No Humans Involved

by Kelley Armstrong

  But we keep using what works. That doesn't mean we're too stupid and superstitious to try without the bits and bobs of ritual. This group had probably done the same--tried sacrificing an adult. Maybe it failed, as did our pared-back rituals. That could be psychology at work--at some level we're convinced we need ingredient X and therefore we fail without it. Or maybe I was thinking too much to avoid what I was supposed to be doing.

  Paige told me once that her mother always said the main function of ritual was that it provided the spellcaster--or necromancer--with a gradual transition from the everyday world to the magical. That the act of concentrating on placing ingredients just so, on drawing symbols, on laying out tools and lighting censers was for focus, to release the brain from thoughts of shopping lists and luncheon dates. If that was the case, I'd probably never needed that refocusing more than I did this afternoon.

  It wasn't thoughts of shopping lists cluttering my mind, but the horror of what I was about to do.

  Raising the dead. If you're a religious person, you call it resurrection and it's a miracle. If you're a horror buff, it's Armageddon at the hands of a flesh-munching mob of shambling corpses. In truth, it's some of both.

  Like miracle workers, we return the ghost--the soul--to the body, conscious and aware. So unless you raise a Hannibal Lecter, the person's not going to start eating brains. But the body is the dead one, the broken one, the rotting one, just like in a horror flick. So now the ghost is trapped, fully aware, in that broken and rotting corpse. Could anything be more horrific?

  Yet every well-trained necromancer is taught to do this. Must practice even. Whether he or she ever chooses to raise a zombie, we know how, should we need that knowledge.

  And now I did. To raise a child.

  THE DARKEST POWER

  I BEGAN THE INVOCATION. Jeremy stood just past the nearest garden bed, watching for anyone coming from the house. Eve patrolled for ghosts, warning them off. I think Kristof was helping too, but I didn't see him; didn't see anyone.

  As much as I tried to clear my mind, every sight, every sound seemed to vie for my attention. The poke and scrape of pebbles under my knees. A prop plane buzzing overhead. A fly walking over my chalk symbol. The sickly sweet smell of lilies. To me, they smell of funeral homes and death. Sweet yet off-putting, like the stink of rot.

  Rot...

  How long had these children been in the garden? How much had their bodies decayed? Were they even whole? What if they weren't and I'd return a soul to a partial corpse, one without arms, without legs, unable to fight to the surface, trapped under the earth as I sat, oblivious, listening to airplanes and watching flies--

  Enough. Focus.

  It took awhile, but I finally found a mental place without sights, without smells, feelings, sounds, even thoughts. Just me, commanding any nearby soul to return to its body.

  A soft sound came to my left, so faint that I first mistook it for the rustle of a leaf. Then I heard Jeremy, softly calling my name.

  I leapt to my feet and hurried toward the sound. Jeremy was walking toward a garden of rosebushes, moving fast, his gaze on a shifting patch of earth. Something small and gray darted back and forth as if pushing the dirt away.

  Jeremy slowed. "Isn't that the spot where--?"

  The ground erupted in a flurry of dirt. Even Jeremy reeled back.

  "Raw--raw--raw--"

  The garbled raucous cry echoed through the garden as the dirt continued to fly, the thing at its center moving so fast it was only a blur under the geyser of dirt. I saw something long and flat and broad, flapping against the ground. A wing.

  The dead bird. The one Jeremy had uncovered and I'd reburied.

  Once I realized what I was seeing, I could recognize all the parts--the eyeless head lolling, neck broken, one leg grabbing dirt, trying to find its grip, the other leg jabbing at the earth, the claws gone, wing beating frantically, trying to take off. The bird kept screaming in fear and pain, battering itself against the ground as it tried to make its broken body work. The stink of it filled the air, that horrible rotting--

  "Jaime!" Eve's voice was harsh at my ear. "Send it back."

  All I could do was stare at the bird.

  "Goddamn it, Jaime. Send it back!"

  I snapped out of it then, my lips flying in the invocation that would free the bird's soul from its body. The garbled screeching stopped and the tiny corpse fell to the earth, dirt raining down on its still form.

  For a moment, nobody moved. Even Jeremy seemed shocked into speechlessness.

  Life from death. The darkest power. In my hands.

  After a moment, Jeremy moved in to clean up. He said something to me and I responded, but I don't know what I said. I walked past him, as stiff and unseeing as a sleepwalker. He caught my arm, tried to get me to stay, but I mumbled something--again, I don't know what--and kept going.

  I walked back to my ritual setup and dropped to my knees. A rock jabbed into my shin hard enough to cut me. Warm blood welled up. I couldn't find the energy to wince.

  "It's over," Eve said, from somewhere close. "Yeah, it was bad, but it's over and the bird's free and it happened so fast it probably doesn't remember anything."

  She kept reassuring me that the bird was okay, but we both knew that when I closed my eyes, I didn't see a broken and rotting bird, screaming and flapping in terror. I saw a child. Until now, I'd only imagined what I intended to do to these children. Now I saw it, heard it, smelled it.

  "We'll find another way." Jeremy's voice, somewhere above me, his words drifting past.

  Eve said nothing, but I could feel her tension as she held her tongue.

  "We'll find another way." His voice was beside me now, as if he'd dropped to his knees.

  "He's right," Eve said finally. "This was a bad idea--"

  "No. I'm going to do it."

  "You don't need--" Jeremy began.

  "Yes, I do." I followed the sound of his voice, forced my gaze to focus and saw him crouched beside me. "This time I'll release the soul as soon as we see something. We don't have time to back off now and do more research. Better to--" I swallowed, "--just do it and do it fast."

  Jeremy hesitated, then nodded. "Would you like me to go? Leave you be?"

  "No." I met his gaze. "Please don't."

  So, with him beside me, and Eve scouting, I began again. My heart beat so hard I could scarcely breathe. When I closed my eyes, I saw the bird again. Every time a child's ghost touched me, I jumped, as if in guilt.

  "Take some time," Jeremy murmured. "Everyone inside is busy packing. No one's going to bother us."

  When I couldn't relax, Jeremy tried distracting me with a story from his youth. Any other time, I'd have hung on his every word, sifting through the tale for insight. But even though his story took place in his late teens, it made me think of childhood. Of the children. And underscoring his words, I heard them whispering.

  As I leaned forward, sweat dripped onto the chalk symbol. I picked up the chalk to fix it, but my fingers were trembling so badly I snapped the piece in two. Moving to grab the fallen end, I accidentally erased the chalk edge with my knee.

  "Here," Jeremy said, reaching for the larger piece of chalk.

  I managed a weak smile as he filled in the missing parts. "Now I'm a true celebrity necromancer. I even get professional artists to draw my symbols."

  A joke weaker than my smile, so I didn't blame him for not smiling back. When I looked, though, he seemed not to have heard at all, but had withdrawn into his thoughts. After a moment, he lowered the chalk to the paving stones and drew something to the side of my ritual setup.

  "Remember those runes I mentioned? The ones I see?" he said as he drew. "This is one of them. Not for protection, but for calming."

  He finished the simple design, then took my hand and laid it on the symbol.

  "Now, maybe these are just part of some secret code I found on a cereal box when I was a boy but--" He met my gaze. "I think--I feel--there's more to them than that."
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  And as I knelt there, his hand light and warm on mine, the rough stone beneath, the edges of the rune running past my fingers, I could feel the anxiety and panic seeping from me, as if drawn into the stone.

  I began the incantation, my hands on the rune, his on mine, and the words flowed with a confidence I rarely felt.

  The sound came quickly. The same soft noise I'd heard earlier. Coming from the same direction. My gut twisted, half bitter disappointment, half frustration.

  "The bird again," I said as I pushed to my feet. "It's that damned bird. I tried focusing on a child, but--"

  "Wait," Jeremy said. "Let's be sure before you release it."

  We followed the sound to the same garden. I could see where Jeremy had reburied the bird, but the ground there was undisturbed. My gaze shot to a spot a few feet away.

  "The cat?" I said.

  But that patch of earth was still too. The whole garden was still. And quiet.

  I glanced at Jeremy. "The sound. Is it gone?"

  He shook his head and leapt into the thirty-inch-high garden as easily as if it had been a mere step up. He cocked his head to listen, then picked his way deeper into the hexagonal rose garden, following the sound straight to the center.

  As he bent, I heard it again, faint, coming from the ground. I climbed onto the retaining wall, stepped into the bed and almost fell back as my pointed heels sunk into the soil. My arms windmilled, but I caught my balance before Jeremy scrambled to my rescue.

  "Two words," Eve sighed behind me. "Sensible shoes. Preferably sneakers. Not pretty, but I swear, someday they'll save your life."

  "I know. I know."

  I took off my shoes.

  "Can you stand watch?" I asked Eve as I walked up beside Jeremy.

  "Kris has it covered."

  In other words, she wasn't leaving. Probably expecting me to panic and screw up again. As I crouched, a high patch of earth shifted from a disturbance under the surface.

  I raked back the dirt. Jeremy helped. Eve hovered. The garden seemed to go silent, no sound but the sifting and shifting of earth as we dug. The smell of damp earth soon mingled with something danker, mustier--the stink of the grave.

  I kept digging. Probably a dog or another cat, an older one, buried deeper, under more seasons of added soil, more layers of rotted vegetation. The family's designated pet cemetery, amid the roses, so their dearly departed wouldn't stink the place up.

  I was scooping away a handful of dirt when a dark stone appeared at the bottom of the hole. Then it moved, jabbing upward. A long, dark claw. Another poked through. Then a third, the last only white bone. The long thin bone of a human finger.

  "Th-there," I said, lifting my hand to stop Jeremy. "Good enough. I'll send the soul back--"

  "No," Eve said. "Dig a little more."

  I swung around to look at her. "It's a hand. Even I can tell it's--"

  "Yes, it is." Her gaze met mine, eyes cold and unreadable. "Keep going until you have the hand exposed--"

  "It is exposed," I said, voice going shrill as I watched the fingers--bone and rotted flesh--reaching for the air. "That child is trying to dig his way out and I'm not standing back and letting it happen so we can have a whole body to show the police--"

  "Then stop him."

  "Stop--?"

  Her gaze bore into mine. "Stop the child from digging and keep him calm. This will only take a minute, Jaime."

  When I hesitated, she said, "Trust me."

  I yanked my gaze away, closed my eyes and commanded the child to stop digging. That impulse to claw his way out was so strong, so deeply rooted, that zombies had been known to batter themselves to pieces trying to get free of a casket. And yet, when I gave the order, the hand stopped moving.

  Again, for one moment, there was silence, Eve and Jeremy both staring at that still hand.

  Here was the other side of that darkest power. Not only could a necromancer raise corpses, we could control them. Enslave the dead.

  Looking at Eve and Jeremy, seeing awe on the faces of two of the most powerful supernaturals I knew, I realized it was more than just the darkest power. It was the most fearsome. The greatest power a supernatural could wield. Jeremy could tear his victims limb from limb. Eve could torture them with magic. But with death came release--unless I stepped in. Then death was only the beginning of the horror.

  As I held the child still, murmuring words of comfort--mental and aloud--Eve knelt beside the hole. Then she reached in and took hold of the child's hand, fingers wrapping around the small ones as if she could reach through the dimensional barrier and touch them.

  Her eyes had barely closed when her body went rigid. Beneath her eyelids, her eyes moved, twitching like someone dreaming. At a movement to my left, I looked to see that Kristof had joined us, standing back but watching Eve, his face taut with worry.

  "Her name's Rachel," Eve said, her voice tight, as if pushing words out. "Rachel Skye. She's eleven. She lives...no, I can't get that. An apartment building. A city. A busy street." A noise in her throat. "Not important. She's coming home from school. Taking the bad way. The one she's not supposed to take. But it's shorter and there's a TV show she'll miss if she takes the other way. She cuts through the alley. She hears something behind her. Something flies down over her head. Everything goes dark."

  Eve pulled her hand back from the child's and crouched there, head bowed, hair falling forward to hide her face. Kristof moved up beside her, hunkered down and said something, too low for me to hear. A whispered exchange. Then he squeezed her hand and backed off.

  Eve looked up at me. "That's all I get. Darkness, then she passed over."

  I relayed everything to Jeremy, who'd been waiting patiently throughout, never asking for an explanation. As much as I longed to ask Eve what she'd done, I could tell I wouldn't get an answer. The what and how didn't matter. Only the results.

  "So they probably drugged her or knocked her out," Jeremy said. "They kept her unconscious until they killed her. They're uncomfortable with what they're doing. They feel guilty."

  "Cowards." Eve's face darkened, but she shook it off. "Hold on. I want to get this done so we can let her go."

  She started again. Like Hope, she seemed to be experiencing a vision, getting her information that way rather than through questioning. Unlike Hope, though, this wasn't random flashes. She controlled the vision, as if guiding her way through the girl's memory.

  The second foray added little to the first. Rachel had never regained consciousness after her attack. As she'd been losing consciousness, though, she'd heard a voice. A British-accented woman's voice telling someone else to make sure he grabbed Rachel's knapsack. In that command, she'd heard a name. Don. And that was all we had.

  BLUFF AND BLUSTER

  I RELEASED RACHEL'S SOUL. Then Jeremy covered our tracks as I hurried back to clean up my equipment. Eve didn't stay. She mumbled something about continuing to work on getting access to Botnick, but even if she did, I had a feeling he'd say the same thing Rachel did--that he'd been attacked from behind and immediately hooded, seeing nothing.

  I was erasing the rune as Jeremy walked over.

  "This," I said, pointing down at the rune. "It's not for calming, is it?"

  "What makes you say that?"

  "Because, if it was, I'd see it all over Kate's bedroom."

  He let out a laugh, but only shook his head and picked up my kit.

  "You said earlier that you don't know what they're for," I said as I finished erasing it. "That goes for this one too."

  "It could be for calming."

  "But all that mattered was that I believed it was." I straightened, stood on my tiptoes and brushed my lips across his cheek. "Thank you."

  I examined the area, making sure we'd left nothing behind.

  "All set, then," I said finally. "If you can run the kit out to your car, I'll--" I took a deep breath. "I'll go find Grady."

  MY PLAN was to let Grady discover the body. That would divert most of the media
attention away from me and give it to someone who'd love the spotlight, leaving me to step back and concentrate on luring in the group. I'd use my influence with Grady to ensure that all reports said I'd instigated the search and pinpointed the burial site. That would tell the group that I was the threat, not Grady.

  I found Grady and Claudia in the living room. While Grady thumbed through the daily paper, Claudia was arguing with the caterer, insisting on getting dinner before we had to leave.

  Nearly dancing with impatience, I waited until Claudia dismissed the poor woman, who took one look at me and fled before I could add any culinary demands.

  I knew the camera was there, probably still on. In fact, I hoped it was. This was one private performance I didn't mind making public.

  "Bradford? Can I talk to you?" I glanced at Claudia. "Both of you."

  "Certainly. Where's Jeremy?"

  "Outside still. Something happ--" I swallowed and sat beside him on the sofa. "I know you have a strong sixth sense for these sorts of things. Have you...sensed anything in this house? Or in the garden?"

  He aimed a hard look at Claudia, and I knew she'd been holding him back from discussing this with me, not wanting him to make a fool of himself.

  "I have," he said. "I picked it up as soon as I arrived and it's become steadily stronger. You remember that seance I did, don't you? That poor young woman, killed in this very yard, brutally slaughtered in the prime of her life? Cut down by nefarious forces. Demonic forces."

  Claudia motioned for him to tone it down, but he kept going.

  "I believe, Jaime, that in contacting her, I caught the attention of those forces. The other day something possessed me. Something demonic. It was trying to communicate with me. To show me something."

  "Yes, that's exactly--"

  "Then, the next night, there was a dog. A hound of hell, I'm certain. I saw it prowling the gardens, its red eyes glowing. It was trying to draw me outside, to lead me to whatever that demon had failed to show me."

  I nodded vigorously. "I'm sure you're right. I've been feeling the pull too. There's something in that garden."