Initiate Read online

  She clomped down the hallway to the kitchen. Angela was at the stove stirring the eggs. She looked up as Lily sat down at the small wooden table.

  ‘How about I buy you a pair of sneakers?’ her mother said, smiling. ‘You sounded like a herd of elephants coming down the hall in those boots.’

  ‘Mom . . . my boots are cool. You and your bare feet . . .’

  Angela always walked around without shoes, which she said connected her with Gaia – the goddess of feminine earth energies. That’s how she talked; everything was energies, or vibrations, or harmonics. Every morning at sunrise before Lily woke, her mother would walk around their farmhouse with a clutch of smoking sagebrush, enchanting a strange song that she said protected them with ‘white-light energy’. Lily thought it was just plain weird, but then again, that was her mom.

  ‘You’ll start to feel energies soon, Lils,’ Angela said, as she put a plate of scrambled eggs, white beans and spinach on the table in front of her. ‘And then you won’t need those big boots. You’ll want to walk around in bare feet.’

  ‘No way, Mom. No way.’

  Lily had a thing about her feet. If her feet were safe, then she felt safe. Walking around in sneakers was like walking around a war zone in a swimsuit.

  ‘Anyway,’ Lily said, ‘instead of spending money on dumb sneakers, how about you buy yourself a pair of sexy jeans? Something really cool. And treat yourself to a three-hour session in a beautician’s.’

  Angela burst out laughing. ‘There’s no way I’m spending good money on a pair of designer jeans, Lily. It’s not happening. And three hours in a beautician’s is three hours of my life I’ll never get back.’ She gulped down some coffee from her chipped metal mug, then looked over at Lily. ‘You really think I’m in need of a makeover?’

  Her mother’s face was strained yet beautiful.

  ‘Not really, Mom. I’m sorry. But every now and then you should just give yourself a little treat. You know, pamper yourself.’

  Angela laughed again. ‘Three hours in a beautician’s chair is no treat, Lils, let me tell you. It’s like medieval torture. And anyway, that money could be better spent on something useful, like a new wheelbarrow, or a chainsaw.’

  The garden had become her mom’s life in the four years since the accident. She and David, Lily’s father, had been biochemists and had run a small but thriving business making aromatherapy products that they sold all around the world. All that came to a grinding stop though when David suddenly died. Angela quickly sold up everything, including their house and car, and put the money into a trust account. She told Lily she wanted to start a new life, so she went out and paid cash for an old beat-up truck, she ditched their phones and ripped up the credit cards, and early one morning they drove away from their family home and headed east, until they found themselves in Louisiana. In a remote corner of the state, Angela rented a house with some land out back. That’s when she started a garden. At first it was a hobby, to keep herself busy, but soon it became her obsession.

  In a surprisingly short time, and by divining the Gaia energies into the right harmonics, as she described it, Angela got the garden producing the biggest and most succulent fruit and vegetables the district had ever seen. They were making a good steady income, and having fun working together too, but then suddenly one day out of the blue she told Lily they had to move. She said the energies in the garden were no longer ‘conducive’. So they quickly packed up and drove away.

  After that, they never stayed in one place too long. Lily thought it was because her mom needed to keep moving, to stay ahead of the black fog of depression that threatened to consume her.

  While her mom took refuge from her grief through gardening, Lily did the same through a second-hand harmonica that she’d bought on eBay. Her father had loved the Delta Blues and so Lily was soon harping Howlin’ Wolf, Lead Belly and Muddy Waters. She was careful not to play her father’s favourite songs within her mom’s earshot though. Whenever Angela heard a song that David had loved, she’d begin to tear up, and she’d quickly leave the room. It was at those moments that Lily felt totally useless. There was nothing she could do to help her mom, other than to try and be the best daughter possible.

  ‘How were the eggs?’ Angela asked, looking amused. She watched as Lily finished off the last piece of toast like she hadn’t eaten in a week.

  ‘Horrible,’ Lily said, grinning. She had to restrain herself from picking up the plate and licking it clean.

  Angela stood and cleared the table, rinsed the dishes in the sink, then handed them to Lily to dry. She looked out the kitchen window at the high hills that bordered the valley. The mist was almost gone.

  ‘You know, I think David would have liked it here,’ she said. ‘I mean, he was a city boy at heart, but I really think he would have felt at home here.’

  Her mom didn’t often talk about her dad. In fact, after the accident, it had been a couple of years before she could even bring herself to say his name. But lately Lily had noticed that she’d been mentioning him more often. It felt like her mom’s emotional wounds were at last starting to heal.

  ‘I can’t imagine dad becoming a hippie farmer, sitting in the sun drinking herbal tea and listening to Janis Joplin,’ Lily said, drying the frypan.

  ‘So that’s what you think I’ve become, a hippie farmer?’ Angela laughed, handing her some silverware.

  ‘Mom, you’re more hippie than those women in that stupid Woodstock movie, I swear to God.’

  Angela had shown Lily Woodstock a few months back so she could see the blues performers, and Lily had laughed so hard she’d nearly fallen off the living room chair.

  ‘Those hippie women were beautiful,’ Angela said. ‘With their tie-dye skirts and flowers in their hair.’

  ‘Mom, they were just plain weird. Beautiful, but weird. Which is what you are. Beautiful and weird.’

  They finished the dishes and then walked outside and around to the gardens. The farm was tucked away at the end of a small remote valley in the lush hills north of San Francisco. There was only one track into the valley, and with clear line of sight, they had plenty of warning should they have any visitors.

  The gardens were at the rear of the house, several large plots of tilled ground full of row upon row of big healthy succulent vegetables. This was the best crop her mom had produced. They would do well at the markets these next few months.

  ‘If we get over $500 today then it’s lunch at Delmonico’s,’ Angela said, handing Lily a pair of gloves.

  Lily whooped. Delmonico’s had the best pasta and the yummiest desserts, but it was expensive. It was a special-occasion kind of place, like when Lily got her black belt in aikido. They had a big dinner that night. Usually after the market, though, they stopped in at a cheap little coffee shop in the centre of town and talked about how the morning went. Lily loved these after-market post mortems, the couple of hours when she got to talk to her mother not as a daughter but as a co-worker. As a friend.

  Angela set up her phone and speakers on a fence, and turned on Jackson Browne. It was a bit too ’70s for Lily’s taste, but her mom enjoyed it, especially while they worked. They quickly split off. Lily began up one end of the plot, plucking out fat juicy carrots, wiping off rich brown soil and carefully placing them in a recycled wooden box. Angela worked the other end, clipping cauliflowers and placing them in a tray. She started to sing along to the music and Lily joined in, not really knowing the lyrics but singing with gusto until they both broke up laughing.

  Lily reached down and was about to pull out another carrot when she suddenly felt a tingling sensation in her fingers. She stopped, took off her glove, and looked at her hand. It looked normal enough; no stings or bug bites. And then she felt the tingling again, stronger this time, like an electric charge running up into her hand. It was an unpleasant sensation, like she’d just picked up a live wire.

  A shadow darkened the ground around her. She stood up, put her hand up to shield the sun, and saw a large
bird circling high above – a huge golden eagle drifting on the updraft. It was looking down, as if waiting for prey to break from cover. Lily glanced across at her mother, who was standing at the other end of the garden watching her.

  ‘What’s wrong, Lils?’

  ‘I just got this weird feeling in my hand, that’s all,’ she said. ‘Like a stinging nettle or something.’

  Lily noticed that her mom was twirling her fingers. That’s how she picked up energies, like a radar atop a ship. Whenever they went into a house or a building, her mom always twirled her fingers to check the energies, to see if the place needed ‘cleaning’. On these occasions, especially if it was in public, Lily got so embarrassed all she wanted to do was crawl away somewhere and hide.

  Her mom looked up into the sun at the broad-winged eagle. ‘Feel the energies, Lils. Do what I do with your fingers.’

  Lily twirled her fingers. The tingling sensation started again, moving fast from her hand up through her arm into her chest and into her heart. She felt a darkness settle deep within her; a menacing sense of threat and dread.

  ‘What do you feel?’ Angela asked.

  ‘It’s not nice,’ Lily said. She closed her hand into a fist to try and stop the energies from seeping in any further. ‘Mom, what’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing, Lily, nothing at all.’ Angela glanced up at the eagle again, and Lily noticed a flash of something – was it fear? – in her eyes. She bent down, picked up her partly filled tray of cauliflowers. ‘We should go, Lils. Get these veggies into the truck straight away. We don’t want to be late for the market.’ She walked off quickly, carrying the tray over to the old Ford.

  Lily watched her go. ‘But Mom, we haven’t finished. I’ve got more carrots, you’ve got more caulies. If we don’t harvest them now they’ll be overripe by next week. You never leave stuff in the ground.’

  Angela pushed the tray onto the back of the truck and turned to Lily, her face drawn and pale, her voice firm. ‘Lils, I want to go. To get the early buyers. Now please, just do as I say and don’t argue.’

  Lily nodded. The tingling sensation in her hand had now gone. She looked up to find the eagle again, but it had completely disappeared.

  The phone rang in the apartment that was gold and velvet and smelt of pampered cats and stale tuna. During the day the old lady liked to keep the windows shut and the curtains drawn, even in the mornings when the sun crinkled the sea outside and the breeze was fresh and clean.

  She’d been dreading this call. She hesitated, then pressed SPEAKER on the faded yellow handset that twenty years ago had been state of the art.

  As she feared, it was him.

  ‘Is today going to be the day?’

  No hello. How are you? How’s the weather there in Florida? No niceties. He didn’t do niceties. He didn’t have to. He was the Grand Master, after all. His voice sent a cold chill through her. There was an ancient deadness to the voice, a total lack of emotion; it was a voice that controlled the destinies of others.

  ‘I hope so, Hallowed One,’ she rasped, trying to hide her nervousness. ‘We have inquisitors at markets all across the country today. Illinois, New Mexico, Georgia, Dakota, California. Twelve states in all. But we believe we have a lead on her. At last.’

  ‘You better hope so, Hag. Because we’re running out of time. You understand that, don’t you?’

  It was a thinly disguised threat. There were only three people who really scared her, who had the power to hurt her. He was one. The second had no skin, and the third wasn’t human.

  ‘She will be found, I can assure you.’

  ‘You’ve assured me for four years,’ he said, his words like daggers piercing her wrinkled flesh.

  Every week they’d had a similar conversation, but in the last few months as the time approached he’d become colder, more intimidating.

  ‘We think she’s in California, Northern California,’ she said. ‘That’s where we’re putting all of our effort today. We had an unconfirmed sighting . . .’

  ‘An unconfirmed sighting?’ His voice was like a whisper-quiet rapier, piercing her flesh. ‘How many of these “un­confirmed sightings” have we had? I’ve entrusted you with this. I’ve told Budapest you’d deliver. I’ve stuck my neck out for you when everyone else told me you’re past it, you’re a burden to the Order. So if you let me down . . .’

  ‘I won’t let you down, Grand Master,’ the Hag said quickly. She knew what lay in store for her if she didn’t find this mother and daughter; a death so horrific that it would be talked about in hushed tones throughout Baphomet for years to come. The Golden Order rewarded failure with operatic ferocity.

  One of the old woman’s cats leapt up onto her lap; a fat Persian with long gold moulting hair and crusted yellow eyes that looked up at her sleepily. Nervously, she stroked under its chin with her lizard-like hand. The cat began to purr loudly.

  ‘Unholy is almost upon us,’ he reminded her, his voice like shards of ice. ‘The ceremony will be attended by all the adepts and masters from the north. The arrangements are already being put in place. So I want them found, I want them captured, I want them taken to the Deep Sink and I want them sacrificed in the manner foretold. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Perfectly clear, Hallowed One,’ she said. The cat’s purring was now so loud he could probably hear it. ‘I have one of my best inquisitors out at this market . . .’

  ‘Don’t disappoint me, Hag. Because if you disappoint me, you disappoint That Below, and you don’t want to do that, do you?’

  And then the line went dead.

  The Hag sat there for a moment, her veined hand trembling, her tongue flicking out and wetting her cracked lips. Another of her cats nudged her age-blotched leg. He was hungry. That one was always hungry. Unsteadily, she pressed the speaker button again to disconnect the call.

  That Below. The Two Evil. No wonder the Grand Master was getting desperate. This would be no normal extraction. This would be something very special. The mother had to be found. And fast. She had eluded them for years. She had the prowess of her ancestors; their cunning and their wiles. She’d developed her skills and powers to a highly evolved state and now had few weaknesses. She moved whenever they got close to her, intuiting when they were about to pounce. And she was growing stronger every year, inducting others into her ways, gathering followers, and soon she would be impossible to stop.

  Lately though it seemed she’d dropped her guard somewhat, and they’d picked up strong intelligence that she and her daughter frequented farmers’ markets to sell fruit and vegetables. The Hag had contacted the high priests and priestesses of Baphomet cells across the country, and they’d sent out inquisitors to systematically search each of their local markets. And then a few weeks ago she got word from a low-level ordinate in California that they could be somewhere north of San Francisco.

  The Hag got up, walked into her galley kitchen. The apartment was on the fourteenth floor of a condominium block that looked out to the ocean one side, a private golf course on the other. She didn’t lack money. For her, and for others within Baphomet with a master’s level of skill, acquiring money was simple. The stock exchange, horses, even lotteries. The spellwork was not difficult, if you knew how. None of them flaunted their wealth, though. The last thing they needed was IRS or government attention of any kind. Baphomet was more secretive than the Mafia.

  She put on the kettle, put two teabags into a pot. She liked her brew strong. She looked around her apartment. The blinds were drawn, the room was dim. Her eyes couldn’t handle sunlight. She was an habitué of the dark. At night she pulled back the blinds, opened the windows, and let the sea breeze in. It cleared the stench of cat urine.

  She had ten cats, all different breeds, strays she’d picked up from the street; lost souls looking for a home. She had a soft spot for strays. Sometimes a neighbour, knowing she kept cats, would offer her one from an unexpected litter, and invariably she chose the smallest, the weakest, the ugliest; the one that would
probably end up at the pound, or would be left in a box by the dumpsters somewhere at the back of a shopping mall carpark.

  Whenever she had to travel on Baphomet business, Belt stopped by and looked after the brood. Belt was a young initiate, and the Hag had taken her on as a kind of intern. All she had to do was feed the dear things, look after them while she was away, and make sure the neighbours didn’t pry.

  Belt was eighteen, an orphan and former drug user, but completely reliable and trustworthy. Her adoptive parents were witches; mid-level operatives within the ranks of Baphomet. The Hag immediately saw raw talent in the girl – a surprising talent – and so she began to pass on her knowledge; all the things she’d learnt over the decades. The girl eagerly took it on, and in a short time she’d became a highly skilled and very dangerous young witch. With further training, and if she maintained her enthusiasm, the Hag believed she could become a priestess, or even an adept.

  The kettle shrieked and the Hag poured boiling water into the pot. It was one of the few things she’d brought with her from the old country; a small tarnished copper teapot that she’d lugged across three continents after her escape. It had been her mother’s, the only thing she had to remind her of a life once lived.

  Her name was Davinda Vaduva but her neighbours called her ‘the widow’ behind her back. To them she was a reclusive wealthy retiree from somewhere in Eastern Europe who had settled in Florida for the sun, the OJ and the clean sea air. Some in the block had tried to become friends in the few times they shared a lift, or bumped into her in the local 7-Eleven. A couple had even knocked on her door to suggest a cocktail, but each time their advances were met with a quick and sharp rebuff. And so now everyone left her alone.

  There was talk among the Monday morning bridge group that she had escaped East Berlin before the fall of the wall, that she’d been an informant for the Stasi, or that she came from royalty in what was once known as Bohemia. There were also whispers that she practised the Dark Arts. Someone swore they’d once seen her at 2 a.m. on her balcony doing some kind of creepy ritual as the full moon rose over the ocean. She’d been completely naked, holding a dagger and a silver chalice, chanting strange words up into the night skies.