by Jade Alters
“I…” the girl murmurs. She looks about as confused as I did, during my first encounter with a Vampire.
We freeze, eyes stuck on one another. Then Stephanie rushes past me to possess one of the other Vampires. River, in the form of a great horned owl, crashes into the side of another Vampire’s head. Bart blurs from one of them to the next. Chests and heads click off the ground in his wake. I don’t have time for this. Mercy or damnation? I slam the girl’s shoulders down hard enough to buck her head off the ground. A little spray of scarlet jumps out from beneath it. Her eyes close, but it’s nothing a Vampire can’t recover from. I leap up and lunge to the next.
I incorporate the general rule of an eye for an eye as I rush down the dank back alley. I deal with the Vampires how they deal with their prey. If they’re struggling to hold back, to let their victims live, I clothesline them with a scaly arm. I bash their skulls with the backsides of my claws. But for those who drink their fill and leave only lifeless, shriveled husks behind, I let loose the fire. I cremate those Vampires and victims alike. Only mounds of gray ash are left of them when I move on.
Stephanie, River, Bart and I make short work of the Vampires in the alleys around the Tether. It shakes me, to see so many so confused, and the bloody mess it’s created, but I can’t let myself feel it. Not until the mission is complete. Not until the Academy is safe. I never thought I’d raise a claw to defend it again, but now it’s all that stands between us and the Lotus.
I step out into the alley where it happened. The very place where a Vampire took everything that resembled a normal life from me. The walls have been repaired, but some of the stone is permanently scorched. There are no Vampires here. No, rather more disturbing is what’s right outside the alley, on the other side of the illusory curtain. Something that I can’t stop from shaking me. My heels cement to the ground.
“Cece, wha- oh my…” Stephanie cuts herself off when she arrives beside me.
“What the fuck…” River murmurs. Just on the other side of the translucent barrier is something I never imagined I’d see. A public display of the supernatural. A mass kidnapping. There are fifteen Vampires, just that I can see from the alley, dragging more Normans off. Some of them have broken limbs. Some of them have fangs ripping through the tissue of their throats as we watch. Their captors drag them off for the nearest alley they can find. For some, that includes the one behind the illusory curtain.
“We have to get out there,” I growl. A fiery shell wraps me, to revert me to my human form. “Minimal visibility. River, we’ll bring them to you, in here.”
“Possession only, got it,” Stephanie confirms her understanding.
“Come on,” Bart follows. They flank me on either side as I step through the glassy barrier into the streets of the city I once called home.
Stephanie’s Astral form dissolves to the Blue Plane instantly. Bart races off at borderline human speeds. I focus to channel the fire within without releasing it. A solid, Dragon-strength haymaker sends the nearest Vampire reeling and the Norman survivor sprinting into the colorful night. City lights flash all around us as the blue-eyed possessed waltz right into the illusory alley with River. As knuckles like sledgehammers fire out from Bart and myself. As newbie Vampire bodies stagger off at blurry speeds or outright collapse. We cleave their numbers just about in half when I see it.
In the beaming lights of Valencia street, a silhouette stalks us. At first, it’s just one. But, between evading fangs and hurling back my own destructive counters, the silhouette multiplies. Before I know it, a whole contingent of robed figures gathers on the edge of the road. The brightness of the bar advertisements around them obscures any detail, but I know who they are as well as my own reflection. We all do. I don’t need to see the backs of their burgundy robes to know what symbol is emblazoned there. A Lotus.
“They can’t mean to make a stand here,” Bart murmurs as he zips to my side. But, despite the analysis I happen to share with him, each of the robed members unveils a small metal orb from their hidden arsenals. I glance from one to the other as the Lotus unit fans out. They seem to form a sort of perimeter around the area, around the Vampiric carnage. But not one of them has a bow gun, like the one Heren used on Dorian.
“Go,” I tell Bart. “It doesn’t look like they’re after me.”
“You’ve got one minute. Then I come get you,” Bart counters. I find a kind of concern I didn’t expect when I meet his eyes. In that scarlet ring sings a silent message: clock’s ticking. Then he vanishes. I’m not sure exactly what I plan to accomplish in that minute. Ravage the streets of the city in my draconic form? Take out a few more Vampires, or maybe a Lotus or two? I just know it’s all too weird to walk away from with nothing.
What I do see, in that minute, is potentially the most chilling spike in violence I ever have. Vampires rip throats clean open in their thirst. Hands and feet thrash against the encroaching darkness of a bloody death. Bystanders trip over one another in the rush for the safety of nearby bars. Shrieks from those who couldn’t escape echo down surrounding alleys all around. Sirens blare in the distance. Engines roar and tires squeal – Normans either fleeing the scene or rushing in, in emergency response vehicles. My heart even jumps at the sight of one news van. The film crew is a little too intimidated to get up close, but they are setting up a camera.
All throughout this chaos, the Lotus spreads out, holding up their blinking light orbs. They separate the Vampires into smaller, paralyzed clusters. With heavily curved sabers, they cleave their heads right from their necks. Each Lotus to slay a Vampire sacks the head and drags the body to a surrounding alley. It’s so well organized, so efficient, that I think my time must be up. I expect Bart to zip in any second, to pull me away. The Lotus has used no flashing Dragon-freeze tool on me, yet I feel just as powerless to move in the face of it all.
“Go back to your school,” comes a voice from my side. I jump away from it, but the Lotus member who spoke is already busy hitting another Vampire with paralyzing light. She hardly gives me a glance from beneath the shade of her hood.
“But...you…” is all I can get out of my suddenly dry throat.
“For now, the Vampires are the bigger threat,” the girl tells me. “You’ll have your time.” That prickles every hair down my spine. Like she’s already seen it. Yet still, I turn for the alley. There are Normans all around. If we want to keep our secrets, the best thing to do is to leave less of us on the ground. I make a break for the Academy Training Zone. Stephanie, River and Bart flicker at me through the translucent barrier.
“Cece?”
My feet scrape across the pavement. Each foot weighs a ton. The only thing heavier is my head as it creaks sideways, to find the man who called me. A man I haven’t seen in years. I’m not sure what to call him. Jonah? I’m certainly not calling him Dad. Not after the way he left me in that hospital bed. The way he told me to stay there and let them run tests. I don’t call him anything. I just stare at him, dressed in the collared uniform of some EMS service.
“Cece!” Bart calls me. This time, he does grab me. We shoot back down the alley to the Academy Training Zone faster than my brain can register. In a second, it’s all gone.
New Tricks
Emery,
The Broken Academy, Administrative Wing
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Cece so pale. But by the end of that report, I probably look about the same shade. The Vampires, the Normans and the Kyrie? All on the streets of San Francisco? Suddenly our time seems shorter than short. I’m not sure we even have any. Heren may have acted as the head of the snake, but it seems the body is still quite capable of fighting on.
“It’s likely the frenzy was brought on by the Lotus hunting the newbie Vampires,” Lucidous announces after the longest, heaviest silence to ever hang over our massive gathering. The Council, the Kyrie, the ASTF and the Kyrie’s best fighters sit side by side at a long collection of tables pushed together in the main hall of the Administrative Wing. “They
forced them all into a tight, highly populated area.” Another long silence.
“We need to consider the possibility that, when the Vampires have been dealt with, the Lotus will come for the Academy,” Magister Reynold says at last.
“A direct attack?” Horace lets out. “You think they’re capable?”
“We have to consider it. Especially with the tactics we’ve seen in the field,” Chief Botan asserts.
“They’ll come,” Cece assures us all. The surety with which she says it is downright jarring.
“Then the best thing we can do is develop defensive strategies,” Dragonlord Thise figures. None can disagree with that. We’ll do best in the halls we know. Especially considering it might be the one place the Lotus doesn’t.
“Emery,” Magister Reynold catches me off-guard. I almost pull a muscle turning my head to him. We’ve all been waiting on this. To see who the first call to action will fall on. The first official order, outside of discussion. The beginning of the war. I feel Darius’ chill in the shape of a hand gripping my thigh. I slide my hand down to grab onto him.
“Yes?” I prepare myself for whatever role. Whatever minor shielding I can provide against the piercing razor that is the Lotus. Every time I think of those flowered robes, I see Heren. I see those perfect, eerie blue eyes looking right through me. Wherever he is now, I hope it hurts.
“Magicians have long played one of the finest supporting roles in major supernatural battles, rare as they are. Do you think you and Serge could train others to conjoin their tricks, like you two do? The magnitude of certain tricks the two of you have performed… Well, it’s historical,” Magister Reynold tells me. Serge and I share a glance from a few seats away. He has as much trouble as I do withholding a smirk when Horace and Deliah shift uncomfortably on the other side of the table. “If we had more Magicians capable of doing that…”
“Yeah, sure,” Serge says, purposely casual. I snort when Deliah visibly winces at the response, when he’s been shown such respect by a superior. Even Reynold smirks through his wiry white beard when he sees what we’re doing.
“Uh-huh,” I grunt. The wrinkles that appear in Horace’s head add ten years to his look.
“Then we’ll start training immediately,” Magister Reynold nods.
“Lucidous. Bart,” Thise calls out across the table next. The two of them turn their heads to attend. Everyone else listens in. “These frenzied Vampires the Lotus are exterminating…can they be reasoned with?”
“It depends,” Bart answers first. “The ones we saw in San Francisco…maybe. Some of them…” The conversation spins on, and everyone spins around it. Everyone but me, and maybe Serge.
I’m too concerned with this new role of teacher. Serge and I have been able to merge tricks specific to our shared bloodline. Now we’re going to teach unrelated strangers how to do the same? What tricks will we even use? By the end of the meeting, I’ve got a rough draft of a plan.
Emery,
The Broken Academy, B Wing Courtyard
The satellite Training Zones are understandably off-limits, after what happened in San Francisco. That leaves us precious little places for our new students to practice the tricks we need. For the strategy I have in mind, we’ll need room.
Serge and I take the most confusing collection of Magicians I’ve ever seen in one place to the B Wing courtyard of the Academy. A fall breeze rustles the grass and decorative plants. It unifies students who would typically never train under the same teachers with unruly hair. My brother and I stand before a crowd of Academy Magicians, from first-years to old classmates. Intermixed with them are Magicians from the Dalshak clan, along with other powerful and snooty families. They look about as happy to be sharing the courtyard with their new colleagues as I expected. But they’re all here to learn the same thing: a trick I’m not sure we can teach them. They’re all driven, for once, by the same motive: survive a war I’m not sure any of us will.
“Alright, Magicians,” Serge starts the class. It’s odd for me to hear such authority in his voice. When we were younger, I never would even have imagined he had it in him. But now he booms over this odd tapestry of Magicians old and new with a volume that rattles the twig-like branches of the brush. “We all know the basics. Light acts as both a particle and wave. We were born with the capability to manipulate those natures.” With this, his eyes shoot to the corners of their sockets. A pair of eyes just like mine signals me to play my part. I step forward.
“The hardest part of this is joining your tricks. Weaving these light waves together takes…a certain chemistry. It’s a dynamic operation that relies on both of you to read the other,” I say to the expectant Magicians.
At first, it’s a mix of condemning and fearful glares that find me. Either Dalshaks who hold my betrayal close to heart or new Academy students who have only heard legends of me and my brother. But they’re as surprised by the voice that comes from within me as I am. It’s not the authoritarian demand of our parents. It’s an honest tone of command that is brave for coming with fear, rather than insane for coming without it. Of course I’m scared. We should all be.
Serge and I demonstrate a scaled-down version of one of our joint tricks. We lock our arms together with a hand on each other's shoulders. My brother and I snap our fingers at the same time to ignite a screaming bright lance made of pure light in the ground between us. The weapon shines in the core of every wowed Magician filling the courtyard. It’s bigger and brighter than anything a single Magician could conjure. A few mouths hang open. Some of our students even take a cautious step back from the unprecedented trick they don’t understand.
The truth is, it took Serge and I so much longer than our students have to learn to do this. It came more from boredom than anything, when we were little. We were hardly allowed any games, outside of the puzzle boxes Horace and Deliah constantly dropped in my lap. Serge was more a fan of dazzling new tricks, which I have to admit drew me in after a while. Fast forward a few years of boredom, and we could conjure tricks both illusory and truly distorting like nothing the magic world had seen. At least, not that it had written down. These Magicians have months, at best, to learn to do the same. I just hope it took Serge and I so long to learn because of how young we were.
“Now again, slower,” I tell them as Serge and I release one another. Our shining lance dissolves into blazing yellow petals. One strong wind sweeps away all signs it was even there, save for the scorched grass where its tip had struck. “You probably missed the first few steps, because they were so fluid. This is exactly how it needs to be, though, to use joint tricks in battle.”
“First: the physical contact,” Serge announces. He puts his hand on my shoulder. Mine finds its way to his. “It allows you to feel changes in tension. Your partner’s body language will help you gauge when to start your trick. You see, each joint trick is formed from two smaller ones.”
“In every Magician’s partnership, there needs to be a lead and follow. Both are equally important, despite the names. Trying to conjure both tricks together is next to impossible. It’s slight, but if you pay attention this time, you’ll see that I’m the lead in our partnership,” I follow. With a subtle nod to Serge, I rub my free hand’s fingers together. As they hang ready to snap, a faint shape forms in the grass. It resembles the lance we conjured seconds ago, but it’s almost completely see-through.
“Now, I read the rhythm of lightwaves from her trick,” Serge explains. His fingers touch to calibrate his own trick with mine. “I make mine to fit with her mold perfectly. My waves should fill the gaps in hers, so there’s a constant, heightened intensity to the trick.” As he finds the sweet spot of interlocked lightwaves, the brightness intensifies. The spear shimmers to vibrant life, almost as powerful as it was before. Whoahs and ahs flutter through the crowd on the wings of butterflies in everyone’s stomach. Watching them watch us like that sets a few loose in me, too.
“Then, only once your lightwaves have harmonized completely…when yo
u see the visual difference, and feel a signal from your partner,” I announce. I close my eyes to concentrate. I wait until Serge squeezes my shoulder. From there, we both count in our minds. One…two… On three, we both snap.
Our spear sputters sparks of luminance over the courtyard as it rockets straight upward. Eyes shoot up after the streak of light. It pierces the fluffy clouds over the Academy before dispersing as bolts of golden lightning. A few mutters and mumbles create a drumroll of anticipation throughout the crowd. Serge and I unlink shoulders.
“Pair up. If you came with someone, or anybody in the group comes to mind you have a good relationship with, of any kind, try them first,” I quiet the crowd just by speaking. To my surprise, their volume lowers organically, even the other Dalshaks. “But personality and magical ability aren’t always the same, so you may have to mix up partnerships if it isn’t working out.”
“Today, we’re just going to try synchronizing lightwaves. To make it easier, we’ll use props,” Serge announces. He crouches down to take up the teaching tools we brought with us. Glass orb-lanterns. “All you’ll do is try to light the lantern, together. If you succeed, it should be considerably brighter than anything you can do on your own.” By the time he’s done explaining, I’m almost done handing the orbs out to the front row of students. Some of them are considerably older than me, yet they eye me with a sort of suspicious respect.
“Now…we don’t expect many of you will even be able to light the lantern together today,” I call out over the crowd while I pass out their assignments. “That’s alright. This took us a long time to master, even the basics. It was so much longer before we were able to channel it into anything practical. Don’t be surprised if it takes until the end of the week to light the lantern together. Feel free to practice on your own time…” I trail off when I notice a certain body lingering on the outskirts of the courtyard.
