The Baby On the Doorstep

Guns? My heart nearly leapt out of my chest. I had known they were always a possibility, but possibility and reality are two different things. Of course there are guns, Gavin! I scolded myself. What did you think they did, waved around feathers? They're an underground paramilitary group dedicating to ridding the world of wizards, dope! Still, I had to admit the sight of those black barrels had cold chills racing up and down my spine. I recalled the conversation I'd had with my father recently, about whether there was a spell to protect against bullets. I prayed he knew it and that it worked. Hell, I wish I knew it, though I suspected it was probably way beyond my current casting capabilities. I was only an apprentice, after all.

I wrapped the light shield tighter about myself. My glamour casting couldn't make me truly invisible, but it did obscure me from normal sight, so that when somebody looked directly at me, all they saw was an odd blur, kind of like the flash reflection you get from staring at the sun too long. But it would serve to get me past the two guarding the landing.

I watched and waited, my nails digging into the palms of my hands. Steady, Gavin. Now's not the time to be hasty, I whispered silently. Now's the time to cultivate that famous Snape control Dad's always going on about. It was that control that had made him able to be a spy for so long, and what made him so damn good at hunting down criminals. I wished I possessed even a tenth of it.

I forced myself to breathe deeply, evenly, to slow my heart rate so I was not panting and my blood was not rushing through my veins like an express train. Good. Good. Be calm. I relaxed and waited for the moment when the two guards had their backs to me, as they made the turn at opposite ends of the landing.

Then I sprang up the stairs, moving on cat's feet, and before they realized it I was on the top of the landing. I didn't pause, but ran straight to the right, for that was where the window Monkey had peered out of was. The guard I passed frowned in puzzlement, but didn't even realize something had gone by him in the hallway.

I slipped down the hall, my ears and eyes alert, listening for any sound of voices. I tried all the handles of the doors on this side, finding most of them locked. Then, the fourth door I passed, I heard voices. One was a rather pleasant tenor, the other a little deeper. I groped for the handle and to my surprise, it turned easily.

I inched it open, then put my eye to the slender crack.

In the room beyond, a rather tall dark-haired man sat behind a desk. He was dressed in a conservative button down white shirt and tie, a jacket hung over the chair arm. He appeared to be in his mid thirties or thereabouts, goodlooking, Caucasian man with deep brown eyes. I squinted, wishing I dared shove the door open further. There was something oddly familiar about this man, though I could've sworn I'd never seen him before in my life. And yet . . .his features were strangely familiar.

I looked at the other man, who was sitting opposite him. He looked a bit older than the one seated behind the desk, with wavy reddish hair and he was wearing camis, like the soldiers do during wartime. He was turned towards the door in a three-quarter profile, but I could just make out a rigid jaw and a narrow nose and green eyes.

" . . .almost time to make our move, sir," the older man was saying. "If we wait too long, the freaks will call in reinforcements. I've heard tell they've got their own army or police force or something."

"Relax, Hart. All in good time, my friend. Move too soon and we risk losing the prey. The five we located are but fuel for the fire. I'm after bigger fish, Hart. I want one of their masters, one of their major players. There's one I believe that calls himself the Director, or some such title. A warlock steeped in the Black Arts if ever there was one." The guy's dark eyes began to shine queerly. "I want that one, Hart! If I take him down, it will be a great victory for the Brotherhood. God has shown me the way and the Light, and I am his arm of righteousness. I shall bring the Light of Heaven to the wicked and erase forever the taint of magic from the world."

"Indeed, Captain," said Hart, inclining his head.

I froze. Captain? Was this the Captain Hawthorne Richards had spoken of? The one Evelyn had said was her nephew? It had to be, and I shivered at the fanatical light in his eyes, a light I'd seen countless times in another pair of eyes for over half my childhood. Ferrous's. Even so, I wanted to laugh at the way the asshole was acting, like he knew all there was to know about wizards, when in fact he'd barely scratched the surface. He'd called my dad, the slayer of numerous dark wizards, a practitioner of darkness! Severus Snape! The man was dumber than dirt, he wouldn't know a true necromancer if one came up and kicked him in the ass. Then again, why should I expect anything more from someone who'd made a career out of persecuting wizards and witches? Who was obsessed with following a code that should have died out over two hundred years ago?

I turned my ear back, for Hawthorne was speaking again. " . . .really too bad about Hannibal Ferrous, he was one of our most loyal members, worked as a recruiter for years, my father knew him. Over a quarter of our members came from his orphanage. But then he grew careless and let his temper run away with him . . ." Hawthorne shook his head and sighed. "Fifteen counts of child abuse, and every one of the little bastards willing to testify in court, the lawyers refused to plea bargain . . .we had no choice but to let him take the fall, he was a liability."

"You did the right thing, sir," parroted Hart, like a good little subordinate. "The secrecy of the Brotherhood before all else."

I should have known! Ferrous was a member of the damn Brotherhood. No wonder he'd been so fanatical about my using magic, so determined to beat all traces out of me. And then I recalled the other thing Hawthorne had said, about getting recruits from the orphanage. Obviously Ferrous had been teaching some of the orphan boys, he'd had no use for girls, the Brotherhood doctrine and then sending them on to Hawthorne when they were ready to become full-fledged members and take part in the killing or whatever. No wonder he'd run the orphanage like some damn kiddie boot camp.

"Yes, Ferrous failed me, failed us, and for that he was punished." Hawthorne steepled his fingers on the desktop. "He failed me even more personally, as I'm sure you know, Al."

The other man nodded. "He lost your son, didn't he?"

"Yes. He cost me my heir, the child I would have trained up to succeed me one day as Enforcer. Actually, it was not entirely his fault, Hart. The real blame must lie with my wife, Abby, who chose to repudiate her wedding vows of obedience and try and steal my son from me. She thought she could leave me and take my child away and not suffer the consequences! She wanted to raise our son away from the Shining Path, claimed it was subversive, that it was unnatural. Stupid bitch!"

"Women are weak, vessels of sin, like it says in the Bible."

"Just so, and Abby was weaker than most. She listened to my crazy aunt and was tempted into sin. She refused to listen to me, even when I struck her. Instead I woke one morning to find her gone and my son Johnny also. She thought she could run from me, but there was nowhere she could go that I wouldn't find her. She hid from me for a month, but one of our agents finally spotted her in New York. Then I came for her and taught her the final error of her ways."

The way he spoke of his wife made my flesh creep. I knew then that he had killed her, killed her for defying him, poor woman. She'd only been trying to protect her son from his monster of a father. But what had happened to the baby?

"But I couldn't raise Johnny myself, I was too busy, I had too many commitments, both to the Brotherhood and my regular job. So I left him on the doorstep of Morningstar Orphanage, which Ferrous ran, and told him to raise my son as befit the heir to the Brotherhood. He promised me he would instruct the boy as I would, that he would make sure Johnny was a credit to me."

"What happened?"

"He screwed up. He left the boy too long in the care of the nurses or whatever, didn't start teaching him Brotherhood doctrine until he was three or four, and by then he'd been corrupted or whatever. Told Ferrous he could see spirits, believed in magic, of all the blasphemous nonsense . . ."

I felt my soul shrivel in horror. God in heaven, no! This couldn't be happening. I had to have heard wrong. Because I had been left on the doorstep of the orphanage as a baby, abandoned and unwanted, or so I'd always been told. Your ma abandoned you' cause you were a tainted freak, boy! Ferrous sneered in my head.

I felt sick to my stomach. That had been a lie. My whole life I'd believed my mother had hated me, had wanted to get rid of her own child for some reason known only to her. But that assumption had been false. I had not been abandoned, my mother had not thrown me away like so much garbage. She had been murdered, killed trying to get me away from the monster sitting behind the desk.

" . . .I told Ferrous to make sure those notions were driven out of his head, by whatever means necessary. He promised me he'd see to it, but then something went wrong, the kid ran away one day and Ferrous couldn't find him, it was as if he'd vanished . . "

I had vanished, in a manner of speaking. Vanished into the streets of the Lower East Side, sheltered by the Ravens, who taught me to walk the shadows and become one with the night.

I felt my head spin with the awful revelations I'd heard. My stomach threatened to rebel, I forced my nausea down. I could not get sick now. Much as I longed to spew my guts all over the disgusting man who called himself my father.

Captain Matthew Hawthorne, Enforcer.

Murderer, bastard, who'd left his only child at the mercy of a sadist like Ferrous. He'd given me willingly into Ferrous's care, knowing what he would do. I wondered if he'd ordered Ferrous to whip me. Yes, that would be like him.

I longed to bust into the office and spit right in his arrogant face. He had left me to five years of hell, but now the joke was on him. For little did he know that he'd sired a wizard. I would bet all the gold in the US mint that Ferrous hadn't told him that little detail. Couldn't have the Enforcer learning that his offspring was tainted with magic, magic that had come, ironically enough, from his side of the family.

I started to tremble slightly as the full impact of his words hit me.

The first beating I'd ever gotten was when I was around three, when I'd innocently told Ferrous when he'd asked me what I was staring at that I'd seen a good spirit. "There are no good spirits, boy!" he'd screamed. "Only minions of the devil. What blasphemy are you speaking, you devil spawn? Such is evil, wicked, and not for little boys, especially not ones like you!" That began the round of daily abuse I was subject to until I'd finally managed to run away years later. Severus had told me when I'd spoken to him about that memory that the good spirit I had seen might have been a zephyr, an Air Elemental that resembled a young boy with wings.

When I was little, I used to dream about finding my real parents, how they would come for me and love me and never beat me or hurt me. It had never happened, and eventually I'd quit hoping and started planning my escape. Then Severus had adopted me, and suddenly one gaping hole was filled. I had no mother still, and that left a gnawing ache deep in my heart, but I could deal with it. I had a father who loved me and that had to be enough.

It was enough. I had no desire to find my biological parents, who'd abandoned me on the doorstep like last week's trash.

Except now my past had come back to haunt me.

Johnny Hawthorne, my mind hissed. Once that had been my name. I'd been named for that damn witch-hunter judge, I thought, feeling even more ill. Then I shook my head. No! I was Gavin Albus Snape, not John Hawthorne. I wanted no part of the Hawthorne legacy, which seemed to bring only sorrow and death.

I'm not your son! I longed to shout. You're not my father, Sev is. And by all that's holy, I swear I'm going to do all in my power to bring you down, Hawthorne. The prodigal son's returned, Daddy Dearest, and you don't need to kill the fatted calf, you need to start running before I roast you over a damn fire.

Now I knew why his face seemed so familiar to me. The resemblance was unmistakable, much as I hated to admit it. I'd look very much like him twenty or so years from now. The thought made me feel even more nauseous. I hated the fact that he and I shared blood, for what he'd done in his life turned my stomach. How many had he condemned to death for no reason save that he thought they should die because they were witches?

He'd even targeted his own aunt. Hell, he murdered his own wife in cold blood, so I shouldn't be surprised any more. I closed my eyes tightly, feeling tears well up behind them. I could recall very little of my early years at Morningstar, for those years had not been unpleasant, indeed they were one of the few times I'd ever encounter an adult who was kind to me. Ferrous did not want to waste his time caring for an infant, so he hired two nurses to take care of all the little ones who were under three.

It was one of them, Molly McLaine, that had told me stories of fairies and magic, and played with me and sang silly songs to me after she'd bathed me and whatever. I'd really liked her, called her My Molly, but once I was three and potty trained and able to feed myself, Ferrous had removed me from her care. Poor Molly had been dismissed from the orphanage once Ferrous learned she was the one who'd been filling my head with all those stories, he'd terrified me into revealing that bit of information with a switching and being locked in a dark closet. Knowing what I did about Ferrous and his damn organization, I prayed that all he'd done was fire her. I was almost certain she hadn't been harmed, for as the bastard behind the desk had pointed out, they didn't want any scandal attached to their members. Hopefully sweet Molly McLaine had gone on to a better job and raised a family, like she'd wanted.

Funny, I hadn't thought about her in years, but listening to the conversation between the two Shining Path fanatics had brought her back to me, one of the few good memories I had about Morningstar. My eyes narrowed and I glared at the man who dared to call himself my father, holier-than-thou Matthew Hawthorne, and I wished him dead and gone to hell. One way or another, I'd make him pay for what he'd done, I vowed.

Your day of reckoning is upon thee, Hawthorne. This is for my mom Abby, Molly, Janie and me, the son you abandoned to Ferrous's tender mercies all those years ago. What you sowed now ye shall reap, unto the tenth generation.

Fire surged restlessly in my blood, begging me to set it free. I controlled my urges however, and bid it wait. Now was not the time for my power to slip its leash. First I needed to find Monkey and get her out of this hellhole. Then and only then would I show my true colors as a firecaller.

I crept away from the door, I'd had heard enough of their conversation. I made my way down the hallway, trying all of the doors I came to. Finally, in the second to last one, I made out a girl's voice, trembling with fatigue and fear, answering another, deeper male one.

"I told ya and told ya-I don't know anything more!"

"Now why don't I believe that, pretty?" laughed the man's voice. "I think you're lying to me, girlie. And girls that lie to Valmont get punished."

I heard the sound of wood striking flesh, it was a sound I was intimately familiar with.

Then a gasp and whimper.

"You gonna talk now, pretty? Or shall I give you another lesson?"

Monkey told him to do something anatomically impossible with himself.

I was picking the lock as quickly as I dared, and it gave just as the brute was drawing back the stick in his hand for another blow. Janie was crouched on the floor at his feet, shackled by a length of iron chain to a chair, one arm up to ward off a second blow. Her arm bore a red welt on it from the previous one.

I saw red. How dare this miserable bastard pig hurt her? The fire within me roared to life and I darted a flicking tongue of flame at the stick in the bald man's hand.

It caught instantly, becoming ash in a second.

"What the HELL?" he cried, shaking his hand. He whirled around to face me, his hand reaching for his gun.

"Bastard!" I snarled. "If you want answers, ask me, stupid asshole!" My eyes burned with fire.

"Warlock!" he gasped, pointing the semi-automatic at me. "How dare you come here?"

"Gavin?" Monkey sobbed. "Is that you? Run! He'll kill you!"

"In his dreams, Monkey," I said. I conjured a fire shield just as the goon cut loose with a round.

The bullets slammed into my shield and melted under the intense heat. None of them reached me.

The bully went pale and backed away.

I smiled coldly. "Want to play with fire?"

"God in Heaven!" he cried, shivering. "Get thee hence, devil!"

I laughed softly. "You're the devil, not me, hurting little girls." Then I heated his weapon, making it blaze red hot.

He screamed in agony and dropped it. I melted it where it fell. He held up his hands in surrender, babbling and whimpering. They were blistered and burned, he'd be lucky if he could use them again without reconstructive surgery.

I pointed with my hand, letting a little flamelet dance on the end of my finger. "Move over there, scumbag. And not a sound out of you, or else you're toast, got me?"

He nodded, tears filling his eyes, then he moved over to the far corner. I etched a circle of fire about him, making the flames knee high, so he wouldn't be tempted to step over them.

Then I dropped to my knees beside my friend, who was a wreck. They'd been at her for some time, she had black and blue marks on her face, arms, and her legs, what I could see of them below her shorts. She was darker skinned than I was, for she's got Hispanic blood in her, but the bruises and cuts were still noticeable. Her pink T-shirt was ripped in places and not by design. I swore under my breath and pulled my magic back inside myself.

"You okay, Janie?" I whispered softly, releasing the glamour.

"Been better, bro," she replied, and her dark eyes misted with tears.

I'd never seen her cry ever, she'd always been as tough as nails, a real scrapper. "I'm getting you outta here, girl. Lemme see that shackle."

She extended her left foot, and I took it in my hands, noting with another furious curse that her ankle was swollen and bleeding, she'd obviously been trying without success to get it off herself. I examined the locking mechanism, then inserted my wire, but the damn thing was rusted and the wire snapped before I'd given it five turns.

"Damn!" I growled.

"Gavin, get out of here!" Monkey whispered, her eyes full of fear. "Before they come in to see what's wrong. You should've never come here alone."

"How do you know I'm alone?" I asked, yanking what remained of the wire out of the lock.

She gave me an annoyed look. ""Cause you never do what I tell you, Wolf-boy. You always think you know it all."

"Sometimes I do, girl," I joked lightly. "Hold still, I'm going to magic these off."

"How?"

"You'll see." I concentrated, casting a skin-tight barrier of air about her ankle and foot. Then I put the tips of my fingers about the shackle and sent a pinpoint burst of fire into it, making it glow cherry red for an instant.

Monkey yelled, even though it didn't burn.

"Hush, Janie!" I snapped. "I won't burn you. Trust me."

"You sure 'bout that?" she cried, shaking.

"Positive," I said, then sent another pulse into the metal. This time it turned white hot around the edges and I struck it hard against the floor.

It shattered, breaking in half, and Monkey was free.

I helped her to her feet. "Can you walk?" I asked.

She nodded. "Walk, crawl, I'll do whatever it takes to get the hell out of here," she said gamely, though I could tell it hurt her to move.

"Think you can climb out the window?" I asked, wishing I'd thought to bring along some of Dad's healing salve.

She set her jaw and nodded. "Sure." Then she limped painfully over to the window and unlatched it.

It was then that the fire alarm or whatever chose to go off.

I should have anticipated that, but I wasn't thinking too clearly about anything except rescuing my friend at that point.

"Move!" I shouted at her, helping her over the sill.

"What about you, Gavin?"

"I'll follow," I told her impatiently. "Go down, Monkey. Hurry."

She obeyed, climbing slowly and painfully down the wall.

Then the bastard whose hands I'd blistered began screaming "Prisoner out! Captain! Prisoner escaping! 1099!"

"Shut the hell up!" I yelled, but he didn't, even when I made the flames shoot up to his shoulders.

Apparently, he'd already resigned himself to death and wanted to go out sounding the alarm to his brothers, the bloody martyr. I levitated a large glass bowl on the table and smacked him hard over the head with it.

He went down like a pig hit in the head with a mallet.

Then and only then did I put out the ring of flame I'd summoned.

But it was too late. The guy's cries had alerted the cavalry.

I spun around to see six men standing in the doorway, guns leveled right at me.

"On the floor! Now!" one of them barked.

"Screw you, Charlie!" I spat, and conjured up my fire shield once more, cloaking myself in a sheet of fire.

Several of them gasped and I heard more than few hiss "Warlock!" and "Devil worshipper!" before they opened fire at me.

I ducked and backed away towards the window out of reflex, though half the shots didn't hit me and peppered the wall instead with bullet holes. The rest of the bullets were absorbed into my shield and never touched me.

"Halt!" commanded a stern voice. "Hold your fire. I want him alive."

That voice I knew. Suddenly Matthew Hawthorne appeared in the doorway, his eyes glowing with fury. "How dare you profane our house with your foul presence, warlock?"

"Ha! That's something, calling me foul, when you stink to high heaven, Hawthorne!" I spat.

His eyes narrowed. "Do I know you, warlock?"

"No." I continued backing towards the window. Just a few more feet.

He was pulling something from his belt, a long metal tube. I didn't know what kind of weapon it was, it didn't look like much.

I formed a fireball in my hand and drew it back to throw it at him. "Catch, Daddy Dearest!"

But before my fireball could strike him, he blew and a cloud of fine blue dust settled about me. I coughed, breathed it in, and all of a sudden I felt my magic dwindle to nearly nothing. Huh? What the hell's happening to me? I wondered frantically. I tried to summon the magic that was my birthright, but I couldn't remember how to do it. My head was spinning, it felt light and fluffy, like a cloud, and I fell on my ass with a stupid grin pasted to my face.

Then I passed out and knew nothing until almost a whole day later.

So what did you think of that little revelation? Shocking?

Next: Severus returns and discovers his son is missing. He's going to have a canary! And you'll see it from his POV, too!