The Necromancer's Betrayal

by Mimi Sebastian

  When my heart finally stopped tripping over itself, I carefully settled my cheek on the soft silk of his shirt. He pressed his lips to my ear, and his breath, tinged with whiskey and his spicy demon scent, overwhelmed me and everything, everyone around us melted in a blur. He pressed his thumb against my side, grazing until he found the round swell of my breast. I felt his smile against my cheek when I suppressed a moan. My rebellious arms somehow found their way around his neck.

  “You’re insufferable,” I said.

  “Charming.” His breath puffed against my earlobe, causing my nipples to harden.

  “Smug.”

  “Confident.” He continued to rub and caught my nipple with one devious flick, eliciting a sharp gasp.

  “Arrogant.”

  “Gracious.”

  “Oh, hell.”

  “That, too.” He tightened his arms even more. “Do you know how much I want to throw you over my shoulder, take you to my place, and make love to you? I don’t think you’ll ever understand how much I want you.” His words, whispered into my ear, soft and husky, about undid me.

  “This conversation is not a good idea.” But my body screamed, throbbed to hear the rest of what he wanted to do.

  “Why? Don’t want Lysander to see me kiss you?” He glided his lips across my jawbone, leaving my skin zinging everywhere he touched. “He kissed you.” His words, tinged with a note of regret, sent a violent shiver through me.

  “No. Stop. What if Malthus sees?” I pushed away from him. He loosened his embrace, giving me an extra inch of space, without removing his arms from my waist.

  “Maybe I don’t give a damn.”

  “I had an interesting talk with Portia.” My words had the intended effect, throwing a bucket of freezing cold water over the conversation. I hated to extinguish the passion I so craved, but our talk had veered into the same morass that led to nowhere but despair.

  “That was mean,” he said, his eyes clouding with frustration.

  “What? Talking with her or bringing it up?”

  “What did you talk about?”

  I smirked. “Sharing.”

  He quirked an eyebrow. “Maybe I don’t want to know.”

  “Do you trust her?”

  “It’s wise not to trust anyone for the time being, but I’d be surprised if she was involved.”

  “You might try talking to her the next time you’re together.”

  “I haven’t been with anyone since you and I made love.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Guess I can’t say the same for you.”

  Ah, back to the pain. It almost felt better. At least we’d enjoyed most of the evening before igniting the white flag. I should have shot back at him with some retort, admonished him for judging me, but I was too buzzed and confused with guilt and readily accepted my role as dartboard for the night.

  “So tell me, are you and Lysander serious? Do you care for him?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course.”

  His arms stiffened.

  “He’s a friend,” I added.

  His eyebrows shot up in disbelief.

  “I’m not dating him. I’m not dating you either. Yes, we—” Frustration stifled my words. “What do you want me to do? Wait nine years? I don’t think our relationship can stand nine years of hurting each other.”

  His arms tightened, tightened, tightened and suffocated my thoughts. “He’s using the blood exchange to manipulate you.”

  “He’s not manipulating me. You know better than that.”

  “Lysander is a very old vampire, and I can assure you, he didn’t spend those hundreds of years in a monastery. He knows exactly what he’s doing.”

  “Just like you know exactly what you’re doing with Portia?”

  “That’s different.”

  He let me pull out of his embrace. “Sure it is,” I said, before turning away from him. The bar came into view and, needing a destination, I sprinted off before he could prevent my escape. I chanced a glance back and saw Portia had claimed him for the next dance. He whirled her onto the dance floor, but not before locking eyes with me for one last, hard stare.

  I leaned my stomach against the table and scanned the drink menu, searching for something stronger and more exotic than a martini. Then I spotted, to my amusement, a drink called the Corpse Reviver. Perfect. The equal parts dry gin, Swedish punch, Cointreau, and lemon juice topped off with a dash of Pernod would supply the right amount of oblivion to carry me through the rest of the night. Besides, how could I resist a drink called the Corpse Reviver?

  The bartender slipped the flute in my hand, and I slipped into the cool night air of the courtyard, deciding I preferred the company of Naala to Ewan or any other demon.

  Moonlight gleamed off the demon spider’s statue. Why Xavier kept this constant reminder of that repulsive creature was beyond me. “Screw you, Naala,” I said, raising my glass to her. “I’m going to find Delatte, find Cora’s killer, then give myself time to figure out who I am, what my demon side means.” I inhaled and took another sip of the Reviver, a new determination spiking my blood, or maybe it was this damn drink.

  “Is this a demon creature?”

  I swayed to my right and encountered Dominic a few steps to my side. Ah, fuck. I had no more fight left in me, so I took another gulp and let the universe take over. “Yes.”

  “One you’re not fond of, I gather?”

  I ran my hand along the cool stone of Naala’s long, spindly leg. Why was I so fascinated with this abomination? “About as fond of her as you are of me.”

  And he smiled. A real smile, not one filled with deceit or threat, and I just about fainted. “Under different circumstances, I think I would have liked you very much,” he said.

  “What circumstances?”

  “If you weren’t a necromancer.”

  “See, I find that incomprehensible. I haven’t done anything bad to you.”

  “Your race shouldn’t exist. Necromancers are a perversion of nature.”

  “This coming from a blood-sucking vampire.” I threw my hands up. “You’re holding me accountable for, I don’t even know what. Something the demons did? Necromancers did hundreds of year ago?” I laughed bitterly. “Seems like necromancers paid for any past crimes with the genocide, don’t you think?” I ended my tirade with a thin-lipped smile. My kind had paid with their lives, and the vampires had helped drive the genocide. They weren’t the only ones to blame, but they had plenty of blood on their fangs.

  “And history may yet repeat itself,” he said quietly.

  “Is that a threat?”

  He shook his head. “No, but there are some things we can’t escape. Every supernatural being embodies his or her history. The moment you’re born, you absorb it. It feeds your power.”

  I shook my head. “No. You’re using that as an excuse to act like an asshole.”

  He didn’t snarl or sneer, only looked thoughtful. Damn. Tonight was unusual indeed. Portia reaching out. Ewan being civil, sort of. Werewolves apologizing. Maybe those bartenders were slipping some kind of supernatural roofies in the drinks.

  “Has Malthus told you what side he took in the necromancer genocide?” Dominic asked.

  It was a question I’ve avoided. An answer I’d feared ever since I learned the genocide had split the demons into opposing factions. I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head. The muffled music and chattering voices drifted around us in the courtyard.

  “Do you want to know?”

  I regarded one of Naala’s multiple eyeballs. Just when I’d achieved one level of understanding in my relationship with Malthus, he upped the ante, necessitating a renewed and grueling effort to cross that new boundary. I wasn’t sure I wanted to even try anymore. “I think you’ve already told me, and it’s something I suspected.” I em
ptied my glass and decided I needed more oblivion from the idea, now confirmed in my head, that Malthus had supported wiping out the necromancer race. None of it made any sense, especially since he’d hooked up with my grandmother.

  “Maybe some of what you said is right. Some of us use history as an excuse. We are unable to puncture the boxes we’ve constructed around ourselves,” he said after a few moments.

  The alcohol was muddling my brain. Did he just agree with me? “Is the spell on this place going to disappear after tonight, you know, the carriage will pop back into a pumpkin?” And everyone who was acting civil and nice would turn back into snarling harpies and trolls?

  “And who will return your glass slipper?” He smiled again, and I caught a glimpse of something human in his eyes. It made me incredibly uncomfortable.

  “Is the ferocious vampire joking with me?”

  He chuckled, then stilled. The air turned strangely heavy and silent, no longer filtering in noises from the party inside.

  A silent energy swept across the courtyard, a foul breath.

  Dominic grunted and doubled over. His skin began folding in on itself. Oh no. I’d seen the shrink-wrapped vampire bit before. I heard the faint sound of chanting.

  “Delatte. Where are you?” I swung my head around, squinting into the darkness of the surrounding trees.

  Dominic clenched the skirt of my dress. “Stop,” he whined in a starved voice.

  “It’s not me, dammit. It’s the bokor. The one who attacked Lysander. He’s trying to steal your soul.”

  “We must exchange blood,” he rasped.

  Fuck. His body was degenerating rapidly, faster than when Delatte tried to steal Ly’s soul. He was right. I crouched, and he took my wrist in his wasted hands and licked it with his withered, wet tongue.

  “Just get it over with,” I said through clenched teeth.

  His fangs lengthened, but instead of gleaming and hard, they appeared distended with a bluish tinge. I squeezed my eyes shut and looked away.

  Then something hit me, throwing me back on the grass, tearing me out of Dominic’s weak grip. A large dog with empty eye sockets snarled and growled, baring his sharp canines. Its emaciated body appeared hollowed out, with its rib cage protruding through the dry, hairless skin. A sick, oversized, mutant Chihuahua. Undead. Some kind of arcane presence was animating the dog . . . a soul stolen by Delatte?

  I watched helplessly as Dominic whined and withered into a wrinkled pulp. My breath tripped into hyperventilation, and my lips became numb. The seconds stretched out. The dog barked and snarled, and Dominic moaned in agony. Delatte remained hidden in the shadows of the courtyard, silent.

  And then a small red light caught my eye, as if someone had pointed a laser right at one of Naala’s eyes. The demon mark on my arm throbbed, and before I could think about what I was doing, I lifted my arm and gathered to me whatever was fueling the dog, giving me a frenetic jolt in the process. The chagur scalded my arm, searing a trail up my shoulder. I ignored the pain and ran to Dominic, crumbled to the ground next to the collapsed dog corpse.

  He made one last attempt to rise, his dusty eyes wide, imploring me before he sunk back to the ground in a final gasp. Oh, for fuck’s sake. I had no love for the vampire, but I had no death wish for him, either. I scanned the courtyard, but knew Delatte had disappeared. He’d succeeded in stealing Dominic’s soul and now, powered up, would come after mine. I slumped against Naala’s statue. Another death associated with me. In the court of the damned, I had every motive to want Dominic dead. The devil dog lay in a desiccated heap on the ground. Maybe it could somehow demonstrate the connection to Delatte.

  Ewan suddenly appeared before me, startling me. He crouched next to me. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded weakly. “The bokor.”

  “Xavier is searching for him.”

  I moved to stand when two sensations hit me simultaneously. Despair squeezed my gut over Dominic’s death, and something else I’d never experienced before slid around inside me, like an oil slick, trying to find purchase, on what? My arm twitched painfully, and I finally looked at it, shocked to see a tattoo line, gleaming in a multitude of tourmaline colors, twining my arm from the chagur to my lower shoulder. The tip opened like a cat’s claw vine, sharp tips poised to stab its way further up my skin at my next transgression.

  Ewan noticed it, too. He gently clasped my arm just under the mark. “Does it hurt?”

  “Yes. Please don’t touch it.” I shrugged his hand away, searched for my shawl that had fallen to the ground, and wrapped it around my shoulders, hiding the chagur.

  My arm throbbed. I clenched and unclenched my palm, the energy I’d absorbed still zinging and tingling. Unusual but not unwelcome. I looked at Naala’s eye again, back to cold, white stone. A few moments later, the shadows and quiet of the courtyard dissipated with the arrival of werewolves, witches, demons, vampires and other creatures, all charging the air with their whispered conjectures regarding Dominic’s death.

  I stood, and Ewan wrapped a possessive arm around my waist. Malthus and Xavier appeared and dispersed the crowd. I couldn’t tear my eyes from Dominic. One minute we were joking. I was actually joking with the vampire who had tried to kill me, and now he lay on the ground, and I’d stood by while he’d writhed and died an agonizing death. That could have been Lysander.

  Ewan tugged me toward the gallery. The combination of the shock and alcohol loosened my limbs, and I slipped. He tightened his hold and gave me a moment to recuperate. I caught Lysander’s stare over Ewan’s shoulder, and my vision shook at the desolation etched on his face. He stood next to Dominic’s body, looking truly forsaken, as Satan must have felt when they kicked him out of heaven. I wanted to jump out of Ewan’s arms to comfort him, explain, but lacked the strength. Ewan sensed my brief flinch and tightened his grip. I hiccupped and buried my face in his shirt, letting him lead me away.

  Xavier waved his hand toward the loft, and Ewan ushered me up the stairs. Most of the revelers had left, but the band continued to play a mournful jazz tune, giving the gallery the air of a sad, after-party hangover. I fell on the couch and stared out at the bay shrouded in a cloudy night sky. The initial jolt of the dog’s energy had diminished, but it still coursed through my veins, giving me caffeine-inspired jitters. The impulse to dispel it warred with the obsessive need to hoard it. My precious.

  Xavier and Malthus came up, and Lysander joined us a few minutes later. Kara made it halfway up the stairs before Xavier politely rebuffed her. She gave me a small nod, then left with Jax.

  Xavier sat next to me and placed a hand on my shoulder, right over the mark. I winced and he drew his hand back, taking my wrap with it, and peered closer at my arm. Both Malthus and Ewan joined his examination. Xavier cursed in demon and stood up.

  Malthus touched the mark, causing me to jerk back at the sting. “Ow. It hurts.”

  Lysander hung back but kept his eyes trained on my arm.

  “Tell us what happened,” Xavier said.

  “One minute I was having a civil conversation with Dominic, if you can believe, and the next, Cujo shot out of the dark, and Dominic started shriveling.” I looked at Lysander. “It was the same thing that happened to you.”

  “The dog lying on the ground?” Ewan asked.

  I nodded.

  “A baka,” Xavier said. “A hollowed-out corpse—in this case a dog—that he filled with an evil soul.” Xavier nodded for me to continue.

  As if hearing us, the evil soul writhed inside me, confirming what I’d suspected, but didn’t want to acknowledge. I’d absorbed a soul. Before I could dwell on the implications, the sheer enormity of what I’d done, Xavier said more forcefully, “Tell us what happened.”

  “The dog threatened me, kept me from helping Dominic, and . . . I just absorbed it.”

  Everyone stared at me.<
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  “Absorbed it?” Ewan asked.

  I nodded slowly. And kept it. Cherished it. Could I tell them that? It wasn’t fair, really. No other supe had to weigh each of their words to the ounce, hide each involuntary twitch. I noted the way their eyes slid off me now, and every time I raised my voice or waved my arms a little too forcefully, I heard their thoughts: the necromancer is losing it.

  Fuck ’em. I pressed my fist to my chest. An evil spirit, call it what you will. I had absorbed its soul and satisfied a yearning that had been building inside me, as if finally satisfying a craving for steak after subsisting on celery. And my power welcomed it. The two complemented each other somehow. I stood, suddenly feeling claustrophobic on the couch.

  Malthus reached me in one long stride and clamped his hands on my shoulders. “Release it, release it,” he ordered.

  I met his gaze and realized I didn’t want to. More pain sliced up my arm, making me cringe. Malthus shook me, and I noticed Xavier take a step closer.

  “Ruby.” Malthus spoke, his voice low, probing in my head, making me groan. Xavier stood quietly, while Ewan loomed behind Malthus, the grooves on his forehead deepened to unfathomable crevasses filled with worry.

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “You must. Use your power to push it out. It’s an evil presence inside you,” Malthus insisted.

  My chest tightened. The so-called evil presence squeezed with panic when it sensed my vacillation. I called up my power, and it flailed in rebellion. I widened my eyes at Malthus.

  “You control this,” he whispered, offering the conviction I needed.

  I swelled with power too fast for the presence to react, effectively expunging it with one long gasp. I sensed the soul struggling with its freedom then eventually dissipating into the spiritual ether.

  I sagged against Malthus. He kissed my forehead and rubbed my back. I can’t remember ever being touched by Malthus. His hands felt rough, real . . . human.