Fatal Heir

by L. C. Ireland

  “It was my mother,” I added, and my voice choked.

  Tears welled in Mel’s eyes.

  “We have that in common,” she said. “One of the deadmen I’ve killed—” her voice caught “—was my mother, too.”

  “Oh, Mel.” I pulled her into my arms. She buried her face in my chest. I could feel the heat of her tears soaking the fabric of my shirt.

  “She must have died in her sleep,” Mel said. “I don’t know how, only that she stopped breathing. She woke up a deadman and killed my Pa. I heard him cry out my name. That was the last thing he did before he died. And then the mist got me, and I felt them die. That’s what deadmen do. They make you feel their own deaths. They want you to suffer like they did.” She climbed into my lap, sitting sideways, and rested her head on my shoulder. For once, she seemed more like a child than an adult.

  “You don’t have to tell me this,” I said.

  Mel grabbed my hand and traced the lines in my palm. “My parents taught me to always sleep with lighting powder and flint. That’s what saved me. I managed to get a fire lit and then … and then I burned them both. I burned the entire cottage down, and I ran. I finally found myself in your barn, stealing milk. Your pa could have had me killed or arrested when he found me.” Mel slipped her fingers between mine and gave my hand a squeeze. “But he didn’t. Your folks let me stay.”

  I pulled Mel closer.

  “Mel?” I asked. “Will you marry me?”

  “Royalty marry a commoner?” she teased.

  I glanced at my father, who had just reappeared in the shadows.

  “My parents had an unequal marriage, and they turned out just fine.”

  Mel wrinkled her nose. “Dead?”

  “That’s the dream, isn’t it? Being dead together?”

  She hiccupped, halfway between a laugh and a sob. “Yes,” she said, “I will marry you, Donald Baines. Or Izayik Delaren. Or whoever you are.”

  “The only person I care about being is your husband,” I said.

  She kissed me.

  This should have been the happiest moment of my life, but it was surreal. While Mel and I committed our lives to each other — whatever was left of them — I could hear the moaning chant of the deadmen beneath us, growing restless.

  We could no longer afford to sit around and wait for an opening to escape. We were going to have to create some sort of diversion and get out quickly while we still had the energy to do so. The three of us had spent the last several hours gathering everything we could find in the abandoned apartment, trying to create something that would distract a horde of deadmen and provide us an opportunity to flee. Mel and I kept finding reasons to pass each other and share a quick kiss. Our antics were beginning to annoy Zarra. I didn’t really care.

  “Haven’t you ever been in love?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Zarra grumbled, making a face as she tasted what was left of our water supply, “but he’s gone and burned already.”

  “Oh,” Mel frowned soberly. “What happened to him?”

  Zarra glanced at me, hesitated, then said, “Highness here killed him.”

  “What!”

  I had only killed two people. One was the portly footman who I touched as he lay dying. The other was the Imposter.

  “Rath?” Mel asked quietly.

  Oh yeah. And Rath. I killed him, too.

  Zarra shook her head.

  “The Imposter?!” I gasped. “You were in love with the Imposter?”

  Zarra disappeared into the next room and returned with part of the bed frame we had hacked to pieces. She looked uncomfortable. “Don’t go making it a big deal, okay? He’s gone and all, anyway.”

  “But you joined me. You betrayed him.”

  Zarra scowled. “I loved him, Highness, but he wasn’t worth my soul.”

  “Your soul?”

  “Yeah, you know, the black marks?”

  Mel and I stared blankly at her.

  “So this might sound silly,” she said, “but my ma told me this when I was a girl.” She riffled through a trunk of clothes, searching for a new pair of shoes. “When you do bad things, black marks appear on your soul. When you die and go to the Gates, the Gatekeeper can see all those black marks. If you have too many of them, he won’t let you through.” She sat down and pulled a boot over her wool sock. It was clearly a man’s boot, several sizes too big, but it was better than nothing. Fortunately, she was used to walking with mismatched shoes. “The Imposter didn’t believe that. He believed in taking what he wanted, no matter what. I would rather be alone with a clean soul than in a relationship with a black one.”

  I knelt beside her. “Well, I’m sorry,” I said.

  “It was him or you,” she said with a shrug. “I would have done the same thing.”

  “Izayik.”

  I turned my head toward the corner Willian usually appeared in, but he wasn’t there.

  “Izayik!”

  His voice was more desperate now. The light was too bright in this room. There were very few shadows for him to appear in.

  “Quick! Stand in the window. Block the light.”

  “What?” Mel asked.

  I didn’t bother explaining. I shepherded the two women to the window and made them stand side by side. The shadow they cast was minimal, but effective. I could just barely make out the shape of my father’s spirit.

  There was still that strange delay between the movement of his lips and the words drifting through my mind. He was speaking quickly, so I was only able to catch snippets of what he was saying.

  “Must go … too much … the bones …”

  “What are you saying?” I asked. “I don’t understand.”

  “I can’t—” he held up his hand. I had to squint to see. It looked as if his hand was being swallowed by shadows much deeper than the ones Mel and Zarra were casting.

  “What’s happening to you?” I asked, alarmed.

  “Corrupting.” Willian slowed down so I could understand him. “I wondered why there were no other spirits. Now I know. I cannot stay here. I am corrupting.”

  “What does that mean? How can a spirit corrupt?”

  Zarra and Mel exchanged an anxious glance.

  “Corrupted spirits become—” I missed the last word.

  “Haunts?” I guessed.

  “Or worse.” I watched in horror as Willian’s eyes turned red.

  Mel responded to my alarm by snapping her fingers in my direction, already coated in lighting powder. Sparks flew. Willian vanished.

  I rounded on Mel and Zarra, wishing with every bone in my body that Rath was with us to answer this next question. “What on earth could be worse than a haunt?”

  The deadmen below us took up a chorus of shrieks. Mel grabbed her torch and crept toward the stairwell. She took one look at the bottom floor and stumbled away as if it were on fire. She clapped a hand over her mouth to keep herself from screaming.

  “What is it?” Zarra asked.

  Mel shook her head. It definitely was not good.

  I took her place by the stairwell to get a look at whatever horror my father’s spirit had just become.

  I instantly regretted it.

  The deadmen were piling together against their will into a writhing mass of body parts. It was slowly forming into the shape of a large four-legged beast.

  “Get out, get out, get out!” I cried.

  But how were we supposed to get out? Jump out the window? Whatever that thing was, it was blocking the only door to the outside. The mist was getting thicker. While I spun in a circle, panicking, Zarra and Mel grabbed the rope Mel had spent the last several days making. Zarra secured one end while Mel threw the other out the window. Mel took a deep breath and then climbed down, right into the mist.

  “You next,” Zarra said, almost shoving me out the window.

  I grabbed the makeshift rope and threw myself over the windowsill. Bracing myself against the wall, I slid down to the ground. Zarra tossed my pitchfork and a torch down
to me. I grabbed them both, but struggled to light the torch. Mel, still holding her breath, clung to my arm as she started to twitch.

  I finally managed to light the torch. Unfortunately, my cry of triumph caught the attention of the monster inside the old building. Zarra was halfway down the rope when the beast burst through the wall, sending her spinning around the side of the building.

  This beast was the single ugliest, most horrific creature I had ever seen. It was made entirely of human bones, all twisted together to form a monster that was roughly the size of a house.

  The beast was distracted by the dangling Zarra; she made for an easy target. Mel shot at the giant creature, but the arrow simply wedged itself among the bones. The beast turned on us with glowing red eyes. It made a sound like a thousand people screaming all at once.

  I shoved the torch into Mel’s hands.

  “Run!” I said.

  Mel didn’t have to be told twice.

  We ran.

  The beast followed, and it was surprisingly fast.

  Mel took a hard right, and I took a left, running inside the back door of an old butcher’s shop. I could only hope that while the beast was busy chasing us, Zarra would be able to climb down the rope and get herself to safety.

  The beast tried to force its way into the building behind me. It stuck its head in the door and screamed. I backed into the butcher’s table. My hand found a rusted knife, long forgotten. The beast shrieked at me from a mouth made up of far too many human teeth. The walls around the door were beginning to crack. It would burst in here at any moment.

  I grabbed the knife and jammed it into the beast’s mouth. It screamed from another head embedded in its shoulder.

  “So gross!” I sobbed.

  The wall began to crumble. I whacked the beast on the head with my pitchfork and ran for it. I could hear the wall collapsing behind me. The cracks in the walls were spreading. If I didn’t get out soon, the whole building would fall on top of me.

  I dove out the front door as the building collapsed behind me. I heard the beast howling with rage as I took shelter behind the remains of an old fountain. Maybe the building crushing it would be enough.

  No such luck. The beast climbed out of the rubble using its many bony arms. I leaned on the old fountain and tried to catch my breath enough to run again. But the beast didn’t come for me. It had found another target among the three of us:

  Mel.

  “Look out!” I cried, vaulting over the broken fountain.

  The beast was startled by my voice. It turned to face me, but its long, bony tail thrashed like a whip behind it. The tail whacked Mel in the side, throwing her several paces.

  “Mel!” I screamed.

  “Highness, watch out!”

  Zarra’s warning came too late.

  The beast leapt at me, its many arms reaching to grab me, its many mouths gnashing hundreds of teeth. I threw up my hands in front of my face, as if that would make any difference. I braced myself for the pain.

  The pain never came. Instead, something uncomfortably warm and tingly and alive hit me from the side and knocked me out of the way.

  Rath.

  He hovered a pace above the ground, gloriously alive, holding a large sword in his hands. He held it above his head and a gold light shot into the sky.

  “Hey!” Rath yelled at the monster, “I’ve got a bone to pick with you!”

  Rath was alive!

  Pure relief sucked all the air out of me. I hadn’t killed him. He didn’t even appear injured. He was in good enough shape to talk smack to a giant undead skeleton monster. It was as if he had never been injured at all.

  In an instant, two others appeared beside Rath. Banash was wearing the boot Zarra had dropped back in the castle. She carried a familiar man with her, a tall dark figure with a blue cape and leather armor.

  Commander Shyronn hit the ground running and seized his sword from Rath. The beast threw its weight forward. It slashed at Rath but lost its balance and fell forward when Shyronn hit it on the side with his big sword. Banash caught the beast before it hit the ground. She wore the Insurgent’s Gauntlet, which I recognized from my father’s memories.

  Rath, Banash, and Shyronn, armed with their various pieces of the Armor, lunged toward the beast that had once been my father’s spirit. I scrambled away from the fight, half running, and half crawling to the rubble that had buried Mel.

  “Mel!” I gasped.

  I pawed at the rubble, my voice hitching with a sob of alarm when my digging revealed a pale, freckled arm. I started to reach for her, but stopped myself. If I touched her, would she die?

  I sat back on my heels helplessly.

  “Mel,” I sobbed.

  “I’m here,” Zarra said, shoving me aside. She grabbed Mel by the arm and yanked her from beneath the remains of the building. Behind us, we heard the sounds of the beast’s screams mixed with shouts of coordination from Shyronn. Gold light flashed from their weapons.

  We laid Mel on her back. She was white as milk beneath the dirt caked all over her. Her clothing was soaked in filthy blood all along her right side. She breathed in deep rasping gasps, as if no matter how deeply she breathed, she never could get quite enough air. I reached for her again, but stopped when Zarra slapped my hands away.

  “Don’t touch her, Highness,” she warned.

  I couldn’t figure out what to do with my hands. I stuffed my fist in my mouth. Zarra looked equally helpless. Mel was in such terrible condition that neither of us knew where to start. Her life was slipping away from her, and we could do nothing but watch.

  I patted my pockets, looking for something — anything — that might help. My fingers brushed the metal of the circlet. I felt a rush of adrenaline as the circlet’s energy buzzed through me. I pulled the circlet out of my pocket and turned toward the battle.

  I remembered my father’s memories about haunts and how my mother had been able to stop them like no one else could. According to Banash, I had inherited her abilities.

  The element of surprise had worn off. Rath, Shyronn, and Banash seemed to be fighting a losing battle. No matter how many of the beast’s limbs they hacked off, it simply grabbed the fallen body parts and reattached them with alarming speed. Though the Insurgent’s Armor seemed to frighten it, it just wasn’t enough.

  The beast caught Banash by the braid and dragged her to the ground. I seized my pitchfork and ran forward. The beast tried to hit Shyronn with its long tail. I jabbed my pitchfork into one of its ribcages and hauled it toward me. I said a quick prayer to Seraph Alaudrin and then placed my hand on one of its skulls.

  Sys crackled on contact. For a moment, the world stopped moving. I was so overwhelmed by the energy rushing into me that I thought I would die. When the pressure built until I could no longer control it, I jerked my hand away from the beast and collapsed.

  Banash appeared beside me, grabbed me by the collar, and dragged me away like I was made of parchment. She shoved me toward Zarra and Mel and held up her shield between us and the beast.

  Sys pulsed out of the beast’s crumbling body, rolling over us in misty waves that made the hairs on my neck stand on end. Banash’s shield provided a barrier that prevented most of the energy from hitting us. Instead, it rolled over us like we were all standing in a bubble.

  Banash Stepped away the moment the waves died down and returned an instant later with Shyronn. He looked stunned, his eyes wide open and his dark hair a frizzy mess. Banash thumped him on the back. He coughed and doubled over, holding onto Banash’s sleeve for balance.

  “The sys stopped his heart,” she explained as if this was a perfectly normal thing to talk about. “He’ll be fine.”

  The mist was closing in all around us. And with it came the voices of the deadmen.

  “Life among us …”

  “Free … us …”

  Everyone gathered around Mel while I stared vacantly at the pile of bones that had just tried to eat me.

  “We need to leave.”
Shyronn finally regained the ability to speak. He stood up straight and looked around at the mist billowing about us. I assumed the only thing keeping the mist from overwhelming our small group was the sheer concentration of vala in the Insurgent’s Armor.

  I felt Shyronn’s hand on my shoulder. “Can she be moved?” he asked. He was looking at Mel. I shook my head to clear my mind and fell to my knees beside her.

  “Mel?” I asked. “Mel, can you hear me?”

  Banash knelt across from me. She brushed her long hair out of the way and gazed down at Mel. She leaned close and pressed her head against Mel’s chest, listening for her heartbeat.

  Banash looked exactly the same as she had in my father’s memories. Shyronn and Rath both looked older, but Banash hadn’t aged a single day.

  “Please.” I wasn’t sure who I was talking to. Rath? Banash? Mel herself? I settled on Mel. “Please don’t leave me.” I pressed my hands against the ground next to her, as close to her as I dared to get. “I’m not brave enough to be left behind.”

  Mel’s eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks as if she was trapped in a nightmare. Still she breathed with those deep, desperate huffs. Her body trembled.

  Banash looked at me. Sort of. She didn’t seem capable of making direct eye contact. “The tie is nearly severed,” she said, “but I think I can still save her.”

  “Oh, please—”

  “However,” Banash cut me off, “she will not be the same.”

  “I don’t care.” I didn’t give her a chance to explain. “Save her.”

  Banash nodded once. “Step back,” she told me.

  “Why?”

  “Your sys may still draw her spirit out. Step away.”

  I stumbled backward, colliding with Shyronn. He had his sword drawn and faced away from Mel and Banash, gazing into the mist. I noticed that Zarra and Rath were doing the same.

  “Deadmen,” Rath murmured.

  I hadn’t even noticed that their voices were getting louder. I could see their silhouettes just barely outlined in the thick mist that surrounded us. They were close.