by Lisa Daniels
Rosen snorted. “All the same, we need all the help we can get. Will you consider, at least?”
“I will. Just don’t expect any help from that quarter.”
“I’ll try not to.” Rosen’s response was dry, though her expression became a whole lot sourer when the news updated, with a new revelation that the wake of destruction was still going, making a southward path that showed evidence of the army of undead intending to sack major towns and cities.
“What is even on this idiot’s mind? What’s the point of this?” Rosen flung up her hands in frustration. “Why make everything so much worse?”
Because that’s what people do, Mason thought to himself. They liked to make things worse, often without fully meaning to. It was just an end result. Just like what he’d done with Ellie, when he only wanted to tell her that she was welcome with him, welcome in a context outside of their original dynamic. That had caused a wall to slam down between them instead. It was all he kept seeming to encounter, lately. Every time he thought he might have fixed things so that their lives could progress normally again, something else threw itself into trouble.
“Mason,” Ellie whispered, her eyes going big and pleading, in such an annoyingly cute way that it twisted his stomach into knots and made all the thoughts fall out of his head. “There has to be a way to save my father. Beyond everything here and what everyone’s saying about it being a trap. He’s in danger.”
“So are you. You can’t go back there, Ellie. You can’t sneak off in a plane in the middle of the night and hope things will be fixed. They’re canceling flights,” he added hastily, in case he’d given her a bad idea. “They’re shutting off the area so that we can’t rush northward and into certain danger.”
Her face fell, but her hand was still firm and strong on him. Such an earnest, beautiful face. When did she become so beautiful?
He had noticed, somewhere, of course… he just didn’t want to fully accept in his mind what it might mean to process such thinking. He froze up, but the moment passed when she let go and turned to face Rosen and the newly arrived Morgana as she strode toward them, red-faced.
“Someone tried to throw an egg at me,” Morgana said, rubbing at her hair as if expecting to find eggshells or yolk in it. “Shattered against the damn wall, but I feel like something got me. Anyway, you called?”
“News. Look at it,” Rosen said flatly. Morgana peered over at Rosen’s phone, and Mason examined Ellie’s back. Wondering. Wondering if he could do something for her. The start of a stupid, insane, and possibly suicidal idea was already forming in his mind. It’d please her, right?
Might kill him, too. Might be the single worst idea he’d ever come up with in his life, or the best. He let it burn a hole in his brain, and keep him warm, even as everyone else fell into a kind of morbid depression, unsure of how to deal with all the crap being flung their way.
Tonight, he thought, letting the warmth envelop him as he observed Ellie. Remembering all the things they’d gone through together, all the happy and bad moments, from his uncertainty of his place in the world when first becoming a security guard, scrambling for the first opportunity presented, to their best moments before she’d become more withdrawn, more thirsty for independence away from her father.
Tonight, he would do it. Suicide or not.
Chapter Nine – Ellie
Ellie woke up, and the world remained just as bad as it was before. Even the sunlight dazzling through her window did nothing to lift her mood. Her insides were a nest of worms, and there was a hollowness she usually associated with hunger, but no appetite remained in her.
Her father was out of reach. A week ago, she would have been glad of this news. Right now, it dealt a cruel blow to how life was meant to be. Her father wasn’t supposed to be in trouble. He wasn’t supposed to grow enough of a conscience to worry after Ellie. And yet he did. She felt sick to her stomach with worry, knowing there was no way anyone would bother to extend any resources to rescue her father. She even agreed with them to some extent, but it didn’t take away that unease within. Because she knew they were condemning her father to die.
Something was strange about breakfast today. No sooner had she finally finished her toast than it occurred to her that Mason was yet to emerge. Usually by this time, he happened to be out of his quarters, drinking something in the garden. She checked the garden to be sure, then headed to his room, knocked—no response. Tumbling into the room sent a quick spike of fear through her.
One check of the entire house later, and a report from Rickard and one of the servants roaming the halls confirmed her worst fear. Mason was gone. Without so much as a note or any kind of explanation for his disappearance.
Furiously, she tried to phone him, to text him, but there was nothing but voicemail, no sign of her messages being read. Where the actual heck had Mason gone?
She contacted Morgana about this, unsure where else to go or how to quell the rising panic in her soul.
“He’s just vanished, Morgana. He’s not responding to anything. He didn’t say anything about what he was doing...”
“Huh,” Morgana said. “He asked for two days’ leave from the precinct Security Services. I was there when he requested it, but didn’t think anything much of it at all.”
Mason had asked for a leave? What for? She didn’t know, but her panic calmed marginally, now registering that perhaps this was something planned, rather than, say, a mysterious kidnapping in the middle of the night, though she’d feel a little sorry for whatever kidnapper ended up dealing with a great lump of a dragon like him.
Please be okay. Stupid Mason. She had only just come to terms with the fact that she might be able to keep him in her life.
The worry persisted throughout the day, but at least she had plenty of distractions in an attempt to take her mind off it.
“One thing they’ve been wondering at the precinct,” Rosen told her, having one of her free mornings and afternoons for once, “is whether or not a necromancer should be allowed a companion that they can summon, if it’s possible to get guardian angels to be more commonplace.”
“That… doesn’t sound like a good idea,” Ellie replied. “People already dislike us enough. If we start walking with an undead bodyguard down the street? I’d be surprised if they didn’t just start shooting the body on the spot. I don’t think they have laws that will get you arrested for that yet.”
“Laws can be changed. Times change.”
“People don’t always like change.”
“Tough,” Rosen said with a grin. “It happens regardless. Why, in my lifetime, I’ve seen eight states take on necromancers in a legal setting. I’ve seen two countries decriminalize us, if not everything we do. It’s not madness to think one day we’d be allowed to summon our own protection. Or that maybe we will summon things for other people’s protection. We’re severely underutilized as it is because of the prejudice.”
Ellie tried to imagine all the different ways she could be used, though her limited imagination didn’t go far. Simply because she’d never considered any other alternatives to her powers. In a way, she grew up believing that necromancers were bad. She believed she was a criminal, because that was what people expected from her.
Rosen seemed to spot some of the thinking reflected on Ellie’s face, for she sighed and shook her head in an almost melancholy way. “It’ll always take time, kid.”
“Kid?” Ellie now puffed up. No one called her a kid! Except… to Rosen Grieves, she probably was one. Immature. Not enough knowledge of the real world. Worrying too much about things that she couldn’t change.
“It’s a shame your bodyguard didn’t deign to inform us about his intentions,” Rosen continued, staring off into the distance for a moment. “Obviously it’s something he can’t tell us about, or we’d be...” She paused. In that same moment, Ellie felt the passing of a shadow, a pressing upon her soul. Both necromancers regarded each other with the same inquisitive expression, before slipping into tra
nces, entering the Other Side to see the cause of the sensation.
As before, Ellie felt the groping presence of her mother’s soul, glowing dimly, circling around her as if anxious to talk.
“This is her, isn’t it?” Rosen said softly, her voice taking on a strange, ethereal tint. “This is your mother.”
“Yes.”
The spirit approached Ellie, resembling a little of what she used to be in life. Vibrant blonde hair. Eyes the same shape, though they glowed a supernatural blue compared to their living color. There was a strained expression upon her ghostly features.
“I cannot be here for long,” the spirit said, clasping Ellie by the shoulder, as if desperate for the touch. “They have my ashes, as do you.” She gestured to the locket that Ellie wore, always wore. “He has found a way. He knows how to make us die for him. Again and again.” The spirit appeared agonized. “He can take us from the sanctity of rest.”
“From Beyond?” Rosen asked, and Ellie stared at the older necromancer.
“Yes,” Ellie’s mother said simply. “Do not ask of what is Beyond. I sense it in you.”
Rosen’s face quivered in obvious disappointment.
“His purpose,” the spirit continued, turning those burning blue eyes back to Ellie, “is corrupted. He too has gone too far. He has taken into himself something that hates. Something attracted to the violence and blood of the living, of the transgressions of the soul. He will first come for Rickard Grieves, whose soul escaped his grasp. Then he will come for you, and every other necromancer. He seeks to wipe you all, so that you may never touch the Other Side again. Though he will not stop with necromancers.” Her mother’s form flickered, then faded away, being tugged somewhere else. The lingering presence of her touch remained with Ellie for a long time afterward.
Both necromancers slipped out of the trance, returning to the world of true colors, instead of the misted, diffused ones the Other Side offered, which grew more monochrome the deeper they went.
“I guess we have more information now,” Rosen said, looking extraordinarily grim. “Not that it is particularly welcome. Another crazy revenant that wants to end us all. Just what the doctor ordered.”
One crisis led to another. Ellie’s pinching anxiety about her own father barely compared to the increasing terror over the knowledge that everything they’d ever stood for might go down in a blaze of sadistic, corrupted vengeance.
Why did things have to be like this? Why couldn’t things be simple, for once? She ground her teeth in frustration. Where the hell was that fool of a bodyguard? If anything happened to him… but she didn’t want to go too far about that. Because nothing would happen to him. Mason was perfectly capable of surviving by himself. He had to be. Because she needed him.
Another memory, invasive and squirming, reignited in her brain, stirred by watching Rosen close the office door behind her. A memory of her father doing the same, locking Ellie away from her parents, and then hearing a screaming, cursing argument. One that never seemed to end. Mason had been there then, gently guiding her away.
We’re going to play a game together, he’d said. One far away from all their shouting. Everything will be fine, you’ll see. They walked so far away that soon all the noises stopped. They played stupid child games, like Grandma’s Footsteps, and the big Jenga they had in their old garden, slightly damp from the rains earlier that day, which made it a lot harder to pull out the wood and stack it on top without it crumbling into a bricky heap.
Mason had always done things like that for her. Taken her away from the crux of her parent’s arguments. Trying to fill her soul with better memories, trying to help her see the best in her family. He tried, and she loved him for it.
He gave her happiness. But no—she didn’t want her happiness to be dependent on one person. She didn’t want it to be dependent on anything but her own willpower, her own choices. Though Mason was a choice, wasn’t he?
Possibly one of the best choices she’d ever made.
Over the course of the day, the news intensified in its reported problems. Now this undead army was marching south. Now another city had evacuated itself, but the body count was piling. One town even went as far as locating its only necromancer and bludgeoning them to death, but that town had been swept aside anyway.
Ellie returned to Talia’s home, jumpy whenever she encountered people on the street, though she specifically went home with Talia and Janos, keeping herself under protection, though people were fully aware of the Grieves family, and clearly saw her associating with them.
“He spoke about doing something the night before,” Janos had informed them, after Talia let out a few agitated curses about how irresponsible Mason was for leaving Ellie alone. He was being paid to protect her, and this wasn’t exactly anything like the protection that was needed.
Please return safely, Ellie thought, sending the prayer off into the unknown, a terrifying place where anything could happen. The empty, gnawing worry continued, and her pile of messages to him increased. Late afternoon faded to the first signs of dusk, and she sat out in the enormous garden, taking deep breaths to stop herself from panicking, and occasionally dipping into the Other Side to sense all the pet spirits that were still there, connected to the buried bones, and a few other spirits in the deeper levels, which had that vague menace to them, common in those who had some kind of trauma in their dying.
Something blurred in the skies above. Something hurtling toward the mansion, toward the garden, dark and winged.
Ellie gasped, standing up, squinting into the sky. The creature slowed in its descent, before flaring up wings, and she let out a scream of delight, forgetting completely how annoyed she was with Mason for vanishing without telling her. The dragon tumbled onto the grass awkwardly. He was wearing a strange harness, and someone unbelted themselves and rolled off his back.
Regal. Her father. Ellie’s jaw dropped open. Out of all the things she’d expected to happen, this was not one of them.
“Father! Mason!”
The green dragon’s form melted, until it became the familiar form of Mason, who had a proud if tired grin upon his face. Regal appeared decidedly green, and kept his hands firmly planted on the grass for a good moment or two, while Ellie hurtled herself into Mason’s embrace, reaching for his hair and tugging at it. Then she crouched down to greet her trembling father, who didn’t look anything like the imposing figure he liked to act as when he was in the deadrings, running them, carrying out the orders of Zaimov.
Rickard and Talia came running out of the building, bodyguards hot on their trails.
“We’ll need to get Regal into witness protection,” Mason said, turning curt and professional in front of Rickard Grieves. “I retrieved him from hiding, and he’s agreed to share the information he has and cooperate in what is asked of him. Though he is aware he may have to do some jail time regardless.”
Regal didn’t say a word. In fact, Ellie’s father didn’t seem to be wholly… there. “What’s wrong with my father?”
“He’s...” Mason licked his lips. “He’s been having trouble staying in the normal world. He slips into the Other Side a lot. Something to do with how Zaimov was using him.”
Light returned to Regal’s eyes, and he sat up. “Sorry.” Father and daughter locked eyes together. They settled for a rather perfunctory hug—the rift created between them over the years still needed some fixing. But it was enough to have him here. To have him and Mason safe. For Ellie, that meant the world.
“I hate you for not saying anything,” she snapped at Mason, since he kept smiling in that tired way of his for entirely too long. “You didn’t answer anything, you didn’t leave a message...”
“I apologize,” Mason said. “I’ll make up for it. I swear to you.”
Slightly mollified, Ellie turned to the plight of her father, clearly bailed out from the heart of darkness. A man who slipped into the Other Side without control—someone who needed help. Someone, who for all their sins, deserved mor
e than death.
Chapter Ten – Mason
“I knew you’d stop me,” Mason said. He and Ellie faced one another in her room, not too long after Ellie’s father had been delivered to the precinct. The father and daughter reunion had not lasted too long. Mason expected as much. He knew the cracks between them were wide. Not wide enough to allow the man to be left to suffer alone, however. “That’s why I went without a word.”
He watched as Ellie spluttered a bit, before she said, “You could have at least messaged. Anything. ANYTHING at all. Instead you don’t say anything and just vanish?”
“I was flying in my dragon form,” he said defensively. “I had to buy the permits to cross states. They let me do so to escort an endangered citizen from the necromancer-hit areas. I didn’t have a whole lot of time to check my phone.”
She continued to look pissed off, her cheeks puffing up slightly in that adorable way she had. Why does she have to look like that? He did feel a little guilty for flying off without a word, but he knew he would have done the same thing regardless. He didn’t want to raise Ellie’s hopes about fetching her father, just in case he failed. He wanted to return to her with concrete evidence that her father was alive.
And he was. If now a technical prisoner.
“Don’t do that again,” she said, though obviously he couldn’t do it again.
“Alright. Next time your father gets mysteriously kidnapped, I’ll stand aside,” he said, which earned a sharp jab from Ellie’s elbow. “Ow.”
“I’m serious. Don’t just run off without any words. What if they fired you? What if something happened here? What if I needed you?”
“You didn’t need me,” Mason said softly. “You’ve honestly not needed me for a long time. But it’s an honor nonetheless to serve you.”
“What do you mean?” Ellie said, her face scrunching up in confusion.
“I mean that you’re dangerously self-reliant, nowadays,” he said, attempting to smile, though perhaps it didn’t convince her. “You’ve become the capable woman you always promised to be. Even with Regal holding you back somewhat, putting a stopper on your legal career path. I’m proud of you.”
