by Jayne Hawke
“You’re so good at research,” Ethan said.
“I’m shit at research,” I said with a laugh.
“Ok, fair point. Would you like to trade research for my paperwork?”
“You’re sexy, but you’re nowhere near that sexy.”
TWENTY-FIVE
I was beginning to regret my decision not to do Ethan’s paperwork when the words started blurring in the book in front of me. There was a lot of stuff written about how awful necromancers were, how to stop someone’s becoming a necromancer, but I hadn’t found a single thing about stopping one. I wanted to think it was as easy as removing his head, but it would have been nice to have a little confirmation on that.
We’d already been through Mom’s library, so I was tucked away in the huge library in the safe house. Everyone else was off doing their thing. Kerry had gone somewhere with mutterings about some tech thing; Dean and Cade were doing a small job for Ethan’s business. I had the entire place to myself, and it felt wrong. The safe house was far too big for one person to be rattling around all by themselves.
It was as if Ethan had read my mind. He walked into the library with a broad grin on his face.
“I have the afternoon free...”
He strode over to me and picked me up facing him. I wrapped my legs around his hips and quickly saw exactly what he had in mind to fill the time with. He kissed me passionately, and I fell into his embrace, feeling his hunger mirrored within me. It had been far too long since I’d been with a guy, and the gods knew I needed him more than ever.
Ethan walked across the room and pinned me against the wall, holding me firm while he began kissing down my throat, leaving a trail of goosebumps in his wake. My heart was pounding in my chest as I tried to restrain myself and enjoy every moment.
Restraint had never been my strong point. I tugged on Ethan’s shirt trying to remove the ridiculous amount of clothing between us. Ethan smirked at me and bit my bottom lip as he pulled my arms above my head before he pinned my hands up there.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” he said huskily.
He teased and tormented me. Hot lips and sharp teeth trailed down my throat and along my collarbone before he undressed me far too slowly for my tastes. It felt like an eternity passed before he finally gave me what I needed.
As promised, he continued to take his sweet time while my breath came in short ragged bursts where I bit back the demands for him to stop tormenting me and fuck me. And then he did. We entwined ourselves around each other as the world faded away leaving nothing but exquisite pleasure and the feel of his hard muscular body against mine.
I was nothing but a puddle of pleasure by the time we finally finished. He wrapped me in his arms and held me close in an armchair. There were no untouched surfaces, no positions left unexplored. I rested my head on his chest and closed my eyes, feeling a warm contentment filling my very essence.
Something changed between us that afternoon. I could feel Ethan more clearly. It wasn’t just the magic running through his veins, it was a sensation of him. I allowed myself to sink into the feeling of protection and affection that formed his aura. This was how we were meant to be.
TWENTY-SIX
I stayed in Ethan’s bed that night. We didn’t sleep all that much. That didn’t stop me from getting up before dawn and demanding another sparring match from Dean. I wasn’t going to be viewed as some inferior member of the pack. We were going to spar until I had a clear win.
Again we sparred for over an hour until we were exhausted and badly bruised. I’d learnt from the previous morning and landed some hard blows on Dean. It wasn’t enough, but it was progress.
After breakfast, Sin dragged me out behind the safe house to have another sparring match. I was sore and growing stiff, but it felt good. I wasn’t meant to be lost in books or fretting over my past. I was supposed to be kicking ass and making a real difference in the world. Maybe that made me a monster, but I could live with that.
The news came in not long after dinner that a small army of skeletons had been spotted in the old cemetery. Ethan and I left the others to watch their movie. They’d worked hard, they deserved a break. Anyway, it was only a few skeletons. How difficult could it be?
We stared down the army of skeletons, and their vacant eye sockets stared back in immutable, morbid placidity. They were awaiting a cue, bone-forged tower shields and sabres held in limp hands. We were formulating a plan. Far from their superficially similar zombie counterparts who were necrotic flesh controlled by whatever was left of their central nervous system, and thus slow and huggable, skeletons were the necromancer’s answer to elemental golems from other disciplines. Not as sturdy as a rock golem, perhaps, but quick, armed, and most critically endowed with a sliver of the summoner’s spirit and intellect. Not to mention quite striking in the moonlight.
“I’m betting those bone shields are stronger than they look,” Ethan said, tense but eager.
“Probably. No way their blades are going to hold the same kind of edge as real steel, though. Let alone whatever my stuff is. Have you fought skellies before?”
“If you can call it fighting. Unless they’re rendered into bone dust, they’ll keep putting themselves back together. You have to break the magic. Eat the death.”
“Well, that’s... an image. Time to get spell breaking, then. Shall we keep score?”
Despite having time to adjust and strategize, it was still a shock when the skeletons all leapt to life in unison. Their movements were anything but jerky or clumsy, the absence of ligament and muscle making their mystically invigorated forms graceful and impossibly flexible.
“Take your work seriously, Kit. It takes you seriously.” He gestured at the quickly approaching wall of skeletons.
When I saw just how quickly they were moving, I began to see his point. I pulled on my witch magic and found it somnolent, grey and underutilized. I’d been practicing my war god magic so much I’d left it to languish. This was going to hurt.
I closed my eyes for a moment and pushed my mind outwards, seeking sources of magic. The moon and stars were there, but the moon was as fickle as any goddess and I didn’t want to overdraw on the stars who had been so good to me in the past. I cast my mind down and found that the dead had already been drained here, likely to make the very army we were facing. That only left the plants.
I brought up a shield with my war magic, wishing I could just pull that magic into my witch work, and used it to keep myself protected while I turned the landscaping into dead skeletons. Ethan had taken the lead, his death magic more than ready on command and the energy he needed taken right from his victims. A heap of inanimate bones lay at his feet, his hands gesturing in sharp, cyclical motions as he devoured the death around him.
Of course, there were still plenty to go around. A reminder I didn’t need clashed against my shield with a hollow clack, and I reached out to tear apart the magic that kept the skeleton animate. It took too much energy, more than I could hope to keep going for the duration of this fight with the resources I had. I dragged at the earth and the sky, but I couldn’t get a grip on either of them. I was going to build myself a meditation womb when this was over.
I needed to work with what I had, and that meant making every dribble of magic count. I was fending off several skeletons by that point, their impossible motions pushing my war abilities beyond what I would have been able to handle a year before, but hours of sparring meant that, at least, was up to the challenge. I watched them move with half my mind, working to integrate their grace into my own styles, and as I did I watched the threads of spirit that kept them animate. They were under strain, the quick motions requiring significant energy and precision. That gave me an idea.
I reached out to the nearest and tweaked his threads just a touch, severing a fraction of what was keeping him alive, and watched the outcome, still dragging more and more energy from the grave moss and grass surrounding us, wracking my brain to remember if there were trees behind me I could
count on as I moved continually back. In a few moments, I saw another tiny rip as the compromised thread overloaded just a little. The skeleton jerked for a fraction of a second, an impulse misfiring, and I took the opportunity to put him on his back with a shield slam. He disassembled and reassembled in a second, back to full form but not full function as the process tore another little bit of magic from its correct placement. With just a tiny fraction of a full break, I could set these things on an inevitable path to ruin. After that, it would just be a matter of keeping them fighting.
I smiled wickedly. This was going to be fun. There were perhaps a dozen skeletons left, most of which were pressing in around me as I backpedalled to keep from being surrounded. I reached out and tweaked them one by one, feeling exhausted even from those small acts but knowing the practice would help. When each was nudged on the path to its end, I summoned up a morning star and went to work. I didn’t have much energy for magic, but I could still keep my body moving and fighting for as long as I needed to with the aid of my father’s contribution to my bloodline.
I want to say I was a whirlwind of death, but the truth was that it was a holding action and I had exactly enough energy to fight it like one. When the skeletons pushed too hard, I punished them for it with my mace. When they jerked and faltered with magical degradation, I swept out with my shield and made room for myself to breathe. Bones clattered and flew, rejoining their owners again and again until, one by one, they collapsed to the ground as if their circuits had shorted out – and in a sense they had.
When the last fell and I dropped my equipment back into nothingness, I found Ethan posing mightily atop a pile of bones watching me with a mix of curiosity and mirth. “I can’t say that would have occurred to me, little breaker, but it did the job.”
“Who are you calling little, puppy boy? We can’t all survive on Purina Ground Doom, some of us are working with moss and grass out here.”
He laughed and hopped down from the pile, putting his arm around me and walking us back towards the car.
TWENTY-SEVEN
There was a weird shift somewhere inside of me over the next few days. I could feel the pack. It wasn’t like I could read their minds, but I could feel that Dean was pushing me to protect the pack rather than just being a jerk. I felt the deep affection Kerry had for Matt, and sheer joy Cade took in the Solstice preparations. It was an ethereal sort of emotion in my mind. I knew it wasn’t my own, and it was taking some getting used to.
The necromancer seemed to have gone to ground. There hadn’t been a single odd death, zombie, or skeleton in over a week. My days had been spent sparring and trying to figure out my witch magic. Mom’s grimoires were entirely focused on the blood-magic side of things, and it hurt my ego to read the books aimed at kids. Still, needs must. My pack needed me to step up and become better, stronger. There was going to come a day when we had to take on my father, and I wasn’t going to let them down during that fight.
My witch magic, the normal witch magic rather than the blood magic, was a fickle and fragile thing. The blood magic came so instinctually it whispered and pulled on my hands, guiding me to use it. The witch magic, however, was far more delicate. The magic itself was all around me. The internal part just allowed me to feel and use those threads.
I could use it when I was in a fight, because I had no choice. Even then, it was far from as good as it should have been. Sitting on a bench looking over the river trying to pluck at threads of magic running through the water was frustrating to say the least. Every time I felt as though I had a grasp on a single thread, it slipped between my fingers and was carried away on the current. Every book on witch magic agreed that this was the starting point. There was no point in looking at more complicated workings if you couldn’t grasp a single thread of magic.
I was failing at child’s play.
Closing my eyes, I tried to push aside the anger and focus on a calm state. Controlling my emotions was another key part of this whole witch thing. A calm settled over me, and I reached out with my magic once more. The threads swayed through the water slowly gliding past my mental fingers. Tenuous pieces of magic barely bigger than spider’s silk. Each of those threads contained enough magic to form the beginning of a spell. If I could pluck just three threads, then I’d have enough water to make someone’s lungs burn. I needed a good handful of threads to actually drown them. Baby steps.
I felt a thread moving slightly slower than the others and reached out for it. The cool silk brushed against my fingertips. I resisted the reflex to grab onto it and instead kept my mental movements slow and careful as though I was trying to work with some wild animal. There was a sensation of intelligence as the thread bent away from me. My jaw clenched, but I made myself remain slow and steady. I wasn’t going home until I’d succeeded at this.
It was an hour later when I finally pulled a tiny thread of magic from the water and pulled it back towards myself. I felt it lie limp in my fingers and knew that the magic within it was almost inert where I’d been too rough, but I was making progress. The thread dissolved into my palm and helped ease my parched throat.
“Are you ready for a game?” Sin asked.
I almost jumped. How long had the elf been standing behind me like that? Why hadn’t I felt him and his magic? The damn elf would be the end of me, I just knew it.
“What kind of game?”
“If you can snap the magic in a kelpie at the right moment, you’ll be able to collect all of its magic and bottle it. That would make a nice gift for Matt, would it not?”
I heard the familiar heavy sound of hooves against stone somewhere to my left. Kelpies weren’t something to be taken lightly. In their human form, they were a little wild but could be fun people. In their horse form, they were savage and incredibly strong.
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
Sin sighed, and the hoofbeats began moving away. I was exhausted, and I really didn’t want to kill someone just because Sin wanted to be nice to Matt. It was a nice thought, a dangerous one, but I had to give him some credit.
“I suppose I’ll have to get him socks, then.”
“Why would you get him socks?” I asked as I stood and faced Sin.
“They’re the traditional Solstice gift.”
“You were talking to Dean, weren’t you?”
Sin’s eyes narrowed.
“I didn’t hear a lie in his voice.”
“He’s just bad at gift giving. I’m sure Matt would love something alchemical, or some of your baked goods. The Solstice is supposed to be about thoughtful handmade gifts.”
Sin frowned in thought.
“I can do that.”
With that, he turned and walked away.
“Home’s the other way. Dinner will be soon,” I called out.
He turned to look at me. A smile slowly dawned upon his face.
“Yes, it is home now, isn’t it?”
TWENTY-EIGHT
The necromancer remained hidden wherever he was, and things were almost peaceful. It felt as though I blinked and suddenly it was the Solstice. I was more than a little proud of the fact that I’d managed to keep Kerry’s gift hidden from her. She had been through my room trying to find it more than once. When she couldn’t find it on her own, she kept trying to convince me it wouldn’t ruin the surprise if she got some clues. I said nothing.
Dean banged on Ethan’s and my door at the crack of dawn. I groaned and pulled my pillow over my head.
“Come on, pack tradition,” Ethan said as he ripped the covers off.
The cold air hit my naked body, and I grumbled. This was not how Solstice was supposed to go. I was supposed to remain warm and comfy in bed until around ten. Then I’d make my way downstairs and pull out the pastries I’d splashed out on for breakfast. Matt would come down and enjoy his fudge. It was peaceful, relaxed, and didn’t involve cold air or a run.
I got into my running clothes and gave everyone my best glare. Pack tradition my ass. It was bullshit. Cade joined u
s, but I noticed that Sin, Matt, and Kerry remained home tucked up in their nice cosy beds. The bastards.
Dean took point, and we started off at a good clip. A thick frost lay heavy on the ground coating the rooftops in a beautiful silvery white. The ground was a touch slippery, but I didn’t notice all that much. I was more interested in the stunning sunrise unfurling before us. The horizon slowly blossomed into a gentle roseblush with touches of lilac around the edges. As the sun lazily rose, the frost glittered in the pale sunlight, making the entire city look fresh and pristine.
Our breath plumed in front of us in small white clouds that weirdly brought a smile to my face. The entire city was sleeping. Not a single car passed us on the nearby road, no commuters or walkers were anywhere to be seen. It was as though we had the entire area to ourselves. Maybe the tradition wasn’t such an awful thing after all.
I knew something had changed as we got closer to home. There was a fresh magic hanging in the air around the brick building. It tickled the tips of my fingers, but I couldn’t quite figure out exactly what it was. I hadn’t felt anything quite so delicate and ethereal before, it was like an incredibly fine tapestry formed of translucent threads. We slowed as we approached the door, and I felt something pass between the guys. There was a pulse of excitement, which their faces didn’t betray.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Dean rolled his eyes.
“We’re getting home and having breakfast.”
Happiness sparked within him, I felt it, but his face remained almost grumpy.
We walked inside, and I couldn’t stop myself from grinning. When we’d left, the house had been as it usually was with a few sprigs of holly pinned into the corners around the kitchen and living room. As we walked down the hallway, I saw the banisters were coated in a thick silvery frost complete with small icicles. Holly and ivy crawled along the ceiling, and pine boughs spread across the doorways.
