Ann Marie's Asylum (Master and Apprentice Book 1) (30 page)

He teleported, reappearing next to one of the women holding the boy. Before anyone realized what had happened, he had her by the hair and had ripped out a portion of her scalp. The young woman exploded in screams and cries.

Bernard scooped up the boy’s limp body with the dagger sticking out of his chest. “Hey there, buddy,” he said to the little boy who was still alive. “What’s your name?”

“Dade,” the boy whispered. “Please don’t hurt my mom.”

“This boy is mine now,” Bernard told the entire coven while looking the leader straight in the face. “You broke the only rule there is, the most important one in nature. Only a savage would destroy her own child to gain power. I should annihilate this entire group for what you’ve done. You all know I’m the most powerful sorcerer in this part of the world and there is nothing you could do about it. I don’t know how powerful killing this kid would have made you, but it wouldn’t be worth it. You’re all savages. He’s no longer your son. If I see you or anyone from this coven around the boy, I’m gonna kill all of you, all your families, everyone alive in your whole bloodline. Hell I might even kill every god damn witch I see.”

Then, while cradling the boy in his arms, Bernard started to walk back toward his limousine. He studied the little boy’s chest wound, noticing a green undulating glow, like a firefly in slow motion.

“Never seen anything like this,” Bernard whispered to himself. He told the half-conscious little boy, “How about that. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen something new.” With little Dade Harkenrider in his arms, he looked back at the coven of witches behind them. He went on, talking to himself and the little boy at the same time. “What exactly were those hags into back there? Don’t worry my boy,” he told young Dade. “I am going to take care of you. What happened back there was an abomination. I’m going to make sure that nothing like that ever happens to you again.”

Suddenly, something seemed to strike at Bernard’s intuition. He quickly spun around as though he intended to find someone following in his footsteps. Spawned from the coven’s firelight, two strange shadows formed for a moment before disappearing.

“What do we have here?” The old man asked as he looked around the beach for them. “These aren’t the normal shadow people. Someone on the other side has taken an interest in us,” Bernard told the boy who was barely conscious.

Hidden in the shadow realm, Ann Marie and Dade were following close behind. Ann Marie was shaken up by the violence she had seen.

“I can’t believe what I just saw,” she said as they invisibly followed Bernard down the beach. “Your mother murdered you.” She added, “or she tried to. I don’t understand.”

“I’ve never understood,” Dade said.

“Can Bernard see us?”

“Not exactly,” he explained. “He might see our shadows if he catches the light right, but there’s nothing he can do to us.”

“Why did your mother do that to you?”

“Ritual,” he answered plainly. “It’s an old legend.”

“What do you mean by legend?”

“Sorcerers believe that there is a special power in some children. They want to take it from us.”

The two of them listened while they followed Bernard and the bleeding little Dade across the stretch of beach. The old man seemed to be trying to comfort the boy.

“Sorry this had to happen to you,” Bernard whispered to him. “This isn’t the way your life was supposed to go. This wasn’t in the design.”

The little boy, Dade, looked dreamily down to the strange antique dagger in his chest and touched it with his hand. “What happened to me?” he asked. “Why did my mom do this?”

“Don’t talk,” Bernard told him. “I’m going to take you back to my laboratory.” The old man jutted his chin up and to the left, toward the big beehive building up the beach. “Up there,” he said. “That’s mine. That’s my Asylum. Me and my friend, you can call him The Sheriff, we’re going to get you all fixed up. We’re gonna get that pesky dagger out of your heart. That must be terribly uncomfortable, after all.”

“Am I dying?” Asked the little boy.

“I’m afraid not,” said Bernard. “It seems as though something quite extraordinary has happened.”

While she followed behind, Ann Marie started to feel dizzy and the moonlight began to get dimmer. She grabbed for adult Dade’s arm and held on as tightly as she could. The overwhelming blackness around her began to shift, then swirl. She gasped for breath and experienced the sensation of drowning. She felt herself choking down what tasted like tank fluid. The entire world spun faster around her. She held on to Dade’s hand as though her life depended on it.

She woke up inside the tank and could see The Sheriff on the other side of the acrylic wall. He was looking at her in total horror.

It looked like her body had fused with Dade’s. Her arms, which had been wrapped around his shoulders, had somehow become part of him. Her legs had become part of his lower body. It was like they were two water droplets just making contact.

Her condition didn’t alarm Ann Marie for some reason. Instead, she was consumed by a soothing sensation that she had never experienced before. It was a feeling of totally letting go, a feeling of pleasurable abandon. At that moment, she wanted it to never end.

Dade started to wake up and their bodies began to divide like two amoebas. The separation felt like the end of the greatest comfort Ann Marie had ever known. While the Sheriff helped them both out of the tank, she fought back the urge to weep because the feeling of loss was overpowering.

Dade was still shaky but he carried her over to the cot.

“I’m so sorry,” he told her. “I should have never let this happen to you. I should have protected you.”

“I did it,” she whispered back. “It was my choice. You didn’t do this to me.”

The Sheriff was still in a state of shock from sight of their melded bodies. “What in the name of the good lord in heaven is going on here, boss?”

“You never call me boss anymore,” Dade told him.

“When the shit gets weird,” The Sheriff explained, “weird like it’s been, we all know who the boss is.”

“What happened to us?” Ann Marie interrupted them. She tried to sit up. “Bernard saved you,” she said. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t understand either.”

Chapter 17

Abandon

The Cliffside Maternity Clinic was just down the hill from the Asylum Laboratory. It was nestled between a boutique dress shop and a designer bathing suit store. The most exclusive and expensive place of its kind in the area, the place had become a hit with wealthy expectant mothers in Palos Verdes. Eastern chanting mixed with pan flute trickled out of speakers hidden in fake trees and rocks in the lobby. There was even a special package with a salt water pool available for those willing to pay to have their child born with two dolphins. The facility had been featured in
The Classy Baby
Magazine.

On Friday afternoon, a pregnant woman was in the middle of getting her blood drawn in one of the exquisitely decorated “mommy rooms.” The expectant mother was in her early thirties and seemed to radiate good health. She had a big diamond and platinum engagement ring on her finger. Her clothes seemed to be picked with taste and the absence of a budget.

She leaned back in the chair and nervously jostled her feet as the needle went into the soft skin of her arm. She forced herself to stop staring at the glass vial, which her heart was pumping full. Instead, she looked at the phlebotomist and noticed a particularly strange tattoo on the young woman’s arm. It was mostly obscured by some cover up makeup.

“What does that mean?” She asked the young, albino nurse in pink scrubs, who hadn’t spoken at all during the procedure. “I’ve never seen a tattoo like that. It looks it was done by a real artist.”

“You shouldn’t have been able to see that,” the nurse said as she noticed the cover up makeup was starting to smudge off. Underneath, there was a strange scrawled outline of a face with all sorts of symbols and details. The albino woman’s hair was dyed jet black. “I’m sorry,” the nurse said as though she didn’t mean it at all. “We’re supposed to cover these up.”

“It’s OK,” said the pregnant woman, “I was thinking of getting one myself. If you don’t mind me asking, where did you happen to have that one done?”

“You can’t have this one,” the nurse answered. She pulled the needle out of the woman’s arm and put down a cotton ball to stop the bleeding. With her patient not looking, the nurse snuck the vial of blood into her pants pocket. She added, “You can’t just buy one of these tattoos. They’re special.”

The idea that her nurse possessed something out of her reach seemed to bother the expectant mother. Her tone took on an argumentative quality. “Well, why can’t I have one?” She asked. “I can certainly afford it.”

The albino nurse looked down at her and laughed. It seemed to bother the soon-to-be mother even more. “I didn’t mean to offend you,” the nurse said. “I just meant that I didn’t get this in one of the regular shops.” At that point, the nurse brought over a syringe with pinkish-clear liquid and started to swab her patient’s upper arm with rubbing alcohol.

“What’s that needle for?” The patient asked, looking somewhat confused. “I thought we were finished.”

“Oh, this,” the nurse said. “It’s vitamins. A little something extra the doctor wanted you to have.”

“Is it B12 and folic acid?”

The nurse smiled at her in a way that seemed almost threatening. It was as though the patient had asked one too many questions. Her expression made the pregnant woman nervous. “You got it,” she finally answered. “Keeps your mood up and helps you keep the extra weight off. These injections are becoming all the rage with the active new mothers.”

The pregnant woman leaned back in her chair as though she had somehow become excited at the prospect of the shot. “Go ahead,” she said. “I’m ready.” The needle sunk into the flesh of her arm and the contents of the syringe slowly dumped into the woman’s blood. An empty glaze of a smile started on her face and her pupils began to swell. Her body went limp in the chair as the nurse finished the injection. “I want one of those tattoos,” the pregnant woman mumbled in a kind of slow, half groan. “I want one real bad.”

“My master gave it to me,” the nurse said, looking deep into her black eyes.

The pregnant woman seemed half-anesthetized. Her body was too limp to stand. She tried to get up but collapsed back into the chair. “I want to meet your master,” she started to moan as her eyes closed and the effects of the drug got stronger. “What’s happening to me?”

“Nothing you need to worry about, deary.”

“Oh. OK.”

“You know I always wanted to be a mother,” the nurse told the woman.

“That’s good,” the pregnant woman mumbled. “Babies are wonderful.”

“I would have but,” the nurse said as her face took on a threatening quality, “I was poor for too long. Living on the streets for years, eating garbage and sleeping on toxic waste took its toll. I’m infertile.”

“Oh no,” the pregnant woman groaned. “Babies are wonderful.”

“That they are,” the nurse said. “I always thought it was my destiny to be a mommy but now I know it will never happen.”

“Oh no. Babies are wonderful.”

“People like you, the royalty of this godforsaken place, destroyed everything I’ve ever wanted.”

“I know.”

“That’s why my family and I are going to make you and the people like you suffer so much.”

“I know,” mumbled the pregnant mother as her body went almost completely limp.

“I know that you know,” the albino said, scowling hard at the mother. “Tonight,” she explained, “you are going to pay us back what you’ve taken.” The albino nurse wound up and slapped the intoxicated woman across the face.

The drowsy mother didn’t realize what had happened but woke out of her trance nearly instantly. “I must have dozed off. Am I finished already?” she asked the nurse.

“Oh yes. You’re finished.”

...

That night, in the Asylum Corporation Airplane Scrapyard, Bernard Mengel looked over his flock of desperate young men and women. Ivy took her place at his side. A group of a half-dozen crestfallen homeless kids slowly marched toward the bonfire.

Bernard took out his fiddle and played an ancient Keltic melody of death while the youths started to form a circle around the bonfire. “My little boys and girls, step right up!” he shouted over his playing. “I’m gonna show you a trick I learned from a brujo in Haiti!” He whispered only to Ivy, “I’m thinking romantic getaway when this is all over.”

Bernard asked the albino nurse, who was standing around the fire, “Did you do as I asked today?”

She nodded, saying, “Of course, my master.”

“Did you find us the perfect little womb?”

“The very best one in SouthBay,” the nurse said, wiping away the tears from her eyes. She was suddenly smiling like a little girl bringing home a set of A’s on a report card.

“Very good,” Bernard said. “Then it won’t be much longer then.” He told everyone to gather around the bonfire, to link their hands and focus their intent. Everyone except for Bernard and Ivy bowed their heads and closed their eyes. The group started to hum. At that moment, the bonfire, which was nearly ten feet tall, started to flicker and dance as though mysteriously fanned.

The fire looked alive. It stared into the eyes of everyone as it spat and danced. It started to reach for Ivy, but Bernard commanded the flames to keep their distance. “No, no,” said Bernard to the bonfire. “She’s all mine. Stay back flame! She’s for me to consume! Not you!”

Bernard went back to the same Keltic tune on his fiddle. While the notes drifted off into the night with the sparks from the bonfire, someone walked into the scrapyard.

Barefoot and wearing a maternity nightgown draped over a fully swollen belly, the young mother from the clinic looked delirious. Her eyes were black and her face conveyed no awareness or emotion. She slowly marched toward the bonfire like an automaton.