A Torment of Savages (The Reanimation Files Book 4)

by A. J. Locke

My mood was bleak, as were my thoughts, as I walked into Tielle’s office. After Kyo had convinced me to leave, all I could think about on the drive here was what I had found in my backyard and the sinister, yet unclear information Kyo had given. As I drove, I half expected some dark wave to rise up out of nowhere and crash over my car, suffocating me then dragging my soul to hell. Well, back to hell.

  At my entrance, Tielle looked up from where she’d been bent over a tablet near the windows on the other side of the room. She’d been looking at it with Micah, who had been frowning but smiled when he saw me. Despite my bleak disposition, I couldn’t help but smile back. I was happy to see him. That feeling of wanting to be wrapped in his arms so I could forget all the bad shit going on stirred inside me. He came over and gave me a hug.

  “I heard about what went down with Leena,” he said. “I’m so sorry you had to find her like that.”

  “Part of the job I guess,” I said. “Sorry I didn’t call you last night. I was exhausted.” I glanced at Tielle. “Does that warrant me an office now, Tielle?”

  “No,” Tielle replied, coming over to us. I immediately coughed as a strong scent caught in my throat. I swallowed, and cleared my throat, but ended up coughing again.

  “Are you okay?” Micah asked. “Need some water?”

  “No, I’m okay,” I said. I looked at Tielle. “Your perfume is rather strong.” Overwhelmingly so. It was a sweet scent, but far too strong, like someone had decided to take all the sweet scents and mix them together.

  Micah gave me a look that said he agreed with me but hadn’t planned on being the one to say anything about it.

  Tielle gave a tight smile. “The perfume I’m wearing was a gift. I’m trying to do the nice thing by wearing it.”

  “The nicer thing would be to pour it down the sink,” I muttered. My throat had that itchy feeling that prompted coughing, but I tried my best to suppress it and took a not so subtle step away from Tielle.

  “Anyway, if we’re done discussing my perfume, we have other rather pressing matters on hand.”

  What had her panties in an even tighter bunch than usual? When I looked at Micah, I noticed that his smile had faded.

  “What is it?” I asked. Tielle handed me the tablet they’d been looking at.

  “There’s been another article,” Micah said grimly as I started to read. “It…it’s worse than the first one.”

  If you thought I was not serious about exposing Selene Vanream, you were wrong. Many of you still hold on to the notion that this woman is a hero, but I am here to tell you otherwise. We all know that about half a year ago, Selene contracted the Rot. There is no cure for the Rot, yet Selene managed to overcome it. Maybe you think it had to do with her dying and being revived, that it wiped the Rot from her system. Well, you would be wrong. The truth of how Selene overcame the Rot is truly dark, and twisted, and fully showcases how black a soul she has. In order to be saved from the Rot, Selene accepted a cure that put the reanimation power of stripped reanimators into her body. The Rot would target the new power and leave hers alone. It was a Band-Aid cure, but one that would ensure Selene’s continued existence as long as she subjected herself to periodically absorbing the reanimation power of others. Power that was obtained from the runes that contained reanimator’s stripped power, that are supposedly kept under lock and key. Nothing her boyfriend and his madman uncle couldn’t get around of course.

  And here is the very worst part: once the Rot consumed the added reanimation power in her body, the former reanimator it belonged to would drop dead. As we know, reanimators cannot live without their power, but this held little regard for Selene. Four stripped reanimators are dead because of her: Gina Rivera, Lenard Hoff, Jun Pak, and Crystal Feld. Know their names, look them up, and see the obscure, swept-under-the-rug way their sudden deaths were handled, all around the same time last August. Know that Selene Vanream and her counterparts were fully responsible for their passing, yet are walking free under the pretense that they are heroes.

  Selene Vanream is no idol, and it is high time she is torn down.

  I felt sick enough to throw up. I shakily collapsed onto the chair in front of Tielle’s desk and put the tablet down. Micah came to kneel down next to me, taking my hands. I felt like I was going into shock.

  “He really meant it,” I whispered. “He is really trying to destroy my life.”

  “Jacob won’t get away with this,” Micah said.

  “But we have no proof that he’s the one releasing these articles,” I said. “His verbal threats against me don’t stand.” I looked at Tielle. “Micah told me you took care of the situation with the dead reanimators and the missing runes that Renton used. How did Jacob even find out about all of this?”

  “I am not sure,” Tielle said. Her face looked as severe as I’d ever seen it. “However, you will not be toppled by the words of an anonymous article that is so clearly meant to viciously attack you.” Her words were strong, but there was an edge of uncertainty behind them. “If there is real pushback from this, I may be forced to open an investigation, but I will do everything I can to take care of you.”

  I wasn’t comforted, but I nodded.

  “We need proof to stop Jacob,” Micah said. “If we can do that, then this goes away.”

  “Something tells me it won’t go away so easily,” I said. I thought about Carlos again and knew that I had to go see him sooner rather than later. He was my only hope of getting proof, but I couldn’t let Tielle know that, since he conducted highly illegal business. I took a deep breath to try and calm myself but ended up inhaling more of Tielle’s perfume and coughed instead. Micah went over to a small table where Tielle had a few bottles of water and brought one over for me. I took a drink and allowed myself to relax. Knowing I could get the proof I needed to stop Jacob’s attacks helped make me feel better. I stood up.

  “Jacob the troll is not going to ruin my day,” I said. “He will be dealt with. In the meantime we have other things on our plate. What’s the latest on Leena?”

  “Sedated,” Tielle said dismissively. “She won’t be able to be questioned for a while.”

  My eyebrows rose slightly. Last night Tielle was all over this investigation of Leena. It was the entire reason I was even here, to talk it over. Now she was just brushing it aside. It probably meant there was something even heavier going on. That didn’t leave me with a good feeling, not that I’d been having any good feelings today.

  “What else going on?” I asked. Because obviously that damn e-mail wasn’t enough. Micah was frowning as he exchanged a glance with Tielle.

  “There was an incident at the area where the open necromancer circle is,” Tielle said. “The PTF officers who were standing guard were found unconscious, and the ground beneath them and the circle was scorched black.”

  “Wh-what?” My eyes widened.

  “Dead animals were also found in the area,” Micah added. “Pigeons, squirrels and rats…”

  “Shit. It happened there too?”

  “What?” Tielle and Micah said in unison.

  I told them what I had found in my yard.

  “This is not good,” Tielle said.

  “To say the least,” I said. “Do you know what the hell this could mean?” I had been about to tell them what little I knew, but that information had come from Kyo and I had to keep his presence a secret. I gave Micah a quick glance, feeling a pang of guilt go through me. I really needed to tell him about Kyo.

  “History speaks of occurrences such as these as being harbingers of great death and chaos.” Tielle had walked away to stare out the window, her hands clasped behind her back. I wasn’t surprised that she knew what Kyo knew. It was her job to be educated about all things paranormal far beyond the rest of us. “Deep knowledge about these happenings is obscure, and I can’t recall any record of it happening in the last century or so, but this is the start of something bad. I don’t know why, but it doesn’t matter…”

  “The darkness has risen,” I sa
id softly.

  Tielle turned to look at me for a heartbeat, then turned back to the window. “Yes.”

  “The fact that it happened not only at Selene’s house but the necromancer circle is troubling,” Micah said. “For one, it’s worrisome that Selene seems to be a target. Two, could the fact that it happened at the open circle mean that something got out? Some kind of really strong ghost that’s juiced up on other ghosts?”

  “This is way beyond ghosts,” Tielle said. “Something did come through, but it’s not as simple as saying it’s another ghost. No matter how strong, ghosts don’t have the kind of dark power it takes to scorch the ground and kill animals.”

  “It’s interesting to note that the PTF officers were only rendered unconscious, not dead,” I said. “It’s good of course. But why weren’t they killed?”

  “Who knows?” Tielle said. “They are all hospitalized and still unconscious with no certainty as to when they will wake up. So just like Leena, we can’t question them.”

  “What can we do then?” Micah asked.

  Tielle unclasped her hands and turned around. “Investigate,” she said. “What happened at the circle is already on the news causing panic, I was not able to stop that. The PTF is doing their own investigations, and I want you on it too, Selene.”

  “What exactly am I supposed to do though?”

  “Examine the site, use runes to see if there’s any energy you can gather for us to analyze, take pictures. Then scout around and see if it’s happened anywhere else.”

  “All right, I can do that.”

  “I’m not sure to what end it will be, but we must do something,” Tielle said. “While we wait for whoever or whatever to reveal themselves…we must do something.” She hung her head briefly and squeezed her eyes closed for a moment.

  “I wish I could have told my son not to come anymore,” I heard Tielle mutter.

  “Son?” I said, a little too sharply. Tielle looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

  “Yes, my son, Jian. You’re already aware that I have a son.”

  “Right, I am. I uh…was just surprised to hear you mention him since you don’t really talk about your family. Or anything personal at all.”

  Tielle gave a brief, tight smile. “Jian is here from D.C. to spend time with me and tour some colleges since it looks like I will be here for a prolonged period. He’s the one who gave me the perfume.”

  Hence her choice to wear the foul smelling thing instead of dumping it.

  “Oh, how nice,” I said. “It’d be great to meet him.”

  “We’ll see,” she said, looking out the window again.

  “Right, well, I’ll go start my investigation.”

  “Give me a full report when you’re done.”

  “Like you had to ask.” I turned and started to walk out, almost forgetting about Micah, who fell into step beside me. My thoughts were churning, and not only about the symbolic dead animals and blackened earth. Tielle, a dead witch, had a son. I don’t know how I did not remember that. I had found out about him when I’d researched Tielle back when she was hell-bent on getting my reanimation power stripped. Jian was her only child, had to be about eighteen if he was looking at colleges, and lived in D.C. That was all I knew about him.

  This put an interesting spin on the issue with the almost non-existence of dead warlocks and the question as to whether or not dead witches had been practicing infanticide. So that meant Tielle hadn’t gone with the flow and not only kept her baby boy but made no secret of it in the dead witch community. So did other dead witches follow suit and keep their sons? If so, why weren’t there many visible dead warlocks around? It was puzzling, to say the least. Did Jian practice dead magic? He was young, so there’d be no reason I would have heard about him aside from the fact that he was Tielle’s son. Maybe he was looking at colleges with Paranormal Studies programs. There were several good ones here.

  I thought of the one dead warlock I knew of in current times. Dr. Perlysse. He had been a very public figure, but had there ever been any attempts on his life once the choice had been made not to kill him as an infant? Maybe that’s why he kept such a public profile.

  “Selene? Selene?”

  I snapped out of my thoughts to see Micah looking at me while he held the elevator door open. I barely remembered walking here from Tielle’s office. Micah took my hand.

  “I know it seems like bad times are descending upon us again, but try not to let it weigh you down. Whatever it is we’ll take care of it.”

  “Same as we always do, right?” The smile I gave him was weak. He bent down and kissed my forehead and I sighed and leaned into him. He moved so he could use his back to keep the elevator door open and wrapped his arms around me. I folded myself into his embrace, closing my eyes as though that would block out all the bad stuff.

  “It’ll be okay,” Micah whispered. I raised my head, and he bent down and kissed me gently. “Go investigate, but be careful. I’m gonna be here all day, but we’re still on for tonight, right?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for anything,” I said. I reluctantly stepped away from his arms and into the elevator. “It’s going to be the highlight of my day for sure.”

  “Well, the bar is already kinda low, should I be offended?”

  “No.” I stepped forward, stood on my tiptoes, and gave him a deep, ravaging kiss that caught his breath and had him stumbling forward when I pulled back. “You shouldn’t be offended, you should be excited.”

  “I’m a lot of things,” he said in a breathy voice. He moved in for another kiss, but I pushed him back and smiled at the wanting look in his eyes as the elevator door closed. As I rode down, I tried to wrap the warmth that had rushed through me at Micah’s touch around myself as much as I could. I had a feeling I would need to hold on to as many good feelings as I could to get me through the day.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  After leaving the PCC, my first stop had been to Carlos to see if he could find proof that the posted articles were coming from Jacob McNabb. Unfortunately, Carlos’s continuing issues with his servers and the fact that there was heavy encryption on the article’s source, making it hard to track, meant I’d had to leave without my proof. Carlos said he would text me when he’d figured it out and delved in to tackle what he called the biggest challenge he’d had in a while. I just hoped it didn’t take long.

  I was now standing a few feet away from the open circle in Central Park. It was a faintly glowing ring that seemed brighter against the dark earth beneath it. The faded glow indicated that the circle wasn’t completely open, but it was still enough for ghosts to pass through. Several feet behind me, PTF officers in full riot gear with rune-bulleted rifles stood. It was further away from the circle than the guards usually stood, and when I arrived I could tell they were nervous. After what had inexplicably happened, I knew this wasn’t a job any of them had rushed to sign up for. If it was going to happen again, they knew as well as I did that putting more distance between themselves and the circle wouldn’t make a difference. I suppose it was comforting to fool themselves into thinking it would. I didn’t have a hard time gaining access to the site since they knew who I was and that I worked closely with Tielle.

  Like at home, I felt the same, highly uncomfortable presence of dark energy. It clung to the blackened earth and I had to fight to keep myself from turning and getting the hell away from here. I was here to investigate. So I might as well get to it.

  I took my phone out and spent a few minutes taking pictures. From close up, from further away, from all angles. I didn’t think the pictures would tell us anything helpful about what had done this, but Tielle said take pictures so I took them.

  When I was done, I took out my rune pouch and found an Absorbing Rune, then set my bag down and slowly approached the blackened area. The closer I was to it, the more I felt the dark energy, which was bad enough, but I realized that my dead magic was trying to respond. The brush of this energy was making it rear its head like a dozing lion
that had suddenly gotten a whiff of some antelope nearby. My dead magic wanted to come out to play, but I kept it locked down as tightly as I could. I couldn’t say I was surprised though. Darkness called to darkness, and the form of dead magic I carried came from a very dark place. The same place this new energy did.

  When I was close enough, I crouched down with the now active rune. Holding it between my thumb and forefinger, I stretched my arm out. I was pretty much forcing myself to do it because my skin felt like it wanted to crawl off my bones. And the dead magic was becoming more restless. I took a deep breath and held my arm still, waiting for the rune to absorb some energy. After a few moments, I felt energy start to seep into the rune, but to my surprise, the pale pink rune started to turn black. That wasn’t supposed to happen. But not only that, the rune grew warm, and then, in a sudden flash of heat, it disintegrated into ash. I pulled my arm back and stumbled, falling onto my butt and staring at my hand in disbelief. My thumb and forefinger had smudges of black on them, and there was a tiny pulse of that dark energy beating against my skin. I stood up and hastily wiped my hands against my jeans. My nerves were rattled. What kind of energy would do that to a rune? Not even the mixed up ghost energy that had been in the victims of the crossover ghosts had caused a rune to crumble to dust. I had no idea what to think except that this new, unexplained phenomenon just kept getting worse and worse.

  It was one thing to have bad shit going on. But when you didn’t know who was causing the bad shit, where they were, why they were doing this, and when they would strike again? That was pretty much like walking blindfolded and weaponless into a room full of trigger-happy people with guns.

  * * *

  I was exhausted by the time I was driving down my block looking for parking. It was just after six. After leaving Central Park with nothing but some useless pictures, I’d scouted around, looking for other signs that things were amiss. In a couple alleyways in downtown Manhattan I had seen a dozen or so dead rats. Below them, the ground was scorched. In midtown a bunch of dead pigeons lying in the middle of the road were being cleaned up when I came across them. Again, the ground beneath the bodies was black. I had gotten out of my car and eavesdropped on people who were looking on. They were puzzled, and a few people were of the mindset that it was some sign of an evil presence. No kidding. Angels were unlikely to kill animals as a sign of their presence.