Neophyte

by T. D. McMichael

  “No.”

  André was adamant.

  Leaving the rest of this argument unspoken, they moved on, the plan resolved, agreed upon without words. They would dig. Or, rather, re-dig. The essence of the job was in secrecy. No evidence, imprints or otherwise, could be left behind. If I am right, thought Thierry, time will tell. No more murders.

  It was an encouraging thought.

  It was almost like something was going on. Their business had never been this busy––nor André so on edge.

  It was arduous going, at first, the soil hard with the winter frost. The age of the grave didn’t help matters. Soon they would be rid of the stranger. Least he’d have company, they thought. He was too big to be a she. Thierry recognized that now. Did they even come in females? He reckoned they must have.

  This seemed to amuse him. Anything to deflect from the desecration. Still, André was uneasy, and he couldn’t help thinking Thierry had a point. It would be wise to see who they were burying––if just for piece of mind; but the price said otherwise. They had mind readers, after all. The Lenoir would know....

  One mistake was all it took to get killed––and, strange though it may have sounded, André valued his reputation. He wouldn’t let Thierry lead them astray with their temptations.

  It was nearing 4 a.m., the sun would be up in a few hours, when they found what they were looking for. Throwing their shovels on top of the precarious mound, they popped quickly back down––thinking all the while: hurry, hurry––to brush back the dirt from the cheap pine lid of the coffin, which had lain undisturbed for nearly two decades. Amazing how it had survived intact all this time.

  “We could forgo this bit,” said Thierry, who had suddenly realized the time. They had wasted too much of it with their consciences.

  André removed his pry bar in response. So be it, thought Thierry, taking it from him, not relishing the sight that was about to greet them.

  Thierry worked deftly, tearing at the wood. It gave in splinters and breaks. At his motion, André hopped dutifully from the grave. Thierry pried with all his might. Nails jarred from wood, reverberating in the freshly dug hole. And he bent it back, going so far as to step upon the occupant within. He felt the lace of her gown underfoot. Now if somebody checked, there would be two corpses––the woman, and the stranger––buried here.

  “How much time do we have?” he asked. They were almost done.

  André looked uncomfortably at the approaching dawn. A life of servitude had bestowed in him an accuracy of measures.

  “Just enough to throw the dirt back on, I’d say, if we want to sneak out before the light.”

  He did not like to think what would happen if they got caught. Apart from trespassing, and other illegal acts, the identity of their man should be known by no one. That was the agreement. They were referred by certain unscrupulous clients who did not forgive mistakes easily; all other considerations were insignificant compared to what would happen if they failed.

  “No! How much time do we have to do the rites?” Thierry hissed.

  Shaken, it was a moment before André could respond. “Well?” said the latter.

  He listened fretfully to Thierry wheezing below him. Slowly the words of their client came back to André. He shuddered. There had been something depraved in that figure, unnatural, as though he had done terrible things, and would do them again. “I don’t know,” he said at last.

  Thierry stamped his foot; unwise, given what he was standing on. They heard bone crack. “Careful,” said André. He heard his own everlasting doom there. Again, he crept to the body in the burlap sack.

  He would have to touch it, real soon. Then he’d know. It would be hard, awkward; settled in its discomfiture the way old compost lay, sickly to the touch.

  Either that, or spring at them!

  Nothing would shock him now.

  It all went back to the client. Night stretched into night, in his memories of their meeting, as though daylight would never come again. An illicit one-time act––that was the way André liked to think of it; but this time was somehow different, more unsettling.

  André had never murdered anyone. He didn’t think he could. But he knew what murder felt like. And he had never felt this before.

  He looked at Thierry, who seemed preternaturally paused, as if he, too, were undergoing the same set of moralistic crises, heaped one atop the next.

  “Do you get the feeling,” he said, “like we shouldn’t be doing this?”

  Thierry grunted, clearly troubled.

  “Say we don’t,” said André, “say we take this guy, we...”

  “He’s dead,” said Thierry. “If we heard anything, it was his ghost talking.” He was irritated by the hesitancy he perceived in André’s voice. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Then he looked up. André looked frightened. A fear was on his face that could not be tossed aside, or in a pit and covered over with what remained of the night.

  “I don’t want to do this,” André said.

  André had a plan. They would cover over the coffin, lid and earth, making it look to unsuspecting eyes like nothing had happened there. Suspecting ones were another matter.

  Implausible though it seemed, André wasn’t certain, whether in a day or in a year, somebody would be sent, to check up on the contents of the grave, to see if the contract had indeed been fulfilled. But there was nothing else for it. With doubt indecision had been born.

  Probably he was being paranoid, but it was time to take action. What could this man have done, he wondered, to warrant––

  Quickly, and with aching backs, they began forcing the dirt back from where it had come. Within minutes they had finished, both men doing their best to make the site look undisturbed. It was biting cold and all about them remnants of dying grass rose in feeble patches.

  The moon had gone, as they trundled back the way they’d come, replaced by the first rays of wintry sunlight, their burden still in their possession. It was late December––freezing in Paris. A sheet of ice half a foot thick glazed over the Seine. It was so cold, Thierry noticed his breath fog before his eyes. His breathing was labored, both with trundling their cargo––if anything it had kept growing in size; it was very heavy now––and the new exertion of his and André’s choice. Something had stopped their hands on the brink of completing their mission (which had never happened before)! And now they were stuck with––whatever it was.

  “Are you thinking what I am?” he said.

  André nodded. “The old man will know what to do,” he said. “They say he studies. Maybe he will take it off our hands.”

  “Not that,” said Thierry, who stopped short to rest against a small aspen tree. “First we must know what we are taking him.”

  It was the thieves’ code, both men knew it. Given where the body came from, there could potentially be a considerable amount of heat upon it: interest from unlooked-for foes. The only kinds of bodies they buried were the ones nobody wanted found. Which begged the question: What if it were? Tales get around. Pretty soon you pay for your kindnesses, they thought. They didn’t want to bring the old man a looked-for body.

  But André had enough. He stabbed first one spade into the ground, then the next. It was fantastically quiet out. “Are you saying that you think we should check this fellow?” he said. “We can’t keep dithering, Thierry.”

  “Stolen radios make bad pawns,” said Thierry philosophically.

  “Your knife please,” said André. “Hurry! I don’t want to be known as the ditchdigger of Père Lachaise. We’ll see what this fellow knows or if he’s as mundane as I find you.”

  Thierry handed André a small butterfly knife. It whicked open in André’s hand.

  He started at the neckline, piercing the burlap with the point of the blade, working his way up to expose the chin. There was no pulse.

  If experience had taught both men one thing, it was how to recognize Death. For all intents and purposes, the body before them was de
ad.

  Soon, the head was exposed. André pulled the hood back crumpling it behind as a makeshift pillow, revealing the face.

  The features were striking. This person, whoever he was, would move through society extraordinarily easily, both in the supernatural world, with all its variation, and in the mortal world. It was strange how there was a definition between the two, almost defined by death. Fringe though they may have been, even Thierry and André could sense that supernaturals sometimes died. Something was coming. If they could’ve guessed, hardship. For them and everyone else.

  A myriad of far-fetched ideas paraded in front of both men’s minds, each more outlandish than the last, until they were consumed by choices, wondering, Which option shall we take? First things first, however: they would need to get a look at the Mark; concealed, for now, but not forever. “We need to get a look at this fellow––before we bring him to that old bone conjurer,” said Thierry shrewdly.

  André balled his fingers into fists. Why was it always him?

  Cautiously, he held one out until it flowered into five gnarled, veined tentacles, and he touched the sack.

  There was no reaction––unless it was the reaction of André’s heart beating. “See? Told you,” he said. “Dead.” He breathed a sigh of relief. The powerful form in the burlap sack remained immobile.

  But then what had that whispering been?

  André wet his lips, anxious to resolve this. He could sense Thierry’s uneasiness. The Mark. Just the Mark. And then they could get this over with. Either the body would give up its secrets, and remain dead––in which case, they would give it a less-ignoble burial, probably in the old man’s garden––or...

  He withdrew the blade. Puncturing the burlap had nicked the skin. There was blood on it. Running blood. André gasped. Thierry shook his head. It was there. The Mark.

  The skin had the fine silvery penstrokes they had only heard about but never seen before. What had the client said? You must say the words?

  That was very important. The Last Rites....

  Looking at the huge form before them, the only words André could muster were how? How had the body seemed to double in size the last half hour? As though it were still alive––or worse––changing.

  The face was hardening, becoming bolder, the skin tighter. André had never heard of bodies altering so drastically. Hair was forming where there had been none.

  What had the client said? This work must be done before first light.

  “I don’t think we’ll ever get it there in time, Thierry.”

  “In time or out––just as long as it’s off our backs.”

  “I think we’re too late.”

  The figure was rising up, stepping from the wheelbarrow––Thierry and he tried to run––its shroud falling to the wayside––but it was too late.

  “Something wicked is in the works––we’re dead because of it.”

  “Its Mark. Look at its Mark, André!”

  On its feet now, the figure was even more massively intimidating than they could possibly have imagined. Who had not wanted it seen, and why? They slammed into a crypt wall, trying to escape, turned, staring at it, their backs to stone. Confusion and fear somehow jammed together, locking up their ability to move.

  “But you c-can’t be––” said Thierry, looking at it. The shadow advanced.

  André didn’t care what the old legends said. This thing was huge. It was here now, before them. Sizing them up. André hadn’t meant for things to get so out of hand.

  “We t-tried to s-save you,” he said, trembling before the onslaught of the shadow.

  Suddenly the light shone.

  They were transfixed by the hunter’s Mark.

  And then it spoke.

  “Stormr hamrinum,” it said. The words a kind of mélange, a confusion of color and sound and––

  The grapefruit-sized ventricle at its elbow released a surge of magic. The invocation, a brilliant orange fireball, engulfed the night sky. It seemed to envelop Thierry and André; before they knew it, fire, like burning coal, had invaded their bodies, rushing to their very souls. Halsey Rookmaaker woke screaming––the writhing bodies still with her, like shadows from a dream.

  For a moment that lasted an eternity, it felt like the monster was in her bedroom with her. It was kneeling, when a voice sounded: “The war is starting. Battle lines will be drawn. She and the vampire are headed towards Prague. Find the other one and kill him. Do not let it survive.”

  “And them?” said the Hunter.

  “The Dark Order shall rise again, my old friend.”

  Chapter 1 – Her 18th Birthday

  I felt like I had run really far and stopped––my heart rate was off the charts. Who had that figure been and why was I seeing him? True, he had been really big––hulking even––but even in my dreams I could feel what the other men had been thinking. Their perceptions of him colored the flash-memory. He had grown, changed, shifted, killed. It had been really dark. I wished I had seen him better. But did I?

  It was a second before I realized they were dead. That I had seen it happen. And that it was probably real. Père Lachaise was in Paris, France. I had seen something which had happened a great distance away.

  I reached to turn on the light, but the lightbulb blew out. This was something which had been happening on a regular basis, and I wondered why it hadn’t happened before. Probably because I needed to know it was possible before I could do magic. Which was a depressing thought.

  I didn’t like to think that I was so much of a follow-the-leader that I had to wait for Lia to tell me she had been blowing up microwaves and stuff before she realized it was the craft that was doing it. The magic spark in her skin or whatever, her core self, that was saying, There’s something going on here. You’re coming into your Self.

  My Self was in her nightgown in her four-poster, shivering slightly, because the wind had knocked open the French doors, and when I looked he wasn’t there. Lennoxlove Lenoir, one of the vampires from France. When Hunter, and what I had just seen in my visions, I realized he hadn’t been one, either, a vampire. Then who had the Hunter been?

  Somebody looking for something.... That’s all I knew. I think instinctively I knew that. Boxes of empty Sylvanias littered the floor. I gave up and lit the Iron Roses, two entwined candle holders like roisin dubhs, black Irish roses, with links to northern Wicca.

  When I looked up LENNOXLOVE in a search engine, it gave me a place in Scotland. Which was weird. Maybe that was where Lennox was from. I had always taken him for American. It was too depressing to think about. What did I really know about him, other than the fact that he was really good-looking, with long, dark hair that shot out dynamically just so. He was always making interesting shadow figures, creeping into my loft. My landlady didn’t know. She thought I was just a loner. A stupid ragazza.

  I fetched from the bedside Volume number two of my Diaries, feeling the heavily-worn pages with my fingertips. It had had a Mark. The hunter had had a Mark. That seemed to clunk in my brain as something which was important.

  But that wasn’t possible, was it? He was a shifter. I had seen him change into a wolf––or a kind of wolf. There hadn’t been one in over a century. A witch or wizard and a shifter. A witch or wizard shifter. So others had said. I saw him changing, becoming something more than he was––which is what I wanted to do.

  I sighed, letting my mind wander: So be it, I thought; which had become, of late, my motto, with so many lightbulbs being destroyed. They were collecting like the bones of dead things in my trash can.

  I wrote out the last few lines in my somewhat loopy handwriting and closed the diary. Dedication... Erm––I thought a bit...

  Let’s see...

  I hit upon a likely line and wrote the following:

  To my amanuensis, Lennoxlove Lenoir, and as some have taken umbrage, I can only stress that the remainder of the Diaries shall be written through my eyes only; forgive him his trespasses, even if he isn’t i
n this volume, much.

  Let them make of that what they would, I thought, before realizing the likelihood of any reader actually reading this far was beyond unbelievable. But then all of this was. Vampires and werewolves and me. I was a Wiccan. A Neophyte now, to be more precise. There was also Adept, and then those who were Fledged; the great end-all be-all, Fledged; the steppingstones to magical apotheosis.

  As for why no one would read this––well, that was one of the Lenoir’s rules, wasn’t it? To shut the hell up about the existence of vampires. The other rule was don’t make too many vampires. Would I be held accountable if this account were to somehow get out? I had been in the world six months. Long enough to know better. But I had never been indoctrinated, in the Wiccan sense. True, I had taken the Rede, a kind of Hippocratic oath, but I had never sworn allegiance, or, in fact, sided with one group over another, unless verbally. Maria Lenoir knew, for instance, that my heart was with the werewolves and with her cousin, Lennoxlove Lenoir. Almost like I was torn. In truth, the predicament had never been difficult. If anything, it felt like the right thing to do. As if I was born to be split. Like magic itself.

  Not one or the other––but both my Lennoxlove-allegiance and my werewolf-allegiance existing simultaneously. It felt natural. Just...

  Stop defending it, I told myself.

  But if it got out that I was running around with a pack of werewolves, and with the only vampire in Rome, would the Lenoir come for me?

  It was a chance I would have to take. I would be willing to take. Writing was like therapy, to me. I felt better when I did it. It helped me make heads or tails, X, Y, or zed, of things. Plus, if I wanted to attain the highest Wiccan standard (and I did), I would have to keep the diary. Fledged wasn’t something I could do in a controlled environment. I had thrown my future away, after all. Wiccans wrote. Kept Books of Shadows.

  Briefly other Wiccan Initiates––Shaharizan and so forth; Gemma Moonflower and the like––those who were going to established Wiccan Households, such as Harcort, or the Covens. There was also the House of Peril and some other ones, chief among them Ravenseal. It was said Ravenseal was the best. Then why didn’t I want to join it? What was it about the easy opportunities and likelihood of running into ‘the best people’, at Ravenseal, that bothered me so much? Was it that I was fraternizing with the enemy? (They had selected me at the Gathering. Which was kind of a recruitment-type thing.)