Ashes And Grave

by Aiden Bates

  If I’d been able to move, I would have ripped his head off with a swipe and pissed in his blood. As it was. I must have ‘fluttered’ an awful lot because Ivan smiled wider.

  But though I did struggle, pointlessly or not, against whatever control he exerted, I also collected something that I thought might be valuable, if I ever had a chance to use it or at least tell it to Mikhail. He hadn’t said ‘broken out’. He’d said ‘released.’

  “How about the old pineapple up the—” he started.

  And froze. He glanced around, smiled. “Well. Here comes the cavalry, it seems. But… oh, I think it’s just the one little knight in dull, fragile armor. Guess old Master Laryn didn’t think you warranted much, did he? Now… you stay right here, and don’t move.”

  He didn’t walk away so much as dissolve as if he’d never been there, and a second later I wasn’t completely convinced that he had been.

  A few seconds later, I could feel my mate. It was like water in a desert, a sudden sensation that reminded me of being alive. I didn’t even realize that I was missing it, until it materialized inside me, gave me a pulse to replace my heart. When I still couldn’t move, I settled instead on focusing every part of my awareness on that presence, on that growing warmth that spread through me to replace numbness. I tried to speak to it, even just with my thoughts, to tell him that Ivan was here, that it was a trap, that he expected and wanted him to come, but if any of that reached Mikhail, I couldn’t tell.

  A moment or an hour later, steps padded across the floor, giving no echo like they should have. I braced myself, hoping this was my mate and not some trick, but Mikhail stepped into view and dropped to his knees in front of me. “Nix,” he murmured, and looked me over. “Okay. Okay, you’re… you’re in one piece. That’s good. How long—never mind, you won’t have any idea. Here…”

  He raised a hand that briefly blazed like a small sun, and the light shot through me, filling me with will and intention again, giving me back the use of—well, not my body, but whatever stood in for it here. First thing I did was pull him to me and press my lips to his. It would have been more enjoyable if there was any taste, or more than one sensation in this place, but it would do for the moment.

  “We have to go,” I said quickly as I pulled away, my eyes skating over the letters written in small print on his face—not as dense as Ivan’s, but there all the same, “Ivan is here, he—”

  “Oh,” Ivan said from some distance behind Mikhail, “he knows. Don’t you, little brother?”

  Mikhail took my hand and I stood with him, and we both faced Ivan with our chins raised. Though, I probably didn’t feel as confident as Mikhail seemed to.

  “I’m taking him,” Mikhail said. “And you can’t stop me. You know it. You’re dead.”

  “Dead,” Ivan mused. “Since when is that more than just a relative term for us?”

  Mikhail held my hand tight in his, and looked up at me. He handed me something. A silvery thread. “Take this,” he said. “Pull it. It will take you back, and I will make sure that he cannot follow. You’ll be free.”

  “Mikhail, I’m not—”

  “I will be fine, this is a place that I am familiar with,” he said. “You are not, and you are a liability here. You are a weapon he will use against me. I know that you wish to fight, to stand beside me, and I want that, too. But I want you to stand beside me up there, in the world of the living. Your body is dying. Mine is… it is used to this, it will last longer. Time enough for me to put an end to him.”

  I held the thread, and started to argue.

  But he sighed, and gave me a gentle shove. It sent me sailing, and then dissolving, and then plowing through layers of existence I couldn’t comprehend even if I’d been able to linger in them, and then I was coughing, and sputtering, and dragging a tube from my throat as I flailed around and tried to orient myself.

  I hacked up the last of the plastic. I spat the staleness from my mouth. I could taste it. I could smell again. My skin felt the air. For just a brief moment, an overwhelming joy seemed to permeate every cell in my body.

  And then I knew where I was, where I had been.

  And that Mikhail was still there.

  “Welcome back,” a short man with a sharp, black goatee said, as he drummed his fingers on the head of a black cane. “I take it my apprentice is still…?”

  “Still there,” I confirmed, confused. “Who are you?”

  “Thomas Laryn,” he said, and extended a hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m told you mated my apprentice.”

  “He’s in trouble down there,” I said. “Ivan, his brother, he’s got this… I don’t know, a temple, or some kind of—”

  Thomas grinned slowly. “Oh, I know. Don’t worry about it right now. We’re going to help him out with that. You know why Mikhail was always my favorite?”

  I shook my head, bewildered that he wasn’t as panicked as it seemed like we all should be at the moment.

  He leaned in to tell me a secret. “He always puts a candle in the window for his friends.”

  27

  Mikhail

  Ivan paced the edge of his bone-temple slowly, watching me with a contemptuous smile on his thin lips. “So. Here we are again, eh?”

  I did not think he meant the place. It was unfamiliar to me. But it seemed that it was some manifestation of Ivan’s soul.

  A place of torment.

  I spread my hands. “I am here. As you wanted. Do you wish to air your grievances? I can help you move on, perhaps.”

  He coughed a laugh. “No, thank you. I’m surprised it took you so long to get here. Not made that many trips?”

  “Only when it is necessary,” I said, turning slowly to keep him in front of me. This was his place, and while I was not powerless, it would not do to be reckless, either.

  Ivan sighed, and looked up at the arches of bone. “I used to love it here,” he said wistfully. “The world up there is… hard, and full of rules and other nonsense that just slows people like you and me down. Here, everything is malleable. It bends to the right will.”

  “Yours,” I said. “Yes?”

  He shrugged. “Any necromancer. But yes—mine. Maybe yours.”

  I sighed. “If this is the part where you ask me to join the dark side and rule by your side, it would be easier to simply skip to the exacting-your-terrible-vengeance part.”

  He paused, and gave me a look of interest. “Vengeance? What, against you? Why?”

  “For whatever perceived slight you feel I gave you in life,” I said, waving a hand at the imaginary list. “How am I to know? You were always a mystery to me. A terrifying mystery.”

  He put a hand to his chest. “Dear brother… I am not grieved by you. You did nothing to me. You were… just there.”

  It should not have struck me so deeply, but I could not help being stung by that. “You beat me mercilessly,” I told him. “You summoned horrors to invade my sleep. You killed nagyi, you—”

  He held up a finger. “I did not kill nagyi,” he said, resolute. “She just died. I told you, I told everyone, I had nothing to do with it. Now… after she died. I mean, at that point she basically belonged to me.”

  I reacted in anger, without thinking. The stuff of the underworld collected at my fingertips, and I sent it arcing toward him as a spear of black and green lightning that exploded against the wall where he had been a bare second before.

  He put a hand on my shoulder from behind me and shoved. I pitched forward as the world twisted, and slammed against the wall, bone biting into my back. “Rude,” he muttered. “You want to know why I terrorized you?”

  “I don’t care why,” I lied. “You are a monster. You always were, it is simply the nature of you.”

  “Sure,” he said, nodding slowly. “That’s… not a terrible explanation, I suppose.”

  He came close enough that I was glad, for once, for the stale scent of ash that filled my nose. His yellowed eyes, scrawled with the words of the dead, searched my face. “
There really wasn’t… a reason. Not really. I was just so hungry. All the time. I hungered for praise, and for warmth, and for nagyi to look at me the way she looked at you. For Master Laryn to pat me on the back. For you to look up to me.”

  “I worshipped you,” I breathed. “I wanted to be just like you, even though the sight of your eyes upon me terrified me. You, with the deft fingers, and the ease with which you walked between worlds, as if you were born in all of them? Who could do anything, go anywhere, grasp any concept. You were brilliant. I wanted to be as brilliant as you. Of course I looked up to you. And every time I did, you beat me down for it.”

  He took a step back. I slid down from the wall. He put a hand slowly to his lips. “I… I didn’t know. Mikhail, I… I’m so sorry, I never—if I had known, maybe…” he bowed his head. “Maybe I… wouldn’t have been such a monster. Maybe I wouldn’t have killed all those people, ripped their souls open to eat what was inside. Maybe everything I am is your fault, because you just didn’t show me enough brotherly love.”

  When he lifted his head, his smile was cruel, and sharp as a blade. “You think everyone is redeemable, don’t you?”

  “No,” I said. “I do not think that, Ivan.”

  He grunted, and turned away. “Look. I’m going to make the offer once. Not because I want to, and not because I want you by my side or some… pathetic nonsense like that.”

  He turned back, his hands clasped behind him. “There is a new order arising in the universe. It needs… allies. And before you say no, let me make something clear—there are thousands willing to help and it really only needs a few dozen at the most.”

  “What order?” I asked. “The abyss? Is this about DuPont?”

  He frowned. “Who? No. The abyss… why would I want anything to do with that? Oblivion is… terminally boring, I imagine. No, brother. This is something much more creative. More glorious. More beneficent. To those that serve the cause, in any case. For those that don’t… well, it’s a great deal less beneficent toward them. Enlist. Serve the much greater glory.”

  I shook my head, and waved a hand at him. “Is this the reward for service?”

  He shrugged a shoulder. “You saw me before. In the depths of Tartarus. Where you left me.”

  “And if I say no?” I wondered. “You destroy me.”

  He looked me over slowly. “No,” he said, soft as a whisper but louder than thunder. “I won’t need to.”

  “Was that what all of this was for?” I wondered as I gathered my will again. “All to lure me here and make this offer?”

  Ivan sneered. “Hades’ taint, that is the most egotistical thing you’ve ever said. Of course not. Why would I go so far out of my way for—no, obviously not. I went up there to exact bloody vengeance, there’s nothing more complicated about it than that. It just so happens that you showed up. See, that’s how it works. I’m not recruiting you, little brother. Not really. It brought you to me.”

  “Tell me what it is,” I said. “And I’ll consider it.”

  His smile faded. “No, you won’t. And besides, can a fleck of bacteria comprehend the human body? Does a skin cell understand the ecstasy of touch? You couldn’t understand, even if I wrote it down in a book.”

  Somewhere in the distance, I thought that I heard a voice.

  When Ivan straightened, his brow furrowing, I realized that it wasn’t the whispering of the souls woven into this place. It was a voice. A lot of them, in fact, like an angry mob.

  He turned, eyes narrowed to slits, and then gave a sigh and began to step back, his form going translucent.

  It was my one chance, perhaps. I leapt, and reached into him with my will and with my soul, dragging him back. “Going somewhere, brother?”

  He began to buzz like an angry bee, shaking in my grip, before he gave up and snarled in my face and thrust a hand out toward the wall.

  Souls came pouring out of the construct toward him, burning to black mist as they swirled around one another and funneled toward his hand. “I was going to let It take care of you,” he rasped, all composure gone from his voice, “but if you insist on making an issue of this—”

  The temple shook before he could finish, as if struck by a great hammer. Ivan’s eyes widened, and he looked up and around at the structure, panicked. “What…?”

  “Did you think I could not flee?” I asked. “That I was stuck here? Or so fixated on you that I would indulge myself in trying to understand who you were?”

  The burned souls nearly reached him, but I stretched my own hand out and pushed them back. It was a contest of wills, but I did not have to beat him at it. Only delay him as the temple shuddered again.

  “Ivan,” I said, drawing him close with my free hand, “all you ever were is a monster clothed in human skin. I do not need to understand you, brother. I do not need closure. I got that the day I saw you in your prison. And I don’t know how you got out of it, but I can promise you that where you go next—from that, you will never return.”

  A crack formed in the temple wall. “Let me go,” Ivan snapped, and clawed at my hands. But, already, his power was waning.

  “If your enemy is more powerful than you,” I said patiently as I endured his scratching and clawing, “then you must destroy that which makes him powerful. And if you cannot do this alone—”

  A wall collapsed. Shrieking souls, perhaps mad, perhaps crying out in joy for freedom as they were freed of his construct, poured into the empty sky.

  “—then bring friends,” I whispered.

  “No!” Ivan wailed, watching as the source of his power dissipated into the sky.

  “Let me tell you, brother, while you still have ears to hear,” I said as his strength ebbed. “You have always believed that the power of the necromancer is to have power over the dead. To enslave the soul, to consume, to invade. That is your limitation, and it always has been.”

  He stared at me, furious and unbelieving, and grasped at my arms with hands that had grown brittle and weak, “Spare me your fucking lectures.”

  “Necromancy,” I said, “is about love. Love for those who seek peace. For those that fear the quiet of death, for they do not know that it is rest. Love for all it is that makes us alive, and human.”

  The source of the destruction now became apparent. Souls. Legions of them, storming the temple. Many that I knew, that I had helped in my time under Master Laryn. Many, many more that he had known and aided, and befriended. More than could be counted, each of them with a debt to pay that might never have been called. We did not do the work for payment. Not from the souls of those we helped.

  “This is what power is,” I told Ivan as the last soul trapped in his demesne was freed, at last, to go where it was meant. “It is in those of us who grasp the hand of another, rather than shackling the wrist.”

  They swarmed the foundations, which had begun to crumble. I handed him to them, and with no power left to defend himself with other than the weak will he had been born with, they began to tear at him. Each one took a piece—a tiny, almost invisible piece—and withdrew from the temple and from this purgatory. They had come because I was here. I served as the beacon, as the candle in a dark place, and Master Laryn had—thankfully—answered my call by sending them to my aid.

  And they did. I watched until the last piece of him was carried away, and the many souls turned to me, all of them in varying states of wholeness. Solemn, I bowed my head to them. “You have my thanks,” I said. “And the thanks of my master, Thomas Laryn.”

  As one, they bowed their heads, and then began to leave.

  It was not relief that I felt, exactly. Not yet. Not until I was back. I turned to leave the place, but was stopped by a familiar touch.

  I turned, not daring to hope.

  But she was there. Her hair vibrant and long, her eyes bright, her smile coy and teasing as always.

  I pulled her to me. “Gabby.”

  She laughed, and let me hug her for a long time. “Hey, Mikky.”

  Whe
n I at last let her go, she reached up to touch my face. “Look at all this…”

  She meant the writing. I turned my face away. “Don’t,” I told her. “I don’t want you to read my sins.”

  Gabby made a rude noise. “Please. What sins? You’re practically a bedtime story, it’s sickening. You should have seen me when I first got here.”

  “What happened to you?” I asked. “I tried… I looked for you, I—”

  “I know,” she said, and took my hand. “Some folks crossed over, we crossed paths, they told me. I wish I could have said more. I didn’t know what was gonna happen, to be honest. And I’m still not really sure? But I got out, and clawed my way through the darkness, and then…”

  She sighed, and reached up to brush a tear—a real tear, down here, for her at least—and then jerked her chin. “Before you go, I've got someone I want you to meet.”

  I frowned, and turned, unsure who she could mean. I had met her family.

  But I had not met this man.

  He was tall, his hair cropped short, his skin dark, and free of any writing at all. It had been washed away, perhaps, since he had been here. Gabby walked around me and went to him, and held his hand. “Before I was passed away so violently,” she said, “I… had a husband.”

  I shook my head. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. It was painful. This is Michael. Michael, Mikhail.”

  I took his hand and shook, comprehension gradually dawning. “Did you… did you agree to be my ally because my name reminded you of your husband’s?”

  Michael grinned. “It was kind of a running joke,” he said. “I’m Michael number six, actually.”

  My brow pinched as I gave Gabby a critical look.

  She shrugged. “It just happened that way, it wasn’t on purpose or anything. So. You and Nix, did you… you know.” Her eyebrows waggled.