by Amir Lane
Rise
Morrighan House Witches Book Zero
Amir Lane
Rise
Copyright © 2017 by Amir Lane
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form by any means without prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real events, places, or characters is completely coincidental.
Cover by Covers by Combs
www.coversbycombs.com
Formatted by Keyminor Publishing Services
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East Berlin, German Democratic Republic
Grad student Ekkehard Schneider doesn't believe in magic until he discovers his boyfriend, Zven, is a pyromancer. When Zven panics and sets a police officer on fire at a riot he didn't intend to be at, Ekkehardt can't bear the thought of a life without him. Attempting to flee to West Germany together, Zven is killed and Ekkehart is left with a bullet in his chest, a heavy survivor's guilt, and the ability to see spirits.
Recovering in his parents' home in Leipzig, Ekkehardt finds an old journal belonging to his late aunt, where she describes bringing her boyfriend back from the dead. Though the last pages are missing, Ekkehardt knows he has to make things right. He doesn't expect it to work, and he certainly doesn't expect to wake up battered and bruised with no idea of how he got home.
It turns out Zven isn't the only spirit he brought home, and they want his blood.
240 pages
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Interlude
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
Continue the Story
Shadow Maker
Want more from Amir?
Also by Amir Lane
About the Author
Acknowledgments
To Danny,
Who made me a better writer, a happier person, and is the only reason any of these damn things ever get finished.
1
East Berlin, German Democratic Republic. October 1982.
I have a secret.”
Ekkehardt Schneider lifted his head with a raised eyebrow. It was cold out for this time of year, with the wind beating against the windows, but Zven Lorenz was always warm. Even though the room was small, and the bed even smaller, Ekkehardt was comfortable. He'd been on the verge of falling asleep when Zven's words caught his attention.
“You have a lot of secrets,” Ekkehardt said in a half-asleep drawl.
Zven rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, a sly smile forming across his lips. It was an expression that said he knew damn well what Ekkehardt was talking about, and that he was maybe even proud of it. Zven was a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in trouble. The secrets he had could fill a book. It wasn't as though Ekkehardt could judge him. He was one of those secrets himself.
“I want to share this one with you. Sit up; I need some space.”
Ekkehardt frowned, confusion and curiosity flaring up within him, but he did as he Zven told him. He crossed his legs and slouched forward. Posture wasn't one of his finer qualities. His mother was always chastising him for it, and it made his shoulder blades feel pinched, but it didn't stop him from folding in over himself when he sat. His muscles pulled in protest, but he ignored the discomfort. Zven sat in a similar position, though his back was straight against the wall. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply enough his entire upper body moved with each breath. If Ekkehardt was honest, he looked a little ridiculous.
“What are you doing?” There was a laugh in Ekkehardt’s voice. Was Zven messing with him?
Zven hushed him. He raised his left hand, work-worn palm open towards the ceiling. He looked like he was pretending to meditate. Ekkehardt was half expecting him to start ohm-ing. He didn't. Instead, all he said was, “Don't freak out.”
“Why would I freak out? Zven?”
It didn't seem like a joke anymore. Zven wasn't even doing anything, but it set Ekkehardt’s nerves on edge and— Was it just him, or was it getting harder to breathe? It wasn't impossible — he could still breathe proper lungfuls of air — but it took more effort now. Was the furnace leaking? He'd heard of that happening, and people suffocating to death before even realizing there was a problem.
“Don't freak out,” Zven repeated, and he snapped his fingers.
A spark erupted between his middle finger and thumb that extended into a small flame.
Ekkehardt jerked back. He was having a hard time breathing now, though it had nothing to do with the air anymore. His mouth moved in an attempt to form words but his brain didn't supply any, and he was left gaping in something between awe and horror and awe.
Zven didn't appear bothered in the slightest. He opened his fingers, and the flame rolled into his palm, growing until it was about the size of a tennis ball. The fire touched his skin, the light making Zven’s face glow and casting shadows that made him look even darker than he was, but it didn't burn him.
Ekkehardt reached out until he felt the heat of the flame. It was a real fire. This wasn't a trick. No. No, it was a trick, it had to be, but it was a real fire.
Zven closed his palm, and the flames went out. The room felt much darker now.
“What—?”
Ekkehardt still couldn't breathe.
“It's magic.”
Of course, that sly smile was still in place on Zven’s lips, like it was a game. Ekkehardt couldn’t believe he was in love with this ass.
“It's a trick,” he corrected.
“I never said it wasn't.”
Ekkehardt’s mind was starting to catch up. This was why the room had felt heavy, why he felt as if he couldn't get enough air. Zven must have— The flame must have sucked some of the oxygen from the room. But that didn't explain… anything else. In fact, it barely explained what it explained. People couldn't do that.
Except Zven just did.
There was a logical explanation. There was something on his hand. Some kind of flint and maybe a chemical coating as fuel. Ekkehardt almost laughed at himself for starting to believe it.
“I'm not the only one, you know,” Zven continued. “Liese sees things. Futures.”
Liese Riedel, one of their roommates.
“Liese lied to you.”
“She didn't lie. She saw us being together before either of us knew we wanted it. Before we even met.”
“She obviously made that up. Or she was exaggerating. Being theatrical.”
“Does this —” He brought his fingers together again. “— look like a trick?”
“Don’t!”
Ekkehardt grabbed Zven’s hand. Just because it hadn’t burned him the first time didn’t mean it wouldn’t the second. Except… this obviously wasn’t the first time he had done this. Not with how easy it was for him. He must have practiced this trick before showing it to him.
“Ekkehardt, you don't have to look so frightened. Like you said, it's a trick. Nothing to worry about.”
“How did you do it?”
Now that the initial panic had passed, curiosity overwhelmed him. He was a scientist, a chemistry graduate student. Understanding the world was what he did, and this was something he did not yet u
nderstand. He grabbed Zven’s hands, turning them over in search of whatever he had used to ignite the fire. Zven’s palms were calloused and scarred from years of manual labour, but there was no sign of any flint or match. It must have been used up.
“How did you do it?” he repeated.
There was a flash of something in Zven’s eyes, so dark they were almost as black as his hair, a complete contrast to Ekkehardt’s. The sly smirk on his lips put his expression somewhere between mischievous and sinister. It made Ekkehardt want to lean in and kiss him, and it made Ekkehardt want to get very far away from him.
“I told already you,” Zven said. “It's magic.”
Magic was a game, a trick. Manipulation of perception. Distraction. He wasn’t going to accept magic as an explanation without sufficient proof that it was nothing else.
And yet, no matter how many times Zven did the trick with fire, Ekkehardt couldn't figure it out. For days, Zven put up with every test Ekkehardt had for him without a single complaint. If anything, he seemed amused by it. He never missed an opportunity to show off when Ekkehardt randomly said, “Do it again,” and he never hesitated to snap his fingers, sometimes on both hands just to show that he could. He only complained once when Ekkehardt made him wash his hands until his fingers wrinkled to prove there was nothing on them, though he couldn’t start any fires for a good half hour afterwards. Ekkehardt watched him like a hawk to make sure he didn’t put anything on them in the meantime.
It gave Ekkehardt a hypothesis: The oils in Zven’s skin was the fuel, and there must have been an increase in… something that was acting as an ignition. It was weird as hell, but it wasn’t magic.
Finally, he decided to give Zven the benefit of the doubt and pretend part of him still didn’t think this was a prank.
“Where did you learn to do this? Can you do other tricks?” he asked, propping himself up on an elbow.
Zven let out a long sigh and leaned forward to pull Ekkehardt into him. Ekkehardt offered no resistance, falling forward on his arms and rolling over to lean against him. He was broader than Zven, heavier, but Zven never complained about it.
“I knew you would have questions.” There was no annoyance in Zven’s voice, only amusement and maybe fondness. “I never learned, exactly. It was an accident. I was… fifteen, I think. It was the middle of winter, and I was rubbing them to keep them warm and all of a sudden… All of a sudden, my hands were on fire.” He laughed. “I thought I was going to die. I was screaming and everything, but then I realized, it didn't hurt. It just felt really warm. After that, it was just trial and error to figure out how to do it, and how to control it.”
Ekkehardt was quiet for a moment. Zven made it sound like it was… Like it was real magic, not the kind people did at kid’s parties. Maybe he thought it was.
“Do your parents know?”
Zven snorted.
“Have you ever known me to tell my parents anything?”
He had a point there. Zven didn’t have the best relationship with his parents. It always felt surreal to Ekkehardt. Who didn’t get along with their parents? He’d never met Zven’s, but they sounded like a special sort of awful.
“Anyway,” Zven continued, “fire is the only thing that I can do. It’s a bit of a speciality. And as for why I didn’t tell you sooner, well… Truth be told, I was afraid you would freak out and tell everyone you knew. Could you imagine what would happen if it got around that I was doing honest-to-God witchcraft, Ekkehardt?”
Ekkehardt could. It was far from the 17th-century witch trials, or even the pre-war days when the Gestapo was rounding up Romani people and anyone associated with witchcraft; or so he’d been told. Sometimes, especially in Berlin, it didn’t feel much different. The city wasn’t nearly as… open as his hometown of Leipzig, and even that was much more restricted than the West was supposed to be.
“I would never tell anybody,” he said.
Admittedly, a part of him wanted to tell his sister, Lorelei, about it, but he wouldn’t tell any more than he would tell her about their relationship. He would trust her with his life, but these weren’t his secrets to share.
“I know that now,” Zven said. “That’s why I showed you.”
Ekkehardt propped himself up on his elbow. His stomach tightened as the truth became more difficult to deny.
“This is real,” he said, only just audible.
“Oh, this is very real. And there is so much more out there than just this.”
2
It seemed insane, now, that Ekkehardt had never noticed it before.
The way Zven was always impossibly warm all the time seemed so obvious in hindsight. He never carried a lighter or matches, and yet, he never had any difficulty lighting his cigarettes.
Liese was more complicated. Sure, she always knew what the weather would be, or what would be on tests, or if one of them was in a bad mood even before they walked in the door. It could have all been coincidence, or she just paid very close attention. Just because he could accept that Zven could do something he couldn’t quite explain yet didn’t mean Liese did, too. He would give her the benefit of the doubt — they had known each other for years, and she wasn’t the type to make things up — but he wasn’t going to make any big decisions based on it.
It appeared, though, he was the only one who hadn’t known about their skills. He discovered that the fourth in their house, Jakob Weber, had known from the start.
“I don’t know how you didn’t know,” he said. “Liese hardly hides it.”
Technically, Jakob was right. If he looked for them, the clues had been there. Sort of.
The first time they’d met, Ekkehard was still doing his undergraduate degree. He had been living in a much smaller house with five other people stuffed wall-to-wall. Liese, whom he had never even seen before, had all but ambushed him after a meeting with his Master’s advisor. It turned out they had never met because they were studying entirely different subjects: he was studying chemistry, and she was studying Middle High German poetry. They didn’t even have any friends in common. But she told him she’d heard he was looking for a new place — he hadn’t been — and she had an open room in her house. Granted, this house wasn't much larger than the one he had been in before. All four bedrooms were crammed onto one floor, and the kitchen made up the bulk of the rest of the house. They couldn't even fit a couch in the living room and instead had to settle with four folding chairs. But two people made a surprising difference, and they managed just fine. He learned after the fact that she had done the same to Zven, and Jakob had already been living there when she moved in.
Liese had brought them together. Maybe Zven was right; maybe she’d seen them being together before they had even met. Maybe that was why. Either way, Zven took her seriously. Now that he was paying attention, he noticed that when she said something, everyone listened. Again, it could have been a coincidence.
Ekkehardt was looking for her now. He wanted to know more about this. Not just about what Zven could do, but what she could do, too. He wanted to know if there were more people like them, if there were other types of… He was hesitant to say magic.
The door to Liese’s room was cracked open. She was probably reading. Maybe she needed a break. They always needed breaks. If she was as good as they insisted, she most likely already knew he was coming anyway.
He tried to turn on his heels as he heard Liese and Zven’s hushed whispers and nearly fell, only just managing to catch himself on the wall. Curiosity overwhelmed civility. What would they be whispering about? What was so important they didn't want anybody else hearing? He licked his lips and glanced back over his shoulder. Jakob was nowhere in sight to catch him eavesdropping.
It was wrong. Zven and Liese obviously didn't want Ekkehardt to know what they were talking about. He could probably just ask Zven later. Zven was full of secrets, though. He wasn’t going to tell Ekkehardt anything Liese didn’t want him to. Ekkehardt had to know, and he had to know now. He inched toward the
crack in the door and pressed his ear to the wood.
“— you, something is wrong,” Liese whispered.
“I'm saying that I believe you, but you need to tell me what.”
“I don't know!” She exhaled sharply. “I don't know. All I know is that I don't see either of you after tomorrow night.”
Ekkehardt’s stomach sank. That didn't sound good.
“Why not? What happens to us? What happens to him?” Zven demanded.
Him who? Him him?
“If I knew, I would tell you. Do you think I want anything to happen to either of you? I love you both. You know that.”
One of them was moving. Pacing, from the sound of it. The weight of the footsteps sounded like Zven’s.
Ekkehardt shouldn't have been there. He shouldn't have been listening to this.
“I won't let anything happen to Ekkehardt,” Zven said forcefully as if she was going to do something to him.
“I know.”
“Is he going to die?”
His mother had once told him that eavesdroppers never heard anything good about themselves. As always, she was right. It was too late to walk away, though. He needed to know, not just out of curiosity. For a moment, he forgot he wasn’t supposed to believe in magic or precognition, that she couldn’t actually know what was going to happen. He needed to know what Liese was going to say, and he needed to hear it from her.
