by M. R. Forbes
“Hey, jackoff,” Amos shouted to get his attention.
Mr. Yellow turned his head as if in slow motion, his eyes narrowing when he caught sight of me. He turned, equally slowly, hands crackling with electrical energy.
“You knew what I was going to find in London, didn’t you, asshole?” I said, unafraid.
The energy burst from his hands, heading directly for us. I exhaled the death magic, pushing it out toward his attack. The bolts vanished, extinguished by the power.
“You don’t understand, necromancer,” he said. “This is a fight we can’t win. He’ll kill us all, and then what?”
“Is that what he told you to say?” Amos asked. “Because that has to be the lamest statement I’ve ever heard.”
“I was trying to stop it,” I said. “But instead of helping me, you helped him?”
“For an equally valuable reward. I’m tired of this. All of this. The other Houses. The rank and file. The simple-minded baseness of humankind. Samedi will end all of that. We can live in peace as the immortals we can become.”
“What good is being immortal if there ain’t no girls around?” Amos asked.
“You have no idea what kind of power we can truly wield. I can create as many girls as I want, each of them shaped in the image I desire.”
“You mean play God?” Frank said. “What are you, twelve?”
“You have no idea what it means to have the burden on you. Black did. He died trying to rid himself of it. I don’t want to end up the same way.”
“He died because Samedi killed him and ate his fucking soul,” I said. “You’re going to end up the same way.”
“We have a deal.”
“Do you know what a lich’s deal is worth?” I asked.
“Jack shit,” Amos said.
Yellow turned away from me, a shield of magic rising in front of him, catching a blast of frigid air that exploded through the hole. He looked back at me and then vanished.
“Shit,” Amos said.
“He won’t go far,” Ms. Silver said, emerging through the hole in the wall. I knew her by the shimmering cocktail dress she was wearing, and the hundreds of chains and rings that adorned her exposed flesh. “The site was sealed when we started the moot. It’s standard operating procedure.”
“Is all of the fighting standard operating procedure?” I asked.
“These are dark times, necromancer. Your presence here only confirms that. But this is House business. You aren’t wanted.”
“If Samedi is involved, it’s my business whether you want me here or not.”
“I’m warning you,” Ms. Silver said. “I’ve got enough to worry about without having to deal with you.”
“Then worry about it,” I said. “If you want to stop Samedi, we’re on the same side.”
“I’m against him for what he is and what he represents,” she said. “You and him are the same.”
With that, she threw her magic at me, a spear of ice that formed out of the moisture in the air. It raced toward my eye, turning back into water as it neared me. It splashed me in the face but was otherwise ineffective.
“Damn it,” I said, getting angry. “You don’t get it, do you? None of you get it.”
I reached out toward her, the death magic loud in my ears, ordered and easy to manipulate thanks to Macha. I didn’t need to touch her for her skin to begin to tighten on her bone, her body aging in an instant.
“This is what he’s going to do,” I said, pulling her life force from her and bringing it to me. I could feel it as I breathed it in. I could feel my body growing stronger despite the decay that was ravaging it. “To you and everyone you care about. To everyone I care about.”
“Conor, stop,” Dannie said, moving beside me.
“Why?” I said. Ms. Silver was terrified. I could see it in her eyes. She wanted to use her magic against me, but she couldn’t. I was in control. I had all the power.
“Because you’re turning into him,” Dannie replied.
I let it go without hesitation, coughing out the rest of the magic and looking at Dannie, feeling a sudden sense of fear and panic. What the fuck was I doing? Death had warned me. I was lucky Dannie was there to give me pause.
“Shit,” I said. “Silver, we need to stop the others.”
She glared at me with a face that had aged ten years. Then she vanished, too.
“Not the most advisable way to make new friends, brother,” Ashiira said.
“Heh,” Amos said. “Now he makes a joke.”
31
Round and round and round we go.
We stayed together, moving through the corridors of the Mansion, keeping an eye out for the Heads of the Houses. It seemed the initial betrayal was over, because the volume of magical attacks had dropped precipitously, and there were more than enough dead users littering the hallways for Samedi to make a pretty serious army.
Not that he did. He was staying out of this one for some reason. Or maybe he knew I would be able to set them back down, so what was the point?
For all the corpses we came across, we didn’t discover any of the Heads. Lackeys and sidekicks, but no Yellow, no Silver, no Purple or Gold. Had they all gone into hiding from one another? Apparently, they had set a group enchantment on the building that prevented them from leaving. I bet they regretted that now.
“Maybe they’re all on the same side,” Frank said.
“Yeah, they’re probably kicking back by the pool, laughing about how Samedi is going to end the world while they sip mai-tais,” Amos said.
“We already know Silver and Yellow aren’t on the same side,” I said. “But they wouldn’t have made this move if they didn’t have a majority, if not in numbers than is overall ability.”
“The enchantment can’t be removed unless all of the surviving casters remove it,” Ashiira said. “There’s at least one wizard in here who doesn’t agree with the rest.”
“I could remove it,” I said.
“Not a good idea,” Dannie said.
No, it wasn’t. Letting who knew how many super-wizards who agreed with Samedi’s doomsday scenario out of the Mansion was the worst thing we could do.
“It’s a clusterfuck however you frame it,” Amos said. “How did I wind up in the middle of it?” He paused, then glanced over at me. “Oh yeah. Somehow I got mixed up with you. You’re a walking curse, Baldie.”
I was starting to feel like one. The fact that I had almost killed Ms. Silver was only making it worse. She was one of the Houses against the lich, and I had been ready to take her life force, and then her magic.
A chill ran down my spine at the thought. I could have done it, too. Pulled everything from her, and absorbed it into me. I could have made myself into a wizard.
I could have made myself into a lich. Just like Samedi.
“Conor, are you okay?” Dannie asked.
“No,” I replied. “I accept that I’m a selfish asshole. But becoming the thing we’re hunting? That’s not me.”
“It’s the death magic,” Macha said. “It can’t be controlled forever, not without going mad.”
“I know. Death warned me about it. But I didn’t expect it to happen so soon.”
“My power accelerates the madness, the same way it amplifies the magic.”
“You’ve been using her a little too freely, Skeletor,” Amos said. “And not for the right things.” He wiggled his eyebrows a few times to shove his innuendo through.
He was right about the first part. I had been treating her like a new toy, eager to discover the full extent of the magic I had been saddled with for so long. And why not? I had lived with the pain, the coughing, the sleepless nights. I had resigned myself to losing Karen and Molly, to living and dying in the shadows. To a life that I never wanted, and wouldn’t wish on anyone else.
I fucking deserved it.
Except it was turning me into a psychopath, and fast. I couldn’t save my wife and daughter from this bullshit if I became the bullshit. I couldn�
�t keep Dannie alive. Frank either.
The fact that I cared that much about the Trogre took me by surprise. For the last five years, I had done everything I could to push most people away. Now I was getting soft. Because I knew the end was coming?
Was I starting to accept it?
That thought was almost as frightening as the rest. I’d been ducking death for so long, and now I was running headlong toward it. I also didn’t find it quite as terrifying as I once had. Maybe knowing Death personally made it easier?
“You’re right,” I said. “I’ll do my best to tone it down. Smack me if I get out of hand.”
“With pleasure,” Amos said. “Nice pun, by the way.” He pointed to the stump.
Frank laughed. I grimaced.
We kept walking, covering nearly the entire bottom floor of the place. Where had everybody gone?
“Did Prithi happen to mention where they were gathering in here?” Dannie asked. “There has to be a conference room or something?”
“She didn’t say,” I replied. “I guess she thought we could figure that part out on our own. This place isn’t all that big.”
“Except for the fact that it’s filled with the most powerful wizards in the world,” Amos said. “They could be changing the fucking walls around on us, and we’d never know.”
“You wouldn’t know?” I asked.
“My resistance is more defensive,” he said. “What about you?”
“The death magic dispels it subconsciously, but I need to be close. I can reach out toward it, but there would be a risk of damaging their self-imposed imprisonment enchantment. We already decided would be a bad idea.”
“Guesswork then,” Frank said. “At least as long as they’re in here, they aren’t out there.”
“Until they kill whoever the holdout is,” Amos said.
“Silver,” Dannie said.
“Nice job almost doing the dirty for them, Baldie.”
We continued walking through the Mansion, staying together. The place had fallen eerily silent, the wizards trapped inside all gone to ground. Or maybe there was one wizard hiding and the rest hunting? It was impossible to know what the sides were, or who was where. At least the Heads had exiled themselves in here for their coup. Taking their power to the outside world could have destroyed it.
But wasn’t that what Samedi wanted? To kill everything? So why did they lock themselves in here to do it? Maybe he didn’t like sharing the death and destruction. Or maybe they didn’t want to risk the people Samedi had promised to spare?
We had so little information. I couldn’t begin to understand why any of the Heads would agree to buy whatever Samedi was selling. What had he done in so short a time to make them so afraid of him?
Maybe all it had taken was to show them he was immune to their power. That they couldn’t hurt him, but he could hurt them. A billion deadies could kill a wizard sooner or later, no matter how powerful that wizard was.
“Hey, did you hear that?” Frank asked as we neared one of the doors on the second floor.
“Nope,” Amos said.
“Shh,” Dannie said.
We all stopped moving, trying to be as quiet as possible.
“Amos, shut up,” Dannie said. His breathing was heavy, even at rest.
He put his hand over his mouth, holding his breath.
I heard it now. Scratching on the other side of the door. I reached out and touched the handle, and immediately felt the clash of death magic against the enchantment there. The door was a door, and it swung open.
A cat darted out from it, through my legs and down the hall. It was grey, with a streak of silver along its back.
“Damn it,” I said. “Follow the cat.”
We did, running after it in from the outside probably looked like something out of a weird, macabre comedy. Dannie was the fastest runner, of course, and she burst ahead of us, taking the corners with ease in pursuit of the feline.
“That Silver?” Amos managed to cough out between huffs and puffs.
“It’s just a cat,” I replied. “But it’s her cat. Maybe a familiar.”
I was willing to bet it was running to join her.
The Heads of Houses didn’t usually bother with familiars. They didn’t need them to help store magic. But if Silver had been worried about the nature of the wizard moot, maybe she had brought one along for a little extra oomph. And if it was trying so desperately to reach her, maybe she needed that oomph right now.
We turned the corner, finding Dannie standing in front of a wall.
“It went through there,” she said.
I put my hand on the wall. It fell away immediately, revealing a corridor we hadn’t seen yet.
“I fucking knew it,” Amos said in triumph.
The cat turned the corner near the end. Dannie raced off in chase of it again. We followed.
It was a lot of running. Too damn much. I could feel my insides burning, and the nausea growing. I wanted to lay down, to rest, maybe to die. I needed to cough. I needed to breathe.
I didn’t stop. This was too important. I stayed with the others, though I started to fall back as my body weakened. That was when Frank grabbed me, picking me up and slinging me over his shoulder.
“I got you, Boss,” he said.
I rode along like a fucking invalid, angry at my weakness and at the same time grateful for the carry. I couldn’t have done this on my own, as much as I may have wanted to.
Dannie was stopped at another wall. Frank brought me to it and put me down. I touched my hand to it, and it faded away, revealing a pair of sliding doors heading out to the pool.
Amos hadn’t been completely wrong about that either.
Ms. Silver was standing on the water at the center of the pool, her cat now on her shoulders, wrapped around her neck. Yellow was standing on the diving board. Gold and Purple were on either side of her. White was there, too.
“Are we interrupting?” Amos said as the Heads of the Houses all turned to look at us as one.
“Necromancer,” Silver said.
There was some kind of enchantment around her. I could sense the power of it. A net cast by the other four Heads, making it too strong for her to escape from.
“What did he promise you?” Dannie asked them. “That you would sell out like this?”
“You know what it’s like more than most, Miss Black,” Mr. White said. “To be responsible for everything. The security of the world. You grew up in the shadow of it.”
“It was the one thing I admired about my father,” she said. “That he wanted to protect people who didn’t have magic from the things that did.”
“You don’t know what that means,” Mrs. Purple said. “Not in total. This world, it doesn’t want our society. It doesn’t want our technology. It pushes back against it all. Do you think Samedi is an accident? He isn’t.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“The world created Samedi,” Mr. Gold said. “To cleanse itself of the stain of humankind. To start new.”
“Samedi is a mad wizard. A necromancer who went insane. Who became immortal.”
“Which by all rights shouldn’t happen,” Yellow said. “But did. You have to ask yourself why.”
“He was trying to destroy civilization before the technology,” Dannie said. “Before all of this.”
“We aren’t supposed to be here,” Purple said. “Humankind. This world was meant to be for the ogres, the trolls, the elves. The old humans. We were never meant to exist. We were never meant to thrive.”
“Bullshit,” Amos said. “We’re the superior race.”
“You aren’t one of us,” Gold said. “You don’t know. Samedi is a cure. We’re the disease.”
“Maybe you are,” Amos said.
I didn’t say anything. My mind was working, thinking back. Of all the deadies we had encountered in London, there hadn’t been any new humans among them.
Was Purple right?
I didn’t want to believe it, but th
e fact that so many Heads of Houses believed it made it tough to deny. They had killed one another over it. They were siding with Samedi over it.
“Even if you’re right,” Amos said. “It don’t matter. We’re here, and we have a fucking right to be here. You don’t get to decide we don’t belong. Neither does that asshole. Sorry, but a lich ain’t a good thing no matter how you slice it. Neither is fucking genocide.”
“So eloquently put,” Ms. Silver said. “But my argument, exactly.”
I stared at Amos. He had been okay with Black reversing the reversal, which meant he was perfectly fine with genocide as long as the shoe was on the other foot. His hypocrisy was mesmerizing.
It was good enough for now, though.
“Samedi needs to be stopped,” I said. “Not helped. Magic, non-magic. Why the fuck does it need to be an either or?”
“Yeah,” Frank said. “Can’t we all just get along?”
“Kumbaya,” Amos said.
“We’ve been discussing this for a while,” White said. “Long before Samedi was returned. Long before you returned him.”
He looked at me accusingly.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” I said.
“Exactly,” Yellow said. “You have no fucking idea what you’re doing, necromancer. So why don’t you stay out of it, and leave it to the ones who do know?”
“We were waiting for the sign,” Gold said. “Some of us, anyway. Not all of us agreed. Black wanted to take it into his own hands. He wanted to reverse the reversal, to get rid of magic again. He said it was too much power concentrated in too few hands. He said it was too much responsibility for any single person to hold. He was right, but not in the way he thought.” Gold looked at Dannie. “He knew it had turned him into a monster. He wanted to be more like you, so he could understand you and relate to you, and make up for what he had done.”
Dannie shook her head. “Bullshit. I don’t believe that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Yellow said. “Samedi is the sign. He said so himself.”
Of course, he did.
“There’s only one problem,” I said. “You can’t escape unless you all agree to drop the enchantment. And it looks like you have a holdout.”