I couldn't say a word, but I couldn’t keep quiet, either, if I wanted to survive this. If his loophole theory was right, it would come down to my life or all of Amaria's. I chose Amaria, hands down, except the professor would just choose someone else with gray magic. First Vickie. Then me. Surely there were more of us who balanced on that very thin line.
"Say it now," he shouted into my face. His blade nicked my flesh.
I had no doubt he'd kill me.
Even though I clung to the hope that he was wrong with the same urgency I clung to life, I couldn't let Ryze come back. I refused to be that person who brought on Amaria's downfall. So, let the professor kill me. At least I'd get to see Leo.
The professor must've seen the acceptance on my face, the peace with my decision, because he screamed. Raised his knife over his head for the killing blow.
The door slammed open with enough force to quake the entire room and rattle my bones painfully. Professor Wadluck froze and stared. Instead of the presence standing outside, though, there was nothing, nothing but a cold, dark energy that slithered closer among the shadows and over the trunk. So close I cringed back and turned my head away at the awfulness bearing down on me. The professor stumbled away from it. Wintery air needled into my face as pressure squeezed my head, my jaw, pressing me farther into the wall at my back and making my stab wound scream. Pressing, pressing. A crack sounded, and then more of that bitter green gas wafted from my mouth.
Words poured out, the rest of the spell: Ut benedicat tibi terram hanc iuxta spiritum, Ad te redi vitae theloneo.
No. No.
The professor whirled on the trunk and stared.
I shuddered, overcome with a sudden realization as I gazed down at my palm. Because something else had come out of my mouth too. A tiny round green ball, smaller than the size of a pea. The dampener. It hadn’t affected me, but now it seemed there was a lot more to it than that. It hadn’t affected me so I could do what I’d just done.
Slowly, slowly, I prodded the empty space where a tooth should’ve been with my tongue.
Then, as if with a loud click, everything made sense. And it gutted me to the core.
“Morrissey,” I whispered.
The thing that had been tugging at my memory about the freshmen hallway. The room in the hallway where I’d first seen Seph sleepwalk... The room she’d come out of was Morrissey’s. I hadn’t remembered, never realized that might be important. Until now.
Morrissey had put the dampener inside of me contained within a tooth with a green gas that changed my words.
Jon’s bones had told me the dampener was inside. Inside me.
ME, the person who kept coming to visit Vickie.
“What’s your full name?” I ground out.
The shadows recoiled away from me toward the doorway and coalesced into a human shape. Before the shape could fully form, the shadows seemed to suck it back in like they weren’t willing to let it go. That happened to me, too, as a shadow-walker, slowly becoming more and more immersed in the dark.
But then the shape pulled away from the shadows’ grasp and stared at me with cold beetle-black eyes through a curtain of long black hair decorated with a headband full of teeth.
“Morrissey Effman,” she said, her voice low and dangerous.
A relation of Marjorie Effman, the professor buried in the graveyard who’d filled me with foreboding.
“Why?” I choked out. “Why are you doing this?”
The door slammed on me, on what I’d thought was a great friendship, and then she was gone.
Leaving me alone with a hole in my heart, Professor Wadluck, and the trunk.
The bell around my neck I hadn’t bothered to take off began to ring. The reliving was near.
The professor crept across the pulsing symbol closer to the trunk and wrung his hands.
I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my hands to my ears to block it all out. What had I done? Gods, what had I done?
I had to stop this. Unless something else came pouring out of my mouth when I did a spell, I could kill Ryze. The knife the professor had stabbed me with lay just beyond my fingertips.
Slowly, I opened my eyes, and immediately wished I hadn’t.
Slipping out from the lid of the trunk were long, pale fingers.
Professor Wadluck heaved a shaky breath, started toward the trunk, then seemed to think better of it as he covered his mouth with both hands. His back was turned, his attention riveted.
Now was my chance. I began to crawl toward the knife, inch by painful inch. Moving made the blood gush faster, the pain grow more intense.
The hand gripped the bottom of the trunk’s lid and hefted it upward with a long creak. I expected to smell death like I had Vickie’s dog, but all I smelled was musty age.
I gripped the knife covered in my own blood. Now all I had to do was use it. Using the table the professor had been lying on, I slowly hauled myself to my feet.
At the same time, Ryze rose up out of the trunk. Our gazes locked. Even though I’d never seen him before, I knew it was him. His power radiated out of him in dark waves. His eyes were as black as Morrissey’s, and a long scar ran down his left cheek to his scruffy jaw. Dark brown hair fell to his shoulders. His clothes were an old-fashioned style of fitted black pants and a black shirt with ruffled sleeves and collar. He didn’t look like he’d died and come back. Far from it.
Professor Wadluck threw himself at the base of the trunk and bowed his head to the floor. “Master, we did it.”
“Who’s the girl?” Ryze asked, his voice husky yet smooth, his gaze never leaving mine.
“Dawn,” I spat.
“You have a great dislike for me, Dawn.”
“You killed my brother,” I gritted out.
He held up his hands innocently. “I’ve only just arrived after a thousand-year hiatus. I haven’t killed anyone. Yet.”
“It’s because of you my brother is dead.”
He nodded slowly and then shrugged. “So?”
That was the wrong thing to say to a girl with a knife. I didn’t care who he was. A merciless scream ripped from my mouth as I charged at him, all my pains and wounds forgotten. He laughed, not even trying to defend himself, which only cemented my rage deeper into my soul.
I brought the knife back and plunged it forward, aiming for his heart.
He caught my wrist easily and crushed it with his fingers. The bones ground together in my hand, forcing me to drop the knife, but I refused to cry out, to admit defeat.
“Bow down, little girl,” he snarled, his cruel eyes flashing. “You’re wasting my time when I need to go see about those dragons.”
“I’ll...kill you.” It was a vow I’d take to my grave.
“How many times have I heard that before? And yet, here I am.” My fist still crushed within his, he looked to the professor, who was still bowing low. “Good work, Wadchum.”
“Wadluck,” he corrected.
“Whatever.” With one last dismissive look at me, he said, “Evanescet.”
He disappeared, now set loose upon Amaria because of me. My bell stopped ringing.
I could only guess at what would happen next, but one thing was for sure:
"Obrigesunt." An orange fireball shot out of my palm and hit the professor.
His next few movements shot loud cracks through the air as he slowly petrified. His skin shriveled closer to his bones, drying out and turning gray as stone. It split here and there from the force of my spell and dripped thin trails of blood to the floor.
I slumped against the table. “Bind thee in health, Protect mind and soul too, Boost vigor and happiness, Make it all renew.”
Nothing happened. I repeated it, and still, nothing. My magic reserves were all dried up, and I’d already lost so much blood. My head spun and shadows edged into the corners of my eyes as I tried to focus across the room. I’d have to staunch the flow in my back myself and then go and find help.
Tell everyone what had happened becaus
e of me.
But my body wasn’t cooperating, and I couldn’t even stand. I knocked over several glass bottles and other supplies as I searched for more bandages, and my mind kept teetering on unconsciousness. I feared I might be slipping into mage’s oblivion since I’d used so much magic. Necromancy itself was a huge suck to my reserves, and then to try to survive, I’d kept using my magic. I was drained. I was beyond drained, and mage’s oblivion could last months, unless I was Professor Wadluck apparently. Amaria didn’t have months.
Eventually I dragged myself out the door, limping and holding myself up with the wall.
Distant screams sharpened my awareness and hooked around my heart, tugging me farther down the hallway and away from passing out.
“Seph!” It came out as both a cry and a frustrated growl.
I was too late. She’d already activated the stone if I was already able to bring Ryze back, which meant I’d completely failed her. I hadn’t stayed by her side. I hadn’t protected her even when I’d had a gut feeling that the stone had never stopped whispering to her. Those truths dragged down the inside of my skin with devastatingly sharp barbs.
But was she okay?
When I turned the corner into the gym, the sight struck me hard. It dropped me to my knees and seared itself into the darkest corners of my memory forever. Blood splattered to every corner. Bodies lay in twisted lumps. Close to twenty of them. Diabolicals and other mages who’d tried to guard the stone, and failed just like me.
But the worst soared above the gruesome floor above the wide-open red door. Floating high in the air, held by an invisible grip to her lower back, was Seph. She spun slowly, her legs, arms, and head hanging limp. Her white nightgown had turned red with blood, and my rope dangled uselessly from her ankle. And in her hand pulsed the black onyx stone, its dark glow twisting her face tattoo into something monstrous.
Jon’s bones had said she’d find herself ‘up’ in the future. They were right.
Sounds ripped from the back of my throat until they coalesced into one long scream, the sound of my breaking heart.
“Dawn!” a familiar voice shouted from across the gym. Ramsey. He came running.
I had to do something. I had to help Seph and stop Ryze and interrogate Morrissey. Find out who killed my brother and destroy them. I vowed to do it all, and I would not quit. For Seph. For Leo. For all of Amaria.
But my body was buckling. I collapsed to the gym floor.
“No! No no no, stay with me, Dawn!”
Ramsey’s panicked face was the last thing I saw. With one last broken gasp, I slid past unconsciousness and into the inky dark of mage’s oblivion.
The End of Book 2
Necromancer Revealed is coming January 2nd!
About the Author
Lindsey R. Loucks is a former school librarian living in rural Kansas. When she's not discussing books with anyone who will listen, she's dreaming up her own stories. Eventually her brain gives out, and she'll play hide and seek with her cat, put herself in a chocolate-induced coma, or watch scary movies alone in the dark to re-energize.
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Necromancer Unleashed: Book 2 Page 14