Nordstrom Necromancer: A New Adult Dark Fantasy Inspired By Norse Mythology

by Amy B. Nixon

  I caught his face, partially to prevent him from clouding my mind with another kiss, partially because I wanted to keep touching him.

  “Make me wake up, like you did in my last dream, and come find me. I want to kiss you for real, not like this.”

  “I can’t,” he whispered, leaning in, and our lips met in an ethereal caress.

  Why couldn’t he? Was he still away?

  “Aren’t you back? If you are, please wake me up.”

  He let out a hoarse groan and pushed his face in my hair. I shuddered in his arms when his mouth landed once again on my neck’s already extra sensitive skin.

  “Dann, please!”

  I bit my lip as soon as my brain registered how turned on I was and how much it showed in my whimpering voice.

  The morbid belief I’d only feel disdain when it came to sex had vanished into thin air, as if it hadn’t been nestled in my head for an entire year. After my ex, I had simply grown used to the repulsive nausea I got from the mere thought of being naked, body or feelings wise, with another guy. And now I was stunned by the fact that I absolutely meant what I had nearly implied with my suggestions to Dann.

  Contrary to what my body desired, I drew back from him. Responding to what my body desired, his fingers trailed over to my face, thumb brushing just under my lips, which yearned for more of his touch, for his kisses, for his being.

  “I beg of you, stop biting your lower lip like that.”

  His gravelly voice pulled me out of my mental vortex. The bright blue in his stare had grown darker. His eyes were fixed on my mouth, not blinking for the longest time, as if he was the one who felt mesmerized, when it was the other way around.

  “You’re excruciatingly beautiful, but do you have to be so irresistibly sensual? I swear by the Vanir, you’re making all of this even harder than it already is.”

  “Why?” I asked, disoriented.

  Why had he said that to me? Why was I making whatever all of this was even harder? And most of all – why couldn’t he wake me up and kiss me outside a dream?

  The silence that followed stretched to eternity and beyond. I couldn’t pick out a single emotion from his facial features. Maybe my brain had liquefied, melted by his tenderness, but hard as I tried, I couldn’t find the answer in those astonishing blue eyes.

  He kissed my lips one more time, before uttering something which didn’t seem like the answer I was looking for.

  “Because the northern stream still flows poisoned.”

  Like clockwork, a second later I was awake and alone in my room, confused, overwhelmed, feverish and longing for the aftertaste of his lips to be replaced by his real lips.

  The mere thought of his intoxicating French kisses swept me away from my bedroom. It carried me over flights and flights of stairs, pushed me through the hidden passageway behind the painting, pulled me down the arched tunnel, and made me reach for the door that kept my newly awakened, most innermost desire hidden away.

  I expected him to be there. The fuck with that, I yearned for him to be there and to take me in his arms the moment I ran through the door. I longed to find myself locked within the protective and comforting wreath his fingers weaved around my skin, I longed to be pressed against his beating heart, I longed to have my defensive walls torn down and replaced by his lips.

  But this wasn’t the Disney fairytale shit package.

  There was no prince standing there, ready to sweep me off my feet. There was no melody produced by skillful fingers running over the grand piano’s keys. There was no baritone whisper to make me tremble in the darkness.

  There was no warmth, no tenderness, no mercy.

  I was standing in a cold, dark room devoid of all human trace. A single musical instrument stood there to remind me why the only thing I felt was an incorporeal hand curling around my throat and clenching its claws ruthlessly.

  All that was left for me here was my disappointment’s desolation, which I faced breathless and immobilized, silent and alone.

  Was he still away? And what the hell had he said before forcing me to wake up? Something about a northern stream still flowing poisoned? Nordstrøm meant northern stream. But poisoned? What was that supposed to mean?

  A Winter In Fugue

  Three days later, Dann was still missing. Shaken by my dream, my thoughts kept drifting to him.

  His arms, wreathing all around me. His fingers, weaving caresses into me. His lips, kissing my own, painting beautiful trails on my skin, making me moan and shudder in his arms. His words, comparing me to the northern lights, telling me I was excruciatingly beautiful.

  This was bad. Screw bad; this was abso-fucking-lutely the worst mess I could get myself into! And I had already managed to get myself into all sorts of crazy shit since coming to Norway. But why did I feel this way?

  It’s because you’re fucking insane, a wise voice noted in my head. It was quickly silenced by a different voice, which cooed about how Dann was excellent at everything and how I would be insane not to fall for him.

  Could I let myself give in to my emotions? All my life, I had fallen for the bad boys, and my stupidity had always backfired. Dann seemed different from the others before him. I trusted him with my life, but could I trust him with something dead and broken beyond the limits of necromancy? Could I trust him with my heart?

  I found myself thinking about him a fourth night in a row.

  My feet carried me to the medieval dude’s painting in the castle’s main entryway. I paused at the portrait, wondering if I should go into the dungeons. A nearby torch’s light illuminated the painting, and I found myself reminiscing about Dann’s last lecture. He talked about Muspelheim’s eternal flame. The eternal flame was an everlasting source of heat and fire, and was the only thing capable of destroying the Bifröst Bridge.

  When the primordial fire of Muspelheim mixed with the primordial ice of Niflheim, sparks of eternal flame flew across the multiverse. Some of them bonded together and formed our Sun, while others remained in the form of isolated shards, floating freely amidst the dark matter.

  Dann had explained how Nordstrøm Wanderers had obtained one of those shards, centuries ago. They had paid a hefty price to the dwarves of Nidavellir to tear it to pieces and forge special cressets that could hold the flame’s power. These cressets later became the torches that now lit the entryway, corridors and hallways of this castle.

  I took the plunge and descended through the secret passageway, only to find a deserted room. The grand piano stood lonely in its corner, like I did in mine.

  Unwillingly admitting it to myself, I wished he was here. All this time I had taken our talks and his open invitations for granted. Now, when I finally felt like opening up to him, he wasn’t around.

  ***

  The next morning, I went to see Marcus Dahl to get my mind off the storms in my heart. Despite having Apertured once, I couldn’t do it today. No matter how many times we tried, not a single inch of my body went poof. All I did was waste his time on a day he shouldn’t have even dealt with me to begin with.

  “Miss Dustrikke,” the guard spoke with a stormy expression, “I understand why you’d prefer being somewhere on a vacation instead of practicing, but you need to try harder.”

  After a few more fruitless attempts at Aperture, Marcus told me to take a break. I decided to go for a walk and clear my head.

  Honestly, I couldn’t imagine going on a vacation. There wasn’t a place in this world I wanted to visit. I had heard in some movie that people made the place, not the other way around. Since I didn’t really have anyone to turn to, I had no place to wish for.

  I couldn’t even imagine being in my house in California. That life seemed so distant, so far behind, as if I had left San Francisco not months, but years ago.

  One of the courtyards was as barren as my vacation dreams.

  Slowly walking across the snowdrifts, I thought about the first time I had truly forgotten about my old life. It was somewhere in this courtyard, near the side
building which housed the training grounds. That afternoon when Aurora had hit Dann with a snowball right in the face in the middle of his sentence. The memory of his scowling expression and the way it transformed into a resting bitchface made me smile, but a second later my smile vanished, as I remembered what had followed next.

  Winter used to be my favorite season. My birthday and my favorite holidays were crammed into a single winter month. But now, after all this time, I no longer saw it as the enchanting season through the prism of a child’s eyes. Now all I saw in winter was how painfully ironical it had been.

  This winter brought me sincere smiles and my first carefree laughter in a really, really long time. And this winter took everything from me.

  I slowly came to a halt, with eyes scanning the cloudy sky.

  “Why?”

  My voice was a barely noticeable whisper.

  “Why me, Freya? What’s so special about me, that you had to pick me out of all other Dustrikkes to be your… I don’t even know what I am. If I’m your Chosen One, all I’m chosen for is a path, which leads to death for me and suffering for you.”

  I didn’t receive a reply. There was no echoing voice, divine specter breaking through the clouds, or an inner feeling that I was getting a sign.

  “Why me, Freya?” I repeated quietly.

  Unsurprisingly, there was no answer. She was worshipped by everyone here and who knew by how many others off this island. She wouldn’t want to talk to the only one who had never even thought of her.

  I wasn’t brought up as a religious kid. My family never went to church. We never talked about anything spiritual. I had asked them a few times over the years why I wasn’t baptized and whether they were secretly atheists. Each time the answer was the same. They believed there was some sort of a divine force, but never labeled it with a name, and told me I could call it whatever I wanted to – Jesus, Allah, Cao Dai…

  So, I grew up thinking there was something superior to us, but I never named it, and I never prayed to it.

  Now that I knew it had many forms and many names, I hadn’t bothered praying to any of them. Partially out of habit, partially because I wasn’t sure how to speak to the Norse pantheon. Having that in mind, Freya’s lack of answer wasn’t disappointing. Deep down, I knew my questions were rhetorical.

  Instead of wasting my time asking a non-responsive goddess rhetorical questions, I decided to ask a slightly more responsive necromancer different questions.

  Administration told me where I could find the last person I’d ever thought I’d go looking for in my spare time – my mentor. Climbing one of the west wing’s towers, I expected to find a room up there, but it turned out to be a turret.

  Chilly air seeped through the walls’ windowless crevices. Fortunately, I was still wearing my long jacket, which made the freezing temperature slightly more bearable.

  “If you’re going to sneak up on someone, do it properly, Dustrikke.”

  Looking around the small oval area, I let his comment fly past my irritant receptors.

  There were a couple of wooden chairs with fitted cushions, and a tall cabinet next to them. Other than that, the floor space was empty. The oval walls, on the other hand, were decorated with what seemed like the inventory of a small weapon shop. Crossbows and throwing knives, swords and axes, guns and sniper rifles. One had to wonder what the cabinet contained.

  “Aren’t you cold?” I asked quietly, eyeing the windowless openings.

  Brühl turned around with his signature scolding glower.

  “What are you doing here? Don’t you have studying to do for university, like the rest of those verdammte Kinder?”

  “No, and while we’re on the subject of studying – next time, try being more subtle in your reports.”

  “It is my job as your mentor to keep track of your progress and report it to the Council. You’re under their protection, which means you will play by their rules, regardless of your last name.”

  I rolled my eyes, fixing them on the nearest wall. If he knew the severity of my problem with authority, he would probably turn the Dick Mode up a notch. Or even two.

  “Why are you here, Dustrikke?”

  “My water element broke out.”

  “When?”

  “That’s the thing. I have no clue when and how, but it happened before I came here. Judging by how painful it felt when the other two elements broke out, I would have sensed and remembered it.”

  “When did you discover it?”

  “On the weekend when… when taking a shower,” I lied quickly, hoping he’d take my hesitation as a sign of embarrassment. “I got angry and the water pulled back from me, but I didn’t really feel anything other than typical annoyance.”

  He grabbed one of the chairs, dragged it across the floor, and sat down, straddling it from the wrong side while resting his elbows on the back’s wooden frame.

  “Sit!”

  I obeyed, knowing there was no sense in telling him I preferred staying up and walking around to keep myself warm.

  “Do you know when you had the suppression spell put on you?”

  “No.”

  “How old are you now?”

  “I turned twenty-one in December.”

  “Scheisse! You could have broken out years ago.”

  If most people broke out at eighteen, but Dann – who was also a Class Five necromancer – had Apertured at fifteen, when had my water element broken out?

  “Have you ever been outside of San Francisco?”

  “Yeah, a few times. I’ve visited some cities in other parts of California. I was also once on vacation in New York and once in Oregon.”

  “Have you felt notably frightened, vengeful or infuriated during any of those travels?”

  I tried to recall my feelings from those trips, but I couldn’t really pinpoint an exact event which fell into his notable category. As a teenager, I got more mood swings than I did now. None of them seemed drastic, though, at least not when compared to the crap from the past couple of years, and especially not compared to the shit I’d felt on this island.

  “Um, I don’t think it happened during my trips.”

  “That’s a good start. Can you narrow down any devastating tides, groundbreaking thunderstorms, hailstorms and similar occurrences in San Francisco?”

  “Do I look like the worldwide meteorological database archive?”

  “Think, Dustrikke! Did something life-changing for a teenager happen to you? Not getting into the university you wanted? Having a fight with your best friend? Breaking up with a boyfriend? Girlfriend? Gender-fluid partner? I don’t even know what you call them. Your generation is different from mine in too many ways, so think! What affected your feelings?”

  I had lost a lot of things, and the hurting had only gotten worse with each new pile of shit that got dumped over the other piles. But…

  “There was a thunderstorm…”

  Eyes closed, I tried to remember a particularly nasty day. One, which I wanted to eradicate from my memories.

  “What happened?”

  “It came out of nowhere. I remember it, because I don’t really like thunderstorms, but it was the first time I enjoyed one.”

  “What happened, Dustrikke?”

  “The Phallus Who Shall Not Be Named happened!” I snapped back.

  “Speak clearly! Or do you prefer me to torture it out of you?”

  “A cheating son of a bitch who called himself my boyfriend!” I yelled, jumping off the chair and circling around the place. Somehow, it seemed smaller than it did a couple of minutes ago.

  “Your boyfriend cheated on you? That’s what happened?”

  “He didn’t just cheat! I caught him doing it in his dorm room with some blonde bimbo! And he admitted he had been fucking her behind my back for months! And she knew about me from the beginning!”

  “What happened next?”

  “I stayed and we had a kinky threesome. What the fuck do you think happened? I threw the nearest thing at
him, which was some book, and rushed out of the building.”

  “When did the thunderstorm start?”

  “I don’t know, at some point while I was walking back. I was too angry to focus on driving, so I marched off on foot. Lightning and thunder rolled out, then rain started falling. San Francisco is either cloudy or misty all year round, so rain is something we get often. The sky is clear for only, like, five days a year.”

  “How did you feel?”

  “Are you my fucking shrink?”

  “Answer the question.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  He got up, dragged me out of my corner and pushed me in the other direction, literally sending me flying towards the chair. I wasn’t sure if he used just physical strength, but right then and there I wished I knew how to fight in hand to hand combat, so I could give him a piece of my mind.

  “Listen, you silly little girl! Your generation and your upbringing doesn’t know wars, famine and real problems. Boys and girls like you think it’s the end of the world when your feelings get hurt, and those feelings get affected beyond any reasonable measures by trivial things, such as fighting with friends, cancelled TV shows, or cheating boyfriends. I will ask you one more time as a civilized adult, and I expect you to respond like one. How did you feel?”

  “Like it was the end of the world!” I growled, staring directly into his eyes. “Yeah, we get affected by such shit; and I got so affected by mine, it felt like the end of the fucking world! My guts were twisted, my heart was aching, I couldn’t breathe, everything was painful, and I thought I was having a heart attack or something. And I enjoyed the fucking storm, because the sky was ripping open like I wanted to rip my own chest open. That’s how it felt!”

  Folding his arms over his chest, he didn’t even blink at my meltdown.

  “When did the storm stop?”

  “While I was asleep. My aunt gave me some new herbal tea, and it knocked me out like a horse tranquilizer. When I woke up, the storm was already gone.”