by Aiden Bates
Mikhail
When Nix told me that council member Vilar had a human mate, and that they had adopted children, I recalled seeing the old dragon when I first arrived. He had been red-scaled, standing beside Nix in the midst of the storm the poltergeist had manifested. When he shifted back to human form, I had seen how old he was.
It was somewhat surprising to learn that there were human mates in Emberwood. It was not uncommon elsewhere, but given the relationships that Emberwood had—or, more properly, did not have—with most of the world, both human and paranormal alike, I expected them to be somewhat more insular.
I also expected Vilar’s human mate to be, frankly, younger. Tail-chasers fetishized shifters, and it was common to see older shifters with younger men and women who were fulfilling some fantasy with a shifter who perhaps did not have so many other prospects and was willing to settle for someone whose appetites would never be fully sated.
But, that was not to say that all humans who ultimately fell in love with shifters and became their mates were tail-chasers. And when Vilar’s mate, Markon, invited us into his home, I decided that this was not a shifter/chaser relationship.
Markon was perhaps in his fifties—still considerably younger than Vilar, who to look as he did must have been well over a century and a half old, at least. He wore a V-neck shirt that revealed both the well-managed shape of his body, and the telltale spots that peeked out where his shoulder and neck met to prove that Vilar was serious about him. He’d claimed him, at some point.
Gabby nudged me with her elbow as she looked him over, grinning ear to ear. I had to pretend she was not there. She had not been in the room when Nix and I were occupied... at least, I was fairly certain. If so, she had not said, but she was remarkably smug all the same.
“Well,” Markon said as he allowed us into his home, “this must be the notorious necromancer I’ve heard so much about. I heard you dropped our ghastly visitor with a few words.”
I inclined my head, gracious at the praise. It was, I realized, the first such that I’d received since I arrived. “I assure you, it was more difficult than it likely appeared. But I was well-motivated.”
“However hard or easy it was,” he said as he took my hand, “my Vilar was in that room, and I appreciate what you did.”
“Finally,” Gabby breathed. “Someone with decent manners in this place.”
The genuineness of his gratitude was moving. I almost felt my eyes sting at the corners. “I hope that I can ensure it is never a concern again.”
“Which,” Mikhail said, “is part of why we’re here. Is Vilar home?”
“Soaking upstairs,” Markon said. “I’ll let him know you’ve come by.”
I looked around the house, which was oddly quiet for a home with three girls. Or perhaps they were older than Nix made them sound. “And... you have three children, I am told?”
“The girls,” Markon agreed. “We sent them to stay with my mother, in Charleston, while all this was going on here. To keep them out of harm’s way.”
Gabby put a hand to her mouth. “Oh... fuck.”
Nix and I shared the same look, and perhaps had the same thoughts. I tried not to alarm Markon by panicking. “How long ago did they leave?”
Markon cleared his throat, glancing at the ceiling. “About a week ago... Vilar didn’t want to tell anyone. We homeschool the girls, I’m a teacher. Or... I was before the girls came along. Now I’m more of a house husband and full-time dad. And teacher. And, at times, a maid. Anyway, he didn’t want the community to think that he was overly worried. Why?”
The answer to that was going to be painful. But he was a father, and he deserved to know. “Perhaps you could let Vilar know that we are here?”
He knew that there was something wrong. He gave a shallow nod, and glanced at Nix, nervous, before he went to the back of the house.
Once he was gone, Gabby became almost frantic. “We have to go, boss. We should go now, there has definitely been something coming and going from this place in the last few days.”
I held a hand up for her to be quiet as Nix leaned toward me.
“So,” he said softly, easily too quiet for a human to hear from the other side of the house, “the weyr is currently proof against attacks, yes?”
I knew where he was going. “More or less. Certainly, it would take a great deal of effort.”
“Is there any possibility that Rav might know where the girls are?”
The only good answer was the honest one. I glanced at Gabby, nodding. “There are a great many ways to find that information out. The only safe assumption is that he does. We will have to retrieve them, and bring them here to be safe. They are currently the only easy targets.”
Nix’s eyes flicked to the back of the house, where Markon had disappeared. “If he gets to them—”
“He will not,” I said, with more calm than I felt.
“I’ll dig around the local ether,” Gabby said, beginning to fade, “see if I can dig up a lingering relative, maybe get a message to any spirits near the girls.”
That was the best use of her particular skills, so I gave her a brief wave to hurry her along to the task.
Nix glanced at my hand. “Gabby?”
“She will see if it is possible to have someone in the area watch over the girls until we can get to them,” I said.
“What, like another ghost?” he asked.
I shrugged. “There are more than ghosts in the world. Perhaps a household spirit, or an ancestral watcher—she knows how this works, she will work with what is available. But she will have to get a message there first. The high ether, where spirits like her dwell, is a surprisingly social place.”
He shook his head slowly, bewildered. “Necromancers must make remarkably good spies.”
“We don’t like to talk about it,” I said, “but it’s true we’ve played that role for much longer than most are aware.”
Markon emerged from the back, followed closely by Vilar, who had a plush robe on, his hair still wet from the water. “Nix,” Vilar said as they approached. “What’s this about the girls?”
He looked to me, maybe wondering if I wanted to take point.
I did not want to inform an ancient dragon that his children were perhaps at risk. I gave the smallest of nods.
Nix seemed to steady himself. “We’ve discovered a possible source of these attacks,” he said. “And it would be best if, for now, it was kept as quiet as possible.”
Vilar frowned, the lines on his face deepening. He put an arm around Markon, and Markon slipped an arm around his waist. They seemed to lean on one another, bracing for what they instinctively must have known was coming. “All right,” Vilar said. “So?”
“Rav,” Nix said. “Mikhail believes it is possible he’s seeking revenge. All the people killed so far are connected to you, Pop, me, Areela—everyone involved in the hunt for Pendrig and Rav. We think he’s attacking the people closest. And now that the weyr is protected—”
“Gods, no,” Markon gasped, his voice almost a whimper as his hand went to his mouth, his eyes already brimming with tears.
Vilar’s red scales shimmered over his skin, his eyes blazing as he nearly lost control on the spot and sprouted wings. “The girls are in Charleston,” he growled. “You’re saying we sent them out of safety?”
“Call them,” I said, raising hands uselessly for calm. “I have someone already moving to look out for them, and I will go myself to—”
“The hell you will,” Vilar snarled. “We’re under attack by a gods damned necromancer who should have stayed fucking dead, and you think I’m about to send another to go anywhere near—”
“Vilar, please,” Markon nearly sobbed. “Let him speak. He’s the one that knows about these things. Don’t throw away his help. It’s our babies.”
At Markon’s pleading, Vilar calmed somewhat, but not entirely. “Why should you go? Aren’t you supposed to be here, making sure this comes to an end?”
“For the moment,�
�� I said, “no harm will come to the weyr. That will last about seven days. However, because of that, your daughters are potentially more attractive targets. Perhaps where they are, and perhaps in transit back to the weyr. If I am with them, and the attack is launched, I can protect them. With respect, Council Member, you will not be able to.”
You’d have thought I called him a gecko and told him he’d killed his girls already. He surged toward me, scales bristling. If not for Markon holding him back and Nix stepping between us, his own scales suddenly showing, Vilar might have at least broken something, if not killed me.
“Don’t you tell me that I can’t protect my own,” Vilar snapped. First with words, and then literally as his jaws bit at the air, a threat I felt directed at my throat.
“He’s not saying anything like that,” Nix snapped back. “He’s saying—we’re both saying—that he has the best tools to defend them against this specific threat, Vilar. And he’s right. So make the call, tell us where they are, and let us go and get them and bring them back safe.”
Vilar glared at me for another moment, but gradually shifted back to human form, pulling his robe closed as he did. There were tears on his cheeks as he changed, and he wiped them away. “Markon, honey... call your mother. Don’t... don’t tell her anything, just check on the children and... make sure they’re all right.” He looked to me, and then to Nix, deflated again as he turned away. “I’ll get you the address. Bring Markon’s mother, as well. She means everything to him, and to the girls.”
“We will,” I promised.
He took a notepad from a shallow drawer by an old rotary phone and scribbled the address down, then passed it to Nix, who looked at it and then handed it to me. “We’ll have to drive,” he said. “And we’ll have a full complement.”
“Take the minivan,” Vilar said, waving a hand generally toward the driveway outside the house. “It’s got a full tank, we barely use it. Speed all the way there if you want, I’ll pay the tickets and clear anything up if you’re stopped.”
Nix put a hand on Vilar’s shoulder, then pulled him into a hug. “I promise,” he said softly, “we will bring them back safe, and then we’ll make sure this never happens again.”
When they parted, Vilar was haunted. He wanted to come, I knew, but he would only take up space and in any case he would be useless if my brother attacked the children.
The pit of my stomach curdled as we left Vilar and Markon’s house. There was no avoiding the truth of what I was facing. Rav had to be Ivan. It was the only thing that made sense, even if I didn’t know yet how he had managed it.
What I did know, from experience, was that Ivan had no qualms about murdering a child, and that he would not give up only because the weyr was now resistant to his intrusions.
He would find them, and would do so as soon as he realized what I had done here. If he hadn’t already.
13
Nix
It wasn’t easy to speed in a minivan, but I pushed the vehicle until it began to vibrate a bit too hard to trust that it wouldn’t fall apart. Vilar was one of the wealthier members of the weyr, but given Emberwood’s overall economy, that wasn’t saying much. The minivan certainly wasn’t new, and there was half a chance it would explode before we ever reached Charleston if I pushed it too hard.
That apparently made Mikhail somewhat nervous. “We’re not moving fast enough,” he muttered for the tenth time since we’d left. We were already well over halfway, Charleston was only an hour and half from the weyr.
“Vilar said the Markon’s mother didn’t notice anything odd,” I reassured him.
“Just because she does not notice anything does not mean that there is nothing already wrong,” he grumbled. “The poltergeist that Rav was employing has been destroyed. Perhaps he will craft another, or find one, or perhaps he will use a different tactic. Just because a spirit cannot fling things at you, does not mean that it cannot do harm.”
I hadn’t really considered that. The poltergeist had been so effective, and so deadly, that it seemed like the only weapon a necromancer might need. But of course, magic was a far-ranging toolbox. “What else could he throw at us?”
Mikhail sighed, waving a hand as if the answer were far too complicated or too extensive to go over.
“I may need to know,” I said. “I have every confidence in your skill, but if something happens and I have to make it back to the weyr with the girls, I need to know what to look for.”
“If something happens to me,” he countered, “then you will most likely not survive whatever comes.”
I glanced at him to see him chewing on his lip. His foot tapped at the floorboard. One hand picked at the seam of his jeans, while the other drummed impatiently at the armrest on the door. Not that I had known him very long, but even as a mad poltergeist had hurled what amounted to jagged spears at us, and turned the council chamber into a small hurricane of deadly objects, Mikhail had seemed poised. In control, like he wasn’t worried about the outcome so much as uncertain of the proper calculations to make that would ensure it.
Now, his nerves may as well have been outside of his skin, waving little signs to declare just how anxious he was.
“You’re very worried about this,” I noted. “Are you not sure you can handle whatever we encounter?”
He snorted. “No. I am not worried about that. I have a great deal more training than Rav.”
“How do you know that?” I asked. It seemed at least a little overconfident.
He shook his head. “He’s been dead for ten years, yes? I’ve been learning for the last ten years. Was he an old man when he was killed?”
“No,” I replied. “I guess… he seemed young?”
“He likely was,” Mikhail said. “No one who would do what he did lives very long.”
That seemed like a remarkable leap of logic. “You said that you’d never encountered him. Was that true?”
His furtive glance told me at least part of it had been deception, whether he’d meant to or not. “I am familiar with him,” he said quietly. “That is all.” After a moment, about the time I decided to press him for more, he spoke again. “A necromancer may attack a person in many different ways. There is the direct way, which is to attack a person’s soul, or their life force. Like with your father, for only one example. Then there are the myriad creatures that inhabit the various levels of the near and far ether, and the underworld.”
“Demons, and things like that?”
He shook his head. “Demons are from another place. Other dimensions. But the mortal soul is a very malleable thing. Any soul which lingers too long in the etheric realms may become something else. Spirits of hunger, of fury—like the poltergeist—of despair, of almost any part of living experience. Whatever most drove them in life, and whatever they are most connected to in death, can change the nature of the spirit. Rarely, for good. Ancestral spirits, guardian spirits, these such things—these were once people who were guardians and teachers, and who cling to the etheric realm in order to continue to serve and protect.”
“But those are rare,” I said.
“As I said, rare.” He straightened a bit in the seat from where he’d been slumped down in it. “For the most part, it is a bad thing. This is the nature of mortal beings. We are petty, we are selfish, and at times we are cruel because of those qualities. A necromancer may search out such spirits, refine them, even join two such beings together. This is the poltergeist that afflicted the weyr—it was very strong, unusually quick to recover. Likely, it was a kind of… collage. Many such spirits, all stitched together.”
“Ghost Frankenstein,” I offered.
Mikhail grunted. “It is Frankenstein’s monster you are thinking of. Frankenstein was the doctor. But, just so.”
I couldn’t quite help rolling my eyes, but didn’t argue the point. “So if not that weapon, then what?”
“A powerful spirit of despair might drive a person to suicide,” he said bitterly. “A spirit of anger might drive
a person to murder. Even a corrupted ancestral spirit can be used to lure a person into other dangers. The spirit of a person who was drowned may be empowered to revisit their misery on the living. As I said. There are many options.”
Many, to me, sounded the same as ‘unpredictable’. “How do you plan for all of those?”
He gave a dark, mirthless laugh. “I do not plan for all of them. I assess, act quickly, trust my magic.”
That wasn’t comforting. I tried not to worry about whether he could handle it or not. There were clear steps ahead of us for at least part of the way. Get to Charleston, get the kids and Markon’s mother, get them back to the weyr. If there turned out to be extra steps between those… well, hopefully Mikhail could deal with them.
Relying on him that much made me nervous, though. There was little room in all of that for what I was good for other than being the wheel man. That was the whole reason I’d reached out for a necromancer in the first place—this was a danger we just weren’t equipped to fight off. You couldn’t torch a spirit, couldn’t fight what you sometimes couldn’t even see; especially when seeing it only meant that you knew it was coming, not that you could do a damn thing about it.
Dragons are not especially known for our love of problems we can’t burn or gut.
Getting Mikhail talking about his craft seemed to at least focus him, if not relax him at all. Not that being relaxed was really called for under the circumstances. But as we fell into silence again, the same signs of worry cropped up. We had another fifteen minutes to go to get to the girls. I kept glancing at him, checking to see what state he was in. It seemed to get worse the closer we got.
It took me until we crossed into the city and made the first turn to head toward Markon’s mother’s place to realize what his anxiety was really about.
“You’re worried you can’t protect the girls,” I said.
He frowned. “That I can protect them is not in question,” he muttered. “That I will do so successfully is the uncertain part.”