Touch of Death (Order of the Elements Book 2)

by Emma L. Adams

  Yes. I should. But I couldn’t get the vampire lord’s words out of my head. He knew I was a spirit mage. Unless I avoided contact with all vampires from now on, word would make it back to the Order sooner or later.

  And the man in front of me might be the only person who stood a chance of teaching me how to hide it.

  “I—” I broke off. “I know the lich traitor is probably the one who stole the amulets, but I didn’t want to bring them up in front of Lord Blackbourne. Was I right to do that?”

  “I suspected he knew.” He turned to face me for the first time since we’d left the vampires’ meeting place. “There’s little the vampire lords are unaware of when it comes to the movements of their equals.”

  “And—me?” I buried my freezing hands in my pockets. “I’m not exactly on an equal footing with them.” To say the least.

  “You’re concerned that they will tell the Order what you are.”

  “No shit.” Oops. I probably shouldn’t forget I was speaking to someone equally capable of spilling my secrets—but my fear from the vampire’s revelation had momentarily knocked aside my common sense. “Who wouldn’t?”

  The Death King’s brows rose. “The vampire lords have better things to do than to turn the Order against their own employees.”

  “It would only take one slip-up.” Fear constricted my chest. “One wrong word to the wrong person. How do I stop myself from giving off this… whatever it is that gives me away as a spirit mage?”

  “You can’t.”

  My hands curled into my fists. “That’s it?”

  “We cannot change our natures.” He indicated the gates, where two liches parted to allow us through. “None of us. Vampire, Element… spirit mage. The Order knows that.”

  I screwed up my forehead. “They didn’t take away my magic, so they must have known that I’d still register as a spirit mage to anyone with the ability to tell. Right?”

  “You just answered your own question.” He remained still for an instant, his shadowy form etched against the night sky. “But if you wanted to know whether using spirit magic would make your signature more prominent, you were right.”

  My heart sank. “So I have to stop using it?”

  “That’s not what I said.” He turned to me, the moonlight animating his human face in a disconcertingly lifelike manner. “Your nature is impossible to hide, strong or not.”

  “The Order knows.” I spoke more to reassure myself than anything else. “They already want to kick Devon and me out into the Parallel. They’ll have even more of an incentive if they find out I disobeyed their command to stop working with you. Hell if I know why they’re so set on me turning down your offer of work. Unless they think you’re going to turn me against them.”

  His brow arched. “If I were perceived as a threat to the Order, I wouldn’t be in this position. Do you think the Order would allow an independent ruler to establish dominance without making sure they weren’t a threat to their own rule?”

  My mouth parted. “Does that include the vampires, too?”

  “Yes, it does,” he said. “It isn’t in my interests to start a conflict with those who work to protect the magical community in either realm. I have no desire to see my Court consumed in another conflict.”

  “The Order isn’t in charge here,” I said. “Isn’t that why you wanted to recruit me to begin with?”

  “I overestimated your commitment,” he said. “Understandably, no doubt. You have no desire to embrace your identity as a spirit mage, and until you take a side, people like Lord Blackbourne will be poised to take advantage.”

  “Aren’t committed?” His words stung more than they had the right to. “I’m sorry I didn’t take you up on your offer of a job, but there’s too much at stake for me to risk pissing the Order off. And I don’t want to live here in the Parallel.”

  “Then what do you want?” he asked.

  My memories back. To learn spirit magic.

  No. I couldn’t go that far… not if I wanted to retain any chance at walking away from this alive.

  But what about Dex? And the other liches, falling victim to the killer? Even the Death King, whoever he’d been in his previous existence?

  “Information,” I finally answered. “If I’m to find out how the liches are being killed, I need to know more about spirit magic.”

  “If that’s the case,” he said, “you’ll need to come with me.”

  Apprehension dug its heels in, but if he thought me uncommitted, I’d have to go ahead and prove him wrong.

  I walked up the steps to the castle, ignoring my fatigue and wariness. He glided ahead of me, through the door and into the entrance hall. Then, I followed him around the corner and into the hall of souls.

  12

  The hall of souls stretched out in front of us, filled with long shelves lined with amulets. Old-fashioned lanterns hung at intervals on the walls, casting long shadows over the shelves, and I startled when I realised we weren’t alone.

  Several liches gathered around the room, pockets of shadow in the shape of people. I backed up to the Death King’s side, only to find his human guise had slipped away in the last few seconds, leaving him as masked and terrifying as ever.

  “Do you have anything to report?” he asked the assembled liches.

  As the liches moved closer, I retreated another few steps, sensing I wasn’t supposed to eavesdrop. My breath frosted the chill air beside a pillar formed of interlocking bones. I decided not to look closely enough to determine if they were human bones or not.

  After a minute of whispered conversation, the liches departed. None of them bothered to open the door before exiting in a sweep of shadows. Now alone, the Death King reached into a pocket of his coat and removed the amulet the vampire had given him.

  I cleared my throat. “If you don’t mind telling me… that amulet—whose is it? I mean, whose was it?”

  “That’s what I’m here to find out.” He faced the shelves of amulets once again.

  I inched closer, rubbing my hands together for warmth. “Are they arranged in any particular order?”

  Did he have to pick up and examine every single amulet if he wanted to find the identity of the missing one’s owner? It seemed a hell of an inefficient method, but as far as I knew, until the recent events, nobody had ever stolen anything from here.

  “They’re roughly organised by the date the individual turned lich,” he said, “but if one went missing, even its owner might not notice at first.”

  Like he hadn’t noticed his own soul amulet had ended up in my hands, at least at first. I looked more closely at the amulet he held, noting the faded lines on the edges. It might be bigger than a typical cantrip, but a spell had bound the soul into place. “How could a spell so complex be undone?”

  “Because no spell lasts forever.” He didn’t turn around. “There are always weak spots, if you know where to find them.”

  I turned this over in my mind. “You mean the lich traitor undid the binding spell himself? If that’s the case, what’s to stop any of the liches doing the same to anyone who annoys them?”

  “Few liches have the capacity for such magic,” he said. “Removing a soul is one thing. Binding it to a vessel is another entirely, as you know well. And undoing such a binding? Rarely heard of.”

  A shiver curled down my spine at the memory of cupping his life essence in my hands, and the accompanying shock and surprise that someone so indomitable could seem so vulnerable.

  “But you do know a way?” I sucked in a sharp breath when he turned around, his faceless mask blending into the darkness.

  He held up the amulet. “To create a true lich, one’s soul must be separated at the moment of death.”

  My heart climbed into my throat. Everyone said the liches had made some kind of deal with death, voluntarily detaching their souls from their bodies in order to live forever, but I’d never heard it confirmed from one of them directly before.

  Yet the corpses we’d
discovered had been decomposing as though they’d been slaughtered recently, and like the ritual that had turned them into liches had been reversed. What spell could possibly accomplish such a feat?

  Nothing of concern to the vampire council, apparently. But then again, it wasn’t Lord Blackbourne’s people who were dying. The vampires didn’t have any claim on the revenants, seeing them as lesser beings. Kind of like the liches saw phantoms and the like. Phantoms hadn’t even been human, if their clawed forms when they returned to life were any indication, so the vampires would need to feel directly threatened to do anything about them. I hadn’t thought Lord Blackbourne had seemed like he might be working against us, but he sure as hell wasn’t on our side, either.

  “What did phantoms used to be when they were alive?” I asked the Death King. “I mean, did they always look like… those clawed monsters?”

  “You just answered your own question.” He lowered the amulet, his tone heavy with annoyance at me for changing the subject. “The spell returns the dead to life, but it seems to have a time limit on it. They start decaying swiftly.”

  “Hang on.” I screwed up my forehead. “If the same spell which is bringing the phantoms back to life is doing the same to the liches, can it really be your lich traitor who’s behind this? And… are you sure the intention is to commit murder? Because bringing the dead back to life isn’t exactly a typical method.”

  Was the traitor lich truly out to murder his fellow liches, or might he have another motive entirely?

  “The result is the same,” the Death King said, his voice clipped. “This murderer may have brought my liches back to life, in a way, but it was with the intention of leaving them dead. The theft of their soul amulets proves that.”

  “All right.” The subject bothered him, evidently, but I didn’t really blame the guy. He’d spent the last Elements knew how many years thinking he was going to live forever, and it seemed his fate might be to end up a rotting corpse after all.

  I watched him carry the soul amulet to the shelf, and then something else occurred to me.

  “Wait,” I said. “The soul amulet is still intact even though there’s no soul inside it. Can they be reused? Like…”

  Like the COS’s new cantrips?

  The Death King’s spine stiffened. “It would be a great insult to the previous owner.”

  “I didn’t mean—” I broke off. “I just wanted to know if it was possible. Where do you get them from? I mean, do you carve a new one for each new lich?”

  He walked in silence for a long moment. “We have a large collection of soul amulets from our time among the living.”

  “They can’t be destroyed, then?”

  “Not by any natural force,” he said.

  “Who carved them?” I asked. “You?”

  His whole manner chilled. Literally. Frost formed on the shelves, and my fingers numbed. I buried my hands in my pockets, my heartbeat kicking into gear. Quiet, Liv. Stop poking him when he’s already in a bad mood.

  “Some of them, yes,” he said.

  He’d done the same to Brant to teach him a lesson, but he’d reversed the process and brought him back. If he’d been left with his soul detached for too long, though, the spell would have been irreversible. Like the others. They’d been without living bodies for so long that now the best they could do was conjure up an illusion of their former selves, and only the Death King seemed to be able to do that.

  “Can you turn down the air con?” I said through frosted lips.

  He stepped away from me, and some of the chill faded a little. “I forget how human you are.”

  “Yeah, we can’t all be immortal death lords.” My teeth chattered. “I know it’s obviously a sore subject with you, but I’m struggling to understand what any lich would have to gain from murdering his fellow liches using a spell that returns them to life.”

  “He wanted the Order’s traitor to take my place,” he said. “Perhaps he fancies himself the next Death King.”

  “If you’re immortal, then how does leadership pass from one Death King to the next?” I asked before I could help myself.

  “How do you think?”

  “The last one dies,” I concluded. “You knew you wanted to become king when you turned?”

  His reply was short, terse. “What makes you think I chose this?”

  My mouth parted. He’d turned at the moment of death. He’d died for this… or so I’d thought. Had he really not chosen this fate?

  From the way the temperature plummeted again, I had an inkling I was treading on dangerous ground, and if I didn’t steer the topic into less treacherous waters, he’d kick me out and we’d undo all the progress we’d made. I hadn’t come here to ask him personal questions, however potent my curiosity might be.

  “Then how do you go about selecting the next leader?” I asked. “Do you get a say at all?

  “I have a few liches selected as my potential successors,” he said. “It’s in my interests to prepare for any possibility.”

  I imagined he did, especially after how close he’d come to losing his title recently. “So if the traitor wants to take your place, is there a reason he targeted those particular liches?”

  “No.” An impatient bite entered his words. “None of the victims so far have been liches I work with personally.”

  “Maybe he’s building up to it,” I said. “I mean, reversing death magic strikes me as experimental at best. The revenants might have been a test run. And the phantoms, too.”

  “Perhaps.” His stare seemed to bore into me even with his eyes hidden by the mask. “There are many corners of the spirit arts which are little-known even to us.”

  “Spirit magic.” Lord Blackbourne’s face appeared in my mind’s eye. Look to your own… and he’d known me for a spirit mage right off. “Are… I mean, were you a spirit mage? When you were alive?”

  A heartbeat passed. “I was.”

  “And…” The words stuck in my throat. “That’s why you can create other liches, isn’t it? You’re more powerful than the others…”

  Because he’d been like me. Before he’d died.

  “Yes,” he said. “Nobody but a spirit mage can turn another person into a lich, and even then, they run the risk of making the change permanent.”

  “I think I’ll pass, thanks,” I responded.

  I’d rather stay alive. The perks of being undead didn’t outweigh the obvious downsides to entering an eternal existence as a walking corpse. But it explained a lot about his knowledge of spirit magic. He’d used it himself when he’d been alive as well as afterwards.

  And a spirit mage must be responsible for the spell turning liches into fresh corpses. Mr Cobb might have been arrested, but it seemed he wasn’t the only rogue here in the Parallel.

  “I expected as much,” he said. “However, this particular spell strikes me as experimental. There are ways to return the dead to life, for a short time, but not into living, breathing beings.”

  The image of Dex reforming in mid-air filled my mind’s eye. When I’d brought him back from the brink of death. For a short time. No… that can’t be true.

  The Death King tilted his head. “Yes? What is it?”

  My conflicted emotions must have shown on my face. “Dex has been missing for days now. He can’t… I mean, I brought him back to life, and now he’s gone. Is it because of what I did?”

  “What would give you that idea?”

  I shrugged, my skin pebbled with goose bumps. “He’s never vanished like this before. I tried astral projecting and looking around the nodes, but the phantom interrupted me.”

  If he’d been on top of a node at the wrong time, whatever I’d done to pull him together after his death might not be enough to save him this time.

  “You haven’t tried since?”

  Was there a challenge in his voice? “I want to find him, but I don’t want to invite even more trouble. Either he doesn’t want to be found, or…”

  Or he was gone. A
cold pit opened in my stomach. What kind of a friend was I, leaving him alone to face whatever dark force was hunting the dead?

  “If you astral project, a sprite shouldn’t be able to hide from you,” he said.

  I tried before. He wasn’t there. But had I really? I hadn’t searched everywhere, just one node. Perhaps if I persisted—and if I ran the risk of running into another half-dead phantom—I might be able to find him. If I couldn’t find him in the physical world, the spirit world was all that was left. “Can I do that from in here?”

  “Can you?” he said. “Yes, it’s perfectly safe.”

  “I take it the liches won’t draw on my face while I’m out of my body?” In response to his raised eyebrow, I added, “That’s what my friends did to me the other day.”

  “Yet you trust I won’t do the same?”

  I blinked at him. Could I picture the Death King drawing on my face? Nope. But then again, I hadn’t expected him to let me use his castle as a base to go hunting for Dex, either. Given the number of times he’d scared the shit out of me, I should be worried he’d do worse than draw on my face, but I had a friend to rescue. I’d wonder why I’d come to trust the Death King later.

  I slipped out of my body, reaching out with my senses to track down the nearby nodes. The one closest to the castle blazed on my vision, but I flew past it this time, towards the shadowy outline of the gates.

  “Dex?” I called.

  He wasn’t in the lands of the dead, not if I hadn’t seen any signs of him in my last few visits. Where else might’ve he gone? Surely not underground, not with faceless beasts slaughtering revenants. He must have found somewhere else to rest, somewhere he wouldn’t be disturbed by the living or the dead.

  I floated to the swamp’s edge, and halted beside the tree which I used to store my props in. A spark of light pinged on my vision. Aha.

  “Dex?” I called, peering inside the jagged hole in the tree bark.

  The light brightened into a transparent humanoid figure crouched inside the tree. “Get away from me!”

  I jerked back, flipping over in mid-air. “Dex, you’re alive!”