Dr. Dion Cantor receives a phone call in his office from what sounds like a young boy, who confirms that he is in fact the one named "Charlie" who sought him out after meeting Dion's friend Femi. Charlie asks Dion if he hears "the music" and offers to tell him everything he knows about it if Dion agrees to help him find his missing cousin Max. Intrigued, Dion agrees to meet with him, and Charlie appears in his office suddenly, as if by magic. He appears to be about thirteen or fourteen years old, pale, with dark hair, pale green eyes, and a stillness that seems somehow unnatural. He explains that he was just outside the door, and used his powers to bypass Dion's secretary Carmen, and to appear as if he had materialized. Dion is impressed, asks him if he's hungry, and takes him to the cafeteria to buy him breakfast. After a snack Charlie thanks him, and then asks him if they can go back to his office to talk privately.
Charlie then goes on the explain that his cousin Max has been abducted by people who most likely meant to abduct Charlie. He explains that he is descended from a secretive people who call themselves the Vundara, which means "Those who move unseen." They are secretive even amongst themselves, which is why very few "Purebloods" remain. As far as he knows, Charlie is the last of the Purebloods, his parents having died in an accident, and his grandparents having "gone to sleep." Max, he explains, is a "halfblood," the name they give to anyone who has any trace of Vundara blood in his ancestry. Halfbloods often exhibit special abilities. The stronger the blood, the more powerful their abilities. As a Pureblood, Charlie explains, he has many abilities, although he is young and trained in only a few. He demonstrates by transforming suddenly into a black leopard sitting in a chair in Dion's office, and then changing back. With the display, Dion detects a faintly sweet and smokey odor, and is overcome with a sensation similar to what he feels when he takes the substance that boosts his own magical abilities.
Dion tells Charlie that in order to help him he must call in his associates, and Charlie agrees to trust them. Dion then summons Juliette Pearce, Genevieve Delanuit, and Terry Strahan to meet Charlie. Charlie tells them that the music that some of them hear is calling all of those with the Blood to New York City. He doesn't know why, but he says that he hears it continually, and that sometimes it is so overpowering that it deafens and overwhelms him. Max heard it too, although not as loudly, and Charlie and Max followed the sound to the Church of the Holy Light in Hell's Kitchen, where they saw a man pleading with the monsignor to allow him to make rubbings of the dais stones of the church altar. The monsignor seemed anxious, and hurried, and would not allow the man to make the rubbings, but allowed him to enter briefly and photograph the carved stone altar dais with a small, digital camera. Moving unseen by either of the men, Charlie and Max examined the stones, but were unable to make sense of the odd geometric carvings. Later, they left the church and walking past Barnes & Noble Booksellers they saw a poster for a book signing, and the photo of the author was the same man who had photographed the stones. They bought a copy of the book: Lurkers; Secrets of the Other-world, by Jonathan Sandhall.
Showing them his copy of the book, they see that it is a crypto-historical work postulating the existence of extra-terrestrial or extra-dimensional aliens living among humans throughout history, and playing the role of spirits, faeries, daemons, and other supernatural beings of human folklore. Sandhall identifies cryptic markings and symbols located within more mundane architectural sculpture spanning the whole of human history from the late Stone Age to the present, and claims that these symbols are messages left by the "lurkers" for one another. The symbols are geometric in design, and he identifies them as cymatics - visualizations created by sound waves. The markings, he says, represent actual sounds, even phonemes in some unknown alien language. The photo plates in the book show carvings from archaeological sites that closely resemble the carved stones of the dais in the Church of the Holy Light.
Charlie does not know whether or not Sandhall has anything to do with Max's disappearance, but suspects that he might know something. Meanwhile, he tells Juliette that since she also hears the music, and sees things in dreams, that it is likely that she is of the Blood. They all agree to return to the Church of the Holy Light to examine the stones more closely.
At the church they begin to carefully photograph the stones. Strahan remembers reading about cymatics used to hide liturgical music suppressed by the Church during the Middle Ages, and believes that with the proper equipment they may be able to reproduce the sounds recorded in the dais stones and listen to what it sounds like.
Sensing that they are being spied upon, Dion checks the door and is confronted by a large rust-colored dog, which snarls menacingly before attacking and biting him. The dog is frightened away by Charlie, who has taken on the form of a tiger, and it runs down the street. Juliette gives chase on her motorcycle, and following the dog into an alley, where it changes into a lean and athletic woman dressed in ragged clothes and wearing a knitted cap on her head. The woman climbs a fire escape, and Juliette chases her to the roof, but loses her as she leaps across a deadly expanse to the next building.
Meanwhile, Charlie uses his powers to heal Dion's wound, and Dion feels the power energizing his own body. Taking advantage, he casts a scrying spell and locates his attacker's hideout. Seeing what she sees, he visualizes an extended family of abject squatters living in an abandoned tenement building, and in the basement boiler room, a young man in his early twenties apparently drugged and bound next to what looks like a very ancient woman who lies bound to a board, missing her arms and legs, and with wounds that look as if they've been re-opened time and again for years. The ancient hag looks as if she should have left the world of the living decades ago, but is somehow forbidden from dying. Also in the room, they see a steel drum wired to a car battery. The shape-shifting woman removes her knitted cap revealing red hair cut into a kind of horse-like mane, and deep red-black tribal tattoos just showing on the back of her neck. She speaks with other similarly tattooed elders, making reference to their dying Blood Witch. Charlie tells them that he believes she is Varanáa, a tribal people who use sorcery to replicate the powers of the Blood.
Describing the scene, Genevieve recognizes the location and calls in the FBI, reporting a bomb and hostage situation. Within minutes, the NYPD and Federal agents surround the building as Dion and the others show up. They deduce that the Varanáa use the blood of the Pureblood Vundara as a key component of the ink used in creating their magical tattoos. The ancient hag is a dying Pureblood who has given her blood and flesh to support the magic of an entire tribe of Varanáa possibly for generations. Charlie is horrified by the thought, and anxiously tells them that the Varanáa will try to use Max, thinking him to be a Pureblood. Charlie explains that Max is probably drugged as he is a natural teleporter. Dion uses his own magic to teleport them all to the site, but is left drained. Charlie then offers to enhance Dion's powers, but says that it requires that Dion drink of his blood. He cuts a small slit on his wrist, and Dion reluctantly drinks from it, immediately feeling re-energized with more power than he's every felt before. Meanwhile, Genevieve enters the building and begins to negotiate with the Varanáa.
Dion casts an invisibility spell, and enters the building, grabs Max, and then teleports out of the room as Genevieve distracts the Varanáa woman. She notices that many of the other Varanáa squatters appear to be old or feeble-minded, and only a few of them appear to be physically and mentally competent. She realizes that the threatening woman is the functioning leader of the tribe. Using his teleportation spell, Dion takes Juliette back into the basement, and they manage to disable the Varnáa holding the trigger and disarm the bomb. Genevieve disarms the Varanáa woman, who then changes into her dog form just as the agents storm the building and arrest the entire clan. Later, Genevieve has the dog captured by the ASPCA, and together with her accomplices, takes custody of it and forcing her to change back to human form, damages the tattoos that allow her to shape-change.
Charlie and Max teleport away, but return later to thank them, and offer to help them in the future, and to continue to investigate the mystery of the music. Charlie then reveals that, while he appears to be only a young boy, he is in fact forty years old. The Purebloods, he says, age very slowly, and yet even so he is still young and did not have the benefit of lucid parents to teach him everything. His grandparents have "gone to sleep" as the Vundara are wont to do when they become very old; shape-shifting into rocks or earth and forgetting the world for centuries until one day, spontaneously returning to flesh form.
No comments:
Post a Comment