by Lisa Daniels
I have to suck this up. I’d be a fool to refuse so much money. Two hundred thousand a year for the protection of this barely legal adult. If he pleased her and kept his feelings to himself long enough, his family would soon have little to worry about again. His father, step-brother, step-mother, and uncle. Enough money for him to comfortably retire early, too, and set up home in the north of Canada, or the mountainous forests of Europe.
“I see,” she replied, every bit as cool as his tone had implied. “Do you obey any instructions issued by me?”
“It depends on how reasonable those instructions are. I have permission to ignore them if I judge that your life will be at increased risk of demise from obeying them, or should they seem unreasonable.”
“Great,” she muttered, though his sensitive hearing picked it up. Now that the dead cat was back under the ground, his inner alpha was taking his sweet time sniffing her out, and rumbled approval in his chest. Though he mostly remained in tight control of his mind and instincts, the alpha always lurked there at the back of his skull, as an accumulation of base, primal instincts, sometimes reacting contrary to what he wanted. Usually focused around food, sleep, and sex. It could be annoying, holding a civil conversation while his alpha decided he’d really like to fuck someone or eat that hot dog he scented upon the wind.
He examined her for a moment longer, trying not to let his belly crawl with disgust, reminding his brain that the end result would be worth the association.
“Do you… often come down here?” he asked rather delicately, since he’d now noticed that the graveyard plot was large, and there were at least fifteen other burial mounds. “And… raise animals?”
“We all do,” she said, now studying him closely. “We have to practice our abilities somehow. So all the pets that we’ve had over the years end up here when they go.” She now pointed at a spot where the soil hadn’t been touched and a small gravestone read Regent. “We don’t bring up Regent anymore. His soul has moved on. So if we were to bring up his bones again, it would be from using an incompatible soul. And that’s not what we do. You get me?”
His brain was already switching off and internally screaming just from the notion of any kind of soul being risen, being defiled… but he nodded all the same. “So… you only resurrect pets?”
“Yes,” she said, appearing a little annoyed. “It’s easy enough, when the pet wants to visit you. I don’t resurrect Sizer, either, because all of his favorite people have died, and he doesn’t like us.” She indicated another worn-out grave.
“Mm,” he replied. He hated that a part of him was getting curious, because the way she talked about it suggested there was a lot more to it than he thought. Instead of just bullying a dead soul into a body, she made sure said soul was okay with being forced back into living. Though he couldn’t see how any soul would be okay with it. They were supposed to rest. To stay on the other side and… do whatever it was souls did. Reincarnate. Wait for judgment day. Whatever belief system that seemed to work with people. “I’ll need your schedule for next week. Your individual lesson schedule as well.”
She glared at him for a little longer, before (reluctantly) asking for his number. When it was entered, she sent him a picture of her schedule. Satisfied that she wasn’t creating too much of a drama over the situation, he bowed to her and took his leave, and when he was far enough away, he noticed that she summoned her wretched beast to join her again.
He instantly phoned his father, boiling with resentment. “You knew,” he snapped, when his father answered.
“Knew what?”
“You knew you were being assigned to a necromancer. And you foisted the job upon me, failing to mention that little detail. A very important fucking detail, I might add.”
“The job is still the same as any other job. Whatever our client is, we will always maintain our reputation. The Hunter family has been running protective services for almost a century.”
Janos sighed in irritation. “I told you that I wanted nothing to do with… with this vile magic. Do you know, the person I’m guarding’s just bringing up dead animals from a graveyard? Doesn’t seem to think anything’s wrong with doing so.”
Pacing up and down the manicured lawn, Janos kept his charge under supervision from the corner of his eye, biting his lip hard when another creature, what might have once been a dog, shivered out of the earth as well to join the macabre activity in the graveyard. A third came, shapeless and ominous, with those winking blue eyes of a departed soul. When Talia glanced over at him, she even mustered a smile, and he knew then that she was doing this because of him. Testing him.
“They have to practice their magic somehow, son. Unless you would prefer them to learn their craft by other means?”
“I’d rather they didn’t use it at all,” he muttered, his anger at his father dissipating, but annoyance with Talia rising. If she was going to do this in his company, raise the dead like the ghoul she was without any regard, just to get a reaction out of him…
“If you believe yourself incapable of doing your job, best tell me now, so I’ll remember for next time that if any decent-paying jobs turn up, I’ll have a word with your brother, uncle, and cousins first.” The threat hovered in the air, palpable. Refuse, and be passed over in the future, losing his right to better work—unless he struck out on his own.
“You know I’ll do it. I’m just pissed off with you that you put me here in the first place. You should have told me.”
“I warned you that it would be difficult.”
“Not the same thing.” Janos sighed, winding down the conversation, until his father hung up and left him there to process the condition of his new job. Accessing the scenario, he saw no immediate threat to Talia, other than her own monstrosities suddenly turning on her, and that wasn’t really something he could defend her from. If your client wanted to play chicken with trains, then short of chaining them to their bed posts, you simply had to watch.
Her father, the soon-to-be councilman, and Second Respondent for serious crimes (the First was within the police force themselves, and he hadn’t bothered checking on who they were), came out of the estate to greet him. When he tried to lure Janos in for coffee and a frank conversation, Janos refused, because he didn’t want to lose sight of his charge. Rickard seemed to approve of Janos’ caution, and instead spoke outside.
“She’s not happy with this whole arrangement, of course. So you might find she’ll try to escape you, provoke you… she’s always been one for testing boundaries.” Rickard appeared rather watery-eyed as he regarded his daughter. “Sometimes I wonder if she’s right—that I shouldn’t elevate myself to councilman.”
Janos raised both eyebrows. “It’s a position many would be envious of.”
“Yes, yes. I intend to do it to improve the public image of… our type of magic,” said Rickard, grimacing in apology. “But most of her friends don’t even realize she’s one. It’s going to be hard on her once I become a major public figure.”
Janos thought of the recent headline story in West Africa, where a necromancer had been stoned to death, and of Alabama, where they’d recently passed laws forbidding necromancers from raising anything aside from animals. Which caused hot debate with animal activists, as humans were also technically considered animals, and depending on the frame of mood and time of day, people liked to claim animals as sentient or incapable of it.
This was supposed to be a country that accepted necromancy. But few would, and for good reason.
“You could send her away, if needed, and let her live without needing a spotlight on her activities.”
“I could,” he agreed, “except she’d bite my head off if I so much as breathed that she should abandon her friends.”
It was clear that Rickard had much love for his daughter, and Janos felt envious for a moment of the concept that a father could be so devoted. His was… fatherly enough, in his own way. But not to this extent. Not going moony-eyed with concern over his own offspr
ing.
He’s a necromancer, too, Janos reminded himself. This man simply had the benefit of not being caught in the act. “Do you think her life will be in genuine danger, or will it simply be a case of public harassment?”
“Danger,” Rickard said. “Necromancers… they don’t have a great track record. Three in the police force have already been killed. Targeted, you might say. And since I work indirectly with the police when they are lacking… I’ve suspected for some time my family might be a target. Since they haven’t caught the killer yet.”
“I see.” Janos noted all this, privately wondering how feasible it would be to protect Talia from a serial killer that hadn’t been caught by the police. That suggested cunning. Someone smart enough to evade police, even those who might be werewolves, like him, bears, big cats. All creatures with a decent enhancement of their six senses. Wonder if they tried interrogating a corpse like—he shook the thought out of mind.
No. He’d do his duty. Nothing more. Protect the brat, ignore her unsavory habits, and laugh all the way to the bank when he waved his paycheck around like a reckless lottery winner.
He just hoped that the underlying nausea within wouldn’t boil over and make him do something stupid. And that his inner wolf remained dormant. Preferably forever, as he now felt it scratching at his soul, demanding exercise, freedom, the cool soil beneath his paws, and the myriad of fragrances a forest had to offer.
Later, he told himself as he accepted Rickard’s offer of a drink, and remained outside to receive it.
Chapter Three – Talia
“Who the hell is that guy?”
“Why do you have a bodyguard?”
The questions bombarded Talia barely five minutes into her first lecture. The lecture hall was big, with empty seats dotted around, and Janos, to her utter chagrin, had decided it would be a great idea to settle in one of the back seats. His permanently dour appearance, his immaculate, white button shirt, far too formal pants, belt, and shoes, along with actual sunglasses tucked in his hair and a wired earpiece in one ear, screamed that he was there for protection. Or possibly part of the mob.
Couldn’t he at least dress like a normal student? The lecturer seemed to be aware of his purpose there, or just didn’t care, because she plowed straight into her lesson of the day, mostly about the ins and outs of business and succeeding as an entrepreneur.
“My father’s about to be elevated to councilman,” Talia replied to her friends, Jake and Nadine, both of whom she was about ninety percent sure were dating, but they’d never confirmed as such. “And that means I’ll need protection.”
“Ohhh,” Jake said, his large, brown eyes wide in interest. Nadine, half-trying to listen to lecturer Thornberry, half-listening to their conversation, scrawled her notes in shorthand. “It’s because of… that, right?”
“Yes.” Talia smiled thinly. Her closest friends knew, of course, but they tried not to make it too obvious. It was easier to be gay than to be a necromancer. “Once he’s taking newspaper headlines, it’ll be revealed what I am as well. And then my father seems to think I’ll be getting dozens of assassins by the day or something.”
Jake snorted a laugh and Nadine rolled her eyes theatrically. “Parents are like that. You know mine swaddled me until I reached about sixteen and started sneaking out to the parties.”
“They just wanted you to be safe,” Jack whispered, nudging Nadine, and her wide mouth smiled, revealing slightly crooked teeth, which suited her down to the bone. Neither of Talia’s friends had magic, though Elodie, currently in another lecture, had some form of intuition, and claimed to be descended from a line of Greek Oracles. Whatever that line was, the magic clearly had lessened over time, to a fragment of the prophecy-giving her ancestors had once possessed.
“They’re hypocrites,” Nadine drawled. “My father was jumping into abandoned quarries and plummeting off cliffs into rocky water, yet he panics nowadays if I so much as sneeze, in case it’s some infectious disease.”
“To be fair,” Talia said, “it could be because he woke up one day and thought, ‘holy shit, how am I still alive’, and then did his dadly duties.”
Lecturer Thornberry cleared her throat and tapped the whiteboard rather aggressively with her marker pen, ripping the three of them out of their conversation so that they turned their attention back to the lesson. Though Talia kept glancing towards Janos, to see the bodyguard, with his aura of gloom, occasionally scan the room, and scan her. Alert for danger. And keeping enough of a distance so she could at least hold private talks with her friends.
They met up with Elodie in their free period, and she took the news with considerably less cool. She’d struggled before to accept Talia’s powers, but now she was more or less all right with it.
“You could be in serious danger,” Elodie stated. Where Jake and Nadine were different shades of brown, Elodie’s hair was more white-blonde, dyed from her usual mousy color. She also more liberally ornamented herself with earrings, and Turkish eye bracelets, which she liked to claim helped her “see” into the future better.
They were all waiting for her to rattle out the winning numbers of the lottery, of course.
“I’ll be fine,” Talia argued. “Sure there’ll be some problems, but Lasthearth’s a safe city, and I don’t think we’ve had any attacks on campus for decades.”
“Speak of the devil, and he shall come,” Jake said.
“Hey! Maggot! Maggot girl!” The new voice came from behind as Talia walked down the corridor to outside, and she turned just in time to witness a projectile hurtling her way—a rolled-up wad of paper. It wapped her in the face. “Watch the maggots fall off her!” one guy chortled to his friend.
Talia’s heart sank somewhere into her bowels. Right—her father had his official television interview this morning. Some outsiders already knew.
Jake screamed some curses at them, and Elodie and Nadine puffed up, but none of her friends needed to do anything. Janos was there, eyes flashing a dirty yellow, jaw elongating into a wolf snout as he snarled loud enough for them to hear and picked up both students by the scruffs of their necks. His immense height and now bulging, hair-sprouting, rapidly morphing arms suspended them both. His legs were braced to take their weight, and they squirmed like fish before he smashed them both together a couple of times, before dropping them in a heap.
“Attack her again, and it’s within my rights to kill you,” he growled in an awful, cavernous voice. Both students scurried away, screaming obscenities once they had retreated to a safe distance.
Janos in wolf form bulged out, with additional muscles bursting from his shoulder, arms, and legs, which seemed to bend under the weight.
Talia’s mouth dropped open. A bipedal werewolf. Those were rare. The usual kind turned into large wolves. But bipedals… they had a fearsome reputation.
Almost as fearsome as a necromancer. She continued gaping as the corridor cleaned out, leaving her alone with her friends and a werewolf who melted back into his normal form.
“He only threw a piece of paper,” she pointed out.
“You’re welcome,” he replied, wiping a tiny amount of drool from the side of his face. “And next time, it might not be a piece of paper they throw. Next time it might be a rock. Or worse.” He made a gross cracking sound with his jaw, as if it were dislocated.
“Holy fuck,” Elodie whispered, eyes big, clutching onto Nadine and Talia so tightly that pins and needles prickled all along Talia’s hand. “That’s who your father hired as a bodyguard?”
“Apparently,” Talia confirmed, slightly impressed, mostly scared. Janos, in the meanwhile, acted smugly confident of their reactions, and even put a tiny swagger in his walk as he approached Talia.
“I’ll try not to interfere too much,” he assured her, “but whatever the threat, even if it’s something as small as throwing paper, I must take it seriously. And it will hopefully deter people from threatening you in public.”
Likely because you’ll disembowel
them where they stand, Talia thought, now feeling a little off-center. Weren’t bipedals supposed to be absurdly expensive bodyguards? They were used for protecting ultra-important public figures, like presidents and prime ministers, billionaires and war leaders. Resilient to magic, possessing frightening speed and strength… how on earth had her father afforded one?
“I didn’t realize your family was this loaded,” Nadine said, while Talia could do little else but rub her mouth, disconcerted.
“We’re not. Unless my dad’s doing more than I thought he was… or Janos here is cheaper than average.”
Janos didn’t provide her an answer. He merely smiled and invited her to guess all by herself.
News about the paper-throwing incident spread fast through the campus. By the end of the day, everyone knew exactly who she was, and people also knew she had a bipedal werewolf as protection, who practically crushed two students to death with his bare hands. (The tale got more exaggerated as time went on.)
Unfortunately, people who didn’t care about her previously now turned frosty. Even a couple of her lecturers clearly avoided getting her to answer questions, when she’d usually been one of the regular few in the lesson to raise her hand. One lecturer went out of his way to parade her as the necromancer—look how accepting and friendly he was to have a necromancer in his class!—and she was half-tempted to set Janos on him just to shut him up.
Her usual walk home was dogged by his steps, too, and she felt like because of him, she had a beacon sticking out of her back, alerting everyone in a mile radius as to who exactly she was. Weren’t bodyguards supposed to be subtle? Wasn’t he supposed to blend in with the crowd, virtually indistinguishable, instead of strolling along with those beady little sunglasses, his stupid outfit, and his menacing grimace of an expression?
