The Fire You Touch

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Chapter 2: Aeryn

Aeryn shut the door to her flat and leaned her forehead against the wood. The image of Dudley's cousin burned against her closed eyelids. The trunk. The broomstick.

The owl.

It looks just like Dad's…

Aeryn slumped to the floor, her knees weak.

***

Aeryn's father had been a wizard. Or, he liked to say that he had been a wizard, but he never had been given the proper training for his powers. In America, being a wizard was regarded more of a curse then a blessing. American wizards, or 'extrasensory controllers,' as they liked to be called, found that a focus on politics, business, and everyday life was more important than cultivating their talent. For the nation of individuality, the wizard movement was severely backward.

Aeryn's father, Roger Blake, had been born in England, but moved to the States when he was four years old. Because he was technically a British citizen, he had received an invitation to join a school of magic when he turned eleven. Neither of his parents were wizards, and they forbade him from joining the school. Her father had been devastated. Over the next few years, he gathered as many books on magic as he could find to try and home-train his talents. He even found small support groups for 'extrasensory controllers,' but left each of them bitterly disappointed when he discovered none of them wanted to cultivate their powers.

He had always dreamed of returning to England. His dream never came true. Roger went to school with ordinary children, learned ordinary topics, went to an ordinary college, and eventually was employed in an ordinary job as an accountant for an advertising firm.

Then he met Fiona White. He fell in love with her instantly, and they became married. For once in his life, Roger began to think that maybe he could have a happy life, even without fulfilling his hopes of becoming a wizard. He and Fiona had Aeryn two years after they married, and life looked good.

Then the mutant scare hit America.

No one knows exactly why it came in such a rush, but all of a sudden America had once again turned against those different from the norm. A very vocal senator in New York, Senator Kelly, called for mutant registration and other horrible punishments, just for being born differently. Fiona Blake had been terrified. Her sister carried the mutant gene, and lived in fear each day of being discovered.

Aeryn remembered her father calling the mutant scare a "witch hunt," a bitter, sarcastic phrase for him to use. "I tell you, Fiona," he said, "if this Senator Kelly knew about us with extrasensory control, we'd be his next victims!"

But Aeryn's childhood had been good. Her father had enough money for the three of them to live in a comfortable home in the suburbs of Ann Arbor, Michigan. She was a very friendly child, and made lots of friends in school. Instead of a dog or cat, though, her father purchased a large snowy-white owl, which he kept in the house. It was a very well-behaved owl, never hooting loudly inside and always coming back to its cage before daylight. "Every wizard should have such a familiar!" Roger always said.

In her eleventh year, her father began to test Aeryn for extrasensory control. In the basement of their two-story house, he would draw a mail-order wand from his sleeve and levitate bricks, change needles into matchsticks, and zoom around the cramped quarters on a broomstick. Aeryn tried her hardest, but she didn't have the power. Her father was disappointed, certainly, but he never ceased giving her the lessons.

"You'll see, sweetie," he said to her one day. "You're just a late bloomer. You've got magic in you yet!"

Aeryn had hoped so. It didn't matter too much, though. She was happy.

Until the evening of her fifteenth birthday.

She came home from school one October evening. She realized something was terribly wrong the moment she stepped foot in her house. The furniture was broken and tossed about the rooms. The lights were broken and the house was very, very dark. As she called out for her mother, she stepped in something slick and wet and nearly slipped. Putting her fingers to the wet patch, she stepped to a patch of light from the window. Her fingers were stained a dark red. She looked down at the floor again, and she saw a white, shapeless lump on the floor. It was her father's owl. Its neck had been broken.

Suddenly, someone grabbed her from behind, and there was a blinding pain at the back of her head. She awoke some time later, head aching, to hear a heavy voice threatening her father. "I know what you are, Blake," the heavy voice said. "Will you join us or not?"

"I'm not a mutant," her father insisted. He had been cut, and was bleeding all across the floor. Like her, he was tied to a chair. The huge man before him punched her father in the jaw.

Her mother, tied up next to him, screamed. Aeryn cried out, but a resounding slap across her face silenced her. "Quiet," hissed a voice. It was a woman, but her voice was as thin and cool as a snake's whisper.

What happened next would be forever engrained in Aeryn's memory. The huge man leaned down to her father and pulled out a long, sharp knife. It glinted menacingly in his hand. "I'll give you one more chance, Blake," he hissed. "You may not be a mutant, but we've got uses for folks with powers like yours. Join us now."

Her father looked the man in the eye and spit in his face. "Go to hell," he snapped.

The man wiped the spit away from his suddenly impassive face. "You did this to yourself," he said quietly. With a swift motion, he grabbed Fiona's hair and slashed the blade across her neck.

The cry that tore from Roger Blake's mouth was that of a keening hawk.

"Mama!" Aeryn sobbed as her mother slumped against her bonds, her eyes going lifeless as blood poured from her neck. She strained against the ropes holding her.

"Fiona." Her father's voice was broken.

The huge man whirled around and walked over to Aeryn. He ducked down and glared into her eyes. She looked away from him, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Shall I kill her next, Blake?" the man asked calmly. "What if I fry her brains instead?"

"No!"

Aeryn struggled as the man put his hands on either side of her face. She struggled even harder against her bonds. Pain shot up her arms, but she felt the cords slipping slowly away from her.

All of a sudden, he was inside her head, and there was a terrible fire raging in her brain. She screamed. The pain grew unbearable, and she thrashed back and forth in the chair, trying to throw him away from her. She was going to die. She knew it.

Then, all of a sudden, the huge man gave a cry, and his presence withdrew from her. The absence was like cooling water. Gulping deep, huge breaths, Aeryn fell forward in the chair. She was trembling uncontrollably, and she looked towards her father. His lips were moving rapidly, and she saw with horror and pride that he had drawn his wand from his sleeve and had pointed it at the huge man.

The huge man snarled. He threw out his hand towards Roger, and her father's eyes went wide. His face turned deathly pale, and the wand fell from his hand. For an instant, his gaze locked with his daughter's, and he mouthed the words I'm sorry. Then his head lolled backwards.

Aeryn couldn't even sob. But the ropes holding her hands were suddenly loose.

"What now?" the woman snarled.

The huge man wiped a hand across his face and shrugged. "Kill the girl, then we'll get out of here." He spat on Roger's body. "Damn you, Blake. We needed you."

Rage boiled up in Aeryn's body as the woman advanced towards her and yanked her head backwards. She stared into those cold eyes, fury starting to overwhelm the fear she felt. The woman lifted a knife and brought it down towards Aeryn's throat.

Aeryn pulled her hand from the ropes and caught the woman's wrist an instant before the blade pierced her skin. She clenched her teeth and pulled as hard as she could, not with her hand, but with her mind. The woman shrieked and her knees buckled beneath her. Aeryn clung to her fiercely, feeling the woman's power drain into her, filling her…

The man turned and saw them. His eyes widened, and, with a curse, he rushed over and pressed his hand to Aeryn's face. But she was ready for him as well, and growled as she yanked at him, a despairing joy filling her as his face turned pale.

Within instants, the two lay dead at her feet, their power drained. Aeryn freed herself from the ropes and rushed to her parents. For her mother, there was no hope, but as she leaned over her father, she heard the sounds of his shallow, ragged breathing.

"Daddy." She threw her arms around him. He coughed.

"Aeryn." His voice was so weak. "I'm dying, sweetheart."

"No, you aren't," she sobbed. "You aren't. I'll get a doctor."

"Aeryn." His eyes turned to her, a gentle gleam glowing in the depths. "Listen to me. This is very important. I don't know what you did, but you killed those two. They are…were…very powerful mutants." He smiled. "What did you do?"

"What did I do?" She pulled at his ropes, trying to get him free. "Daddy, that doesn't matter, I just pulled at their power and they keeled over, I don't know what I did, Daddy, but I'm going to get you help."

His hand caught hers as it was freed. "If you couldn't be a wizard, I'm glad…that you're a mutant." He gripped her hand as tightly as he could, and his face winced in pain. "Sweetie, I'm…I can't hold on much longer."

"No, Daddy!" Aeryn fell to her knees.

"Aeryn, listen to me." His other hand reached for hers and caught it. "Do what you did with those two. Take my power. You can use it." He coughed, and blood stained his lips. "Promise me you will do this," he gasped. "Promise me you will go to England and find our own kind." His breath rasped in his throat.

Aeryn's lips quivered, ready to refuse him, but she couldn't. "I love you, Daddy," she said softly, and bowed her head. As gently as she could, she began to pull at him, feeling a delicious warmth siphon through her.

Her father groaned. Aeryn's head jerked up in time to watch her father's eyes roll back in his head. She screamed his name, but it was no use. Her father was gone. Kneeling on the floor, her knees wet with the blood of her mother, Aeryn began to sob, uncontrollably.

***

It had not taken long for the news to disclose the lurid secrets of the murder. A wizard slain by mutants, and those mutants slain by another even more powerful than them, was the biggest break in many a reporter's history. The headlines went berserk, and a statewide mutant hunt was started.

But Aeryn had left Michigan. Gathering all the gold in her house (her father never trusted banks; all the money he had ever earned had been stashed as gold coins in the linen closet), she flew to England, letting the past die behind her.

Fifteen years old. Aeryn quickly learned about her mutant powers. She had the inborn ability to absorb, at will, another person's skills, personality, even his or her life force. Until she was able to control her power, she wore gloves, all the time.

Her other abilities were no less powerful. The huge man she had killed had been a telepath with amazing telekinetic powers. For months after her arrival in England, Aeryn had nearly been discovered for levitating objects ranging from pencils to a Volkswagen beetle. The woman had been an illusionist, and Aeryn was able to produce illusions that were startlingly realistic.

It was almost like magic.

As for her father's abilities, Aeryn had only been able to absorb the tiniest fraction of his powers. His wand, when she held it, could produce a shower of magical sparks, but she herself did not have the ability to make a feather fly into the air. She was magical, but only just.

Yet she still escaped to England. It seemed the only logical thing to do. After her arrival, she began her occupation as a maid, and she tried her hardest to forget everything she ever remembered about magic and mutants.

Five years later, she was still cleaning houses.

***

Aeryn put her hand to the door. She knew, as sure as she knew her name was Aeryn Blake, that cousin Harry was a wizard. A kid, maybe, but a real wizard nonetheless. One who was attending wizard's school, like the one her father had been invited to attend…

The front of her shirt was wet. It wasn't until she put a hand to her face that Aeryn realized she was weeping.