have seen. Before it can be directed, I have observed that all forms of magic are rambunctious. The shapeshifter shifts without thinking it, the witch or wizard disappears or reappears, without meaning to, the vampire kills before it can understand why it is even hungry...”

  “Do you know about the dark aether?” I asked. We were in the Columbarium. Asher assured me we had all night.

  “I am not a wizard, per se, but yes, I have heard of it.”

  “But never seen it?” I said. Despite myself, my voice was trembling. After all, what Asher claimed to be able to do struck me as nothing short of dark magic.

  I realized suddenly that that was the way the other Wiccans had been behaving toward Asher, as though they thought he was dangerous, too. I suddenly felt ashamed.

  Each new Wiccan discovery hit me with its own particular pang. So this was why ailuranthropes were mistrusted? The dark aether. People thought they had it.

  “I should trust you,” I said. “Forgive me. I will describe it to you. The dark aether is like an alien intelligence. You can see it, feel it. But you can never trust it. Sort of like it thinks for itself.”

  “That is exactly how the Dioscuri are,” said Asher. “But go on. I want to know what you have seen.”

  I snapped two of my double-jointed Wiccan W digits. They sparked but did not blaze. To Asher:

  “Two voices. Don’t know who they are,” I said. “I’ve heard them a couple times. I forget what exactly. Something about two of us. ‘She must not become Fledged,’ or some nonsense. So I guess that means I have time. It’ll be almost a year before I’m Adept. How long to Fledged is anyone’s guess. But they said that they would try to kill her––me, whoever I am; so I guess I don’t have that long. If I’m her.”

  It felt more natural to think of her as being me, and vice-versa.

  Asher nodded, as if this made perfect sense.

  “The conduit goes both ways, into, and from,” he said. “Although why someone would wish to broadcast they mean to kill you, Halsey.... No, I choose to believe you are causing this to happen. You said it has not happened for a while, your mind traveling?”

  “Correct.”

  “I will keep an eye out,” said Asher. “Interesting expression. I think I will keep both eyes in, and peeled, except for when I blink, but you get the gist. I will watch to make sure nothing happens to you. Meanwhile, you, Halsey Rookmaaker, must continue to concentrate on your becoming. We are at the Gathering, which is safe. There are too many of us here for any such shenanigans. No one will try to kill you here.”

  I let Asher believe that; although, I thought, it would be the perfect opportunity. If someone was trying to kill me, what better place? Nobody would know who had done it. Maybe that was the point. Then, I thought, if they were after me, they, whoever they were, must think I could do it, become fledged!

  I did an inner-woohoo and came back to Asher.
r />   “Maybe it’s Marek,” I said. A part of me that I didn’t like to think about got excited at the mere mentioning of Marek’s name. “Although he is more of a loner. As in, one. Whoever these people are, there are two of them. One. Two,” I said, holding up two fingers.

  Asher might have thought I was crazy, because he got this look on his face, so I guessed we were even.

  “Are you ready?” he said. “Because I want to show you something. How I do what I do is as important as what I can do.”

  We sat down facing each other, there in the dirt. The torch, in a bracket, illuminated us darkly.

  I became aware of Asher’s eyes.

  “You look like you want to read me,” I said.

  “You are not wrong.”

  “Then why are you hesitating?” I said.

  “Because... I am there, in my head, and I am told that you have feelings for this person. His name is Lennoxlove... Lenoir... correct? He is one of the vampires...?”

  I looked at Asher, whose eyes were blind. He could not see me. He was someplace else. The place Lennox was at. Far, far away.

  “I have to warn you, Halsey, that my gift is an unusual one. I do not merely see. I am a traveler in memories. And a trawler in dreams. I see things as they are, as they may be, and I see things that were, but have not been for a while. No doubt you can appreciate why certain ardanes exist forbidding the use of those of my kind? While I am not a Dioscurus, I have its power. What I will show you is truth, however. What they show is only what they wish others to see. Which is why it is dangerous to put too much stock in their visions.”

  “Can you see me?” I said.

  “Alas, not what you wish to know––nor would I tell you, even if I were able––about your parents and whatnot. Nothing is so destructive as knowing the future. And nothing is as dangerous as the past. I could only help you to experience what you yourself have already seen, and for that, you have your own brain. But we can read Lennox, if you wish. He is experiencing the Agonies this very moment. It is a trial by fire. And I am afraid, you may not like what you see.”

  “But you can show me?”

  “Yes, Halsey Rookmaaker. I can show you. Now, if you wish.”

  He blinked. Suddenly I was staring at him, into his eyes, which were here with me. I licked my lips.

  “Do you think I should look?” I said.

  “It’s not for me to say. Look and you will see; for my eyes have that power. Do you wish to see?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  I felt myself being sucked into his eyes. Our surroundings vanished entirely. All communication was by telepathy alone. We were flying over countryside. It was dark out. Fires peppered the countryside. I realized they were house lights. They were becoming fewer and fewer. Remember what I told you, he said. My power is in the seeing. Not in the direction of my sight.

  We came to a place on the other side of daylight, ill-lit, shrouded by the dark aether itself; the countryside around it barren, craggy, with scattered houses here and there. I could hear the rush of something or other, what must’ve been the sea, but it was too far away to tell.

  Everything was shrouded in the fog of Asher’s mind.

  I told him this, to which he replied, “That’s good. Maybe you are like an aerial. Intercepting traffic.”

  I thought about that; but it didn’t make much sense.

  “Never mind that now,” he said. “We are almost... Yes; in there are two vampires. One of them, I think, is your Lennoxlove.”

  “Why are we so far away from everything else?” I said, looking at the barren countryside.

  “Probably,” said Asher, “because of the screaming.” He shushed me and we went inside.

  Two vampires were sitting much as Asher and I were, wherever we had left our bodies, back at the Gathering. I recognized one of them immediately. Lennox’s eyes were closed. He looked as though he was in deep meditation. But his body...

  Lennox’s body was emaciated-looking, his eyes especially, the skull so sunken, in some parts, it looked as though he hadn’t eaten in weeks. Fed, I needed to remind myself. With any supernatural, their particular rhythms overwhelmed me.

  I was on Werewolf Standard Time, when I needed to be on Lennoxwatch.

  “Oh, Lennox,” I said, coming to him. “I’m so sorry,” I said, but he couldn’t hear me. His eyelids flickered.

  “That is good. I think we will get our opportunity sooner rather than later,” said Asher.

  “What d’you––?”

  But before I could inquire further, Lennox’s eyelids opened, and a couple of things happened simultaneously.

  Lennox said, “Halsey?” And Asher and I jumped into his eyeballs. It was like falling into an April sky. Lennox’s lavender eyes widened, and somehow both Asher and I had landed, smack dab, in both a time and place I did not recognize.

  Cobblestones instead of asphalt.

  Huge white-washed buildings.

  Clapboard houses.

  Real gas lamps.

  I followed Lennox as he walked down a narrow moonlit street in clothes I had never seen him wear before, with Asher at my side. “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Unless I am much mistaken, we are in one of Lennox’s memories,” said Asher. He shrugged and smiled.

  “You mean, you can just jump into people’s memories and relive them whenever you feel like?”

  “Shh,” he said to me. “This is important to Lennox. Pay attention, now. Let us see what we can see. I have heard that is the purpose of the Agonies. They are a sieve, Halsey Rookmaaker. For what, I am not sure.”

  A carriage pulled by two stallions, came to a standstill some ways ahead of Lennox, who crouched, in his ill-fitting garments, watching the scene unfold. Suddenly a horrible scream erupted from the buggy, which looked like it was about to turn over, it was rocking so fiercely. A woman fell out of it, and began crawling on her hands and knees. The driver of the carriage simply sat their, reigns in hand, ignoring her. Lennox leapt forwards. Out stepped an older gentleman who bent and was about to deliver a backhand strike to her face, when Lennox made his presence known.

  “What do you want?” said the older man.

  The aura about Lennox changed. The garments he wore, instead of looking as though they had been pulled from a trash heap, took on a different aspect. He simply radiated power. When he took off his jacket, to give to the lady, he looked royal. She crawled up his leg, which he held out jauntily. His open shirt clashed daringly with his well-chiseled profile, I saw smirk, as he dared the other man to say something. Anything.

  “Drive on, Rochester. I know a lost cause when I see one,” said the older man.

  He left the woman to Lennox’s ministrations. At once Lennox helped her to her feet.

  “My hero,” she said. She may have been drunk. Her makeup was smeared. She was in a frock of some sort. It looked turn-of-the-century. But what century? Just how old was Lennox, anyway?

  Less than a century, I told myself. Everyone said so.

  So this must’ve been around Nineteen Something-or-other. I didn’t recognize the place. Asher helped me there. “Look!” he said.

  Rising in the distance was the Eiffel Tower, so we must’ve been in Paris. The home, I realized suddenly, of the vampires. If I were to believe their conceit that they were the only ones.

  Perhaps they made that true by enforcement. I had seen Lennox kill two vampires before.

  “Say, whatcha doing here, anyway?”

  “You’re drunk,” said Lennox.

  “And you’re handsome. You lookin’ for a good time, or you just like to wander the streets like I do? Only time to get whatcha really want, at night.”

  “Can I drop you somewhere?” said Lennox.

  “Not unless you’re going to give me a piggyback ride,” she giggled. She didn’t look like she would object.

  “I had something else in mind,” he said.

  “Well, that’s gonna cost you,” said the prostitute.

 
; “I can pay,” said Lennox.

  “Just as long as you ain’t one ’a them deadbeats. Deadbeats,” she said again. “Come with me. Maybe we can find someplace behind a tree or something.”

  She took Lennox’s hand, who did not move.

  “Say, you’re kind of cold. What––what are you doing? No, I don’t want––Don’t––”

  He was rising up with her.

  The scene changed.

  Asher bade me look away. “Once we have seen we cannot unsee,” he said. “Lennox may not like you knowing these things about him.”

  But I couldn’t.

  “He told me once,” I said. “Lennox told me that he used to kill people. It was in his nature back then...”

  I watched as Lennox took the prostitute. What I couldn’t have known, and was unprepared for, was how brutally cruel he was, and nonchalant in his cruelty. He played with her as a cat does a mouse.

  “You want me?” he said to her.

  “I want to be you,” she said.

  She clung to him, half drenched in her own blood; it ran down her front in a great sash. A torrent of blood that coated her naked body.

  “You will be, I daresay,” said Lennoxlove, “quite soon enough. Say hello to death, mademoiselle, for you are with it now...”

  He lunged at her before she could speak. There was a powerful exhalation of breath. He left her there on the banks of the Seine. And I watched, in horror, as he disappeared into the night.

  The next night was worse; I met with Asher again, and we rushed into Lennox’s dreams. His nightmares. Into his very soul!

  By then, I was addicted. I didn’t care that it was rude. I needed it––had to see. Lux’s speeches about the ethics of power were so much hot air. Besides, I had that sense that Lennox, for want of a better word, could almost feel me there. I had his permission. I had permission of Camille, too, who was almost Lennox’s mother. Perhaps she thought my overhearing would help him in some way. The Agonies weren’t a penance, were they?

  Lennox was somehow more self-assured, this night. We were at another day, another memory.

  He looked like a million French francs. His coat and top hat from a fine French house of fashion. One could tell. His luxurious necktie spilled out from the lush fabric.