When I said nothing, he resumed digging. "Your power is amazing, son. You've been holding out on me all these years."
Where was my eternal hate? The only thing inside me was cringing fear. "I never asked for this. I don't want these powers."
Dad laughed. "You've got them, so you might as well use them. Enough dabbling with bees. You slaughtered my top vampire and only drew power from an acre? When you become the Arch Lich, you'll be far stronger than me."
A wisp of hate curled through my chest. "I'll never be a Necromancer."
He unearthed an arm, shook the dirt off, and added it to Robert's pile. "Sure you will. You're the lich prince." He shot me a look, and his eyes glowed red in his skeletal face. "Without you, I can't raise your mother."
The guilt I'd avoided for so long crashed in like a tsunami. A knot formed in my throat. At the same time, rage followed it. "Let her go, Dad. She's dead."
"She's not dead!" he roared, and I jumped. "I am the Necromancer, and she will live!"
He stalked to the pile of body parts and began arranging them in the proper order. As he attached each limb to the trunk, he pressed a hand to the wound and fused them back together. "Just as your brother lives again. Just as you would, had he done this to you."
"Why did you send him after me?" I couldn't discuss Mother and keep any semblance of self-control--and that was with the puzzle box at a safe distance.
The Necromancer fused Robert's head onto his neck, and rose to survey his handiwork. "You've gotten soft, boy. You need a challenge to help you remember what you are."
He threw a handful of darkness into Robert's chest, and addressed him with power in his voice. "There. Get up."
Robert opened his eyes, and slowly sat up. He rubbed his neck and flexed his arms, wincing. "Thanks, Dad. Dammit, Mal, why'd you have to dismember me? That sucked!"
I didn't answer. I wasn't discussing Libby here.
Robert climbed to his feet and walked in a circle. "Dad, there's sand in my joints."
My father leaned on his shovel. "Tough coconuts. Drink some blood and fix it."
He fixed his red eyes on me. "Why did you do it, Mal? I expected a battle, not complete annihilation." His tone was conversational. We might have been discussing the plight of the Cubs, rather than the reassembly of one of his sons.
I jammed my hands in my pockets and turned my back, expressing my disgust without words.
"Oh, he's in love with my ex-girlfriend," Robert said in a singsong voice. "I snapped her neck and he lost his mind. Didn't you, Mal?"
My arms went rigid at my sides, and my fingers curled as if anticipating the weight of steel claws.
My father's hand closed on my shoulder, and he spun me to face him. He was so strong that my resisting feet dug furrows in the earth. His red eyes shone into mine. This close, I saw the light came from inside his pupils. I couldn't fathom its source.
"Malachi Seren, you know the motto." His rotten breath fanned my face. "Befriend many. Serve some. Trust few. Love none."
I glared my defiance.
He shoved me with such force that I crashed into the canal embankment. The breath whooshed from my lungs. He strode toward me as I struggled to rise. He grabbed my hair and jerked me to my feet, then snarled in my ear, "Have you forgotten what you are?"
A knife appeared in his hand--the serrated variety intended to create pain and suffering. He pressed the tip into my forearm, piercing the skin. The metal burned with chill, imbued with hungry death magic.
I grunted in pain and wrenched myself out of his grip. But the wound did not bleed--it had already healed itself.
In the distance, Robert guffawed.
"You see?" Dad growled. "You are a lich. Your purpose is to become a leader of the undead, once I have raised my army. You have no emotions, and you cannot--you will not--ever--feel love."
I smoldered. Fighting him meant robbing more life from the land, and I couldn't do it. Instead I said, "Dad. Love is a verb."
The Necromancer stared me down for a long moment. It was as if I had presented him a new, strange riddle, and he was attempting to solve it. "Who is this girl?"
Robert, ever impatient, broke the silence. "Her name was Libby Stockton, and she lived in that house over there. I fed on her for months."
"Yet she lives," said my father. "I saw her myself, today." He fixed his burning red stare upon me. "Robert said he broke her neck."
Robert and the Necromancer both drilled me with their eyes, waiting. I steeled myself. "I healed her."
"YOU WHAT?"
Dad's blast of death magic spawned a tornado which whirled me off my feet. It hurled me through the air in a chaotic maelstrom of frigid darkness, and tree branches tore at my body. When it ended, I lay in a tangle of uprooted trees a hundred yards from my horrible family.
As I climbed out of the wreck, the Necromancer strode toward me. I tried to run, but the magic had slowed my reflexes and made my head ring.
He grabbed my throat and lifted me off the ground.
"A lich heals no one," he snarled. "The full moon rises in seven days. At midnight on the seventh day, she will become a thrall."
"Mine," I choked.
"No, mine. You don't deserve a minion, especially not one you love."
He dashed me to the ground. My head bounced off a tree limb, and I lay stunned, with bright spots flaring before my eyes.
The stars reappeared overhead. I drew deep breaths as my body mended itself, and the chill left the air. The darkness lightened to mere night.
The Necromancer had departed, and Robert with him.
I groaned and rolled on my side. If Libby was my thrall, I could free her as soon as the Necromancer turned his back. But he would never free her. Her soul would be locked in his diamond bottle with the other thrall souls, and she would mindlessly do his bidding until her body weakened and died.
I snarled and beat a fist against the ground. Never! I'd destroy his phylactery first, and scatter his fragments across all four oceans.
But I needed my bees. They had to survive this altercation.
I ran to the bee station. My tattered body jabbed and burned, half-healed. The life magic I'd drawn from the land lingered inside me, rebuilding my lacerated flesh.
The bees slept inside their hives, entire cities of small people nestled together. I opened my trunk and rummaged through it. I needed to place protections--one at midnight and one at noon. But the protection from the four elements--the strongest one--took a week to perform, and I hadn't time. Robert might return at any time, and so could Dad. Midnight to noon would have to suffice.
I laid copper hoops around each hive and painted each with a dab of tar. Then I added a pinch of bone dust and powdered moth wings. A pulse of death magic activated each ring, and the spell waited for its daytime counterpart. I'd perform it at noon.
The stars wheeled overhead. I sat beside my hives, elbows resting on my knees. Dad's voice echoed through my mind.
Your purpose is to become a leader of the undead ... You are a lich ... You cannot feel love.
If I had wanted to become a lich, perhaps I would have agreed. But I was an accident. Robert had gone with Dad late at night on one of the rituals, and returned as a vampire.
Whereas I had walked in on Dad as he was casting an experimental death spell. It sliced the soul from my body and spirit, and only Dad's quick action had captured it, and transformed the puzzle box into a phylactery.
Sometimes I wished he had let me die.
Now I was a deathless monster who drank life from the surrounding world. But was I truly as disgusting as my father intended? I ran a hand along the nearest beehive. Perhaps that was the difference between my father and me. While he had given himself up to the horrors of undeath, I had fought to retain my humanity. I sought living companions, even if they were only insects.
My father sought slaves.
Perhaps I had kept myself too alive. My fickle heart had lost itself to a woman.
Who now hat
ed and feared me.
That thought disturbed me more than anything my father or Robert had said. They acted according to their natures, and evil was predictable. But Libby had witnessed my true power, and rejected me.
To my sorrow, I had discovered that love was not confined to the realm of emotions. Love was an act of will--a verb--and my will was unaffected by my missing soul.
I drew a deep breath and lifted my face to the stars. Tomorrow I would talk to her.
Even if she hated me, she must be warned.
Chapter 12
Libby
I woke up super early the next morning. The sun was hardly up, but a mocking bird had begun to sing outside my window, and he was freakishly loud. I listened with the simple enjoyment of lying in bed, warm and comfortable, with no sickness in my lungs or stomach.
Maybe it had been worth killing the orchard. It would grow back. Hopefully.
I was forced to get up, though, because my stomach tried to tear its way out of my middle and eat my face. So I dashed downstairs and cooked a massive omelet in self-defense. Mom and Dad were already up and drinking coffee in the living room, so I poured a cup and joined them.
"You're up early." Mom scanned my face. "Feeling better?"
"Way." I sipped my coffee. "I'm going to skip my meds today and see how I feel."
"I hope it's not a one day thing, like last time," said Dad. He already wore a t-shirt and stained jeans, ready to tackle the farm. "I need my helper back on her feet."
"Believe me, I'm ready to be well." I drank my coffee and tried to mentally frame an explanation about Mal. No matter how I tried, I couldn't. Just like in my books, they'd think I was either lying or crazy. Heck, so would I.
"Oh, Libby," said Mom. "Tiffany called yesterday evening, after you were in bed. She says she can tutor you so you can graduate, but you have to start now."
My brain exploded with a galaxy of possibilities. I was well--that meant I could go back to school. Which also meant that I only had four months to make up for missing the first half of the year. I could go to college. My entire life lay before my feet again--a beckoning yellow-brick road.
I drained my cup. "I'll call right away."
I hadn't actually seen Tiffany since Christmas. We mostly we kept in touch online. She'd offered to tutor me before, but I'd been too sick to even think about it. But now--heck yeah, I wanted to graduate.
It would keep me from brooding about Mal.
Since it was only six-thirty, I had compassion and texted Tiffany first. She texted back, "Working on project, you can call."
I took my cellphone upstairs to my room. Her phone rang once. "Hi Libby!"
"Hi, Tiff. Mom said you can tutor me?"
"Oh, yes. I was looking over a sample copy of the standardized test for this year, and I know you could pass with tutoring. You don't have to learn anything to pass the tests. You just learn the test. You know Miss Hill--she'll let all that homework slide if you get a good test score."
"I'm feeling way better today. Want me to come over?"
"No, I wanted an excuse to drive somewhere." Her voice dropped. "And I have something serious to talk to you about."
"Did you break up with Jeremy?"
"That ended months ago. No, this is different."
Her voice sounded odd. Almost ... afraid. There were vampires and liches running around, but she wouldn't have had contact with them.
Wait. Mal said that Robert had been biting girls at school. What if ...?
I waited anxiously for Tiffany to arrive. She showed up in her sleek, silver coupe about eight o' clock. Everything about her was sleek--her smooth black hair, her olive skin, her blouse and slacks. She was half-Asian. While every guy in school admired her, they called her the Ice Princess. She was simply not interested in anything but science. Jeremy had wrung a few dates out of her because he was the other top science student.
I'd become friends with her when I helped her in English, and afterward I invited her to my gaming guild, because nothing says friendship like headshots.
Tiffany carried in a couple of books and a binder. Mom was vacuuming, and we had to talk over the noise. "Let's study in your room. Less distracting."
Once in my room, Tiffany set everything on my computer desk, then sat on my bed. The cool, professional charade fell away--her eyebrows scrunched, and her chin quivered. "Libby, something's wrong with me."
Icy horror hit my middle, and I sat beside her and scrutinized her face. I'd been dealing with magic, monsters and the undead, so that's what first came to mind. I struggled to think of a more normal problem. "Like cancer?"
Her eyes widened, and she rubbed the back of one hand. "No. It's barely noticeable. Weakness. A cough. Like I'm getting valley fever."
My horror changed flavors. I stared at her hand. There was a red welt on the back, as if she'd been scratching a mosquito bite. "By any chance, did Robert, um, bite you?"
"Uh-huh. That's when it started."
I needed to talk to Mal. He could heal her--then I reeled. He could only heal her by killing more things. But he was all I had--no doctor could treat death motes.
Tiffany must have thought that my shock was normal, because she kept talking. "I work in the biology lab at Cal State on weekends, so I took some samples and tested them on their equipment." She twisted her fingers in her lap. "And--and there's these black things in my blood and tissue."
I had to stand up. My insides went hot, and I struggled to speak carefully, because I really wanted to scream. "Black things?"
She nodded. "They're not bacteria or viruses. Maybe they're spores. I brought the images." She opened the binder and handed it to me.
I fumbled the cover open with sweaty hands. Inside were four grainy microscope pictures in black and white. Each one showed cells like fried eggs, and black dots, like gnats, clustered together in swarms.
Tiffany pointed at the top image. "I couldn't capture the way they move. That's what scares me. Bacteria swim around, interact with cells, that kind of thing. But these--they dive in and out of cells, then penetrate all tissue at random. Like radiation." Her scientist tone rose toward tears. "And they're inside me!"
She sobbed. I put my arms around her. She clung to me and cried.
Sympathy tears knotted my throat. She had the vampire infection. I would have to talk to Mal, much as I didn't want to. Maybe his bees could spare a little honey.
My tears vanished, and I drew a deep breath. Of course, the honey would heal her without killing more land. That was Mal's loophole. That was why he raised magic bees, so he didn't have to kill things. I'd been so caught up in the lich thing that I'd forgotten everything he taught me in the beginning. He had started my education with what he believed was most important--the magic honey that kept him human.
A tension relaxed inside me--the fear of a predator that I'd carried since yesterday. Mal may be a lich, but he was still my friend.
I cleared my throat. First order of business was to calm Tiffany down. I patted her back. "How did you get pictures of elemental particles?"
Talking science always calmed Tiffany. She sat up and wiped her eyes, and sniffed. "I had to use every filter they had. I could see something there, but it was hard to make it appear on camera."
"Have you told anybody? Like your parents? Or professors?"
She shook her head. "I didn't know what I'd found. I thought Robert had a staph infection he'd been passing to girls. I've seen him bite you. But this ... It's like radioactivity. You must have it, too!"
I nodded. How in the world could I explain death motes? Or should I try? Tiffany's brain worked in formulae and theories. She wouldn't buy something as nuts as life and death motes.
Mal would know how to handle it.
I stood up. "Come on. We're going to talk to a friend of mine."
***
I loaded Tiffany in the golf cart and we drove out to the bee station. It was a warm, sunny morning, and the orchards were snowy white with blossoms. The air smelle
d so sweet, it gave me a headache.
"So," she said, "you're telling me there's a beekeeper who knows about these particles?"
I kept my eyes on the dirt road. "Yeah, he's a specialist. He's been trying to educate me."
More or less.
"You know," said Tiffany, studying me, "you don't look very sick. Your voice is stronger."
"Oh, uh, they changed my meds. I've gotten much better." But my face grew warm from the effort of the lie. Tiffany picked up on it, but from her frown, she couldn't figure out why I was bothering to lie in the first place.
As we neared the bee station, my nerves stretched tighter and tighter. I hadn't seen Mal since he'd killed the orchard--what would he say? Especially when I dumped Tiffany on him? Would he be mad?
The last time Mal had gotten mad, he'd ripped Robert apart and buried the pieces. The thought made me want to turn the cart around and flee to the house, butI kept driving. Tiffany was infected, and worse, she'd discovered the motes. I couldn't pretend I didn't know anything--and I couldn't hide that I was mysteriously well.
We pulled into sight of the bee station, and my nerves stretched so tight I thought I'd snap inside. There was nobody there but bees and their hives. I exhaled and went loose as an unstrung guitar.
Tiffany looked around at the bees and white-flowered orchards. "I've never been out here in the spring. It's really beautiful. And that's a ton of bees! Why do those have rings around them?"
I looked where she was pointing. Mal's beehives all had metal hoops around them. Something to do with the motes, probably.
Several bees circled my head. Their buzzing formed words. "We suffer illness from the death of the land. Mal is protecting us."
I glanced at Tiffany, but she hadn't noticed their voices. "Thanks," I whispered, and waved them away. When Tiff looked around, I added, "Mal's in the middle of an ... experiment. Let's try his camper." My tension returned, but with it came an eagerness to see him again. He protected his bees as he'd tried to protect me.
The camper sat in its usual place behind the orchard on the access road. The curtains were drawn. I parked a short distance away and squeezed the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white. "Stay here, Tiff. Let me talk to him a minute."
Malevolent (The Puzzle Box Series Book 1) Page 13