The Necromancer's Betrayal

by Mimi Sebastian

  I wrapped a long scarf around my shoulders, slipped on my Vans, and grabbed Charlie by his sleeve and ushered him out the door. He shuffled next to me on the sidewalk, his arms extended stiffly to his sides, and I chuckled despite myself. Half the time he looked befuddled, as if trying to remember his humanity, but not quite able to reconcile the blips of awareness with the desire to eat whatever critter or person crossed his path. Maybe bringing him along on my quest for ice cream was not the best idea. Sadly, I also wanted company, but not from Kara, Lysander, or any of the other supes. Charlie never argued and only occasionally grunted at me. He provided the perfect mindless B-movie entertainment to complement the fantastic night. Besides, I couldn’t keep him cooped up for too long. This way, I could let him forage in an alley—my free-range zombie. If by an unfortunate chance, someone stumbled into Charlie, he’d likely pass as a wino after an all-night bender.

  The moon glowed bright. The lights, the passing cars, and the people chatting on the sidewalks fused, creating an aroused, expectant energy that crackled down the streets, seeking release from the frisson. The pleasurable sensation coursed through me, giving me a confidence and giddiness I had no right to feel, given the events of the past few days. But tonight I didn’t have to deal with demons or vampires or witches, only Charlie and me, and the perpetually grumpy checkout lady at the convenience store.

  I exchanged a look with Charlie, an all too brief moment of understanding, but of what, I had no fucking clue. Who knew what thoughts lurked in a zombie’s head, if any? He shrugged, or maybe it was a shoulder tic. I looked ahead and smiled. “Come on, Charlie. Ice cream is this way.”

  A shrug. It was a shrug.

  He mumbled and staggered closer to a tabby cat sitting on a car. The cat leapt off the car and scurried up the stairs of a Victorian, escaping through a cat door. Charlie looked dejected for having been so tempted by a tasty morsel only to have it run away. And I’d fed him ten raw steaks before we left. He might break my bank account before we found Olive.

  We arrived at the store, ringed by cartons of fruits and flowers. I moved to open the door when Charlie decided to go on a walkabout and took off down the street. Okay, apparently he could move fast when he wanted to. “Charlie, stop. Stop!” I ran to catch up before he disappeared down the next block. “Charlie, this is not okay.” I cringed. I sounded like a mother scolding her kid. Where the fuck was he going? Controlling a zombie was proving to be more challenging in some ways than a revenant. A revenant’s capacity for reason, while making it more dangerous, also made its behavior less variable than a zombie’s.

  I caught up to him and was about to clutch his shirt and drag him home when I noticed the fevered insistence in his eyes. He mumbled something. He either sensed food . . . or Olive? He grumbled at me and walked ahead. Did I dare trust a zombie’s instincts? Moreover, did I trust my own? I should have called Ewan. I should have dragged Charlie’s undead ass back home. Lots of shoulds. But I didn’t want to be alone with Ewan, and I really needed to find Olive.

  I called Kara on my cell. No answer.

  I pulled up Lysander’s contact and stared at his picture, remembering the feel of his kiss, his fangs, and the hairs on my arms bristled. That wasn’t such a great idea either. Guess it’s you and me, Charlie. Most likely, our search would prove fruitless.

  After trekking around the city for a couple of hours, I was ready to end our expedition, when I recognized the street we’d turned down. Curious, I followed Charlie up the steep incline that ended at a closed iron gate. On the other side rose the San Francisco Columbarium, still used as a resting place for the cremated remains of the dead.

  My pulse sped up as I stared at the circular, three-story building, built in a Grecian classical style. Beautiful, yet as ghostly as the graves surrounding it. Maybe Charlie had absorbed Olive’s scent after all. I approached the gate. I hadn’t noticed any guards or police cars. I guess they figured most cemeteries policed themselves, and the Columbarium itself looked pretty fortified. Vines and overgrown bushes strangled the white stone walls, snaking up to the domed roof. A larger cemetery had once surrounded the Columbarium, but the city had relocated most of the graves, leaving only a scattering of the oldest headstones.

  If Olive was lurking about, how had she managed to get past the brick wall that circled the property? I grabbed Charlie and walked to the back side of the Columbarium. He decided to squeeze past the tall bushes rimming the wall, uncovering a crumbled section of brick. The night was quiet, broken only by the crunching of our shoes on gravel and the distant hum of cars, giving me a sane foothold while my zombie and I trespassed.

  By sticking our shoe tips into holes in the mortar, we climbed the wall and dropped to the other side, all the while Break on Through by the Doors played in my head. Charlie stumbled and fell face first on the grass. He groaned, lifted himself, and ambled toward the graves. The few clinging rays of moonlight slanted our shadows across the ground, and I thought Charlie’s thin shadow and hawkish nose rather resembled the slinking black and white figure of Nosferatu.

  I ran my hand along the pebbled top of a grave. Most people feared cemeteries, a fear born from the primordial soup, a place most persons, except ghost hunters and Goth kids, avoided at night, even some supes. And me? What other supe ruled the dead? Vampires? Now more than ever, when surrounded by death, my power rose and strove to join the effluvium of corrupt energy that threatened to smother me in its smog. It was taking more and more effort to dig in my heels and insist on moderation.

  Charlie moaned and pointed to the rear of the Columbarium. I sincerely hoped he’d found Olive, otherwise I had no idea why a zombie would get so excited. I followed him to a cellar entrance, its two batten doors shut with a padlock. In a display of unexpected, undead strength, Charlie yanked the lock off. I looked at him in surprise. Every zombie manifested different characteristics, often tied to the necromancer’s strength. Could my demon side have boosted Charlie? Xavier had told me I was a living experiment. More like a ticking time bomb.

  I stared at the gaping darkness of the basement below and chuckled at myself. I’d become a horror movie trope, stepping down into a dark basement. Yet, was I the hapless victim or the lurking evil waiting for its prey?

  I followed Charlie down the stairs. The moonlight cut through some of the murkiness, revealing another set of stairs that we asscended, finally encountering the main hall, a circular room with urn niches carved into the walls, decorated with dolls, candles, even nonperishable food. The eclectic display mimicked a morbid curio shop. One niche bore two eerily beautiful human skulls decorated like Day of the Dead sugar skulls.

  Charlie scurried down another passage, and I sped to keep up. A heavy layer of dust coated the floor where footprints led deeper into the bowels of the Columbarium. The passage grew dimmer and dimmer, lit by a few bulbs hanging from the ceiling. I wasn’t too concerned about encountering Olive. Charlie and I could take her. But uneasiness pricked at my spine—I was still jittery after Lysander’s attack. More and more, I was convinced that Olive and the attack were connected, but right now, in this dark passage, I desperately hoped not. I pulled my cell out of my cross-body bag. Shit. No service.

  The passage opened to another round, domed chamber pocked with niches, a smaller, less polished and, evidently, less frequented version of the one upstairs. A stench beyond any imagining of decaying corpses beset the room, as if the earth itself had vomited all its rotted mass into the tomb. I bent over and braced my hands on my knees to force down the bile. Oh shit. I tilted my head when I sensed movement.

  Charlie stood before a row of—my mind struggled to make sense of the scene—corpses propped upright against the wall, some with their mouths open, lips thinned against their teeth in an eternal scream. Their skin was parchment-like, shriveled and gray, tendons outlined against their flesh, yet my necro senses told me they’d only been dead a day at most.

&nbs
p; I didn’t know what the poor souls were . . . zombies? They looked more like deranged mummies. I didn’t think a necromancer made these things, not that our powers were somehow more noble, but necromancers only ever hurt themselves, corrupted their own souls to make an undead being. Whoever had done this had corrupted these bodies in a sacrifice I didn’t want to contemplate.

  There was definitely something wrong here, aside from the obvious.

  Charlie picked at the bodies and whimpered at the lack of fresh flesh. Not even a drop of blood remained. They’d been drained completely.

  He picked something up and tossed it back on the ground. The object landed with a loud clang. I tiptoed over to see what he’d thrown and pressed my shaking hands to my mouth. Stumbling back, I gave the room a closer inspection in the dim light. Dark spots and splashes stained the cement brick, and my mind quickly conjured torture porn images. I dared look where Charlie had thrown the object and noticed other implements tossed about the floor: a hatchet, razor-edged spoon still trimmed with blood, copper bowls, and powders of various colors—one resembling flour and another corn meal. I wasn’t about to touch any of it to make sure.

  I cursed and fought down a wave of panic. We had to get out of here.

  Charlie had led us into some serial killer’s den, one who maybe liked to bake. The more I studied the floor around the tools, the more I noticed the white powder dusted in swirls and lines as if at one point, the powder had formed a shape.

  A supernatural ritual.

  For a moment, I heard whispers wafting from the corners, some soft and melodic, others assaulting me in angry tones, but one spoke to me in a strong, clear tone and caused my power to burble in response.

  “Montange . . .” the voice droned.

  I spun, ready to collect Charlie and get the fuck out of Hellraiser’s basement when a different, more earthly voice stopped me cold. If he had pins sticking out of his head, I was going to first stare in awe, then scream and pass out.

  “You found my tools,” the voice said.

  Oh, shitballs. My muscles liquefied, and I mustered every ounce of strength to stay upright.

  “I must use tools, charms, spells, chants to tap the powers of hell that you can access with the blink of your soul,” he said. His voice, deepened by a Southern drawl, came from a dark corner across the room.

  How . . .? It took a few seconds of holding my breath to calm my hysterical body.

  “I know who you are . . . what you are,” he said.

  What? My mind blabbered, still too shocked to think straight, then it hit me with a jarring certainty. This was the man who had attacked Lysander, and the implements, the odd mummified bodies . . . it was voodoo. His vampire instincts had done Lysander justice. I finally found my voice, shaky but functioning. “Who are you?”

  The shadows moved, gained substance, presenting two figures. The man and Olive. She’d decayed considerably. Bits of bone peeked through her ravaged flesh. Her blond locks had fallen off her head, and the entire left side of her face sagged as if the bone holding up the skin had completely disintegrated. I tried to reach out and extinguish the arcane energy keeping her alive, to no avail. I slid my gaze to the man next to Olive. He was unremarkable, diminutive in size, but harboring a certain ferocity in the swirl of his eyes and flushed complexion. The shadows seemed to trail after him in supplication. Charlie perked up at Olive’s presence, approached her, but backed off in annoyance when she hissed at him.

  “I am Baba Simon Delatte, sorcerer, bokor, in service to the spirit of death, Baron Samedi.” He spoke his name and title with a deliberate gravitas, as if I should have gone “ahhh” or crumpled away in fear. But I didn’t move or speak. The only noise came from Charlie’s endless scratching and skittering around the room. His movements began to grate on my nerve endings, increasing my anxiety. At least the whispers had ceased.

  “You see my creations. Bodies that wait for a soul that will never return because I have stored their ti-bon-ange, their souls, to perform my magic. Others I delivered to the entities that grant me power.”

  No wonder I’d sensed the weirdness, the putrefaction of the bodies. Similar to witches, practitioners of voodoo harnessed their power from supernatural forces to practice white or black magic. In this case, he’d called on the dark and twisted ones.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “I was called by Baron Samedi to harvest souls in his glory.”

  I shook my head at these drama queen bad guys. What the hell was he talking about? He was claiming access to Baron Samedi, really? Christ. No matter the religion, a fanatic was a fanatic.

  “How did you take control of Olive?” I asked.

  “She is marked with a vodun symbol. When you attempted to raise her, the symbol ignited and brought her to me.”

  Thank God. Despite being trapped in this low-budget horror scene, I was relieved, almost giddy at the confirmation that I hadn’t lost control. But once again, I was dealing with a nut job whose reach extended far beyond his capability. How had he killed a witch? Was he working alone? Was Baron Samedi the big bad demon?

  “So you killed Olive and attacked my friend Lysander next to the docks.”

  He smiled, a ghastly, satisfied smile, more frightening than anything I’d seen so far. “The vampire. Such a shame to lose that ange. Vampires provide the most potent bursts of energy and are greatly prized by the dark powers. I needed the strength of his soul to perform my next ritual. Unfortunately, I failed and had to commit more debase chores.” He fanned his hand at the bodies. “Regrettable, but necessary. With you, I won’t need charms or sacrifices or chants. You don’t appreciate your gift. I can only take and command the soul. But you . . . you can taste it.” He punctuated his words with a repulsive lick of his lips.

  I suppressed a shudder. As if I wanted to taste anyone’s ange.

  “What do you want with me?” I asked.

  He laughed. The bastard held up the hair strands that Olive had pulled out of my scalp. My heart stopped, and a horrible cavity spread in my chest. He wasn’t trying to convince me to join him. He wanted to perform some demented voodoo on me.

  “Yes. I see you understand now. When I deliver your soul to Baron Samedi, he will grant me unlimited power.”

  My eyes were drawn once again to the implements of his gruesome trade. Ones he intended to use on me.

  “The dark powers contacted me, requested souls in exchange for granting me more power and knowledge. I used to serve the pure gods, the white magic, as a houngan, but that source is limited and weak.” He squatted, arranged his tools in a neat row on the floor, wiped off the blood and reshaped the powder, as if polishing the silver and setting the table for an elaborate dinner.

  “Maybe there’s a reason for that,” I said, pointing at the decimated corpses.

  He laughed. Not evil or maniacal, just straight-out amused.

  “I experimented with some of the forbidden spells, gave them a sacrifice, a goat, but they wanted more. My son helped me enact the spell, and the dark powers took him and instructed me to bring them your soul in return for his.”

  Samedi took his son? Doubtful. Somehow Delatte, in the grip of his spell, must have killed his own son and was now blaming his death on some nonexistent voodoo god.

  “With you, I will succeed in releasing him from their grasp.”

  “You want to bring your son back from the dead? Didn’t you ever watch Pet Sematary?”

  “Enough talk.” He pulled out a crude, scary little horror-show doll, stitched together with thick red thread, bald and in no way resembling me. Why a doll? I already couldn’t play Frisbee anymore. Another harmless consumer item ruined to me forever. He stuffed my hair in an open seam on the side and began chanting.

  “Simon, think about this. Your Baron Samedi stole your son’s soul. Wherever he comes from, th
e dark side of voodoo is wrong. It’s something better left alone.” In hell, I wanted to say, but hell didn’t exist. “You don’t need to take my soul. I’ll raise your son, make him a revenant. You’ll have your son, and I’ll have my soul. Win, win.” Of course, there was no way I’d ever agree to make his son a revenant, but the suggestion could buy me time.

  He stopped chanting, and, for a moment, I thought I saw doubt crease his face. Come on, come on. Inner-conscience guy who likes puppies, surface, please.

  Then something I could never have explained in a million years happened. The whispers resumed, and Delatte looked toward the darkened corners, his face transformed by fear. He turned back to me, any hesitation wiped off his expression. “I must deliver you to our masters.” He resumed chanting, and I wanted to scream in panic and frustration.

  Pressure built inside my body, and my breathing grew short, my chest heavy.

  “Extracting the soul requires tearing you up from the inside out,” he said blandly, before chanting again. His whispers sent icy tendrils of fear up and down my spine.

  I fell to my knees and cried out. My thoughts split apart, shattered along with the rest of my body. My heart convulsed, and its beat turned so erratic, I thought I might have a heart attack.

  Fuck me. I could barely breathe, much less think to figure out how to stop him from sucking out my soul with his voodoo doll vacuum. I couldn’t manipulate his mummy zombies, and Charlie, well, I didn’t know what the hell he was doing. Bodies, I needed bodies.

  I blinked my eyes against the agony clamping my body into rigid senselessness. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I banged my head on the dusty floor, trying to counteract the pain and force my mind back, but I only succeeded in smearing dirt and dust on my forehead. My head swam and I felt like I was going to black out. Then an idea managed to penetrate the pain.