Witch's Shadow (The Hemlock Chronicles Book 1)

by Emma L. Adams

  He grinned. “I like the way you think. I’ll go and borrow the candles. You work your magic with the rota.”

  “Not magic. Just a few years gaining the boss’s trust.” Lloyd had jokingly called me a suck-up and I didn’t have many other close friends because they thought I’d snitch on them to the boss, but being trusted with access to spaces usually reserved for senior necromancers sure came in handy. I just hoped some of that trust would still be left when this was over.

  Ten minutes later, I stood in a circle of candles in an alley, about to indulge in a bit of off-the-grid necromancy.

  Lloyd stood guard at the alley entrance, wearing his necromancer cloak so nobody would question what we were doing here. I’d texted Isabel but received no reply, so I assumed she was busy with her witch contacts. It was before eight in the morning, and most people who didn’t work early hours would be asleep.

  The spirit world unfolded, grey and uniform. With the candles surrounding me, I could spend as long as I liked on the other side without making it permanent. I didn’t plan to spend long there, anyway. Just long enough to find the vampire, ask some pointed questions, and pay him back for nearly sucking the life out of me.

  Come on. I know you’re here somewhere.

  A shimmer caught my eye, a patch of darkness that didn’t belong to a spirit. Gotcha. I moved closer. The outline was shaped like a person, though closer than he’d been the last time I’d seen him in the spirit realm. There he was.

  The shadow split in two.

  Huh?

  I blinked hard, half convinced I was seeing double, but the spirit sight didn’t lie. Two vampires faced me, each a man-shaped shadow. But while the vampires looked almost identical in their faceless shadowed forms, instinct told me that neither was the man who’d attacked me this morning.

  One of the vampires raised a hand and a blast of kinetic energy slammed into me, flinging me backwards through the spirit realm. I flipped over, thankful for the lack of gravity, and raised my hand to attack. Necromantic energy poured from my own hand, smacking him into his neighbour. Wait. How do you kill a vampire? Could they be banished the same way as ghosts, or were they like necromancers? Considering they were still alive, maybe they couldn’t be destroyed unless we found their real bodies. Which might be anywhere.

  “Jas!” Lloyd’s voice cut through the fog of the spirit realm. “Jas, give me a hand here!”

  I blinked, back in my body. In front of me, Lloyd stood with a blade buried in a zombie’s chest. As I watched, it tumbled backwards and fell to the floor. “Bloody thing crept up on me when I was watching the circle.”

  “Lloyd, back up—there’s two vampires, and they might have any number of zombies.”

  He jumped backwards as the zombie lurched to its feet again, despite the gaping hole in his chest. “Oh, bugger. This is one of those vampire vessels?”

  “Yes.” I grabbed the nearest candle, holding it like a shield. “Don’t touch either of us, zombie. Take us to the one controlling you.”

  Lloyd kicked the undead hard in the shin, sending him toppling once again. “Creep.”

  “Hang on. I have an idea.” I reached past Lloyd and grabbed the zombie by the scruff of his neck, calling on all the power I could muster. Prodigy, I was not, but every novice necromancer knew how to pilot a zombie.

  The man kicked and flailed, but I held firm and focused on the thin ray of blue light connecting the zombie to whoever held him in the spirit realm. The candle was an amplifier, but knowing I had twice the power with two spirits in my body was enough of a confidence boost on its own. I opened my mouth to speak the words that would grant me power over the zombie, then recalled last night’s witchcraft lessons. The words weren’t strictly needed at all, if you had enough power.

  Time to see which of us was the better necromancer.

  I grabbed the threads of blue light, and pulled, hard—and bounced off an invisible shield. My hand lost its grip, and if not for Lloyd standing at my side, I’d have fallen flat on my face.

  “What was that?” Lloyd wanted to know.

  I pushed back from the wall, my skin slick with cold sweat. “Ow. I tried to override his zombie control. That’s what I get for jumping the gun.”

  “If he’s possessing it, it must be stronger than when a necromancer raises an undead, Jas.”

  “Yes, but… it’s not total possession,” I said. “He was fighting me in the spirit realm at the same time—both of them were—so this zombie must have been on autopilot. I get the impression he’s controlling a bunch of these things at once. You know if a necromancer does that, it makes them less effective.”

  The zombie lunged. I caught his fist in mine and pushed back, adding in a blast of necromantic power for good measure. “Tell you what, let’s get him in the circle.”

  “You know, that might just work.” Lloyd hit the zombie over the head with the heel of his knife, and I swept his legs out from underneath him. Between us, Lloyd and I kicked him into the candle circle. While Lloyd pinned down the struggling zombie, I moved the last candle back into place, and the lights snapped on again. Candles were more use against ghosts than zombies, but if the person controlling him was anywhere near, the lights would drag them into the circle, too.

  At least, I really hoped so.

  “There.” I brushed sweaty hair from my eyes. “Maybe now our vampire will talk.”

  The zombie remained mute, as did his undead controller.

  Energy burned in my hands as I reached for the threads of light connecting the zombie to its owner. I grabbed the threads of blue magic visible above the zombie’s inert body, and pulled with all my might, willing them to surrender control to me. The spirit realm blurred, grey fog becoming distorted, and this time, the blue lines of energy connecting us were mine.

  Problem: now I had an unwanted pet zombie and no vampires. There were no shadowy figures in the spirit realm at all.

  I blinked back into the waking world. “The bloody vampires ran away. Cowards.”

  “Did you say vampires, as in, plural?”

  “There were two.” My hands curled into fists, and the threads of blue light connecting me to the zombie continued to burn. “And now there’s zero, and I just took control of a zombie without guild permission.”

  “But you beat the guy,” said Lloyd. “It was the same guy, right?”

  “No clue,” I said. “It’s not like I could see him. Unless I used a tracking spell… hmm.”

  “On the zombie? Good idea. Your mentor can make one, right?”

  “I’ll ask her.” After my disastrous attempts at witchcraft last night, not to mention the way Evelyn had nearly woken up the entire guild retaliating against the vampire this morning, I wasn’t about to request help from the spirit.

  “You captured a zombie?” asked Isabel, raising her eyebrow at the crumpled heap in the middle of the candle circle.

  For want of a better plan, I’d brought her here to the alley, since I couldn’t exactly walk a pet zombie all around the city without inviting a few questions. Isabel had picked up on the third call, and had said she’d been neck-deep in a spell since the early hours of the morning.

  “Yep,” I said to her. “I managed to break the guy’s control over her, but the vampires—there were two—disappeared before I could track their location. I thought a spell might work better, but I don’t typically keep tracking spells around.”

  “Scumbags,” said Lloyd. “It’d be great if you could get a glimpse of what the guy actually looks like.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping.” I prodded the zombie with my toe. “I still have control, but there’s no point in expending all my power on this when the vampires aren’t even here.”

  “Right.” Isabel pulled a band out of her pocket. She wore several on her wrists, too, in a rainbow pattern.

  Lloyd raised an eyebrow. “Rubber bands? Those are your spells?”

  “They look harmless,” Isabel responded. “Plus it’s easier to cover a limited are
a this way.” She tossed the band at the zombie, where it expanded to fill the circle I’d trapped him in. Then she walked up close, leaning into the spell. “Wait, do you want to try, Jas? It might kick-start your witch magic.”

  I had my doubts, but I couldn’t keep being afraid of Evelyn’s power. Not when it might well save my life.

  I crouched down, extending my hands into the spell’s circle.

  At once, images snapped through my head—black and white, and upside-down until the world reverted itself. I watched through the zombie’s eyes as it climbed to its feet, facing a person. A youngish man stood with his hands splayed in a pose familiar to a necromancer. So this is our guy.

  The vampire looked more like he owned the voice I’d heard than the old dude he’d used as a vessel. Handsome, I supposed—rough and stubbly with a jawline sharp enough to cut your fingers on. If he hadn’t been a soul-sucking vampire, he might have been my type, but that hardly mattered. I really need to get out more.

  He leaned forwards and spoke to the zombie. Tracking spells only showed images, not sounds, but I read from his lips: “You will obey me.”

  Power sparked to my hands, my skin tingling with it. I yanked my hands out of the spell circle, and it dissolved, leaving only the candles and the inert form of the zombie.

  “Whoa!” said Lloyd. “Isabel, did you see that?”

  “Your eyes changed colour,” Isabel commented. “They went from bluish grey to sort of… black-grey.”

  “Damn.” I held onto the image of the vampire as it threatened to slip away. “I think my witchy powers might have switched on in self-defence, since the vampire was so close. I saw his face.” Grabbing a pen and notepad from my pocket, I started sketching.

  Isabel gave me a bemused look. “Did you see where the zombie came from, in the vision?”

  “Yeah, but I doubt the vampire stuck around.”

  “Not if this guy’s recently dead,” said Lloyd, prodding the zombie with his foot. “Look at him. He’s been dead for hours, at most. If we go around asking people if someone they know died this morning—”

  “We’ll be struck off the rota,” I interjected. “You know the rules. We’re supposed to get guild permission first, and there’s no time. Anyway, what if the vampire killed him? It wouldn’t surprise me.” I held up the notepad, where I’d sketched a rough likeness of the man’s face. “Was this the guy who sold you the poison at the market?”

  “Shit, I don’t know. He kept his hood up, but he sounded… old. And he had an English accent.”

  “Oh. The vampire had a Scottish accent. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t working with the assassins in some way, but I guess he wasn’t the one who actually sold you the poison. Maybe they’re working together.”

  “Let me see that.” Isabel took the notepad from me. “Did you take drawing lessons?”

  “On and off.” My apprenticeship didn’t leave a ton of time for hobbies, but sketching had become as much a habit as a hobby. “Anyway, I know the picture’s not much use if we don’t have anything of his we can track him by, but at least I’d know him if we met in person.”

  “I can’t believe he ran away,” muttered Lloyd. “What are we supposed to do with this zombie, call the guild and pretend we found it by accident?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” I said. “But there must be a way to track the vampire’s actual location. I get the feeling he skipped out on registering as a necromancer, and if that’s the case, he probably didn’t leave a paper trail, either.”

  “If he’s outside the guild, he must be a rogue,” said Lloyd. “Nobody ought to be able to control zombies from that far away. Hell, most of the guild can’t project more than a few metres, except maybe the Lynns and Lady Montgomery.”

  “He’s something else,” I said. “He deliberately picks the recently dead to control so nobody can tell they’re dead. Even a necromancer would have to work hard to pick them out of a crowd.”

  But the other two vampires… I’d been so sure neither of them was the same as the man who’d attacked me this morning. Tracking spells didn’t lie, though. The first vampire I’d spoken to was the person who’d reanimated this zombie.

  Lloyd swore under his breath. “Just what we need.”

  “I’ll use a spell to destroy the body,” said Isabel. “That way you won’t have to drag the guild into this. Did you see whereabouts he was, in the vision?”

  I nodded. “Maybe he left some clues behind. But he probably anticipated us using a tracking spell and set up a trap or three as well.”

  “Good job I have some dispelling charms,” said Isabel, producing a handful of bands from her pocket. “Not quite as fancy as the ones the mages use, but it sounds like this vampire creep needs to get up close and personal with my best work.”

  “She’s not wrong.” Lloyd slid the band she handed him onto his wrist. “What do you think, Jas?”

  I studied the image of the man’s face again. I was sure neither of the two vampires who’d attacked us had been him, but it’d happened way too quickly to be certain. And if not, my fear that the city had a whole underworld of vampires wasn’t so far-fetched after all.

  The real question: why were they so interested in bumping off the heir to the Hemlock Coven? And if they wanted to snack on my extra soul, surely they wouldn’t have tried to poison me.

  Right?

  Five minutes later, we came to the street the tracking spell had shown me. It was mostly empty of humans, probably because of the bitterly cold air and the rumble of thunder that promised an imminent storm. That, or the faint smell of rot that said zombies. None of the stone buildings showed any signs that they might belong to someone with a habit of possessing the dead.

  “Is there any way to draw him out?” asked Lloyd. “Throw a bunch of magic around? Summon a wailing horde of ghosts?”

  “Nah, that’ll just draw the humans’ attention—not to mention the guild.” I kept both eyes out for traps, but despite the three of us carrying the witch equivalent to a battering ram, nothing had materialised yet.

  “Maybe one of us should play dead and see if he tries to possess us,” said Lloyd.

  “Don’t joke about that,” I said. “For all I know, he can possess the living. I never asked.” A faint noise drew my attention, and I checked the spirit realm. No ghostly activity, which meant… “Undead, incoming.”

  Several zombies shuffled out of a nearby alley, faintly glowing. When I checked the spirit realm again, thin rays of blue light connected them to a shadowy form. Shit. Was he possessing the whole lot of them at once?

  I grabbed a candle from my pocket and blasted one of the undead with necromantic energy. If they were true undead, they’d keep walking and flailing until we took them to pieces—but with someone exerting control over all of them at once, the quickest way to deal with the zombies was to take out their owner.

  Isabel threw a spell. There was a flash of light, and several undead reeled backwards, one of them catching on fire.

  “Nice,” I said. “Let me guess—your first time using that spell?”

  “I’ve been waiting for the best moment.” Isabel advanced on the zombies. “Let’s take them down.”

  She flicked spells on both wrists, and flames blasted into two undead, taking them to pieces. Lloyd drew a knife and went on the attack, while I threw a shielding spell up and dove into Death. Threads of blue light indicated a vampire’s presence, or at least a necromancer, but there was no visible sign of him. Shit. Don’t tell me he ran away again.

  “Sorry, guys,” I said, waving my knife. “Either our vampire friend has done a runner, or we’ve run into someone else’s zombie patrol.”

  “Seriously?” Lloyd swore, and a flash of light from Isabel made both of us turn towards her.

  Isabel’s arms and face lit up with glyphs, which appeared to glow beneath the surface of her skin.

  “Whoa,” I said, as the glow faded. “What was that?”

  “That,” she said, “was my coven�
��s defensive magic. And I think something in the spirit world tried to kill me.”

  Vampire. “Crap. He must be hiding close by.”

  A zombie hit out at me before I could go into Death to check. Lloyd got there first, cutting its arm off at the wrist. Isabel threw another explosive, causing a zombie’s head to cave in. I threw another shielding spell up, and I plunged into the spirit realm once more.

  “I know you’re in here.” I glared at the blue threads, then reached for the nearest, the zombie stirring under my command. I pulled on the threads of light, gripping as hard as I could, then looked deep into the zombie’s eyes. “Take me to your master.”

  The zombie turned, slowly, and began to walk. I swayed on the spot, my head pounding like the hangover from hell. Zombies could only obey simple commands and I’d wiped out half my necromantic power, but if it took me to that cowardly bastard of a vampire, it was worth the risk.

  “Whoa,” said Lloyd. “You got him?”

  “Just about.” I cut down another zombie, following its brethren’s path. The connection to the undead tugged on my spirit, threatening to drag me to join it. Ow. Why amateur necromancers raised swarms of zombies for fun was beyond me.

  “Are you sure about this, Jas?” asked Isabel.

  “Nope. But I’ve got him. If he’s hiding outside the spirit realm, he’s about to get a nasty surprise.” I gripped Isabel’s explosive spell in my hand, ready to use it.

  With Lloyd and Isabel at my heels, I followed the zombie’s path down an alley that had the definite stench of the dead about it.

  “Are you absolutely certain it’s him?” asked Lloyd.

  I groaned, my head throbbing. “I wouldn’t be in this much pain if it wasn’t.”

  Darkness filled the alley, complete with the stench of rot. I hadn’t expected somewhere teeming with zombies to smell like a flower shop, but the pungent aroma of dead bodies still made me gag. Pulling my cloak up over my mouth, I hissed to the others, “Okay. There’s something really nasty in here. Last chance to back out.”

  “Lady Harper will kill me if I lose the Hemlock heir,” Isabel added. “Just let me know where to throw the explosive.”