by Izzy Shows
I hung on for another heartbeat, two even, before the corpse had turned into a charred shell of whatever it had been. It fell away when I let go of its arm.
I panted for a moment, hanging out of the car with my head just barely safe from the road below. I sucked in a harsh breath and gripped the window’s edge, yanking myself back up so I could collapse onto the roof of the car.
I just wanted this to be over and done with, but we were only getting started.
“You might as well stay out there, in case something else shows up.” I barely caught Emily’s words, the wind was whipping at my ears so ferociously that it made it difficult to hear. I nodded, then realised that she couldn’t see me.
“Yeah, you’ve got a point there. Wouldn’t want to be caught off guard again.” I shouted the words towards the empty space I was hanging out of, hoping they wouldn’t be torn away by the wind before she could hear them. She didn’t respond, so either she heard me or had assumed I’d heard her.
I guess me staying out here was answer enough for her.
I took the opportunity to glance around the night, see if I could figure any of this out. The world appeared deserted, there was not a soul to be found on the street, and that was eerie enough on its own. London was usually crammed full of people, especially on a Saturday night, and now it looked like a ghost town. There weren’t even lights on in most of the houses, as if they knew that they shouldn’t be drawing attention to themselves. I wondered if they knew they were in hiding or if it was such a subconscious action that it hadn’t even occurred to them that they were doing anything abnormal. I hoped for the latter, I didn’t want too many questions coming out of this evening.
I surveyed the road ahead of and behind us, and found nothing suspicious. I didn’t believe my own eyes, didn’t believe it was possible that we didn’t have any further attackers. So, I closed my eyes and sent my senses out into the night to probe at the world and see what I could find. Nothing so far.
I spread my mind farther out, and felt the edge of sick madness the closer I got to Tyburn Tree. That was to be expected.
I pulled back to myself and glanced in at Emily. It looked like we would be unimpeded the last few minutes before we arrived, for which I was grateful. My face and forearm were slick with blood and I needed to catch my breath. I shoved the lethargic feeling far to the back of my mind. I slumped against the roof of the car and sent up a quick prayer to whoever might be listening that I would get all of us through this.
I had never carried so much responsibility before.
37
The Mind of the Necromancer
THE DARK AND MALEVOLENT ENERGY SWEPT over him, delivering a high unlike any he had ever received from a mortal drug.
Deacon had been chasing one high after another following the death of his beloved wife, and it had warped him into the disgusting creature that was capable of this amount of violence. He was angry, angry at his wife for leaving him, angry at God for taking her from him. He had made the pact with the malformed creatures, initially intending to raise his wife and reunite with her…but that had gone so wrong.
So horrendously wrong. She hadn’t been his wife, she’d been an empty corpse that could only move so long as he kept a beat going, kept her heat beating. She hadn’t been able to look at him with the love that used to be his salvation, she hadn’t been able to kiss him unless he’d commanded.
And when he did, she had tasted like death.
So, he had not been able to reunite with his dear beloved in that way, but he had found another. He would pass on into the next world and see her again, but not before his anger was sated. He would take them all with him, the entire city of London. They would know his pain and they would be there with him, so that they could all live in death as they once had in life.
“Hey, boss.” The cautious request was voiced by one of his recruits.
Deacon jerked his gaze over to the man, resisting the urge to snarl at him. He hated them all, but he couldn’t let on to that. They did not know that he intended to kill them. The fools thought they were safe from his rage. They had been too afraid to make the pact themselves, so he had done it, and because of that they had relinquished all authority to him.
“What?” He asked, his face a calm mask.
“Are we supposed to get the sacrifices yet?” The voice quavered, and Deacon could smell the man’s fear.
“No.” He did not expand on the reply, just shouldered past the man to get the rest of the ingredients for the ritual.
It was an incredibly complicated ritual, one that he likely would not have been able to put together without the pact, but as it was burned into his mind’s eye now so he didn’t need to worry about getting anything wrong.
He grabbed the twisted, blackened staff that he had carved for himself from the bed of his truck and strode back to the triangle of baby oak trees that marked the ritual site.
The first thing he had to do was, well…cleanse the damn space. It made his lip curl to refer to it as such, but he could not come up with a better term for it to save his skin. There was too much energy in it from passers-by, even though the spells he’d laid each dawn had kept most away. They’d also laid the groundwork for what would happen tonight.
He walked to the centre of the triangle and stood still, reaching out dark tendrils of his mind to get a read on the location. To the enlightened observer, it would be obvious the darkness was leaking out of him—he could feel it pouring from him in waves. There was no purification taking place here, only a dismissal of energy clouding the location so that he could replace it with his own.
After a moment of inaudible muttering, Deacon slammed the staff down into the centre of the triangle, directly onto the plaque that marked the site of the original Tyburn Tree.
Air rolled out from the impact point in little gusts, carrying the energy out and away. It was almost as if the wind had snatched up and clung to the little bits of energy remnants and stolen them away to keep them safe from the monster that meant harm to this place. A ritual of this degree was certain to mar the location, forever changing it.
The very earth around it rebelled.
Deacon could feel the hatred of the earth beneath his feet, but it only fed his twisted desire to destroy the city. All would know his pain, and if his first victim was the earth beneath him, then so be it. It was not a bad start, after all. There was nothing to protect the earth from him now.
He had captured the Wizard who meant to thwart him, and his blood would now be used in the ritual. Outside of the Wizards, there was no one who could do anything about him. Certainly, not the Fae, who had once been integral to the keeping of balance in nature. They had disappeared or otherwise been useless for ages now; no one was certain why that had happened. No, the earth would have to drink the tainted blood he deigned to spill across its soil, and then it would be used as the focal point for destruction.
“The site has been cleansed. Bring the first sacrifice.” Deacon instructed the recruits. There were four of them, and they were all equals in terms of stupidity. He couldn’t stand any of them, they hungered for control and power. Dominion of those who had ignored them. It was boring. He didn’t need the world on a leash, he just needed his beloved back.
He would destroy the world for her, without a moment of hesitation.
He couldn’t believe that these fools, who had never known even a mother’s love, were reaching for something so stupid and futile as power. And they hadn’t even been intelligent or strong enough to make the damned pact themselves, which would have handed them the power they wanted.
It was his, and he would use it to manipulate them without losing a wink of sleep over it. On the contrary, he would rather enjoy this.
His attention was drawn when the four men brought the first sacrifice to his feet—an average British teenager. She was clearly just coming into her prime, evidenced by the awkward knobbly knees and hyper-thin thighs, she had yet to fill out her entire figure just yet, th
ough her breasts had developed. Likely she was considered beautiful, with her pale skin and raven hair that curled around her cheeks in ringlets.
She blinked up at him with pleading blue eyes. He felt no response in his heart. He collected all this information as clinical and detached as if he had no soul—and perhaps that was true. Perhaps he had traded away his soul, though the creature had made no mention of that being necessary. Perhaps he had lost his soul when he lost his wife, for he was about to carve out this girl’s heart and he could not find it in him to care.
“P-p-please.” She stuttered out the words, her teeth chattering though the night air was not cold. Tears brimmed her widened eyes. She seemed to be trying to focus in on him, though she kept darting glances around. “You don’t have to do this. I won’t tell anyone about you, I swear. I just want to go home to my mom. She’s sick, she needs me, please just let me go home and take care of her. She’ll be lost without me, don’t you see? I have a family, people who care about me. I’m a good student, I haven’t done anything wrong, I promise. I won’t tell anyone about you.” She kept repeating herself until she began to choke on her sobs. Trying to make him think of her as a person.
He tilted his head to the side and regarded her with calm detachment. All that he’d been able to feel for a while now was either all-consuming rage or nothing at all. Her pleas fell on deaf ears. “You will not be missed, because there will be no one left to miss you.” He informed her, though it did nothing but make her keening cries louder. He sighed. “In any event, you can stop trying to convince me to let you go with tales of your virtue—that’s why your here, dolt. I need to defile this site with your innocent blood.”
Her eyes lit up as she seized on that information. She raised her bound hands to reach out for him, though he stepped away and she crashed into the ground. “I-I’m not a virgin, though,” she stuttered, twisting to look at him again. She looked so vulnerable on the ground, so easy to kill. Her eyes pleaded with him “Don’t you need virgin blood? I’m not, so I really wouldn’t be any help to you. See?” She disparately clung to the hope that this would save her life. Her body quivered with the aftershocks of her sobs, or perhaps from the trauma he’d done to her mind. It was out of her control.
“A common misconception. No, your sexual behaviors have nothing to do with this. The virginity which is necessary speaks to whether your blood has been used in ritual magic before. And…” He paused to step closer, crouching down so that his face was directly above hers. He took in a long breath, inhaling her scent before taking several sniffs around her face and hair. He lifted a hand to grasp a strand of her hair, crushing it to his face as he took one last breath with eyes closed and a look of indefinable ecstasy on his face. Then his eyes snapped open, locking onto hers with a piercing gaze that seemed to drive right into her soul. “Yours…has…not,” he said, practically purring. She let out a soft, frightened gasp then snapped her mouth shut. Her terror writ clearly on her face, it only fuelled the pleasure he took.
Deacon straightened up, grasping her thick, curly hair and dragging her up so that she was almost kneeling but could not find a comfortable position. She struggled against him, wriggling so that her form brushed against him several times. He smiled down at her, the patronizing smile of an old man dealing with a temper tantrum. “You should feel…special,” he said. “You have been chosen, to give yourself to me. I will take all that is you inside of me, even as you are poured into the ground. You will become a part of something so much greater than you could ever have imagined. Me.” His words came out an almost snake like whisper, and she abruptly ceased her struggle, craning her neck up to look at him. She shook her head, mute, unable to offer up anything else in her defense. She kept her eyes trained on him, as if unable to look away.
Good. She would watch as he claimed her life. He drew his athame and held it up to the sky.
“Liana, I do this for you.” He murmured the words before bringing the knife down rapidly to slice the girls throat. He felt no need to draw out her death, unlike the Wizard’s. He would have his fun with him, because the man had to be punished. Deacon allowed her life’s blood to spill onto the centre of the triangle, then walked out to one of the trees, and slowly dragged her body in a circle around the three trees, carefully keeping himself on the inside. He gestured for the other three sacrifices to be brought to him before he would close the circle.
The four men rushed to grab them for him—twin boys and the Wizard—though they were clumsy in handling the Wizard. He would not stay knocked out for long, and Deacon wanted him caged inside the circle before he regained consciousness.
They managed to lug him in without upsetting the line of blood that he had drawn, and the twin boys—only about nine-years-old—were easy enough to drop in. Deacon closed the circle of blood then, and felt the energy thrum in the air as it snapped shut with him inside. It was an exciting feeling, and one that he was likely never to forget, no matter what happened.
He had never known that magic was a reality, not until he’d lost his wife and had gone on the hunt to find something, anything, that he could use to bring her back to him. The first time he had closed a ritual circle, he had thought there was nothing more pleasurable on the planet than feeling something respond to the innate power inside of you. Unfortunately, he had not had enough of that innate power inside of him to do the things he needed to.
Hence the need for powerful rituals, and powerful creatures to make it possible for him to complete powerful rituals.
He would be reunited with his darling. Soon.
The female sacrifice had lost the light in her eyes, and her blood was seeping into the group beneath her. Deacon tilted his head at her, his curious eyes watched the sanguine liquid pumping out of the slit in her throat. It was such an interesting thing, watching her jugular pulsing in her neck. Her heart trying so hard to keep her alive. He smirked and knelt before her empty corpse, bringing up his athame again.
Part of him wished that the Wizard was awake for this moment, so that he could see the skill that Deacon used, but he knew that it was for the best that the Wizard be kept under for as long as necessary. He would be allowed to surface only to be killed. Deacon didn’t really believe that the Wizard could stop him, but everyone else seemed to think he was something of a hotshot.
Rather than crudely slamming the athame into the corpse’s chest, he began cutting into her chest in a very clinical fashion, reminiscent of an autopsy. He carved her heart out of her chest and placed it in the very centre of the plaque. He then proceeded to arrange the bodies around it so that the four—three living, one dead—all lay with their heads forming a circle around the heart and their feet reaching out to almost touch the edges of the circle they lay inside.
Then he began to chant, kneeling in front of the heart. He felt the energy gathering around him in thick, dark swirls. His comrades took up the chant alongside him, adding their voices to the mix. He felt the power throbbing in the air. It was a sense unlike any other he had ever experienced, as tactile as touch or scent, and yet wholly different from them. It washed over him and provided a euphoric sensation that he felt in every cell of his body. He could feel the pleasure emanating from the other men chanting, their excitement was palatable. It beat at him—unlike the wave that he had experienced, their excitement came in the form of a pounding drum that refused to be ignored.
A thought flitted in, dismissive of them and how easily they allowed to be swept up in the addictive sensations of the ritual chant. He pushed it out of his head as quickly as he could, and focussed back in on the four bodies laid out before him.
He had work to do.
38
MY CHEEK WAS OOZING BLOOD—THE fluid moved in a sluggish fashion rather than the regular streams I had experienced before. I felt my heart hammer in my chest, forcing the liquid out faster, as I thought about the poison that was inevitably in my system.
Emily jerked the car to a stop before I could do much thinking about that
, though, and it was all I could do to hold on and not fall out of the window. I lifted my head up to see why we had come to such a sudden stop—and was faced with a giant barrier, almost translucent though still visible. I clambered out of the car gracelessly, barely managing not to fall over backwards.
Movie stars never have this problem. I thought to myself.
Emily was at my side in an instant, her eyes wide and one fist clenched on her sword. “What are we going to do about that?”
My own eyes widened in response, and I cast a desperate look at it and then back at her. I bit my lip, my head turned ever so slightly as I began to shake it back and forth, and then managed to stop myself. “I-I…uh.” I stammered. “I’m not sure.”
I didn’t want to admit that I had no idea what I was doing, I had only just started to feel confident on the ride here, but now I felt like the same uneducated shit I had been before. My body was already aching—cheek and arm seemed to have their own heartbeats—from the injuries I’d incurred. I didn’t know the first thing about taking down a barrier.
Maybe I should just quit…The world is obviously doomed. The thought appeared, unbidden, in my mind and I cringed at myself.
Utterly unacceptable. A response formed in my mind, the tone was calm and sounded completely divorced from the frantic energy sweeping around me. Raven.
Are you going to help me? I asked, cautiously hopeful as I darted a few looks around the area. I couldn’t see much of what was beyond the barrier—it was almost transparent, but had a hazy quality to it that obstructed the view.
Of course I am. That is what I am here for.
“Blair?” Emily’s voice cut through the internal focus I had been giving my conversation with Raven.
