Mage Catalyst (30 page)

“That’s far enough,” Renee called harshly as he got closer.
He was only about ten metres or so away and came to a stop, his hands held outwards before him.
“Come now,” he said, his arms held wide in a pose of submission. “This is all very rude.”
He hadn’t put up a shield yet and was still smirking widely. He had the feel of a crouching tiger about him and I didn’t for one second doubt that should an attack come he wouldn’t be found vulnerable.
“Come now, Renee,” he repeated. “Surely this is unnecessary.”
He gestured towards the shields surrounding us.
“Surely there’s nothing to fear from an old friend who only wants to see how powerful you’ve become?”
“You’re an unbalanced psychopath,” Renee hissed at him, “and no friend of mine.”
“I prefer to think that we simply took different paths,” he replied with a chuckle.
Renee snorted but didn’t answer.
I went to say something but Renee put her hand on my wrist, obviously indicating to remain silent. I quietly moved myself slightly in front of Renee protectively.
“Your bodyguard seems a little young,” he commented.
“He’s not my bodyguard,” Renee snapped instantly.
“Looks like we hit a nerve did we?” He scoffed out a snorting laugh. “It’s funny though, because he’s acting like a bodyguard isn’t he?”
“Don’t,” Renee whispered desperately. I wasn’t sure who she was talking to – me or him.
“Apprentice then?” he continued, as he walked in a wide circle his eyes never leaving us. “Or perhaps he’s your lover?”
His eyes almost glowed with a baleful intensity as he spat out the word lover.
“Aren’t you going to introduce us?” He shrugged as his voice went playful again. It was frightening how quickly the tone of his voice changed.
“I think he’s got a pretty good idea of what you are,” Renee spat back.
“So, hostile little sparrow?” he almost sang in a singsong mocking voice.
“Don’t call me that!” Renee hissed angrily. The mana immediately rose down her arms as she readied herself to attack. I instinctively readied myself to join her. I wasn’t quite sure what good I’d be, but at least I was ready.
“Careful,” he snarled, his voice going harsh again. “There’s too many people here for that.”
“Since when do you care about people?” Renee replied.
“Since you bring it up, I don’t. But you do, don’t you?” he answered. “Besides, aren’t you afraid your little friend will get hurt?” He placed extra emphasis on the word
friend
.
“I think we can take you,” I replied evenly.
I knew the type. He was a bully. He’d back down if we stood up to him. He was just like Mark Constance from school. There was only one way to deal with people like that, let them know that there were boundaries that would not be crossed.
“Oh? It talks?” he mocked, his head turned to one side as if examining me like some pet in a cage.
“Devon, please,” Renee whispered.
“Does it think it can take me? Does it care to try?”
“Too many people,” I grudgingly stated. I didn’t want to appear to be backing down.
“I don’t care about the damned people!” he snarled, mana leaping down his arms as both Renee and I braced ourselves for an attack.
“But in deference to Renee,” he continued, his voice taking on that nasal sing song tone again, “I’ll give you five minutes.”

“Five minutes for what?” Renee asked.
“To get to somewhere where there are no people,” he finished simply, “so we can do this properly.”

“Go,” Renee whispered in my ear.

I turned to look at her and realised with amazement that she was serious.

“Leave the stuff, just go.”
“I’m not going to leave you,” I whispered.
“I’ll be right behind you. I want to make certain that he’s not going to try anything,” Renee ordered quietly.
“You go, I’ll stay,” I whispered, hoping like hell that he couldn’t hear us.
“Would it help if I turned my back?” he mocked as he slowly and deliberately turned his back on us. “Four minutes – fifty seconds.” He stated as if counting off time on a clock.
I was torn. He was just standing there, virtually undefended. He’d never even see my attack and I could finish this right now. I didn’t know who this guy was, but it was obvious that Renee was terrified of him.
I could strike him down!
No, no, I couldn’t.
That would mean striking someone down when they were totally defenceless and that I just couldn’t do. I pulled Renee away and we ran across the park.

“Where are we going?” I asked as we ran.

“It doesn’t really matter.” Renee cursed. “He’s probably not going to follow us anyway, at least not at first.”
“What? Why?”
“He just wanted to prove to me that he could make me back down, make me run,” Renee snarled.
“We could have taken him,” I began. Renee didn’t reply but instead threw an invisibility field around herself and telekinetically launched herself into the air. She landed on top of a building on the other side of the road. The building appeared to be a hotel or something.
A few seconds later I joined her.
We were relatively well protected on the rooftop. This meant that we’d at least see him coming when he came for us, but it was still too exposed. There was the possibility that someone from the office blocks behind us might see something. Renee stood looking out over the park. The figure was nowhere to be seen.
“Who was he?” I asked when I got my breath back.
“His name is Lester Vincent – Vin,” Renee replied, “and we used to be friends.”
“What happened?”

“I can’t really answer that right now, but I will – I promise,” Renee replied. “Please don’t push this, just trust me – it didn’t end well.”
“I understand.” I nodded.
“Would he have attacked us in the park like that?”
“I don’t know,” Renee sighed. “Maybe… He definitely would have gone for the kill if we’d attacked him first.”
“Kill?” I repeated incredulous.
“Kill,” Renee confirmed. “Well, maybe. I don’t know.”
Suddenly it all made sense.
Why Renee lived alone in a city without any friends or family. Why her grandfather only visited her occasionally. Why she had so aggressively attacked me when we first met. She was a fugitive in hiding.
“I might be able to talk some sense into him,” Renee concluded.
“I don’t like the idea of you seeing him alone,” I stated.
“To be honest I don’t much like it myself,” Renee agreed, “but if I can get him to see reason I think I can get him to leave us alone.”
“He’s the one you’re hiding from then?” I commented, taking a swing on my hypothesis.
“Yeah,” Renee confirmed quietly, “figured it out did you?”

“Well, it seemed obvious after this,” I continued. “Are you sure you can talk reason into him?”
“Yeah, well, as I said, Vin and I used to be friends.”
“He didn’t much seem like the reasonable type.”
“No,” Renee agreed, “but I have to try.”
“I don’t like it,” I repeated.
“You’d better go,” Renee replied, ignoring me. “Jump down into the alley and go straight home. He won’t come after you.”
“No, I’ll stay, you might need help.”
“Yes!” Renee retorted immediately. “Go. You can’t do any good here. I’ll just worry about having to protect you.”
“Not yet,” I argue. “Let’s wait a half hour or so and make sure he’s not coming after us.”
“He’ll be waiting for you to go,” Renee commented bitterly. “He’ll find me when you’re gone.”
“That doesn’t comfort me very much.”
“I wasn’t trying to be comforting.”

“We could take him?” I suggested tentatively.
“Are you sure?” Renee replied gently. “Really sure?”

“No,” I replied softly.
“Then go.”
I didn’t like the idea of leaving her to face that obviously unhinged maniac alone. I didn’t like the idea of being sent away whilst the adults talked. In fact I didn’t like any damned part of this entire situation, but I didn’t particularly have a choice here.
“Okay,” I grudgingly agreed. “I’ll go, but call me when you’re done and if you don’t call by nightfall I’ll come looking for you.”
“Sure,” Renee shrugged. “Just go. I’ll be okay.”
I nodded and made my way to the edge of the building preparing to drop back to the ground below.
“Devon?” Renee called.
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry I got you messed up in this.”
“Don’t mention it.” I smiled back and gave her a mock salute as I raised an invisibility shield around myself, latched a mana thread onto the side of the roof and dropped off the side of the building to the ground. I felt like scum, the whole way down. Renee called me later that night and told me she’d sorted the problem out.
The only problem was – I didn’t believe her.

I trusted Renee and didn’t think that she’d lie to me or that anything was going on romantically with Vincent. She had made her feelings about him quite clear in that regard. There was something about the way Vincent was acting that led me to believe that he wasn’t going to just simply walk away that easily. Renee had claimed that his primary interest was in humbling her and appearing to be the more powerful of the two of them. When Renee and I had run from him he’d gotten what he wanted. She claimed that she’d convinced him to return home but I wasn’t convinced. I had one of those gut-feeling premonitions that he wasn’t going anywhere. The problem was – I was right.

“And so as we move into the final phase of your high schooling,” Mr Saunders’ monotonous voice boomed across the assembly. “It’s important to take the time to consider everything you’ve experienced in high school and what lessons you have learned that may serve you in the time to come.”
Mr Saunders speech had been droning on for about a half hour and showed no signs of slowing down. I didn’t mind this at all. I’d had a lot on my mind since Saturday that would keep me more than distracted.

Renee had been awfully close mouthed about her meeting with Vin and I couldn’t help but wonder if she may not have been telling me all the truth. I could tell from the expression on Renee’s face that she hadn’t been happy that I’d guessed she had been hiding in Melbourne from Vin.
Everyone is entitled to their secrets, I suppose. The more I thought about this the more it sounded like the type of stupid teenage drama that you’re supposed to grow out of when you reach Renee’s age. It sounded like something you’d go through when you’re my age. The one factor that made me rethink this assessment was that she’d been genuinely scared when she recognised Vin in the park. She had been the kind of scared that you just can’t fake. There was something about Vin or something that he’d done that terrified Renee and given that she could quite easily finish me off with little effort gave me cause for thought. Something wasn’t right.

Mr Saunders eventually trailed off and we sluggishly got to our feet and ambled from the hall.
“What are you thinking about?” Sarah asked on our way out the door.
“What? Oh nothing much,” I replied, as we entered the corridor. “Just stuff.”
“Just stuff, eh?” Sarah pursued. “It kind of looked like you were arguing with yourself during the assembly.”
“No, it’s nothing, just thinking about Renee,” I explained.
It was kind of difficult to talk amongst the throng of people in the crowded corridor so our conversation stopped and started as we weaved through the crowd. Eventually we cleared the corridor into the less crowded locker room.
“Oh, can’t have been good then,” Sarah mused as she opened her locker. “You had an awfully determined expression on your face.”
“It’s nothing.”

“What? She cheat on you already?” Sarah laughed in a playful fashion.
I didn’t answer her back. It wasn’t that I thought Sarah was right. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t being told everything.
“My God,” Sarah gasped, “she didn’t, did she?”
“No, of course not,” I retorted. “We just met someone the other day...”
“Like an old boyfriend? That can be awkward,” Sarah guessed.
“No, maybe, I don’t know.”
“She got overly chummy with him eh?” Sarah teased again. “That can be uncomfortable for the new guy.”
“No, it wasn’t like that at all,” I snapped. “She was physically scared of him.”
“We’ve all had relationships that have gone bad before, sometimes these things get exaggerated,” Sarah replied.
“I don’t think so,” I reflected sadly. “I really don’t.”
“Are you saying that Renee isn’t making you happy?” Sarah asked tentatively.
“No, I’m not saying that at all. What the hell?”
“Just asking is all,” Sarah replied simply.
“But, why?”
“Because, if you’re not happy, you should end it. Wasn’t that the advice that Renee gave you before?”
“Is this some kind of sick joke to you?” I was little hurt that Sarah would say these things.

“No, Devon, of course not,” Sarah replied, touching my shoulder. “But you’ve got to admit, that sometimes you get what you want, and other times you get what you go for.”

“What does that mean?
“It means be happy with what you have,” Sarah reflected sadly, kissing me gently on the cheek. “Because sometimes, the grass on the other side of the fence is just grass.”
Sarah left it at that. I called Renee that night and asked her directly what was going on. I asked her whom she was hiding from and what had happened between her and Vin. Renee informed me that she didn’t want to tell me over the phone but promised to tell me everything this weekend. She’d come to the conclusion that she probably should tell me everything before I had called, as I deserved to know. She said she’d tell me anything I needed to hear – she said we needed to talk.
'We need to talk’, the code for lovers in trouble.
I was nervous about my upcoming meeting with Renee and I was obviously taking it out on my friends. I must have become intolerable as even Tony took to avoiding me. I’d arranged to meet Renee at her place on Friday night for our talk and I was quite unsure of how that conversation was going to go.
I feared the worst. To make matters worse Dad had called mid-week to say he’d be out of town for the weekend. This meant that I had no other reason to go into the city. Hopefully I could patch things up with Renee and spend the night there. If not, then I guess I could simply take the train back home. I wasn’t going to miss meeting Renee for anything. By the time I got to Renee’s she was already back from university and was waiting for me. I rang the buzzer and she let me into the building.
I climbed the stairs with a lump in my throat and knocked on the door. Renee opened the door and ushered me inside. I couldn’t make eye contact with her and noticed that she wasn’t making eye contact with me either. I wasn’t sure how this was going to go.
“Devon,” she whispered, touching my cheek. I think that was the first time she’d used my first name.
“Yes?”
“We need to break up.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“It’s not fair,” I replied.
“No-one claimed life was fair, kiddo.”
“No, don’t call me kiddo,” I snapped. “I am not a child”.
“You’re not an adult either,” Renee replied sadly.
“Then, neither are you!” I shouted, angry at both Renee and at myself at the same time for getting angry.
“No, probably not,” Renee replied sadly.
“I don’t want to break up.”

“Neither do I,” Renee replied.
“Then why?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Renee said.
“Why?”
“Because you’ll get hurt if we don’t,” Renee replied. “And I don’t think I could live with that.”
“I don’t care,” I murmured brokenly. “You’ve told me that before and I said that I don’t care.”
“Well, I do care,” Renee replied, “and things are different now.”
“Is this because of that guy?” I replied, close to tears now.
“Yes,” Renee answered simply.
“You said you sorted that out,” I accused. “You said you’d gotten him to go away.”
“I lied,” Renee replied. “You know I lied. You couldn’t have helped but know.”
“It’s not fair!”
“I know,” Renee repeated again. “I think you need to go now.”
“No,” I gasped brokenly, tears running freely down my face. “Don’t send me away,” I pleaded, throwing my pride and all decorum to the wind. “I can help you! I need you!” I murmured tearfully into her shoulder.
Renee was slipping away from me, I could feel it. Renee smiled sadly at me and wrapped her arms around me, pulling me against her as I wept uncontrollably against her shoulder. Her hand trailed up and wrapped itself around the back of my head stroking my hair.
“Goodbye Devon,” she whispered. I could feel her tears on my cheek.
“You don’t want this,” I murmured brokenly.
“No,” she replied. “But what I want doesn’t count.”
“I don’t want it either.”
“What you want doesn’t count either.”
“It’s not fair,” I demanded. “We’re not like everyone else, we’re special! What we want should count!”
Renee’s face lost its sadness and her eyes grew cold and dark. She suddenly looked far older.
“Devon, please understand. No matter how powerful you become or how special, sometimes things just happen. You can’t just force your life to adhere to your will.”

“Some people can!”
“No,” Renee reflected sadly, “they’re just better at convincing everyone else that they can.”
“It’s not fair,” I said again.
“No,” Renee replied, “but that’s the way it is”.
“It’s not fair!” I repeated, with more emphasis.
“Stop saying that!” Renee snapped angrily. “You think I don’t know that?”
I kissed her on the forehead. I said nothing and a stunned silence descended between us. The door remained open but I refused to leave her, I stood with my arms wrapped around her and my face resting against her shoulder.
“You want to fight this then?” Renee snarled. “You want to take on the world?”
“No,” I replied, my tears having dried. “I simply want you.”
“Oh, Twitch,” she sighed as she nuzzled her face into my neck, “you don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Then tell me!” I whispered.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because, if we do this, then we’ll become something we can’t be.”
“At least we’ll be together,” I murmured brokenly.
“Okay,” Renee replied, giggling suddenly. “Have you got a book of bad romantic lines stuffed up your shirt? That was corny – even for you.”
“Is it working?” I said, wiping away a tear from the corner of my eye.
“No.” Renee sniffed, wiping her hands across her face. “You don’t understand. It’s just not a good idea.”
“Then tell me everything. Explain why not,” I urged. “Let me in! You can’t keep pushing people away forever.”
“Well, I could until you showed up,” Renee retorted with a twinkle in her eyes.
I breathed out slowly. I could see from her expression that’d she’d come to a decision. I’d convinced her.
“Tell me,” I repeated.
“Okay,” Renee whispered, her voice going soft and almost silent.
And so we talked.
Renee told me about how her mother had been murdered when Renee was only a little girl. She continued with how her father had been suspected of the crime and had fled. She finished with how her grandfather had taken her in and raised her as his own.
How when she was six she discovered that she had the talent.
She described in detail how her grandfather began to train her in the arts and it turned out that she was gifted with mana. She grasped concepts and theories like they were second nature to her and she told me how she adored the magic and the power that it gave her.
She then told me how she met Vin and about how he had been sent to her grandfather for training. Renee’s grandfather was considered a great teacher amongst our kind and that promising students were often sent to him for training.
She told me how Vin was at first. How he was shy, thoughtful and introspective. Renee continued with how they had studied together and grown up together and how Renee had thought herself in love with him with all the heart and earnestness of a sixteen-year-old girl. Renee spoke in simple truths and it was hard not to be hurt by her frank retelling. She continued on with her story explaining that as Vin became stronger in the arts and learned more, he began to change. It manifested in small ways at first and Renee hadn’t noticed it. Then Renee found that he had begun testing the local kids in the local school. A school that both Renee and Vin attended at the time. He would play games with them, seeking out their weaknesses to prove that they would never be as strong or as smart as him. He became cruel and reckless as he flaunted his powers without ever revealing his powers directly to them.
Renee’s grandfather had placed stern restrictions on them both against revealing the magic to outsiders. Each month that passed Vin was skirting closer and closer to breaking the rules. He would scare the students and torment them more and more and as time passed he became more reckless.
He became arrogant and proud of his abilities. He spurned his master’s teachings and began to actively seek out ways to test himself and to improve his abilities. He sought to prove that he was stronger than those around him. In the end, he tired of tormenting the ‘normals’ as he dubbed them. This only left one option, there was only one on whom he could really test himself – Renee.
It came to a head when they had finished high school. Renee chose to attend university and Vin did not. Vin saw no value in formal education and scoffed at Renee’s choice. He obviously saw this as a sign of weakness and began to exploit it.
This competition began in little ways. Vin would create stupid challenges to see who could project the strongest mana thread or who could detonate the most mana. When he inevitably lost he would become cold and distant.
He had no patience with being bested by a woman and it soon began to show. Renee described how the two began to argue, often loudly and how one night after a particularly stupid argument she had slapped him and demanded that he go away and leave her alone.
He had taken it badly.
The argument had made Renee’s grandfather concerned and he chose to send Vin away. Vin had refused to go and instead moved into the local town to stay close to her. He became fixated on her and began to follow her, often turning up unexpectedly at her university campus.
At the conclusion of her first year at university, Renee’s grandfather arranged for a trip for Renee and several of her friends. It was an amazing holiday opportunity. Renee found out later that it was merely an excuse to get Renee out of the way so that her grandfather could deal with Vin.
Renee spent the next several weeks travelling around Europe with her friends in what she described was the best time of her life. It wasn’t until Renee returned from her trip that things turned horrible. In her absence Vin’s fixation had increased. Renee’s grandfather’s plan had obviously had the opposite effect to what he had intended.
Renee and her friends were returning home from the airport via a bus when Vin caused the bus she was travelling in to have an ‘accident’. He telekinetically sent the bus tumbling over the side of a cliff on the road leading back into the town.
The accident made the papers, as dozens of people were injured and several people were killed, including the driver. There were rumours that the bus had swerved to avoid someone standing on the road, but Renee knew better. She had seen the mana threads wrap around the bus that had sent it hurtling over the edge. She’d seen the driver on the brakes and grasp at the wheel in panic. This was useless as he had no control over the vehicle any longer. In vain she had tried to steady the bus using her own powers, but it all happened so fast. It was all she could do to brace herself and those around her as the bus fell to its inevitable and fiery end.
She awoke amongst the ruins of the bus. Her arms were battered and bruised and she had a cut to her forehead. A red mist covered her eyes as she spotted Vin on the roadside looking down upon what he had wrought.
In fury she stormed from the bus, leaving dozens of confused and hurt passengers in the wreckage behind her as she leapt to the top of the ravine where Vincent was waiting for her. He gloated, saying that she wasn’t powerful enough after all. That at the end, when it had really mattered he had beaten her.
She didn’t even listen to him in her anger and she struck him, again and again and again. The accident weakened her and put her off balance and her magic wouldn’t respond to her the way it used to. She was unable to penetrate the shield around him.
He’d laughed at her and called her pathetic. He shrugged off her attacks with his mocking laugh as if they were nothing. Renee stuck him again and again, her rage lending her more strength and power but it simply wasn’t enough.
Then, when he had decided it was time, he struck back.
With a contemptuous flick of his wrist he sent a powerful thread against Renee. Due to the accident she had just survived and her own expenditure of energy Renee wasn’t able to stand against it. Renee was just barely able to shield his attack in time, but the blow sent her tumbling back over the side of the cliff. Renee wasn’t sure what happened next, but had supposed that the impact with the ground had caused her to black out.
Renee’s grandfather found her several hours later unconscious at the bottom of the ravine. The trees around her had been crushed as if something far larger had come tearing through the woods.
Renee didn’t see Vincent after that. The bus accident had been investigated and it was blamed on a driver fault that had caused the bus to swerve over the side. An investigation into the fault was launched as to how it could have happened, but had come back inconclusive.
Renee suspected that her grandfather had involved himself in the investigation to hush matters up. She was never able to prove that this was the case though. A small service was held in the town for the victims of the accident. Amongst the victims were two of Renee’s close friends from university.
Renee had fallen into a deep depression after the accident as she blamed herself for the death of her friends. After all, if it hadn’t been for her friendship with Vin the accident would never have happened. Renee’s grandfather had decided that Renee had to be sent away until Vincent could be found and stopped. She could not be adequately protected where they were. She needed to be sent far away while he dealt with matters locally.
Renee’s grandfather arranged, through his contacts, the apartment in Melbourne. It was as far away as he could arrange in a city that had a good university for her to continue her studies. She didn’t want to leave but grudgingly agreed.
She moved and took up film studies (something she’d always wanted to do) and a part time job in the bookstore, finding as she did so that she didn’t need to draw upon the magic like once she did. In fact, she found very little need for it at all. She still used it of course, but she didn’t get the same joy from the experience as she once did. She’d actually done a pretty good job of leaving her past life behind until she met me.
When she met me, her love of the magic returned with renewed vibrancy and temptation. She realised that it was a part of her life that she simply couldn’t do without. No, that wasn’t true – she didn’t want to live without it.
When Renee had first met me at the club she had thought that I was a threat. She thought I was someone sent by Vin to find her and bring her back to him. She knew he would still be hunting her and that he’d never give up. When Renee saw the state that I was in as my body was coming to terms with the mana, she knew she had to help me. She knew from her studies that this is a dangerous time in our development and that it can easily lead to death if it goes badly. In the end, against her better judgement, she decided to teach me.
It might have been easier for her if she’d turned her back on me and let me go my own way. Renee had found that she enjoyed helping me, teaching me and sharing her knowledge with me. Although it hurt when she said it, she said it reminded her of the good times with Vin.
And that was the problem.
She began to look for signs in me, a smirk or gloating comment that would make her believe that she was creating the very same monster that she was trying to hide from. And so she said she had watched me and kept her distance from me. Then Renee told me that she loved me. We didn’t break up that night. I had asked her if she truly thought Vincent would leave me alone just because we weren’t together any longer and Renee had remained silent. She couldn’t answer me, but her silence had answered the question nonetheless.
Vin would eventually come after me anyway. It was obvious that he’d feel that I represented a threat to him. It would be a threat that he’d inevitably feel the need to test himself against. I wasn’t sure that I’d survive the test, let alone pass.
I often look back on this night with the wisdom that comes with hindsight and ponder what would have happened had I just decided to turn and run. I doubt had I chosen that path that I would have retained my self-respect, but the path I chose cost me that anyway. Turning tail and running probably wouldn’t have hurt anywhere near as much.