Ashes And Grave

by Aiden Bates

  “And if you aren’t?” he demanded.

  I slogged up the steps to the small porch and turned to face him, sagging against the doorframe as I did. “Then most likely I will die,” I said, “and this person will have committed an inexcusable offense. I will inform my master, and he will come himself to resolve the situation.”

  “You’ll tell him if you die?” Nix asked, incredulous.

  I nodded. “Of course. For you, and others like you, death is seemingly final. For us, it is... a great inconvenience.”

  He made a coughing sort of noise that I thought in a human throat might be a scoffing sound. “You just bring yourselves back?”

  “Not in the way you are thinking,” I said. “Never that. Not for anyone with a conscience, at least. But, my usefulness extends beyond this world. Now. I have to sleep.”

  “You can’t,” he said. “Not now. Won’t the other necromancer know that you’re here now?”

  “Yes,” I breathed, impatient to get inside and close my weary eyes. “He most certainly does. But unless he is Hades himself, he will also be very tired. We have limits.”

  Though, there were ways around those limits. But if my opponent was employing such foul means to feed their magic, then we had much larger problems and it would not matter if I slept or not. I could well wake up in the next world. I certainly was not going to match them, if that was the case.

  “I will not sleep long,” I assured Nix when he seemed to take offense at my mortal limitations. “I will rise with the sun, and we will complete the work we began tonight. You also should rest.”

  “I won’t be able to,” he grumbled. “Not after hearing this. We need to mobilize, comb the region. Maybe he’s holed up somewhere nearby, tormenting us and laughing about it.”

  “Do whatever you think will be productive,” I told him. “Just do not disturb the work I have already done. The same protections I began will defend us somewhat against necromantic attacks as well. It was among the many considerations I considered.”

  He took a step forward, putting one foot on the lowest step. “So you knew this might be the case? Why didn’t you say as much?”

  I spread my hands. “Because I am a scientist,” I said, “and I first collect evidence and then form a hypothesis, which I test to develop a theory, which I then apply to solve the problem. You are a biased zealot, incapable of clear reason, and so I chose not to feed into your paranoia.”

  “You’re not paranoid if they’re really out to get you,” he countered.

  I threw my hands up. “Fair enough. You were right, it was a necromancer, we are all evil, I’m in cahoots with them, and together we are executing the most foolish ploy ever conceived. Does that make you happy enough to leave me alone so that I can be ready for the next time that this person inevitably redoubles their efforts?”

  Smoke curled from his nostrils. “You can rest,” he said. “But not without supervision. You’ll be guarded day and night for as long as you’re here. Give me your phone.”

  I blinked, and laughed. “Absolutely not, why?”

  “So that I can call security and post someone here,” he said.

  I waved a hand to shoo him away, and turned to open the door.

  The stairs creaked. “I wasn’t asking.”

  I opened the door to go in. “I was not negotiating.”

  His taloned hand gripped the doorframe as he stood over me. “I said,” he rumbled quietly, the heat of his breath burning over the back of my neck, “you will be under guard until you are done here.”

  “Then you can take the first shift,” I offered. “I don’t care. I will be unconscious.”

  I went in. He ducked to follow me, his hand holding the door as I closed it.

  When I met his resistance, I turned to face him, and saw his eyes flat, his expression—such as it was in that half-draconic face—unyielding. “Fine.”

  “You mean to stand guard in my lodgings?” I asked.

  “The lodgings that I graciously offered you instead of a box on the street,” he said. “Which I haven’t decided isn’t the better option. Certainly, it will be easier to keep an eye on you.”

  Pointless. Both for him to do this—which was purely to afflict me with further distractions and irritations, I was sure—and to insist that I was somehow a threat. I had proved myself, I believed, twice now. But arguing that was also pointless.

  I stepped back, let the door go. “Whatever you want. I require quiet to sleep.”

  He stepped inside, and closed the door behind him, then looked around. “I require pants. Or a towel.”

  I went to the bathroom to retrieve him a towel. However, there was only the one that he had allowed me. “There is no towel,” I said, with no small amount of acid in my words. “You only gave me one, and I intend to use it. Perhaps if you’d been more courteous—”

  “Then pants,” he said. “Sweats, shorts, anything; it doesn’t matter.”

  I looked him over. “I will not share pants with you. And I didn’t bring a suitcase full of clothing—this is not a vacation for me, it is work. Stay as you are.”

  “I don’t fit on your couch as I am,” he complained.

  I shrugged, and dropped my messenger bag on the small bed. “Thus far, it is a very poorly thought-out plan. Perhaps, rethink it.”

  He snarled, but it cut short as he looked away, then shrugged. “Have it your way.”

  His scales withdrew, and his body lost mass as his dragon was subdued, giving way to his human form. Hard muscle bulged and twitched as it receded until he stood, naked and smug, his hands spread.

  Two feelings happened in my mind. I hated both of them. The first was a spark of interest. I could not help this; it came from the stupid, animal portion of my brain, which observed that Nix was an unfairly attractive man in human form, graced with proportions that were obscenely beautiful. Muscle was spread evenly over his body, giving every part of him the kind of shape that Michelangelo would have shattered David over so that he could start again and do better. Much as I tried not to look lower than his firm stomach, I could not have missed the well-groomed patch of dark hair at the root of his soft but still sizable cock, or the enticing trail of hair that led up to the fine dusting of soft black fur that gradually thickened as it reached his chest.

  The second feeling, maybe worse because it came from the rational part of me, which I was wholly responsible for, was momentarily not so offended that he wished to personally watch me to ensure that I did not carry out some nefarious plan while he was looking away.

  “You’re going to get cold,” I told him, and waved my finger at the walls. “No insulation.”

  With that, I shucked my coat, turned away from him, and rushed into the bathroom to relieve myself and take a shower.

  I had nearly used all of the very limited supply of hot water when Gabby’s face pushed through the curtain. She’d seen me naked enough times that it didn’t faze her in the slightest, and I had been seen by her so many times that I was no longer capable of being either surprised or chagrined by it. I hastened to rinse the soap from my skin before the hot water ran out entirely, ignoring her presence.

  “There’s a naked man out there,” she said, as if I did not already know.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “It is seemingly unavoidable.”

  “Are you two gonna...?”

  “No,” I said flatly.

  “Can I watch?” she asked, despite my answer. “I bet he fucks like—”

  “No,” I repeated, and turned to clear my eyes as the water began to cool entirely. “To both of those questions, and to anything else you are about to say. No to all of it.”

  She narrowed her eyes, smiling. “Well, I was about to ask if I should leave you alone for the night so I guess now we know the answer to that.”

  “That is not a question that you would think to ask,” I muttered, and pulled the shower curtain aside and through her before I reached for the towel.

  “Please?” she asked.
<
br />   I patted my face dry, and went to work on my hair. “Please what? No—never mind, I don’t wish to know.”

  “Please fuck him,” she said. “It’s like... unnatural not to, did you see him?”

  I considered banishing her. It was rude to do to an ally spirit, and she would be pissed for a while—but it wasn’t as though I was the only beneficiary in our partnership. She would get over it.

  “I assure you,” I told her, “even if I did wish to involve myself with him—which I emphatically do not—he certainly does not wish to sully himself with me.”

  She clucked her tongue, and drifted back toward the door. “Oh, you think so?”

  “It is painfully clear,” I said. “Leave it, Gabby.”

  She shrugged one shoulder. “Fine. But for the record, dragon boy out there was just poking around your spare clothes, sniffing your boxers. But, you know, what do I know?”

  “What is that supposed to—”

  Now she made herself scarce. I had an impulse to pull her back, but that was as rude as banishing her, and I would need her help in the days to come. Had she been telling the truth? Why would he do such a thing? Surely, she was simply fucking with me. Gabby loved nothing more than to tease me, irritate me, and push the limits of our relationship. I understood that she had been that way in life, as well, before she was viciously murdered.

  I sighed, and rubbed my face, clearing the small mirror long enough to look at myself and wonder what exactly was happening in my brain.

  I was shaken, for a start. Dueling another necromancer was a terrifying thought. It was not my first time. But the last time it had been necessary, I was apprenticed to Master Laryn, and had only assisted him. Still, he had trained me well. I was equal to the task.

  But the stakes in a duel of mages like me didn’t end with death, necessarily. It could keep going well beyond that.

  Moreover, my thoughts on Nix were conflicting. He was a zealot, irrationally angry at all mages, and clearly necromancers in particular. Not that what happened to his people was trivial, but it was not as though the cabals had a choice. It was either force the matter, or become the target of the government. A greater conflict was avoided, one which would have been between all mortal humankind and all paranormals. That war would never have ended. The war that was fought nearly didn’t.

  I, however, had done nothing but help them. And still, he looked at me with that contempt in his eyes.

  “It does not matter,” I told my reflection. “I am not here for acclaim, or to be liked. I am here to do what is right. His opinions are of no consequence, morally or ethically.”

  Master Laryn would have told me as much. So would my nagyima.

  I shook it off, finished drying myself and collected my clothes. My shirt smelled of fear sweat, and my boxers were equally soiled. I had one other pair, at least. I pulled my pants on instead, and hung the towel up to dry, then opened the bathroom door hesitantly, wondering if I would see Nix still standing naked in the house.

  He at least was seated now, one ankle on a knee, so that I would have to crane my head to see anything salacious other than the rest of his naked form. He glanced up at me from my notebook. “Just checking up on your progress so far.”

  I left the bathroom and rounded the wall to my bed, where I stowed my soiled clothing beneath it to clean later. “I hope it is interesting reading. It is not long enough to last you until morning, I am afraid.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said.

  I sighed, and sank onto the bed. I was unused to sleeping in clothes, but it did not seem he intended to grant me the necessary privacy. At least, I had been worse off before. I looked to my small bag, and noted that it was partially unzipped.

  “Who do you keep speaking to?” Nix asked.

  I looked up from the violation of my privacy, scowling. “It is none of your business.”

  “It is if you’re coordinating with your partner,” he said, closing the notebook to rest it on his knee. “If you don’t tell me, I have to assume the worst.”

  With a grunt, I pulled my knee up onto the bed and regarded him for a long moment. There was no real harm in telling him, but it made people uncomfortable to know, and it made them paranoid.

  Come to think of it, though, he deserved both of those things. “I was speaking with Gabriella Ruiz,” I said. “My familiar. She is a discorporate mortal spirit who agreed to assist me in my art, in exchange for helping her to resolve her worldly concerns.”

  His face fell. “Discorporate—she’s a ghost?”

  “Yes,” I said. “In so many poorly chosen words, she is a ghost. One which retains her personality and memories, and is able to operate independent of my direction.”

  “So you enslaved a human soul,” he said, his nostrils twitching with apparent anger.

  I held a finger up. “No. It is not enslavement, not in any sense of the word. If she should one day choose to move on to her place in the underworld, I would not only allow it but deliver her there myself, to the kindest plane of existence I am able to locate. She is an ally. It is her choice to remain with me.”

  “Why would she choose that?” he asked. “To serve for, what, eternity?”

  “I am sure that we will be friends for as long as that should I pass over myself in time,” I said. “But, she doesn’t serve me. She is my friend, because I did something for her that freed her soul to one day find peace.”

  He watched me for a long moment, perhaps trying to decide if he wanted to know the answer to a question he was considering. I thought perhaps that I knew what it was.

  “What did you do for her?” he asked.

  There was more than curiosity in the question. He was serious, and not in an accusatory way. Like he was asking me how I had cured cancer, and had a loved one who suffered from it, he wanted to know because it was important to him, I thought. It took some of the wind out of my righteous sails. “I... I found the man who killed her,” I said. “And I brought him to justice. For her, and for the sixteen other girls he murdered between 1983 and 1997. It’s... like a test, which all necromancers in the cabals are required to complete. Find a soul, help them move on. Offer them the option to become partners. Many accept, many don’t.”

  Gabby faded into view, standing at one end of the couch. Not looking Nix over, but watching me with a proud smile on her face.

  Nix looked around, wary. “Is she here now?”

  I broke my gaze with Gabby. “No,” I said. “But she was, a moment ago, when I was showering. And she saw you sniffing my boxers.”

  That got him. His face paled, and he crossed his legs a little further, his hands going to his lap with my notebook. “I was looking for your phone.”

  “Okay,” I said. I pulled the blankets back and slipped my legs under them. “If you’re going to stay, don’t make noise. I’m a light sleeper.”

  He didn’t answer me, instead glancing around the room. I turned off the lamp, and rolled to my side to try to sleep.

  “Goodnight, Mikky,” Gabby said near my ear. “Sleep easy. I’ll watch over you.”

  “Goodnight, Gabby,” I replied quietly. Likely, Nix heard me. But it didn’t matter now. “I know you will.”

  7

  Nix

  It was a long, long night. Only about six hours, but they seemed to drag on forever. It didn’t make it easier to think there might be a ghost hanging around, watching me. It was dark, at least, though I didn’t know if that made a difference for a ghost.

  Twice I thought I felt something brushing my thigh or shoulder, or imagined that I caught sight of a figure in the dark near where Mikhail slept, but when I shifted my eyes to clear the darkness, there was never anything there.

  I half wondered if Mikhail hadn’t lied to me, spun a tale just to punish me for insisting on staying.

  He hadn’t lied about the temperature. It was nearing summer now, but the nights were still cold. It didn’t bother me very much, my dragon kept me warm, and my ancestors were dragons of the d
epths of the ocean, on my mother’s side. The cold didn’t bother me.

  It did make me feel slightly guilty about having stuck Mikhail in it. But surely a mage who trucked in death wasn’t afraid of a little cold. What was colder than death?

  That I didn’t leave, didn’t go and fetch some clothes while he slept, might have been a testament to my pride more so than my commitment. I didn’t mind being naked—no shifter did, we spend half our lives unclothed. But I had thought it would unsettle him more than it did. When it didn’t seem to, I couldn’t bring myself to cave and go get dressed. It would be admitting defeat.

  So I sat on the small couch, reading and re-reading his notes. Basri, our head of security, had collected information from the victims, but with nothing to actually do with that intelligence, it had sat in a file in his office after each killing. And he hadn’t known exactly what to ask.

  Mikhail had asked seemingly strange questions, arranged into neat boxes, numbered in the margins with a guide in the first pages. Has anyone in your family died mysteriously? Have you or anyone you know murdered someone in cold blood? What was the first smell you recall before the attack began?

  Some of them seemed geared toward discovering if someone in the weyr was somehow responsible for generating a poltergeist. Of course, we knew now that wasn’t the case. Others, though, tracking scents and tastes and emotional states—none of that squared with anything I could come up with to explain them.

  I supposed I could ask him, but...

  It rankled to have someone in our midst who knew so much but said so little. Maybe not for lack of asking, but why not just lay it all out, explain how it worked, give us a chance to come up with a solution as well? It was just like a mage to breeze in, assume everyone else was an idiot, and quietly work their schemes in secret, certain they knew what was best.

  The long quiet gave me ample time to simmer, and come to a boil, and, eventually... for a lot of what was boiling to evaporate, leaving only stale residue behind.