Realm Book Three - Illuminated Death

by K. A. M'Lady

  He looked at me with a bright, hopeful expression, and then the light faded from his eyes, knowing that all had not been restored to the Land and the Children of the Light.

  “The Goblins took it. Modgav took it,” I said, anger filling my voice once again.

  “It is as I thought,” he had replied. “But I am afraid we have bigger problems.”

  “Bigger? What could possibly be bigger than that?” I asked, knowing, even then as he set me in the front seat of the Jeep, bundled in a blanket, naked, sore, angry and cold that I truly didn’t want to know.

  “Your police have left a message that your remaining Necromancer is missing.”

  “Son of a bitch,” I said with feeling, hanging my head. Wondering how the hell I was going to fix this when I couldn’t even fix myself.

  “That is not all of it.”

  I remember closing my eyes, taking a deep breath. Thinking that whatever it was he had been about to tell me, was seriously going to be the biggest, most massive piece of shit on toast that I’d had to deal with yet, and that it just really needed to be chucked and not even dealt with. I remember thinking that maybe I could just run away and hide somewhere. Now I knew better.

  “All right,” I had told him, “just give it to me straight.”

  “Jade can no longer sense his brothers, and Jirvel has sent you a personal invitation,” he said, not wanting to look at me either.

  “A personal invitation to what?” I asked, finally looking at him askance.

  “I’m afraid, Mistress, it is a Halloween Party. However, this invitation comes with special instructions, and I quote, “If she ever wishes to see any of her people alive again—tell her to come alone.”

  A shiver ran through me and the memory passed; a few more pieces of my puzzle coming together. If Jirvel wanted me to come alone, well, that’s how I’d come. I mean, she had those I loved and needed anyway. There was no rule however, that stated I had to stay alone. I may have been about to attend Jirvel’s version of Dance Party Hell, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t bring a few guest of my own.

  With that dark thought in mind, I said a few last-minute words to Prism and headed for the door. It was time to let the bodies hit the floor. Here’s praying mine wasn’t one of them.

  What was left of the night had a stark, lonely feel to it. Like evil lingered in the shadows and death were its illuminated glow. I couldn’t help but feel I was still missing a few pieces of my puzzle. Certain that tonight, with the veil being the thinnest between the living and those that wandered the Shadow Lands, Jirvel would reveal all upon my arrival. Of course, she had achieved her goals and captured all of her enemies.

  I could only pray that my ace in the hole would continue to be the Light. But just to be safe, I made one last-minute stop on my way to her Rave.

  The parking lot of Silence on the Moor was just as I’d remembered it, minus a few sirens and flashing lights. Since the summer, Jirvel had kept herself rather busy. Not only had she gathered her forces of Darkness, decimated the majority of Kieran’s clan and slain, the Prophets only knew how many others in her vile attempts to gain greater power, but she’d also managed to find some sorry sod to complete the repairs and fix the damages that the murderous Shadow Land Ogre had done to Kieran’s building.

  Thankfully, while I’d been sleeping today my truck had been repaired and delivered, the keys left under the mat. Amidst all of my chaos, I was grateful for this small gift the Prophets had blessed me with. Especially considering that if we all escaped—when we escaped—I had no idea where everyone was going to sit. Having my truck back would definitely take care of that problem.

  I decided to park it out front, right outside the front door under the streetlight. Screw the bitch if she thought I was going to be skulking about in the night where no one knew I was here and she could hide my body when she was done with me. I got out and looked across the street, the lingering aroma of coffee and danish whispering to my senses from the shop across the street. Who I wouldn’t kill for a cup of joe, I thought with a beleaguered sigh. Ah well, maybe after I’ve rammed a stake through Jirvel’s heart.

  On that sour note, two burly, meaty goons strode out the front of the club, the words hardass all but tattooed across their foreheads; mini-Uzis strapped to their chests. They had their sights lined at my chests, snarls firmly planted on their grim faces and I knew my time for inner turmoil, second guessing and extra prayers were at their end. It was time for this child of Light to mosh in the Darkness with the other children of the night.

  Who didn’t enjoy a good Halloween party?

  Entering the front of the building with Heckle and Jeckle, I said an extra prayer anyway. One never knows when that extra boost might come in handy.

  This time I got to skip the long hallway, the winding stairs and the weird trip through the outer door to get back to an inner door. We headed straight through the club, across the huge wooden, polished dance floor lined with an acre of round tables that were covered in red linens and dinnerware, past the box where the DJ mixed his beat and skirted the curved black bar that followed the angle of the far side of the room. The place was huge, a lot bigger than I recalled it being. Then again, I’d only really seen the decimated bathroom; blood, gore and body remnants covering the walls.

  Heckle and Jeckle took me through a swinging door just beyond the end of the bar and into a blazing bright, industrial sized kitchen that gleamed with cutlery.

  “Do not even think of it,” the one I’d deemed Heckle said, and I felt the first roll of Other come off of him in subtle waves.

  I’d been so tense when I’d pulled up and got out of my truck that I hadn’t really looked at who, or what Jirvel had sent to fetch me. Not very smart on my part. I really needed to get my shit together. Get control of the frantic beat of my heart. Calm the nerves that seemed to be teetering out of control. Especially if I wanted all of us to get out of here alive.

  “We will be only too glad to rid you of this intent should you continue this line of thinking,” Jeckle added. The purr of his Were trickled down my spine in docile tones and my she-wolf perked her ears.

  Jirvel was nice enough to send a Death Stalker and a Werewolf to accompany me on my arrival. How good of her.

  I paused and looked at each of them with one of my new gifts. Might as well try out my new Tell while all of the rest of the bad guys are busy waiting my arrival. They’d had plenty of time to plan my destruction, what was a few minutes more anyway.

  I turned, blank faced and looked at Heckle. Since Death Stalkers didn’t seem to be my best creature of understanding, I figured I should probably test him first. With a little thought, I opened up my link to this power. Really, it only felt like the blinking of my eyes. Closing one lense and opening another to a different view of the Other World. In it, Heckle gleamed in iridescent shades of grey. Each layer of his aura flecked with sparkles and beneath it lay his true self.

  All outward appearances showed him to be a man of mid to late twenties. Long dark hair hung to his massive shoulders, his form too huge and bulky for the appearance of a neck. He had an overly large, round head, a sloping forehead with bushy eyebrows that slashed above the orbs of his dark grey eyes. His nose protruded, bird-like above the arch of a full mustache that hid the crease of his lips. His cleft chin had the scruff of two days worth of stubble. Beneath the whole of it was the burning darkness of rot.

  Flesh that flaked. Putrefied. Skin that oozed and sloughed, muscle that slithered and melted down to the bones beneath. I could almost smell the decay while I stood, transfixed and staring at his Darkness.

  Blinking, I tasted bile as it rose in my throat, the picture of his rotting flesh boring a hole through my mind. The thought of this kind of power both interested and disgusted me at the same time. I’d never actually met a rotting Death Stalker before.

  I blinked again and the imaged faded. The scent of rot skulking away into the night.

  “Do you smell that?” Jeckle asked, nostri
ls flaring.

  Heckle watched me with intent, dark eyes. His brow creased, fingers tightly gripped the handle of his gun, discourse clearly marring his features. “I don’t know what it is you are attempting, Halfling,” he growled. “But do it again and I will go against my mistress’s orders and slay you where you stand.”

  Jeckle, clearly confused by what seemed to be passing between us, looked from Heckle to me and back again. “What’d she do?”

  “Nothing,” Heckle barked. “Let’s just get moving.”

  We’d made it through the kitchen to the elevator that I knew led to the basement and to the sub-basement below. I had no idea how many Others Jirvel had in her service, but I knew I needed to ditch these two, and fast. Two less on her side would be two in my favor. The how of it was another story.

  We got on the elevator, Heckle near the buttons, Jeckle facing me, blocking the door. Heckle pushed the button, the door beginning its shushing slide close. I kicked Jeckle in the chest and out the front just as the door was closing, leaving me and Heckle alone in the shaft.

  “That was not very smart of you,” he said slowly, turning to loom menacingly over me.

  I couldn’t help but smile, the twistedness of my own laughter ringing in my ears as I replied, “My mother always said I wasn’t very bright.”

  He looked at me askance. Obviously not getting my joke—no one ever seemed to do so. “I guess we’re going to have to do this the hard way, eh?” he asked, his eyes bleeding to black.

  Don’t we always, I thought.

  His meaty right fist jabbed out and caught me across the chin before I could reply. I should have expected it, but the crack of knuckles hitting bone knocked me clean off my feet. My head slammed into the corner of the elevator. Heckle turned and punched the stop button on the elevator. With his back to me I whispered the word knife, and one of the handful of weapons I’d laid out at home appeared in my hand. Scrambling to my feet, I knew I had mere seconds to open the door on my Darkness.

  It was like the ripping of a door off its hinges, I reached for it so quickly. Heckle turned, hissed his anger, canines protruding. Flesh had already begun to rot while he charged toward me. In the small confines of the elevator it felt like we were trapped in a crypt of decay. The smell of decrepit, rotting things filled my senses.

  Heckle was swinging fists that skin was coming off of in chunks. I batted away an arm and slimy, gunky things splattered the wall. He swung with a left, I ducked, bobbed, crossed with an uppercut, and my fist met a face that was gooey, gushing with pus, blood and what should have been several weeks worth of death that appeared in mere seconds.

  I reached harder for my darkness and sped the process. I Called his power to me, pulled on his death like a bad dog that I’ve chained with a spiked collar. His eyes widened with fear when I pulsed the power between us—letting him know that I had a hold of it.

  “You…you can’t control me,” he stammered. “You…you are not my master.”

  “No, I am not,” I told him, pulling the invisible chain tighter between us. “But you are filled with Darkness, Death Stalker. Darkness that I control.”

  He stared at me with disbelief and fear marring the sloshing sockets that his eyes had become. I reached again for his power, feeling its vileness like a cemetery of the condemned. I pulled the chain tighter still.

  “But…but, you cannot control this dark gift.” He continued to bluster while his flesh sloughed away at an incredible pace. “Only a Necromancer has this gift over the dead.”

  He was so confused, I almost felt sorry for him. Poor Heckle was just another pawn amidst so many sent to do their master’s bidding without even knowing why. The master said kill, they killed. The master said die, they died.

  “I was born of the Light and the Darkness,” I told him, knowing that my eyes had bled to red. Feeling the Darkness fill me with righteousness. “I am Deneau—I am Justice—the wayward living and the dead of both Realms will eventually answer to me.”

  “You are The Chosen,” he muttered. Awe and fear, disbelief and—oddly—relief swam briefly across the bloody pools his eyes had become while his body continued to melt down to bone before me.

  “Yes,” I whispered assuredly, “I am The Chosen.” Then I twisted one last pulse of power between us and ripped his body apart.

  Chapter Nineteen

  She’s not little, no minion like me!

  That’s why she ensnared him: this never will free

  The soul from those masculine eyes, —- say “No!”

  To that pulse’s magnificent come-and-go.

  From The Laboratory by Robert Browning

  “Ah, what big teeth you have.”

  “The better to eat you with, my dear.”

  The childhood tale ran through my mind while I wiped Death Stalker muck from my face. I knew that as soon as the cab stopped I’d have one very large, pissed-off Werewolf waiting to eat my face off.

  So, I used the next few precious moments I had to Call every weapon I had waiting in my arsenal to my hand. I stashed and stowed in every knife sheath all of the blades, daggers and stars I had meticulously laid out earlier that day. I Called my new guns and extra clips with their silver ammo and I Called Mercy’s Goblin dagger, Endless Blood. Lastly, I Called my own favorite blades, my sickle axes—thirteen and a half inches of cold, dark steel. These I stowed in the sheaths at my back. I was, effectively, loaded for bear. Well, loaded for Were, as the case may be.

  Twisting the silencer on the ten millimeter Glock, I jacked a silver round in the chamber, punched the button that would take me back up to the kitchen and prepared myself for my next battle.

  The cab came to a bouncing stop, the door shushing open to the irate growls of several Werewolves, and I was already rethinking my plan...whatever plan that was. Hell, even I knew there wasn’t much of a damn plan. It was back to the basics on this one: Kill, survive, ask questions later.

  Jeckle took a running lunge towards the door, and I started firing. The first bullet hit him in the throat, blood and gore splattering out the back of his neck. His screech got stuck mid-bellow as his voice box exploded, but he kept on coming.

  The door began to close and his shoulder slammed into it. I jumped backward, gun gripped tightly, ready to shoot again, afraid he’d make it through. Afraid I was going to die in that cage, and not help anyone. The door caved in halfway, knocked off its grid; unable to close completely, yet unable to let the bad guys in.

  Fucking Werewolves! I thought, breathing a momentary sigh of relief.

  It was relief that was short lived as Jeckle’s meaty arm wrenched its way inside the door. He managed to get half of his body inside the cab; his copper fur splattered with blood. His large muzzle snapped and oozed crimson-tinged spittle. With his left arm extended, body reaching, he made several hard swipes towards me, claws fully extended. I scrambled backward as far as I could to avoid those razor-sharp nails.

  The damn fool tried to growl his frustration, but no noise came out. I guess it’s a bit hard to make any noise when your voice box has been blown away, despite a Were’s regeneration abilities. Blood continued to seep from the hole in his throat. Yeah, silver bullets are a bitch.

  My own adrenaline pumped hard through my body, my she-wolf scenting others of her ilk, hackles raised as she smelled fresh meat and certain death. I popped off another two rounds and Jeckle’s head exploded in a bubbling gush of silver fragments, bone and what was left of his brain.

  With little time to consider my alternatives, I knew I had to get out of that elevator. I had no idea how many reinforcements Jeckle had called to aid him, but if they had been able to come to him, then I’d be able to find another way into the awaiting onslaught. I just needed a little more time to prepare.

  With my back to the caved-in door, I peered around the opening. A shot whizzed by my face, striking the back of the cab. Crouching low, using Jeckle’s torso as a shield, I looked again, this time getting a better picture of where the shooter wa
s hiding. I fired a round up and to the right of where I thought he might be. The shooter followed with two more shots, revealing his hiding place at the end of the long center counter.

  There was no one to my left. I had a blind spot to the right where the elevator door blocked my view. I had one choice.

  With a rolling dive I leapt over Jeckle’s body, out the elevator door and fired two shots to my right. The first grunt was followed by the thud of a body hitting the floor. The second grunt was short-lived. I rolled once, then the force of my back being slammed against the side of the counter by my waiting Were took the air from my lungs. My gun spun free of my hold.

  With his large, fleshy fry-pan hand, he slammed it against my face. My head rocked back against the hard wood supporting me. My cheek and eye exploded with pain, my patience severely worn thin. Inside my head, my she-wolf howled her fierce anger. A growl born from the dark depths of rage erupted from the bowels of my belly and flowed out of my voice box, devouring my opponent’s own cries of angst.

  Claws flowed in a rush from my fingers like water on pebbles. Pure instinct and darker hatreds caused me to drive those claws up under his rib cage, past the warmth of his bowels and the flutter of lungs. I dug for darker, meatier things. Things only animals recognized the hunger for.

  With dark satisfaction, I watched his pale green eyes glisten with fear while I ripped and tore until I found the thundering sputter of his heart. I almost didn’t recognize the snarl of glee that escaped me. Then I grasped the wet, pulsing organ in my small, rage-driven hand and jerked it from his body. I watched the light fade from his eyes; his breath leaving him in faltering gasps while I held the bloody, thumping heart before him. Several times, he opened and closed his mouth in an attempt to speak.

  I whispered the word bleed, knowing a wicked smile curved my lips. Bleed, I told him. Bleed and die. Then I watched his lifeblood flow from his body in a gushing, quivering stream. His body slumped in a heap before me, the Light gone from his eyes.

  I could still hear my other quarry at the end of the counter, his breath riding the air hard between us, the scent of his fear coursing through me like so much meat. His anxiety gave me power, power that my she-wolf and I reveled in. I could tell this Werewolf was a young one, newly turned. That he was no warrior, but sent to do a warrior’s job. He was nothing more than cannon fodder.