“You remember last year? Just before Chris—Yuletide?”
How could Damien have forgotten? December of last year was the month his relationship with Amber had ended, but it was also the month Aaron had firmly crossed the line between human and not-human. It had terrified him at first, the thought of being so close to a werewolf—a fucking werewolf. And he could feel the pinch of panic at the back of his throat even now, with Aaron in his bedroom, but he swallowed the fear down and nodded. “What about it?”
“One night, when Amber was… on the night I transformed… Amber had gone to see you after you had broken up, to talk about it. Well I, I was at home, and the same thing happened that night just before everything started to go haywire in my house.”
Damien didn’t really want to hear about that night, didn’t want to think about it, and didn’t want to imagine a world where his actions may have driven Amber into the arms of another man—although they probably had—but he was able to put himself aside for a moment, hopefully long enough to listen to what Aaron had to say.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” Damien said.
“I was waiting,” Aaron continued, “And then she called me on the phone. Only when I picked up, it wasn’t her. It was… fuck, I couldn’t tell you what I heard. It wasn’t a voice, they were sounds. Screams, gargles, as if the person on the other side had the mic hooked up to a horror movie.”
When it looked like Aaron wasn’t going to continue speaking, Damien said, “What does that have to do with Amber right now? Or us?”
“The same thing happened last night. I… I was waiting for Amber to call and then I decided to call her, but before I could dial her number she called me. And what I heard on the other side of that line were the same damn sounds I heard that first night. Then I blacked out.”
“Blacked out?”
“It wasn’t sleep,” he said, “I know it wasn’t sleep because I’m tired as all hell right now and I’ve been down for over nine hours. I blacked the hell out, Damien.”
Damien thought long and hard for a moment. His brow furrowed and he brought his hand up to his mouth, then bit the nail on the index finger; a habit that went back to his high school days—one he thought he had kicked a long time ago.
“We have to get Frank,” Damien said, “And we have to get a message through to Amber. Have you tried her cell?”
“Yes I’ve tried it and I’m getting nothing. I left her a message to call me as soon as she’s able, but I don’t know if she will. Or if she can.”
“If she can? Of course she can.”
Aaron advanced on him and for a moment that same pinch of panic he had felt moments before turned into a tight knot almost constricting his ability to breathe. His muscles told him to back up and he did in a quick jerking motion. Aaron, sensing this, stopped, raised his hands in an ‘I’m not going to hurt you’ kind of way, and said “The last time I heard that sound was during the time when a demon was trying to possess Amber. It cut her off from the world as best it could but she was here, and we could help her. How are we going to help her if we’re all the way on the other side of the God-damned Atlantic?”
Damien Colt sat back down on the bed and ran his hands through his hair. The sweat on the nape of his neck had come back.
Chapter Fourteen
Circling the withered oak, with one hand lightly brushing against the bark and another hand firmly clasped with Collette’s, I started to feel like a little girl playing in the woods. It was as if Collette and I had been transformed into eight year old versions of ourselves; two little girls, hand in hand, one with fire-red hair, and one with hair as black as the darkest night, walking circles around a tree in the heart of an autumn-touched forest.
The girls knew the tree was special; haunted, magical, or living, it didn’t matter to them. What mattered was that the tree was somehow more than it appeared to be. Every shudder of its branches, every firefly twinkling in the air, every ant crawling along the bark; these weren’t just signs of life but intelligent life. It was as if the tree was somehow responsible for producing the sounds they could hear and the smells in the air; a tree that could influence the world around it.
And such a tree would undoubtedly be a portal to a different world. The girls knew if only they could say the right words or offer it the right tribute it would whisk them away to a land of enchantment where they could embark upon wonderful adventures. They would face down goblins and trolls, ride on the backs of dragons, and dance in gardens so full of life the garden itself would dance with them.
And when they were done, they would be home in time for supper.
But what if these girls knew the words? What if they knew what they had to do to open the portal, and they opened it without thinking? They would open the portal fully trusting, in the way children often do, that everything would turn out to be okay, that they would find their wonder and enchantment on the other side of the withered tree, that they would get their adventure, and that they would come home unscathed.
Sometimes I wished I had that bulwark against fear; that wall of faith—innocence?—that says “don’t worry, everything’s going to be okay.” But as one grows up the shield wears and breaks and you’re left with a logical mind that’s only too ready to accept fear. Then all you have is your mettle, but courage is fickle. One minute you’re sure of your actions, charging forth into the breach like a knight on a battlefield. But all it takes is a moment, an instant of contact with a withered old oak tree—when you feel just how very cold and firm the bark is, and you smell the abundant aroma of putrefied flesh, and the tree starts to feel almost like mummified skin under your fingertips—for your suit of armor to collapse around you until you’re left bare and vulnerable.
What do you call someone who ignores the signs and charges on anyway, naked and more than a little scared?
I closed my eyes as we circled the tree for the third time. When I opened them, all was white. I could feel Collette’s hand in mine and the tree just barely making contact with the fingertips on my other hand, but I couldn’t see a hair in front of my face. Blinking didn’t help, but I knew I wasn’t blind. I could see myself, at least, and the fallen autumn leaves at my feet.
“Collette?” I asked.
“Ze mists,” she said, “We have crossed into another realm.”
“Another realm?”
“I have heard of zis magick before. It is powerful. We should be careful.”
I squeezed her hand and turned to look at her. It was misty alright; the kind of ethereal, constricting New England mist you hear authors like Stephen King talk about in their books. And in it, Collette looked almost like a ghost; pale and shrouded. But she was there, and despite the cold bite in the air, we were fine. We had crossed through the portal, and we were fine.
My fingers lost touch of the tree. I wasn’t sure if I had moved or if the tree had somehow shied away from my touch, but it felt almost like losing an anchor; and now we were adrift in a white sea. I tugged on her hand and we began to walk, and while the mist had decided every sound we should make would not travel beyond a certain point, it could not eat the steady crunch, crunch, crunch of leaves beneath our feet.
The return to visibility was gradual. At first I could see black lines starting to cut through the mist like veins or cracks in concrete. They were trees; distant, crooked old trees. I thought I had seen someone in the distance, a figure of a man walking in great strides, but the mist swallowed the figure before I could get a good look at it and suddenly I could see the solid lines of a building. It was a cottage made of stone and wood, with a thatched roof and a chimney blowing out tresses of blue smoke, now distinguishable from the mist.
What is it with Necromancers and cottages? I thought, randomly remembering my first encounter with Collette in the woods. This thought sent a whole lot of déjà vu into my system and for a moment I found myself craning my neck over my shoulder and searching for the oak portal again, trying to verify my way out. But it was Colle
tte who squeezed my hand this time, and I pressed on.
We arrived at a waist-high gate connected to a fence which surrounded the property line. Beyond it I could see patches of soil where food was growing, no, thriving! Carrots, pumpkins, cabbages, tomatoes, corn; this garden had it all. And against the total hazy white backdrop of the mist, all the colors of autumn stood out in sharp contrast. The reds, oranges, browns, and deep greens seemed to shout out and call for my attention as I walked past them. It made me miss home, and part of me wanted to turn around and go back there right now. But another part of me wanted to knock on the door to that little cottage and meet the man inside, this other Necromancer. A year ago I hadn’t even known they existed, these witches who worked with borrowed power. And now I was about to meet a second one.
It was Collette who stepped up to the door. I noticed now that something had been stealing her attention because she couldn’t keep her eyes on the cottage as she approached. Occasionally she would swing her gaze to the left, then to the right. Maybe she was trying to be thorough, to check for danger, but as I felt the skin at the back of my neck start to prickle I wondered if maybe it was that she was seeing or hearing something I couldn’t.
She knocked three solid knocks and waited.
And waited.
Then she knocked again.
Nothing.
“Isn’t he expecting us?” I asked.
“I am.”
The voice tickled my ear as if it had been spoken right into me instead of at me from across the garden. I jerked around, goose-fleshed all over, and saw him standing by the gate we had just crossed. At first I thought he was only a shadow; the mist seemed to cling to him and obscure his features so that his body was no more than a black suggestion against white film. Instantly I was reminded of the image I had seen on my phone, of the dark man in our room. Fear touched my stomach and made it go cold.
Are you him? I wanted to ask, but I was frozen.
Collette, who had come away from the door, pushed past and stood in the space between me and the shadow like a guard dog. What little wind there was seemed to be tugging at her black hair and dress as if to draw her away from him, but she held.
“Show yourself,” she said—no, she demanded—her tone sharp and hot like a blade still in the forge.
The shape beyond the veil of mist moved forward, coalescing, morphing, and taking a more human form. I hadn’t held any expectations of what he would look like other than he would be a man, so when a man appeared, I wasn’t surprised.
He was tall, and thin. Taller than us, surely. He had a crazy mess of dark hair—bedroom hair—which defied gravity in that none of it was touching his face, and was wearing an off-black waistcoat, a long-sleeved black shirt, and a pair of dark jeans. When he stepped closer, beyond the gate, I noticed his high cheekbones, the stubble growing from his cheeks and jaw, and his deep brown eyes sitting in his skull like pools of endless night.
He, like Collette, was beautiful.
“You’re her,” he said, his British accent strongly worn on his tongue, “The French Necromancer.”
“Oui,” she said, “And zis is ze one we call ze Red Witch.”
“The Red Witch,” he echoed, though he halted his approach. “My name is Luther. Luther Sheffield.”
“Books.” The word fell out of my mouth. “We have your books,” I said after a moment.
The man nodded. Collette stood aside to let him through and he walked past us, his stride not making a sound on the wet earth. He must have been the shadow I had seen in the woods a moment ago. If these were his woods, if he was the lord of this place, it made sense he should be able to manipulate its laws to his will.
Finally he let us inside, but not before checking over his shoulder to make sure we were alone. The cottage he lived in was quaint and rustic, and every bit as British as it could have been. The floors were wooden, the walls were made of stone, and the décor was minimal. Beams of dark wood ran across the ceiling and upward from corners to support the roof. A fire was quietly crackling and popping in the fireplace on the far wall. On the hearth there were candles and tiny animal skulls arrayed in a symmetrical line; squirrel, squirrel, bird, bird, human, bird, bird, squirrel, squirrel. Above the display stood the skull of a wolf pinned against the wall. From its teeth various trinkets of indeterminate origin—and some that looked like dreamcatchers—were hanging.
And that was just the fireplace.
The rest of the cottage similarly boasted many other such trinkets and symbols bearing a strong connection to death. Like the clock situated on a column only a few paces away from the front door, for example. It was black, its mechanisms were polished bronze, and atop the timepiece there was a plaque with the words “ultima forsan” engraved into it. In Latin those words translated to “perhaps the last”; a reminder to anyone who read the hour that this could be the last hour of their lives.
Then there was the picture of the Danse Macabre hanging off the wall adjacent to the fireplace. It was a dull piece depicting the grim reaper carrying off the rich and poor alike; the reaper, a skeleton dressed in jester’s garb, and the rich and poor in all their fineries being dragged away behind him.
A loose memory of my younger self watching a cartoon where skeletons danced in the streets called at my mind as if from a distant shore. I didn’t know what it meant then, but I knew what it meant now. The Danse Macabre, like the skulls and the clocks, were memento mori; reminders that you have to die.
“I have seen zis clock before,” Collette said, examining it. Musing over it.
“Maybe you have,” the man said. “There are many like it.” His eyes fell on me, and for a moment I felt a shiver shriek through my body as if his eyes were the eyes of death.
And yet, they’re scared eyes, I thought. The clock ticked and the silence grew longer and deeper.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet us,” I said, finally.
“I wasn’t given much choice.”
“Zere is always a choice,” Collette said. She turned to him, hands clasped together. “We are grateful you made yours to our benefit.”
“I rarely do things solely to benefit others these days. Last time I tried to help someone I wound up getting left for dead.”
“Zat is unfortunate.”
He waved his hand. “Also inconsequential. I am here, alive—for all the good life is. And you have something for me.”
I nodded and approached the table in the kitchen. Careful not to damage the contents of my pack, I leaned over the table, twisted my body, and let the backpack slide off. And when it did come off my shoulder sighed with relief. I then opened the zipper and started to produce heavy old books from inside, laying them on the table one by one.
An Explorer’s Account of Aztec Death Magic.
The Gods of the Old Kingdom.
The Tome of the Dead.
The books were old and heavy, most of them had been battered by the sands of time, but they were perfectly readable. I had gone through some of them during their life at the bookstore, but the topic of death never interested me enough to go on reading them, at least not until I met Collette. And then when my interest was piqued enough for me to go searching, Collette had taken them to read. I would miss them more than she, but it made sense we give the Necromancer whatever books we had about death.
He came over to the books, picked one of them up, leafed through it, and then closed it, seemingly satisfied. More memento mori to add to his collection, I thought.
“So… will you help us with Line—”
Luther’s face twisted into a leer and he rushed at me, placed his hand over my mouth, and pinned me against the wall. His eyes were wide with anger—fear—and I could feel his breath on my face. My heart was pounding now, hard and fast, and my fingertips were starting to buzz with Power. It was almost a reflex, now, like jumping when someone touches your shoulder unexpectedly.
It was a reflex I had to learn to try hard to control.
“Don’t say
her name,” he said.
“Let her go,” Collette said.
Luther turned his head, scowled, and released me. My body remained as stiff as a board for a moment, but then it relaxed.
“You don’t understand,” Luther said. “You can’t say her name. She can h-hear you if you say her name.”
“She can hear us?” Collette asked.
“It’s a sense she has; a trait she stole from the beast’s children.”
“You mean demons?”
Luther’s head snapped around in my direction, his hair bouncing for a moment but then returning to normal. He nodded. “What do you know of demons?”
I was about to tell him about Aaron and the cult, about the time I summoned a succubus and sent it after my ex because he had cheated on me. I was about to tell him that I had partially been possessed by a demon. But that inexplicable voice I had heard before, the one that told me the moon was waning, came again in an instant.
Don’t. You’ll spook him off.
I swallowed, arched an eyebrow, and simply said: “More than you do.”
That seemed to satisfy him well enough. He turned around, headed to the table where the books had been—had been? They were gone. Pack too. The table where I had just laid down three big, heavy books was as it had been when I first walked into the cottage; devoid of anything but a simple checkered cloth.
“Where are the books?” I asked. “I didn’t see you move them.”
Luther turned around, hands outstretched like a magician.
“Ze dead here are strong,” Collette said, “Strong enough to move things. I watched them come and take ze books away. Why do you have zem doing your errands?”
“I don’t ask them to do anything for me. The helpful ones simply want to be helpful, to feel useful again.”
“And ze not so helpful ones?”