Grave Debt

by D. D. Miers

  Ethan shrugged, but his guilty look made me sure I was correct.

  "If something does happen I want you strong enough to get us both out of there. When you can shift again, we'll go to the curators."

  Chapter 2

  Aunt Percy clicked her tongue and stormed past us back into the house. Mort stood, stretched, and followed her in, apparently deciding he'd had enough of the heat. Ethan smiled at me, reaching for my hand.

  "How are you holding up?" he asked, thumb gently tracing the back of my fingers. "I know I haven't been exactly conscious the past few days, but I'm pretty sure even one of your aunt's creepy zombie cats could tell you're dead on your feet."

  "I'm fine," I lied, not wanting him to worry. "Yeah, I could use a nap. But I'm not going to be able to rest until this is dealt with, anyway."

  "You shouldn't push yourself too hard," Ethan suggested, frowning. "If Aethon shows up, you need to be strong enough to fight, too."

  "I'm not worried," I said with a teasing smile, trying to derail him. "If something happens, you'll save me."

  But Ethan's frown only darkened. He squeezed my hand tighter.

  "You shouldn't rely on me like that," he said quietly. "I don't want to let you down."

  "You won't," I said, confused by his concern. "I know we haven't known each other that long, but you've probably saved my life a half a dozen times. You nearly died for me. I trust you."

  This seemed to worry him more, so I pulled him closer, pressing a soft kiss to his lips. He hesitated for a moment, then returned it with interest, his hands sliding into my hair.

  He deepened the kiss and dragged me out of my seat and into his lap with no protest from me. His hands found my hips, fingers slipping under the hem of my shirt to graze the sensitive skin of my lower back. His tongue slipped past my lips, hot and inviting, and my pulse jumped in excitement. I broke the kiss to catch my breath, our lips still close, and searched his eyes.

  "Are you sure you're well enough for this?" I asked, worried for him.

  His hands moved lower to squeeze my ass demandingly.

  "I think it's exactly what I need," he said, his voice a little rough. I knew he held himself back. "Unless you're not ready for this. I can wait."

  I bit my lip, considering it, and glanced toward the sliding doors. The blinds were drawn and Aunt Persephona was upset enough that she likely wouldn't return for a while. If I knew her, she'd probably find an excuse to leave the house. The garden was surrounded by a high privacy fence and an overgrown Rose of Sharon hedge that kept all the undead shenanigans we got up to back here safely out of the public eye. There was no one watching but the zombie cat, which was even now padding off into the bushes again to continue hunting.

  Ethan and I had come close to something like this before everything had happened, but we'd been interrupted. And it was still a very new relationship. His kisses moved to my throat and I couldn’t stop him.

  "Maybe just something quick," I whispered.

  "Yes ma'am," he purred, and tipped me back against the patio table, which made ominous creaking metal noises as I caught myself on my hands. He pushed my shirt up over my breasts to press kisses between them, hands squeezing over the soft silk cups of my bra, but I wasn't here for foreplay. Not this time, anyway. I pushed his head lower, and he chuckled against my skin.

  His hands caught my ankles and slid upward, pushing my long black skirt up to my thighs. I closed my eyes, relishing the way his fingers dug into my flesh as he kissed his way up my inner thigh, working his way up to my underwear. He pushed them aside, his fingers slipping between my folds. My breath caught as he dipped briefly within me, just enough to wet his fingers and drag them up through my lips, spreading slick as he circled my clit, making me squirm. He kissed me again, swallowing my moans as he teased me. His fingers curled into me while his thumb rubbed slow circles over my clit, making my hips rock, trying and failing to ride the two fingers rubbing perfect over my inner walls.

  Impatient, I fumbled for the button of his jeans. I felt him through them before I even got the fly down, already half hard. I was a little surprised by how excited he was, shaking as I pulled him free of his underwear. I'd never had a guy so obviously into me and doing nothing to hide it. His kisses were voracious, his moans unrestrained as I stroked him, working him up to full hardness quickly before I slowed down.

  There's something fantastic about giving a guy a really good, slow handjob, especially a guy as responsive as Ethan. The reactions you could bring out of him with just a small change of pace or the pressure of your fingers. The power of holding him in your hand and knowing you could stop at any minute and leave him begging for more. Or squeeze just a little too hard and see the little thrill of primal fear run through him. I wore matte black acrylics, and I let the dull tips run along the underside of his shaft, pressing in just under the frenulum. He shivered, whispered a curse, and raised his hips into the contact, sending a flash of excitement through me. If he hadn't been kissing me so hard, my mouth would have gone dry.

  I'd almost forgotten his fingers inside me for a moment, but now he increased his efforts, free hand joining in to rub more vigorously over my clit. My hips shook as I tried to angle myself better, to let his questing fingers get deeper, while trying to focus on his cock in my hands, the slow twisting rhythm I was building, which stammered every time his fingers moved just right and left me gasping.

  "God, Vexa." He pressed his face to my shoulder, his voice a low growl. "I can't wait to be inside you. You smell so fucking good."

  The words caught me off guard, making me squeeze him a little harder. He pressed his teeth against my shoulder, sharper than I expected.

  He pulled his hands away from me suddenly, grabbing the table with one and my hip with the other. I understood why a second later as his fingers darkened and sharpened into claws. He'd let go of me at the last second and I paled at the thought of those claws inside me. He was still growling into my shoulder, and it had ceased to be a human sound, the teeth against my skin long and monstrous. But he was still hot in my hand, hips bucking up into my touch, his breath a shallow, desperate pant. Unsure what else to do, I continued, keeping my pace slow and steady.

  "Hang in there," I whispered into his ear. "I've got you. You're almost there."

  He squeezed my hip, the only confirmation I think he was capable of giving, and I sped up to reward him, squeezing just hard enough to make him whine. Worrying as his sudden partial transformation was, I also couldn't pretend it wasn't hot as hell. To see him driven so wild, trying to contain it, to be holding something so powerful literally by the balls —I'd never been skydiving, but I could only assume the rush was similar. His growling changed pitch, the frantic thrusting of his hips less controlled, and I knew he was close.

  "That's it," I whispered as he pulsed in my hand. "Go ahead. Cum for me."

  He released at once, spilling into my hand with a long, low moan.

  "Good boy," I said, stroking his hair with my clean hand as he twitched his way through orgasm, his face buried in my throat.

  Gradually, his breathing calmed and I saw his hands return to normal. He didn't stop hiding in my shoulder until it was over, but I could still see the glint of gold in his eyes as he leaned back. I moved to sit on the edge of the patio table while he recovered, fishing a wet nap out of my purse to clean my hands.

  "Shit," he said, still breathless. "Fuck. I'm sorry. That's never happened."

  I couldn't help but laugh.

  "They all say that."

  "No, seriously," he said, anxiety cutting through his afterglow. "I've never . . . never shifted in the middle like that before. If I hadn't realized what was happening fast enough . . . if I'd lost control . . ."

  "I kind of like you out of control," I replied with a grin, spreading my knees a little wider. My skirt was still up around my hips.

  "You don't understand," Ethan said, only distracted for a second by my display. "Who I am when the wolf takes over isn't me. I'm in
control when I shift voluntarily, but when it happens on its own—Vexa, it would have killed you."

  A nervous shiver ran through me, banishing a little of the lust blinding me. Ethan looked genuinely freaked out.

  "Hey." I slid off the table and took his face in my hands. "Everything is okay. I'm fine. No one got hurt. In fact, it was great. If you're really worried about hulking out or whatever, we'll get some fuzzy handcuffs. I'm into it."

  He looked down with a soft, embarrassed laugh.

  "We might have to get something more heavy duty than fuzzy handcuffs," he said, wrapping his arms around my waist and hugging me close, his face in my chest.

  "I know some websites," I reassured him, running my fingers through his hair. "We'll make it work."

  "It might be safer for you to just walk away," Ethan said, voice muffled by my shirt. "I wouldn't blame you."

  "Do I look like the kind of person who chooses the safe option?" I asked him, raising an eyebrow.

  He laughed again, hugging me tighter. He sounded a little choked up, but with his face hidden, I couldn't tell.

  "That's why I should be making the safe choice for you," he said. "You're too crazy to make your own decisions."

  "Oh yeah, I'm nuts," I agreed. "The whole necromancy thing is a cover for my severe delusions."

  "It's just been a long time," he said, almost too quiet to hear, "since anyone was willing to go to that kind of an effort for me."

  I wasn't sure what to say to that. I knew he'd been basically on the run for years, ever since he realized the wolf would target anyone he cared about. That must have made getting into any kind of relationship difficult. I hugged him tighter, laying my cheek on the top of his head. This was still new and I wasn't sure where it was going. But at the very least I could give him this.

  Chapter 3

  He went back to bed after that, exhausted by the partial change, and I returned to my books, useless as they were, and tried to keep myself from waking the dead every time I got frustrated.

  The rest of the day and the day that followed ticked by too slowly. When Ethan wasn't awake to distract me, anxiety filled in the gaps. I couldn't shake the feeling that Aethon was watching. That he could storm in at any moment and kill all of us and . . . do God only knows what. I still had no idea what he planned or what he wanted or even who he was beyond an ancestor from centuries ago. Knowing so little about him made him all the more frightening.

  The next day was just as uncomfortably warm, and I'd retreated inside to sit at the kitchen table next to the rotating fan trying in vain to cool the room down. Ethan was passed out in the guest room with his own fan after a busy morning of complaining he was fine and also bored as hell. He was doing better today, but the shifting scare had rattled me a bit. I wanted to be sure he was really well again before we left the apparent safety of my aunt's house.

  Aunt Persephona had been avoiding me since yesterday and been out of the house most of the day. In the sweltering afternoon she returned and put a heavy, black, leather-bound book down on the table in front of me with no title or distinguishing marks. Not unusual for family grimoires never formally published, but something about it felt ominous.

  "What's this?" I asked, as she pulled up a chair.

  "I went to my storage facility," she said, smoothing out her skirt. "I have a little air-conditioned unit outside of town."

  "You get AC for your storage unit but not for your house?" I asked, pulling my sweat-soaked black tank top away from my chest.

  "It's where I keep the family heirlooms too precious or too delicate to be kept at home. It has to be temperature controlled for the sake of the relics. Your uncle and I used to call it the family vault. That book is the only thing in my entire collection that references Aethon Tzarnavaras by name."

  My interest now firmly piqued, I pulled the book closer and flipped it open.

  "That's the personal Book of Shadows of Alexius Tzarnavaras," my aunt went on. "Aethon's grandson. It was he that pushed for Aethon's banishment and disownment from the family. Alexius avoids the specifics of what exactly Aethon did to discourage others from attempting it. But he implies many, many deaths were involved and Aethon's ultimate goal was eternal life."

  "What?" I stopped paging through the book, my eyes wide. One of the first things Aunt Persephona had taught me about necromancy was death was not just inevitable, but important. Necessary. It was to be prepared for, expected, even embraced. Not avoided. I'd never considered myself religious, but the idea of using necromancy to avoid death struck me as almost blasphemous.

  "Aethon was more than just the patriarch of our family," she continued. "He was the creator of necromancy. If what this man said about the candle is correct, he brought necromantic magic into the world in the first place with the creation of the candle. And his singular goal from the first seems to have been to escape death. He spent decades using necromancy to extend his own life, alienating us from the rest of the magical community, until he committed an atrocity so unspeakable that his own family turned on him."

  "Well I guess that explains why he's still around," I said, a little shocked. "Does that mean he pulled it off? He's actually immortal?"

  "I doubt it," Aunt Percy said with a shake of her head. "But even if it's not true immortality, managing to extend his life span this much is an incredibly impressive feat."

  "Here's what I don't understand," I said, leaning back in my chair, lips pursed. "If he's been alive all this time, why is this the only book that mentions him? Even if he was banished, you'd think the disgraced undying inventor of necromancy would be something worth writing about."

  "I can only imagine they were happy to forget about him," Aunt Percy replied with a frown. "He is our family's original sin; the reason other magic user's reject us. We just don't speak of him."

  "But still," I insisted, "if he's been alive this long, someone should have mentioned him. Someone outside the family at least. I guess he could have just been keeping a low profile, but the guy had a cell phone. I don't think he's been underground all these years. And even if he was, what made him come out of hiding now? Judging by the mess he made at the funeral home, he's not interested in hiding anymore."

  "Maybe whatever he's used to extend his life span is wearing off," Aunt Percy suggested.

  "You think he wants to use the candle to recreate whatever atrocity got him banished?" I asked, worry coiling in the bottom of my stomach.

  "I assume that's something he'd require the candle for," Aunt Persephona agreed. "And it might explain the urgency if he's running out of time."

  I frowned, opening the book again.

  "Is there anything in here about what he did?" I asked, flipping quickly through the pages. "Even just a hint?"

  Aunt Percy shook her head.

  "There isn't much more about him at all than I've already told you," she said. "If I hadn't read through every book our family has written, I might never have found it. Alexius didn't mention Aethon much before the incident. A few offhand remarks about the rest of the community demanding the family force him to stop his experiments. And after the banishment, Alexius quite deliberately doesn't mention him again until the end of his life, ruminating on his regrets."

  "He regrets banishing him?" I asked, curious.

  "In a sense," she replied with a shrug. "He does mention that it did nothing to ameliorate the rest of the magical community. And that Aethon's wife continued to support him till her death. But mostly, he seems to be concerned that banishment may have been too harsh a punishment. As he's lying on his deathbed after a long illness, looking forward to letting go, he imagines Aethon, alone, isolated forever from family and society, without even the promise of eventual death to release him. And he thinks that perhaps it was too cruel, even for Aethon's crimes."

  I frowned, considering all those years alone. It wasn't something I could even really wrap my head around. What must a person have to be like, in order to live that long, completely alone?

  "
Thank you for this," I said, taking the book with me as I stood up. "I'll keep reading over it. Maybe there's something that will give us an idea of how to stop him."

  "I certainly hope so," Aunt Persephona said with a sigh, turning the standing fan to face her. "If he really is planning to do whatever he did before again, I don't know what might happen, except that people will almost certainly die."

  I took a deep breath, trying not to let that worry paralyze me. Aunt Percy reached for my hand, squeezing it reassuringly.

  "I brought this to you for a reason," she said. "I want you to understand not just how long ago this started, but that the other magic users were rejecting us even then."

  I sighed.

  "Aunt Percy —"

  "I know, I know," she said quickly. "I'm not trying to stop you. Talk to Ethan's curators or whatever you think will help. God knows how many times I tried before I gave up. I just want you to be prepared. We are pariahs to them. You can't rely on them. Our family is all we have."

  I held my breath, resisting the urge to remind her that now that Great-Uncle Ptolemy was dead, she was the only family I had that I could discuss this with. My parents had no magic and did their best to pretend it didn't exist. My grandfather, her brother, had died years ago. I knew of a few distant cousins living in other parts of the country, but most of them were nonmagical. And even if I could track down their names and numbers, I didn't know them. What kind of help could I expect? If all I had was family, then all I had was Aunt Percy. And as much as I loved her, that was a lonely prospect.

  I took the book back out to the patio, hoping the breeze might clear my head. Mort curled up at my feet, presumably hoping for the same. Unfortunately, there was no breeze to speak of, so I baked in the stagnate air as I struggled to read through Alexius's Book of Shadows. It was fairly dry, as far as personal records of magical growth can be dry. It wasn't a diary, and Alexius wasn't the verbose type. In general, he stuck to succinct descriptions of the exercises and rituals he'd attempted and their results, with very little diversion to talk about his daily life. It was a useful grimoire, if nothing else. I'd certainly read worse, where actual practical content was vastly outweighed by heaps of philosophical purple prose. Like the magical equivalent of those cooking blogs that couldn't give you a recipe for brownies without a ten-page essay on their childhoods and failing marriages.