Broken Wings: Genesis (9 page)

“Pardon me?”

He looked at me with the smile of
a patient parent indulging a slow-witted child. “Initiation rites? Pietra had
indicated that you were to be joining our coven as a thirteenth member
tonight.”

I looked to the High Priestess,
who was keeping careful control over her expression. “I thought it would take
time to see if I meshed with the rest of the group.”

“Ordinarily, yes––”

Mack interrupted her. “Pietra has
been telling the coven of the amount of time she has spent with you. She
indicated you would be a perfect fit, and the rest of us agreed.”

“She is way too generous––” I
tried to argue and find a way out of this. The last thing I needed was to link
my energy to a coven group. I couldn’t afford to spread myself that thin.
Besides, I worked alone and I wanted to keep it that way.

“Nonsense.” Pietra gave me a warm
hug. “You are a perfect fit. I think the rest of the coven, now that they have
had the chance to meet you for themselves, would agree with me. It’s the only
reason they all could make it tonight, even those who had others plans.”

In other words Chaz had known
about this and hadn’t given me a heads up. I was going to be having a talk with
that boy when I got back to the apartment. Father David certainly wouldn’t be
pleased that an employee of the church, even an unacknowledged contracted one,
was a member of a coven. The church had some pretty strict rules on that stuff.
I guess that I’d have to leave that part out of my report. I could break the
link when this was all done and he’d never be the wiser for it.

The High Priestess pulled back and
looked at the women who were drawing close, all with approving nods and smiles.
Judith didn’t seem so approving, but that’s okay. At least she and I agreed on
one point. I was angry enough to pinch the underside of Pietra’s arm before I
stepped fully out of her embrace.

My features moved into a look of
overwhelmed humility. Inside, I was pissed off down to my toenails. She had
left me with no options. If I backed out now, I would never be able to help this
group to form a cohesive, united front against the smug man sitting on his
canvas throne. And since he had linked to the energies of the coven, I would
have to do the same.

I would’ve much preferred to have
reached that conclusion on my own, and certainly wasn’t looking forward to
having myself linked in my current drained and weakened state. Pietra must have
figured it out and made certain I would take up the challenge to protect her
girls whether I wanted to or not. When this was all over, the High Priestess
and me were going to be having a little chat, too. For now, I played the part.
What choice did I have?

“I am honored.” My guess was that
only Pietra knew my response was choked by my anger and not by humility.

The women came around me with warm
hugs. Even Jamie got up from her seat next to Mack to welcome me. Mack and
Judith remained seated. I was hustled into the house to prepare myself for the
initiation, while several women stayed outside with Pietra to light the central
fire and finish the preliminary set up of the circle and the altar.

When I stepped back outside, I was
clad in nothing but the white robe of an initiate. The two sisters, Jane and
Joan took up positions, one in front of me and one behind. Judith stepped into
place behind them. Mack and Pietra stood to either side of the altar, within
the circle.

The remaining women filed in ahead
of me, taking up positions around the inside edge. Judith closed the circle
behind us, after we were all in. The ritual started with Mack and Pietra calling
for the blessings of the Lord and the Lady upon the circle, and then stepped to
the quarters of each direction to invoke the protection of the watchtowers. I
never could understand why people took such time and painstaking effort to make
a perfect circle, only to turn it into a square by invoking the watchers at the
four directions. But hey, this was their thing, not mine.

After some initial time spent on
invocations and prayers, Pietra called for the petitioner to come forward. I
was lost in thought, and it didn’t even register that it was me she was
referring to until Jane and Joan nudged me from both sides at the same time. I
was up.

I took my time with small prayers
to the four directions as I worked my way around the circle to the altar. It
was expected of me. Just because it wasn’t my thing, that didn’t mean I was
ignorant of what to do.

At the last, I stepped up to the
altar, taking up a position between Mack and Pietra, the altar at my front, the
fire at my back. Words were exchanged in ritual greeting and I stepped out of
my robe, to bare myself as the symbolic newborn child to the rest of the coven.

Someone gasped behind me, but I
didn’t recognize the voice. I wasn’t familiar enough with the group to single
it out.

“Pietra, look––she’s a Gatekeeper.”

Gatekeeper? I wasn’t sure what
that was supposed to mean, but I closed my eyes, knowing what they saw. I had a
set of birthmarks on the back of my body. Few people had ever seen them. It was
too late now to either keep them hidden or to feign ignorance, so I shifted my
feet apart to give them the full show. There were seven, almost perfectly
star-shaped, deep red blotches; one on the back of each shoulder, one at each
ankle between calf and heel, and three that created a belt at my waist. When I
shifted to stand with my feet spread apart at shoulder width, it was easy to
see the constellation
Orion
laid out in perfection on my backside. It
was why my father had given me the ridiculous surname
Star
.

Pietra stepped around me to look,
as did Mack. When they came back to the altar again, her look was one of
disturbed surprise. His was unreadable, but I thought I saw a flash of hunger.
I stared straight ahead, acknowledging neither.

“A Gatekeeper––” the High
Priestess whispered.

A memory sent a subtle chill washing
over me, raising bumps on my skin. Ithane, the woman of my dream––hadn’t she
been a Gatekeeper? My thoughts wandered back and forth between dream and ritual
as Pietra and Mack stepped forward in unison to anoint my body. The ritual
binding to the coven went on around me, but I was barely aware of it. My
thoughts kept wandering to a place far away, trying to make all of the pieces
fit together.

At some point, the ritual was
complete and each woman stepped up to greet me with a hug followed by a kiss on
each cheek. I responded properly to their ritual greetings, but my mind was
elsewhere. Mack gave his greetings, and finally at the last, Pietra stepped
forward to give hers.

When she turned me around to face
the rest of the coven and announce my acceptance, the sky lit up in brightness.
We all looked up. How could we not? Across the constellation of
Orion
,
high above us, lights streaked their way from one end of the sky to the next. I
wasn’t sure what I was seeing at first. Then I knew. Just like the dream, a
shower of meteors lit up the sky, streaking their way to places unknown. What
it meant, I didn’t know. But I had a bad feeling I was going to find out,
whether I wanted to know or not.

Tired does not even begin to
describe how I was feeling by the time I reached my apartment door. No one
could tell me much about the whole Orion-Gatekeeper thing, other than that
there was some sort of obscure belief about Orion being the symbolic gatekeeper
to not only the heavens, but to other worlds as well.

One of the girls, Andrea, had
mentioned something about remembering an old story about Orion and the
scorpion. But her version wasn’t the Greek myth about the scorpion chasing
Orion. It was actually the other way around, where the warrior chased the monster
to keep him from settling in the heavens.

I made a mental note to ask
Morpheus about it. He was almost as old as dirt. I figured he might remember
something. If nothing else, maybe he could ask around for me. After all, he
traveled in different circles than I did.

I entered my place as quietly as I
could manage. The living room light was on. Tossing my pack on the couch
without ceremony, I crossed to the bedroom. A low lamp was lit there as well.

Chaz was asleep, lying curled up
on the small love seat that sat in the far corner of the room. It was my
reading nook. I fell asleep there as often as I did in my bed, usually holding
some obscure text that would later fall to the floor to wake me. Ke was settled
in under the covers of the bed. Chaz had taken away the shower curtain and
cleaned up the rest of the room while I was gone. Now that I think about it,
I’m pretty sure he had taken care of the hallway, too. It just hadn’t
registered at the time.

With caution, I walked over to
stand at the side of the bed. My mind drifted to the dreamscape Ke had pulled
me into. I don’t think it had been intentional. He had tried to warn me. I also
don’t believe in coincidences. There were far too many similar pieces to this
puzzle that obviously fit together. But how? For the first time, I couldn’t see
the larger picture and it disturbed me. Especially since I had that gut feeling
that when they all fell into place, my face would be smack dab in the middle.

But what did it all mean? I stared
down at the man on the bed as though trying to will the answers from him. I
wouldn’t get any, but it gave me something to occupy my mind.

His head was turned into the
pillow, so only half of his face showed. I studied him for a time while my
thoughts ran circles around today’s events. It was a rounder face, but with
firm lines that defined his cheek and jaw. The nose was a little wide, but
straight. The lips were full, but it didn’t look like a mouth that smiled much.
I don’t know where
that
thought came
from, but it felt right. Long, dark lashes brushed his cheeks in sleep. I
already knew his eyes were like golden chocolate.

His hair looked to be all one
length and was a deep brown, almost black, with auburn highlights that gave a
glint of red in the warm light of the bedroom. It was also streaked with gray
in places throughout the length that went past his waist. There was still some
dried and matted blood in the strands, but there could be no help for that
until he could get up and into the shower.

All in all, he was a good-looking
guy. I’m sure that would be even more improved when he was cleaned up. The
irony of him being there wasn’t lost on me. The only good-looking guy I’ve had
lying near-naked in my bed in a couple of years, and it’s only because he’s too
injured to be elsewhere.

“You’re back.” Chaz’s soft voice
cut through my thoughts.

“Yeah, here I am.”

It saved me the trouble of
choosing between letting him sleep or waking him up to keep my promise to talk
when I got back. I gave sleeping beauty a last glance and walked over to the
kid. He sat up, still a little groggy, to make room for me to sit next to him.

“So when were you going to mention
the initiation that Pietra had planned?”

There’s nothing like a splash of
cold water in the face to shock you into being awake. I could tell that he had
forgotten about it.

“Shit, Yesh. I’m so sorry––”

“Save it. I was pretty pissed at
first, but then I realized we had a few other things to deal with by the time
you got back.” I tipped my head toward Ke. “I just don’t like being
blind-sided.”

“Man, I didn’t mean for that to
happen.” He was mortified into silence for about the space of a heartbeat.
“How’d it go?”

I filled him in on the events that
had taken place at the coven meeting.

“I knew about the marks,” he was
looking at me strangely. “I mean, I’ve caught glimpses of them here and there
over the time that I’ve worked with you. But I’ve never seen them all together,
so I guess it never dawned on me that they were part of a bigger picture.”

He was eyeing my back, trying to
visualize the marks through my leather.

“Maybe someday, kid. But I’m not
baring myself for anyone again tonight.” I clapped a hand on his knee and sank
back into the plush softness of the love seat.

“So––?”

I frowned. “So what?”

Chaz looked at me. Topic jumping.
The kid was good for that. He wanted to know about the dream deal, so I told
him. I didn’t leave anything out. I needed an extra brain wrapped around the
details. Maybe he would see something I was missing. By the time I was
finished, he was leaning back into the sofa with me. He had a dazed look on his
face.

“So what does it all mean?”

He wasn’t so much asking me, as he
was sort of letting the words out to hang in the air. I knew how he felt. That
was pretty much where I was at, too.

“I don’t know, kid. This has me
stumped. Somehow, it’s all connected, but I can’t make the pieces fit.”

“Do you think maybe it’s a past
life thing?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know––past life,
reincarnation––”

I started to laugh. “I was an
angel in a past life? I don’t think the whole angel thing goes hand in hand
with theories of reincarnation.”

Chaz shook his head. “Not
nowadays. But there’s the whole school of thought that the theory of
reincarnation was removed from biblical texts by Constantine back in 313 A.D.”

I raised my eyebrows and looked at
him. “Does Father David know where you’re devoting your study time these days?”
He blushed and I shook my head. “There’s also plenty of supposed proof that
doesn’t mesh with that timeline, Chaz. But let’s just assume for a minute that
you’re correct and reincarnation is for real. Angels don’t have physical forms
to begin with, so how can they die and become reincarnated? It doesn’t make
sense.”

“It should.” The voice came from
the bed, surprising us both.