Saturday, October 20 By the time the night of the show finally came, both of Nessa and George were feeling the strain of the three weeks away from their home and friends, of living in a hotel in a large alien city where George was actively aware of the level of hostility towards people of his kind-that it was better than it would have been in much of America still said very little-and being constantly aware, in a way they had not been at home, of their being in direct danger from people they might not be able to fight against, and of having to conceal their fear in the presence of everyone other than their coach and a man they still did not completely trust.
“And to think,” said Nessa, “we nearly came here to train at one time.”
Of the entire cast, she was the one who had to endure the least time in make-up; all the others, George included, were to be clad in such prosthetics and paint that they might not be immediately recognizable by their viewers. But Nessa was to play the innocent girl in a white silk nightgown, and she was unwrapping said nightgown and checking to see that her blades were not wanting for sharpness, alone in her place backstage while most of the others sat in their make-up chairs elsewhere, when Joshua, who ought to have not even been able to get backstage, came up to her, holding a plastic bag, and looking very agitated.
“What is it now?” she asked, her normal hostility to him now gone.
“I believe Rollins will be in the audience tonight,” he replied. “I think he’s traced us back to this show.”
“Betsy isn’t here yet,” said Nessa. “If both you and she stay away, there’ll be nothing for him to detect.”
“But I’m not sure he hasn’t connected you two to her. You can’t perform tonight with noone to protect you. You’re going to have to drop out of the show. Claim you’re sick.”
Nessa started to nod, but then the impact of what they would be doing hit her. “We do that,” she said, “and we might as well flee from doing anything at all in our lives for fear members of this mad cult will find us. Could we escape them if we fled to Africa? Antarctica? Betsy said the cult originated here in the States, so if you’ve gone across the pond, I’m sure you’ve gone into Canada, and I assume Paris as well.”
“And you will refuse to change your ways?”
“I believe we have made that perfectly clear already.”
“Very well. I thought so. In that case, I brought you this.” And out of the plastic bag he drew an old style musket. “For George. I spent the last week looking for this. It’s extremely close to what Colonel Brandon would have used, and it works the exact same way. He’ll have to teach the rest of you to shoot; I actually don’t have that knowledge.”
“Right-hand man in a mad religious cult and you don’t know how to fire a gun?” Nessa asked, using her surprise to cover any other feeling she might have had.
“A magic religious cult, Miss Ross; guns were only considered needed by those who hadn’t been taught magic yet. Give that to George and tell him that if you insist on this folly, he must be willing to kill.”
That possibility of their needing to kill remained no matter what they did, and Nessa had privately decided she was willing to the night she had confronted Joshua in her hotel room. Yet her instincts-Emma’s deeply feminine instincts-revolted as she carefully handled the gun, not sure how to even do so safely, and doubting Joshua would know that either.
“Mrs. Weller and I will discuss this matter further,” he said, “and decide what to do with ourselves. Meanwhile, I’ll get out of here before I’m seen.”
When he was gone, Nessa put the gun down pointed away from herself, then took off her coat and hat and threw them over it. She felt better when the weapon was out of her sight.
Ironically Emma had in fact studied archery, amid all her other subjects of study, and enjoyed it, and at one time in her life become quite good with it. Of course, she had never given much thought to the idea of her arrows aiming towards anything besides wooden target; it had been purely a game to her. And one she had eventually lost much of her interest in, particularly after she had married. Nessa wondered, as she sat there, if she might however try to regain that skill, or if the weakness of the weapon made it not worth it.
She considered the others. She had read enough of Sense and Sensibility to determine that none of the other three characters reincarnated into their group likely had any skills; even if Edward Ferrars had learned how to shoot a gun; she couldn’t see him using it much. Mr. Bennett and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice had both done some hunting, but of course Betsy and Mrs. Mosley had more effective weapons with which to defend themselves. About Mansfield Park she had no idea. She didn’t know much Persuasion either. She did know the heroine had married a naval officer, but she too might have learned how to shoot a gun with no real expectation of ever using it.
She was, meanwhile, left in an awkward position for another hour, while she waited for George to escape the make-up chair. Now that she had a gun to guard and hide she could hardly leave it, she did not at all want to move around with it, so all she could do was awkwardly sit there, examining the nightgown and leggings twice over, even after she was certain there were no rips or runs, and wish she had a journal like Diamond’s, even though she typically didn’t care to hear what Emma had to say. Perhaps she and George could share one, she thought; he could use it more and she could use it occasionally.
George, encrusted in rags and the face of a ghoul, returned earlier than she had expected, however; from how he came hurrying over she wondered if he had somehow gained that telepathic ability to tell when she was in distress, which they had joked about as teens. Even if he did not, he saw her distress on her face quickly enough, and he sat very close to her and spoke as quietly as possible as he asked after the problem. When she lifted her coat enough to show him the gun and explained how Joshua had given it to her to pass on to him, he nodded grimly, saying, “I thought it might come to this. But how are we to keep that thing concealed? And if we are to take it home, it must be smuggled-though that, I assume, we can leave to him. Is it loaded?”
“I didn’t think to check,” said Nessa, feeling foolish.
“Don’t scold yourself,” said George gently. “We’re all new at this sort of thing. Knowing Joshua, it probably is, but let me see.” As he knelt over the gun and exposed more of it, Nessa found herself getting up and placing herself in front of him, even though they were alone. “Yes, loaded.” She watched as he covered it again, then very carefully picked it up and looked around for a place to hide it. “We’d best get this concealed quickly; they were almost done with Michelle when I left and she at least is almost certainly at large by now.”
The audience was settling down, the lights were starting to dim, and next to him, Nessa was trembling as she took her skate guards off. She had to go out alone, an action which would cause either one of them discomfort even under normal circumstances.
The lights fell completely as she wound her way to the center of the ice, and a deep voice welcomed everyone to Halloween on Ice, and threatened diabolical harm to anyone who failed to turn off their mobile phones. She was looking up at the ceiling when the lights rose, fearful. The audience saw it as an act.
A second spotlight crept onto him as he too emerged into the arena, hunched over with his arms spread out in what was supposed to be a menacing manner, but he didn’t know if it actually was. Certainly when, as the music started, he seized his partner from behind, the exaggerated horror on her face did not extend to her eyes; if anything, they betrayed the opposite emotion.
But that passed, and as he stalked her around the ice, occasionally pausing the drama to perform their spectacular technical tricks, he could see her slowly absorb herself. That she had only a short time ago memorized the program enough to not have to focus on what she had to do meant it was a new sight to her partner, and one he had to shut out to avoid distraction. It didn’t help that she had seemed to lose her ability in the previous weeks; she should have long been able to do it for their free dance, but was instead making their coach cry with frustration. He menaced her as their distant dangers menaced them, and he hid what he felt when she felt the fear for the both of them. Yet somewhere in him, he felt a vague relief that she could still do this; more often than not she did most of their performing in competition; they told George he was the better skater, but she was probably what made them stand out.
Then it was over, they were in their final horror movie-style pose, and George didn’t know if it was his imagination but he thought the applause was impatient in nature; he and Nessa weren’t exactly the stars here. But if so it was just as well, as the two of them were happy to get off the ice as quickly as possible.
Backstage nothing looked all that different than it had when they’d gone on; Nancy passed them out her way out, as did Todd Eldredge. But George had hairs prickling at the back of his neck; an inherited instinct for sensing imminent invasion developed from wars that had ended well over two centuries ago.
He seizes Nessa’s hand and she nods in complete understanding without even breaking stride to look at him; never in his life has he been so grateful for their ability to communicate so well. They keep their performance smiles on as they moseyed efficiently to the closest way to get out of sight of the others, slipping their skate guards on as they went.
When they were alone, Nessa said, “Did you see or hear anything?”
“Would that I had,” he growled. “Then I would have some idea of who I fear is about to attack us.”
There was no more to say, then, until they had retrieved their mobile phones, and George called Betsy to bring her back to the arena. On hearing the reason for it, however, she said, “Wait a minute…” A pause, time enough for dread to prickle, then her voice again, urgent, frightened: “George, get the gun, and then you and Nessa get out of there now. Joshua and I will join you as soon as possible. Stay away from the northern entrance if you can.”
Nessa saw his reaction to this, and was unlacing her skates even before George asked their coach, “How many of them are there?”
“I think…four probably. The only one I can tell for sure is Mike Rollins.”
They took their skates and hid them were they had stashed the rifle. As George took the weapon into his hands, he felt a nameless anxiety within himself dissolve. Nessa placed herself behind him as they crept out into the back passages of the arena, exiting to the east, as far from the northern entrance as they could get without being seen by anyone inside the building.
The two of them couldn’t be identified from any other non-magic users, George reminded himself. Joshua had made that very clear; actual individuals could only be identified by those who knew them well; he himself would need Betsy’s aid to find them. Once they did, of course, Rollins would be able to follow the two of them, but their goal was to draw the Disciples away from the arena, and deal with them without endangering their fellow skaters.
They were in an alley almost a block away when Betsy and Joshua caught up with them. “He’s tight on our tail,” warned the latter. “I think Miss Ross should hide.”
“I will not,” Nessa said coldly.
Joshua looked at Betsy, who folded her arms. He probably could have forced Nessa to hide and there wouldn’t have been much Betsy could have done about it, but for some reason it didn’t look was inclined to do so without her aid, or at least approval. He shook his head and said, “Both of you get behind us.”
There weren’t at all inclined to disobey him there. The two magic-users were spreading their arms out and placing themselves three feet apart from each other, just as from around the corner there was a murmur of voices that George recognized from long years of memories as undoubtedly hostile, and his grip tightened on his rifle.
He knew this feeling already, even if he himself had never experienced it before; this fear that any man would know when the possible end of his life advanced on him in the form of other men ready to charge him down in that mad frenzy they had to work themselves up into in order to do it, this unavoidable impulse to turn and run when one must not turn and run, the desperate wish for courage, even from those who had found it before, the silent, selfish prayer, because survival would come at the expense of other lives.
But Nessa had no such memories to prepare her for this. Even from a foot and a half away he could feel her trembling.
“The hard part is to stand,” he whispered to her. “You’ll want very badly to run. Even though in this case it’s a bad idea, even the bravest of hearts will scream at its owner to run. But you must not run.”
When the first of the enemy appeared at the alley entrance, George didn’t even know what to expect, whether he would charge, or whether Betsy and Joshua would attack first. But instead, they just strode forward, all nine of them, he who could only be Mike Rollins at the lead, a tall man with a dark goatee and an ivory silk blouse, swaggering up with his hands held out and palms spread. George’s automatic thought was he was begging to be attacked, and he wondered that Betsy and Joshua did not do it, but he was forced to assume there was some sort of logic based off of the mechanics of magical fighting.
“Who are they?” Rollins inquired, his eyes unmistakably on George and Nessa. George felt a stab of fear, followed by a surge of battle rage, though he kept both emotions contained beneath his still form.’
“You won’t ever know, I would hope,” said Betsy. “I’m not interested in giving you their names.”
“I think I might be able to find them out,” said Rollins. “I know I’ve seen her before.” And when he actually pointed at Nessa, George could no longer restrain himself from stepping in front of his cousin, hands placed on the rifle in readiness to fire.
Betsy looked at Joshua urgently. He nodded, and raised his hand.
But in the flash of a moment Rollins had done the same, and from there George had no idea just what happened, but the two men were leaning forward opposite each other, hands locked into tangled chains of light, storm grey and violent purple flashes and links. What they were doing was incomprehensible to almost all that viewed them, and nor did George and Nessa have the ability to wonder, for in another moment the other eight had charged forward, bloody roars filling the space ahead of them, and Betsy looked at them, and exchanged a glance with George that three years of being his coach allowed them both to understand immediately. She couldn’t deal with all eight of them; he and Nessa needed to help.
“Don’t run,” he cried to Nessa, before his hands settled onto his rifle and he let the memories take over, and the closest of the men fell dead with a bullet in his heart. But his second shot missed, and then the men were upon them, and they went for him first. He was thrown to the ground, his weapon knocked from him, a knife raised high. For an awful moment fear paralyzed him; his training and memories not enough to get him to defend himself. But then a stone hit the man over him, followed by another; he heard Nessa’s harsh yells of triumph.
Then he heard her scream, and that spurred him up; his fist found his attacker’s face; his foot did a moment later, but he was no longer looking at him, his hands were groping for his rifle, but when he saw that Nessa was pressed to the pavement, desperately trying to wiggle free of another man who had her by her leg, he instead launched himself at them, savagely closing his hands around the man’s throat, spurred on less, now, by his soldier’s history remembered, than by the sight of Nessa flailing helplessly, like a rabbit caught in a snare.
The man let her go to turn on George, he threw himself back hard and George’s hands locked on his shoulders. The Scot’s strength proved the superior, and as Nessa pulled herself to her feet she kicked him in the shin. But a moment later another man had thrown himself on her. George had now resorted to pummeling his foe, and could not get past him to help her.
All might have been lost, if Betsy hadn’t yelled “Spices! Bad spices!” There was only a split second, just long enough for both her charges to realize something was about to fill the air, and they both drew their breath in and stopped their noses, crushing them against the bodies of their confused assailants George then closed his eyes, too, as something unpleasant tickled them, and he felt the body he was locked to collapse and fall limp, heard a thud as Nessa’s opponent suffered the same fate. The heaviness on his eyes lasted about a minute, then passed, then they heard Betsy say, “All right, you can breath now.”
They breathed, they opened their eyes, and they carefully untangled themselves from unconscious limbs. Then they both gasped on seeing the form of Rollins; even George’s war-worn eyes blanched at the way his chest was split open. The man Joshua had killed just before Awakening them hadn’t a mark on him, what the difference was George wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He didn’t know either who had killed the other four men, him or Betsy, but all nine of the Disciples were down.
It was even more creepy, however, when Joshua camly clapped his hands and sent four beams of almost black light into the four who were merely unconscious, killing them instantly no doubt, and even at the same time commented, “Well done, Mrs. Weller. Better than I expected, especially with the sleeping cloud. How did you do that?”
Personally, George wouldn’t have answered, but Betsy did: “Living in the same house as your sleeping beauty made me familiar enough with the shroud of sleep already, and I’d noticed how you’d set her breathing too. Once I figured out your spell was centered on that, I only needed to figure out-I didn’t kill that one, did I?” She was referring to a man lying on his back with his arms flung towards them, the smallest and thinnest of the group. “I thought I hadn’t.”
“No,” said Joshua, “but that’s hardly surprising, since you’re new at this. Don’t worry; I’ll take care of it.” He raised his arm over the fallen man.
But as he did, he somehow awoke, and cried out-and Joshua suddenly staggared forward over him, clearly about to faint. The Disciple raised his hands, and Betsy too flailed.
Why didn’t they detect him as a magic user? George’s mind was racing. And what was he capable of? Was it possible to deal with him, or would taking a step forward towards him, or attempting to retrieve his rifle, result in he or Nessa being killed?
There was a fire escape behind the Disciple. He backed up and leap onto it, assuming the stance of a cornered animal. Betsy had collapsed. Joshua was still up, but his eyes were zoned out; he would be of no help.
Then he seemed to realize he had the upper hand, and a deadly smile crossed his still agitated face. “The lady will come here,” he said.
Nessa didn’t dare disobey. She walked forward and joined him on the fire escape, and didn’t react as he roughly seized her arm. She made an effort to hold her head high and haughty; it was only because he knew her so well that George could tell how terrified she was.
“Where do you intend to take me?” she demanded, in an imperious tone of voice he had imagined Emma using, but had never heard from his cousin. “Upward?”
“Upward sounds good for starters.” The glint in his eyes was turning predatory. “There’s a window open up there.”
“Lead the way,” she said boldly; it was an excellent performance from her, one that made George’s heart sick, for his only thought could be that she was giving herself up in the hopes of saving him, and possibly Betsy, if she was not dead.
Or so he believed, until he noticed, as she was dragged up the fire escape, that she was continually looking down at the ground, and there was a calculated look in her eye. Getting a fairly good idea of what she intended to do, George scooped up Betsy’s body to make sure she was nowhere near the pavement below the fire escape. He noted immediately she was still breathing.
How long she had planned to wait before striking George wasn’t sure, but the Disciple likely caused her to change her mind when his hand moved from her arm to her breast, unwilling to wait longer. In another moment she had shoved, and he went toppling back. When he didn’t fall, George, watching below, experienced one last moment of devestation, before he promptly attacked her with no more than his fists, and they knew he’d been bluffing; he could use no more magic on them. And he was small and scrawny enough for Nessa to be his superior in strength, in another moment she had hurled him from the fire escape.
The sickening crunch as he hit the alley headfirst jarred both Betsy and Joshua out of whatever state he had put them into; she gasped and looked around, and he exclaimed, “Cursed Absorber!”
“Absorber?” repeated Betsy as George put her down. “Is that what he was?” Then she looked down at the body, and George practically saw it when the events of the past five minutes sunk in. It sent him turning his eyes upwards, to where Nessa was staggering down the metal stairway; actually seeing the man fall meant she’d been hit with the impact of it right away. Neither woman had even bourn memories before of taking another’s life.
“What is an Absorber?” he demanded harshly of Joshua. “And why didn’t you tell us about them?”
“Mr. Fiddleson, if I took the time to tell you every little up and down about an art you still refuse to learn…”
“You told only one of them can do magic!” George insisted, barely keeping himself from yelling. “We relied on that fact as sacrosant!”
“Well, it’s not; sometimes when you kill a magic-user someone else who has been in the presence of him for a prolonged amount of time briefly Absorbs whatever he’s learned. It’s not that common but it does happen. Fortunately the effect is usually fleeting and not very strong, though they often think themselves more powerful than they actually are. Now we must get back to the arena before we are missed.”
If George had been at all able to deny this last part, he would have said more and angrier to Joshua. But when the magic man was right, he had to focus on giving Nessa what comfort he could before she was forced to face their fellow skaters and act as if nothing had happened.
He kept his arm on her shoulders as they walked away, averting their eyes as Joshua waved his arms over the dead bodies and each dissolved, probably into the atoms that they had been made of. “Breath in and out,” he whispered to her. “One step, and then another. You must live with yourself now. By this time tomorrow you will no longer find that difficult.”
She met his eyes then, and through the horrored shock and fright he saw great astonishment. “You are not telling me he suffered from this? A military man, one who fought duels even off the battlefield?”
“In his youth, after the first time? He was as vulnerable to it as you are. Some of his fellow soldiers were not, mind you, but he was.”
When Nessa was tense, it usually concentrated in the very bottom of her shoulderblades. When George touched the tips of his fingers automatically to where it was easiest to gauge, he found a firestorm raging beneath her skin. But already it was starting to die down, and as the arena came within their view, he felt not only her but he himself relax, and he thought the two of them would both be all right when their skate blades touched ice once again.
But that could not be even after Joshua had sucessfully led them through the back door and backstage once again, then cleaned and mended their costumes and make-up, undoing the rips and stains and smears that had marred them during the evening’s events. For the show was far from over, and because it had been rehearsed and prepared without them, they could not come out until the very end.
Instead the three of them found seats as Joshua left, saying something about scanning the area, and over the loudspeaker they heard “...and five-time World Champion, ladies and gentlemen, the one, the only Michelle Kwan!”
The applause was so defeaning George very briefly entertained the hope that enough of it would persist to more or less drown out the music; she was certainly beloved enough. But while the first few measures indeed proved inaudible, when the heavy metal sound kicked in it proved too loud, and with resignation of not escaping it George stopped trying to overlook the TV monitor not far from where they sat, which showed what the cameras were recording for the broadcast later that month.
A chance to watch Michelle Kwan skate was never something that could be easily dismissed anyway. She might have lost a little of the power she’d wielded at her height, but her movement was no less beautiful, her emotion no less potent, the picture she painted no less breathtaking. Even through the diluted medium of a tiny TV screen, George could see and appreciate how she took the almost too loud music and positively transformed it, aided by Betsy’s suberb choreography of course but he and Nessa couldn’t have skated something that beautiful, at least not as they were then, maybe not ever.
And yet, for so much of the program, his eyes strayed, and he found himself fixated on the shroud that she cast and flipped and clung from her hands. This was a black piece of cloth, made of lighter fabric and long enough to float behind her head as she went into a spiral. The audience might or might not focus on it as the center of the number. George hoped they didn’t, even if it was wrong for them not to.
Betsy had kept the piece of cloth. None of them had seen Joshua wearing the cloak from that first day after she had let him have some of Malcolm’s old clothes, but George had seen the cloth placed idly on her mantlepiece, next to the pair of European bronze medals that had been her and Malcolm’s pride and joy. He wondered if there was some sort of significance to it that only meant something to her as a magic user.
He and Nessa held hands as they skated out for the ending, and largely because of each other’s presence they were able to calm themselves down the rest of the way, and get in and out without any difficulties. But backstage, when George was alone, after confirming it was after midnight, after five in Edinburgh, and therefore he was probably just getting up, he pulled out his phone to call Diamond, then after turning it on changed his mind and called Sheila instead.
It was a good decision. With Diamond he would never have finished the story; his boyfriend would have gone into hysterics and started crying and it would have been hours. But Sheila was wise enough to let him get through the whole account before she reacted.
“You know what I think?” she asked when he had concluded. In the background he heard footsteps-were they Diamond? Or one of his parents? He couldn’t tell.
“We’re in trouble?”
“That, and it is an extremely unpleasant coincidence that your Aunt came to call yesterday. She will be here within the next three days and how we are to protect her I cannot imagine. Not to mention how do you intend to hide a musket from her?”
To Be Continued...