Dark Thread

by Crymsyn Hart

  A shriek erupted from somewhere inside the temple. One of the priests rushed into its vestibule. “The gods send the dead back to life. Quickly, an army of cadavers is coming. The gods are angry with us. Only you can speak to them and beg for forgiveness. You must find refuge and take the sacred texts.” One of the priests grabbed the master undertaker’s hand and pulled at him to leave. “They are after you. Run and seek refuge.”

  “Believe me now?”

  “You don’t have to rub it in, Khusebek. Gather your things. We have but min—” The undertaker was sliced through the stomach and upward by a sword held by a walking corpse that used to be one of the temple guards. Darria jumped away from him when the guard looked over at her and withdrew its sword. Omar dashed out of the way and grabbed a bag in the corner. He stayed in the shadows, hiding from the guard and holding the pouch to his chest. The guard passed over the corner at first, but then, it stepped back and stared at him.

  Even in the memories, Darria sensed the dark power of the necromancer oozing from the corpse’s pores. He could see through the guard’s eyes.

  “What do we have here?” the graveled voice said from the guard, his gaze settling on Omar.

  “N-nothing.” He cowered in the corner. His hands moved slowly over the temple walls, searching for something.

  “Nothing? Do you know what you hold in that pack of yours in the left hand that you hold so dear? Give me the key, and I’ll let you live.”

  Omar shook his head. “Not going to happen. I know you, necromancer. You can conjure up all the dead bodies you want, an army of them, but you won’t be able to replace what we have done. The gods will hear of this.”

  The guard laughed. “Who do you think sent me?”

  “They wouldn’t,” Omar whispered.

  “True. Maybe they wouldn’t, but someone would. Now. Give. Me. The. Key.” The guard held out his hand and gestured for it.

  Omar pressed something on the wall, and it swung open. He darted back into the tunnel to the screams of the sentry behind him. The image stopped when they came to the opening of the tunnel on the other side of the Valley of the Kings. He was now looking down from the valley, and all Darria saw were rising bodies. Omar stopped to catch his breath and glanced down at the key on his left arm. It glowed purple. She could feel the power that rushed through him as a result of being elevated to the undertaker position.

  “See, I told you that I lived long enough to be the undertaker.”

  Darria shook her head and stared at the corpses. None of it made any sense. She was running around in circles. The gods might have been wiped out, but once an undertaker was instilled again, the gods fed from their energy. They were resurrected, which she had seen with Hades. There had to be a bigger picture. Who had that kind of power to be over a council of gods?

  “Omar, what was in the bag you had with you?” The scenery switched, and they stood inside the tomb where she had first started.

  When Darria looked for him to answer, Omar had disappeared. The torches remained lit, but the cold of the tomb remained. The casket was closed. The paintings were vibrant as they had been before, but she didn’t feel a breeze and figured she was sealed in the crypt.

  She rubbed her arms against a shiver of fear that marched over her soul. This is just a memory, but it feels real. Darria walked over to the sarcophagus and pushed on the lid. After a minute of her pushing, her added strength made her able to push it open enough to gaze down into the bowels of the coffin. She expected to find a mummified Omar, but instead, she found a large pottery jar sealed over with wax. Darria lifted it out of the sarcophagus and held it near a torch, so she could read the inscriptions on the jar. They were easier to read than before. When she looked at them, she saw the hieroglyphs, but the words translated easily into English in her mind.

  “Breath of life that only death can control.”

  That was all that it said.

  Either the jar was cursed, or it was something else. She set the canopic jar back in the coffin and heard footsteps on the stone floor. She turned around and saw a young girl limping toward her, holding Omar up with his right arm across her shoulders as she half helped him and half dragged him to be near the stone coffin.

  “I’m sorry, Illyria. I tried to save your mother.”

  “It’s okay, Papa. I know you did.”

  He was clutching his left hand to his chest. It was only a stump.

  “Find my hand, and burn it along with the rest of me. I will go to the gods. Nothing can bring me back and force me to talk. Please do this for me.” He reached to stroke her face, but his hand fell away, and he lay limp in his daughter’s arms.

  His daughter leaned over and kissed his forehead. “I’ll find it. I swear. They won’t call you back.”

  “But it’s easy to call him back. If it weren’t for you, then I wouldn’t have known where the temple was. I wouldn’t have known where to find the undertakers. Thank you for that.” A hooded figure stepped from the shadows.

  Illyria spun around. “You promised you wouldn’t hurt him.”

  “I didn’t hurt him. He had a run-in with one of my servants.”

  “Servants that you control,” she spat. “I thought you loved me.”

  The necromancer drew his hood back from his face. A long scar ran from his temple over his right eye and across his nose. His mouth curled into a sneer. “You were a fool to think I could love a peasant. You were nothing but a means to an end.” He reached inside his cloak and thrust his hand quickly into the girl’s belly. She slumped down to the floor and clutched the wound.

  “Tell me where he hid it, and I won’t bring you back. I won’t bind your spirit to rotting flesh and have it linger until you are but dust and bone. I can trap you within these walls. Do you want to suffer for an eternity? Tell me where it is.”

  “Never. Go to the underworld, in the seven hells, where Anubis will tear you apart.”

  “That’s what you think,” the necromancer said.

  The girl reached into a pouch at her waist and pulled out the key. She held it in her palm. The necromancer tried to grab it, but the key vanished in a wink of light. “It went to its rightful owner. A little bit of magic I picked up from my father. I know all about the undertakers. No matter who weaves your strings, you’ll never get what you seek.” Life left her. Her spirit lingered a moment, then faded away.

  He tried to open the coffin, but the lid wouldn’t budge. The top of his right arm was exposed. Similar objects to the ones she had on her arm were on it. The arrow was bigger. Instead of a bone was a skull and the comb, but she could tell that he was collecting the objects that were given to the undertakers. He was a necromancer. He could get the undertakers to release the objects to them if their spirits were attached to the flesh. She had all seven on her arm, and nothing had happened to her yet, but that didn’t mean anything.

  Another piece was missing. The knowledge sat on the edge of her brain. Darria didn’t know what that last piece was. If she could find it, then the puzzle would be complete.

  The necromancer tried again to open the sarcophagus but couldn’t.

  “Don’t hold your breath. You won’t open it, and you’re not getting out of here.”

  “You were the one who bade me to do this,” the necromancer sneered.

  The other half waved a hand, and the necromancer was unable to move. “You were supposed to do this discreetly. You weren’t supposed to scare half the country with your antics. You were ordered to get the pieces the undertakers carry and bring them back. Now you’ve forced our hand.”

  “I can overtake you,” the necromancer warned.

  “You’re not that powerful. Besides, this is all going to be forgotten,” the figure sighed. The room rumbled. Dust fell around the tomb. Darria glanced up and saw a large crack in the ceiling. A large slab fell onto the necromancer and squished him. The figure went over to the coffin, pulled out the jar, and held it close. The rest of the tomb collapsed. Darria backed away to the nea
rest door and ducked out. She pushed through a large cobweb and found herself eye to eye with a gigantic, black spider. She batted it away, knowing it wasn’t real, and jumped through the door when the rest of the crypt came tumbling down.

  Chapter 15

  The door to the memory slammed shut, and she was flung back into her waking state. Darria gripped the desk and her tattoos were glowing. Her whole body buzzed with energy. She got up and paced the room. As she did, her gaze fixed on the spider in the corner of the room.

  “You’ve been watching me all this time,” Darria said to the arachnid. “Want to weigh in on any of this?” She shook her head in disgust and slipped out of her office with questions churning in her mind.

  Someone screamed in the kitchen.

  Sonia stood by the sink with her sprites whizzing around her. Oliver was dressed in his robes, the eye sockets of his skull black and empty from death. Sonia dropped her glass. His gaze turned to Darria. He came toward her and collapsed to the kitchen floor.

  “Oliver.” Darria rushed over to him and touched his chest. Her hand came away with crimson staining her palm. The skeleton head didn’t fade away when she caressed his cheek. Even in his wounded state, he remained defensive of her. “What happened to you?”

  “Attacked in the graveyard. They had a scythe, Darria.”

  “Who is that?” Sonia chattered with fright.

  “He’s ... my harvester. Hush,” she shushed the other woman, focusing back on him.

  The blood drained from her face. Few things could kill a harvester. One of them was a harvester’s very own scythe or some other weapon of death. “Why would they do this to you? Can you switch to your other guise, so I can look at your wound?”

  “Oh, dear gods. What’s this?” Marie rushed in.

  “He’s been hurt. I-I think it’s fatal. Can you help him?” she asked Marie.

  “I don’t have the power, but you do. You have power over death, and you are more powerful of a necromancer than I ever was.”

  Darria shook her head. “He’s a reaper. I can’t actually heal death, and he’s an angel.”

  “We can give life to what is dead and bind souls to flesh. He is death. You can heal him as you can heal Omar’s wounds. You have to see it. Want it. Taste it,” Marie responded.

  What she said made sense, but she didn’t know if she could do it. Never before had she had the ability to even think about healing a harvester. She couldn’t lose him. He had already pushed her out of his graveyard, but she wasn’t going to let him push her out of his heart. Oliver meant too much to her.

  “No. Let me go. It’s too dangerous for you,” Oliver said to her.

  “Shut up.” Her rage and the sorrow she felt at the thought of losing him bubbled up within her. She placed her hands over the wound. Life was leaving him, and he was growing colder. The link they had remained, but she tried to ignore its fading. Darria tried to do what Marie said, but something blocked her. She tried to see the flesh mending together under her fingers, but it wasn’t working. Tears stung her eyes.

  “You have to drop the harvester and be you. I can’t do this without you doing that. I’m not going to take you over again. I won’t do that, but you have to trust me.”

  “Darria. You need to know the one that attacked me. I—”

  “Hush. We can talk later.”

  “What’s going on?” Sonia asked Marie.

  “Let her concentrate,” Marie responded.

  Darria touched the skull and trailed her fingers down his cheek. “Please, Oliver. We have to finish our conversation. If you die on me, then we can’t do that.”

  He nodded, and the harvester guise fell away. Oliver screamed when she touched him. Darria tore open his shirt and saw the black lines threading along his veins, poisoning him, killing him from the inside out. His complexion was paler, and his skin was clammy. She opened her mind and felt the link forged between them. Pain engulfed her.

  “No, sweetie. You can’t go there. You can’t pull in his pain,” Marie whispered in her ear. “You have to focus outward and see the flesh knitting together. You’ve done this before on instinct when you pulled the hunter from the other place. Trust that part of yourself. It’s already there. Let go, and know that it’s going to happen the way you want it and not the other way around.”

  “Okay,” Darria answered. Her mind cleared. She tried to think about the other half that lingered in the shadows. Her hands tingled with cold. It filled her core as the energy whooshed down her arms. Within her mind, she saw the poison moving toward her hands and out of his system. Then she willed the flesh to heal. Oliver was a powerful being, and the healing sucked more of her power than she had thought possible because he was partially alive.

  She kept pushing and focusing on the wound until she could feel the poison within her. The cold consumed her. Darria grabbed on to the death energy inside the harvester and also felt the angelic part of him. She willed him to be whole and heard him shriek once more. She did not focus on the pain, but she kept on pushing until it seemed that she could stretch herself to the ends of the universe within Oliver’s mind. The agony retreated, and she had to pull back. She opened her eyes, and Oliver gazed at her with awe she hadn’t seen before.

  “You healed me. Only Azrael can heal us if he wishes. How did you do that?”

  Darria shrugged and wiped the tears from her face, noticing the blood on her fingertips. Oliver took her face in his hands. He trailed his thumbs over her lips. Darria’s heart nearly burst at the gesture, but she held her breath at the hope that he might want to mend the rift torn between them. “I was foolish to doubt you before in the graveyard. I never should’ve taken the coin from you. Will you forgive me?”

  “I get it. You didn’t know what was going to happen to me. I didn’t know what would happen to me either, but I haven’t turned into a monster.”

  He touched her hair and kissed her lightly. Darria held in a moan. She wanted to savor the kiss between them. “That’s why you are the person for this. You passed the test.”

  Darria flashed him a questioning gaze. “Oliver, what are you talking about?”

  “Darria, back away slowly,” Marie urged her.

  She looked at her friend and got up slowly, moving out of Oliver’s grasp. “Marie, what’s the matter? I healed him. I didn’t think I could, and....”

  Marie grabbed her arm. The fear on her friend’s face was something she hadn’t expected. “That’s not Oliver.”

  “What do you mean? Of course, it is.”

  “I’m afraid Marie’s correct. I wasn’t sure she’d recognize me, but I had to take a chance. We’ve been so intimately entwined.” The creature let the disguise fall away.

  Darria gasped. This was a woman she had never met before. She appeared to be in her mid- to late sixties and had white hair that was streaked with black. The wisdom in her eyes trapped Darria. She pulled herself away from that hypnotic gaze. “Who the hell are you? Where’s Oliver?”

  The other woman twirled, dressed a silvery pants suit with a gold necklace. The gold belt around her waist had a buckle that was a pair of scissors. “He’s safe for now, same with your assistant, Rory. No harm will come to them if you do what we desire. If not, then you’ll find both of their destinies cut.”

  “You’re one of the Fates.”

  “I’m Morta. You’re quite sharp and very powerful,” Morta told her.

  “We’ve been waiting a long time for you,” Sonia said from behind Darria.

  She turned to the other undertaker. Sonia appeared to be a little older. She was dressed in a flowing, red skirt and a loose, white top that almost made her think that Sonia was a hippie. The sprites screamed. She batted one away. A white string shot from her finger at Heffla, pinning her to the cabinet door. The sprite struggled to get free as the others raced to the aid of their leader. Darria glanced back at Sonia and down at her flesh, where the arrow was still etched into her left arm.

  “How can you be an undertaker? I don�
�t understand,” Darria said. “The sprites have been around you. How could you fool them?”

  “We’re the Parcae, the Fates; we spin and weave the destinies of every single fucking living thing in this world. Don’t you think it’d be easy to assume one of those destinies or spin a new one for ourselves? Poor, half-crazed Sonia was dead a long time ago. I slipped into her role, and they never suspected a thing. You’re right, Morta; she is the one we’ve been waiting for, the one to bring back the true God.”

  “Hush, Decima, we don’t want to get to the big reveal so soon,” Morta replied to Sonia.

  “What do you want me to do? I assume it has something to do with the pieces I have on my arm. What about Lina? She’s the third one of you, isn’t she?” Darria asked. Her frustration rocked her body. It felt like everything in her vibrated with power and anger. It was hard to keep it all in check.

  Marie clutched her arm. “Don’t make them angry.”

  She turned to Marie. “Why not? They’re just more supernatural bitches that I have to put up with. I’m so tired of dealing with paranormal sisters. I had to do it with the gorgons and Medusa. What is it about Greek monsters?”

  “We’re not monsters, and we’re not Greek. We’re from the Roman Pantheon,” Decima corrected her.

  Darria stood up. She was not about to be threaded through whatever needle they wanted to manipulate her into. “Whatever you want, I’m not doing it. Now get out of my house.” The power of the spells that were enforced over the house flashed over her and warmed her. It should have forced them from the house, but they remained where they were. The two Fates giggled.

  “Your petty magic can’t force us out. We’re connected to you, Darria Savege. Who do you think guided you to this job? Who do you think made the key choose you for this lofty position?”

  “I’m not an idiot. I get that you were the ones who sent me to Abner and set certain parts of my life in motion. Did you always know I was the key to your dastardly plan? Marie is a necromancer. She certainly knows more about it than I ever would.”