Again my dreams were filled with another trip to the grove. This time when I awoke the goddess in the grove had left my mind filled with knowledge of how to travel from place to place in a fraction of the time without using the Fae realm. As with every other day this week my head felt full to bursting with the knowledge of how to use the skill I had just learned. I awoke in the bed with no knowledge of having walked there and quickly rose. I drew on the mana to put the skill to the test. I was so absorbed in trying the skill out I didn't notice that there was very little pain as I drew on the mana.
I had just begun shaping the mana to start the test when the phone rang. I released the mana and noticed for the first time the ache in my head from drawing it. I blinked a few times and shook my head as I picked up the phone. "Hello?"
"Tre, this is Dana, Consul Telemon's secretary. He asked me to call and make sure you were awake for your meeting with Apprentice Pena."
I recognized the woman's voice and nodded, even though she couldn't see me. "Thank you, Dana. I will be in the conference room shortly." We exchanged pleasantries and hung up. After setting the phone back in its cradle I walked over to the closet and changed into some clothes that Arianna had brought from the hotel. After brushing my hair I gathered up my mini-comp and Michelle's file and headed for the door.
It took me very little time to reach the conference room where I was supposed to meet with Apprentice Pena. One thing that Telemon saw to was that every Chapterhouse was identical in layout. The Motherhouse is also the same for the most part, just that it is much larger. I took a seat across the table from the door so I would see when she entered and opened her file.
I looked up at the door as I heard it open. I glanced at my watch seeing it was still a couple of minutes until eleven thirty and smiled to myself. I looked at the person standing in the doorway and smiled. The Order garbed its apprentices in shapeless gray hooded robes. Apprentice Pena was indeed wearing the shapeless gray robes but under her robes he could see she wore gray jeans and a gray tee shirt. Her long brown hair was pulled back into a tail and her brown eyes sparkled as she stood in the doorway and appraised me as I was doing to her. "Apprentice Pena reporting for our scheduled meeting, Sir."
I allowed a bit of a smile to cross my face. "Come in and close the door behind you, Apprentice." Once she had closed the door behind her I pulled a crystal out of my pocket and set a ward around the room. I closed my eyes as the headache settled in behind them once I released the power after setting the ward.
When I opened my eyes again she was standing behind the chair opposite me looking at me curiously. "Are you okay, sir?"
I nodded with a rueful chuckle. "Yes, Apprentice, I'm fine. I'm still recovering from my mishap last week. I just have to remember to take it easy. And stop with the 'sir' stuff. My name is Tre." I gestured to the chair in front of her. "Have a seat, Apprentice. Let's get started."
She pulled the chair out from the table and settled down into it. I watched her for a moment before flipping the file to one of the clean sheets Telemon left in it for taking notes. "Tell me about yourself, Apprentice."
She locked her dark eyes with mine and shrugged. "I don't know what you want to hear, sir. I was born in the Vampire Dominion of Minneapolis. I was the third-born child of Mark and Judy Pena. My father is a banker in Minneapolis and my mother is an accountant. Both were highly placed in the Baron's Court. Highly placed for humans that is." I watched her while listening and taking notes. "The year before I was born the Baron of Minneapolis had sent out orders that any children with magical talent were to be brought in for 'testing'. He wanted mages to serve him, both as humans and, later, as vampires."
She paused and poured herself a cup of water. "When I was getting ready to start school, I was tested, in secret. I was made to hold the image of a shield in my mind. I didn't know it then but the man testing me, Jerry... Dale I think his last name was, someone my mother grew up with, cast a spell at me. Pain flared in my head and drove me to my knees. My parents freaked out, but they knew then that I could use magic. The power had not actually manifested itself fully. That didn't come until I hit puberty. But the man that tested me used the same test that was used on him at my age and that he had used on each of my siblings."
I interrupted her. "Was there a history of magic use in your family? Any that you can remember?"
She thought about it a minute. "I'm not sure. But one of my parents must have come from a family with magical abilities. Given that it it commonly believed that the talent for magic comes from the mother's side of the gene pool, there is your answer. Apparently someone on my mother's side of the family was a mage." I nodded and made a note to see what I could find out about 'Jerry Dale' and to see if I could trace back who was magically active in her family as she continued. "Despite the Baron's order, my mother refused to turn me over to the vampires for training."
She looked right into my eyes. "I came into my powers on my first period. It was a trying time for everyone. Jerry, my mother's friend, started coming around regularly to teach me the very basics of controlling the power so I didn't get mad and use magic on someone accidentally. One of the first skills that he taught me was to hide that I could use the power." She shrugged. "If no one suspected that I was magical, there was no problem. That was Jerry's solution. To hide the fact that I could use the power."
"You were taught to mask your aura to hide that you were magical?" I scribbled a few more notes on the paper. When she nodded I circled the note to find this 'Jerry Dale'. "That is not normally something that is taught to children. It is a skill of Initiates not apprentices." I shifted my vision to get a look at her on the Astral. Her aura glowed and flickered with power. I could see in her aura that her story was disturbing her. I could also plainly see the ability to use magic imprinted on her aura. "Mask your aura, Apprentice. Do it just as you were taught."
As I watched, her aura lost the pulsing glow that showed she was magical, taking on the dull glow of a person born without the ability to use the power. Blinking my eyes a few times I shifted back to normal vision. "That is interesting. And you say you were taught that first?"
"Yes, sir. Jerry said that if I could hide the fact that I could use magic that my family and I would be safe." Her face took on a look of sadness. "He was wrong. Apparently someone in the Baron's Court heard that I could use magic. At first we didn't know who told, but when the Baron's soldiers came for me we found out rather quickly. They had an order to make a lesson out of us. My older brothers were to be killed, in front of my parents and myself. After they were dead I was to be taken. When they read the order, Will, my second brother, protested that he was supposed to be rewarded for turning me in."
She stopped, tears in her eyes. "My brother betrayed me to the vampires for a reward. He was 'rewarded' by being allowed to watch his brother drained by two vampires before they killed him. His reward was to not be fed on before they killed him. Instead they broke his neck. My father and mother were still in shock when I was taken. I was taken downstairs and put into a car. I couldn't even resist at first. I was just limp." She shrugged again. "That is how I was able to escape. I was left alone in the back seat of the car as we drove. At the time the only skill I knew was how to mask my aura. We stopped at a traffic light and all of a sudden I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up and heard Jerry's voice whispering in my ear to run. To get out of the car and go to a parking garage a few blocks away."
I wrote down a few more notes, about the spell he used to speak to her from the Astral Plane, her body's reaction to magic being used near her. She continued, speaking quietly. "Suddenly the vampire driving just... melted. The back door of the car opened and I jumped out. The passenger died the same way, and that was the last I saw of them. I ran for the parking garage like Jerry had said. When I got there Jerry was waiting. He got me in the car and we took off. We crossed the river and headed east until we reached Chicago. When we got there he gave me some cash, bought me a ticket and put me on a plane for New York. He said there would be some people waiting on me there and they would protect me and give me training." I kept jotting down notes as I listened, my curiosity about this Jerry Dale growing by the second.
She spread her hands and gestured around her. "I was met by two men at the airport and they brought me here. I spent a few days here and was then sent to train with Julius. I was with him up until a few days ago when he sent me here to meet with you."
I chuckled and looked at her. "Did Julius tell you why he wanted you to meet with me?"
She nodded. "Yes, he did. He told me that I had learned as much as I could from him and that you would complete my training. He says that you are the greatest student he has ever had, and the one with the most potential to do great things." She smiled. "-If- you don't go and get yourself killed by the vampires in Memphis that is."
I laughed quietly. "Yes, he has said much the same to me over the years. He keeps warning me not to let the vampires 'ruin my potential'." I flipped to the listing of the spells she learned. "Julius sent me his appraisal of your skills. He says you are very good at sorcery and ritual sorcery as well as good with summoning. You are also apparently very good on the research side of things because you have learned quite a few spells that Julius doesn't know."
She smiled, though the expression didn't quite reach her eyes. "Yes, I spent most of my free time in research in Julius's library. Julius and I would summon spirits to help me with my studying." I glanced up at that and she shrugged. "He wouldn't teach me the spells himself, but he would summon, or help me to summon, fire elementals to help me learn them. That is how I learned the vast majority of the combat spells that I know. Others I worked out on my own."
I glanced at the list of spells, noting the marks of spells she studied without spirits to aid her. "Very impressive." I flipped the folder shut and looked across the table at her. "What do you know about me?"
