Initiate Page 3

  They all chortled at the thought of the old widow standing naked with a dagger and a vase, and agreed it was entirely possible she was a witch. And over their mochachinos and blueberry muffins they concluded that it was kind of cool to have an old witch in their block. It gave them something more than politics to gossip about as they sat around the pool.

  They didn’t connect her with the horrific electrocution of the block’s Cuban cleaner, who had shouted at the widow for leaving the lid off a rubbish bin. They found his burnt and blackened corpse the following day in his tiny bedsit, his face contorted in a frozen scream, his body almost fried to a crisp.

  Nor could they have possibly imagined that she was responsible for the death of every dog within a half-mile radius – each dog dying of a sudden paralytic disease, which caused an agonising and howling demise. One of the widow’s cats had been badly savaged by a neighbourhood dog, and so now there were no more dogs.

  And then there was that freakish accident with Betty Langlish, crushed to death by her Lincoln town car while parking in her garage. The police couldn’t understand it. She’d gotten out of the car, locked it, and was walking to the door with her bags of groceries when the vehicle suddenly started up of its own accord and rammed her into the brick wall.

  But what really baffled the police was that the car had done so repeatedly, again and again, until Betty Langlish was merely pulp. Video footage from the security camera clearly showed the vehicle was driverless at the time, and the family was now considering legal action. Obviously there was some mechanical fault in the car’s ignition or gearbox.

  They’d forgotten how the previous day, Betty Langlish had delighted them all in the communal TV room by imitating the widow standing on her balcony in the nude, holding her dagger and chalice and chanting spells to the moon. Some had laughed so hard they were crying, until Davinda Vaduva walked into the room. There’d been a few moments of awkwardness, but Betty had glossed over it beautifully and it seemed like the widow either hadn’t seen or hadn’t understood what Betty had been doing. She didn’t seem the least bit concerned. Then the next day Betty was dead.

  Someone in the card group, Douglas Metcalf in apartment 1601, had suggested making the widow guest of honour at the next Halloween party. She’d be perfect, he argued. She wouldn’t even need to wear a mask or get dressed up. And how about the hair growing out her ears – how perfect was that? They all laughed, some so hard they spilled their cocktails down their frocks, but they ultimately decided against it, because they thought the widow might consider such an approach to be insulting.

  But really, when it came down to it, none of them had the gumption to knock on her door and ask, because she scared them. There was something about the old lady in 1403 that made their flesh crawl. It was something in her eyes, a thin veil of skin over her pupils that made them think of serpents. They didn’t realise that from her balcony fourteen floors above, she could hear their every chuckling whispered word.

  The Hag pitied them. Every day getting drunk on cheap cocktails, sitting around in their little threesomes or foursomes making fools of themselves. They were a joke. Sometimes they irritated her, like that cretinous Betty Langlish, and they needed to be taught a lesson. But the Hag never wanted to draw attention to herself, or to her activities. She just wanted to be left alone.

  She poured herself a cup of strong tea, walked over to her computer, sat down, brought up Google maps. She clicked the mouse, zoomed in on Northern California. There were several towns marked with red dots, each showing a Saturday farmers’ market. She paused for a moment, then zoomed in on one. As the image scrolled into a closer view, the township of Mill Valley appeared on her screen.

  She lay back and let the pit bull lick her toes. The dog was mottled black and white, and not much more than a big ball of muscle on four legs. It had an ugly stub of a tail, and jaws that could rip a man’s arm off with a shake of its head. Kritta had seen her do it, and she smiled at the memory.

  She looked down at the pit bull as it found the nipple next to her big toe. Kritta shuddered. Outside she could hear water lapping on rocks. The stinking old fishing plant was due for development, boarded up and locked off to the public, not far from the Golden Gate Bridge. She’d managed to break in a couple of weeks ago, and other than some realtors who’d visited with clients, she had not been disturbed. It was a perfect base from which to conduct her search.

  The dog looked up at Kritta as she licked the secret teat, her yellow eyes burning. Kritta smiled, and reached down and patted her head.

  The dog didn’t need to suckle. Every day she was fed bloody chunks of meat – sometimes human remains when Kritta needed to dispose of a body – but mostly her food came from a butcher. She also gave the dog several drops of her own blood in a bowl of milk each day, just to keep the animal connected to her. It wasn’t about nourishment, it was about intimacy – about giving thanks and showing love.

  The dog had been useful these past several years. And so too her other familiar. Together they’d helped Kritta rise up the ranks of Baphomet, and now she was a valuable member of the Golden Order. More by luck than anything, she’d lately become a key part of the search for this woman and her daughter because increasingly, it looked as though they could be hiding out in her district. Her other familiar had been scouting for months, and had seen a couple that seemed to fit, but she wouldn’t know for sure until they could be positively identified.

  Kritta Kredlich was small. Four foot ten in her biker boots. Eighty-nine pounds. She had an almost pretty face, punctuated by a large jagged scar that ran from one corner of her right eye down to her jawbone. She’d tattooed the scar with barbed wire, to make it even more distinctive; a savage mark of pride. Although she was tiny like an oversized doll, no one questioned her authority. She could use a blade with such speed and surgical efficiency that it was almost surreal to witness. Her knives were from Japan. Always Japan. The country where they chop the heads off tuna the size of small boats. She could slice through flesh and bone effortlessly with just one flick of her wrist. She liked to watch the faces of her victims as they looked down at their dismemberment in stunned disbelief, before the blood began to spurt.

  She kept her knives in black velcro pouches on her silver-studded belt. She wore leathers, partly because of her beloved Yamaha, but mostly because she felt comfortable in leathers, even in San Francisco in the middle of August. She had to get them custom made because of her size, but that was okay, it was worth the expense. She didn’t spend money on drugs or booze or parties – just her leathers, her knives and her bike. And her familiars.

  Her familiars could take on corporeal form. She could switch them at will, almost instantaneously. Kritta envied their ability to be creatures one minute, human the next. But in reality, they were never human. They just appeared to be. They were inextricably bound to her, extensions of her dark powers, and as such they were incomplete without her, just as she was incomplete without them.

  The dog pulled back, licked her lips, looked up at Kritta with sloe eyes. She’d had enough. She was sated. Kritta called her Bess, and in her human form she was a squat chunky woman with teeth that she’d filed into sharp fangs and a tongue she’d split in two like a snake. Almost every part of her exposed flesh was covered with silver piercings, and most of her private parts too.

  Bess revelled in pain; hers and others. In human form she could bite into a man’s neck with her razor-sharp teeth and open his carotid artery in a flash. Within ninety seconds he’d be dead on the floor in a pool of warm coagulating blood. In her pit-bull form she could leap across a room and tear out a man’s windpipe just as fast. Or crunch through his rib cage and tear out his heart.

  Bess was useful.

  Andi, Kritta’s other familiar, was due back soon. In human form she was a striking six foot four African woman, her face and arms ridged with traditional scar tissue, like dark loam recently plowed. Andi was a whiz with brews – witches’ brews that were lethal and unde
tectable. She was also a potent kickboxer. With her height and strength, she could put her bare foot through a brick wall or punch through the chassis of a car. And a kick to a man’s face was like a sledgehammer smashing into a ripe watermelon.

  Kritta put her boot back on, walked through the debris of the abandoned plant over to the broken dusty window. She looked out across the harbour. Andi had left early and should be back soon, hopefully with news of the woman and her daughter. The Hag had not told them why the couple were needed, only that it was crucial they be found and captured, preferably without harm.

  That was curious. Without harm. Usually Baphomet’s instructions were to deal with their quarry cleanly and swiftly, most times so they were never seen or heard of again. On occasions, they liked to publicly demonstrate their prowess, and work it so that some other organisation or individual took the blame for their horrific acts. Terrorism groups around the world had, over the years, benefited greatly from Baphomet’s largesse.

  Kritta was keen to know what Baphomet had planned for this mother and daughter. Whatever it was, she sensed it was important, because the search had been escalating for years, to a point where now there was a real sense of urgency. As well, she’d learnt through her networking within the organisation that the Grand Master himself was taking a personal interest in the search, which meant that this was no small-time shakedown. This was a big deal.

  Kritta knew that if she found them, if it was she who handed them over to the Grand Master, then she could jump a few rungs up the ladder within the Golden Order. She wanted to be senior enough to run disturbances for all of Southern California. That would be awesome. But right now it was a long way off.

  She squinted against the early morning sun reflecting off the water. She put her hand up to shield her eyes, and looked north to the skies above the bridge. She saw a dot there, a black dot, moving fast and coming home. Kritta smiled. Andi loved her eagle familiar form. She loved the ability to soar, to dive and drift, but what she really loved was the acuity of vision. She loved that she could see detail from three thousand feet that others couldn’t see from thirty yards.

  As the massive golden eagle swooped down to the fish plant, Kritta stood back and let Andi burst through the window. The back-flap of her expansive wings created a dust storm as she settled onto a table. She was a magnificent creature; deep dark brown, with ridges of gold feathers on her wings and gold flecking around her regal head. Kritta loved that her familiar’s beauty belied her true ability to inflict terror. Her beak was razor sharp. She could use it like a can opener to take the top off a man’s skull and pick out his brains. And with her talons she had the strength to swoop down and carry off a young adult.

  Andi turned her head to look at Kritta, and the huge bird screeched. The sound reverberated around the empty plant. She wanted succour.

  ‘Yeah. Okay, okay,’ Kritta laughed, as she popped open her leather jacket and lifted up her black top to expose a witch’s teat that extended out over her navel. Andi screeched again and hopped over, flicked out a long orange tongue and began to suck.

  Bess barked.

  There was rivalry between the two familiars, each vying for Kritta’s attention and affection; each constantly wanting to top the other, quick to envy if one got any praise or compliment which the other felt was undeserved. Yet when they needed to, they worked together as one, as a tightly interconnected triumvirate. They fought ferociously to protect one another, and they provided the eyes and muscle for Kritta to carry out her tasks effectively within the secret ranks of Baphomet.

  Both familiars represented aspects of Kritta’s essential being; Bess the tightly wound aggressive pugnacious one who would fight until her last heartbeat, Andi the cooler more aloof clinical killer who enjoyed taking her time watching someone die. Together they made the complete Kritta.

  The eagle arched back and settled her wings. She was done. Again it wasn’t nourishment, it was reward. It was the back-handed biscuit. The slipped cube of sugar. The dangling fish on the end of a long pole. But it was more than that. It was a reconnection of spirits. Andi was an inextricable part of Kritta’s energetic field, as was Bess. She’d been out and away on duties, and they had to re-engage as one.

  Kritta now needed to know what she’d seen. According to the Hag, there wasn’t much time. The woman they were seeking was a master of the highest order, which meant she was powerful and very dangerous. Kritta closed her eyes and with a few quiet words wrapped within a moment of intense concentration, she turned Andi into her human form – a tall imposing African warrior woman, she too dressed in biker leathers.

  ‘What have you found, girl?’ Kritta asked, tucking her t-shirt back in, buttoning up her black jacket.

  ‘I think it’s them. I’m not sure, but if it is, then we’ve got to act fast. They’re about to move,’ Andi said, her voice deep chocolate-brown. She walked over to a map of California duct-taped to a peeling wall, and pointed to the township of Mill Valley. ‘I think this is where they’ll go. It’s the closest market.’

  Bess barked sharply, wanting to be turned into her human form as well.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Kritta said tersely to the dog. She needed to think, and Bess often irritated her with her incessant demands. She walked over to the map, looked at the various entry and exit roads into Mill Valley. They could be there in no time on their bikes. But it was the avenues of escape that concerned her. This woman had managed to elude the Golden Order for years.

  Kritta turned to the pit bull, creased her brow in concentration, closed her eyes again and intoned an ancient spell. The dog immediately became human Bess – short nuggety leather-clad Bess with pointed teeth, a mutilated forked tongue and piercings over almost every inch of her face and body.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said curtly to Kritta. Then she looked at Andi, unsmiling. ‘Did you have a nice flight, sweetheart? Stretched your wings, did ya?’

  Bess resented Andi’s ability to fly, and hated that Kritta usually sent the eagle out on the important scout missions, and left the pit bull behind to guard her. Mostly though, Bess resented Kritta’s open signs of affection towards Andi, when she often only gave the dog distracted pats on the head.

  ‘Throw her a bone,’ Andi said to Kritta dismissively. She turned away from Bess who merely laughed, a rough sandpaper sound that was more like a bark.

  Kritta picked up her favourite knife, a seven inch spring-loaded Mikasa flickblade smuggled in from Osaka. She pouched it, then turned to her two familiars. ‘Come on, time to go. Remember, if it is this woman then she’ll be smart and she’ll have powers far greater than mine. And don’t forget that we’ll be in a public place so we’ve gotta be discreet. If we need to, we’ll watch and wait our moment. Don’t do anything impulsive. I don’t want the cops on our hammer,’ she said, looking pointedly at Bess. ‘So let’s go have some fun!’

  They whooped and laughed as they strode out of the dank fish plant into harsh sunlight, immediately wincing at the glare. They hated the light.

  They jumped on their bikes, kicked down hard to bring the machines to a full growling roar, then thundered off in a spitting cloud of dust and stones, heading north to a small Saturday morning farmers’ market.

  They loaded the boxes of vegetables into the back of their rusted old Ford F100, then headed off. Shafts of morning sunlight splintered through the front windshield as they made their way along the bumpy dirt track that led from the farmhouse through the valley out to the main road south.

  Lily waited until they were rumbling comfortably along the highway before asking her mom the question that had been simmering ever since they left the garden so abruptly.

  ‘Mom, what happened before, when we were harvesting . . . With my hand? It was weird.’

  ‘Was it weird good or weird bad?’

  ‘Bad. It kind of went right up into my heart. It felt sort of . . . uncomfortable.’

  ‘Then it’s coming,’ Angela said.

  ‘What’s coming?’


  ‘Your powers, Lils. It comes with age, with maturity. It’s in your DNA.’

  ‘What powers?’ Lily smiled. ‘Am I going to turn into Wonder Woman or something soon as I grow a decent set of boobs?’

  Angela laughed. ‘You’re becoming a sensitive, Lily.’

  ‘A sensitive? What’s that?’

  ‘You’re becoming sensitive to energies. It’s a gift I have that I got from my mother, and she got from her mother before her.’

  Lily barely remembered her grandmother. She’d lived in Baltimore, and had been tragically killed outside a shopping mall by a stray bullet from a random drive-by. The cops never caught the shooter. ‘So that energy I felt,’ she asked, ‘where did it come from?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe it was coming up from below.’

  ‘You mean the soil?’

  ‘Yes, the soil. It could be on the turn. Turning bad.’ Angela flicked her eyes up to the rear-view. Scanned the cars on the highway behind her. Looked out the window, up to the sky.

  Lily had heard this before, several times, usually just before they hauled anchor and moved somewhere else. Her mom had been like this ever since her dad’s death. As soon as they got settled in one place, for no explicable reason they’d up and leave.

  She needed to be distracted, Lily thought. Get her mind off things. She pulled her phone out of her jacket, plugged it into the truck’s speakers, and found a song on her playlist that she knew her mom would like – Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run’. She turned it up loud and they both began to sing as the truck grumbled south, Angela moving to the beat. When the song ended Lily chose another, and in no time they were driving into Mill Valley.