Dark Heritage Trilogy

by Hoffman, Samantha

  “Thanks,” I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “I’m just not used to all of this yet.”

  “I know, and I told her that she shouldn’t be mean to you. She was new to all of this once before too. She should have known better.”

  Tanya led me down a series of halls until we got a large steel door. When I put my hand out to touch it, my fingertips burned at the freezing coldness the door exuded. I hastily pulled my fingers away and when Tanya opened the door, I could see my breath exhale in a cloud of mist. “Where are we?”

  “The freezer room. It’s for necromancers.” She looked uncertain and a little frightened. Her reaction to the room was not helping my nerves any and I felt my heart begin to race. My palms were suddenly clammy, and I wiped them dry on my jeans. “Well, your teacher will be waiting for you in there. Good luck,” Tanya said, gripping my shoulder. “If you need anything, just ask around for me. Finn should probably know where I am, and he can point you in the right direction.”

  I looked over my shoulder and spotted him just down the hall a ways, flirting with the redheaded girl from earlier. Shaking my head, I walked into the freezer room, and was not surprised to find that it was almost like walking into a walk-in freezer at a restaurant. The frigid temperature caused bumps to rise all over my skin, and I rubbed my arms, trying to bring some warmth back into them. Fighting the chattering of my teeth, I looked around the nearly empty freezer room, and it suddenly dawned on me.

  It’s a morgue…

  As I took in the rows of closed doors that would be holding dead bodies, a scream started to build in the back of my throat. Oh, god! What the hell is wrong with these people? I backed quickly away from the metal doors in the wall, and I tripped over a stool, going down hard on one elbow. After only a few seconds, I was back on my feet and racing for the exit.

  I don’t care what the Council said; I’m leaving and I’m doing it now!

  A hand clamped down on my arm, and I gave up trying to hold in the scream. My loud shrieks echoed off the walls, and I twisted and turned, trying to pull away from whoever was about to murder me in a freezer full of dead people. The hand shook me gently, and everything pulled slowly back into focus.

  Two dark green eyes with purple circles under them stared worriedly at me from beneath thin black eyebrows. It was just a woman a few years older than me, and my heart started to slow and return to normal as I took in the rest of her features. She had long black hair that fell into her face, hiding prominent cheekbones, full pouty lips, and a nose that was on the larger side.

  “I’m sorry,” she said politely. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you alright?”

  I took a minute to catch my breath, and she didn’t rush me. Finally, I nodded my head. “Yeah, I’m alright, but I need to get out of here. It’s a morgue!”

  “Relax. Take a deep breath. There are no human bodies in this room, I promise. Those cubbies only hold recently deceased dogs and other small animals. They’re used to help train new necromancers, because it’s safer and easier than trying to get them to raise a human body. Plus it tends to freak them out less.”

  My eyes found the nearest cubby, and I couldn’t help but picturing some dead dog that probably had its intestines hanging out, and I shuddered. “There are seriously dead animals in those cupboards? Don’t they dislike being forced back into their bodies? Don’t you feel bad about keeping them here to play with?”

  “It’s not playing,” she said defensively. “They don’t feel pain, and most of the time they don’t even understand what’s happening to them.”

  “Most of the time? So there’s a chance that some poor dog you raise from the dead is going to realize what’s happening to it? Do those ones feel pain? How do you even know they don’t feel anything? Maybe they do and you just don’t know it!”

  She put her hands up to stop me. “I know, because I’ve spoken to ghosts before. Any ghost is incapable of feeling pain, including the ghosts of animals.”

  “But you can’t talk to animals,” I pointed out. “How do you know the same rules apply to them? You could be wrong, and you could be torturing these animals by putting them back into their bodies. Would you want someone playing with your spirit like that?”

  She looked at me, completely unruffled by my outburst. “It doesn’t hurt them. I’ve been doing this for longer than you. If you had as much experience as me, you’d know I’m not making this up. Now, do you mind if I introduce myself? Or are you going to keep arguing with your teacher?”

  Finally, I realized that this was the first time I’d really spoken to another necromancer, other than Nancy Puckett. Nancy didn’t look like a necromancer though, with her blonde hair, gray eyes, and yellow sundress. This woman looked much more like what a necromancer should be: black hair, serious eyes with dark circles under them. She was also dressed entirely in black, complete with black nail polish on her fingers.

  “Do most necromancers look like you and I do?” I asked, noting that we had the same black hair and dark green eyes. The only differences between us were slight: I had noticeable dimples, she didn’t. I had shorter black hair, she didn’t. I had a small, curved nose, and she didn’t. but I shared the same basic hair and eye color, and I too had the dark purple circles under my eyes, no matter how much sleep I managed to get.

  She nodded. “Most of us have dark hair and dark eyes, though that’s not always the case. You and I have green eyes, but most have dark brown eyes, and sometimes they even turn black.”

  “What do you mean turn black? Eyes don’t just change color.”

  “Ours can. Some of us have a stronger affinity for death than others. Some weaker necromancers can only see the dead; they can’t actually communicate with them or raise them. Others are more powerful, and can actually raise an entire army of the undead. Some things we do, like raising an army, draws on our inner power. We gradually take on the characteristics of the dead after using so much power for so long. We get hollow-looking eyes, shambling gaits, pallid and sunken skin, and a foul smelling odor. Power-hungry necromancers often look like death themselves.”

  I shuddered. “The Council thnks I’m trying to raise an army of the undead. If I did, would that happen to me?”

  She nodded. “You’d take on a more grotesque apparance that would be irriversible. Just don’t raise an army, and you’ll never look like a living corpse. Now, stay here. I’ll be right back, and we can begin your first lesson.”

  She left me sitting on a small stool in the middle of the freezer room, and I rubbed my arms nervously. There were raised bumps there, reminding me of how cold this room was. When I exhaled a nervous breath, it swirled in front of my eyes in the form of mist. I’m about to try and raise the body of a deceased animal. What is wrong with these people?

  Chapter Eleven

  When she came back, she was holding a small paper bag in her hands, and I couldn’t help but flinch at the sight of it. I had no idea what was inside of it, and I didn’t actually want to find out. But she set the bag gently down on the table nearby, and pulled her stool over. “Come and sit with me. We have a lot to get through today.”

  I scooted over to the table and looked at her. “I don’t even know your name yet.”

  “It’s Annette, but you can call me Annie.” She reached her hand into the brown paper bag and pulled out the body of a white dove. She set it down on the table in front of me, and I felt myself begin to pull away from her. “Alright Veronica, I want you to focus. Use the power deep inside of you, and search for the dove.”

  “But the dove is sitting right here,” I said, motioning to it. Is she crazy?

  Annie frowned and rolled her eyes. “I know that,” she said impatiently. “Search for the dove’s soul. I want you to find it and summon it back to this side of life. Force it to rejoin with the dove’s body; this’ll make it alive once more.”

  I didn’t want to do it. It was wrong and creepy on so many levels, but I knew that I was not leaving this compound unti
l they were sure I was safe. So I took a deep, calming breath, and searched for this power that supposedly resided inside of me.

  I’d never searched for any power before, and I wasn’t sure how to do it, or what that power even felt like. “I’m not getting anything. How am I supposed to do this? You can’t just toss me overboard and hope I can swim.”

  “Just keep looking,” Annie softly urged. “It’s there inside of you, deep down. I know, because I can sense it from across the compound.” What she said both startled and frightened me. “Don’t lose your focus. Just keep looking. You’ll know when you find it.”

  She was right. A few minutes of searching went by, and I finally found what I was looking for. It was hidden beneath my worries and insecurities, but it was there. Powerful, pulsing, and vibrant. I saw it in my mind as a black ball of energy that brightened when I called to it. It pulsated and moved toward my fingertips almost like shadowy tendrils, and for a moment, I was scared of it and what I might be capable of.

  “You’ve found it. Remember the path you took to reach it. You’ll need to know it if you want to call forth that energy inside of you.”

  “Why do I need it?”

  “Well, you can’t just tell a dead body to wake up and start walking around,” she said. “You have to use that energy to bind the spirit back to the body. This’ll reanimate it for a short time, and because you’ve used your power to accomplish this, the soul will obey you and only you until you release it. Or if I were to overpower you and switch its allegiance.”

  “You make it sound like slavery,” I said, disgusted with my power.

  “It is, in a way. Though this gift can also be used for good. Don’t forget that. Necromancers have brought the victims of violent crimes back to life, and we’ve helped solve murders that way. We offer the victim a sense of closure while also preventing something horrible from happening to another person. We can do good, Veronica.”

  “Ronnie,” I said, correcting her this time. “Only my mother ever called me Veronica. I didn’t wanna correct the Council, but I can’t stand being called by my full name. If I’m going to be here for a while, which the Council seems to think I will be, I’d like to be called something that’s familiar to me.”

  She nodded her head. “I understand. Now, Ronnie, I want you to reach inside of yourself for this power, and I want you to focus it on the dove. You should feel a slight humming in your body; that means you’re doing it right. When you accomplish this, you’ll be able to feel a connection with the dove’s departed soul, and you can call it back. I’ll tell you what to do next when you get there.”

  I set my feet, rolled my shoulders, and dove back down into myself, searching again for this ball of energy. I found it faster than I did before, and it pulsed and grew. Like Annie said, I did feel humming in my veins, filling me with power, and I called to it.

  “Good. Now think about the dove, picture it in your mind, and focus on its energy. Call its spirit back into existence.”

  I closed my eyes and began thinking about the dove. I pictured it flying, cooing, eating, and anything else it might do. Slowly, a picture began to form in my mind, fading in from nothing. The picture became clearer with each passing second, and I finally realized it was the dove lying on the table across from me.

  It’s small, beady eyes stared into mine. “Ronnie, I want you to force the dove’s spirit back into the body. Just, picture the spirit, and give it a mental shove. The spirit will merge with the body, reanimating it.”

  I did as Annie told me, shoving the spirit, but I wasn’t sure if anything was actually working. A few minutes went by, and I started to fidget nervously. The sooner I can do this, the sooner I can leave this place. You can do this. Concentrate! Just push harder. Do this!

  “Ronnie, stop!”

  My eyes opened, broken from my concentration, and what I saw revolted me. The dove was slowly and clumsily flapping its wings, trying to get in the air, but it wasn’t the only thing in the room that was moving. From my seat on the stool, I could clearly hear the pounding that was coming from every single cubby in the freezer room. Almost three dozen cubbies in total and each of them had something moving around inside.

  They banged against the doors, and I jumped off my stool. It clattered against the ground, adding to all of the pandemonium, and I looked at Annie. “What happened?” She was staring at me with a mixture of surprise and horror, and it gave me a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Annie? What’s wrong?”

  “You raised them all. All thirty of them. At the same time. I’ve never seen anything like this before. You must have massive amounts of power hidden away inside of you. Ronnie, things just got very serious for you. I’ll have to inform the Council of this matter. I’m sorry.” She looked freaked out, and she even backed away from me. “I think you should go. Don’t worry about the animals; I’ll take care of them for you. Just go.”

  I turned and bolted for the nearest exit, nearly trampling Tanya in the process.

  *****

  “You did what?” Ezra asked, staring at me in awe.

  “I accidentally raised every animal in the freezer room,” I said miserably. “I’m even more of a freak than the Council thought.” I looked at Tanya. “What do you think will happen to me now?”

  She sighed and her wings drooped sadly. “I’m sorry, Ronnie, but I think the Council will insist on keeping you here for a very long time.”

  “That’s alright,” I said quietly. I’d done some heaving thinking in the hour since my freezer room incident, and I’d come to the same conclusion as the Council. I was too dangerous to let go now. If I could accidentally raise thirty or more animals today, what was to stop me from accidentally raising an entire graveyard? “I wanna stay now. It’ll be safest for everyone else if I’m locked up in here.”

  “You won’t be locked up forever. The Council just wants to keep you here until you get your powers under control. That might not take too long. You’ll see,” Tanya said, playing nervously with her long blonde hair. Her eyes, so bright and normally reassuring, were looking at anything but me, and I got the feeling that she didn’t actually believe what she’d just said.

  Ezra took over. “Listen, Ronnie, we all have power that we can’t always control. Any half-demon would be the first person to tell you that. There’s a lot of power inside of me, and every day is a fight for control. It’s hard at first, but it’ll get easier with time. You’ll learn to control this power, and use it for good.”

  I sighed. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I didn’t expect you to. At least, not yet. With time, you will, and you’ll see that living this kind of life isn’t so bad, especially if you have other supernaturals to help you along the way.”

  “Right. If you guys don’t mind, I’m going to find my room and I’m gonna go lie down. The last forty-eight hours have just been…terrible. I really need some rest.” I got to my feet and Tanya waved goodbye as I left the waiting room.

  Finn followed me out into the hall, acting as my ever present shadow, and I turned on him. “I’m not going to just make a mad dash for the nearest exit. You don’t have to follow me so closely!”

  He grinned. “You couldn’t get by me if you tried, but I wasn’t actually worried about you making a run for it. I just wanted to tell you that they’re right. Things do get easier with time. Every one of us has been where you are at one point or another.”

  I looked at him, surprised. “Are you actually being nice to me?”

  He scoffed, and his eyes hardened, but I wondered if it was just for show. “Of course not. Ezra and Tanya are my friends, and I don’t want to see them get hurt because you’re a ticking time bomb.”

  He turned around and left me alone in the hall. My bed called to me, and I found the second door down from me, opened it, and slipped inside. There was a bag of clothes on the edge of my bed, which I recognized as my clothing from home, and I sifted through the contents. Pulling out a pair of purple pajama bottoms and
a tank top, I dressed in the dark, and crawled into bed.

  Chapter Twelve

  The hard-packed dirt crunched beneath my feet. In the lonely darkness of the cemetery, each twig that snapped sounded like a gun going off. Every small sound made me pause, and I rethought my decision to set foot in the graveyard filled with dead and decomposing bodies.

  When I reached the exact center of the graveyard, I reached into my shirt, and came away with a purple pendant that hung from a silver chain. I lifted it from my head and it swung before my eyes, catching the subtle light from the full moon that hung high in the dark sky above me. With just one spoken word, the pendant began to glow a brilliant silver color, and it captured my attention, shoving every thought from my mind but one.

  Slowly, I closed my eyes and began.

  Searching deep inside myself, I found the glowing ball of power and energy inside of me, and I called out to it, begging it to come forward. The power quickly complied and it began to take over my body, controlling my every movement. I was helpless to fight it, but that didn’t matter, because I wouldn’t want to fight it. This was the price of my power, and I was more than willing to pay it.

  The ground began to quake beneath my feet, and the soil around me began to shift. Fingers poked through the surface, scrabbling for a grip to pull themselves up. Slowly but surely, corpse after corpse began to rise from the ground, shambling around on unsteady feet. Dozens of recently deceased men and women fell into line, making their way to where I stood.

  They fell to their knees before me, bowing their heads low to the ground. Some of them looked more useful than others, but they all looked at me with rapt attention, almost as if I was their goddess and they were made to worship me. They obediently awaited my orders. They were willing to do whatever it was that I asked of them, without question, without hesitation, and without a care in the world.

  They felt no pain.

  They felt no emotion.

  They felt nothing.

  They were my slaves and with them, I would rule the world, punishing all those that stood against me. All would perish, and I would rule the world with death, despair, and the threat of eternal servitude like the army of mindless zombies that stood behind me. None would oppose me.