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“Don’t worry,” Gemma said, brushing the men aside and placing a large old book on the coffee table. “Look, we’ve got all the instructions. Careful, though, it’s fifty years old. We copied it from an older manuscript.”
She flipped the pages loosely. Inside were handwritten notes and sketches of mutid creatures.
“So you’ve never done this before?” I asked.
“No. But, well it’s hard to describe. Part of this place is Augustine’s. But another part is ours. After the Culling, humanity became more tribal. They had their own initiations, ceremonies. What they would call blood magic. Venom was a sacred experience of the divine; ash was a toxic gift from the gods. The myths helped us survive. I’ve never performed this ritual, and few of us practice the old ways anymore, but it’s still a part of our culture. Small rituals we barely notice, but do out of habit, as we were raised to mimic our parents.”
“So yes, it’s my first time. But it’s not foreign to me. We don’t know exactly how it works, so we’ll perform the ritual as best we can, even if it’s mostly a superstition. As for the formula, that’s pretty straightforward, and Augustine checked it personally.”
“It’s fine,” Trevor said. “I’m ready.”
Gemma gestured for him to take off his shirt and lie back on the coach. Nathan helped another man tighten the shackles around Trevor’s ankles.
“So you need three things,” Gemma repeated. “Elixir, ash, and blood.”
Trevor looked at me, and there was a heavy moment. My cheeks blushed. Being surrounded by this many strangers felt too intimate. Even more so when Tevor took off his shirt, revealing his scars and tattoos.
“How much?” I asked.
“Three drops,” Gemma said. She pricked my finger with a needle, and I squeezed it over a glass jar Nathan held out to me, counting out each drop of blood. He nodded, then brought the jar over to a metal shelf that served as a kitchen area. I watched him measure out some elixir and add two cups of ash. Then he tossed everything into a blender and added a dozen eggs, shells and all.
Gemma had to raise her voice over the mechanical whir of the machine.
“There are different formulas,” she said. “This is the lightest. It should take you about 25% slagpaw. Increased muscle mass, bone density, that kind of thing. But not enough to get your teeth and claws out; then it’s a whole different game.”
Nathan handed her the glass pitcher from the blender, which was full of a chunky, gray concoction that looked like pea soup.
“I know,” she said when Trevor wrinkled his nose. “But your body will need protein quickly. It’ll make the transition smoother.”
Trevor gave me a grim smile, then chugged it down, stopping only for breaths.
“Now what?” he asked.
“Lay back, relax. Let us do our thing.”
I stood to the side as another woman I didn’t know and an old man with spectacles knelt beside the couch. The woman had a bronze pot of blue paint, which she painted onto Trevor’s skin in detailed, swirly patterns.
The man had a tattoo machine that he turned on and off with a foot petal. It sounded ragged, like a distant chainsaw. The others formed a circle around us, with fire batons and torches. Two held bundles of burning sage, which smoked up the room and rolled slowly out under the roof into the open sky.
Someone turned on some music, like a tribal electronic beat, and the men began to sway and move around. Not really dancing together, each just moving to his own beat. It was surreal, both spiritual and casual at the same time. Some of the men were in robes or fancy clothes with painted skin like Gemma, but others had tangled long hair and dark leather and denim. One held a beer bottle in his free hand, another a cigarette.
The elite stood just outside the entrance, looking bored. It was startling to me, that the men felt comfortable enough to dance in his presence; that they weren’t terrified by the threat.
One of the men was drumming a steady rhythm with the music, on a small leather drum strapped around his shoulders. The others picked up the beat with spoons and bottles, until it almost sounded like pouring rain.
Gemma was whispering something to Trevor, reading from the book. At some point she paused and waited for him to nod. A private agreement, something I wasn’t part of. The woman added a few flourishes of gold paint around his eyes and wrists, and the man rubbed away the blood and ink of Trevor’s new tattoo. Some kind of animal print, like a wolf’s paw, over his heart.
His eyes were wide and his muscles strained. He’d started to sweat. I wasn’t sure if it was the tattoo or the potion, but he was in pain. I knew what exposure to the ash felt like. I couldn’t imagine consuming this much of it all at once. I’d never seen Trevor shift before, and I flinched when he began to struggle. The others moved away warily toward the edges of the warehouse as his muscles bulged and contorted. It looked like rats had burrowed under his skin and were trying to push their way out.
“Go to him,” Gemma said from behind me. “Let him catch your scent. Your blood keeps him human. As long as he can smell you, she should keep enough reason.”
8
Istepped carefully towards Trevor, leaning in close and rubbing his forehead with a wet towel. He grunted, shivering with fever, but then his eyes focused on my face.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
He took a deep breath. His voice was deep and raspy when he spoke. “It tickled at first. Then it stung. But now… now it’s like there’s a storm inside me.”
