American Goth (36 page)

Four columns of indeterminate shadow now guarded the Circle.

Unlike the last Rite, the first one I’d been to, I no longer needed the mix of herbs and wine to open the channels for me; I had mastered them. I hefted the chalice in salute to all those that surrounded me, then offered it to the fire.

It hissed as the first figure stepped forward and I recognized Lyddie, her eyes bright and her gaze solemn. “You have been called to the Gate,” she said. “To what purpose?”

“To guard,” I answered. “To defend.”

“I accept your call,” she said and nodded, satisfied, then returned to her position.

I felt a surge run through me, a heat race through my skin as the fire snapped and flared. One of the faint pillars that guarded the Circle shimmered faintly.

Another stepped forward. His face was lined, his shoulder-length hair cloud white, and his eyes were a shocking blue, even in the firelight. There was unmistakable strength in his gaze, and he emanated presence, knowledge, sureness. He was old, older than anyone I could ever remember meeting.

“Called to the Gate, to guard and defend,” he said, “but for how long? We are but a moment on the Material in the sight of the Universe. Do you chose the moment, or do you pledge for the greater Challenge?”

The wind rose up in a howl around the building, blowing through the chinks and cracks in the doors and windows as I answered truthfully from the deepest part of me.

“The greater Challenge—life to life.”

The wind ruffled the very hairs on my arms as it swirled around us, then calmed, and another pillar shimmered.

“Let the living Dark Lord issue his Challenge as is right in the balance,” a voice hissed dryly, a voice I knew, and I looked among those that ringed me to discover from whom it had issued. My eyes found the figure, shrouded in a gray cloak before he threw back his hood, and it was somehow unsurprising to recognize Old Jones, only here, now, with my vision open to the different levels, he held a form, one I had by now seen many times before: nonhuman, but humanoid, a slender figure made of gray skin, with a face that looked more like a mask and two black slits that shone like oil for eyes. I still couldn’t tell if those were ears or horns that rose from his head, the same color and texture as the rest of his aethyric body.

Cort stepped forward. “Rafael has called for the Challenge, his right as Examiner,” he said to the others. “Do any deny him?” He looked about the crowd and no one answered.

“The Challenge has been accepted,” he said, and returned to his original position.

The next figure that approached me was cloaked in a black that seemed to absorb the light around it. He was taller even than Cort, and the hood he did not remove added to his height. He radiated strength, power, menace, as if he meant to frighten me. I stood my ground anyway as he advanced.

“Called to the Gate,” his voice echoed as he circled me, “to guard and defend. Called to the Gate, through each life that ends. Will you honor the pact, the natural flow? Will you honor the balance that existed before time began, back when the Dark and the Light were equals and sang the same harmonic song?”

I saw the faint gleam of his eyes under the shadow of the hood and I focused on them. “I swear to honor the balance, to do all in my power to restore the flow where it has been damaged, to sing the same harmony.”

He threw back his hood, the living Dark Lord who operated, too, by the Law, in service to the Balance, revealing long dark hair that disappeared beneath his cloak and a mouth framed by a sleekly trimmed beard. He smiled at me before he turned to rest. “The Challenge has been called and answered—the Dark recognizes your youngest Champion.”

The wind howled once more as rain beat upon the roof and windows, the sound of a thousand hammers smacking down on slate while cool electric lines descended from my head to my feet, a shock of sensation through my spine, my arms, my legs, as it joined the other energies that had begun to coil through me, and in my peripheral vision, yet another pillar shimmered.

With each question and answer, they seemed a bit brighter, and as my very human body struggled to contain the flows that ran through me, I began to feel the shimmering, dizzying approach of overload as another came to me.

The robe did nothing to hide the lush form beneath it and she emanated jovial warmth. The flame was reflected in the copper of her hair, and the smile she beamed at me was sincere as she took my hands in hers.

The touch of her fingers to mine felt like a hundred different caresses, the press of skin to skin all over, and my mind wavered as she opened her mouth to speak.

“And what would you take in return, Child? Would you bind yourself to the Material, not seeking to shirk the life that awaits you? Your gifts are manifest within you, your path set before you, your life, your death, your return to the elements. Do you accept it in its entirety, or would you seek more? It is much to bear and unfair to ask without your complete acceptance.”

My body began to tremble under the onslaught but I held my voice steady, firm, as I gave my answer.

“I accept that which is mine within the natural order, I accept the choices I’ve made in the past that have led me to this place. I will walk the path before me.”

“Take your gifts, Child of Light, Child of Fire and Air, of Water and Earth,” she said, then leaned up and kissed me. Her mouth met mine with an electric tingle, and as her tongue eased between my lips, I felt the swift twirl of the planet beneath my feet as the final flood of power churned within me. The pillars seemed to blaze before my eyes, and as I gazed about the Circle I saw their aethyric forms clearly, read the secrets of their bodies and knew their healths and ailments, so clear, so very visible to my eyes…smiled at the crowded gnomes and sylphs as they jostled one another, wrestling and pinching each other to get the better view, saw Graham just beyond the Circle and the beauty of his true self, the pure body of Light that was male, female, both, neither… The salamanders jumped and played like dolphins in the sea of flame that held them as the undines sang their liquid song.

Once again the aethyric and the Material merged, crystalline lines and patterns that danced and twisted, and the minds before me were so very, very visible.

“You are not only to be Wielder,” Cort’s voice spoke clearly into the swirl that jigged before me, “but you have mastered the Aethyr. More than guardian, you are guide. Will you honor the heritage that rides in your blood? Will you carry Linea Sanguen, the thread, the line of blood, to maintain the balance and guard the Gate?”

His gloved hands held, half pulled from its new black scabbard, the sword I’d seen so many times, but it had never looked like this before. It had been buffed and polished to newness, the hilt redone in the same inky black as the scabbard. It reflected and refracted the flames and seemed to glow with its own inner light.

I carefully took the hilt in my right hand and removed it. “I will,” I swore and drew the diamond edge across my palm, cutting a line from the pad just under my index finger to the outer edge by the pinkie, right above my wrist.

I held my hand up and let the blood drip onto the floor. “I bind myself to it.”

“Called to the Gate,” he said, his voice echoing in my head, “to guard and defend. Called to the Gate, through each life that ends. Called to the Gate, so swear and so bind, not the cup, nor the spear, but the sword and the mind.”

A knock of thunder shook the very walls around us.

“The Lords of Light have accepted the new Wielder!” he called out as he bound the scabbard about my waist.

I was almost blind, reeling as the world revealed itself and the power, the energy I would use and control unleashed within me. Every mind was wide open; I could walk through any at will, pick a thought or memory, plant one if I chose, create or negate will. The sword sung in my hand, a myriad of images and emotions, each one readable, touchable, and as I looked through the nexus lines that blossomed before me, I could see where each possibility led, the higher and lower probabilities of outcome.

It was Elizabeth, her energy and aethyric double I recognized through the blaze that took away normal sight, who put her hands on my shoulders when I’d sheathed the blade, the weapon with a name I now knew: Blood Line.

“You are bound to the Light,” she said as she bandaged my hand, “Wielder, and Master of Aethyr besides, but you must work on this world, in the Material. Would you be equally bound to it, to its hopes and fears, its loves and sorrows as well?”

I nodded, unable to speak, and suddenly Fran was before me, not the Fran I’d known before, and not the Goddess, but
her
, the essential her, fierce, proud, and golden, infinitely beautiful and blazing with an emotion that went beyond words, what she felt for me. I could see the bond we shared that stretched from this life to the ones that preceded it, to the ones that followed. And I knew I could do anything I wanted, anything at all: I could take her mind and remake it any way I saw fit, I could take her on floor before the fire and none would stop me as the power ravened through me.

But I couldn’t do that because I
wouldn’t
do that… I grabbed the ankh around my neck and let the force flow to it, charging it—it now not only had the net of my life, but its strength, my energy and essence.

As I channeled the overload into the matrix of metal I squeezed in my hand, I knew with an unshakeable surety that this had been yet another test: to be part of the Circle, fully empowered, and fully able to turn on it, to impose my will upon and destroy it, yet deliberately choose not to… And as the world began to right itself once more I witnessed the mantle of the Goddess, the distinct nimbus of power, descend upon my lover, my friend, transforming her once more.

“Do you acknowledge the power of the Goddess over your life and your death, so long as you take breath on this world, live in this structured form?”

“I do and will,” I answered through the pounding rush in my body, the energies given to and unleashed within me a mad swirl barely under my control, the tilt and spin a force that beat with my heart and through my chest, a throb that pressed and pulled at my body, filled me with an ache. On the many levels of existence, I was Hers: Champion and Consort, the willing sacrifice, the one who would shed blood so that others might not, a means, a weapon, a tool, no more but certainly no less in the hands of the Light.

She closed the distance between us and Her fingertips brushed against my neck, opened my collar, opened the robe I wore and pressed against my chest, pushing me down before her. I felt more than saw with my peripheral vision the backs that turned to us, the approach of Graham, of Elizabeth, of Cort, as they surrounded us.

Her hands skated down my sides, and She kissed me as she carefully undressed me. “Will you accept the Goddess?”

I saw the curtain that surrounded us, thick enough to block direct vision, thin enough to permit the light of the flame to glow within.

I gazed into Her eyes, the lambent glow from within and without, breathless from the visions that swam before me and the flow within me. “Yes,” I whispered, and She murmured ritual blessings against my skin as She kissed the points of energy exchange and collection, painting a line of incandescence down my body. The robe She wore was silken against my skin, the feel of the cool flow of water as She breathed against me, the stone solid beneath my back.

“This,” She said as She fit her shoulders between my thighs, “is the Gift of the Goddess.”

The Gate opened before my dazzled eyes, and I found my voice when she took me into her mouth.

There were no barriers between Worlds, the living and the newly dead mixed freely, one mostly unaware of the other, except for those that wandered in their sleep, and I saw them in their multitudes, the hopes and dreams, the fears and despairs of the world, and the monsters and saviors that moved among them. And as I yielded to the kiss of the Goddess, I slowly grounded as She restructured and settled the energies that flowed within me. I opened my eyes as Her lips caressed the tendon of my thigh.

She kissed me again, enough to make certain that I was fully in the body, then flowed up me, Her robe open, covering us both as She hovered over me.

“You have accepted the Goddess,” she murmured, then kissed me, briefly but thoroughly, allowing me to taste myself on her lips.

“Then accept, too,” She said, and Her aura shimmered, shifted, a reflection of graceful strength, of power with form, of the Light, focused, directed, active, “the God.” He plunged His cock, heavy and thick, hot and hard, in me.

“Yes,” I agreed as the Gate slammed shut with me within it, and as my body lifted to meet His my life flowed back, back, I saw my friends, my father, my childhood, my mother. I felt my first breath, the explosion that was my creation, and the wheel of the planet gave way before me, threw me into the Great Void.

And then it was us, me and Fran, close, closer, immutably bound, and I flew, a downward rush, a speeding spiraling path through the Universe, the branching reaching touches through worlds, the fast-forward play of my life to this very moment until again I burst forward, past the now, past the future that played before me in a white haze, past the body and into the Light.

There, I saw the pattern, the entire Tapestry in its beautiful unfinished completeness, understood the limits of the Material, the full possibilities of the rest not similarly contained, and even as I saw, it slipped away to be replaced only with the assurance that there was a meaning, an order, a reason.