Cassandra

            Elliot opened his eyes slowly. Someone was knocking gently on his door. He tried to remember if he’d been dreaming, and decided he hadn’t. His ass was numb from sitting on the floor, and he felt a crick developing in his neck. He didn’t answer whoever was knocking.

            ‘Elliot,’ Byron called through the wood. ‘There’s someone who wants to meet you… when you’re ready.’

            When he was ready.

            How could he be ready? He hadn’t been ready for anything in days. He heard Byron’s heavy footsteps start to retreat, and he stood. Perhaps he’d heard the bed he’d been leaning against creak somehow, or his own soft steps on the floorboards, but when he opened the door, Byron had stopped in the hall and turned to wait.

            ‘OK,’ Elliot told him. ‘Let’s go.’

            As they were heading out the door, Justin leapt up from the couch and joined them. Alyssa grunted and rose too, but rather than follow them, she trudged up the hall in the other direction.

            Byron led them into one of the seedier boroughs. Already the prostitutes were beginning to stake out their territories for the night. A gunshot ran out in the night and someone threw a bottle. A few seconds later, sirens rang out several blocks away. Byron and Justin positioned themselves so they were flanking him on either side. They passed several obvious drug dens, and then Byron directed them towards the shabby exterior of a building. A steady stream of whores and Johns flowed in and out. As they passed under the doorway, Elliot spotted the mark of the Evil Eye cast in faintly luminous red paint overhead.

            On the lavish inside, there was no waiting this time. They were already expected. A young black woman opened the back door and let the trio down into the darkness, once more with Elliot in the middle of the procession. His steps faltered in the dark as his eyes adjusted and he felt Justin’s breath hot on his neck. His voice came out of the inky pitch, whispering reassurance.

            ‘Just take your time. The steps are even and straight.’

            Presently, they reached the end of the staircase and the path leveled out. He shielded his eyes automatically as the woman opened the door ahead and warm light lanced out. Another long hall, this time with doors, and then a prim waiting room. Elliot followed after the woman, but looked back when he realized Justin and Byron had fallen behind. He looked questioningly to them and Byron nodded as the woman opened the final door and gestured for him to enter the gloom beyond.

            Glowing red lamps lit a circular table and comforter chair. Someone else was lurking in the shadows across from him.

            ‘Please, have a seat.’

            He was determined not to get creeped-out, so as calmly as he could he took the seat before him.

            ‘My name’s Cassandra, and I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for some time now Mr. Harper.’

            ‘Ah.’ He said, and then wished he’d kept quiet, as he had nothing to follow this with.

            ‘So how are you finding it? Being a Vampire I mean.’

            Well there was that. Clearly she already knew. Maybe she was one too?

            He opened his mouth, but as he did, he felt something moving in his head. She plucked his thoughts from him and spoke them aloud herself.

            ‘Confusing…Disturbing… Distressing… Infuriating… hmm.’

            He tried to block her from his thoughts, imagining a wall before her picking fingers as they searched his brain. She seemed to find this hilarious and cackled loudly.

            ‘Don’t bother trying. I’m an Oracle—it’s what I do.’

            All the same, it was a distinctly unpleasant sensation, so he redoubled his efforts, picturing an iron shell around his head. Almost immediately he felt the pressure in his brain vanish, and she fell quiet.

            She leaned forwards, leaving the shadows behind, though a dark veil still hid her face. ‘Give me your hand—palm up.’ She put her hand out across the small table and made rapid, expectant pinching movements with her fingers.

            He braced himself for entering Duat and tried to block it out as he finally conceded his palm.

            Her hand turned over and her fingers gripped his wrist so there was a small space between their palms. But as soon as her pale skin made contact with his, he was hurled into the most intense storm of sensations he’d ever encountered.

            The fog rose up like a torrent of wind so that he felt as if he were in the centre of a hurricane. Gusts of wind tugged at him and racked his seat. The chair and the table between them seemed the only solid things left, and then even these took on a transparency until they vanished as well. The winds howled around them and he felt as if they were being spun in place, round and round. Her touch was too much for him, and the imaginary casing around his mind crumpled, giving her full access. She tore into him like a beast, feasting on his memories. He saw his life siphoning into her in flashes—bursts of memory that were devoured as quickly as they were called up.

            The winds tore at them until her hair streamed out around her head, and though her veil ruffled franticly, it remained in place covering her face. There was nothing left underneath him, no seat, no floor even. The blustering winds were like streaks of white in the darkness. He felt them latch onto him and start to drag him away. He grasped her wrist for purchase and he gasped, though the sound was torn from him.

            Images streamed into his mind, flickering helter-skelter, but they weren’t his memories coming back to him. Nothing seemed in order. He tried to sort through the slurry of information to make sense of it.

            A rape… No, speaking with Byron... No. A boy. A rush of adolescence and early adulthood. Then a violent rape. The young man was left torn and bleeding, and then the attacker returned. A knife, slicing, digging, prying, and hands flailing. Screaming until his throat was raw, and then a weight lifted off of his chest. Lifted by someone and carried to safety. Darkness all around. The soft touch of bandages and clotting material, but distant voices muttering that the bleeding wouldn’t stop. Finally, a wrist pressed to his mouth and more blood. This time flowing into him. Pain wracked his body, and then—

            Cassandra jerked her hand free of his. He became slowly aware that she had for some time been clawing at his wrist with her nails in order to break free. His wrist dripped a few splashes of blood onto the table before healing over.

            ‘You’re a man!’ he blurted out before he could stop himself.

            Cassandra seemed to stiffen up and he almost felt the face behind the veil glare at him.

            ‘Well you certainly are something special…’ From the tone, her teeth were clenched tightly.

            Several books shot from their places on the bookshelves that lined the room and unfolded before her on the table.

            She passed her palms over the texts, back and forth along the lines. He held his silence. Clearly he’d offended her by somehow entering into her thoughts. Her right hand stopped, and then ran backwards over the last line. She passed it over again, and then the other books flew away—she didn’t bother to return them to their places, but cast them to the floor instead. She tilted her head at an angle, and then her left hand darted out to touch the splashes of his blood on the tabletop. She brought her fingers to her lips and lapped the blood away. Her shoulders rocked with a shudder and the pressure in the room dropped. The air he was breathing suddenly felt heavier and colder.

            Whispers started to fill the air, soft as spider silk on his ears. Something gossamer brushes across his face and then his arms and neck.

            ‘Mimic!’ She hissed, and the ghostly strands echoed her with a chorus of almost inaudible whispers.

            Something soft and invisible landed across his wrists. It was cool and slightly clammy and raised goose-pimples on his flesh. He tried to brush them off, but found his hands pinned to the chair. He struggled and the bands lost their softness, becoming hard and sharp. He looked up at Cassandra, panic starting to rise like acid in his throat. Something flickered past behind her, but he couldn’t see what. He blinked and looked back at his wrists. Bands of white mist wound round and round his forearms and sporadically a grimacing face would rise to the surface of the pearly substance and then sink down again. He shouted in surprise and struggled to pry his hands free, but another grabbed his neck and yanked him back hard. He flailed, bucking his shoulders to break free, but to no avail.

            ‘They’ll be delighted I discovered you before too many found out about you. This will be much easier to clean up.’ She tilted her head from side to side as the bond on his neck constricted until he was gagging and gasping for breath. His feet scrambled on the ground for purchase. ‘I wonder if they want you alive or dead?’

            He gargled out a cry for help and flailed again. His foot caught the leg of the table and kicked it up. The rim caught Cassandra in the mouth and she groaned, clapping her hands over her jaw. The bonds weakened momentarily and he wrenched his hands free—or rather, he tore the arms free from the chair, though they remained bound to him. He scrabbled with the thing at his throat and managed to tear it free. He jumped to his feet holding the collar, which writhed in his hand like a snake, before melting into the air.

            A tome catapulted from one of the shelves and slammed into his side. He hit another shelf hard and felt a rib crack. He could feel it mending even as he stood, but it still knocked his breath from him and sent darts of pain through his body. He caught the next ledger she sent at him and used it to batter away the others from his face. They were quickly becoming a whirling tornado of tomes as she assaulted his body with them.

            He screamed again for help. Why hadn’t Byron and Justin come yet? Was this their plan all along? A shadow lurched at him beyond the cyclone of books and paper. She charged at him, a long knife in one hand. He tried to cover his face, and the knife bit into the wood. The chair arms were still fixed to his wrists and he used them to batter the knife away before landing a blow across her face. She stumbled and he fled for the door. It was locked.

            His shoulder muscle twitched and he turned, bringing his arm up. His speed caught her by surprise, and his fist in her midriff, knocking her to the floor. The knife hit the wall, missing his ear by inches, but he heard a satisfying snap of ribs from her. She tried to rise. He kicked her back down. She lost her grip on the knife and it skid away from her reach.

            She managed to kick his own knee out though, and he fell hard beside her. His muscles ached from the beating, but then his back twinged again. He rolled sideways as she did, moving away from one another as an entire bookcase crashed to the ground where they’d been. He snatched up her knife and rose, spinning around as she lunged at him again with another knife. But he was in under her guard. She grunted as her elbow caught across his shoulder and locked, and his knife bit upwards through her ribcage.

            They froze together, faces inches apart; her eyes were closed through the veil. She wheezed and her jaw dropped as she tried to say something. Her knife fell from her grasp with a clatter and then Elliot stepped quickly back from her as blood splashed from her mouth. Without him supporting her, she fell heavily across the fallen case. He could see the knife had gone deep—even part of the hilt was buried between her ribs. Blood was pumping from the wound faster than he’d ever seen. Faster even than when he’d slashed his own wrists. But she wasn’t healing.

            One of her hands reached out for him. Palm up, he could see an eye in the centre. Not a tattoo or paint, but a staring, living eye. The fleshy eyelid drooped and the hand sank back to the ground to rest on a tome. He reached out and lifted the veil and then quickly dropped it. Her eyes were scared and sewn shut. He experienced a flash of her remembered rape-attack. Her lungs wheezed out their last air and then the wound in her chest spat cinders. He jumped back as a fire seemed to consume her from within, burning and blistering her skin to ash. Some of it rose in the air and he stepped further away. He heard a cacophony of moans and groans from the shadows as her whole frame crumpled and fell to cinders where she’d lain. The ash burnt nothing where it landed, but her body was reduced to a dark smudge.

            He breathed raggedly, leaning back against the door. The room was a mess. Torn papers and books everywhere from her assault. Flecks of black drifted down in the air like macabre snow. He brushed the ash from the book her hand had fallen upon and lifted it. The dim light made it impossible to read the cover. It felt… right in his hand. He could think of no other way to describe it. But something inside urged him to take it.

            Byron and Justin looked up as Cassandra’s door opened. Elliot stepped through it quickly, closing it behind him before they could see inside. The young woman approached him and her eyes darted to the bound leather book in his hands. He lowered his head, moving it slightly behind him and out of view, and spoke respectfully. ‘She asked not to be disturbed again tonight. She said something about listening to the spirits.’ He wasn’t sure if she’d buy it, but bullshitting his way through was just about the only option left.

            From the expectant and hopeful looks on Byron and Justin’s faces, they had no idea what had happened. Perhaps the old witch had soundproofed her walls or something. Byron sensed he wanted to go, and asked for the girl to please show them out. She gave a glance back at Cassandra’s door, but then briskly led them back down the hall and up the darkened stairs. Though this time, Elliot kept imagining leering faces in the shadows. He clutched the book tighter, hoping they could just reach the surface sooner before he broke down.

            He strode from the whorehouse into the night air, breathing deep and raggedly. Neither Byron nor Justin said anything to him, until he ducked into an alleyway several blocks down and leaned against the wall, gasping for breath and trembling. Byron started to say something, but Elliot shook his head earnestly and clutched his arms around his chest until his breathing stilled. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly and asked them, ‘Can you take me to the beach? Somewhere quiet.’

            They exchanged glances, but agreed, and soon they were on they’re way. Once they were in a cleaner, safer district, Byron deftly slipped his hand inside a passing man’s coat pocket and plucked out his wallet. He hailed them a taxi and asked to be taken to Point Fermin Park. They squeezed into the back of the cab, and Elliot quickly zoned out as they joined the Interstate and coasted out of the city. He finally looked around as they passed through San Pedro before eventually stopping at the park. Byron paid the driver, and then passed him an extra wad of cash asking him to wait around for them. He promised to pay double for the return trip if he did.

            Justin held back, moving slowly as Elliot wandered out into the park. He passed the lighthouse, long gone dark, and walked right to the park border, looking out over the sliver of beach and rocks. He finally allowed himself to think about what had happened. She’d tried to kill him! The air was warm, but he started shivering and shaking. The surf crashed in the distance and the flecks of white caught his eye. He thought he saw a face in the foam and his shudders redoubled in strength. The book slipped out of his arms as he started wringing his hands, rubbing them to get imagined blood off his skin.

            Justin joined him, sweeping ash gently from Elliot’s hair. The boy shuddered and shied away from his touch. ‘Are you ok?’ He asked.

            Elliot nodded. ‘Yeah. I’m… Yeah.’

            ‘Do you want to talk about what happened?’

            Elliot shook his head. ‘Not yet.’ He stopped wringing his hands and rubbed his arms.

            ‘Are you cold?’

            He nodded.

            Justin moved around behind him and wrapped his own arms around the boy for warmth. At first Elliot stiffened, but gradually, he relaxed and submitted to the comforting limbs. They stood that way for some time, watching the surf bellow, Justin’s breath light and warm on the back of his neck.

            After a while, they heard Byron calling to them. Dawn wasn’t too far off now. They needed to be heading back. As they turned, Justin’s foot kicked the fallen book. He stooped and lifted it, turning it over and examining the runic writing on the cover. Their eyes met and he gave the boy a quizzical look, which wasn’t answered, and he handed it back to him. Neither said a word. They rejoined the waiting taxi and he dropped them off at the end of their street. Byron paid the cabbie by emptying the contents of the wallet into his hands, and then tossed the whole thing in the first garbage bin they passed.