The Enterprise of Death

by Jesse Bullington

  “Only way to thwart him?” The hope he had fostered in her quickly felt the pinch of frost. “Of course you don’t know another way, otherwise my predecessor, this Walther, would not have been possessed. But obviously he was.”

  “Obvious now,” said Carandini. “The boy stood a decent chance, to hear Breanne tell it.”

  “But you won’t let me hear Breanne tell it.”

  “No.”

  “What did she do for him? How did she deal with him, as you said?”

  “The issue,” Carandini sniffed, “is that if you die it would probably thwart him, indeed, it is likely the only way to thwart him, but that pesky ward prevents us from counseling such a course, or allowing you to consider it. Breanne was forced to perform surgery on Walther when it became evident he intended to kill himself upon leaving our company.”

  “Surgery?” Awa glanced nervously at the array of too-bright metal tools covering the tables. “What kind of surgery would prevent him from, ah, doing that?”

  Carandini tapped his head again. “Cut him off from thinking about most things, other than eating and keeping warm. Unfortunately that route didn’t work, otherwise I’d already be up to my wrists in your skull. Again, these abominable compulsions—it must have gotten the boy killed, or whatever you want to call what your tutor does when he steals your body, and so that avenue is denied me.”

  “How would, would hurting his brain keep him safe?!” Awa demanded. “What kind of solution is that?”

  “A pretty good one.” Carandini crossed his arms. “It kept him from doing himself harm, which was the point in the first place, and no doubt caused some difficulties for your tutor upon taking over the body—we had hoped that if he did manage to possess Walther he would be in the same bestial position as the boy, but apparently the old breather managed to overcome the deficit of reasoning long enough to trap some traveler or another and eat their brain. That’s how you lot repair your physical injuries, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Awa sighed. Why had she even allowed Chloé to come along in the first place—so she could watch Awa become possessed, or maybe help her kill herself ? So she would be close to Awa when her body was stolen by an utter bastard with a predilection for dead flesh? What the hell was wrong with her?

  “The surgery wasn’t the only precaution.” Carandini had taken up a pair of pliers and was wresting the darts out of his breast. He dropped the bloody quarrels on a metal plate to punctuate his sentences. “Breanne found a mountain peak riddled with thick, unbroken veins of iron. Those natural deposits, when combined with a great deal of time and energy and our own arcane wards, would allow an ethereal spirit to pass through but prevent the necromancer from leaving once he bonded with the flesh of his pupil. He would have been imprisoned there upon possessing Walther, yet somehow you fell within his grasp and he manipulated you into doing exactly what all your predecessors had done—studying his arts to prepare your body, then freeing his spirit from the aged mortal shell after he cursed you. And all without ever escaping the mountaintop! A little impressive, I must admit.”

  “So you took the apprentice to the mountaintop and left him there? How was that different from killing him, and how could you if the ward—”

  “It was the only way, and obviously Walther had a chance or we wouldn’t have been able to leave him there. Initially Breanne wanted to dump him on some empty island or in the middle of a desert, where the boy could live just long enough to become possessed and then perish, but she couldn’t, the ward wouldn’t let her. Compulsions compulsions compulsions. I didn’t want to let you in, I didn’t, I wanted to lock the door and leave you to fend for yourself, but next thing I know I’m ushering you downstairs, giving you the grand tour, so why don’t you tell me what it is I can do for you and be off.” Carandini stood and walked along the benches toward a metal door set at the end of the hall.

  “I need the wits that are leaking into me, your wits, to find a way to stay alive,” said Awa, brightening. “Why don’t I stay here, and you and your collective can study me without killing me, and then when he comes we’ll all have figured out something together!”

  “Out of the question,” said Carandini, opening the iron door. “We would succeed, I presume, in removing your ward if we were to examine you, which would allow us to kill you, which is why I can’t allow you to stay.”

  “Well don’t, then!” Awa followed him. “Why be so nasty to me? Why not make a friend, form an alliance, and defeat the necromancer together! You don’t have to kill me once the ward is removed!”

  “I didn’t say we could remove it, just that we might. Dark.” All the globes in the laboratory winked out. “Light.”

  The rear wall of the new room lit up, thousands of luminescent insects squirming across it, pale green light spilling out over a spacious, comfortable stone chamber. The chairs and bed looked as soft as the floor and walls were hard, and Carandini ushered her to sit as he went to a tasteful wooden cabinet and fetched a bottle. Awa settled into the chair, and though she told herself she would not display anything of the sort, a happy sigh involuntarily left her lips. Her host set a beautiful yellow glass bottle on a small table beside her chair then sat opposite her in the seat’s twin.

  “If you stay here you will die,” said Carandini wearily, rubbing his temples. “That’s obvious. I don’t particularly wish to help you but it seems I must do something or you will die, which I am compelled to prevent. So what next?”

  “I don’t know,” said Awa, picking up the bottle. “Is this wine?”

  “Yes,” said Carandini, and, waving his hand, two glasses appeared on the table beside her, sparkling quartz goblets that blazed with the light of the wall. “Pour me one, too, if you please, might as well enjoy being foolish for a night.”

  “I drank with a skeleton before,” said Awa. “But he really couldn’t keep it in, of course, and it couldn’t affect him. I suppose you are different?”

  “I am.” Carandini winced.

  “Tell me about your type, about your differences from the undead I am familiar with,” said Awa as she filled his glass. As soon as she finished it floated off the table and drifted over to his languid fingers.

  “We require blood to stay alive,” said Carandini. “As you will eat a finger to replace a missing digit, we must drink fresh blood to preserve ourselves. We do not have a heartbeat unless we wish it, however, and as our bodies maintain a very cool climate the blood inside our veins will last a very long time and we do not need to refresh it very often. If we choose to use it, it goes bad much quicker and we must ingest fresh human blood.”

  “Choose to use it?” Awa sipped her wine and found it delicious, but much as she wanted to throw back the glass and pour another she knew that getting sloppy with this monster would not further her cause. “How do you use your blood if you do not have a heartbeat?”

  “We do not have a heartbeat unless we choose to. I’ve turned mine on now, for example, in order to digest and savor the giddiness this beverage affords. If we’re of a mind to enjoy a nice meal, or other physical pleasures, then we activate the dormant organs required for the task and set to. The blood goes bad much quicker when we do this, though, so we usually avoid it.”

  “Where do you get human blood down here, so far from everything?” The question made her a little uncomfortable, as she doubted the answer would be pleasant. It was not.

  “We have a farm further down,” said Carandini, draining his glass. “We raise them, humans, and keep them in pens downstairs. They’re never in the best of health but we’re rather good at tending to their maladies, and so we always have something on hand. They don’t taste as good as those that live above—not enough exercise, probably, or maybe the sunlight has something to do with it. At any rate—”

  “That’s terrible!” Awa set down her glass. “What gives you the right to do that!?”

  “The same thing that gives them the right to eat cows and sheep and everything else—there’s no one to stop us. O
f course at this point we’ve developed artificial tonics that serve just as well, but it really doesn’t taste as good so we just keep it on hand for an emergency, like a plague outbreak or—”

  “Doesn’t taste as good?! You mean you don’t really need the blood, you just prefer it?!”

  “That’s it.” Carandini burped and the bottle floated from the table to his hand. He refilled his glass. “But shouldn’t we be worrying about you, Lady Awa? Why the curiosity about us?”

  “Chloé,” said Awa, more than a little disturbed and doubtful he would help her if he did not have to. “She—”

  “She’s one of us now,” said Carandini. “You were heard when you told me in the lab what you’d really come here for, and Breanne’s taken care of it.”

  “What?!” Awa stood up. “When, and how—”

  “They’ve been listening in, of course, and the little death you gave the girl was easily undone. You did arrive just in time, it sounds like she was almost gone. Why you would prefer her to be one of us instead of simply restored to health is a question I wouldn’t mind answered, in light of how ignorant you seem to be of us.”

  “Wait … what?” Awa looked around the dimly lit room, wondering just how many ears were listening in. “I didn’t want her to die, and since she was hurt beyond repair—”

  “Beyond whose repair?” Carandini was on glass number three. “I could have restored it, your Chloé, to full wellness in the time it took us to walk downstairs. Hemorrhaged brain, broken bones, ruptured organs? Child’s play.”

  “I … I didn’t know,” Awa murmured, wondering for the first time how well Chloé would take the news that she was now a supernatural creature that must occasionally consume human blood. Not very well, she expected. “I thought it was the only way.”

  “It wasn’t.” Carandini chuckled. “She’s one of us now.”

  “You said that,” snapped Awa. “Are you going to keep her hostage or will you let her go?”

  “She can do whatever she wishes,” said Carandini. “We don’t bestow our boon lightly, but I gather Breanne took a shine to her. Still, Breanne can’t very well hurt you, so she was probably just setting things in place for the girl to have somewhere to go after the inevitable transpires.”

  “You mean after I die? Some place for Chloé to go after my tutor finds and destroys me?”

  “Yes.” Carandini nodded. “Exactly. You’re getting smarter, see?”

  “I want to go.” Awa stood, no longer sure she appreciated the increased intellect that made it so difficult to draw absolute differences between herself and her ghoulish host. “I’ve had enough of this, this nastiness. Living underground, eating people you don’t have to, plotting to steal my girlfriend—what’s wrong with you things?!”

  “We’re just practical is all.” Carandini shrugged. “Anyway, you can’t go yet.”

  “Why not!?”

  “Dunno. Compulsions. Can’t let you out until you’ve come up with something feasible, I gather. So think, Awa, think!” Carandini had stopped using the glass and drank directly from the bottle.

  Awa sulked. She could not stop worrying about Chloé—was she awake? How much had they told her about Awa? She had been waiting for the right time to tell Chloé everything, but somehow it was never the right time to tell your lover that you are actually a necromancer afflicted with a terrible curse.

  The longer Awa stewed, however, the easier it became to think past her immediate concerns, her emotional concerns, and slowly a smile started to spread across her face. It was so simple, so obvious, that she could not believe it had not occurred to her before. She knew how to find a way to defeat the necromancer.

  XXXIV

  Sharp Truths

  Carandini had crawled into bed and lay moaning, clutching his scalp. Awa let herself out and closed the iron door behind her, bedding down in the empty laboratory so that her host could gather his wits. Then she fell immediately asleep, exhaustion keeping her pinned to the floor until nearly a full day and night had passed.

  Her host was sitting on a bench watching her as Awa awoke and groggily made her way to the bowl she had found on a table and used as a chamber pot. She noticed he now wore a crown of iron but otherwise remained nude. She turned away from him and pissed, wishing he would stop staring at her.

  “Time to go, then,” Carandini said after she finished, and he escorted her back to the surface. In the little iron room the mindless corpses of Merritt and Kahlert waited, the bloody sack that had housed Chloé draped limply over Merritt’s arm. “I gather your, ah, girlfriend is waiting outside.”

  “Wait,” said Awa. “Please.”

  “You are quite welcome,” said Carandini.

  “No, not that,” said Awa. “I want to show this one. He deserves it. Will you wait? Please?”

  “You are a strange one,” said Carandini, but he obliged her.

  Awa called Kahlert’s spirit back to his body, the suddenly sentient corpse backing into a corner and crying, “Stay away!”

  “Ash,” said Awa patiently. “We are a day’s march from your home, and here we find a nest of undead sorcerers with more power than even I can conceive.”

  “Sorcerers?” Carandini snorted. “We’re scholars, philosophers, alchemists.”

  “Can you control animals with your mind?” said Awa, annoyed with the bastard. “Can you bring the dead back to life?”

  “Of course.”

  “Ahhhh”—Kahlert’s head snapped back and forth between the two on its fractured neck, his mind now remembering everything his body had experienced since his death—“aahhh!”

  “A day from your house, Inquisitor, a single day out. They’ve been down here for who knows how long and you didn’t suspect a thing!” Awa smiled and shook her head. “And when you took a witch-hunting holiday in Spain you were just down the road from a necromancer, did you know that? So close he hid his mystical treasures in your library—last place a witch would look, but the last place a witch hunter would look as well, apparently. So your house is on top of a warren of bloodthirsty monsters, your summer home is next door to a warlock, and to top it all off you’ve been letting your undead witch girlfriend call the shots. You’re a credit to your profession.”

  “Help!” Kahlert closed his eyes. “Please, God—”

  “Just thought you should know,” said Awa, and dispelled his spirit.

  “That was perfectly charming,” said Carandini. “If you are quite finished I will ask you to leave. Don’t come back.”

  The iron portal rang out as Carandini disappeared back down his hole, and Awa sighed, staring at the little red door. What would Chloé have to say? Would they have told her that apparently Awa could have simply asked for them to heal her instead of transforming her into whatever she now was, another Bastard of the Schwarzwald? Nothing for it but to find out, and Awa swung open the door.

  Chloé was waiting in a pool of moonlight on the edge of the forest, more beautiful and alive than Awa had ever seen her. Her skin shone, as did the iron circlet crowning her pale brow, dark hair falling over her shoulders and breasts like night falling over snowy hillocks, and Awa nervously went toward her, keenly aware she had not so much as washed her face since spending a week shoved in a witch hunter’s sack, her clothes soiled, her hair a lumpy mass jutting out from her skull. She paused in front of Chloé, rubbing her hands together, nearly crying at her lover’s unbroken jaw, her unbruised skin, her sharp teeth.

  “Were you ever going to tell me you were a witch?” asked Chloé, her tone less severe than Awa had feared but nowhere near so warm as she might have hoped.

  “Would you have come with me if you had known?” Awa smiled, weak but hopeful.

  “No,” said Chloé, and flinched. “I mean, I don’t think so. Maybe? I was superstitious.”

  “Oh,” said Awa, confused. Remembering Chloé could not lie, she focused on something that had been bothering her for a long time. “Why did you insist Merritt come with us? You had a new excuse ever
y time I asked, and you knew how much I hated him.”

  “I … I liked him,” said Chloé uneasily. “I know he wasn’t as funny as he thought he was, but he was alright enough. I know what you did to him, incidentally.”

  “Oh,” said Awa, no more comfortable with the conversation than Chloé. “Liked him like you liked me?”

  “Not quite,” said Chloé, “but close? He was just as lost as the rest of us, run out of his birth home after some business with their Henry getting a whim and putting the spurs to honest men. So down he came to Paris, and he was a good enough sort. Kind of an asshole about foreigners, but I was working on him about that. Nobody ever had their mind changed about blackamoors, or witches, for that matter, by being killed by one.”

  “Why come with me at all, then, if you liked him close to how you liked me?” said Awa bitterly. Why the fuck were they talking about that asshole anyway? “Thought there was more fortune to be made tagging along with me, is that it? After all the clothes I bought you, the books you never had time to study, thought you’d make money and keep your boyfriend in the bargain and—”

  “That’s not fair, and you know it,” Chloé said, crossing her arms, and even if the girl had not been dead Awa would have known she was telling the truth. “Taking to the road’s the most dangerous thing in the world. You really think I’d abandon a comfortable position in the best brothel I’ve come across because I thought there was more to be made risking my neck on the open road with you? And so what if I was confused, if I liked the fellow who drank too much and was a cunt to people he didn’t understand almost as much as I liked my girl who drank too much and was a cunt to people she didn’t understand? I should’ve been more honest with you, about my feelings for him, but I never loved you any less for it, and you weren’t exactly upfront with me, either.”