Terminal City: Book One in the Terminal City Saga

by Trevor Melanson

  “Spells?” Mason had never felt, nor looked, so taken aback. “Are you saying my dad was in a cult? My dad, the atheist professor? What you’re describing— it’s like Scientology times a thousand.”

  “No, no, no.” Lester slapped the table. “Just let me finish, kiddo, and then I’ll prove it to you.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Like I was saying.” Lester sounded exhausted. “Your dad and I were necromancers. Well, I still am a necromancer, and your dad was up until the end. But he exists in the Spirit Realm now, which is where people go when they, you know.” He made a croaking noise.

  “The Spirit Realm, eh.” Mason nodded mockingly. It was too stupid for an actual rebuttal.

  “Yes, the Spirit Realm,” Lester said soberly. “A few months ago, I summoned your dad’s spirit. He asked me for a favour. He wanted me to — shit, I don’t even know — teach you or something. I’m less than thrilled about the whole situation, I assure you.”

  “You’re going to teach me?”

  “Well, your pa certainly ain’t in any condition to do it himself, now is he?”

  “To be a necromancer?” Mason clarified, leaning forward on his elbows like an arrogant debater.

  Lester looked a little peeved now. “This was his life’s work, kid,” he said. “Despite his impressive career and all those books he wrote, this was what kept him up at night. He thought you’d be passionate about it too. Said you would discover great things, said you had the right mind for it, that you were even smarter than he was.

  “Personally,” added Lester. “I don’t see it.”

  Mason rolled his eyes as far as they could roll.

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Lester. “I know you don’t believe a damn thing I just said. Go ahead and chuckle, kid, but you won’t be laughing in a minute.”

  Mason hadn’t actually laughed until he said that.

  That’s when Lester held up his wine glass, still half-full of merlot, examining it in detail like a piece of art. He started mumbling something to himself.

  Mason cupped his ear. “I can’t hear a damn thing you’re saying.”

  A second later, he realized he didn’t need to. If a picture was worth a thousand words, what came next deserved a goddamn encyclopedia. The wine in Lester’s glass was suddenly glowing and getting brighter. Lester’s plump face shone even redder than usual, and then it was the whole room, Mason included, bathed in crimson— like a darkroom without the dark.

  And then it was over, just like that, at the snap of Lester’s stubby fingers.

  If Mason could have seen the expression on his face.

  He could see Lester’s, though. The old codger had stopped mumbling. He was staring straight at Mason, smirking pompously. This was the moment he’d been waiting for. He swirled and sipped his cheap wine like a connoisseur, savoring every drop. “I suppose,” he said, “I should have just started with that.”

  Chapter 5

  Does necromancy corrupt? That is what the inquisitors would have us believe. Certainly, there are bad necromancers. There are psychopaths among us and those who think necromancy makes them something of a superhuman. Indeed, power attracts and exasperates the worst of people, but that is a fact of humanity. Necromancy is simply a tool, and tools can be used for many things.

  —Samuel Benedict, The New Necromancer

  * * *

  Joan Worthington was jet-lagged. She was always jet-lagged for these meetings. She couldn’t remember the last time her fellow guardians had visited her in London. It was a good sign, she knew. It meant things were better in Europe, less urgent than in North America, the heart of the inquisition.

  Still, she was tired. It was late in Maine, but not nearly as late as it would have been back home. It didn’t matter. This was the time Rowland had set, and they had little in the way of negotiating power.

  “This the place?” Her cab slowed to a roll, a lone black driveway snaking northward beyond the driver side window.

  Joan knew the sight well— her home away from home. “Yes,” she said. “Right here is fine.”

  The bill was thirty-two dollars. She gave him two twenties. “Keep the change.”

  “Thanks, ma’am,” the driver said. “You have yourself a good night.”

  “That remains to be seen.” Joan stepped out of the car and watched him accelerate off into the night, his brake lights vanishing around the bend. She headed up the driveway, heels clicking on the pavement.

  A gust of wind threw loose strands of grey hair over her eyes; she swept them back with her fingers, hoping she still looked as she had an hour ago. It was always windy here, a small price to pay for living on the ocean, she supposed. Whenever she stayed with Samuel, she would relax along the cliffs, sometimes just listening to the waves. Joan could already hear them crashing in the distance. She didn’t know anyone in London who could afford a place like this.

  But London was far away now, and her long trek over. Joan stepped onto the wooden veranda, up to his front door — she breathed — and then knocked three times.

  The house was an old, red Victorian. It looked like it belonged in a calendar. Instead, it belonged to Samuel Benedict, with whom she had an interesting relationship. They were close friends, maybe even best friends, they had sex — which she was looking forward to — and, of course, they lived an ocean apart. It had to stay this way. Samuel was North America’s guardian, in charge of defending necromancers and their secret this side of the Atlantic, and she was Europe’s.

  Joan could hear him coming down the stairs now, recognizing the sound of his heavy footsteps. He was a big man, much bigger than she was.

  Samuel opened the door, smiling, but she could tell he was preoccupied with thought. He was an intensely smart man, though he was just as single-minded, the darker side of the same coin. Still, she loved the whole package. He was who he was, a man who loved her equally and as an equal.

  Samuel craned his neck down to kiss her forehead. “I missed you,” he said. It had been four months, longer than usual.

  “I missed you too.” She ran her hand down his stubble. “Good thing we have a whole month together.” It was her reward for putting in extra hours this summer. She would stay with him until her fiftieth birthday next month.

  Joan stepped inside, Samuel’s hand brushing the small of her back.

  “Everyone is waiting in the living room,” he said.

  “Rowland?” she asked.

  “Everyone but him,” he clarified. “We’re still waiting.”

  “That figures.”

  They made their way through the foyer into the living room. The other guardians were already sitting down. There were five of them in total, Joan and Samuel included.

  Sitting cross-legged on the brown leather loveseat across from her was Camila Costa, a Brazilian woman from São Paulo. Camila always wore bright heels, and Joan had never seen her so much as slouch. She made beauty seem like a job. Joan wished she knew where Camila got the energy.

  “Joan!” Camila stood up for a hug. Some people just weren’t very good huggers, and Joan was one of them. Camila, on the other hand, was a fantastic hugger. She embraced Joan with more warmth than all of Britain.

  “How was your flight?” asked the man beside them, Hiroshi Saito. Hiroshi was the best necromancer among them, but he would never admit to that. Boasting was beneath a man like Hiroshi. He was a wanderer, as much as anyone could be these days, though he had a home in Tokyo. “To be near the airport,” he’d once said. When it came to flying, Hiroshi was full of opinions.

  “My flight was delayed,” replied Joan. “I apologize. I meant to be here hours ago.”

  “Punctuality and planes go together like oil and water, my dear Joan.” Hiroshi took a slow sip from his tumbler of scotch.

  Lastly, there was Abah Okoro, the Nigerian. He nodded in her direction. It was
as much as Joan would get from Abah. She’d never met anyone so stoic. She used to think it was all a facade, but not anymore. Abah had iron coursing through his veins. He was rock, hardened all the way through. She didn’t know much else about him, but she knew that.

  Joan and Samuel took a seat together on the long sofa by the fireplace. The flames had retreated to the embers below, but Joan savored the smoky smell. She wanted to sit closer to Samuel, but that could wait. This was work. Her vacation hadn’t started yet, she reminded herself.

  Camila sighed dramatically. “Where is this stupid guy already?”

  “He is not a… stupid guy.” Abah didn’t look impressed. Then again, he never did.

  “Stupid, no,” added Joan, “but he is a lot of things. After twenty years, I had gotten my hopes up, thought maybe he was gone for good this time. I should have known better.”

  She could tell from the way Samuel stiffened his neck, staring intensely at nothing in particular, that he was about to disagree with her.

  “I don’t know,” he said, right on cue. “Times have changed. The inquisitors are getting better at tracking us— at killing us. They never used to have the internet. Just last week, they got an acquaintance of mine, Simon Paisley. Burned him alive.” Samuel sighed, shaking his head. “Man never hurt a fly. So yeah, I don’t know. Maybe Rowland will level the playing field.”

  “He’s an awfully blunt instrument,” replied Joan. “Too blunt. He doesn’t just kill inquisitors.”

  “I know, I know.” Samuel sounded apologetic. “But what if he saves more people than he kills? If we’re being honest, no one has taken out as many inquisitors as Rowland. Not even close.”

  “That’s not how we do things, Samuel.” She was using his first name— her tell that she was annoyed with him.

  “Perhaps. Then again, it’s not up to us anyway,” he said. “Rowland’s going to do what he’s going to do. I’m just pointing out that there’s a silver lining.”

  The others stayed silent, but Joan could see in their eyes that they agreed with Samuel, which annoyed her further. They were wrong, but it was hard to blame them: they’d all lost friends to the inquisitors, and she knew how that felt.

  Someone knocked on the front door— a slow, heavy knock. It was him. It had to be. Joan could feel his energy from here, his radiation. Rowland was the atomic bomb of necromancers.

  Samuel stood up, as silent as a prayer, and headed to the door. They heard it creak open a moment later. They heard it shut. No words were exchanged. Samuel came back first and nodded. At long last, Rowland stepped into the living room.

  He was a hard man to look at. He was tall and skinny, more starved-looking than trim, and paler than most corpses. His hair was a wintery white and his eyes a poisonous red. His sclera had turned pink, his pupils maroon— the aftermath of too much necromancy. He looked like the product of his own experiments.

  Then again, appearances were relative. Perhaps he didn’t look so bad for a man his age, thought Joan. Rowland rarely revealed anything about himself, but she knew he was over three-hundred years old, kept alive by his own spells. It was older than she’d ever wanted to live, that’s for sure.

  Samuel returned to the cushion beside her, but Rowland stayed standing, still wearing his black overcoat. He wasn’t planning on getting comfortable.

  “I will be brief,” he said. His voice was raspier than an old smoker’s. “Then I will go.” Even after twenty years of self-imposed isolation, it seemed he wasn’t feeling particularly social.

  “I have returned with a plan,” he continued, lingering between sentences.

  “A plan for what?” It was Joan. She was already growing tired of this theatrical bullshit. The other guardians gave her sharp looks. But not Rowland. He was too conceited to care. She was simply some yammering kid as far as he was concerned.

  “Telling you my plan,” he said, “is not part of the plan.”

  Of course. Children needn’t understand the adult in the room— only listen and obey.

  Arrogant bastard.

  “Here is what you need to know.” Rowland stepped up to Joan, not exactly threateningly but without concern for her comfort. He was even uglier up close. She could see the thick veins texturing his temples and gnarled hands. His skin was thin and patchy, like a pale balloon stretched over a skeleton, ready to pop— if only it weren’t held together by forces greater than flesh.

  “First, know that I have returned, as you can all see for yourselves, and that I am here to stay.”

  Joan flinched at the news.

  “Second,” he said, “let it be known that I will end the inquisition, once and for all.”

  “How so?” asked Camila, arms crossed. “You’re going to kill all the inquisitor men?”

  “Correct.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t going to tell us your plan.” It was Joan again.

  “That is only a small part of my plan,” replied Rowland. “The only part you need to know, for now.”

  “I beg to differ,” she said.

  “Begging is for dogs.”

  “It’s an expression.” So go woof yourself, asshole.

  “If that is all, I am done here.” Rowland eyed each of them in turn.

  “Where were you all this time?” asked Joan.

  “Next question.”

  She sighed. “Are you going to tell us anything you haven’t already?”

  “No.” At least he was honest.

  “Then I guess we’re done.”

  It appeared Rowland and Joan finally agreed on something. “Good,” was all he said, turning toward the exit. No one offered a goodbye. Wordlessly, they watched him disappear into the hallway. They heard the front door swing open. For a few seconds, sound seeped in from the windy night, and then he was gone. It was a little anticlimactic.

  Hiroshi poured himself another scotch.

  “An end to the inquisition,” said Samuel, setting his hand on Joan’s shoulder. “That would be one hell of a silver lining.”

  She shrugged out from underneath his fingers. No, he was still wrong. This would end badly. It always did with Rowland.

  “Pass the whisky, Hiroshi.” Samuel looked a little too comfortable.

  Joan got thinking she might not sleep with him tonight after all.

  Chapter 6

  Mason wasn’t sure why he kept antagonizing Lester. Sure, he was weirder than an elephant’s dick, but he didn’t hold that against him. Mason had never fancied himself particularly normal either. And yet he was being a jerk, but then so was Lester.

  It was Friday evening and enough time had gone by for the truth to sink in. Mason now accepted the fact that the man living with him was a necromancer (though he remained a little fuzzy on what being a necromancer entailed) and that the same could have been said of his father. That pill was a bit harder to swallow. Still, something about Lester continued to piss Mason off. Or maybe it had nothing to do with him. Maybe he was just pissed off.

  Lester seemed pissed off too. He hadn’t wanted to come down here, nor had he ever wanted to teach anyone anything. It was a favour. And yet, from the way Mason treated him, you wouldn’t know it. He’d said as much last night, before Mason reminded him that he was an uninvited guest. Neither one of them was wrong, strictly speaking.

  But sometimes, when their guards were down, they acted almost like friends.

  “Going on a date?” asked Lester, emphasizing the word date.

  “It’s not a date,” clarified Mason, tying his shoes.

  “Well, not with that attitude.” Lester was sitting in the kitchen, eating rice from a bowl and reading obituaries in The Terminal City Chronicle. He looked up. “Date is a rather superfluous word, anyway. I wouldn’t dwell on it.”

  “You brought it up,” sa
id Mason.

  “I suppose I did.” Lester returned his gaze to the paper. “Any progress with the illumination spell?”

  The illumination spell was, according to Lester, one of necromancy’s simplest. The goal was to manipulate energy from the Spirit Realm into light in the Living Realm. Lester had shown the spell to Mason many times now. On each occasion, after only a few seconds of chanting, an orb of red light would manifest over Lester’s palm.

  “Remember, it’s not just about the chant,” Lester reminded him again. “The chant only helps you focus your power on the right spell. It’s like a filter. In theory, not even necessary. What matters is that you feel the spell.”

  “Well, I don’t feel shit.” Mason shrugged into his leather coat. “I can’t seem to pronounce the words right either.” So far, his venture into the world of necromancy had been fruitless and frustrating. “Maybe I’m just not a necromancer,” he added. “Not everything runs in the family.”

  “Maybe not,” replied Lester, “but you wouldn’t know it yet. It’s only been a few days. And need I remind you, my young apprentice, that necromantic ability has nothing to do with blood?” He placed a finger on his temple. “It’s all about your mind.”

  “Ah. Gotcha.” Mason had one foot out the door. “So, what you’re saying is that I’m just too stupid.”

  Lester sighed. “For fuck’s sake, kid, it took me three whole months to get my first spell working.”

  Mason considered this. “I did say a week,” he said. “The week’s almost up. I hope you didn’t think you’d be staying here for, what, three months? Yeah, I wouldn’t count on that.” Mason wasn’t sure he meant what he said, but Lester was pissing him off again, though he wasn’t entirely sure why.

  Lester put on a show too, burrowing his face between both hands. “The prospect isn’t appealing to either of us, believe me.”

  At this point, Mason left, locking the door behind him.

  * * *

  Mason showed up to the bar before Asha, who had said to come around nine. It was 8:56 p.m. If some of her friends were already here, he wouldn’t have recognized them. He decided to settle down at the bar with only a pint of beer for company, playing around with his phone so passersby would believe he had friends. Not that anyone noticed or cared.