Authors: T.D. McMichael
Neophyte / Adept (63 page)
Lenoir took the mother
lode of Rayven’s talents, his abilities. So Laurinaitis said. Did Lenoir want
Rayven’s soul now, as well?
“You’re forgetting the Rede,” said Sándor. “The Wiccan Rede
to Do No Harm. Rayven had his chance, Halsey. He made his choices. If he has a
soul, perhaps it can be saved, but that isn’t what you should be worried
about.”
“No,” said Septimus.
“We have to stop him,” said Sándor.
“What about the Last Rites?” I said.
“To destroy Rayven, we must first find the grey wolf. Either
that, or kill Rayven’s master, and I don’t think you want to go up against him
just yet.”
“No.” I shook my head––but that would mean
leaving Rome, leaving everything; starting over, in a way. To find the grey
wolf, would Rayven have to be near me? I asked.
Sándor nodded. “And therein lies our great advantage,” he
said. “After all, Rayven wants you dead.”
I felt like I had taken a wrong turning, only to find myself,
mysteriously, back at the beginning.
Rayven...
His Lare... the Last Rites...
Somehow I needed to find out everything I could about
necromancy, even if that meant going against the Rede––
I could take Rayven’s soul, thus destroying him beyond the
reach of his master; only, the Wiccan Rede kept stopping me... There was no way
around it. I was going to have to address the Wiccan Rede.
Rayven’s a demon. So
if he was brought
Back, I thought...
The
gravediggers were trying to save Rayven. That’s what they were doing when he
murdered them; so, if I murder Rayven...
Am I helping him?
Maybe by reuniting Rayven with his soul, I can kill him. But his soul is in
Limbo... or no––that’s his spirit animal...
How do I murder
somebody without dooming myself elevenfold? And what about this flesh offering?
I thought.
I couldn’t exactly raise the
dead without doing some serious Dark Magic. It must take huge amounts of
magical energy to raise the dead––energy I don’t have...
unless––
Chapter
17 – Epilogue –
The Dark Path
I flipped through the Everything book, back in my room,
thinking about the Dark Path.
Nota bene:
Magic drains
––
YOU, if you let it.
If I was going to stop the Dark Order from rising, first
off, I couldn’t do it today; I wasn’t ready yet; I hadn’t learned enough. If I
summoned Rayven now, he’d probably just end up killing me.
The S Bros told me about the Dark Path, but that didn’t give
me any clues how to walk it, or if I should. What I needed was a guide...
I booted up my laptop, typing my request into the search
engine. It was still counting back from IX, the Roman-numeral web site.
When I had thought the grey wolf was Risky, I thought he was
protecting me–– But if he was
Rayven’s
Lare... It created a whole new sort of problem for me.
I opened a second window, doing a quick search for
Lares
––
There were different types. The
Lar Familiaris
was a family spirit––A
Guardian
. What had Mistress Genevieve
said?
“Your Mother and
Father––rest their souls––elected me your Guardian.”
I reread the letter.
I already had a Lare. A guardian, in a way. Mistress
Genevieve. I had been in Rome, now, thirteen months, time enough to figure out
certain answers were not necessarily here.
Let’s look at what you
know, Halsey. Parents murdered––raised overseas––
You’re
eighteen––
According to Mistress Genevieve
, that is the year, apparently, We Come Into our Powers...
(“Magnetism pulls us back to the beginning. You to yours is a powerful tug.”)
What if she’s right? If so, Rome would be my beginning...
St. Martley’s my middle, and now... Was this the end?
A psychopath and his henchman were after me... Until I knew
why, I’d be stuck in shadows, locked in a mystery.
Risky was the lar familiaris of
Ballard’s
family, not mine––
enos Lases iuvate
––their
paterfamilias
. It was his job to protect their secrets...
Somehow, Risky had managed to safeguard not only the truth,
but us ever finding out about it––
I scribbled a long and detailed note to Ballard, which took
me most of the night, before finally ripping it out of my Diary. I continued
adding P.S.’s, crafting it, until it was perfect––or as nearly
perfect as I could make it. After all, it was imperative Ballard not flip out,
when he read it, which is exactly what he’d do, if I messed it up. I had been
looking at the web page for hours, when it occurred to me: The sitemaker’s name
was listed at the bottom of the page––
the webmaster’s name
.
I scribbled it down, feeling like I had my first lead.
I wrote another letter, addressing it to Manon, basically
apologizing for leaving her in the lurch.
Vittoria was still up––I could hear her moving
about; it was a shame there weren’t more spots at House Rookmaaker. But
Vittoria was like me––a wanderer,
eclectic. “Besides,”
I wrote, adding another postscript, “subpar
magic––even ordinary magic––isn’t enough anymore,
Ballard, not really.” If I was going to walk the Dark Path, I had to become
Adept, Fledged, Beyond Fledged... Everything was packed. Laptop, my books...
Volume IV
would
either be a doorstop or a dead end. Still, I couldn’t help thinking I had come
up short. My time in Rome was ending, perhaps forever; a plan was forming.
Dressing, I gathered my things.
I left my room and crept into the hallway.... Downstairs,
past my landlady. She twitched in her sleep.
Sándor and Septimus let me into their shop.
“Now, remember: wait until I’m out of Rome,” I said, “
then
you can tell him. All right?”
They nodded. They seemed to take for granted my leaving. I
handed them the page I had ripped from my Diary, to give to Ballard.
“When the moment is right,” I said.
One good thing: Now that Skarborough was on the case, she
would keep Ballard informed of my hunt for the Dark Order.
“How will you get past the Riders?” asked Septimus.
I shrugged. “Magic––maybe. I dunno,” I said.
I threw my leg over my Gambalunga. Part of me felt like a
coward, like I was running away; the other part, that I was running
towards
something.
Could my visions, like those of Lenoir, change? In the
recurrent vision I had of Ballard, where he led the army,
he
stood alone. I was not there.
Unless what I saw was a chimera, the war was going to
happen. Battle lines
would
be drawn.
I was a neophyte, unfledged. To figure out the hints which
had been dropped my way, I would need to find
real
magic. The Dioscuri had set me a mission, after all, to
find them
––whoever
they
were––so that’s what
I’d do.
As for House Rookmaaker, somehow I didn’t think my parents’
bequest lay simply in the stone and mortar of a long-dead House. Rather, I had
a role to fulfill.
And, if I had to walk
the Dark Path... so be it.
A crossroads was before me––a choice. The
Perseid meteor shower flashed across my vision, overhead; I waved good-bye to
the S’s, weaving my way through Rome. A list was forming in my head of the
things I would need to do, and the places I should go; a list of impossible
complexity, which I memorized there and then.
Paris... Find the
website... Find the webmaster––Look into Them...
Numbly, not really thinking about it, I headed onto the A1
autoroute, away from Rome.
Whether or not I made it was beyond the point. Whereas
before, I had been in the dark, this time they would be––the Dark
Order.
Ballard would be all right; he had the twins; he had Lia and
Gaven; he had his own magic to find out. Besides, something told me, if he left
Rome now, he would be exiled forever, the Quirinal would never let him back in.
Ballard needed Rome; I did not. I just had this inkling,
like a preternatural intuition, really, which the current Il Gatto would
definitely understand, about
being
reckless; otherwise, maybe not tomorrow, but someday, I would find myself face
to face with something I could not defeat, because I had been too scared to
try. My backpack felt heavy, as I rode out of town.
The north star was Fomalhaut.
I thought about circles and souls, Steampunk, and the Last
War; a House of Spirit and of Fire; and I thought of my House; and I thought,
This is
my
world now; and I’m
prepared to fight for it.
So, this is it,
for now
, I wrote in my Diary.
Checking to make sure all the flips and switches were in
order, I accelerated my Gambalunga away from Rome, towards the City of Light.
# # #
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