“Nice try, but I realize you just called me old,” he scoffed. “Draugborn don't have heartbeats or souls, but we do grow up, despite being technically dead. We age a hell of a lot slower than normal humans, but even when we do, it doesn't affect us the same way." He took a sip of his tea. "I'm over three hundred years old, if you can believe it. After a while, my flesh just ... withered away and left bone. Somehow, I'm still kickin'."
"That's why I saw you as a skeleton," Edie said, thinking back to the fight in the park.
"Yup. Dropping my glamour helps me focus when flaying and eating souls."
She bit her lip. "Can everyone who uses death magic eat souls? I've never seen that."
"Me either," Cal added gruffly. “Use the energy as a source of power, maybe, but…”
Basile sighed. "Because I don't have a soul, I have ... hmm ... room, I guess, to house as much spiritual energy as I want. Draugborn tend to be experts at exorcising spirits and obliterating them, or taking their power into themselves, but there's a risk."
"Risk?" Satara leaned forward as the priest lectured them.
He seemed amused that she was so rapt, and began speaking directly to her. "Heh. Well, you know how if you overeat, you stretch your stomach? It's a bit like that, but with souls. They say that if we consume too many, the space where our own souls are supposed to be becomes bigger and emptier. Draugborn who exorcise and consume a lot of spirits, even over a long period of time, supposedly become hungry and evil." He waved his hand uncertainly. "It's not usually a problem, because their liches keep them close by—and if they go feral, so what? As long as they're physically intact, they're serving their purpose."
Edie looked around the room, suddenly on edge. Any lich who would make one of these draugborn was not someone she wanted to be friends with. "But ... where's yours? Do we have to worry...?"
"Nope." Basile grinned and leaned back a little further in his chair, so that his legs were properly elevated. "A few centuries ago, I sealed my creator up in a big stone sarcophagus. She won't be bothering anyone now."
Almost all at the same time, the group looked down at the stone coffee table. Edie's stomach turned when she realized that it wasn't really a coffee table at all.
"Someone is in there?" she squeaked.
"Correct!"
"What about your—" Marius paused and cleared this throat, starting again: "It wouldn't be that hard for a lich to make a skálpr from an object. Why take the extra steps and hurt your mother in the process?"
"Oh, hell," Basile chuckled, "the lich didn't hurt my mother, kid. She was my mother."
The room fell into silence.
After a moment, Basile leaned forward and slapped his hand down on the stone, patting a few times. His tone remained conversational. "I mean, I get it. There's a laundry list of upsides to having your vessel able to walk around and follow orders. Makes them easier to keep track of; they can learn to defend themselves against anyone who might try to destroy them; and no one sees it coming, anyway, because it's such a rare, involved process.
"But I obviously couldn't let it continue. I knew that the second I understood what was going on. She wasn't just some lich—she was a lich queen, ruling over a swath of wasted land and taking whatever she wanted from the people who lived there. Just a real bitch. So ... I made it so she couldn't hurt anyone ever again."
"But," Satara said slowly, "you couldn't kill her because you're her skálpr; she can't be killed permanently unless you're destroyed. So you sealed her away instead."
Basile shot her a finger gun. "Bullseye. You're sharp."
"You being her vessel won't cause any problems, will it?" Marius asked grimly. "Her soul hasn't corrupted you?"
"Well, I haven't had any issues yet." The priest seemed less than pleased with that particular line of questioning, smiling coolly. "I am technically a vessel for her soul, yeah, but I only facilitate a resurrection. My existence makes it possible for her to come back, even if her body is completely destroyed. But she has no power over me. Especially not in the box." He added pointedly, "I am my own person."
So, Edie thought with a sigh, he understands that he's not his mother, but I'm just “a Holloway.”
Cal grunted and said, "You’re useful in a pinch, I'll give ya that."
"No kidding, cowboy. Do you people always get into so much trouble?"
Satara sighed, rubbing her forehead. "Occasionally. But for once, it wasn't our doing. It was the rally that was the trouble."
"Rally, eh?"
"Do you think they were all Gloaming?" Edie asked.
"That's unlikely." Marius shoved his hand in the pocket of his jacket. "Almost all the people gathered there were regular humans in silly costumes. Humans with full-time jobs and things like that, most likely. The Gloaming doesn't think much of humans, and certainly not ones that haven't dedicated themselves fully to the cause."
Cal grunted. "How much more dedicated do you want the bastards to be, exactly?"
"Maybe the Gloaming don't want humans in positions of power," returned Satara, "but as foot soldiers? Why not, if they have the zeal? They need fresh waves of fighters, and we still don't know how the Wounded amassed the force that struck Zaedicus's party." She hugged herself and added grimly, "If they aren't Gloaming now, they will be soon."
Marius shook his head. "I disagree. The Gloaming has had the opportunity to work with groups like the Blood Eagles in the past, and they never did. Whether it was because they were too proud or actually have limits to their depravity, I don't know."
"Since when did you suddenly get all pro-Gloaming, Sunshine?" Cal asked, wrinkling what was left of his nose.
"I'm not," the vivid said firmly, "I'm simply looking at the facts, the patterns."
"Times are changing." Basile finished his tea and reclined again, latticing his fingers over his abdomen. "Clearly, things have really been going down up north. I'm almost jealous! You're gonna have to fill me in."
"Likewise," Marius mumbled.
Edie was still trying to wrap her head around the whole ordeal. "I just ... I can't even understand it. Those men, all their Norse imagery..." She looked at Satara. "They don't even know that you're a shieldmaiden! To a real-life valkyrie! And Marius is a Blade of Tyr, an exalted warrior. Maybe I'm naive, but Christ."
"It doesn't matter who I am," Satara said with a sigh. "Even if we weren't those things..." She trailed off, closing her eyes.
Basile lurched out of his seat suddenly, as if an invisible boot had kicked him, and began to pace the room. "Let’s get an exchange of information going, then. I know who Zaedicus and the Wounded are, but I could always use more context, and since you all are such good friends with them, well…"
"Fine." Cal crossed his arms. "And you tell us about what all’s happening down here."
"Sure." The priest stood straight, one hand behind his back, the other palm up. "I guess I'll start at the beginning."
He began to pace again as he relayed his information.
"I guess it was about a month ago that the Blood Eagles started getting noticed, but I did some research, and they've existed for a lot longer. A year and a half or so. They began as a small social media group. One of those pages you can join, or whatever it is humans do on the internet. They expanded into an online forum full of 'Odinists,' they call themselves, or 'folkish heathens.' Basically, people who worship the Old Gods but believe it should be an Anglo-only affair.
"You'd be surprised by how many different groups of these people there are, but this one is particularly ... tedious? Troubling? Not only are they depraved, but they’re militaristic, into grand gestures and manifestos, idolizing mass murderers—" He swiped the air with a hand. "The works. Really up their own backsides. I guess that's probably what caught the eye of the Gloaming, or whomever is responsible. And since they were picked up, they've started having an actual physical presence in the city, an actual leadership … Daschla Hyltir came out of nowhere and has pretty quickly turned into a symbol for them.
She’s—”
“Oh,” Satara said, “we’re familiar with Daschla.”
“Is that so?”
“She was Astrid Fengrave’s shieldmaiden a decade ago,” Edie explained. “Satara was her replacement.”
“Huh.” Basile lifted his chin and studied Satara for a moment before continuing. “Well, ever since she turned up, things have been going downhill.” His tone became increasingly exasperated. "And they’ve just been growing exponentially! One month! Their forum traffic has skyrocketed, their page likes have soared, they've been collecting new members like flypaper..." He came back to his armchair and slouched into it. "And I didn't even see it coming ... which is kind of my job, as an agent of Odin. So you can imagine the trouble I'm in."
"At least they aren't trying to murder ya," Cal mumbled from the side of his mouth.
Basile didn't seem to hear him, gesturing instead to Marius. "He's right, though. I mean, I've been doing this for centuries. I know the Gloaming are terrible. But they're usually terrible in their own special way ... they don't tend to ally with groups like this—or any groups, for that matter. Especially ones run by humans, like you said."
"But that doesn't matter," Satara insisted, rubbing her knuckles anxiously. "This is the New Gloaming. There is no precedent for what they'll do, and they've already proven that."
The priest pinched the bridge of his nose. "Ugh … New Gloaming, new Reach. Hey, maybe we'll get lucky and get a New Aurora. Now with blackjack and strippers!"
Edie's gaze darted toward Marius in time to see him cast his eyes down without a word. In that moment, she wished she could go over there, though she wasn't completely sure what she could do to comfort him. She was still so uncertain of where they stood … if he still thought she was an abomination. It seemed like his opinion changed every time it was brought up. For now, she simply kept an eye on him.
"Well, new or not," Basile continued, "I'm just glad there's more Reach here now. For a while there, I thought I was the only one up north."
Edie balked a bit. "The only one? What about the hellerune?"
Satara seemed confused for a moment as well; then her expression turned crestfallen. "The papers Cal stole said there was a 'Reach problem.' We ... thought there would be more than one of you. A network."
" ’Fraid not," he said with a sigh, crossing his arms. "Just one very powerful draugborn. But turns out even I'm not powerful enough to keep up with everything going on around here, let alone fix it by myself. When Odin told me I'd be getting some extra hands, it was a relief, but frankly ... I expected more people."
"We— Wait." Cal sat forward in his seat, squinting at the priest. "Roll it back a sec. Odin told you?"
"Are you saying you have a direct line of contact with ... Odin?" Satara asked. "The Allfather?"
Basile shrugged. "Sure, why not? I mean, you work for a guy for three centuries ... I don't always speak to him directly, but I answer to him personally. He's kind of a micromanager like that."
Edie sat back in her seat, processing this new information. So far, she'd met elves, vampires, and even a lesser Norn. Most of the people she spent time with talked about the gods nonchalantly, like their existence was a given. But Basile was the first person she’d met who regularly spoke with a god on a personal basis. Her family had never been religious—as far as she had known, anyway. Contending with the fact that rulers of the universe actually existed wasn't really something she was comfortable with. And it ultimately raised more questions than it answered.
Cal, Satara, and Marius were more used to the concept of the Pantheons being real, but finding out that Basile knew Odin personally still seemed to come as a shock. There was a pause before Marius broke the silence. "You're a priest of Odin, you're one of his agents, and you commune with him ... is that right?"
Basile hummed affirmatively, squinting at him. "This is a lead-in to a weird question, I can tell."
"Odin is Lord of the Valkyir," Marius continued. "Freyja had her hand in creating them, and she leads them, she's their Mother—but in the end, they answer to Odin."
"Most things do," the priest said with a sigh.
Marius gestured to Satara, his tone growing firmer. "Like Edie said, Satara was Astrid Fengrave's shieldmaiden. But Astrid was obliterated by a lesser Norn named Indriði, and she never prepared Satara to take her place as the laws dictate. We've been searching for instruction on how to continue with her investiture, to no avail."
Edie felt Satara tense beside her, but it was clear where Marius was going with his spiel—clear enough that the priest was able to finish his thought for him: "And you want me to tell you what to do next, is that it?"
He sounded weary and put-upon, and the tone made Edie's blood boil. "If we can't figure out how to turn her into a valkyrie," she said, enunciating each word, "Satara will die."
A subtle turn of Satara's head silenced her, and the shieldmaiden spoke up. "My fledgling wings appeared pretty soon after she died, and they've been rotting quicker than I thought they would," she said, her voice soft though she looked Basile in the eye. "I'm not sure how much time I have left. If you can point me in the right direction, I'll be in your debt."
The priest considered her for an extended moment, crossing his arms and tucking one hand up to his chin. Eventually, he pushed his glasses up his nose a bit and said, "I'll do it. But I need your help first."
Their mouths opened, but before they could say anything, he held up a hand.
"First, you need to do what you came here for, whether you knew you were coming here for it or not. We need to take down the Blood Eagles, or whatever force is behind them. I don't care how; we need to put a stop to it.
"Second"—he pointed at Edie—"you're looking for a hellerune, correct? Well, I got one. I've been watching over him for a long time, using magic to cover his scent so no one ever found him. But it's been getting a hell of a lot harder recently, with all the Gloaming crawling around here. A latent magical signature, I can hide just fine. When someone's looking specifically for him? Well. So he needs protection."
Cal threw up a hand. "You want us to bring down a whole faction before you help us? Motherfucker, I don't know if you heard what the lady said, but this is kinda time-sensitive. Shit's rotting." He scoffed. "What kinda priest're you?"
Basile shot him a look, equal parts befuddled and unimpressed. "Yeah, I got that. But plenty's time-sensitive, bub, including what's going on here. I wouldn't expect you to understand; you haven't been here." He considered Satara. "Besides, I'm not going to let you die. We need to get this out of the way as soon as possible, and I'll work on getting you hooked up, all right? You just have to trust me."
The shieldmaiden watched him warily for a second, and Edie felt a shiver go up her legs. Nonetheless, she nodded. "We'll do it your way for now. But I'll die without your help, and the dead make poor allies."
Cal huffed. "I resent that!"
"I'll keep my end of the bargain," Basile said, pacing a fist over his heart. "You have my oath that I will help you."
Well, that was a good sign. Edie had learned pretty quickly that oaths weren't something the Norse took lightly. In fact, according to Marius, breaking an oath was considered tantamount to murder.
And in this case, if Basile broke his oath, it really would be murder. When the rot in Satara's wings entered her bloodstream, she'd die and have to spend eternity as a twisted demon fledgling in a castle made of snake venom or whatever the hell it was.
When the oath was given, Satara relaxed a little. But she remained wary, rubbing her hands together anxiously. "I guess we should start with the hellerune, then."
"We were looking for him anyway," Marius said. "Hoping to find him before the Gloaming did. Indriði's papers spoke of him, too, but there were no specifics."
Basile snorted. "Finally, some good news. At least I've done that aspect of my job right. Where do I even start with him...?" He walked around his armchair and finally sat back down. "Well, first of all, his name
is Adam, and he ... doesn't exactly know he's a hellerune."
"Great." Cal put his head in one hand. "More ass-blastingly lethal mages just walkin' around like bozos at a clown convention."
"Odin determined it'd be best to just let him live his life," Basile continued pointedly. "His powers have been active for a long time, but I've managed to hide his energy with a regimen of suppression and cloaking spells. Like I said, though, since the Gloaming are focusing on finding my hellerune specifically, the regimen has had to become more convoluted. Harder and harder to maintain."
"But where do we come in?" Edie asked.
"Hmm ... I need some muscle should the Gloaming show up and try to kidnap him, to begin with. But ... truth is, it's just not practical to keep him in the dark any longer." Basile spread his hands. "He needs to be told the truth, brought into the circle so we can protect him properly. And he's, um..."
"He's ... what?"
"He's kind of ... precarious. You know, in the mental health department. And I'm not sure if you've noticed, but I'm not the warmest creature who ever walked the earth."
Cal raised a brow. "Say it ain't so."
"I put on a good show for the humans, but that's pretty much it. Now that you're here, though," the priest continued, "I can delegate the touchy-feely part to you."
Edie ran a hand through her ponytail, considering this. Telling another hellerune about his powers wouldn't be easy, but it certainly wasn’t the worst job in the world. She didn't consider her mental health particularly precarious, but she had gone through the same thing recently—finding out about her lineage, about the hidden world around her. If anyone could help, it was her, with Cal backing her up.
"Uh ... one thing, though," Basile began, and Edie could already tell she wasn't going to like whatever he had to say next. "I kind of haven't checked in on him for a couple days. I’ve been busier than a one-armed house painter. But ... I have the sneaking suspicion that something went ... wrong."
"Wrong?" Marius wrinkled his nose. "Wrong how?"
Unholy Spirit (The Necromancer's Daughter Book 3) Page 8