by Harry Nix
“Woe to the conquered,” Nia said and stuck out her tongue.
“I’ll vae victis you,” April said.
“Do you want any help down there?” Alex called out.
“Nope!” three voices chimed back.
He sighed and leaned back on the headstone as the three girls bickered and worked on getting the coffin open.
Only a week ago they’d fought off a Blood Golem and multiple weredogs. After defeating them, Alex had taken his two mates, Juno and Nia, to bed to celebrate life after such a close call with death. April had taken the opportunity to vanish, leaving a cryptic note behind that she was going to seek aid. She’d only returned today, late in the evening, refusing to say where she’d been but that they needed to go grave robbing immediately in one of Baxter’s many cemeteries.
It wasn’t the best timing – Alex had been practicing magic all day long and was near exhausted. He was along tonight for protection but banned from participating so he could get his strength back. Nia had told him to sit down, be quiet, and eat his bag of salt and vinegar potato chips while they worked. He was happy to oblige – although the crinkling of the plastic bag sounded abnormally loud in the cemetery at two in the morning.
He took a chip from the bag and crunched it.
“Could you eat louder up there? I want to make sure I definitely can’t hear anyone sneaking up on us,” Juno called out.
He grinned as he grabbed out a handful and crunched them extra loud.
He heard Juno sigh.
“Nia, can you vae victis Alex?”
“I can coitus more ferarum if you like.”
“I know what half of that means, and somehow I think that’ll be louder than that bag of chips you gave him.”
Alex leaned over to look down into the grave. It was a cool night, but the three girls had worked up a sweat digging. Nia had stripped down to a tank top that showed off her luscious form. Juno was wearing tight camo pants and a black wifebeater and had dirt smeared all over her.
Then there was April.
She was halfway between Juno and Nia in height and the curviest of the three. The first time Alex had seen her, she’d been wearing overalls, and was naked underneath.
She was in overalls again, although wearing a t-shirt under them, perhaps in deference to the fact they were now in civilization.
Alex looked down at April and caught her looking up at him. A week ago they’d had a moment, coming face to face while Alex had Nia and Juno over his shoulders.
Some deep part of him wanted her. Wanted her to be his entirely, to be part of his pack, wanted her body...
It seemed the other two were fully aware also and onboard, both Nia and Juno making a few comments on the drive back to push conversations in that direction.
Although Alex was gradually getting used to being a werewolf, there were times when there was still a division inside him, a split between his human and wolf sides. The wolf was happy to have a pack, delighted to have two mates and eager to add another. The human sometimes freaked out, swearing that this alternate reality was false somehow, a soap bubble soon to burst.
If Alex was honest with himself he had to admit the wolf was winning the argument. April’s curves were certainly helping, too.
Locking eyes with April, he gave a wolfish grin.
“You three snacks better get this done quick because this food is nearly finished and then I’m going to be hungry for something else. There could be some coitus more... um... fur... anthem.”
“Sex in the manner of furry rock music?” Nia asked.
Alex shrugged and crunched some more chips. “Sounds good to me,” he said through a mouthful.
“Damn, has this been welded shut?” April complained.
“What about giants?” Alex asked. Although he still felt like he was a lost traveler on a new continent, he was determined to fix that as fast as possible, and so he was using every opportunity to squeeze knowledge from the girls.
“Real, but extinct,” Nia grunted, chipping away at a weld.
“I think around the civil war they went out,” April added.
“The civil war killed them? Were they in the North or South? Or was it just at the same time?”
“Not that civil war and it was a coincidence. Giants couldn’t cross-breed or hybridize so it was the same old story – loss of habitat, encroachment on their traditional lands, mass death and then the stragglers can’t find each other,” April said.
Alex chewed a handful of chips, his mind spinning somewhat. Not that civil war... man, it opened up another bottomless box of questions. He decided to put it aside for now and stick to mythological creatures who were turning out to be anything but.
“What about fairies?” Alex asked.
“Real, thriving. Integrated well into normal society,” Juno said.
“So they’re not tiny like Tinkerbell?”
“They can be. Some of them can even fly. Most have minor magic powers. Because they pass for human so well, they’re doing just fine,” Juno said.
“Mermaids?”
The three girls all stopped what they were doing.
“Very real, extremely hot,” April said.
Nia was fanning herself. Alex wasn’t entirely sure if she was just putting it on.
“They’re cousins to sirens and every single one is a work of art,” Juno said.
“Remember that time we all went to Cancun?” Nia asked.
“You had so many love bites,” April said.
“Hey, I’m sitting right here!” Alex said.
“Oh shush, I’m sure you had girlfriends before us,” Juno said, leaning down to inspect the weld.
“Sure... just not mermaids,” Alex said.
“Well, we can rectify that if you like. It will mean installing a pool wherever we end up living though,” Nia said.
“Apart from incredible hotness they don’t have many other magical powers though, so there is that to consider,” Juno said.
April turned to the two of them. “So what, you’re trying to build some superhero team-up pack here?”
Juno shrugged and tested her shovel against a loose bit of weld.
“The strength of the wolf is in the pack,” she said.
“Maybe you should see if Wonder Woman is available then. I hear the Avengers broke up recently,” April said with a healthy dose of sarcasm.
“She’s not in the Avengers,” Juno said.
“Yeah, totally different group of superheroes,” Nia added.
“Well, that other one then, Captain Marvel or whatever,” April said.
“You afraid your application won’t get accepted?” Juno asked with a sly look.
That shut her up. Although it was dark, Alex saw the April blush. She immediately tried to cover it up by bashing away at the weld holding the coffin shut.
“Okay, let’s get this happening,” Juno said after a moment.
With much struggling, swearing and Latin phrases, they finally got the coffin open.
Alex expected bones or maybe a desiccated corpse but the body inside was... perfect. It was a woman, mid-twenties with blonde hair. She had a red blush to her cheeks that matched her red lips. If he didn’t know she was a corpse, he would have sworn she was just sleeping. His eyes went down from her lips to her neck and the necklace she wore. It was chunky gold with a brilliant green emerald set in an amulet.
It was also crawling with spells.
“Before I take this – see anything dangerous Alex?” Juno asked.
Alex had cast Analyze and knew Juno had done the same. He was tired from working magic all day and so the spell took more out of him than he had expected. He let out a huge yawn as it went to work on the necklace, quickly returning a screen full of data and question marks.
“Are you getting question marks Juno?” Alex asked.
“Yup, damn,” the little witch said.
Alex saw a flash of screen above her head as she compressed Analyze on to itself, making it far stronger i
n an attempt to decipher the spells. He couldn’t see the result but he guessed it when Juno stamped her foot and swore.
“That’s six times strength and still question marks, argh!”
She looked up at him, giving him an excellent view of her cleavage.
“How’s your recovery? Can you beat six times?”
Alex waved up a screen, casting Know Thyself as he did. His mana was still low and only slowly regenerating. It seemed physical and mental exhaustion affected the rate. There was no way he could cast a more powerful Analyze spell than Juno right now.
“I’m going to need some sleep to be more useful,” he said.
“I’m only getting question marks, too. I think we have to risk it,” April said.
“Well, I didn’t come down here to listen to Latin and some wolf eating the loudest bag of chips in the world to return home empty-handed,” Juno said.
With that she reached down and unclasped the necklace. Everyone held their breath for a moment but then nothing happened. Juno stuffed the necklace in her pocket and then looked down at the corpse.
“My dead darling dearest Marisol, we thank you for jewelry and for not being a gross maggot infested body that smells worse than Nia’s cooking.”
“Hey! There’s nothing wrong with my cooking!”
“Quiet!” Juno suddenly said and clasped Nia’s arm. Alex felt goosebumps rising on the back of his neck. Then the magic in the area pulled, a great surge, and he, Juno and April shivered.
“What the hell was that?” he asked Juno.
She didn’t get to answer because right then dead darling dearest Marisol opened her eyes and screamed like a banshee – a scream matched by others throughout the graveyard.
“Necromancers!” Juno yelled as the three girls scrambled out of the grave.
Alex dropped his chips and shifted into this hybrid form. With the time out at April’s his shifter charm had now exhausted itself and so he obliterated his clothes.
“Damn, I liked that shirt,” he said as it fell to the ground in pieces.
His hearing immediately improved and he grimaced. More than a few dead were screaming, drawn back into life by the unseen necromancers.
“Do we fight or run?” he asked.
Nia had already shifted and had her claws out. She was watching Marisol attempting to pull herself out of her coffin.
“Alex, this is a graveyard. It’s pretty much the worse place on Earth to fight a necromancer. We should run!” Juno said.
Red sparks were flickering at her fingertips, waiting for her to cast a spell.
Alex’s wolf was grumbly about it – it would prefer to fight – but it wasn’t the one in control right now. Although there were four of them, Alex could see it was a bad move to fight against mages who used the dead in a place where they were sometimes buried six levels deep per grave.
Besides that, he was low on mana and had no idea how strong the dead – or the mages controlling them – were.
“Back to Boris then,” he said.
There was a thudding sound from inside a row of mausoleums that sat alongside the path to the exit where Boris was parked. A moment later it was followed by a loud crashing of stone tomb lids falling to the ground.
“Run!” April yelled.
They bolted but they were too slow to avoid the newly awakened dead that came lunging out of the mausoleums.
A man in a suit rushed out from the dark. His eyes were glowing bright green and he was growling, a low guttural moan. Alex swiped and tore out this throat... normally a killing blow but his enemy was already dead and so it did nothing.
The corpse swung at him and connected, nearly knocking him over. Alex felt his head ring like a bell. Damn it was strong!
“You gotta dismember,” Juno yelled. She’d cast a spell that gave her a fiery whip in each hand. She was using them to devastating effect on nearby corpses, slicing legs off. Nia was aiming low too and April had summoned vines with sharp talons that were ripping feet apart.
Alex shook off the ringing and swiped again, this time ducking down and taking its leg off at the knee. The corpse swung at him, lost its balance and toppled over.
There were more crashes as stone tomb lids hit the ground. They had to keep moving or soon they’d be overwhelmed.
Despite his tiredness, Alex roared and slashed like a madman, aiming for knees. The corpses were unnaturally strong. An old woman who must have been only recently deceased punched him in the face and Alex felt bones crack and some of his teeth snap off.
He quickly spat out blood and teeth, took out both her legs and then moved to the final corpse that was struggling against April’s vines.
Within a moment it was down and they kept moving. The man in the suit had managed to get back up and was attempting to hop in pursuit but kept falling.
“Can we just kill the mages?” Alex gasped, his heart jackhammering as they ran.
“Too many,” Juno yelled back.
“I don’t know where they are,” April said, looking around.
Alex looked across the cemetery, hoping to catch a glimpse of their true attackers but there was only row after row of headstones, statues and bunches of flowers scattered about. On the far side he spotted more dead lurching out of their mausoleums, green eyes glowing like deep-sea jellies.
The four of them ran through the dark for the exit.
Alex was nearly at Boris when he realized something was seriously wrong with him. His balance was suddenly off and a wave of vertigo washed over him. Boris was nearby but the path was suddenly like the deck of a ship in rough seas. Alex toppled, crashing into the ground and losing another tooth when he failed to get his hands up in time.
He rolled over on to his back but it was no better – the sky itself was heaving. He rolled over again and tried to get up but every direction seemed wrong. He lunged towards Boris where Nia had the door open but missed completely, smashing his face into the rear wheel.
“Can’t get my balance,” he called out, squeezing his eyes closed.
“We gotcha,” Juno said, the witch grabbing one arm. He felt April on the other side, the two of them straining as they hauled him into Boris, Nia helping at the end by literally grabbing the scruff of his neck like a mother cat.
Alex forced his eyes open and tried to focus on his spell screen. Know Thyself was still running. His injuries were listed – fractured nose, broken teeth, minor blood loss – and under Active Spells there was a new section he’d never seen before: External Spells. It listed one spell, a row of four question marks.
“Don’t puke in my car dude,” Juno said as Boris roared to life and they raced off into the darkness.
Alex tried to cast Analyze on the question marks but his screen kept hopping around. Waves of vertigo washed over him, each one threatening to bring up his lunch.
“Hold still,” April said and placed a cool hand on his forehead.
He heard an orchestral score as she cast a spell and then smelt mint as a blissful cold emanated from her hand, quickly spreading through his body.
It didn’t entirely wipe about the mysterious spell that had afflicted him but rather soothed it enough that Alex could keep his eyes open without wanting to vomit everywhere.
He eventually managed to sit up, April moving her hand to his arm to keep connection.
“What the hell is that spell?” Alex said. His mouth still tasted of blood and his gums were aching as his broken teeth slowly healed.
“There are lots of variations but basically it’s Vertigo. We definitely need to get some spell protection rings but they cost a lot of money,” Juno said, sliding Boris around a corner like she was in a rally car.
Alex saw the question marks change, the spell now titled Vertigo.
“Who are you?” April asked suddenly.
Alex looked at her and saw her face was grim.
“I’m no one. Alex. Werewolf Mage. Former game designer. Target of every crazy mage on the planet apparently. I don’t know why they�
�re after me.”
Alex suddenly shivered as the cold from April’s hand deepened. The Vertigo spell on him vanished and April quickly removed her hand.
“Blood Golem and weredogs. Now necromancers. Assassins sent by Corvus. Who are you? Who made you?” April said.
“That’s what I said!” Juno said, throwing her hands up in the air.
Alex sighed and sat back, feeling his skin tingle. The aftereffects of April’s spell made him feel like he’d taken a bath in minty mouthwash.
“I don’t know who my parents were,” he said, skimming over his list of injuries. His mana was dropping as his body healed. With a grunt he began pulling on the magic around them, managing to halt the decrease for the time being.
“Juno, give me the amulet,” April said, tapping the witch on the shoulder.
She passed it back and April began examining it, the single emerald glimmering.
“Can you tell us what that is now and why we had to get it?” Nia asked.
April shook her head and then slipped it into her pocket.
“I was told only that it would help us. But I have no idea how.”
“Who told you that?” Alex asked but April didn’t answer, staring out at the night as they drove to Juno’s home.
2
Alex awoke near the back fence with April pressing hard on his chest with her two hands. Then she suddenly slapped him.
“Alex, wake up!”
Alex brought up his hands to ward her off, his head still a confusing mixture of dreams. He felt a tight pressure around his feet and ankles and when he looked down saw thick tendrils had bound him to the ground. He also saw that he was standing there completely stark naked.
“Okay, I'm awake,” he said as April raised a hand to smack him in the face again.
“Yeah, you said that a minute ago. What's five times sex?”
“It's a million and one. I promise you I'm actually awake now. Can you let my feet go?”
“Not until you answer my math question.”
Alex shook the sleep away and looked at April properly. She was wearing one of his t-shirts, oversized on her, and not much else. Around her neck was the stolen necklace.
Standing so close to her, Alex could smell her delicious scent. It was like the wet earth after rain and a mixture of things growing and thriving. She had a pink blush to her cheeks, perhaps from the exertion of trying to stop him doing whatever it was he was going to do in his sleep.
