by Debra Dunbar
“I’ll call her.” Sean looked around the coffee shop. “Morning crowd is gone. Why don’t you go ahead and take off early. Get some sleep. I’ll hold down the fort until Anna comes in.”
I loved Sean. If he hadn’t been twice my age and happily married, I would have kissed him. “Thanks, I owe you,” I told him as I grabbed my bag from the back and headed for the door.
I didn’t have time to get some sleep if I was going to make it to the pizza joint in time to meet Russell, but I did have time to swing by my apartment and grab my sword. And leave Dario a note.
I didn’t know Russell, but Janice had mentioned he was “odd.” It might be terrible manners, as well as possibly an illegal activity, to carry a sword into a pizzeria, but I wasn’t going to take my chances at facing a necromancer unarmed. And just in case things went horribly wrong, Dario would know who to kill to avenge my death. If things went fine, I’d be back before nightfall—in plenty of time to destroy my note.
Taking one last look at my bathroom door with the towel tightly wedged under the bottom, I headed out.
The Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore was just north of downtown and heralded as both a historic landmark and the cultural hot-spot of the city. Mixed in with the parks, pubs, and trendy stores were galleries and restored brick homes. The area was out of my price range when it came to art, theater, and opera, but there was one place that had made Mount Vernon my go-to spot since the moment I’d moved to the city. The Walters Art Gallery was chock full of all the things that made my European History degree self sing. And it had a weapons collection to drool over.
But the museum wasn’t my destination today. I parked and walked up to Jose’s Pizzeria, scrunching my nose at the prices on the menu posted at the window. Yep. Way out of my price range even if it had been after payday.
The door chimed as I walked in. After a quick look around, I slid into a booth facing the door. The only picture I’d seen of Russell was from forty years ago. There were three African American guys in the place, every one of them staring at me. I figured if the necromancer was here, he’d approach me.
Someone did approach me, but it was the waiter. I could hardly take up space in a restaurant without ordering something. After digging around the floor of my car this morning, I’d managed to find a dollar bill and another buck fifty in change—just enough to order some fries and a glass of water and have a quarter left over for a tip. I felt like a vagrant telling the waiter what I wanted, but it was what it was. I couldn’t dun the vampires for payment after what happened last night. They had greater priorities than paying me the rest of my fee. The coffee shop wouldn’t have a check for me until Friday. That account my parents kept sticking money in was looking better and better each day, but for now I’d suck it up and eat my meal of French fries.
The waiter must have taken pity on me because the small order was ginormous and I also had a nice homemade pickle as a side. Six months in Baltimore had taught me the joys of dousing my fries with vinegar. I loved how the bitter snap meshed so well with the salty potatoes. Before I knew it, there was nothing in front of me but empty plates, and it was edging towards one o’clock.
That’s when the waiter slid into the booth across from me. I blinked at him, remembering that Janice said Russell worked in warehousing. This couldn’t be him. Was my server trying to pick me up? Was this a new method of delivering the bill? I put my crumpled dollar and change on the table and pushed it toward him, feeling my face heat up with shame. I really needed to get a second job, one that didn’t involve vampires.
“It’s on the house.” The waiter’s eyes darted around the restaurant, eyeing each patron with a wary suspicion. “I’m Russell Findal.”
Heck, if I had known he was going to buy my meal, I would have ordered a pizza. I contemplated offering to shake his hand, but figured someone this paranoid probably was a germophobe, too. Instead I twisted my arm to show him the Templar tattoo on my wrist.
“Yeah. I figured that from the sword. Do you guys carry those things everywhere? You’re going to get arrested.”
I probably was. Eventually. “I figured with what’s been happening in the past few days, the police were the least of my problems. I saw the spirits you raised at the cemetery last Wednesday, Russell, and I hear that isn’t the only time they’ve been out of their graves.”
I don’t know what I expected, but the sad smile wasn’t it. The man reached in his pocket and took out a photo, pushing it over to me. It was a smaller copy of the one that had been framed and in the plastic bin.
“I needed to talk to them, to confirm my suspicions. I’m a careful man and I don’t want to act on hearsay and rumors, you understand?”
“Did your family confirm your suspicions?”
He nodded. “Knight Ainsworth, have you ever raised the dead?”
I winced at the title. “Aria. Please call me Aria. And no, Templar magic moves in a different direction, although I have read several texts on necromancy.”
He leaned toward me, taking the photo and putting it safely in his shirt pocket. “They are never as they were when alive. Parts of their soul have forever moved on, and all that remains for us to call are the skeletons of spirit, burned with the emotions and experiences that weighed heaviest on them before they died.”
As creeped out as this was, I’ll admit I was intrigued. “What do you mean?”
His eyes met mine and I saw how haunted they were, as if all these encounters had burned him as well. “A woman who lost the man she loved may only talk about her feelings for him, her need to find him. As powerful as the spell is, I wouldn’t be able to question her about anything else in her life. She’ll always bring the conversation back to her lost love. She’ll only be suited to performing tasks that deal with that emotion.”
“So I’m assuming your family was angry and wanting revenge?”
“My parents, mostly, and Linc. The other two were young when they died. Hector didn’t even really know what happened. He kept asking me if I knew where our cat had run off to.”
Hector. His twin, forever trapped as an eight-year-old boy while Russell had lived, had grown up. Lord, this man had lost so much.
He sighed. “I let Kendra and Hector return to their eternal rest, but Linc, Mom, and Dad have a purpose here. I can’t let them sleep again until they’ve avenged the wrongs done to our family.”
Three spirits, but I’d seen at least four additional ones last night. Who were the other spirits? Had one of them been the dead sibling with the most reason to be angry? “Were you able to summon your eldest sister? Did you get to speak with Shay?”
He jerked backward was as if I’d struck him. “No. I have no idea what they did with her body after she was killed. I called her spirit, but she would have been raised at the site of her remains. Depending on where they are, it could be days before she makes her way in response to my summons.”
My next question required some delicate wording. “What if there are no remains left? Would you be able to raise a spirit if she were cremated?”
The necromancer nodded. “Even in cases where no ashes remain, such as death by atomic blast, the spirit will return to the place they died. I’m assuming since Shay hasn’t arrived yet, that her body was disposed of out of the city.”
Atomic Blast? I really didn’t want to know how necromancers figured that one out.
“When she arrives, she’ll join the others. She’ll be the angriest of all, killed right in front of her father. His spirit told me how she screamed, how she begged for him to save her.”
My heart hurt thinking of it. No wonder they wanted revenge. Russell, too. I understood. I truly did. But there were still some loose ends in Russell’s story. “Do you know which vampires killed your family?”
He tilted his head in surprise. “They all did. The man that took Shay never would have done so without the approval of their leader, and it was a group of them who killed her in front of my father. They are all to blame.”
> I thought of Dario, tried to imagine him participating in such a thing, and I couldn’t. Maybe this was one of those kills from his past that he regretted, but I just couldn’t see it. I refused to believe someone could change so much to have done this crime then become the vampire I knew.
“So what do you intend to do? When will you be satisfied that justice has been done?”
The necromancer’s gaze dropped and he worried at the table top with a finger. “With the spell I used, these spirits have control over the physical realm. They can kill at will. Anything, anyone that they perceive as being involved. I leave justice in their hands.”
I winced, doubting that risen spirits had much in the way of moral judgement when it came to guilt and innocence. It wasn’t just all vampires they targeted, it was anyone in their way. They’d attacked me, and I honestly wasn’t sure if it was because of my pathway of light or because I was guilty by association.
And from what Russell had said, a lot of their higher brain functioning was missing. Spirits who would attack all vampires, blood slaves, the pizza delivery guy—this wasn’t justice, it was mass murder. And in the same category as what had been done to his family. I just needed him to see it that way.
“You and your family have suffered a horrible wrong, but how do you know those being killed are guilty? There are vampires in the Balaj who might not have even been turned when your family was killed, in addition to blood donors, or even innocent humans who just happen to be present at the time of the attack.”
He shrugged, his eyes determined as he looked up from the table. “There is a possibility of collateral damage.”
“Collateral damage.” I tried to control my temper and failed. “How is what you’re proposing any different from what was done to you and your family? How can you sit here and talk about justice when some housekeeper or Jehovah’s Witness dude could be murdered by these spirits too?”
The necromancer snarled, a faint blue light snaking around the silver band on his left wrist.
“I am not like that group of murderous thugs who stole an innocent girl’s life, tortured her in front of her parents, and then proceeded to kill a defenseless family.”
“But what about the ones who aren’t to blame for this? Or the humans? It’s a slippery slope Russell.”
“They are all to blame,” he insisted. “The moment someone turns they are no longer human. Vampires are monsters. Every one of them is a killer, and the humans that serve them are no better.”
It was no use continuing to argue with him like this. I needed to find another way of resolving what was quickly becoming Baltimore’s most deadly feud.
“So three spirits, four if Shay shows up. Vampires aren’t exactly easy to kill. How long are they going to go at it until they give up and return to rest?”
“They never will rest. Not until all the vampires are dead.”
There was a flaw in that logic that only someone familiar with magic would likely see. “So you hinged their return on task completion? You must need to summon them each night anew as they wouldn’t be able to remain here past sun up.”
His eyes jerked to mine in surprise. “How do you know that?”
“I know something of magic, even if necromancy isn’t a Templar art. You’re summoning more than your dead family, aren’t you? You’ll need more than three or four vengeful specters to kill an entire Balaj.”
A little smile quirked up the edge of his mouth. It was creepy. “My family weren’t the only ones wronged by vampires. They leave a sort of calling card in their killings that make tracking their victims fairly easy. Even so, clearing Baltimore of these monsters will take time, but they will eventually die. Vampires will have no defense against the specters, not unless they are working with someone versed in magic.”
He said the last with suspicion, looking up from the table.
I felt cold. Any chance I had at resolving this situation hinged on keeping my position neutral in Russell’s eyes. I needed to somehow make him see that he wasn’t in quite the superior position he thought he was. If Russell suffered a significant setback, he might be willing to compromise on his idea of justice. With luck and some research, I might be able to help the vampires provide that setback as long as Russell didn’t know I was helping them.
I might not have much in the way of offensive skills when it came to necromancy, but one thing Templars could do was protect from undead. I wasn’t sure whether my Templar protection would extend to the vampires or not. Technically they were undead too, and last night’s blessing had burned the vampires it had touched. It would be gruesomely funny for me to cast a circle of protection, only to have the vampires excluded and forced to the outside along with the attacking spirits. No, whatever I did had to come from my extracurricular magical education as opposed to my Templar one.
“Templar Knights do not judge,” I told Russell. It was true. Ever since the crusades where we’d slaughtered so many under the banner of faith, Templars made it a policy to not interfere. It sounded reasonable until our “only God has the right to judge” motto interfered with our mandate to protect Pilgrims on the Path. Protect from what? Didn’t that involve making a judgment call about who was worthy of our protection?
But this wasn’t the place for a philosophical debate. Russell seemed to know enough about Templars to be satisfied by my response that I was only an interested, informed onlooker.
“What happens if the vampires hire a mage? There’s a huge Haul Du group in the northeast corridor, and they’ve been known to take contract work.” I needed to give Russell a red herring to follow in case he sensed magic was interfering with the mission of the risen dead.
He smirked. “I’ve got a plan B.”
Janice was right. Russell was creepy. More than creepy. I think he’d lost a few marbles in the course of his journey. Not that he didn’t have valid reasons for being that way.
“What’s plan B?”
“Top secret, that’s what it is.”
I figured he wasn’t going to tell me, but I was nosy and not afraid to pry.
Russell shifted in the booth. “I’ll admit I wasn’t thrilled to find there was a Templar Knight in Baltimore, but I hoped that if I met with you, you’d come to realize that my actions don’t interfere with any of your mandates.”
I got it. He wanted to make sure an army of Knights weren’t going to ride down on him and mess up his plans. He wasn’t using a magical artifact that we needed to reclaim. Vampires would hardly be considered Pilgrims on the Path, so he wasn’t crossing that line. Yes, he was a necromancer, but Templar’s don’t judge.
Correction, Templar Knights don’t judge. I wasn’t a Knight.
I stood. “I’m so sorry for your loss. And thank you for the lunch.”
The relief on his face made me feel even more conflicted. “You’re welcome, Knight Aria. God be with you.”
“And God be with you,” I responded. Little did he know that my blessing held a very different supplication for divine intervention then the one I’m sure he hoped for.
Chapter 20
I AWOKE IN the dark, the sounds of evening traffic outside my window a soothing hum. My bed felt like a little slice of heaven. Eight hours of glorious sleep. I should have spent that time researching something to help the vampires tonight, but I’d found myself unable to make sense of a street sign, let alone a magical text. Now that I’d finally gotten some solid z’s, I felt like I’d been reborn. Murmuring in contentment, I rolled under my sheets and stretched like a cat.
“I was going to offer you some coffee, but after that display I’ve got a very different offer in mind.”
Dario. I bolted upright, clutching the sheet to my chest. I’d completely forgotten about the vampire in my bathroom. Now that it was dark, he was obviously up and about.
The vampire sat on the edge of my bed and extended a mug filled with the very elixir of life. I took it gratefully, eyeing him over the rim as I drank. He didn’t look too worse for wear, beyon
d the faint scrapes on his face and arms from last night. I stared at the front of his shirt, wondering if the marks from my chair leg crucifix had healed.
“How’s the burn?” Okay, I’ll admit that my Florence Nightingale routine was more about an excuse to eye up his naked chest and back than any medical urges on my part.
He grimaced, crossing his arms and lifting his shirt up over his head. “Most of your smite-marks seem to be healing, but this one is going to leave a scar.”
I caught my breath, a horrible wash of guilt running through me at the sight of the raised, cross-shaped mark on his chest. With my finger, I traced the mark, feeling the pattern of the wood grain perfectly reproduced in his skin. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know it was you. I thought it was that vampire coming back to attack me.”
He shrugged and shifted on the bed, moving away from my touch. “You don’t trust me. You don’t trust any of us. Not that I blame you. We’re vampires. You’re a Templar. The uneasy truce we’ve had for the last century isn’t exactly a good foundation for a working relationship, let alone any other kind of relationship.”
His words stung, but they were true. I hadn’t trusted him, wasn’t completely sure I did now. I’d better decide fast because after my meeting with Russell it was clear that I needed to be on one side of this fight or the other.
“How’s your head?” Dario asked. I noticed he didn’t attempt to examine my wound in the way I’d done his.
“The gash is totally healed, thank you for that. Headache is currently being managed by aspirin and lots of caffeine.”
His mouth twisted into a wry smile. “Guess we vampires are good for something after all. I take it you have no aftereffects from my saliva?”
He made it all sound so clinical. My mind flashed back to me curled up in his lap in the dark as he licked my wound, and everything south of my naval stirred in response. “Not really.” I wasn’t about to admit being more than a little horny. Besides, I wasn’t sure that was due to his saliva or the fact that a gorgeous half-naked guy was sitting on the edge of my bed.