by Amir Lane
Oh, this was not good. He was so screwed.
“Zven! Zven, we have to leave.”
He scrambled to his feet, knife clenched in his fist. He grabbed for his bag and textbook, but a firm hand hard on his arm stopped him. What—? There was nothing, nobody there, but the grip tightened until his fingers started to tingle. It was cold, too, cold enough to actually burn. He tried to wrench his arm back from whatever was holding him but it was too strong. Something grabbed his other arm, holding him in place, and he almost dropped the knife.
“Zven!”
Jerking his head back and forth, he found Zven in the same position. Ice ran through Ekkehardt’s stomach as he watched Zven struggle against the spirits.
Something cold, another phantom hand, grabbed at his ankle. He pulled his foot out of the way and stomped down on it. The thick air cleared under his weight and it gave him enough momentum to free one of his arms. He released the switchblade and rammed it into the spirit holding his other arm. The temperature to his left dropped rapidly and the right side of his body felt like it had frostbite.
In front of him, Zven shoved one of the spirits off him and rammed his fist into one of the other’s face. Ekkehardt’s own knuckles stung from the impact. Shit, he didn’t have much time. He had to get rid of these bastards before they killed both of them.
But how the hell was he going to do that without his notes?
“When in doubt, improvise,” he said with a nervous exhale.
Was this even something he could improvise? Each sigil meant something different. He might have been able to remember one of two — and maybe even draw them in blood under pressure — but would they work if they were off? Or if they were just entirely made up? The whole thing about blood magic was the blood, wasn’t it? Hypothetically, given that he was a Necromancer, anything he did with his blood should do something.
Hypothetically.
Well, all hypotheses needed to be tested. Now was as good a time as any for this one. It wasn’t as if he had any other choice.
By now, he knew exactly where the scar from the first cut in his arm was. He lined the knife up and cut. It should have hurt, but he was pretty sure he’d lost feeling in that area by now. He did feel the blood pouring over his skin, though. He cradled his arm against his chest as if it would keep the blood in place. It would have been nice if he’d thought of bringing a bowl like he had last time. It probably would have disappeared, too.
“Okay, okay think. Just try to remember them, just— Dammit, Ekkehardt, focus!”
Every time he tried to think, a sharp pain ran up the back of his skull. Was it him or was it Zven? He was starting to understand what Zven had said about them being bonded. If either of them failed, they were both in trouble. Zven was doing his share but Ekkehardt was just standing there like a moron.
“Come on, you dumbass!”
It was much harder to draw with his blood while it was dripping from his arm than it was to do it from a jar but he didn’t exactly have a whole lot of options. Just letting it drip onto the dirt wasn’t precise enough. The pattern barely looked like anything. He couldn’t even manage a circle this way. He dropped to his knees and started smudging the blood around into a circle. Now what went inside it? He could picture it just at the back of his mind but when he tried to focus on it, it disappeared.
Crap.
‘Improvise, improvise. Sulphuric acid? Sulphuric acid.’
He wiped his hand against his arm to get some blood on it and used it to draw the molecular structure. Sulphur double bonded to two separate oxygens, and two separate hydroxides. Two H, one S, four O. Perfect. He leaned back on his heels and looked for something to happen. At first, nothing.
“Fuck! Fucking fuck f—”
Ekkehardt cut himself off with a scream. His bloody hand was burning, but not in any way it had before. It was like fire and ice eating through his skin at the same time, stronger and worse than anything he had ever felt before. It gnawed his nerves raw and tore through his tissue until it reached his bones. The agony began in his fingertips and spread through his hand, past his wrist, and up his arm.
His screams travelled over his sandpapered throat. He fell back and held his arm as far away from himself as possible, as if he could hold the acid eating through him away. It reached the pin holding one of the bones in his arm together, and he remembered, too late, that sulphuric acid did not react well with metal.
The explosion should have torn him to pieces. It certainly felt like it did. He shouldn’t have been alive after that. He grabbed at his arm and found no evidence of the burns or the explosion. What in fuck’s name—?
A second explosion shook the sky in front of him. His bones rattled, and his teeth nearly fell out of his jaw.
“Zven!”
He pushed himself to his feet and collapsed in on himself. He screamed Zven’s name again. It was too late, though. He’d done this. He’d done this and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Why the hell had he started with sulphuric acid? It wasn’t supposed to do anything. It definitely wasn’t supposed to eat his damn arm. He’d just tried the first thing that came to mind!
When the fire died, there was nothing there but three women on the far side of Zven’s open grave. Their cloaks billowed in the wind. It was the same three women he’d seen after getting shot. The eye resting in the middle one’s open palm stared at him.
“Είναι ώρα.”
“Είναι ώρα.”
“Είναι ώρα.”
Ekkehardt shook his head in confusion. He still didn’t speak Greek, and he still didn’t know what the hell they were saying. It wasn’t what they’d said last time. So what was it, then?
“Ekkehardt!”
Ekkehardt whirled around. It felt like ages since he’d heard that voice in real life, but he’d recognize it anywhere.
“Zven?”
He spun until he was facing the women again, trying to find the source of the sound over the rushing wind. He almost missed it.
Zven’s translucent form was fighting being dragged back towards his grave. He screamed and clawed at the ground, raising the dirt with his fingers.
“Ekkehardt!”
Sharp pain ran through Ekkehardt’s chest and up the back of his skull. He raked his nails over the back of his head in a feeble attempt to relieve some of the pressure. It spread through his temples and sinuses, worse than the worst migraine he’d ever had.
“Ekkehardt!”
The cries of his name were becoming more desperate. He couldn’t keep ignoring them. The pain made him dizzy and light-headed, but Zven needed him. Zven needed him to focus past his skull being split in two and do something. He reached out blindly until he grabbed something hot and semi-solid. He squinted through the flying dirt at Zven’s translucent body. For the first time since they had met two years ago, Ekkehardt saw fear on his face. Not just fear, but complete and abject terror.
“Don’t let go of me! Ekkehardt, please don’t let me go!”
“Never! I’m never letting you go again!”
Ekkehardt’s feet began to slip beneath him. Despite being a spirit, Zven was surprisingly heavy, and keeping them both from being pulled into the hole was becoming more and more difficult. The women, the Fates, were stronger than he was. He couldn’t fight them.
“I can’t do this!” Ekkehardt shouted.
“You have to!”
“I can’t!”
Zven’s hand slipped. His nails burned lines into Ekkehardt’s arm. Even holding onto Zven’s arms with both hands and digging his heels into the dirt, Ekkehardt couldn’t stop them from being dragged across the ground. The sigil carved into his arm burned worse than the spots where Zven was grabbing on to him. It was somehow almost worse than the acid.
Ekkehardt wasn’t going to lose him again. Not twice in one frigging lifetime. Those bitches weren’t going to get him, either of them. He ground his teeth together and screamed through him. His right foot was almost too heavy to
lift, but he managed to take a step back without losing his footing. Good. Next foot. He took another step. And another. And another, dragging himself farther and farther away from the women beckoning him towards them.
“No!” he shouted.
The spirits were back, though he couldn’t tell if they were the same ones from before or not.
“Είναι ώρα.”
“Είναι ώρα.”
“Είναι ώρα.”
The women’s voices carried over the wind and right into his soul. His muscles spasmed. His legs almost buckled. He ground his teeth together and braced himself.
“I said no!”
The fire in his veins was back. It didn’t hurt this time. No, this time, it felt good. It felt like power. The spirits were still swarming, forming a circle around him and Zven, shielding him from the women. He pulled Zven up and stood at full height. Through the spirits, he could see the women watching.
He stepped towards them. He could feel the heat of Zven’s spirit following him, almost touching him. The swarm parted for him.
The grave was so much larger than he remembered. The women looked more like they were standing across a canyon rather than a hole. Still, they were close enough that he could see the individual wrinkles. They were so… small. Most people were smaller than Ekkehardt, but not this small. He didn’t think they were even five feet tall and yet, they seemed to take up so much space. There was an authority that radiated off them that made him feel like the small one. He swallowed and tried to stare them down. He hoped to God he looked more confident than he felt.
“I want you to leave us alone,” he said with every ounce of authority he could muster.
They didn’t respond. The eye continued to watch him.
“You aren’t taking him.”
The words were louder, firmer this time.
They shifted in front of him. In the hands of the one furthest to his right formed a series of threads. She handed one of the threads to the one in the middle, who then passed it to the one on the left. It took Ekkehardt a moment too long to realize that it was his thread — his life — that they were holding.
“Zven,” he said, anxiety rising in his throat, “Zven get it from them.”
Zven rushed towards them without hesitation. They didn’t even look up. The one on the left simply raised her hand, and Zven vanished like a candle being blown out while Ekkehardt had the sudden feeling of being hit like a truck. His body slammed against the ground, leaving him momentarily disoriented. Zven was back at his side.
“Okay,” he grunted. “Somebody needs to write that down.”
Now wasn’t the time for sarcasm. They still had his thread. If they cut it… According to his Uncle Godfrey’s stories, he would die.
The woman on the right was holding scissors to the thread, but she wasn’t cutting it. She said something that he didn’t catch. The one next to her replied. What were they talking about? About him? About whether or not they were going to let him live? That wasn’t fucking up to them. He had a degree to finish and parents to take care of and a spirit to… and a spirit. He had a life and he wasn’t about to let three no-longer-relevant God-figures that he didn’t even fucking believe in take it from him.
“I want that thread,” he growled, pushing himself back up.
Again, Zven rushed them, fire forming in his hands this time. The third woman lifted her hand again. This time, Ekkehardt was ready. At least, he hoped he was.
He stuck his fingers in the still-bleeding wound and started drawing on the dirt again. This one he remembered. Another circle. A line splitting it in two, a curved S cutting through it diagonally. A drop of blood in each empty corner and in each loop of the S. The spirits swarmed again, but this time around the women. It was actually working. He let out a breathless laugh. It was actually working.
Except the women still seemed unphazed. Didn’t they see the mirages? Didn’t they feel them?
The woman in the middle waved the hand not holding the eye and said something in Greek. The other two chimed responses. He didn’t know what they said or what it meant, and he didn’t care as long as it wasn’t a command to cut the thread or take Zven back.
“That thread is mine. You can’t cut it.”
Neither spoke, but the one in the middle pulled the hood of her cloak down. The sight of her sewn-shut eyelids made Ekkehardt’s skin tighten over his muscles.
“Zven,” he said hoarsely.
Zven’s body swirled with fire. Either the heat or the exertion or both made Ekkehardt’s heart race harder and faster than it ever had before. He could hear it, a rhythmic pounding in his ears. The pain radiated through his chest and back and arms and jaw. He wasn’t going to die. He wasn’t going to die. He wasn’t. The flames took over Zven’s body, leaving no sign of him. Ekkehardt clenched his hand into a fist and pulled it towards himself. With it, the spirits moved in around the women. It was only a few seconds before they were forced back.
They were surrounding him now. Dozens, hundreds, more than he had ever seen before closed in on him. It felt like every person ever killed in Berlin was crushing his ribs and he couldn’t tell if his vision was being obstructed or just blurring. The effect was the same. He couldn’t see. At first, not clearly. Then, not at all. He doubled over, though he felt he should have been doing the opposite to get enough air into his lungs. Frustrated tears smudged the dirt on his face.
“No!”
He wasn’t sure if it came from his mouth or Zven’s. The only thing he was sure of was that he felt hot and the women were still staring at him. He tried to scream the word again. All that came out was a hoarse, guttural scream of rage. Even though his eyes were squeezed shut, he could still see Zven, and he could still see the spirits, and he could still see the women. They all had their hoods down now, and they were passing the eye around. He was never going to get that out of his head, was he? Provided he lived through this night, that was.
He wasn’t so sure he would anymore.
23
We’re dead, aren’t we?” Ekkehardt asked.
He sat at the tiny kitchen table that was barely big enough for himself. If he reached out, he could touch the wall with his foot. Zven was cooking and humming. Ekkehardt could smell the eggs and coffee, honest to God. Somehow, Zven could always make the garbage coffee they had in the East taste somewhat decent. This felt real. More real than the past few months felt. He knew he was probably dead, but he felt so alive.
“Well, I’m still dead. Toast?” Zven said.
“Uh, yes. Please.”
Zven rifled through the cabinets.
“You got those biscuits I like. I didn’t think you would buy them anymore.”
“What happened to me?”
He didn’t get an answer right away. Zven occupied himself by turning on the oven and cutting a few slices of bread.
“Zven.”
“You had a heart attack.”
“So, I am dead.”
“Did I say you’re dead?”
“You didn’t say that I’m not.”
Zven flashed him a grin over his shoulder.
“You’re not,” he said. “You’re unconscious. You had a heart attack, and you blacked out. You’re still there, in the graveyard. You’re going to wake up, alive but weak. And Liese is going to punch you for taking her car again to do something stupid.”
“I didn’t know you saw futures, too.”
“No, I just know her.” Zven set the scrambled eggs and toast in front of him. “They gave you another chance.”
“Why?”
Did that make this his second or third chance? He wasn’t sure if the first one counted, or if they’d never had any intention of letting him die when he’d been shot.
“Because you’re interesting. You’re powerful, Ekkehardt Schneider. Enough people can see spirits, but not many can control them. Most people don’t survive becoming a Necromancer.”
“I almost didn’t,” he pointed out.
> “You did, though. And you brought me back.”
“You were already here.”
Zven smiled.
“I wasn’t. I was somewhere… dark and cold and alone. You pulled me back from there. It was all you. Whatever you have, it’s in your blood. I knew when I met you that you were something else.”
“Did you know? About— About any of this?”
“If you were going to become a Necromancer? No, I had no idea. I just knew you had the potential to be one of us. I didn’t know in what way. I never could have imagined that it would be anything like this.”
Ekkehardt was quiet. The toast tasted real. It was even slightly overdone, the way Zven’s toast always was. The eggs were perfect, though. He usually didn’t like eggs, but he never complained when Zven made them. The coffee still had a burnt aftertaste, but that was the coffee. Cheap crap.
“My aunt was a Necromancer, too. And my great-great… great grandmother was like Liese.”
“A Seer.”
“Oracle, I think.”
Zven waved his hand dismissively.
“Same thing, different mythos,” he said. “But you see? You were always going to be something. Magic usually runs in the family.”
“I think I got the short end of the stick.”
Zven let out a long sigh and stared down into his coffee cup. He didn’t drink, though, just watched the steam rise.
“I want you to do something for me.”
Ekkehardt didn’t hesitate.
“Anything.”
“I want you to leave East Germany.”
“I know.”
“I mean it, Ekkehardt. Go to America. Or, better, go to Canada. I hear the Canadians are less trigger-happy.”
Ekkehardt laughed. He’d heard that, too. That said, he’d also heard awful things about both countries. It was hard to know what was true and what was propaganda. But it couldn’t be all bad. Not even East Germany was all bad.