Dire (Reaper's Redemption Book 2)

by Thea Atkinson

"I'm good," I said and tried to catch my breath. I caught his eye. There wasn't mania in the depths of that gaze at all, just confusion. It was him, Callum. Not some sociopath with tattoos over his entire body, trying to kill me. With his square jaw and his perfectly green eyes and his twitching biceps and that strangely intoxicating smell of soap and something else equally inebriating. Callum.

  I blinked hard to make my eyes travel back to his. Funny, his gaze seemed just as pinned to my mouth.

  "You're either a slow learner or you're incredibly stubborn," he said and his voice sounded all queer and distant.

  His breath, too, was a ragged thing, but it didn't sound as though it was coming from exertion. His gaze landed on the pulse in my throat. I had a fleeting image of something otherworldly sinking its teeth into my neck. I expected to feel the rush of fear, but instead of imagining his face nuzzled into my shoulder, I felt a flush of pleasure.

  Sarah, of course, had impeccable timing. She chose that exact moment to come up the back door, and with one long brow cocked, she took in the two of us struggling about on the lawn.

  "Are you two finished playing tag?" she said.

  Callum swung his gaze sideways at her and peeled himself from me as though he'd been caught sticking his fingers into a bowl of cake batter. He brushed off his track pants and stood with his hands on his hips, looking down at me with disappointment.

  "It's not a game," he said. "It's a trial."

  "It sure looked like fun," she said. "Now the games I played as a kid, those were trials. Real, honest to goodness, get your Salem cauldrons out trials."

  I pushed myself onto my bottom and watched as Sarah crossed the yard. She had on a breezy tank top and short shorts. Necromancers' blood ran hot it seemed, thumbed its nose at the cold air. I looked down at my jacket and yoga pants and sighed. Not only was I sweating and dirty, I had torn a hole in the knee and scuffed blood all over the cute capris. So much for looking cute for the hot fireman.

  I'd asked Sarah to live with us because I knew she felt safest here. Something about my grandfather's druid magic lending her an extra air of protection that magnified into one spot what was rampant in the entire town of Dyre. She was always worried that her family would find her. It was why she had run away from foster care all those years ago. When I had found her in the crypt, hunkered down with a doppelgänger and an army of skeletal bones for protection, she'd revealed her family needed her to raise the only other necromancer in her entire family's history. She'd not said any more about it since then, but I knew it was on her mind a lot. She bustled about the house with an almost frenetic energy, as though movement could send its own power into the air and mask her very existence.

  It seemed to be working. Not just because no one had contacted her, but because she had started taking care of the house in Gramp's absence as though she belonged there. I even got the sense that she had waited for something as peaceful as this house for years and could barely believe it was happening for her.

  I, on the other hand, had arrived four years earlier as a bristly early teen, I had bucked the much-needed sense of safety like it was a sharp pike trying to dig into my soft underbelly. It took Gramp years to smooth down my hackles.

  I imagined the difference in our personalities was as strong as the difference in our looks. While she was fair and I was ginger, she was contemplative as much as I was combative. The way we approached such a huge change was one of the reasons why she ate so much and I ended up setting fires.

  When I'd run to her rescue in the middle of the night after her text, I'd ended up finding a maniac in the church intent on killing me. The aftereffects of that had been a blaze inside that torched the pews and brought the firemen running.

  I tried to brush off the dirt from my knees. Callum pushed himself to his feet.

  "Please tell me it's time for a break," I said, looking at Sarah.

  "Actually," she said. "The hospital called. Your grandfather got the all clear and can come home tomorrow."

  I knew she saw the relief cross my face. I'd been living on pins and needles ever since an aneurysm had landed him the hospital. Didn't matter how tough of an old fart he was, an aneurysm wasn't something to play around with, and an all clear had to mean he was fine.

  "I'll pick him up tomorrow," I said around a ridiculously huge smile that made my mouth hurt. Things could go back to normal now. Or at least the new normal.

  Callum slapped me on the shoulder to congratulate me and for a second, I thought he might help me. I was ready for it. I even opened my hands, thinking he might pull me into an embrace. Then he shot me a wary look.

  "You're not picking him up on that scooter, are you?" he said.

  "Of course not," I said, hurt he would think I'd planned my grandfather on the back of Old Yeller. I just hadn't thought that far ahead yet.

  Callum waited with a cocked an eyebrow for me to come up with an alternative and when I couldn't, he smirked at me and I knew all along he had planned to offer but just wanted me to feel uncomfortable for a little while. Damn him.

  "I'll take you to pick him up," he said. "After school okay?"

  I nodded, mutely. I couldn't wait to see Gramp home, in the familiar surroundings instead of white-washed walls and stink of antiseptic.

  "Good," he said. "It's a date."

  It was a few small words, but it made my skin flush.

  Digging into the dirt with my sneaker was a good way to distract me from trying to work out how to react to his tease. Callum wasn't a boy. Not by a long shot. We'd shared a kiss in a strained moment that proved he was all man. His reaction when I'd made the typical frightened teenager response of pulling away, proved it. He didn't want a girl. He wanted a woman, and I was far too close to being under eighteen for his tastes, apparently.

  My toe found a hard object and I winced as I yanked my foot back. It was only in that moment that I remembered I had tripped on something in my mad tear to flee. I started scrabbling around with the edge of my sneaker, holding back the fronds of sage bush with my hands as I studied the ground.

  "What are you looking for?" Sarah said and leaned over, holding back the leaves of a leggy plant for me.

  "I tripped on something," I said.

  "A likely story." She caught my eye over the sage bush and winked at me. The dimple at the apex of her left cheek puckered.

  "Shouldn't you be busy resurrecting dead bunnies or something?" I growled at her.

  "I prefer my creepy looking bunnies stay in Jake Gyllenhaal movies," she said.

  I might have made a comment about the Donnie Darko bunny looking an awful lot like it had been raised from the dead, but it was right then that I caught sight of the thing that had pitched me onto my face. Decidedly earth brown, the edge of whatever it was stuck up enough out of the ground high enough to catch my toe when I was running.

  I bent down to scrape away the dirt from the line of cracked pottery that I saw jutting out from the soil.

  "What is it?" Callum said, crouching next to me. I could smell the soap he used and something a little more pungent that might have been perspiration if not for the strong tang of deodorant masking it. I decided it was the most incredible smell ever.

  "Well?" Sarah prodded when I didn't answer.

  "I don't know," I said, tearing my thoughts away from burying my nose into Callum's chest and back to the strange object. The earth around it was hard packed as though someone had trampled on it purposefully. A strange thing so close to the garden. Maybe it had been there for decades earlier and Gramp's excavations for the sake of his favourite herbs simply hadn't disturbed it.

  In contrast, the soil of the garden was loose and tilled because of his consistent weeding. I found it strange he would miss this particular spot.

  "Strange place for a teacup," Sarah said, musing. She squatted down on the other side of me. She put a delicate finger on the top of the pottery edge.

  "It's too thick to be a teacup," I said. I heeled at the dirt with my shoe. Callum passed me th
e edge of the bat and I worked at the ground with determination. I felt mildly like an archaeologist and got excited about what could lay beneath the surface. I had to remind myself it was no doubt just a piece of old and broken pottery, making it a disappointing reveal. Even Callum and Sarah started digging with me, infected with curiosity.

  "Looks like it goes in pretty deep," Callum said. "Can't be just a shard of pottery."

  Together, it took us several moments before we could see that it was an earthen pottery lid, rough and unglazed but with a knob at the top where someone had pressed their thumb in. Lashings of some sort disappeared into the earth on three sides of it.

  "That must be ages old," Sarah said.

  "I wonder if it's all intact," I said, brushing away a gob of dirt and trying to see where it ended. I gripped the knob and tugged, hoping it would come clear of the ground.

  "Damn," I said. "It's stuck."

  I braced myself on my haunches and tried again.

  "Must be go deeper down than we think," Callum said and shoved my hands away. He dug around the edges with the bat to move more dirt and make a well around the lid. Soon we saw that it did go deeper. And further out.

  I heard a shriek from above me and lifted my face to the sky. Broad wings blocked the sun.

  Sarah's gaze followed mine. "What is the name of heaven is that?"

  "Turkey vulture," I said. "Gramp feeds them sometimes."

  "Freaking huge," she said and shuddered as it circled.

  I shivered too. They were big birds as a norm, but that one must have been the granddaddy of vultures. I waved my arms over my head, hoping the thing's beady eye would catch onto the fact that we weren't dead flesh ready for eating.

  It shrieked again, frustrated and then soared out of sight. I supposed it found a tree nearby to roost in until we left, and he could come down and inspect the ground. I turned my eyes to Callum's.

  By the time we got it out of the ground, we could see that it was a short and squat thing, fully earthen pottery and lashed closed with graying bits of string.

  "What is it?" I said.

  Sarah pouted as she thought.

  "Maybe it's kimchi," she said with a look of hope that belied what I thought was really running through her mind. I knew she wanted to think it was an innocent thing. She'd suffered over the last few years, culminating in a week of hiding out in the crypts at the cathedral where she had to face her own doppelgänger. I read the hope in her eyes and imagined she was already convincing herself it was something as simple as sauerkraut. She even licked her lips.

  "It could be," Callum said. "I wouldn't put it past your grandfather."

  I shook my head. "In all the years I've lived here, he's never so much as bought a hot dog to put it on. I haven't seen a stitch of cabbage in the house."

  "Some hippie," Sarah said with a disappointed groan. "Epic fail." She sat back on her haunches with her arms crossed over her knees. "That solves it, then. We open it."

  I felt Callum's hand on mine as I tried to worry the strings away from the jar.

  "Maybe you better not," he said. "At least not until your grandfather sees it."

  I sat back on my haunches with the thing between both hands. It certainly looked benign. Anything could be inside. But I understood Callum's warning. Best not to open it until I spoke to Gramp.

  Besides. The druid in my grandfather seemed a little less benevolent than he had a month ago. After discovering he had given me a malice bag to help us protect Sarah weeks earlier, I wouldn't put anything past him. The malice bag he had stored in his house had been filled with dead witch's hair and bits of viscera. I shuddered to think what might be inside of this.

  "Maybe I'll just put it on the kitchen table," I said. "He'll be home tomorrow anyway. Maybe he doesn't even know what it is."

  Sara caught my eye and pushed a lock of dyed black hair behind her ear.

  "I doubt it," she said. "That string isn't just made of cotton, you know."

  I peered across at her, taking in the strange glint in her eye.

  "What are you saying?"

  She lifted a delicate shoulder. "I'm saying that string is made of animal stomach. Cat gut, no doubt."

  Casual, as though it was a normal thing to find cat gut wound around an earthen container. I couldn't help imagining her pulling threads of innards from an animal and humming as she worked. I shivered and had to shake the thought from my mind.

  She plucked at the side where the strings had worn nearly clean.

  That was when I tilted it away from her, afraid her touch would break the seal and saw what was on the bottom. I swallowed hard when I noticed the symbol scratched into the surface, and I felt a shudder move through me when I recognized it.

  It was exactly the same as the one on my calf.

  CHAPTER 3

  The tattoo on my ankle was the symbol for virtue. I knew that because Sarah had translated it for me, saying it was from a runic language older than Mesopotamian. Apparently as a necromancer, she'd had to learn lots of ancient symbols. But what could it mean if the same symbol was also on this old jar?

  "Weird coincidence," Sarah said, catching my eye and tapping the bottom of the jar. So she had seen it too. I pulled it close to my chest and chewed my lip.

  "I'll say," I said. "I think the hair on the back of my neck is standing up."

  I peered down at the lid, wondering who had left the thumbprint in the wet clay of the handle. I hadn't seen any hand thrown pottery lying around in Gramp's house anywhere, but it was entirely possible my grandmother might have been into that sort of thing when she was alive. Then there was the other issue of the cat gut lashings that kept the thing closed. Maybe Sarah was wrong about that. Maybe it was just dried up sausage casings or something equally nonthreatening.

  In the end, we left the thing on the pass-through counter between the kitchen and the living room, but I didn't feel good with it sitting there. It almost looked as though it was staring back at me. I wanted to know badly what was inside, and I knew it was killing Sarah.

  By the time Callum left and Sarah and I sat over a quiet kitchen table munching on steamed corn cob slathered in butter and pepper, both of us were in a frenzy to open the thing. I could see her eyeing it and I knew she caught me numerous times with my gaze trailing over to the counter as well. I caught her eye once and asked her how she knew it was animal intestines wrapping the jar and she shrugged.

  "When you see as much viscera as I have, you get a good eye for it." She bit into her cob and chewed thoughtfully.

  "But what gets me," she went on. "Is why your grandfather put it there in the first place."

  "For starters," I said. "We don't know for sure that it was Gramp."

  She licked the corner of her mouth where a gob of butter had begun to melt and dribbled on her chin. "He would be my first suspect," she said.

  "He's not a criminal, Sarah," I said. "And he's not an animal abuser either." I tried to remember if he had ever mentioned owning a cat or if a cat had somehow strayed onto the property he complained about. I was sure the answer to both of those things was a negative. I watched her chewing and pausing long enough to dip her corncob into the pools of butter in her plate. She caught me watching and lifted a delicate blonde brow.

  "You can't say for sure can you?" she said.

  "I would bet he didn't."

  "Well, someone put it there. And those kinds of things are never a one-off.

  "You mean you think there might be more?"

  She shrugged. "I wouldn't guarantee it," she said. "But whoever put it there didn't just bury it for no reason. And they didn't put it in this particular ground for no reason either."

  "You're giving me the creeps," I said.

  She poked her finger into her mouth and puckered her lips around it, clearing it of butter with a loud smack. "If it's any consolation," she said. "I'm still hoping for fermented vegetables."

  "We can both hope," I murmured, imagining my grandfather filling that pottery jar an
d digging a hole in the earth to store it in. I didn't want to think about the poor cat or possum who had died to donate the string. Ever since discovering my grandfather's self-proclaimed druidism was actually real, I had started to look at the contents of his house with just a little more scrutiny. All of the various shells and wooden pieces of driftwood he'd left on his foyer table nearly bristled with possibility now that I knew he was actually a practising sorcerer of some sort.

  I was lost in my thoughts when I heard Sarah say something about Egypt. It was such an abrupt change of subject, it caught my attention.

  "What does Egypt have to do with Gramp burying a jar in his backyard?"

  "You weren't listening, were you?" she said with an accusing eye. "I was telling you about canopic jars."

  "Canon ball whats?"

  "In ancient Egypt when they mummified the dead, they put specific organs into jars like that and left them with the body so that when it was resurrected, it could be whole."

  "You necromancers." I gave a visible shudder for her benefit. "Why not just leave the stuff in the body in the first place?" I said, gagging and putting my cob of corn back down on my plate. It didn't look quite so appetizing right then.

  "Because the viscera contain too much fluid and it would make the body rot instead of mummify. Didn't you learn anything in school?"

  "I must have skipped Egyptian necromancy day," I said.

  "Well, it certainly looks like a canopic jar." She sounded sullen and the way she drew her fork through the melted butter on her plate told me she half expected me to show some excitement at her observation or at the very least be impressed by her knowledge.

  "He's not a necromancer," I said to Sarah. "He's a druid. Whatever it is that he does on a full moon or in the dead of night around some gnarled oak, I'm quite certain he doesn't raise the dead."

  She chewed the inside of her cheek. I had the feeling she wanted to protest, but what could she say? I had seen her raise dead bones and use them as weapons against me before she realized who it was that was invading her space. She couldn't exactly claim innocence. Any protest she might make was moot and she knew it.