by Jayne Hawke
The news came in just after breakfast.
“That was the client on the phone, the one who hired us to take out the necromancer before the knights.” Ethan poured himself another cup of coffee and looked at us gravely. “The client has assured us that the necromancer is healing in one of the underworlds right now. It would appear that Liam, Kit’s father, has a small piece of real estate down there. His plot of underworld is just big enough to give the necromancer what he needs to heal.”
Just when I thought my father couldn’t be any more of a dick.
“Aw man, I hate trips to the underworlds,” Cade groaned.
I raised an eyebrow at him.
“It’s a death dealer thing. Sometimes you have to ferry a stubborn soul to the relevant underworld yourself. We normally only deal with fae, but occasionally someone manages to pull some strings because they get off on having a fae guide,” Cade said.
“How many underworlds have you been to?” I asked.
Cade shrugged.
“The fae one, obviously. The Greek one - Hades was pissed. The Egyptian one - I didn’t get off the boat for that one, though.”
“If you think the Greek one sucks, try Hel. The Norse just carry on drinking, fighting and whatever like they did in life. It’s one big bar brawl, and I don’t mean the fun kind. Vikings really aren’t my thing,” Kerry said.
“How is that possibly worse than the asphodel meadows? Or Tartarus? The meadows are a huge open expanse of flat grass, and Tartarus is a huge pit full of torture. A neverending bar brawl and feast sounds amazing compared to either of those,” Dean said.
Kerry frowned.
“I suppose you have a point. I got ancient mead on my paws in Hel though. It took forever to get off, and it tasted awful.”
Cade rolled his eyes.
“No, we’re not going to the underworld to get him. He’s too strong there. We would have to take him out in a matter of minutes before we were dragged back to this realm or the fae plane. We’ll have to wait for him to resurface and ambush him,” Ethan said.
“I hate waiting,” Cade muttered.
“Isn’t there some spell we can weave to drag his ass back here?” Dean said.
Ethan sighed.
“You’re welcome to go and look through the libraries to find out,” Ethan said.
Dean’s mouth pulled into a thin tight line.
“I screwed myself there,” he said.
“Do all of you come from such fucked up families? I don’t know if I have the energy to kill all of your parents,” Sin said.
Everyone turned and glared at him.
“You’re one to talk. Your family sold you into slavery,” Dean said.
Sin threw a cupcake at his head.
“Mature,” Dean said as he ducked and the cupcake splatted against a cupboard behind him.
Kerry picked up a muffin. Ethan held up his hand.
“Don’t you dare,” Ethan growled.
Kerry slowly put the muffin down.
“Everyone’s going to spend today looking into how to permanently end this necromancer and how to remove Kit’s father from the equation,” Ethan said.
He squeezed my hand. While I appreciated the gesture of support, I didn’t need it. We all knew my father needed to go. It was just a matter of how and when.
We’d split up. Cade and Sin joined me at my Mom’s library; Dean and Kerry went through the pack library. Cade and Sin were looking for anything they could find on necromancers to tell us how to kill the bastard. I was more focused on my father. Mom needed to have notes on exactly how he worked, where he might be, and how to put him down.
She had focused on binding him as she still loved him, but I felt no such love. Not anymore. I paced around the upper level trying to think of somewhere he might be or somewhere I could look for a clue. There had to be something. He hadn’t just vanished for those years.
“I’m going to get us some lunch. Does pizza work for you guys?” I asked.
I couldn’t stay still, and I feared Cade might start trying to gnaw on Sin if he went much longer without a meal.
“Sounds great!” Cade said.
“I’d like extra pineapple and if possible some banana,” Sin said.
Cade and I looked at him.
“What is wrong with you!?” Cade asked, aghast.
“I have a very refined palate,” Sin said.
“Refined is not the word I’d use for it...” Cade said.
“At least I don’t lick my-”
“That’s enough. I’ll see what I can do, Sin, no promises,” I said.
Cade wasn’t wrong, though. Who wanted banana on their pizza!?
THIRTY-FOUR
It turned out that fruit on pizza was an elf thing. I’d gotten Cade extra Italian sausage on his pizza to compensate for being near Sin when he ate his ham, pineapple, and banana pizza. We’d left Mom’s library at around seven and headed home to see if the others had any more luck than we’d had.
“I think we’ve figured out what’s going on, but we’re still not sure how to kill him,” Matt said.
I settled myself into my favourite armchair and waited for him to explain.
“The necromancer is down in what’s basically a pocket underworld. We believe it’s tiny because Liam isn’t that strongly tied to death, so he can’t form a full underworld where they have thousands of millions of souls. At a guess, we think he can hold maybe ten souls, and even then we think it’d be a strain on him. Now, this is a lot of theories and conjecture, as people haven’t really written about this before.”
“Liam is killing people to send down to his underworld. He and the necromancer have likely created an artifact that allows Liam to push the essences down to his underworld rather than where they’re supposed to go. The necromancer then devours those essences; he pulls them into himself. That gives him more power and strength, thus healing him. If we’re right, he’s going to come up out of that underworld far stronger than he was when he went down,” Matt said.
“What’s the bad news?” Ethan said drily.
He pulled me closer to him and brushed his lips over my cheek. A warm affection momentarily washed between us. It wasn’t easy discussing my father this way, but I had Ethan there in whatever way I needed him.
“Wait, the necromancer is basically perma-killing the people Liam killed? He’s stealing away their afterlife?” Cade said.
“We think so, yes,” Matt said gravely.
“That is fucked up,” Cade said.
“The bad news is that we have absolutely no clue how to handle Liam. There’s nothing outside of the hounds about what to do with the fallen. And I don’t think anyone wants to hand him over to the hounds. If nothing else, we don’t want them hopped up on his magic,” Matt said.
I squeezed my eyes closed. How did I end up in these situations?
“Give us the details on this underworld thing. How long do we have? Can we gate crash it? Can we overload Liam so it collapses on the necromancer?” I asked.
“We don’t think we’ll have to wait more than a week. What little bits we did manage to find suggested that maintaining an underworld was a huge strain for all but the true death gods like Hades and Hel. Liam should be weaker right now, so if can find him we might have a better chance of restraining him,” Matt said.
“Can you make a pocket dimension for him? Like you did for your huge sword?” I asked Sin.
“No. I’m very skilled at many things, and incredibly humble - let’s not forget beautiful - but I do have my limits,” Sin said.
He said it in a very conversational tone. I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not.
“Who else can make pocket dimensions? We can’t afford to put him somewhere someone else will be able to get at him,” I said.
“There used to be witches who could move between the planes, all but the god plane. If they hadn’t been exterminated, one of them could stuff him in a really unpleasant plane,” Cade said.
“And if we had enough magic to ri
p him apart, we’d do that,” Ethan said.
“I was just thinking they were pretty cool. It would have been handy to have a few around. I mean, exterminating them was pretty extreme,” Cade said.
“Back on track, please,” Ethan said exasperatedly.
“I don’t think the pocket dimension idea is a bad one. There are fae who can put one together big enough to hold a fallen,” Dean said.
Ethan frowned.
“Other options? I don’t want to go that route.”
“The bottom of the ocean?” Kerry offered.
“Too many chances of someone getting to him. What else?” Ethan said.
“Is there a fire elemental strong enough to shunt him out into space?” Matt asked.
“Any serious suggestions?” Ethan asked.
“He was bound before; can’t we do it again?” Matt said.
“He broke those bindings and killed Mom,” I said.
“But maybe if we can make them more permanent...? Etch them into his essence, maybe.”
“The risk of him getting out of them is too high,” Ethan said.
“Alright, smart ass, let’s hear your suggestions,” Kerry said as she wrapped her arm protectively around Matt.
“If I had suggestions and ideas, I would have started moving towards acting on them,” Ethan said.
“Who wants cake? I have chocolate fudge cake, and an exquisite white chocolate and raspberry pavlova,” Sin said brightly.
“Cake does sound really good,” Cade said.
“We have ice cream, right?” Dean called out.
Kerry raced out of the room to make sure that she got what she wanted before the guys.
Ethan groaned and rubbed his temples.
“How are these possibly the best in the business?” he asked quietly.
THIRTY-FIVE
Cake was a good start, but I really needed some alone time to clear my head. I wasn’t a brainstorming kind of person. I needed space and quiet to think. I made my excuses and dressed for a run before heading out into the cool December air. I knew everyone was going to think I needed time to deal with my daddy issues, but if I could come up with something useful then that’s what mattered.
Sod’s law ensured that I would be dealing with paternal difficulties whether I liked it or not, though, and within a few blocks I found myself bundled into a tiny townhouse I’d never noticed before. My father released me immediately once the door was closed, the look on his face conciliatory but unrelenting.
I’m sure he expected an emotional outburst, maybe even a declaration of love and solidarity, but I wasn’t going to waste the opportunity to draw first blood. Before he even opened his mouth, I had my wrist blades summoned and extended with the right one sweeping up into his groin.
Faster than I could see, he dodged the blow and slapped me across the face.
“I didn’t come here to be unimpressed, Kit. If I wanted to watch someone flail helplessly, I’d be training your necromancer friend.”
I told myself I wouldn’t rise to his bait, but I did anyway. I summoned and threw a pair of throwing knives at him, which he dodged with an absolute minimum of motion, rotating his shoulders allowing the knives to slip past by millimetres and stick into the wall behind him. I repeated the process several more times, harder and faster, but still they passed by him as if he’d had hours to prepare for their arrival. The plaster he stood in front of had seen better days when we arrived and was now beginning to show the brick underneath, but that was about all that could be said for the process. He was still standing with his feet planted, looking casually disappointed.
I threw myself forward again, summoning new weapons in turn, swinging on him again and again, pouring war magic into my muscles, pushing my mind to breaking trying to predict his movements. Half of my blows he caught with his bare hands, a screeching of metal the only sign that his flesh wasn’t simply untouchable. The weapons he grasped were tossed away, only to be replaced with another from my store of war magic, each as useless as the last.
This was going nowhere. I settled my mind, but I couldn’t see any solution. My tactical ability came from my war god magic, as did my weapons and much of my strength and speed. The war god was him. I needed something else, something I hadn’t used before, something he hadn’t seen before. Wouldn’t see coming.
I burst into tears and slumped forward, sobbing.
“Why can’t you just leave me alone? You have what you want, you have your power and your new son and all I want is to fail in peace!” I kept crying and turned to the door, wrenching at the handle to open it and storm out to safety.
It didn’t budge. There were wards, wards I didn’t have time to break. Good try, I guess? The next instant, a blow struck me in the spine so hard I saw spots. A second and third slammed the same spot within a second’s breadth, pinning me to the door with punishing force. I swept around to my left with a blade newly in hand and swung for where my father’s temple should have been, but he easily caught the blow and snapped my wrist in two precise movements, a brutal sensei’s technique demonstration on ultra fast forward.
I almost did cry out for real that time, shoving the pain away before I could embarrass myself further. I looked into his eyes and saw no more anger or effort than had ever been there. It was a look of ambition, purity of purpose. This fight would end exactly how he needed it to, and there was nothing whatsoever that was off the table to make that happen.
The question was, what did he really want? If he wanted me dead, I’d be dead. This had to be another recruitment meeting. That’s why he was in training mode. He wanted me to see what he could teach me, give me, wanted me to know that I wasn’t ready to leave the nest. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t kill me if that showed itself to be impossible, though. I couldn’t just stonewall him and wait until he got tired of breaking things, not that I wanted to. There was no lie to be told, no bargain to be struck, no stratagem to be employed.
“All you have to do is come back to me. I don’t even ask for your gratitude, even after all I sacrificed to give you the strength you squander so liberally here tonight. I just want an heir of good blood to take with me to the heights.”
I wasn’t listening. I had pushed the war magic out of my mind, dismissed its tactical insights, and was trying to think like a bounty hunter for the first time in a long time. I wasn’t going to beat him at his own game, so there was no point in trying. I thought back on my time and realized that I’d never done anything but track, hack, slash, and collect the payment. So much of what I took for granted about myself now was him, his magic and the inborn knowledge it gave me. I wasn’t a warrior, I was a grunt following orders delivered straight into my brain.
So, like any good grunt, I started throwing curses, punches, and furniture while I figured out where to go from here.
“You worthless fucking relic, you killed mom because you’re too much of a bitch to handle a good woman.”
A big haymaker right earned me an uppercut to the gut, but as I doubled over I tried for a headbutt at the bridge of his nose. When that missed, I shouted something incoherent about his big stupid face and bull rushed him, taking him by surprise for the first time and driving him back a few paces before he spun on his heel and threw me into the wall behind him.
“Dickhead!” I shouted as a painting fell onto my head, a hideous greyscale landscape. I threw it at him like a frisbee and rushed him from behind it, managing to land a shot to his side before he repaid it several times over and pinned me to the wall.
“You’re not a god, you’re a fucking hound bloodbag waiting for a cell to open up.”
I let my legs go limp, and he dropped me, expecting, perhaps, to tower over me and give a speech while I admitted defeat and begged to come into his service. Instead, the second I hit the ground I threw an uppercut to his balls and tried to swing out to the left to regain my feet. His knee came up and caught me in the chin, the crunch of my clenched teeth being forced together rattling through my brain. I co
llapsed sideways, but I found myself lying next to a chair and swung it at his knees.
“Pussy!” I shouted as he jumped the blow, leaving the chair shattered against the fireplace on his other side.
When he landed, he kicked me in the nose, my hands too far from my face to block and my brain too far from my body to try. Picking me up by the neck, he slammed me against the fireplace and started to hammer my right eye with his fist, punctuating each blow with another reminder of how much I was throwing away. I struggled for consciousness, spitting blood in his face and glaring even as he sealed my eye shut with swelling. I spewed out every curse word I could think of, every insult in my repertoire right down to playground taunts and things I’d seen in movies, calling into question everything from his manhood to his hygiene, drowning out his monologue even as I fell into incoherency.
He hadn’t even begun to let up (or shut up) several minutes later, and I’d poured every ounce of my war magic into reinforcing the bones of my face to keep myself intact. Finally, the moment I needed came. He managed to break the skin on his middle knuckle, cutting it open on the exposed bone above my eye. That was my cue.
I reached out for the blood, the all-powerful divine blood so many had killed and died for, and grasped onto the thousands of tiny threads that ran through it. I yanked on all of them with everything I had, dragged the power into me like the life rope it was. I pushed all the power back out into him, tearing at his mind, scrabbling against the divine will of the man I’d never really known and finding purchase in the scars my mother’s spells had left in him. I shoved against those wounds desperately, seeing in my mind the tiny imperfections and clawing at them with the magic of his own blood. He staggered backwards, and I landed an ugly hook to his right cheek that knocked him prone, still struggling against my magical onslaught.
I lost the thread of his blood, his godly magic healing him in seconds, but I had done what I needed to. I brought up every ounce of my war magic and threw a shielded right shoulder into the wall beside the door, smashing through the unwarded plaster and into the street, staggering for home as fast as I could, blind in one eye and half dead everywhere else. If he attacked the safe house, at least I’d have the pack at my back. Better yet, now I knew how to hurt him.
