by Becca Andre
“That one’s mine,” Doug said, a smile in his voice.
“Shall I take it from you?”
“You could try, but you would fail.” He was right. She could never take what he had claimed. Just as he could hide the bond from her. Magically, he might be weaker, but he was the most skilled necromancer she had ever met. Well, living necromancer. Ian and his brother were off the charts—in every way.
She moved on and found an unoccupied body, but Doug followed and an instant later, took it from her.
“Hey,” she complained.
Doug laughed.
“Are you two going to use those corpses to dig us out?” James asked. “Or are you just going to play with them?”
“We’re gathering them up,” Elysia explained, realizing how her and Doug’s conversation must sound to someone who couldn’t see what they were doing. “And Doug keeps taking mine.”
“Are you tattling on me?” Doug asked. He still sounded highly amused.
She wanted to roll her eyes, but settled for ignoring the question. Comfortable with the dozen she now controlled, she reached out to them.
“Come,” she whispered.
“I’ll need to animate a few more to get to that point,” Doug said.
She bit back a laugh. “Doug!”
“Unlike some people,” he added in an undertone.
“I heard that.”
“You do realize that was the purpose for Ian’s training session in that graveyard today. He wasn’t trying to teach you how to control a herd of zombies. He was trying to get you to stop letting them control you.”
She struggled to keep her focus on what they were doing. “What are you saying?”
“He said it perfectly. You let the dead seduce you.”
“Please.”
“What? It’s true. I’ve been around a lot of necromancers, and you’re the only one I’ve ever met who can orgasm after animating one corpse.”
Her cheeks heated. “That is not true.”
“Oh really?” His tone was far too knowing, and she was far too aware of how silent James had become.
“Just concentrate on your zombies,” she said. “Unlike some people, it was never my life’s ambition to end up here.”
That seemed to silence him, and they worked without speaking after that. In the quiet, the sound of movement behind the wall grew louder, interspersed with the groans of the dead. She could feel that these bodies had been dead a long time. She needed to channel more of herself into each, to keep them…together.
“Finally,” James said, and she opened her eyes.
The first stone, about halfway up the wall, wiggled free and fell inward exposing a black rectangle of darkness beyond the wall. A skeletal hand reached through the opening and pulled the next stone inward, increasing the gap.
James stepped up to the wall and began to pull stones free from this side. Collared in iron, he lacked his usual strength, but the old mortar didn’t put up much resistance now that the opening had been made.
In a surprisingly short time, there was an opening big enough to step through, and James did just that. Not seeming to care that the zombies continued to widen the hole around him, he disappeared into the darkness.
“Right at home with the dark and the dead, isn’t he?” Doug asked.
Elysia released the dead she still held, and they slumped to the floor. Some were so old that the impact broke them apart.
“Would you quit?” She rounded on Doug. “I know what you’re doing.”
He released his own zombies, his eyes instantly reverting to blue. “And what am I doing?”
She lowered her voice. “You’re trying to make me doubt my decision to be with James.”
“I’m attempting to make you question it, yes. You were never truly comfortable with your magic. On some level, you always feared it. So when you took up with the—with him, I figured you had fallen for him. But the more I watch the two of you together, the more I wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
“Are you with him because you love him, or because you can use your magic when you’re with him. No need to sneak off to some mausoleum.”
Her cheeks warmed. “That’s not—”
“What? It’s a legitimate question.”
“I haven’t even slept with him,” she whispered. “So your concerns are groundless.”
“But you plan to.”
“I don’t see where that’s any of your business.”
“Despite what you think, I care about you, Ely. I want you to be happy, even if it’s not with me.” He moved closer. “I know you. You can’t separate your magical self from the physical. You never could. A relationship with the dead is the last thing you need.”
“Or maybe it’s exactly what I need.” She turned and headed for the dark opening in the wall. “James?”
A rattle of stone sounded from the darkness. “Ow,” James complained. “I forgot how crappy my night vision is like this.”
She wondered if his hearing was affected similarly. He hadn’t been that far away.
“Bring me a couple of those oil lamps,” he called.
She and Doug wordlessly did as told, taking two of the four oil lamps from the hooks on the walls. They were more convenient than candles, but with the glass reservoir on the bottom, she wouldn’t want to drop it.
Doug let her go first, and she stepped carefully among the stones and bodies lining the new opening into their room. The zombies had needed to do little more than tear down a couple of walls. A corridor had once led to their room, but it had been sealed on either end a long time ago.
Her foot nudged a fleshless skull, and it rolled free. “We won’t be reanimating that one,” she muttered.
“Impressive that you could animate it at all,” Doug said.
She wanted to glance back and check his expression, but she didn’t want to take her eyes from the obstacle course she was navigating. At least he was still speaking to her.
They met up with James at the opposite end of the short corridor among another clutter of stone where the zombies had pulled down the first wall.
James lifted a hand, shielding his eyes from their lights. “I’ll go first. Keep the light behind me so it doesn’t screw with my night vision.”
“You can see in the dark?” Doug sounded skeptical.
“Like this, not a whole lot better than most animals. Without the collar, I put night vision goggles to shame. The hound can see in total darkness.”
Doug grunted, but made no further comment.
James stepped across the threshold into a wider space.
Elysia lifted her light and followed, trying to better see their surroundings. This room appeared to be no bigger than the one they had left. The walls were lined with wide shelves to hold the dead. Most were empty, their former occupants now lying in the corridor behind them.
“I’m surprised the zombie animation didn’t draw attention,” she said. “Unless this place is a lot bigger than I realize, he should have felt that.”
“Perhaps the rain has started, and he has no further need of us,” Doug said. In other words, Neil’s potion had made Alexander whole, and he had left them here.
“It hasn’t rained,” James said.
“It might have started since you arrived,” Doug said.
“I would smell it. It hasn’t rained.”
“You can smell it. Down here?” Doug didn’t sound like he believed that anymore than he believed James’s superhuman vision.
“Yes. That’s why we’re going this way. The air is freshest in this direction.”
“There are other ways to go?” Elysia asked. So far, she had seen only the new corridor and this room.
“Three doorways open off this chambe
r,” James said without stopping. “Well, four counting our former prison. One on each wall.”
Elysia moved closer to the wall on their right until her light reached it, illuminating the dark doorway among the body shelves. Doug had imitated her, moving to the opposite wall to reveal the doorway there. They hurried after James, catching him as he reached the fourth doorway.
“Okay, you can see in the dark,” Doug said.
James didn’t answer, he just walked into the dark corridor without breaking stride.
“Just like any animal.” Doug muttered the words under his breath, but Elysia was standing close enough to hear.
She swatted his shoulder, then hurried after James. If she had to spend much time with these two, she was going to go crazy long before Ian’s curse kicked in.
The new corridor ended in a four-way intersection.
“This place is a maze,” she whispered.
“A deterrent to keep rival families out,” Doug said.
“Like keeping a crypt under your dad’s house?” James asked.
“Exactly.”
James grunted. “The corridor straight ahead leads up. The corridors to either side both slope downward.”
“Up sounds better,” she said, eyeing the three openings. Without James, which one would she have chosen?
“What—” Doug started to ask, but James cut him off.
“Listen,” James whispered.
She did as told, straining her ears, but heard nothing. She whispered as much to James.
“Something’s moving around, but the echoes make it hard to tell in which corridor.”
Elysia rubbed the back of her neck, but couldn’t rub away her unease.
“Do you sense anything?” James asked. “A lich? Locked in iron, I can’t search for souls.”
Elysia reached out. There were dead in every direction, the catacombs even bigger than she realized. But she focused on what lay in front of them. Unable to see her surroundings, it was difficult to judge if something lay within the corridors around them, or in other rooms or tunnels. Yet she didn’t sense a lich’s awareness of her presence. She was about to suggest that James had heard a rat, when the distinct touch of another presence brushed across her senses.
What are you doing? A voice whispered in her mind.
Elysia gasped.
“What is it?” James asked.
“A voice spoke to me,” Elysia whispered.
“I heard nothing,” Doug said. “Maybe it was a ghost. Perhaps you opened yourself too much.”
“God, you’re as bad as Ian.”
“What?” Doug asked.
“You second-guess everything I do, like I don’t know the first thing about my magic.”
“My bad. I forgot what a devout student of necromancy you were.”
“Maybe I didn’t worship it like you did, but I’m not as clueless as everyone seems to think.”
Needing to get away from the constant nagging, Elysia walked past James and hurried up the corridor before them. James was right; it did slope upward.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Doug said from behind her. “I don’t think you’re clueless, but I do know how you tended to avoid your magic when you could. Come on, this is me you’re talking to.”
“Just drop it,” she said over her shoulder.
At the top of the ramp-like corridor, a small room opened before them, a curving stairwell leading upward on the far side, the doorway faintly illuminated by what might be sunlight. Leaving the guys behind, Elysia hurried across the thread-bare rug that covered the center of the chamber.
Where are you going? the same voice asked.
Elysia stumbled, but before she could decide if the voice belonged to a ghost or not, the floor cracked beneath her. She tried to jump back, but she had walked too far out into the center of the room.
“Elysia!” James shouted.
The floor collapsed, and she was falling.
Swallowed by darkness, with no idea how deep the hole went, she screamed. Her cry became a grunt of pain as she landed on an unyielding stone floor. Her lantern shattered against the floor in a burst of light, illuminating the small chamber that reeked of dust, disuse, and death. She couldn’t help but notice the smell as she struggled to pull air into her spasming lungs. She had fallen only a single story, but the landing had still hurt.
“Ely!” Doug shouted. “Are you okay?”
A thump beside her, and she reached out to find death. Familiar death. James.
He dropped to a knee, and his hand settled on her shoulder. “Hey.”
“Elysia?” Doug yelled from above them.
“I’m all right,” she called out. At least, she hoped that was true. Various aches and pains were beginning to throb from her jammed knee and bruised tail bone, to her scraped elbow and sore ribs.
Oil from the lamp had splattered over the rug that had fallen with her. The fabric smoldered, but didn’t immediately burst into flame. Perhaps it was a little damp. Even so, it provided enough light to see by—for the moment.
“Here.” James slipped a hand beneath her arm and helped her up.
Her knee protested, but it held her weight. “I guess I should have let you go first and not gotten so excited about a little sunlight.”
“You prefer I fall instead?”
“You would have landed on your feet.”
“I’m part dog, not cat.” He brushed away a tendril of hair that had come loose from her ponytail, and tucked it behind her ear. Then trailed his warm fingers along her jaw. “Are you—”
“Is there a way out?” Doug called.
“A shame he didn’t fall,” James said, his voice so low, it was almost a growl.
“Should I hunt for a rope or something?” Doug added.
This time James really did growl.
“Give us a minute to look around,” Elysia called up to him before she turned to James. “And now you’re growling at him?”
“Just like any animal.”
Like his vision, the iron hadn’t affected his hearing much, either. She sighed and decided to get right to the heart of the matter. “You heard the conversation in Alexander’s tomb.”
“It’s so good of him to look out for your best interests, even when he can’t have you himself.”
Now she wanted to growl. “Would you let it go? Yes, we had a relationship, but that was in the past. I can’t change that.”
“I get it, but that doesn’t mean I want to stand around and listen to the two of you laugh about the fun you used to have sneaking off to some mausoleum.”
Her cheeks warmed, and she hoped he couldn’t see that. “I wasn’t laughing.”
“That makes it better.” He turned away. “We need to find a way out of here before we lose the light.”
“Fine.” She took two steps and turned her ankle in a deep indention in the stone floor.
James caught her elbow before she fell. “Watch where you step. The floor isn’t even.”
“I noticed.”
“Perhaps you’d better stand still. I’ll look around.”
“Since your sight is as good as your hearing, perhaps that would be best.”
He studied her a moment as if intending to speak, then abruptly walked off.
She considered apologizing, then decided she wasn’t the one at fault. Doug was messing with him. Why couldn’t James see that? And more importantly, why wouldn’t he believe her when she said there was nothing but friendship between her and Doug?
James moved into the shadows, walking slowly around the room. The space wasn’t as large as she expected and lacked the body shelves they had seen in the other room.
“Elysia?”
She inhaled as the bond tightened. It was
so annoying that he could do that—especially when she wanted to be mad at him. She walked carefully toward the far wall. His silhouette stood near what might be a dark opening, though it was oddly shaped, like a door on its side.
Drawing closer, she opened her mouth to ask what he had found, and recognized what he stood beside. It was a sarcophagus made of the same flat black stone that both Ian’s and Alexander’s had been made of. And like theirs, the lid was off, leaning against the side facing her. A name was carved on the surface, but the flickering light made it difficult to read.
“What does it say?”
James looked up, the light reflecting in his eyes the same way it would in an animal’s eyes. “Matilda Grace Nelson.”
Chapter 8
Elysia stared at the name carved on the sarcophagus lid. “Dear God. We found her?”
“The sarcophagus is empty.”
She stepped up beside him and looked inside, though it wasn’t necessary. She felt no death except his.
“Check this out,” he said, circling around behind the sarcophagus.
She followed, shocked that he could see anything.
“Careful.” He held out his arm, blocking her next step. “It’s a set of stairs leading downward.”
“How the hell can you see that?”
“Wait here. I’m going to see if I can improvise a torch.” He disappeared around the front of the sarcophagus, leaving her in the dark.
She shifted her weight from foot to foot, straining her eyes in the darkness. She could make out the shape of the sarcophagus and the irregular stones that formed the nearby wall. And if she didn’t look directly at it, she could get an impression of the gaping maw that was the stairwell. It wasn’t total darkness. Not like the time Neil had locked her in Ian’s tomb.
The space around her brightened, and she looked up. James approached, a candle in hand.
“Where did you get that?”
“In the brighter light of the chamber, I noticed a couple of wall sconces. One still held a candle.”
She glanced back at the chamber. The brighter light? The rug had never truly caught, and the oil had nearly burned away. She wouldn’t be able to see her hand in front of her face.