by Amir Lane
Alistair finally stood and took Dieter in his arms. He took advantage of his height to tuck Dieter under his chin.
“Sh, it’s okay. You learn to control them, and it gets easier. You see how good I am with Abigail and Abaddon?”
Dieter sniffed pitifully and gave a small nod.
“That came with years of practice. And I had other witches in my family who could help. You don’t have anyone but me.”
As much as Dieter wanted to protest and point out that he had Lindy and Lenna, Alistair was right. Lindy and Lenna, for all that they did know, weren’t actual witches, and they especially weren’t Necromancers.
“I know you’re upset. But you’ll see that it’s not so bad. It’s just going to take some time to learn. I don’t think it’ll take you long.”
There was some, if little, comfort in that. Something still weighed at the back of his mind. He’d been chewing on it, deliberating whether or not he should bring it up. He wasn’t sure if he should. But who else could he tell?
“I made them leave for a while. Last week,” he said, hesitating before continuing. “They were just… I don’t even know. My nose started bleeding and I drew that.” He nodded toward the window. “And they just… disappeared.”
He pulled his head back from Alistair’s neck and looked up at him. He couldn’t tell from Alistair’s expression if he was impressed or worried.
“You figured that out on your own?” Alistair said, his voice filled with awe.
Definitely impressed.
“I didn’t figure anything. I wasn’t even thinking. I just—did it,” Dieter said.
Alistair pressed a firm kiss to Dieter’s mouth.
“You’re amazing, you know that? God, you’re just something else. It’s beautiful.”
As much as Dieter adored the flattery—and he really did adore it—he couldn’t help but frown, even as his cheeks flushed pink.
“What are you talking about?”
Alistair kissed him again.
“You’re a natural at this. You’re made for Necromancy. Your body already knows what it’s supposed to do.”
“What, bleed everywhere?”
This time, Dieter pulled back to avoid the kiss even though his lips hummed for contact. Maybe later, he wouldn’t mind falling into bed with Alistair. Especially if they could get the Shadows to step out for a while. But for right now, he wanted answers.
Alistair snorted.
“If only it were that easy. No, listen. They’re bonded to your blood. Regular magic and regular sigils aren’t enough.”
“They need to be done in blood,” Dieter said. His throat was suddenly very tight.
“Specifically your blood. Most of the time.”
Dieter felt nauseous. It was bad enough bleeding from an accidental cut or even a nosebleed. But to intentionally draw blood? The thought alone made him lightheaded. Blood was never something he handled well.
“Most of the time,” he repeated. “Does that mean animal blood will work?”
“It depends on what you’re trying to do. In theory, it’ll work for any blood magic that doesn’t involve your spirits.”
“Well, that’s just…”
Dieter let out a frustrated sound and shook his head.
“I know,” Alistair said sympathetically.
“Why does it have to be my blood, though? I don’t want—This is exactly what I didn’t want.”
A Shadow wailed painfully. Dieter almost laughed. It sounded exactly like how he felt.
“It isn’t so bad when you get used to it,” Alistair assured.
“Yeah, well, I don’t want to get used to it.”
“Most people don’t.”
Dieter swallowed. Besides the sudden shift in his weight, the most obvious effect of reducing and going off his anti-psychotics was the lack of dry mouth. After so many years, it was an odd feeling.
“I don’t know if I can do this. I mean, how do you– How do you do it?”
“There are books on blood magic. I can lend you some,” Alistair said.
“No, I mean how do you make yourself use your own blood?”
It was something Dieter couldn’t wrap his head around, even—or maybe especially—when Alistair pushed his sleeve up to show the scars crossing his arm. The sight made him want to gag. Bile rose in the back of his throat, but he swallowed it down and tried to school his expression. It hadn’t been so bad when he didn’t know that they were because of his Shadows. But now, all he wanted to do was pull Alistair’s sleeve back down.
“This is the easiest way to do it. These are all old. When you take care of it properly, it doesn’t scar,” Alistair said.
Dieter tried to smile. It became more genuine when Alistair’s fingers brushed through his hair and cupped his cheek.
“I know blood magic is scary. I won’t make you go through any of this alone. We can start with spells that won’t need your blood. You’d be surprised what you can do with–”
“Please don’t. I—I don’t want to hear it right now. I just…”
Dieter shuddered. Animal blood was almost worse. How would he even get it? He would far rather cut himself than an animal. He’d even prefer to put up with the Shadows.
More than anything, he wanted to believe that this would all get easier. But past experience had led Dieter to only believe the opposite.
The Shadows started to wail and screech in agitation. He didn’t usually have so many in his room. It wasn’t large, either, and they didn’t seem to enjoy being cramped together on top of the bookcase. Dieter didn’t see why they had to all be up there, but he didn’t pretend to understand what Shadows did. They were just weird that way.
Dieter frowned, rubbing his ear.
“They’re being loud?” Alistair asked.
“Yeah. You really don’t hear them?”
Alistair shook his head.
“I’ve never heard of anyone who does. No pun intended,” he said.
The thing that nobody could explain. As if he wasn’t different enough. It looked like Alistair was going to say something else about it, so Dieter pulled him down into a kiss to distract him. He’d had enough of this Shadow talk.
“You spending the night?” he asked.
Alistair grinned and kissed him again.
“Any night you want me.”
DIETER PRETENDED not to catch Lindy’s tight expression when he ran down for water later that night. He spotted a bottle of vodka next to her. The relief that her look wasn’t about him was far outweighed by concern for her. But then her hand started moving, drawing in a sketchbook even as she stared out at the wall. There was no talking to her when she had one of her ‘moments’, so Dieter left her alone.
He moved as quietly as he could to avoid waking Alistair and curled back up against him. Alistair’s steady breathing against his back gave him something to focus on besides the Shadows scratching through the walls.
A sudden coldness filled the space in front of him. It made the hair on his neck and arms stand on end. He knew what was on the other side of his eyelids, and he didn’t want to see it. But his eyes opened of their own volition.
The Shadow was barely an inch from his face. It screamed and screamed and screamed at him.
Dieter bolted upright. He tried to keep himself from crying out, but the sound escaped his lips before he could close his throat. Alistair jerked beside him, his knee ramming into Dieter’s back.
“What –?”
The Shadow kept screaming, and the others joined in. Alistair pulled Dieter back against his chest in a protective hold. The Shadow moved in closer. Dieter put his hand up to push it away. His skin stung, not unlike the way it did when he had first made the seal on the window. But the Shadow only inched back, not vanishing the way Shadows usually did. The longer he had his hand on the Shadow, the more his skin burned.
Alistair grabbed his hand, pulling it away from the Shadow.
“Just tell it to stop,” he said.
“It
won’t listen!”
Dieter moved away from the Shadow as it leant so close that he could have kissed it.
“Just try it.”
Dieter swallowed and squeezed his eyes shut.
“S-stop. Stop screaming. Stop screaming at me! Shut the fuck up!”
His heart was pounding, but it was the only thing he heard. He didn’t let himself open his eyes until his breathing evened out. Alistair’s mouth was on his shoulder, silently coaxing him to relax.
The Shadows were back on the bookshelf, leering down at them.
“I think…” Dieter swallowed again. He couldn’t believe what he was about to say. “I think you should teach me blood work.”
“CAN SOMEONE please explain to me why there’s blood in the sink?” Lindy asked.
Despite it being well past three in the afternoon, she was still in pyjamas.
Lenna raised her hands in innocence.
“Wasn’t me,” she said.
“Yeah, that’s my fault,” Dieter admitted. “I was washing it off my hands, I guess I didn’t clean the sink after. My bad.”
Lindy pushed her glasses into her hair and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands.
“Do I even want to know?” she asked.
“Don’t worry, it’s not my blood,” Dieter said.
Lenna grimaced, and Lindy just stared.
“Fuck it,” she said, “it’s too early for this.”
She turned back upstairs, yawning loudly.
“All right,” Lenna said, “I’ll bite. Whose blood is it? You didn’t shank Mister the Necromancer, did you?”
Dieter snorted.
“Don’t have to sound so excited. I didn’t shank anybody. It’s sheep blood. Or goat, I’m not sure.”
“Huh. So that’s why I been craving lamb kabob.”
“That’s gross.”
Lenna jabbed a finger into his chest.
“That’s what happens when you share a magic connection to a wildcat. But anyway, what’s the goat blood for?”
“Alistair is teaching me blood work.”
Lenna narrowed her eyes.
“No, seriously. What’s it for?” she asked.
“Seriously, it’s for blood magic. It’s apparently the only way to control Shadows.”
The four were still hovering around him, making his life generally miserable. He couldn’t make them go away for more than an hour at a time. He’d take what he could get, though.
“You’re finger paintingwith goat blood, and I’m gross? The hell is wrong with you, anyway? Don’t you know how dangerous blood magic is?”
Dieter rubbed his hands over his face.
“I know. But you guys don’t get how bad these ones are. They’re—Ow! What the fuck was that for?”
One of the Shadows had grabbed Dieter’s arms and raked its claws across his skin. It wasn’t enough to draw blood, but it left bright red lines and a sharp sting.
“Okay, that’s a fair point,” Lenna said.
Dieter gave a wry smile. He moved to the kitchen and turned the tap on. Just as the water ran cold, a Shadow—maybe it was the same one, Dieter still hadn’t learned to tell them apart—turned it off.
“Don’t do that,” he said, turning the tap back on.
The Shadow turned it off again.
“Your thing is an asshole,” Lenna said.
“Things,” Dieter corrected. “There’s four of them.”
“Four? Shit, you do all the freaky blood shit you want.”
Whether she was being sarcastic or if that was just her accent was anyone’s guess.
Dieter gave up on running the tap and opted to grab some ice from the freezer instead. He barely had his hand out when a Shadow slammed it shut.
“What is wrong with you?” he snapped. “Back off. You stupid pieces of shit!”
It was getting easier to control them. Even though the blood he had been using wasn’t his, the Shadows seemed to be responding to it. And as with everything else, Alistair was convinced that he was a natural at it. Even Dieter had to admit that he’d picked it up quite quickly. Even though he’d vomited the first time he’d tried. That had not been impressive.
Dieter checked his phone and sighed loudly.
“Can I just not go to class?” he said.
“You could not go. But the real question is if you should not go.”
“That’s… strangely philosophical.”
“Glad you think so because I have no idea what I just said.”
Dieter couldn’t stop himself from laughing. It was too easy to get lost in the Shadows; In the shrieks and screams and scratches. Laughing was hard most days. He had to get away with it where he could.
IF ANYONE noticed him sitting further and further back in the lecture halls to make space for the new swarm of Shadows, they didn’t mention it. It was harder to stay focused on the lecture so far back. He could barely hear the professor over the whispering behind him. Dieter turned around to look at the empty row. A Shadow sat on the desk, snickering, its head tilted at a painful angle.
Dieter looked back at the screens at the front of the hall and found himself three slides behind. His tablet sat in his backpack, and the slides were all on-line. He could have easily taken it out to get caught up. But he knew that the temptation to open up one of the PDFs he had on blood work and Necromancy would be too great. Instead, he settled with flipping to the next clean page in his notebook and continuing. A spot of blood on the inside cover kept the Shadows from grabbing it or pulling out pages. He would have to fill in the blanks when he got home.
He tried to focus on Steven’s voice at the front of the room. It was too easy to fall into the Shadows. He could feel them under his skin, a sharp vibration that set his teeth on edge, even as they flitted around the hall. There were other Shadows, but none were as dark or as loud as his. None demanded his attention the way these four did. No matter how much he tried, his mind always came back to them. He needed a distraction.
There was an email sitting on his phone from Steven, a polite request for Dieter to stop by his office after class to discuss his accommodations. Dieter chewed his thumbnail. So much for focusing. He’d been beyond thrilled to find Steven teaching Quantum Physics this semester instead of Dr Maria Stuart. He’d heard great things about Dr Stuart, but none of them gave him an excuse to spend so much time in Steven’s office.
Except it was becoming more and more difficult to keep him from finding out about the Shadows. The raised marks on his skin were getting impossible to explain away. But he missed the warmth of his body, and he missed the flattery that no-one else could give him. He missed the guidance that Ekkehardt had never offered. Not even Alistair, who fawned over his brilliance with magic, could compete with him. And, well, maybe Dieter just liked older men. Sue him.
In the end, the pros won out. Dieter waited for half an hour after class before making his way to the Science Complex. He glanced over his shoulder as subtly as he could to make sure he wasn’t followed. He pushed the Shadows out of the way and walked through the open doorway, closing the door behind him.
“I was starting to think you weren’t coming,” Steven said.
“I just got caught up with something.”
Dieter stopped himself there. Any more details could give away that he almost didn’t come.
Steven didn’t ask. There was nothing on his face to suggest that he suspected Dieter of lying. He seemed more interested in the shape of Dieter’s mouth than he was in anything coming out of it. He traced Dieter’s lips before leaning down to kiss him.
Dieter kissed back almost feverishly, trying to drown out the hisses of, “Empath” in his ears. He couldn’t care less whether or not Steven was an Empath. Steven could be whatever the hell he wanted as long as he didn’t stop kissing him. Didn’t stop touching him. Didn’t stop wanting him.
But Steven did stop kissing him, far too soon for Dieter’s liking, only to divert his attention to the smooth expanse of Dieter’s neck.
“What the—?”
Dieter opened his eyes and looked down at his stomach. Red lines that matched the ones on his arms crossed his abdomen. He tried to remember when they’d been made, but he was drawing a blank. There was so many now. He licked his lips and racked his brain for an explanation.
“We have a cat at home. It scratches.”
Steven lined his fingers up with each of the scratches.
“This cat wouldn’t happen to be a puma, would it?” he asked dryly.
“Black jaguar, actually.”
If Steven’s unimpressed expression was any indication, he didn’t appreciate Dieter’s humour.
“Is someone hurting you, Dieter? Or are you doing this to yourself?”
Dieter licked his lips, more out of habit than necessity. He almost jerked his hands back when Steven took his hands and checked his fingernails. They were almost uncomfortably short, and two of them were still growing back. As if fingernails could do this.
“It’s nothing, I promise.”
Even as he spoke, he glanced up toward the Shadows. They were definitely not nothing. But all they’d done so far was scratch. He could live with scratches.
“If someone is hurting you—”
“It’s nothing like that, I swear. Nobody is hurting me.”
If he could call the Shadows ‘Nobody’. There was an Odyssey joke in there somewhere. Dieter almost laughed at himself. He pulled Steven into a kiss.
“You don’t have to worry about me. I’m a big boy, I can take care of myself.”
The answer didn’t seem to satisfy Steven. He stroked Dieter’s hair a little bit protectively. Dieter leant into his hand, his lips parting.
“I can’t help wondering if this doesn’t have something to do with your schizophrenia. If maybe your hallucinations aren’t as imaginary as you thought,” Steven said.