Beyond, I could see the cavernous ceiling of an ancient, Gothic-style church, which had long been reclaimed by nature. An iron fence stood at the far end, the gates open to reveal a plinth with an ornate altar on top of it. The stone floor had seen better days, splintered with cracks that provided space for eager weeds to grow through, thirsty for sunlight, and covered in fallen debris.
Moonlight shone through tall windows on both sides, though some had been shattered completely, leaving the church open to the elements, and the bitter cold that swept in from outside. I stepped through first, in awe of the place. The darkness threw me off for a moment, as I had no idea where we were. I guessed there must have been a bit of a time difference, as this place was already steeped in night. An icy draft blew through the abandoned building, whistling between the eaves as if it held a secret. All around the arching church, ghostly statues were hidden amongst the architecture, their stained hands clutching musical instruments.
“Harley?” Alton’s voice snapped me out of my trance.
“Yeah?”
“I’ll need some help with these.” He still stood on the threshold of the doorway, nodding to the two caskets.
“Of course. Sorry.”
I stepped back through and grasped the brass handle on the front of the first one, using my Chaos to help me drag the heavy thing through the open doorway and onto the church’s broken, weed-strewn floor. The brass studs scraped along the stone, the sound echoing around the building, as I lugged it down the main aisle of the church, the wooden base getting tangled in the undergrowth.
Finally, I reached the surprisingly well-preserved altar at the front of the space. There was no sound quite like hauling a coffin along bare stone, and it made me shudder like nails on a chalkboard. Even after I’d set my casket down, I had to listen to Alton do the same, watching him strain against the weight of it.
Turning back, I looked at the other end of the church. An exploding star of still-intact glasswork glowed above a sandstone balcony, a wooden door tucked beneath it, with a heavy, rusty chain stopping anyone from entering. Anyone without an Aperi Si Ostium spell, anyway.
This place was breathtaking and haunting in equal measure, as though I could close my eyes and hear the ghosts of an ancient choir singing at the tops of their lungs and listen to the sermons that had been spoken across gathered congregations. I wondered how many baptisms, marriages, and funerals had been done here—the three stages of life. Birth, love, death.
“Where are we?” I asked, as Alton approached.
“The Church of Saint-Étienne-le-Vieux, in Caen.”
“That’s France, right?”
He smiled. “Yes, France. Northern France, to be exact.”
“What time is it here?”
“Two o’clock in the morning, thereabouts.”
“Well, that explains the darkness.”
He nodded. “It’s better that we have the cover of night.”
“Where’s this Doncaster dude? I thought you said he was already here.”
A figure popped up from the balcony, patting dust from what looked to be a very expensive, dark green suit—the kind that would have made Wade just as green with envy. It pained me to think of him, stranded in Montana, wondering what he’d done wrong. Pushing away those thoughts, I focused on the shadowy man on top of the balcony.
Light as a feather, he leapt over the edge and landed on the ground, the impact softened by a cushion of Air that he pillowed out underneath him as he soared. Standing to his full height, which had to be over six feet, he approached. In the moonlight, I could see him better as he came closer. He was insanely good-looking, that much was obvious, with a mane of oh-so-casual reddish-brown curls and the most intense blue eyes I’d ever seen. Designer stubble grazed his jawline, his posture like that of a ballet dancer, making his suit look all the more impressive.
Wow… where have they been hiding you? He looked like he’d stepped out of the pages of Esquire, or GQ, and I found myself quickly losing grasp of my voice as he came to a halt in front of me. This kind of man didn’t exist in real life, as far as I knew, but here he was, a hint of mischief turning up the corners of his mouth.
“You must be the fabled Ms. Merlin, if I’m not mistaken. It is the greatest of pleasures to make your acquaintance.” He actually bowed, one hand on his abdomen, the other elegantly placed behind his back. His voice was soft and masculine, with a distinct British accent that made me even more tongue-tied.
“You must be Davin,” I managed to blurt out.
He chuckled as he stood. “I hope you haven’t heard too many terrible things. I’m not half the rogue people love to gossip that I am, though I don’t mind the air of mystery so much. One must always keep an air of intrigue about oneself, if only to keep life interesting.”
He took my hand, placing a gentle kiss on it. I stared at him like an idiot, completely taken aback. This wasn’t what I’d been expecting.
“Uh… yeah.”
He smiled. “I confess, I’ve come to find you exceedingly interesting, even though we’ve never met. Such bravado, such gravitas, in one so young—it is enthralling, it truly is. When I received the call from Alton, I thought it to be some sort of jest, until he explained your intentions in further detail. Although, he didn’t mention how rare a beauty you were.” He glanced at Alton. “Shame on you.”
“Uh… thanks?” I mumbled. I had to remember Alton’s warning about this guy’s trustworthiness, but I almost couldn’t believe that someone so beautiful and well-spoken could be any of the things Alton had said he was.
“When you’re done with your charm offensive, we’ve got things to do.” Alton shot Davin a warning glance.
Davin raised his hands in mock surrender. “Are you envious, Alton? Would it make you feel more comfortable if I were to comment upon your good looks?”
Alton shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t.”
“You are too coy. You always have been.” Davin gave me a hundred-kilowatt smile. “When you called to ask for my assistance, how could I resist? To work alongside the great Alton Waterhouse—such opportunities don’t often present themselves, nor does the opportunity to delve into the great unknown of what awaits us upon our demise. You certainly know how to tickle my fancy, Alton.”
“Have you done this kind of thing before?” I asked. He gave off this intense aura of power, but, from what Alton had told me, this sort of spell was unchartered territory for any and all Necromancers, Davin Doncaster included. I did a quick Empathy check on him, remembering that this was a total stranger, but all I could feel was confidence and self-assurance, with a hint of passion that made my insides feel weird.
He shook his head. “Nobody has, which is why my interest has been thoroughly piqued. I’ve performed resurrections of all kinds, but this… this is beyond anything any Necromancer has done before. I have always hoped my name might echo through history, rather than simply from the lips of exquisite women, and if this proves a success, perhaps I will finally have my name in one of those tomes.” He flashed me a wink that made my cheeks flush.
“Do you think you can pull it off?” I pressed, trying to look anywhere but at him.
“Usually, the more powerful the magical, the greater the chance of a not-so-disastrous resurrection. Fortunately, you have two such powerful magicals at your disposal, so let’s hope we can achieve a mutually satisfactory conclusion.”
I didn’t know if it was my mind or his accent, but I was having some trouble concentrating right now, with those blue eyes fixed on me. There had to be some Chaos going on here that made him so magnetic. No man could naturally have that sort of energy.
“You should’ve been thrown in Purgatory a long time ago for all the Necromancing you’ve done. Illegally, I might add,” Alton said. “You can’t go around resurrecting people at will.”
Davin laughed. “Whyever not? Why be gifted with such talents if you aren’t going to use them? It is one’s duty to use everything one has been given, es
pecially if it brings pleasure to others. Would you deny people that?”
“You rip people off,” Alton shot back.
“I grant them closure,” Davin replied, cool as a cucumber. “You should try it sometime. You never know, you may like it.”
“Like I said, you should have been put in Purgatory a long time ago for the things you’ve done for money.”
Davin smiled. “A man must live, and he must live well if he can. Have I helped some old dears tell their recently passed husbands that they have loved them, without fail, for decades? Yes, I have. Have I helped to heal the wounds of a family torn apart by the death of a child? Yes, I have. Have I helped star-crossed lovers have one last moment to declare their undying love? Of course. Life is so very fragile, and we are here to bridge the gap between the living and the dead. Should I receive punishment for being the gatekeeper to those precious moments?”
“You’re a charlatan,” Alton replied.
“Oof, a palpable hit.” Davin smirked. “However, since we’re discussing illegalities, perhaps you shouldn’t be so quick to point the finger. I’m not the one who brought two stolen corpses here, after all.”
Alton narrowed his eyes. “I did it for the sake of keeping this world safe.”
“There are always excuses,” Davin replied. “I have mine, you have yours. Perhaps we should leave it at that, before it turns to fisticuffs? I should hate to have to put on such a vulgar display in front of Ms. Merlin.”
“Yeah, I think that’d be best,” I said dryly, a little amused by their banter, although it had proven Alton’s point that Davin was into some shady stuff. “We’ve got a lot to do tonight, and I don’t want to have to deal with any bloody noses.”
“Just the living dead?” Davin’s words hovered eerily in the air.
I took a breath. “Yep, that’s pretty much it. And I need you two to work together, instead of sniping at each other, if we’re going to revive my parents. I’ll take the rest from there.”
“A remarkable woman indeed,” Davin murmured, smiling at me.
As soon as my mom and dad were revived, I’d tell them what this was all about—that was, if they didn’t come back as mindless zombies or with mixed-up minds, in which case, we’d be royally screwed.
If all went well, I’d follow the spell and finally unveil the Grimoire’s secrets.
Twenty-Eight
Harley
“Help me move these,” Alton said, nodding to the caskets. “We need to get them as close to the altar as possible.”
“Why?” I replied, out of curiosity.
“Altars of any kind are usually positioned in spots where the fabric between the land of the living and the realm of the dead is thinnest. It’s why Necromancers try to perform resurrections as close to an altar as possible, though I’ve got no idea if it’ll make a difference for this one. I’m talking about spirits that haven’t crossed over yet,” he replied. “But we’ve got to do what we can, with what we know works.”
Davin tutted. “You would ask Ms. Merlin to heave a casket? Where are your manners?” He stepped past me and took up one of the casket handles, pulling it closer to the ancient altar.
“She managed just fine before,” Alton muttered, pulling the second one flush against the first so that they pointed out from the altar like two black piano keys.
“You should step behind that fence.” Davin looked up at me as he unlocked the clasp that held the two parts of the casket lid together. “Not only because of what you may see within these caskets, but because of what may happen. You shouldn’t be near in case the Necromancy affects you by accident.”
“It can do that?” My eyes widened.
“It can, Ms. Merlin,” he replied. “You may come forward once the resurrection is complete, to begin your own spell. Until then, it would be best if you didn’t come too close, especially if they arise as zombies. I loathe the word, personally, but it’s a very real affliction, and if we must behead… Well, it would not do to have a lady risk a bite.”
My stomach churned with nerves. “Would I turn into one?”
He laughed. “Those are fairytales—the stuff of Hollywood and awful video games. You won’t ‘turn,’ per se, but you may acquire a nasty infection of the necrotizing variety.”
“Okay, stay back until they’re resurrected. Got it.” I retreated behind the iron fence.
I couldn’t tear my gaze away as they simultaneously lifted the lids of the caskets, revealing the pale corpses inside. Unlike Isadora, these ones looked peaceful, like they could well have been sleeping. In fact, I expected them to jump out of the coffins at any moment and declare that there’d been a terrible mistake, and they weren’t dead at all.
One was a young woman of around thirty, while the other one was an older man, maybe in his mid-forties. I wished they looked more like my mom and dad, but that would never have been possible, not even if we’d had all the time in the world.
“You should get started on preparations for your spell while we deal with this,” Alton said, his tone worried.
“I have extra vessels, should you need any. I always carry spares. One can never be too prepared,” Davin added, pointing to a small wooden chest that was spilling over with bowls and dishes and urns of all kinds. I slipped around the iron fence, trying not to look too hard at the corpses, and took three of the deep ceramic bowls, before retreating to my safe spot.
As I watched, Alton and Davin took a bowl each and set them on the chest of each corpse. Next, they put two smaller dishes on the eyes of the dead. They went back and forth between the altar and Davin’s chest of wonders, taking out pouches of herbs and weird-looking trinkets: two smoothed rubies, two rabbit paws, two shriveled things that reminded me of shrunken heads, and two silver chains with charms embedded in the silver. They worked seamlessly, despite their previous snarking, putting the necklaces around the bodies’ necks.
“What herbs are you using?” I asked.
“Frankincense, dried oriental lilies, periwinkle, Nepalese poppies, green yarrow, and ayahuasca,” Alton replied.
“And plenty of garlic, of course,” Davin chimed in.
“Garlic? Why do you need garlic?” Please don’t tell me they’re going to wake up as vampires. Zombies were one thing; vampires were something I couldn’t wrap my head around right now.
“Purification,” he explained. “Nothing to worry about. Dracula isn’t going to come and give you a nasty bite either, though you certainly have the sort of neck any vampire worth his salt would long to sink his teeth into.”
I gaped at Davin. “I’d rather nobody took a bite out of me tonight, if it’s all the same to you.”
He laughed. “A shame. I’ll have to suppress my own vampiric tendencies.” With a grin fixed on his face, he licked his right canine in a way that made me want the ground to swallow me up.
Ignoring him and turning back to my own task, I sat down on the ground and took out the Grimoire, flipping it open to the right page. After reading the instructions, I removed the herbs from my satchel. I used the three bowls I’d taken and split the ingredients equally into three parts, before adding three drops of quicksilver. The dark purple liquid from the alchemical catalyst tube would come later, once the resurrection was complete. As for the Sherlock’s Eye, I was supposed to hold that while I recited the words of the spell.
With my preparations more or less finished, I turned back to Alton and Davin. They’d stopped ferrying things from the wooden box and were now adding the finer details, crumbling up the petals of the oriental lilies and letting them fall across the bodies in the caskets. It was oddly beautiful to watch.
“You need to spread the petals so that they lie closer together,” Davin remarked.
“You stick to your corpse, and I’ll stick to mine,” Alton shot back.
He shrugged. “It will be your funeral.”
“I know what I’m doing.” I could sense Alton’s nerves, his mood dark.
“Do you? I thought all of this w
as purely theoretical. I doubt either of us knows what we are doing.” Davin smirked. His emotions were all confidence with a hint of intrigue and amusement.
“Do you ever take anything seriously?” I asked, drawing Davin’s attention to me.
“Very few things,” he replied. “Love, beauty, elegant tailoring… yes, I would say that is about it.”
“Not death?” That surprised me.
He shook his head. “Never death. As a Necromancer, one learns that it’s nothing to be taken seriously. It can always be reversed, even if not for very long. And we have the gift of knowing that there is something beyond.” He grinned. “You must be looking forward to seeing them again.”
I sighed. “I don’t know how I feel about it.”
“Really? I would have thought you’d be chomping at the bit to see them in the proverbial flesh, even if they’re coming through different bodies.”
I shook my head. “I haven’t really thought about it. To be honest, I didn’t know if we’d get this far, so anything beyond this is… unknown territory for me, too.”
“Intriguing,” he murmured. “Very intriguing.”
“I don’t see why. Neither of you knows if this will actually work, so there’s no use getting my hopes up until it’s done.”
He smiled. “Beauty and intellect. A heady mix.”
“Yeah, well, get your head back into what you’re doing so you don’t mess this up.”
He laughed. “Amusing, too. Ah, if only you were a few years older.”
“Pack it in, Davin,” Alton growled. “If we fail because your eyes are wandering, I’ll see to it that you end up in one of these coffins. Harley is not your plaything, and I’d prefer it if you kept your words and your mind out of the gutter. If you make another comment like that, I’ll be forced to intervene. I don’t want things to get nasty, so don’t push your luck, do you understand?”
Harley Merlin 8: Harley Merlin and the Challenge of Chaos Page 24