by D. D. Miers
“Enough,” he hissed, his power stretching out around him, reaching out like a fog. “You appear to have a really nice, comfortable life here. I can end that in an instant. I could wake every corpse in this building.”
My heart skipped a beat, remembering I’d sent Mr. Gould down to the prep room. If the bodies in the freezers started rising, he’d be right there to see it and possibly get hurt.
“You’d be exposed, too,” I said, plotting a plausible explanation as we continued talking.
“What do I care?” he said with a snort. “I’m nobody. I don’t have anything to lose. I can just disappear. But you’ve got a family, a job, a nice house. What are you going to do when your neighbors find out you can raise the dead?”
I threw my own powers out, quick and messy, shielding the corpses downstairs.
“What do you want?” I demanded.
“Work with me,” he said. His powers bore down on mine, testing for weaknesses. “You have no idea what you’re doing. I can help you.”
There was something oddly genuine about his offer.
Careful, Vexa. Don’t go acting all kindred spirits and shit for the misunderstood nercromancer.
“Help me do what?” I shook as I tried to hold him back. I could tell he wasn’t even really trying yet, but I was almost at my limit. “What are you after?”
“I want to use the candle for something worthwhile,” he said, and his energy grew heavier, crushing my inexperienced attempts to block him. “Something that matters.”
Sweat formed on my brow, and I scrambled for some way to throw him off.
“Like your family?”
He flinched, and I took the chance to push back against his magic, driving him farther away from the corpses downstairs. I reached into my bag filled with necro books and watched his eyes widen as he recognized the object in my hands. Between the pages, I pulled out the photo of the happy family.
“This is you, isn’t it?” I said. “Beautiful family, nice house, a dog. And now you’re homeless and alone. What happened?”
“That’s none of your business,” he snarled. “Give that back, now!”
“So, what, you’re trying to bring them back?” I pushed, trying to catch him off guard again before he put his full force into his powers again. “You know that’s not how it works! Nobody comes back!”
“Liar!” he shouted, and I fell to my knees with a cry as his powers overwhelmed me, seizing control of the bodies downstairs. “No, it’s worse than that. You don’t even know what the candle is, do you?”
“I know I’m never going to let a lunatic like you keep it!” I said, bracing myself on the shoulder of the dog.
As I buried my fingers in its fur, its power rushed into me, replenishing the reserves I’d bled out the night before. I’d poured so much energy into the dog last night and when I’d first resurrected it, he had more than enough to spare. He overflowed with it. I channeled it through myself and directly into the corpses downstairs. The blue flame of the candle within me flared, my power swelling like a cresting wave, washing away the other necromancer’s grip like footprints from the shore. As I took control, commanding the bodies to lie motionless, I saw the other necromancer’s expression turn to horror, fixed on a point behind my right shoulder. I sensed someone standing there, a steady and constant presence.
“You’re one of them!” the other necromancer said, somewhere between anger and fear. “Tzarnavaras!”
“Damn right I am,” I said. “And that candle is mine! Give! It! Back!”
Befuddlement crossed the man’s face and my will flickered for a moment.
“You already have it,” he said. “That’s why I trashed your apartment hunting for it! That’s why I’m here!”
“I thought you had it,” I said, my powers winding down as confusion left me unsure where to direct them. “You stole it from me during the car accident!”
“What car accident?” he said, and I didn’t doubt his honesty.
“I’m an idiot,” I whispered to myself.
There had been a third player involved in this all along. One who was aiming to pit us against each other, but to what end?
As if on cue, a fierce wind threw open the door behind me. Through it, I saw the front doors of the funeral home had been thrown open as well. As a stranger stepped through, dread settled over me.
He was not very tall, his stature not particularly imposing. He wore a plain black suit, the kind I saw here every day. His long, blond hair, braided to his waist, was at first glance his only striking feature. And yet the unearthly pallor of his skin, the eerie emptiness of his black eyes, drew the gaze and held it fixated like a sparrow before a cobra. I recognized the face at once, though in the time it took me to place where I’d seen it before, he had already crossed the distance between us to stand over me.
"Aethon," I whispered.
The portrait had been a good likeness. And he looked exactly the same as he had when it was painted thousands of years ago. He stood in the shadow of the doorway, just beyond the light of the windows. For a moment, I couldn't sense his power until I realized it was too big to perceive all at once. It surrounded us like air.
"Descendant," Aethon said.
I half expected his voice to echo as though from deep underground, but it sounded quite calm and ordinary. The wind had died down. He stood before me, by all normal senses just a man, albeit a very pale one with hypnotic eyes, while his power hung heavy over all of us, vast beyond measure. He stared at me with bottomless eyes, and I felt like child, helpless, foolish, in the clutches of something I couldn't begin to understand.
"You have made a mistake."
Yeah, no freaking kidding partner.
"What did I do?" I asked, embarrassed by the hesitant whisper of my own voice.
Fear didn't begin to describe what I endured under that stare. It was a paralysis so total it registered as a buzzing numbness. An utter certainty that any attempt to fight or flee would not just fail but be inconsequential. I was an ant in the path of a giant, waiting for the heel to come down.
"The candle," Aethon said, his eyes never leaving mine, intense as a black hole. "What should have always been mine, stolen, hidden for hundreds of years. And when it finally emerges again after all this time, just as I am on my way to reclaim it, you make the mistake of binding your energy to it, accepting the covenant that should have been mine.” The irises of his eyes pulsed with angry light. “I claim my candle again, only to find its powers bound to another and thus useless to me. You can see why I would be upset."
I nodded mutely, too afraid to do more.
"But you will be given an opportunity to correct your mistake," he said, and with a small gesture the candle appeared in his hand, flaring within its silver cage, the flame flickering in time with my erratic heartbeat. "Sever your connection, break the covenant, and all will be forgiven."
I stared at the candle and, for a moment, if I could have done it, I would have without even thinking.
"I don't know how," I said, bracing for him to lash out at me. But he just nodded in understanding and reached for me.
"Then you will come with me," he said. "And I will find a way to separate you from the candle."
The chill of his cold hand touched my skin although he was an inch away. Before he could connect, someone else grabbed me by the back of my dress and yanked me backward.
The other necromancer, clearly unsettled by Atheon’s presence but ferocious in his determination, held on to me tightly.
"What are you doing?" I asked, trying to pull away from him.
"If you're the key to using the candle," he said, continuing to stare at Aethon, "then you're coming with me."
My anger at his presumption cut through my fear.
"Like hell I am," I said, and jammed the heel of my nice work pumps into the top of his foot hard enough to make him shout and release me. "I'm not handing over the candle to either of you! You've both tried to murder me!"
"Unfo
rtunate," Aethon said without emotion. He hadn't taken his eyes off me since he entered the room. He didn't seem to even notice the other necromancer was there. "It would be wiser to cooperate. Killing you would be inconvenient. Making you wish you were dead, on the other hand, would be all too easy."
He raised a hand and sudden, burning pain flared in the fingers of my right hand, traveling up my wrist. I grabbed at them, an agonized animal sound leaving me, as I watched my fingers turn black and wither. The desiccation spread up my arm, carrying with it horrific pain as my arm died before my eyes.
"Stop!" I begged, unable to think of anything but the pain clawing at my own withered skin. "Stop, stop!"
"Hey!"
A chair collided with Aethon's head. It shattered into matchsticks without the man moving an inch. It did succeed in at last making him take his eyes from me to acknowledge the other man in the room.
"She's mine!" the other necromancer snarled, as though unaware he was a mouse picking a fight with a lion. "She and the candle both!"
As soon as Aethon's attention was off me, the pain and intense, paralyzing fear faded. My arm was tender and hurt more than anything I'd ever experienced, but I could think again, and I wasn't frozen with terror.
I watched as the other necromancer raised his arms and the walls trembled as every dead insect that had ever wasted into nothing in the shadows and crevices of this building swarmed into the room, flying at Aethon like an angry black cloud. Aethon gestured and half the swarm fell dead, but the rest flew at his face, biting and stinging. He didn't seem to react at all.
Imitating the flow of the other necromancer's powers, I reached for any other death in the building, bringing a swarm of lizards and sparrows and one desiccated raccoon that took out a ceiling tile as it broke through into the room, chattering as rabidly as it had when it was alive.
Aethon stood there, slack, unreactive, as the insects crawled over him, the sparrows darting at his eyes, the raccoon clawing and gnawing at his ankles. They did damage, leaving bites and scratches. The raccoon tore into him deep enough to expose bone. But there was no blood. And if there was pain, Aethon didn’t care. He only bothered to kill them when they got too close to his eyes, at which point they would just fall dead. Otherwise, he tolerated their attacks as though they were a minor annoyance, the tantrums of children.
The other necromancer, by contrast, threw all he had into this. I watched, a little awed, as he guided the swarm in rapid, coordinated attacks. Half the swarm dived in while the other circled to flank Aethon. Then just as quickly, they flew out of range and started again. Aethon just didn’t seem to care. Nothing had any kind of impact. The other necromancer noticed this and while Aethon’s vision was obscured by the swarm, he charged Aethon, swinging a chair.
It shattered into splinters just as the first one had, but the impact was enough to make Aethon’s head jerk to the side. The other necromancer, still gripping two splintered chair legs, took advantage of the opening, swinging the improvised stakes at Aethon’s throat. Aethon moved with shocking speed, considering how subdued he’d been so far. He dodged the strike, caught one of the chair legs and knocked the other spinning out of the necromancer's hand, skidding to my feet. I snatched it up as Aethon buried a fist in the other necromancer's stomach, sending him sprawling with the wind knocked out of him.
"This is foolish," Aethon said, and I was inclined to agree with him. "It is clear no one has ever properly trained either of you. You will not defeat me."
He stalked closer to me slowly, like he had all the time in the world. Judging by the fact he was alive even though he should have died with the Roman Empire, maybe he did.
I clutched the table leg with my good hand and summoned the remaining undead insects to stand between me and Aethon. I'd kept the dog away from the fight so far, seeing how easily Aethon returned the other creatures to death, but now I couldn't stop him from crouching between me and Aethon, growling in warning. The raccoon was stubbornly attached to Aethon's leg, tearing muscle away from bone. A human would not have been able to walk on that leg. I'm not sure the necessary tendons were even connected anymore. But it was clear that whatever Aethon was, he was not human, and his ability to move was no longer dependent on such things.
"Yeah, that's probably true," I said, backing slowly away. "But first I want to know one thing."
"What's that?" Aethon asked, almost genial.
"Have you ever fought a werewolf?"
I appreciated the confusion on Aethon's face for about a half a second before Ethan collided with him.
Fully transformed and snarling like something out of a horror movie, he drove Aethon to the ground and pinned him there with one massive paw.
"Got your text," he said, glancing at me, his tail wagging. "Who's this guy? And what is he? He doesn't smell right."
Before I could answer, I felt Aethon's power building, boiling like storm clouds on the horizon. I saw him raise a hand wreathed in dark energy so thick even a normal person would have seen it.
"Look out!" I shouted, and Ethan leapt clear just as Aethon lashed out, his fingertips just stirring Ethan's fur.
But that was all it took apparently. Ethan turned, scratching and biting at his own coat, a high-pitched wounded dog whine leaving him. I watched, horrified, as the same black rot that had withered my hand spread across his side.
"You are beginning to test my patience," Aethon said, rising to his feet. "End this now and I might forgive you. Some day."
Ethan, ignoring the spreading blackness growing over his shoulder and side, threw himself at Aethon teeth first. His pain and rage drowned out everything sane in him.
Aethon didn't bother to try and stop Ethan. He embraced the wolf as it tore his throat out, and from his hands more of the black rot spread.
"Ethan!" Fear gripped me tightly. Aethon was killing him.
Ethan stayed on the attack as long as he could, but as the black started to climb over his face he fell back, whining, stumbling away a few steps and finally collapsed.
I ran to him, my hands on his heaving sides as his fur fell out and the gray skin beneath darkened and withered. He panted, eyes rolling, pain and fear streaming off of him in waves.
"Ethan, Ethan stay with me!" I begged. He didn't answer, too far gone to think of anything but pain.
Aethon watched us, deadly hands hanging loose at his side, throat open and bloodless though I saw his trachea and arteries, exposed and ragged. He waited patiently for Ethan to die.
"Stop it!" I pleaded. "Save him, please! I'll do whatever you want!"
"It's too late for that, I'm afraid," Aethon replied dispassionately. "If you had surrendered earlier, it might not have come to this. A lesson, my descendant. Do not risk anything you are not willing to lose."
I ignored him, returning my attention to Ethan.
"Just hang on," I told him, tears gathering in my eyes. "I'm going to fix this. You're going to be okay. Just hang on!"
I closed my eyes, reaching out with my powers for . . . I didn't know what.
I'm a necromancer.
Necromancy isn't really known for fixing things. We have a pretty narrow range of specialty. We bring back dead things and that's about it. But Aethon had apparently figured out how to just kill individual cells. Maybe I could figure out how to undo it.
I searched Ethan with my powers, rummaging for something, anything I could do. I recognized him, his energy, and it was getting weaker every minute. The dark, beating heart of his curse, entwined with every inch of him. I almost lost myself in it, a dense knot of grief and shame and rage, turning around like a prayer wheel, like an uroboros feeding on itself, threatening to pull me into its endless cycle of self-sustaining hate. I'd never seen a curse before, but this was a nasty one.
I wrenched my attention away from it, searching for Aethon's energy. I was used to energy that felt like a kind of fire. Even the other necromancer had burning hot and angry energy. But Aethon's was more like smoke, thick and oppressive, hang
ing heavy all around me, difficult to see, harder to catch. But it was there, in Ethan, winding its way through his life energy like mist through the roots of the trees.
I wanted to grab it, to drag it out of him, so badly that my hands clenched in his fur. But it just slipped through my metaphorical fingers. I couldn't get a grip on it. There had to be a way!
Desperate, I remembered Aunt Persephona's lesson earlier on putting down the bodies I'd accidentally raised with the candle. That was about washing away unwanted energy, right? Then this was the same.
I visualized cleansing summer rains and rushing waterfalls and the patient through washing and care of the dead. I imagined scrubbing the ugly smoke away, rinsing it down the drain. I experienced a thrill of success as it started working, Aethon's energy retreating. I opened my eyes and saw the black, withered skin slowly returning to normal.
"Interesting," Aethon said quietly.
But I wasn't going fast enough. Ethan continued to fade. And the energy resisted me. It wasn't like the inert will I poured into the dead bodies I resurrected. It was alive and hungry and refused to just dissolve. It wanted to be.
Fine, I thought, then be in me. I opened myself up and turned up the metaphorical garden hose, washing Aethon's energy away from Ethan, letting it flow into me instead. It didn't feel that different than absorbing the energy from the dog earlier. I'd expected it to hurt, to rot me, too, but it was just power, filling me up the way the candle had, making me stronger. I saw the last of it pass out of Ethan, but I had room for more. I'd bled myself dry last night fighting the mountain lion. I was like a dry sponge, soaking up every drop of power I could get. I followed the energy back to its source.
I raised my head and saw Aethon's eyes widen as I pulled in his energy, drawing it out of him like a black hole. His supply showed every sign of being nearly infinite, but I was strangely confident I could take it. All of it. I'd leave him a husk. A wind rose around me, lifting my hair off my shoulders, hate in my eyes as I took in Aethon's power. The last of the pain receded from my right hand. I'd pulled in the energy he'd used to wither it, restoring it to health. Aethon, looking more like a walking corpse than those I'd raised the day before yesterday, met my stare with mild curiosity.
