Bodyguards of Samhain Shifter Box Set

by Lisa Daniels

  “Necromancers, summon your fighters,” the referee announced in his gruff, carrying voice. Ragehand grinned a horrible grin at her, making a point of twirling his black, waxed mustachio before a black bag was hauled in, and he dipped into his trance. Morgana did the same, wanting to detect what soul Ragehand summoned, making a note of its energy signature. It didn’t seem to be any of the famous ones the police wanted her to go after, but she could interview it later, if she got a chance to do so without necromancer attention, and if its necromancer didn’t know the binding that made a spirit only respond to the Commands of its original summoner.

  She hastily asked for Beverly Heath’s help, and the spirit eagerly jumped into her bones, forming a ghostly blue-gold aura around them, rearranging to a standing position.

  A darker blue, almost black aura enveloped the body of Ragehand’s summon, and to Morgana’s dismay, she saw that one of the hands had an axe attached to it instead of an actual hand.

  A cold sweat went through Morgana at the sight. Wasn’t this supposed to be unarmed combat?

  “He said hands-only combat,” Theon whispered, and Morgana understood, and let out a bitter laugh.

  Tricked. Of course. She was at a disadvantage, without a weapon. The crowd bayed, and Ragehand continued to grin. “You’re going to regret this challenge, slut,” he mocked.

  “Should have placed higher odds on me,” she replied, bluffing confidence.

  I Command you, she sent to Beverly in a silent, mental call through their connection, to do what you can to avoid damage from that sword.

  Easy, Beverly answered. She raised up her ghostly hand, and a sharp, thin point exuded from it, until it resembled a fencing saber.

  A few gasps from the crowd, and a small, internal one from Morgana. Because wait. Beverly could do that? Spirits could do that?

  “Wasting a lot of energy on an unnecessary extension,” Ragehand growled, though Morgana was sure she could see slight uncertainty in his eyes. It bolstered her own confidence, and she felt a foreign savagery enter her chest. She barely suppressed the gleeful urge to laugh.

  The referee counted down, and Morgana slipped fully into her trance, feeling like a puppeteer behind Beverly, even though she’d explicitly given the Command for Beverly’s free will and judgment in the fight. The spirit was a fighter. Morgana wasn’t.

  Ragehand’s monster, its spirit visible, body not from her side of things, lunged at Beverly with a growling scream. Beverly’s blue-gold aura stepped neatly aside, one arm out for balance, the other one slashing, scoring a thin wound on the spirit, which healed up instantly.

  With another gurgling scream, Ragehand’s spirit continued to rush Beverly, with frightening speed and strength. Beverly seemed so small and frail in comparison—but she kept stepping aside. Always perfectly, never one step more than she needed. She maddened the spirit like a gnat biting a predator, slashing and stinging from every angle possible, quick and nimble in a way Ragehand’s spirit couldn’t comply with.

  Shit, Morgana thought. She’s really, really good. No wonder Beverly had single-handedly won forty duels. Ragehand’s spirit seemed to be some kind of shifter in its former life, because it now took on a harder, bulkier substance, frustration gibbering out of it. It managed one frenzied swipe that hit Beverly’s sword arm, shearing it clean off, and Morgana pumped energy into fixing the injury—a scary amount as she felt her reserves deplete, and deplete. Morgana found she didn’t need to order Beverly around at all. She followed her instructions, then went one better on them. She was autonomous, unbridled, and fierce.

  The roars of the crowd came to her at a distance, as if she were underwater. Her awareness of the actual arena was dim at best, in her twilight state of a world with muted colors, of two spirits thrashing against one another.

  Of Beverly wasting no energy on laughter, on mocking.

  Morgana’s energy dipped under half, then to a quarter of its former strength. Even with the few blows her spirit suffered, keeping together such a powerful form using so much physical skill, connected to only bones, with an extended sword hand, ripped the magic out of her.

  With a duck, instep, and lift, Beverly sliced her saber-like weapon completely through the spirit, and it fell into two halves upon the ground. The halves wriggled and attempted to mend, before stopping their repair about a third of the way in the process. Ragehand’s spirit stopped moving, before breaking out of the Command, free to zip into the deeper levels of the Other Side.

  Opening her eyes, Morgana saw her ghostly spirit standing tall, shrinking her sword into her hand, above the fallen, solid body of a no-longer-possessed corpse. Ragehand was out cold from magical exhaustion.

  There were barely any cheers for Morgana. After all, she’d lost them a lot of money. The few who did bet on her were all smiles and hysterical laughter at winning a lot of money. Maintaining strength, Morgana walked away from the arena, giving a soft Command for Beverly to follow. Theon fell in line as well, eyes slightly mournful.

  “I bet ten dollars on you,” he said. “I should have bet more, shouldn’t I?”

  “Ye of little faith,” she said, grinning.

  “I am happy to help,” Beverly said, sounding incredibly smug and elated at the same time, which caused Theon to raise one eyebrow.

  “You Commanded for her to speak?”

  “I gave her free rein and will for the fight,” Morgana whispered, not wanting others to overhear. They’d be a bit less impressed if they found out that all Morgana happened to be was a battery, while the spirit actually had the control. Or they might decide to steal Beverly from her.

  Which was also why Morgana had taken great pains to bind Beverly’s spirit to her Commands only.

  “Isn’t that dangerous?” Theon asked, worry evident in his tone.

  “Depends on the spirit. Benevolent ones are safer in this regard.”

  She collected her reward from a rather grumpy tiller, who clearly had bet a lot against her.

  “I wasn’t kidding,” she said. “I want tougher competition. I want in on regular nights. That possible?”

  “Yes,” the tiller said sourly. He gave her a contact card. “When you send a message, use the same password as the venue you were last in. We’ll send you the date, venue, and time of the next deadring. What gets some hotshot like you here, anyway?”

  Morgana put on a scowl. “People always telling me I’m evil, that I should die, that my magic is poison. Figure I’ll use that magic to earn me enough cash to buy a house with, and then stick the middle finger up at them.”

  The tiller nodded, and one of the winning competitors, Corpsesinger, grinned. “I can relate to that one, Crimson. Gonna make a living with this. I’ll be champion before you, though.”

  “We’ll see,” Morgana replied. Corpsesinger approached her afterwards to offer a drink, but she declined politely, recognizing the overtures towards pre-date conditions. She didn’t plan to date anyone in the deadring circle. And the police had recommended against it, too, even if it might jump some hurdles faster. The less ties she had in this place, the better. She eventually dismissed Beverly, because no matter how much she tried to assure Theon that Beverly’s free will wasn’t a problem, he clearly found it as one, so she preserved the last ounces of her power to dismiss the spirit.

  They stayed until the unofficial closing time, when the last match was done and a few more drinks were handed out, as well as what looked like highly illegal drugs. They left discreetly like the others, with the promise of a next location to be revealed.

  As they clambered into their rental, Theon said, “So there was no luck with the bodies at all?”

  “None,” Morgana said. “I couldn’t sense the spirits the police are looking for. As for the bodies, well, it’s going to be hard if they’re using the bones but not the same spirit. Even then, the spirit still needs to see itself as the person it used to be. It’s not an exact science, you know.”

  “That can’t have been a big venue, the one we wen
t to,” Theon mused, passing a green light, keeping his drive steady and smooth. “You were in a place with small pickings, small fry.”

  She sighed. No multimillionaire was going to show himself in a shabby basement. “I figured as much. I’d need to make more of a name for myself, first—if I’m going to find out the people running the whole sorry operation in Stoneshire or Lasthearth.”

  Theon stopped by a 24-hour store on the way back and grabbed a bottle of rosé. Back in the suite, they each poured a glass for themselves, and no more.

  “Figure we should get some celebrations going on, anyway,” he said. “Since you did win your first match. The things you made that spirit do! It was on another level entirely. All the others, just fumbling around with their clumsy fighting, and then there’s you with some goddamn wisp, some drop of water floating around that thing.” He seemed animated, excited, blood rushing to his cheeks in memory of the fight. “You could make serious money off something like this, I bet. If you chose.”

  Morgana felt embarrassed by the praise and hid slightly behind her glass. “Seriously, it wasn’t any skill on my part, really. That’s the big secret. Just finding a compliant spirit who is more than happy to do all the work.”

  “Still, it’s impressive. You picked her out from all the spirits you found. That’s not just a fluke, is it?”

  It is, Morgana wanted to say, but he was looking at her as if she’d done something amazing, and she didn’t have the heart to pile more negativity onto the matter. It was nice to have someone look at her with admiration, rather than suspicion. “Okay, I’ll give you that.”

  He sat there in thoughtful silence, nursing his glass of wine. “Can people steal a spirit from someone else? Like, could a necromancer just take this Beverly Heath from you?”

  “They could if I don’t take the necessary precautions,” Morgana conceded. “Otherwise I think there’s some kind of obscure moral code about the whole business. Considered bad manners, and others would recognize the spirit.” Of course, she was pulling some of this out of her ass. She didn’t know for sure, but she’d read some articles that suggested as such, but it really depended on the venue and the quality of the people who attended them. And since this was all underground and highly illegal, she didn’t really have great expectations of sportsmanship.

  “You know, I was thinking...” Theon stared at her intently, with amber eyes that seemed almost golden in the soft light above them. He leaned forward with intent, and she felt herself being pulled into it as well. “Why is this illegal?”

  “Huh?” For a moment, she was speechless. “What do you mean?” She raised her hands, palms upward. “Obviously it’s bad to use people’s corpses for personal entertainment and money.”

  “It’s a fairly bloodless way of fighting, though,” Theon persisted. “I mean, people love a bloodbath. People like to see danger, don’t they? It was like that with the coliseums in the past…”

  She wasn’t sure if she liked the glint in his eyes. “We’ve become more civilized since then.”

  “Have we, though? Really?” Theon kept his gaze locked with hers as he sipped again. “Because in my experience, people are still craving blood. On our movie screens, in having people we hate killed… I don’t think we’ve changed much since then.”

  “Is this a bear shifter thing?” Morgana gulped her drink down as if it might quench her thirst. She felt uneasy around Theon, but didn’t know why. Part agitation, part something else. “That animal lust for blood?”

  “A human thing, I should think. What, you honestly never thought about it?”

  She had, but it made her uncomfortable to think that there might be a beast lurking under her skin—the kind that enjoyed violence. That enjoyed inflicting it upon another being. She didn’t see corpses as people anymore. As for the spirits, they didn’t hurt much and didn’t fear death, so it was no issue using them. But she didn’t do it for the thrill of combat. She did it because she had to.

  “You must be a real nice person, then.” He kicked up his feet on the table, and Morgana swallowed the urge to yell at him to take them back down. There was something confident and ingratiating about his manner at the same time. Now that there was communication beyond the basics, she found him to have an interesting way of looking at things.

  “Do necromancers ever fall in love with the spirits?” he asked, eyes now wide.

  Morgana shuddered. “Hell, no.”

  “But what if… what if someone they loved died? What do they do then? Keep them preserved in the body? Find a new one? Talk often?”

  Another shiver went through Morgana. She hadn’t lost anyone yet. She hoped she never would, but that was a wishful dream at best. “I’ve not thought about it.” That was a lie; she had. Just not long enough before she decided the topic was too dangerous to continue exploring. Because she didn’t know if she might give into temptation or not.

  “It’s a lot of things to think about, isn’t it?” He nodded thoughtfully to himself. “I envy you in a way. I know people hate your magic and all, but I bet many of them wish they could have it themselves. To be able to speak to the ones they had lost, and learn from the ones long gone.”

  He made it sound so romantic. She chuckled to herself. People generally didn’t make it sound like that at all. More like it was some monstrous act. Even in Ireland, though they had a school for it, there was still this little stigma attached to it. Like they were expected to be up to no good, somehow. “Have you lost anyone?”

  To her surprise, he nodded without any hesitation. “My uncle, aunt, grandparents. Most of them when I was quite young, so I didn’t really understand that it was really losing them. I’d think I could just phone them up in heaven or something. Speaking of heaven...”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “I know there’s the Other Side, but I don’t know where the spirits go after they decide to move on. That’s a mystery even for us masters of death.”

  “Shame,” he said. “You’d think that you guys were most qualified to answer that question.”

  “Sorry.” She reached over to give him a light pat on the shoulder, and also for the opportunity for some close contact. He wasn’t a bad sort at all, really. She couldn’t think why she avoided speaking to him for so long, getting to know him. They continued talking, their subject turning lighter, spinning out of the subject of her magic entirely, and they retired to their beds shortly afterward, with her lying in the bed in a contented huddle, smiling to herself.

  That really wasn’t bad at all. Certainly took her mind off some of the more distasteful things she needed to do in this job. Though he’d also raised some questions she didn’t feel comfortable answering, either. Honestly, she liked the curiosity, even if she didn’t want to answer everything.

  She only hoped he was as good at protecting her as he was curious.

  Chapter Four – Theon

  Three weeks into his job protecting Morgana, waiting for their next fight to come along, she received virtually no harassment at all. Obviously she wasn’t going around announcing to everyone she was a necromancer, and she wasn’t really known to others in this country. Rosen Grieves received a lot of issues, however, even with her record of protecting others. She never went anywhere without that bodyguard of hers, and just as well.

  He wouldn’t have liked that job much. In the meanwhile, they had not yet obtained an invitation to a new deadring, and Morgana fretted that maybe they were onto her, somehow, and kept bouncing that worry onto the police, who told her just to sit tight and wait for the magic to happen.

  “It must be strange, though. A new person just appearing out of nowhere, not so long after a prominent corpse was robbed,” Morgana said, sitting with Theon inside Stoneshire Mall, which was oddly empty, despite all the space and shopping opportunities it offered. Perhaps the wrong time of day or week to go, but Morgana wanted to explore more than just the inside of a boring former university complex. The police didn’t want her for consulting because they didn�
��t want to risk some potential spy in the force revealing her identity.

  “I’m not sure if they really care, to be honest,” Theon said, examining the stores in the mall, the various cafés and restaurants, and wondering where he might like to eat later. “They probably get foreign necromancers all the time, trying their fortune in combat.”

  Morgana looked doubtful, but didn’t protest on the matter. “I hope you’re right. Otherwise they might be down in that basement, plotting to murder me or something. God, I hate this job.” She slouched a little as she walked, letting out an exasperated sigh.

  “What would you have been doing if you weren’t here?” Theon’s eyes traced over Morgana’s dark red hair, enjoying the way the light shined off it with a ruby glint. He knew not all Irish people had red hair, but there was definitely a thing about that hair color being more prevalent there than anywhere else. He decided he really liked red hair: dyed or natural. Something about it stirred interest in his thoughts and breath. Not exactly a bad body on Morgana, either, though she liked to hide it under long-sleeved tops and jeans. As if she was ashamed of her body, somehow, or hiding an awful lot of tattoos. That accursed part of his brain that responded to visual stimuli loved working overtime to imagine what she might look like without anything on at all.

  But he knew better than to let such thoughts bloom into reality. He was a man. That came with all the base urges and instincts he’d really rather pretend he didn’t have at times, along with his deeper, ursine ones as well.

  Morgana, deep into whatever conversation topic she’d decided to cover, had no idea, of course. “I’ve been speaking some more to Beverly, trying to understand her origins better, but I’m left in the dark. Her wiki page shows a frivolous lifestyle, roaming the continent, dueling people, beating them, and sleeping with men and women alike. She had a child, but that’s all the Wikipedia says. ‘Had a child.’ Maybe even several. No idea, but there was some report she was seen to be pregnant in places. She doesn’t sound like the kind of soul that would remain pure after death.” Morgana was chewing on her thumbnail, a habit Theon had started to notice of her when she was thinking deeply. She bit lightly, so the nail more or less remained intact.