Revenant

by Catrina Burgess

  Gage nodded his head. “Yes, my dear, you have been a model of cooperation. But I think that if the two of us have a chance to put our heads together, we might be able to come up with a solution. There has to be a spell or some magic we can find that will stop the rate of decay. I have access to a library full of books that aren’t readily available to the general public.”

  “Forbidden black magic,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “Forgotten magic,” he corrected me. “Not everything from the past is bad. In the past, the death dealers were more powerful than any of the mage clans. The spells they did—the great rituals—enabled them to have unimaginable strength.”

  “At what cost?” I whispered.

  “Everything comes at a cost. You should know that better than most. We should be on the same team, Colina. I want—no, I need your help. And in return, I won’t hurt your friends. You can stay here and join our little family. Where else do you have to go? The death dealers are hunting you. If they get their hands on you, what do you think they’ll do? It’s not safe out there for you. But if you are under my protection, I won’t let any harm come to you or your friends.”

  “I want to see them. And not just for a few seconds. I want to be with them.”

  “Of course, of course,” he answered, waving a hand flippantly. “Whatever you like. Sonja will take you someplace you can clean up and then we will gather your friends together. You can all come to tonight’s feast. We have all the luxuries here. We have a fantastic staff that is cooking up a fabulous meal. We can all break bread together. I’m not your enemy. If you give me a chance, I will prove to you that I’m your savior. Sonja, show our guest to a proper room.”

  Kindness, consideration—was this a new form of torture? Gage was changing his tactics and the very thought unnerved me.

  Caleb, my eternal bodyguard, was there beside me to manhandle me again. Every chance he got he made a grab for me, his grip always too tight. I had bruises on my arm after each encounter with him. I knew he took pleasure in causing me pain. He put his hand on my arm and I shook it off. A wicked grin spread across his face and the anger returned to his eyes. Caleb wants to hurt me. How long did I have before that anger in his eyes erupted into more than just a few bruises? A fleeting thought entered my mind.

  How long would Gage’s protection keep me safe? The only out was to make Gage think I was playing along. I needed to convince him I was cooperating and going along with his plan. If Gage let his guard down, if he learned to trust me…we might all have a chance of getting out of here in one piece.

  Chapter 2

  I followed Caleb and Sonja out of the cavern and into another set of tunnels that sloped uphill. I had no idea where we were going. Gage promised better living conditions, but was it all a ruse? Would I find myself in another field of dead bodies? I watched them walking in front of me, and for a brief moment I wondered if I could take Caleb. I brought fire forth once—I used it to turn banshees into ash. What would happen if I used it on a person? Could I bring the flames roaring out from my mind and consume Caleb? Once he was dead, maybe I could make my way to Luke’s side. The two of us could overpower Jacob. We could make a run for it and be free. And if it doesn’t work? a small voice inside me whispered. Was I willing to bet Luke’s life again on a risky, half-baked plan?

  If we were going to get out of here, I had to think it through. I had to find a way that would give us the best odds of getting out. Gage was not the type of man to make idle threats. When I displeased him, Luke suffered. I knew if I did anything truly foolhardy, he would see Luke die to make me pay—I was sure of it. He needed me to create his zombie army, but that only meant he needed me alive. Luke, Dean, Wendy…he could do away with them at anytime. The only reason he hadn’t so far was because he wanted my cooperation.

  I can’t be consumed by fear and hopelessness. I have to be smart. I have to prepare like I did before I went into the asylum. It took me months of planning to get into that place—and out of it.

  As we walked, we passed shambling zombies moving up and down the passages. Normally I averted my eyes when I passed them. The guilt I felt about raising the dead was something I might never be able to wash away. But this time I took a long look, inspecting each one. Gage was right—they weren’t holding up well. It appeared that he’d decided to get what use he could out of them as slave labor. They carried heavy loads, used like pack mules and grunt labor. If I passed too close, the stench of death hit me with such sudden intensity that I gagged desperately, swallowing bile and horror with the same intense distaste.

  I learned quickly to keep my eyes down, staying well clear of the shuffling feet I passed. None of them tried to speak to me as Wanda once had, but I didn’t know if it was a spell that silenced them, or if they were as afraid of our captors as I was. That thought chilled my blood. But I wondered, Why would they be afraid of Gage?

  How could he, or anyone else, hurt or even intimidate a zombie? If the bodies were damaged enough, I was willing to bet that the souls would be free again. They didn’t seem to feel any pain. It seemed to me that I was the only one who could hurt them. After all, I’d trapped them in prisons of rotting flesh. What could Gage do worse than that?

  Sonja stepped aside, Caleb stopped abruptly, and I barely managed to stop short of him. They stood in front of a steel door with a chain to one side. What sort of new hellhole were they taking me to? Gage said he was moving me to a better place and that I could be with my friends. I wanted to believe he was telling the truth. My only burning desire was to hold Luke close, to be with him again. Whatever happens…as long as we’re together, we can get through it.

  Caleb reached over and grabbed a torch from the wall. Holding it in one hand, he pulled hard on the chain with his other, and the door slowly opened. Sonja stepped over the threshold and Caleb followed. He motioned for me to come through, and as I stepped through the doorway a small gasp of surprise left my lips at the scene before me.

  The walls were no longer rock. We were inside some type of wooden structure. It looked like a basement. Work tools lined wooden shelves, and a set of wooden stairs led up to a door.

  Caleb gestured for me to follow him before heading up the stairs and through the door. I stepped after him and found myself surrounded by light. Sunlight blazed through windows, momentarily blinding me. I’ve been living in the dark for too long. I raised a hand up to shield my eyes and followed Caleb’s outline as he walked into the room.

  Dusty green-and-gold paneling lined each wall alongside old, faded paintings of horses and dogs. A huge chandelier spiraled above, hanging from a brass chain. The place had obviously once been grand, but the cracked, peeling paintings and worn, dirty paneling betrayed how long this place had stood dormant. Cobwebs crisscrossed the chandelier. It was a place long abandoned and forgotten.

  Sonja stood in the doorway while Caleb walked into the room and pointed to a dusty green chair with a gold frame. “Wait here.”

  I’d already learned that it wasn’t worth asking Caleb any questions, so I didn’t bother. He gave me a glare and went out through a set of tall doors.

  I made my way to the chair. The material was embroidered with little gold birds and flowers, but a thick layer of dust covered the surface. The frame was ornate and gold. I looked down at my muddy, smelly clothing and realized that, at the moment, I was as dirty as the chair. I didn’t bother brushing the dust aside—I just sat down and looked around the room. There was a window across from me that ran almost the whole length of the wall, but so much dirt caked it that I couldn’t clearly see out. Sunlight peeked in between the dirt smears, causing beams of light to shimmer in different spots all around the room.

  The door opened. I expected to see Caleb standing there glaring at me, but it wasn’t him—it was Wendy. I almost didn’t recognize her. She wore a pair of torn jeans and an orange short-sleeved T-shirt that was ripped across the stomach. Wicked red cuts crisscrossed both her forearms, and there were bruises on what I c
ould see of her face. Her long dark hair hung down, matted and dirty. She stood in the doorway, motionless. Her gaze scanned my way, and for a moment I wondered if she didn’t know who I was.

  “Wendy?” I said her name softly.

  Her eyes focused on me, though not a word came out of her mouth. A single tear ran down her dirt-stained cheek.

  I got up from my chair and rushed to her side. “Are you all right?” I reached out to touch her, but she flinched away from me.

  There was no way to describe the look in her eyes. It was pure and utter despair. Everything in me screamed to pull her into my arms and hug her, to give her comfort. But as if reading my thoughts, she sidestepped and put one of the threadbare chairs between us, making it clear that my sympathy was not welcome.

  “I’m all right.” Her voice came out as a harsh whisper.

  We both jumped when another door on the other side of the room burst open.

  My heart leaped when I recognized Luke. Caleb followed closely behind him. I started toward him. I half expected Caleb to make a mad dash forward and step in between us, but he just stood in the doorway. I took another hesitant step toward Luke and then, almost as if on cue, we both ran to each other.

  Luke pulled me tightly into his arms. “Thank the Goddess you’re both alive.” As soon as I heard his voice, I realized it wasn’t Luke holding me—it was Dean. I pulled back out of his embrace and looked up into a pair of blue eyes. Of course it’s Dean. It’s daytime.

  Gage had kept Luke and I from physically touching—Gage had some misguided idea that somehow if Luke and I touched we might be able to combine our powers and overpower the magic collar that kept Luke enslaved. But apparently Gage was not worried about contact between Dean and me. Luke had some power when he was in Dean’s body, but Dean had never finished the trials. The strange power that Dean possessed only came out when he was charged up by someone else’s magic. Dean had no magic of his own.

  I took a few steps back and stared at him, trying to clear my fogged thoughts. “Dean.”

  “Colina.” He moved toward me, but again I retreated. He stopped and gave me a wry half smile. “I’m so glad to see you.”

  I paused, unsure what to say.

  Dean’s expression was not hard to read. He was hurt by my reaction, but he was trying not to show it. I didn’t have to be a mind reader like Wendy to realize Dean saw the disappointment in my eyes when I realized he wasn’t Luke.

  Unexpectedly, Dean’s nose wrinkled, and I flushed in embarrassment when I realized it was me he smelled.

  I knew I stank. I’d been touching decomposing bodies. But then again, none of us were clean. We’d been kept in cages that sat on dirt floors. I waited for Dean to comment on the smell, but he didn’t.

  Instead he turned back to Wendy, moving cautiously in her direction. “Hey, are you okay? What happened to you?”

  Wendy rubbed her arms and hugged herself as if she were trying to hold herself together. I could tell by her closed-off expression that whatever had happened, she wasn’t about to confide in us.

  Dean looked around the room, glancing back at Caleb, who still lurked in the doorway. He lowered his voice and asked, “Where are we?”

  “I have no idea,” I answered.

  Dean walked around the room and stopped in front of a black grand piano. His fingers ran across the keys and off-tune chords floated in the air. He looked up and gave us both a wide smile. “Well, it beats being underground. At least we’re together.”

  I looked over at Caleb and then back at Dean. “For now. Who knows what Gage will do next?”

  “What does he want from us? From you?” Dean asked.

  I wanted to tell him. I wanted to explain the ghastly nightmare my life had turned into over the past ten days. The field of bodies they forced me to wade through each night. How I touched the bodies and brought the dead to life. But if I told them, they would see me as a dark and evil monster, no better than the zombies I raised. No better than Gage. And if I told Dean, then Luke—whose spirit was somewhere inside him—would hear.

  “Gage works for the demon,” Wendy whispered. She was watching me. She’s picking up my thoughts. It was pointless to try and hide from her what I’d been up to. The realization was a relief. I wanted to come clean. I wanted to say the words out loud, but I couldn’t. I gave Wendy a hard stare and thought loudly in my mind. Right, go on. Tell Dean. Tell him what I’ve become. Shout about the evil I’m bringing forth into the world.

  Her eyes lowered and she slowly shook her head back and forth.

  Why won’t she tell?

  I heard a door shut and saw that Caleb and Sonja had left the room. We were alone for the first time since we’d been taken.

  Dean glanced toward the closed door. “No more guards?”

  I walked over to the window and used my already-dirty sleeve to rub the glass. I couldn’t see much, but what I could make out was a man standing not far off in the distance, leaning in the shadow of another old building. I wiped away more dirt and took in our surroundings through the dusty pane. Spread out before us were a couple dozen houses. They were all wood structures in a variety of shapes and sizes. Each was old and in a stage of decomposition. A couple of the houses were nothing but empty shells with only one or two exterior walls still standing. “I’m guessing there are still guards, but now they’re on the outside.”

  Dean joined me at the window. “Which finally gives us an opportunity to try and come up with a plan to get the hell out of here.”

  Wendy was still standing in the same place with her head lowered and her hair hanging down in her face. What happened to her?

  “Wendy? Are you okay?” I whispered. Gage said she tried to hurt herself. Were those cuts on her arms and bruises on her face self-inflicted?

  Without warning, Wendy lifted her head and shouted, “Stop asking me if I’m okay!”

  Dean and I both looked at her in shock.

  She seemed to catch herself from saying more. She took a breath and gave me a small smile. “Sorry. I…I’m all right, I really am. I just don’t need anyone fussing over me.”

  I raised my hands as if in surrender. “No more fussing.”

  She walked over and sat down on the piano bench.

  “Anyone have a plan of action?” Dean demanded.

  The question took me by surprise. As much as I wanted to escape, I had no ideas. I was happy to be out of the cavern, but it seemed that they had just moved me from one prison to another. Gage wasn’t going to let any of us go. Not until I did what he wanted. What would he do to us once he had his dark army?

  Now that Gage knew the bodies were falling apart, he wanted to find some kind of spell to fix them. He’d said that he had access to a great library of dark books. Maybe if I get my hands on those books, I can find a spell to destroy him. Along with that question came another, more important thought: Maybe I can cast the demon back to hell.

  Gage was doing the demon’s bidding. If we destroyed him, there would no doubt be another evil henchman waiting in the wings to take over. There had to be a way to banish the demon. I shuddered, remembering how Macaven had formed the dark creature using countless innocent souls, including my pa’s. Somewhere inside it was my father’s spirit. And my brother’s. Guilt and despair washed over me.

  I thought I’d released my brother when I killed the mage that bound him—and I had, for a moment—but it was just long enough for the demon to suck in James’s spirit. That evil thing now possessed my father and my brother. When I faced it back in Macaven’s ballroom, it had morphed for a moment, and its face had become my pa’s. My pa’s eyes had blazed red, full of evil and hatred, eyes that I’d only ever seen full of kindness and love. I could feel anger rising inside me and I forced myself to take a deep breath.

  There had to be a way to kill the beast and release Pa and James. There had to be people who dealt with demons before. I wracked my brain desperately, trying to come up with an answer. There were demon killers once—maybe the
re were still some around.

  “There are no more demon killers,” Wendy whispered, reading my thoughts.

  “Are you sure?”

  Dean answered, “No one practices the art anymore. There are no guilds of demon slayers. No books of their magic. They might have walked among us once, but there is no trace of their kind now. At least, not that I’ve heard of. Maybe once they banished the demons, the demon killers were no longer needed. I’ve heard rumors that their magic was destroyed, that it’s forbidden.”

  “But there is a demon now.” I couldn’t meet his eyes when I said the words. It was my fault the creature was loose, but Dean didn’t know that. Dean hated the girl his mother had told him about—the mystery girl who had raised a demon and brought horrors down on the death dealer clans. I didn’t want him to know it was me.

  I tried to think logically. If you kill a mage, the banshees bound to him go free. Does the same principle work with demons? If we kill the creature, will the spirits used to form it be released? If it worked the same, maybe I could finally free my father’s and brother’s spirits.

  I looked over at Wendy. “There has to be some way to get rid of it.”

  She looked at me in silence.

  There had to be a way to send it back to hell and free my father and brother. I refused to believe it was hopeless.

  Dean was now standing in front of me. He gave me little choice but to face him. “Colina, we need to get out of here. I need to get back to my family. The guilds are under attack and I need to make sure they’re okay.”

  I could hear Luke’s voice in my head. Run if you get a chance.

  “It’s too risky trying to escape now.” If we managed to escape, what would we face on the outside? There were too many questions and not enough answers. If we didn’t get the answers before we tried a foolhardy escape, all of us might end up dead. I wasn’t going to risk our lives until we knew what we were up against.