Talia's Bodyguard

by Lisa Daniels

Oh. “I’m sorry.” Talia didn’t know what to say, but felt embarrassed, ashamed of stumbling onto this, on potentially invoking memories he’d rather not remember.

  “It’s okay,” he replied in a gravelly voice. “Let’s get going in a minute, shall we?”

  “Mm.” The conversation died out and Talia got ready in silence. Her mind wondered if there was maybe a connection between this dead mother and necromancy, but she didn’t dare say it out loud, just in case she was wrong.

  Chapter Six – Janos

  Sometimes he dreamed of death. He didn’t want to, but the images never went away. They stayed with him, years and years later, when all else should have been forgotten.

  He didn’t forget about the corpse that rose. The boiling, burning hatred of his mother for being risen. Her eyes glowed an eerie blue, but sometimes they flickered with the faintest cherry shade of red, as if the anger in her was so intense that it threatened to consume her completely.

  They said they got the information out of the spirit of his mother, summoned for that person into her own corpse—but all he saw was that hate, and the attempt to strangle the necromancer attempting the summons. He saw his mother’s sweet gentleness turned into something else, and that image remained as clear as the day he saw it. That was why he so disliked necromancers. For having that corrupting influence, for pulling someone out of rest into a mockery of a life, enslaved to commands, or enslaved to rage.

  Yet now he was encouraging this Talia to train. Hell, he’d even asked for her to be trained by approaching the father, who saw the merit in his suggestion. After all, she was in danger. Without her powers, other necromancers could slice through her with a magical knife.

  It just galled Janos that he’d stooped so low as to allow something like this to happen. Even if it made sense from a professional point of view, and lessened the strain of his own job. Though he wondered just how many necromancers he’d end up meeting this way.

  Her sister made it into the estate an hour after he ate breakfast, honey pancakes, light and fluffy, maybe too light for his churning stomach. His inner alpha growled in perceived threat from having so many necromancers in one place. The father, in his office. The sisters in the garden, laughing and hugging one another, after an all-too-awkward pause. Where Talia had raven dark hair and deep blue eyes, Rosen had gone for blonde highlights in hers, and had something a little more severe around her features, like yes, she was a cop, and she’d damn well shoot you if you messed about. He tended to like authority and the law in general, except for this darker part of it—the part that scrabbled around crime scenes, that examined the dead and tried to glean answers from those who could no longer talk.

  “I see Father’s gotten you a nice bodyguard,” Rosen observed, and her voice was higher, more fluty than Talia’s. “Was this before or after the incident at the university?”

  “Before,” Talia confirmed. “He felt I needed protection because of him getting elected to the councilman position. Surprised he didn’t try and foist one on you as well—he always liked you more.”

  Janos raised an eyebrow at that statement. People didn’t generally state truths like that out loud. They smacked of weakness.

  “If he did try,” Rosen said, “I’d make his life a living hell. I have enough pressure in my work without some muscled hulk with yellow eyes breathing down my neck. Speaking of yellow eyes—werewolf, right?” she addressed Janos, who gave a curt nod. “What type?”

  “Bipedal,” he answered, and saw mild amusement flicker across her face.

  “Wow, Father must really care for you if he chose a bipedal for protection. They’re super expensive...”

  “I know,” Talia said. “I don’t think it’s about caring, though. I suppose he thinks I’m too weak to defend myself, so he needs to get the best money can buy.”

  It probably wasn’t prudent to mention that Janos’ father had specifically cut costs to undermine the security competition in Samhain, and get them to break out with a new potential branch, run by one of his cousins. Sure had enough family members to branch out over several estates. Family gatherings, of course, were a nightmare. Too many people, and far too many chances for them to get offended if you didn’t remember their names or how many children they had, or even where they lived. Always felt like navigating a minefield. And they all insisted on calling him Little Wolf, because that was how they always referred to him as a child.

  “Sure looks like he could do some damage.” Rosen nodded approvingly. “Not the worst-looking guard I’ve ever seen, either. They usually look a little smashed up. Cauliflower ears, broken noses, the whole works. He looks baby soft.”

  “I have good healing rates,” Janos said in a dry tone. “Most minor injuries don’t scar at all. But the big ones will. And I have broken my nose twice.” He tapped the bridge. “Fixes up well.” For a moment, he’d forgotten who he was speaking to. Not two ordinary humans, but necromancers of Lasthearth, of Samhain. Their easy banter had lulled him into a small, false sense of security.

  How can creatures with knowledge of these black arts be so… normal to look at? Sound so normal?

  “Okay, so we’re going to start off first with endurance training,” Rosen said. “I’ll also teach you some better Commands to bind the spirits—including the ones that stop someone else from taking over your summons, no matter how strong they are.”

  “Oh. That’s possible?”

  “It is. But that Command is in a different language, and that language is more binding. Most of our Commands can be said in basic English or whatever language you want to speak, but there are some that only work in the spectral language. Commands that bind them to you and you only, so that they may never serve another master. Commands that allow them to pretend to be taken by another, only to track that other down and slaughter them. Commands that unlock the savagery in a soul, but that… that would be for an emergency. We don’t want to create too many revenants,” she said with a sly smile.

  “Wait—we can create revenants?” Talia gaped at her, unable to believe what she was hearing. “We can make those—those evil things with the red eyes?”

  “We can. It’s not advised in most cases, because those souls tend to become so consumed by vengeance, that maintaining control over them is difficult. And most have binding instructions to not allow themselves to be taken by another master. But they are our single greatest source of destruction. The military love us for it. A revenant’s worth hundreds of ordinary soldiers. They just don’t really talk about it.”

  The more she spoke, the more fascinated Talia looked, lapping up every word. Janos, meanwhile, felt great disquiet at how casually she spoke of butchering a person’s soul, turning it into a weapon of vengeance. That’s all the souls are to these people, he thought. Vessels. Toys for their control, beyond rebuke, for we don’t have any solid laws for the dead as of yet. Bodies might be property, sure—but what about the soul?

  He found his attention wandering slightly, not wanting to listen to them profane the dead. He found it hard to watch when they then broke into exercises a few moments later, with Talia bringing up all the pets, including the ones that she’d claimed were hostile and unfamiliar with the generation that lived today.

  “It’s just endurance. You hold them for as long as possible, until you become completely exhausted—and push through that. I’ll take over control when you collapse.”

  Talia didn’t seem too impressed with the idea of magically exhausting herself. Magic fatigue was a bitch—Janos had seen it firsthand in an aunt who had some gift with fire. She once drained all her magic to control a wildfire in the brush, and slept for weeks afterward until she recovered. Seemed like Rosen expected her sister to burn out, and burn out often.

  To her credit, Talia tried. She held the thirty or so animals in that cemetery for about ten minutes before she hit the grass in a dead faint, and Rosen took over the animals and dismissed the ones that didn’t immediately vanish when Talia’s magic ran out—the more st
ubborn souls with resentment inside. The kind that, Rosen was delighted to inform them much later, could devour a person’s living body as payment.

  It made Janos wonder, honestly, what the difference between one of these spirits and a revenant was. Because they both seemed to operate from a similar vantage point.

  He’d had to carry Talia inside and place her in her own bed, since she showed no signs of waking up within the next few minutes.

  “She should wake up tomorrow,” Rosen said, staring down at her with a cool, detached expression. “I better get back to work now, but every morning, or two mornings, I’ll be here. I have late afternoon shifts arranged instead of my usual to make sure my little sister gets her training. Please message me,” she said, now handing him a card with her number upon it, “by nine in the morning if she has or hasn’t woken up. So I know whether to come or not.”

  “Alright.” Janos felt rather dubious with this method of training. He knew in endurance running, you pushed the body to the limits, but not to the point where you collapsed and couldn’t move for days afterwards. You did it until you were exhausted, and you needed to be careful not to fall into the trap of sinking to the ground when spent, but taking that extra moment to walk, to slow down the heart rate and blood pump.

  The next day, Talia woke before nine, so he messaged her sister and the same thing was repeated. This time, Talia only managed just over seven minutes before collapsing. Day after that, six minutes, and she slept for over a day.

  The fourth attempt had her lasting eleven minutes. She went through this vicious cycle, though constantly pushing her body, and he couldn’t protect her from the abuse of her own magic. He had to watch, over the month that Talia was suspended from university, as “safety measures” were being implemented.

  Endurance training became interspersed with practicing the spectral Commands, to consolidate her hold on the pet she called Willow, so that even Rosen with her experience couldn’t take Willow from Talia.

  Rosen also taught the best methods of coercing a spirit, of wheedling them to become more willing, since even if they had to obey Commands, it was easier if they were complacent to do so. They talked of digging into the Other Side, apparently descending into the realm of the dead and going deep with their magics, until the colors bled out of the world and only the monochrome remained. Once, Talia shrieked something about revenants, of being haunted, and Janos wouldn’t have been surprised if she was, because he’d seen her tossing and turning in her sleep. Just like he had in the first few months since witnessing his mother’s temporary resurrection.

  Endurance-wise, Talia, within the third week, could hold thirty mostly willing spirits for half an hour, knew how to secure her summons, to travel safer in the monochrome planes they talked of, and to estimate the limits of her own strength better. Rosen’s teaching didn’t seem too challenging. She was always gone by midday, and advised Talia that once this intensive training period was over, she should continue pushing her limits often, with an aim to get her endurance to last for weeks, perhaps, on just one summons.

  Meanwhile, Janos mostly felt useless, though he avoided complaining to anyone about it. His father would recall him and strip the funding. And Talia wanted more reasons to get rid of him. Honestly, he might as well be in his own, personal hell.

  Still, when he got his paychecks, it reminded him to keep at it, to stop overthinking and dwelling on his own prejudices. His eyes sometimes saw Talia as beautiful, and sometimes as some masked creature who was beautiful on the outside, rotten on the inside. Were her eyes deep as oceans, or as cold as the summons she conjured? Was that bottom lip plump and inviting, or did it resemble a big, fat worm? All seemed to depend on his mood during the day. He wished he could go out and splurge his paycheck on drink, maybe even find a woman to warm his bed at night, to stave off the increasing lusts of his alpha wolf.

  The alpha wasn’t sure if it wanted to kill Talia or screw her, for sure. It scratched and whined under his skin, demanding freedom, soil beneath paws, nature surrounding. It longed for the sweet comfort of a den, and sometimes for a female to share its side with.

  After the month ended, Talia seemed resigned to the idea that her bodyguard planned to follow her to the ends of the earth. “You should get out and party sometime,” she informed him as they walked to Rosewood together. He wanted her to catch a ride, but she preferred walking. A lot more people seemed to recognize her, too. The news had gleefully posted her picture on the front pages of many tabloids, websites, and Facebook posts, with many speculating if she was innocent or corrupted, and a few crackpots going as far as announcing she wanted to usher in a new world order where the dead ruled the living, and it’d all start in Samhain, with a necromancer making it to councilman. Let the devil get his foot in, and the rest of him was bound to follow.

  Once, I might have believed tales like that, he thought. At the very least now, he knew there to be no new world order in the making. So that was a nice comfort, at least. He also believed Talia’s ambition—to contact the ancient dead. She specifically hunted the oldest soul when he watched her practice. She wanted to hear their tales, to find out what they had to offer. He could appreciate that desire. He just didn’t like the casual manner she went about it, like it was her birthright to order souls around and yank them out of rest.

  “I can’t risk leaving you alone for too long,” he replied to her statement. “Your life is valuable to me to protect.”

  “Is it, huh...” She regarded him for a moment, an odd look in her eyes. “I suppose you’d run out of money if I died. That’s your value, right there.”

  “That’s a given, but that doesn’t mean I can’t come to care for my clients in other ways. If I like them, it’s easier for me to want to protect them. If I despise them, even with all my training, sometimes it can be tempting to let the worst happen to them, and dock the pay instead.”

  Several people swerved around them to avoid a collision upon the busy street. He sensed an alpha werewolf other than himself nearby, and his inner alpha growled softly.

  “I doubt you care for me, though. I know you hate necromancers. I...” He saw it—she wanted to mention the forbidden word, and he cut her off before she could.

  “Not now. That won’t be something for us to discuss.”

  Disappointment clouded her face, but she changed the subject. “I keep thinking that if it gets really bad, you’ll leave me for the wolves. No pun intended.”

  He barked a scornful laugh. “I think you’d frighten even the wolves.”

  She actually smiled at that, and his heart did a strange lurch, suddenly reminded of her beauty. His inner alpha stopped growling at the presence of the other werewolf in the street, and instead spent a little more time sniffing at Talia. His wolf wasn’t always the best judge of character… but right now he felt in alignment with it. Yeah, okay, maybe she wasn’t too bad, from what he had observed of her the past month and a bit. Prepared to work herself to exhaustion to get better at her magic. Determined sometimes to bend the rules and to think outside the box. She was prone to panic, but also capable of fighting through it. Talia was desperate to fit in, but at the same time, desperate to get better at her magic, which did little fitting in.

  Janos related to feeling outclassed by older siblings, too, because he also saw as clear as day that the father favored Rosen, and tolerated Talia, turning a blind eye to most of her activities.

  “I don’t want to be scary. I want to be respected. I want people to see me and not the demon they think must be responsible for raising the dead.” No sooner had she said this than someone barred the way and spat in her face. She yelped in disgust, and Janos grabbed the female spitter before she had time to make a quick getaway.

  “Harassment! Assault!” the woman screeched, as Janos spat back in her face and gave her a shove.

  “Let that be a lesson,” he snarled. He plucked his handkerchief out of his shirt pocket and handed it to Talia to dab the saliva off her face. “This is
why I want us to take a vehicle,” he added, as some people offered sympathy and others were listening to the rabid woman as she moved away, screaming about assault.

  Talia was red with anger, or frustration, or something else, as she handed him back the cloth. “I don’t want to be cowed off the street. Fuck that.”

  “Have it your way.”

  At least there were no more incidents, but now Talia was paying close attention to the people around her, attempting to assess them as potential threats or not. Trying to do my job, he thought in amusement. He also felt a little sad that people were reacting to her in this manner. But he supposed it was to be expected. Guarding a necromancer was trouble in more ways than one.

  At Rosewood University, her reception was lukewarm at best by the teachers, although there was a new, compulsory lecture that all students needed to attend that day. Jake, Nadine, and Elodie sought out Talia in their own time, and Janos stayed close by, noting that there were still signs of the assault that had rocked the community before.

  The compulsory lecture turned out to be a surprise.

  None other than Rosen Grieve stood in front of hundreds of students inside the auditorium, the largest room in the university. She clutched the edges of a podium, and had a microphone strapped to dangle by her mouth, so that her voice carried through the room. Talia sat by the front, eyes fixed on a table behind Rosen, where a white sheet covered it, and a noticeable bulge lay beneath.

  Is that what I think it is?

  “My name is Rosen Grieve,” the detective began, noting the sly glances towards her sister. “And yes, that’s my little sister there. Our father is a councilman. All of us have necromancy as our magic. Now, I’m here to explain to you a little more about necromancy, and to clear up some common misconceptions that people have about it.” She paused, and a tiny smile covered her lips. “They say that fear of the unknown is what generates so much hatred and anger, so my aim is to make it a little more known, and hope it will help intelligent people like all of you in front of me to exercise better restraint and judgment.”