Free Neophyte / Adept by T.D. McMichael Page B

said.
    “What?”
    “In my dreams, there is this huge clearing, and we are
heading toward it––you, me, and someone else.”
    “There aren’t very many clearings like that in Rome,” he
said.
    “The trees are different. They’re not cypresses,” I told
him.
    “Then where are we?”
    “I don’t know. That’s the whole point, Ballard.” I couldn’t
keep the stridency out of my voice. “But there’s more. We’re in wolf form.”
    “You mean you are?”
    Ballard rocked back on his seat. We sat like that for some
time, just staring at each other. Nobody spoke.
    Finally, Ballard broke the silence. “Have you had these
kinds of dreams before?” he said. “It almost sounds like you expect them to happen . To take place. Wait, you can’t,
like, see the future, can you?”
    “I’ve had other dreams that I expected to come true,” I told
him. “Not that they ever have.”
    “Whoa,” he said.
    I nodded. “It was like I was really fast,” I said, recalling
the dream. “We were flying through the trees. We came out and we started
howling. I mean, woofing .”
    “We need to talk to Gaven about this,” he said. “If you’re
having the Calling....”
    I looked at him inquiringly.
    “It’s what happens to werewolves before their first
transformation,” he said, correctly interpreting my look. “Good thing the
Council meeting is tonight. Gaven can catch you up on the Family origins. Hey,
what if we’re related? Maybe that’s why Risky had me find you. I don’t know. I
don’t know,” he said.
    I didn’t tell him the bad part. That whatever was chasing me
was faster. That Ballard was meant to protect me... And that he kept throwing
himself into dangerous situations, in my dreams, in order to protect me....
    * * *
    We paid up, and left the small café. and got on our
motorcycles. And we just cruised through the city for a few hours. We couldn’t
go to wherever we were going until everyone got partied out, and went home.
Ballard wasn’t joking. It was like Vampire Night for mortals. Everywhere people
were going to dinner and the theater, and just strolling around, regardless of
the fact that it was way past their bedtimes. They would be making it up at
tomorrow’s siesta, no doubt, having stayed up all night.
    Finally, the moon was breaking through the clouds, and we
were well past Midnight, and the sounds, though fewer, were more raucous––teenagers
on their last dregs, whispering excited words to each other, as they lived
lifetimes between hours. I among them. It had been a night for revelations.
    I realized it wasn’t over. That, in a way, it would never be
over. That this night would be mine, and it would be going on for as long as
forever, for as long as I still burned for some inward heavenly thing: secrets,
and truths, and dreams.
    The onset of the Agonies was not unlike this ‘Calling’
Ballard had expressed to me; maybe I was being called. To what I did not know. It didn’t seem important to me just then.
The inexpressible pursuit had ended for now. I was with Ballard and we were
young and free, and whatever problems we had were in the past.
    I decelerated and said, “You can’t be serious.”
    The place we had arrived at was the most famous place in
Rome. The light turned green and we accelerated through the empty night street
to a mammoth colosseum––It was the Colosseum, and it was where the meeting was going to be taking place, the Wolves’
Council I wasn’t entirely sure I was invited to.
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Ballard. “They’re expecting you,
aren’t they? You’re invited, remember?”
    I couldn’t think why. It was a huge lighted edifice I had
seen a thousand times before, but never in person. It looked like a giant war
god had struck the side of the Colosseum with his cudgel and caused half the
oval-shaped exterior to crumble in. A million lights lit up the outer walls,
the archways golden-hued, staring out at us like eyeballs. Very watchful