Necropolis

by Wendy Saunders

  Trying to figure out the best way to handle the situation Olivia opened her mouth to speak but before she could utter a word, Elias stopped abruptly and turned to glance sharply behind them, drawing Olivia in closer as he did.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re being followed,’ Elias muttered under his breath, just low enough for her to hear.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she turned her head to look, but all she could see was people milling the streets minding their own affairs.

  ‘Trust me,’ he took her hand and set off again down the street at a brisk pace that almost had her jogging to keep up.

  They weaved through the crowds, Elias’s eyes darting back and forth looking for a place to lose whoever it was he was so convinced was following them, when they came upon a darkened alleyway filled with heavy shadows and snowdrifts.

  Not stopping to think twice, Olivia yanked Elias into the alley. Caught off balance he stumbled into her as she wrapped her arms around him and spun. They were suddenly enveloped in a thick purple smoke and the alleyway around them seemed to shift and blur.

  When the strange smoke dissipated, they were standing in a completely different alley, brightly lit by cold morning sunlight, the cobbles beneath their feet covered in a tightly compacted layer of ice and snow.

  Caught unaware Elias barely had time to register the bright spark of nausea before his stomach rebelled alarmingly. Unable to stop himself he doubled up and violently expelled the contents of his belly.

  Olivia winced in sympathy as he heaved painfully.

  ‘Sorry,’ she apologized. ‘I probably should’ve warned you, the first time’s pretty rough.’

  ‘What the hell was that?’ he looked up and drew in a shaky breath.

  ‘That,’ she admitted ruefully, ‘was witch smoke.’

  ‘Where the hell are we?’ Elias stood slowly, briefly closing his eyes as if to stop the world from spinning.

  ‘The alley beside the Drunken Duck,’ she replied. ‘Sorry I didn’t know where else to take us. I’m not very familiar with the Underside.’

  ‘Perfect,’ Elias stumbled out of the alley, ‘I need a God-damned drink.’

  Heading inside the pub, they settled themselves into one of the small wooden booths. Deciding to take pity on his stomach which was still a little raw, Elias sat nursing a glass of stout rather than his usual bottle of cheap whiskey.

  ‘I think you and I need to have a frank conversation,’ Olivia mused as she watched him thoughtfully.

  ‘About what?’ he swallowed convulsively against the sudden flood of moisture in his mouth followed by the urge to vomit again.

  ‘Here,’ she pulled off her glove and reached out and took his hand.

  Warmth suddenly flooded his body and a strange smoky scent filled his nostrils. He could hear a faint whisper at the edge of his mind, but it was gone as soon as he became aware of it. After a few moments, she let go of his hand and he realized he no longer felt sick. His stomach was calm and soothed, and his head no longer felt as if he were trapped on a merry-go-round.

  ‘I’m not great with healing,’ she explained at his puzzled gaze, ‘it’s not my gift, but I know enough to get by. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Better thank you,’ he muttered as he studied her face.

  ‘Now then,’ she murmured almost to herself, ‘we’re going to need some privacy. I’m sure there was something in Hester’s Grimoire, if I can just remember the right words.’

  She began to mutter under her breath, closing her eyes. He didn’t quite catch the words she used but suddenly she stopped whispering and rapped her knuckles against the scarred wooden tabletop three times.

  ‘That should do it,’ she decided in satisfaction.

  ‘Do what?’ he frowned. The air surrounding them suddenly felt thicker somehow and crackled with a strange energy which made all the tiny hairs on his arms and the back of his neck rise.

  ‘Just a simple spell,’ she told him conversationally, not even bothering to try and lower her voice. ‘No one will be able to hear us now; they could be sitting in the next booth but all they will hear is white noise.’

  ‘What is white noise?’ Elias replied in confusion.

  ‘Random chatter,’ she explained, ‘indistinct murmurs. Trust me, whatever we say will remain between the two of us.’

  ‘Alright,’ Elias replied unconvinced, ‘what did you wish to discuss?’

  ‘You Elias,’ she replied flatly.

  He sat, staring at her expectantly.

  ‘Look, I know I can be a bit heavy handed sometimes,’ she admitted as she released a slow breath. ‘I have a tendency to kind of wade in and throw my weight around. Believe me, I’m really trying here to be less… me. I’m trying to be understanding of your situation and I get that all this has probably been really hard for you, but I think we need to have an honest conversation about things I’m guessing you don’t really want to talk about.’

  Elias watched her; his expression neutral.

  ‘We don’t really know each other,’ she shook her head, knowing she’d be the one doing most of the talking, but that was fine. Right now, more than anything else, he needed to listen. ‘We met years ago briefly in passing, I had just been tortured and was badly injured. All I knew of you was what Theo had told me, but that was from a previous and redundant timeline. At that point I don’t think he knew you any better than I did. As for you, all you knew about me was, I assume, whatever your mother wrote in her journal and having never read it, I can’t say if any of it’s accurate.’

  ‘What are you saying Olivia?’ he finally murmured quietly.

  ‘I just think, you and me, being here together now, it feels like too much of a coincidence. I’m still not sure how or why I ended up in this particular time, but the fact that you were here too and that you happened to know about the Hourglass, it just feels like there’s a reason for it.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she shrugged. ‘Maybe I’m supposed to help you, or maybe you’re supposed to help me… or maybe we may just end up helping each other. One thing I’ve learned over the last few years is that everything happens for a reason.’

  ‘You’re just trying to convince me to help you gain possession of the Hourglass.’

  ‘I know it may seem that way but I’m not. Forget the Hourglass for a minute,’ she replied in frustration. ‘Look… I grew up in a small town called Mercy in Massachusetts, about an hour away from Salem. It didn’t exist in your time and wasn’t founded until about twenty years after you left. For the first eight years of my life I was raised in a family of witches, not just my mother, my grandmother and great aunt but my father too. Magic was all I knew and was as natural to me as breathing.’

  Her brow furrowed as she cast her mind back. ‘My life changed after that. My grandmother was murdered, my mother too, or so I thought at the time, by my father. I was taken away from the only home and family I’d ever known. After that my life became very difficult. I was constantly rejected for being the child of a murderer. I knew I couldn’t let anyone know about my magic, so I kept it repressed, which trust me, is more painful than you’d think.

  As I grew older, I began to practice magic in secret. I walked the solitary path of the witch and for a while I found solace in the familiarity of it. It was like… wrapping yourself up in an old blanket, it brought comfort.’

  She broke off and shook her head, huffing quietly in disbelief.

  ‘I couldn’t have possibly imagined the path that lay ahead of me. There are days, I still can’t believe this is my life. Time travel? The incredible, raw, primordial powers I have that I’m still too scared to let loose in case I can’t control them, and I hurt someone I love. Angels, Demons, monsters and creatures I’d never heard of outside the pages of mythology and history. I mean for God’s sake, one of my best friends is the God of the Underworld. I’ve been to the deepest reaches of Tartarus and seen the Titans. In fact, half the Underworld emptied out to att
end my wedding.’

  She looked up and found Elias watching her intently.

  ‘The point I’m trying to make, is that sometimes I would give anything to go back to that simple place and immerse myself in the safe magic I was raised to believe in. ‘Do no harm,’ that was the cornerstone of our faith. Such a simple way to live, but instead I live in a world where I’m constantly in danger and live in fear every moment for the safety of my children, a world where my friends’ blood was spilled at my home.

  I felt like a fraud, I kept wanting to tell the higher powers, or fate, or destiny whatever you want to call it, that they have the wrong person. It’s not me. I’m not who they think I am, I’m not some all-powerful guardian. I’m just a simple witch who’s in way over her head.’

  ‘I doubt anything about you has ever been simple,’ Elias muttered.

  ‘You’re probably right,’ she agreed, ‘but I came to a point where I was faced with a choice. Face up to the truth and embrace it or watch everyone I love pay the price for my denial.’

  She smiled ruefully.

  ‘I may not have reached the fully embrace part yet, but I’ve accepted it, sort of, and I’m trying really hard to change. It’s painful and scary, and I constantly doubt myself, but I guess we all have to grow up sometime.’

  ‘You’re saying I’m being childish?’ Elias tilted his head as he studied her.

  ‘No,’ she snorted lightly, ‘I’m saying for the first, I don’t know how many years, you were raised a puritan. I can only imagine what a rigid, confining environment that must’ve been for a child. I think it’s that deeply ingrained belief system that everything magical is inherently wicked or evil, that is holding you back.’

  ‘Why would you think that?’ he shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘Because I watch Theo struggle with the same thing. No matter how far he’s come, the events he’s experienced or the things he’s witnessed, there’s still a part of him that he thinks is evil because of his visions. Some beliefs are so deeply buried it’s hard to ever let them go completely.’

  She stared at him; her eyes direct but softening at the edges with understanding.

  ‘I think it’s the same for you… You are a witch Elias and I think deep down you know that.’

  They sat in silence as he absorbed her words. In fact, so much time passed as he sat staring at his half empty glass, she feared he’d just shut down and that she’d pushed him even deeper into himself.

  ‘I knew the moment I woke up.’

  At first his whisper was so faint she thought she’d imagined it. She held her breath afraid to say anything in case he stopped talking.

  ‘I clawed my way out of my grave and lay panting on the ground staring up at the sky, my clothes dirty and torn, my eyes almost blinded by the sun. I had been in the ground for over a week, almost two, and yet when I pushed myself to my feet and stood, there was no stiffness in my body, no pain. I looked down upon my grave, the ground torn open as if an animal had clawed its way out. I had no idea what I was, my skin was warm, my heart still beat inside my chest, breath filled my lungs, but I was different.

  The world looked different, colors sharper, details brought into sharp relief, the wing feathers of a bird high in the sky above me circling, an earthworm burrowing amidst the grass ten feet away. I could see it all, and my hearing… I could hear the air shifting miles away. The creak of a wagon’s wheels on the other side of the woods. But most of all a strange prickling beneath my skin, a constant itch I couldn’t satisfy.’

  Olivia nodded slowly.

  ‘For a long while after that I noticed things, odd things. A candle bursting into flame with no taper nor hand to light it. Doors opening and closing, people telling me the truth, excessively so, to the point where I could tell it was paining them to do so, but it was almost like a…’

  ‘Compulsion?’ Olivia supplied helpfully.

  ‘Yes,’ he nodded.

  ‘Tell me,’ Olivia asked, ‘did you at any point tell them to tell you the truth?’

  ‘I did,’ he replied. ‘I knew they were lying to me and I lost my patience and shouted it at them. After that I couldn’t stop them from speaking. In the end, when I walked away, one of them was still confessing to a list of misdemeanors he’d committed as a child. It was rather annoying actually.’

  ‘It’s the power of suggestion,’ Olivia chuckled. ‘Not all witches can do it, but then again, whether you know it or not yet, you’re an incredibly powerful witch. I can imagine you’d have quite the arsenal of abilities at your command.’

  ‘You say that so casually,’ he frowned, ‘but I tried several times. I had amassed quite a collection of books of magic during my time with the Veritas and when these strange occurrences began to manifest, I tried a few simple spells, but they didn’t work.’

  ‘Of course they didn’t,’ Olivia shook her head. ‘You can’t practice magic while you look down your nose at it.’

  ‘I don’t know Olivia,’ he scowled, ‘I don’t want this. I’m not a witch, I just... don’t know what I am.’

  ‘You’ll figure it out,’ Olivia replied softly. ‘You can put whatever label you want on it Elias, but power, true power is neither black nor white, good or evil. It is the person that takes it to a light or dark place. Sure, magic can, and has been used to do some pretty awful things but it’s also been used for great good.’

  ‘Again, that’s not me.’

  ‘I think you’re wrong about that,’ she smiled. ‘You’ll never be Mother Teresa…’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Never mind,’ she shook her head. ‘Look, back in Salem you were on the right track when you founded the Veritas.’

  ‘And look how that turned out,’ Elias hissed bitterly.

  ‘I know how hard that must’ve been for you. To create something from a desire to do good and to have it stolen from you and corrupted into something vile. But put aside how it ended and what it has become. When you first founded it, it was to protect the innocents, to protect people of magical descent. Your first instinct was to protect. Believe me, you have it in you to help so many, to do good. How can that be evil?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Elias, let me help you,’ Olivia offered sincerely.

  ‘So I’ll feel obliged to help you retrieve the Hourglass I suppose?’

  ‘God, you’re so cynical,’ Olivia sighed. ‘No Elias, forget the Hourglass. You’ve done your part, you led us to it, that’s where your involvement ends. Scarlett and I can retrieve it ourselves; we don’t need you for that. What I’m offering has no strings attached.’

  ‘Then why?’ he frowned.

  ‘Because I want to help you,’ she replied, ‘because we’re family.’

  Olivia leaned back in her seat and looked up as Eve appeared at their table, her hair concealed beneath her shabby head scarf and her eyes fixed firmly down as she slid two plates onto the table in front of them.

  Elias reached for his plate and as he did his fingers accidently brushed Eve’s. A static shock jolted up his arm, so sharp it almost made his hair stand on end. She must have felt it too as her wide eyed, startled gaze snapped to his.

  Elias stared, he’d never seen eyes that color before, deep aquamarine framed by sooty lashes. For a moment he had the strangest sensation in his belly, like he’d stepped down and missed a step. Then Olivia reached out and touched the woman’s arm and drew her attention, breaking their locked gaze.

  He watched in fascination as the woman turned to Olivia who thanked her, but also made a strange gesture with her hand. The woman moved her own hands in a completely different gesture then turned and hurried away, giving him one last puzzled look before disappearing through a private doorway.

  ‘Who is she?’ the words were out before he’d even realized he’d opened his mouth.

  ‘That’s Eve,’ Olivia picked up her slightly bent fork and dented knife. ‘She works here. She’s a servant of some sort.’

  ‘What was all that about?’ he aske
d curiously, ‘waving your hands about?’

  ‘Oh,’ Olivia cut her potato and raised a small bite to her mouth, ‘sign language. Eve is deaf; she communicates by hand gestures.’

  ‘Is she?’ Elias murmured as Olivia began to eat her meal, but his attention was fixed on the door the woman had disappeared through.

  13

  ‘Well, don’t yer look fine and dandy,’ Ulysses grinned, ‘but y’ll likely catch a cold on yer face.’

  Elias reached up and ran his hand over his freshly shaved jaw; it felt strange after months of coarse ragged hair. Despite his face feeling like it had been peeled, he had to admit he felt cleaner, fresher. His almost black hair was also neatly cut and combed, and he was wearing a new suit.

  ‘Seemed like time to stop feeling sorry for myself,’ Elias admitted as he crossed the room toward the huge man and slid onto the bench opposite him, glancing at the ginger cat who was sitting on the table between them, eyeing him suspiciously.

  ‘Yer movin’ on then?’ Ulysses looked up as he stroked Toad softly.

  Elias nodded, finding himself feeling strangely reluctant to leave the gentle man in front of him.

  ‘I wanted to say goodbye, and to thank you,’ Elias spoke quietly. ‘I was in a bad place when you found me, and I just wanted you to know I appreciated you taking me in. You’re a good man Ulysses Brown.’

  Ulysses flushed in embarrassment.

  ‘Ah was nothin’,’ he shook his head.

  ‘Yes, it was,’ Elias replied, ‘it was a great deal of something.’

  Ulysses sat quietly as he studied Elias who seemed to have a quiet air of melancholy about him.

  ‘Yer looks like y’got a case of the morbs,’ Ulysses spoke over the sound of Toad’s rumbling purr. ‘Got somethin’ on yer mind?’

  ‘No,’ Elias shook his head.

  ‘Y’know I get a lot of people passin’ through ’ere, I know the look when I sees it.’

  ‘What look?’

  ‘Ye’ve got the look of someone who’s about to find trouble,’ Ulysses replied pointedly.