by Gaja J. Kos
“Thanks,” I muttered to Edgar who handed me a glass of water and vehemently ignored the fact that the only person I was thanking was myself. Through proxy, yes, but still myself.
I slumped into a nearby chair, letting the cool liquid slide down my throat as commands floated through the mental link I shared with the zombies, guiding their movements. At this point, even maintaining my hold on them was becoming an arduous task, but it still beat having to shuffle around and do all the work myself.
I closed my eyes. I really needed some food. And I needed some sleep.
Keeping the continuous flow of orders alive, I stalked around the counter and into the back, following the short hallway until I reached my office. The space wasn’t grand, but it was cozy, with a desk dominating the center, a few plants scattered around, masking the simple nature of the filing cabinets and the wardrobe that was half locker, half storage. I kicked off my heels, then peeled my work clothes from my sweaty skin, exchanging them for a fresh pair of jean shorts and a white tank top. The leather loafers came next, my feet thanking me for their soft embrace, before, finally, I threw a light cardigan over the ensemble.
The heat within the bar always masked the light chill of the night outside, and, as exhausted as I was, I didn’t dare risk the exposure. Even Nightwraiths, despite the witch and demon blood running through our veins, could catch colds, and given there was no one else to run the Hag but me, at least not to this extent, I didn’t have the luxury of spending a couple of days in bed.
Regardless of how inviting the thought sounded.
With a soft sigh, I released my electric blue hair from the tight ponytail, and checked myself in the floor-length mirror on the opposite wall. Not fantastic, but passable. At least the late hour would hide the ghastly dark circles lingering under my eyes.
After I plucked my purse, the last piece of my ensemble, from the desk drawer, I walked out of the office, the door clicking shut behind me. Only instead of veering into the bar, I turned right and marched down to the somewhat wider room set at the farthest corner of the building. A single thread of my magic touched the invisible barrier coating the entrance, sliding in as smoothly as a key into the proper lock. Less than a second passed before the ward parted like an ethereal curtain, and I stepped inside, flicking on the light switch, before quickly moving to the side.
On cue, five pairs of footsteps sounded from the narrow hallway. One after the other, the zombies stepped over the threshold, seeking out their respective beds. Though bed was a term I used loosely. There was a mattress for every one of them—just because I couldn’t bring myself to make them lie on the floor—but where a frame would normally finish the ensemble, there was nothing but a spell entwined with the air. A spell of my own design, created to prevent the zombies from breaking down into the very corpses they’d been before I’d infused them with my necromancy.
I waited patiently as they settled in their individual little lairs. The wards emitted a soft, white glow once they sensed the zombies’ presence, then gently closed the circle, ensconcing them in pure power. I checked everything one last time, then reeled in my magic.
The ethereal hooks pulled free of the reanimated flesh, and my head spun from the sudden lightness the process brought upon me. I braced my hand on the wall, breathing slowly to shake off the unpleasant sensation, then guided the tendrils of power back into my core.
When they finally settled into place, a gasp entered through my lips, reminding me—once again—that I was pushing my limits. I groaned. With the bar gaining popularity as much it had, I just might have to consider making a few adjustments to our opening hours and give myself some additional breathing space.
It wasn’t ideal, but it was a compromise that would hurt me far less in the long run than burnout.
Once I was certain I wouldn’t topple over the moment I let go of the wall, I flicked off the lights and strode outside, entwining the two halves of the ward into a unanimous whole once more. A slight headache started to throb in my temples, and I wrinkled my nose in annoyance, hoping to the gods the walk back to my apartment would be brisk and uneventful.
Naturally, given my luck, it was neither.
A high-pitched, female voice reached me first.
The woman seemed to be chanting, “Necromancy is a sin!” over and over again—the exact same thing her sign flashed in bold, bright letters. It was an effort, but I managed to restrain myself from rolling my eyes or snapping at the small group of protestors she was a part of. The same faces, time and time again, all twisted with the worst kind of anger.
The one fuelled by fear.
The people close to me—even the ones who I could hardly call friends—had warned me the wider, human community wouldn’t respond well to zombies, even less to a person who could lift them from their graves. After all, vampires were the only supes who lived out in the open, and even they preferred not to advertise their nature, if they could help it. Yet still I went, adamant to pursue my dream and disrupting the humans’ peaceful lives with the awareness that there was something more out there.
I understood the concern, really, even my father’s disapproval of my profession—dear mom, on the other hand, was positively thrilled—but my bank account was proof enough that the majority of non-supe folks wanted to experience something different. Something akin to the magic they read about in books or saw in movies. Not all of them were willing to accept that vampires were where the supernatural in this realm drew the line.
So I gave it to them. A small part of the dreams, the fragments of imagination toeing the line between myth and reality. And the regulars… Well, I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said they gave me hope for humankind.
However, not even the impressive amount of good press The Night Hag had had over the years was sufficient to shoo away this bunch. They came and went in waves, sometimes leaving nothing but posters or flyers of what an abomination I was lying around, or, on nights like this one, waiting to confront me in person.
I didn’t mind them, exactly, since they showed no signs of escalating further than the accusations they were flinging my way and spreading their outrage across social media—which, at times, brought more customers in than it sent away. But as always was the case with fanatics, it was hard to say with certainty things would stay that way forever. I cast a sideways glance at the furious, shouting faces.
Yeah, I definitely wouldn’t bet on things staying the same.
Head held high—but not pretentious—I skirted around the seething mass, doing my best to block out their comments. Yet as much as I tried, I simply couldn’t shield myself from everything.
Especially lies that struck a personal note.
“Our dead are supposed to be buried, not used as a means for monetary wealth!” a slender man in his late fifties shouted as he stepped in front of me, blocking my path and spraying my face with spittle. “You disturb their rest, abuse them with power no individual should have. You’re nothing but a slave lord, Liva Kasun, treating lives like some possession you can sell for profit and fun. A slaver. A filthy, fucking slaver.”
I cringed inwardly.
Not at the man’s ravings, but at the knowledge they stirred.
Demonkind had a long, disgustingly ugly history of enslaving humans by abusing the sacred bond of linking two souls together for eternity. And while there were numerous other atrocities my mother’s race had committed, that was by far the worst of them all.
I’d sooner kill myself than set foot down that path, but I also knew there was no point in arguing with the man. Not when it was clear he believed there was still life within the corpses I pulled from the ground.
There wasn’t. Not even a flicker.
Zombies were nothing but beautifully put together pieces of bone—and sometimes flesh, if the corpse was recent enough—reconstructed by the potent hands of magic to fit their former appearance. Yes, they looked lifelike. But that was it. Everything they did, everything they said, it was all me.
&nbs
p; For a second there, I considered dragging out a zombie and putting up a show of returning it to its original state just to shut these people up. Yet at the same time I was positive they would only use it to further their twisted agenda.
I wouldn’t be just Lana the Defiler any longer. But Lana the Killer, too.
So I simply swallowed any kind of emotional response and veered off the sidewalk, seeking the empty space of the road. The crowd, however, was determined to not let me go that easily. Great. They gathered around me like a swarm of flies, the buzzing of their voices making my headache worse with every passing second. But I kept walking. And they kept following.
Until they blocked my path.
“Step aside,” I said, voice leveled and feet automatically shifting into a fighter’s stance.
Contorted, shouting faces stared back at me, but none of the protestors moved. Gods, of all the nights, they just had to choose this one…
“Step aside,” I repeated, but this time, I willed just a small amount of magic to infuse the air around me. The power spread easily, and within a heartbeat, significantly dropped the temperature in my immediate vicinity until the would-be chill of death swept across the protestors’ skin.
Their cries of outrage grew, but at least the quick display of strength caused the mass of bodies to back off. I pushed forward, eager to get the fuck away. But I barely made it three steps before a stirring in the air alerted my magic to the bloody sign that would have flown straight into the back of my head if I hadn’t ducked in time.
I looked down at the red, block letters, spilling out the protestors’ pet name for me. Zirnitra’s Whore.
While it was true that some witches and warlocks from the Old World—Kolovrat, as they called it—cherished the dragon god of sorcery, the Kolduny weren’t among them. And my necromancy, for what it was worth, came from my parents’ unique coupling, not as a gift from some half-forgotten deity.
A thud at the translucent shield I kept at my back propelled me out of my thoughts and forced my feet to move. I didn’t turn around, didn’t face the seething crowd of misguided humans even as more and more shit bounced off the protective barrier, but simply kept walking, wondering if this day was ever going to end.
The moment I locked the apartment door behind me, I veered straight into the bathroom. Too worn out to even take a shower, I merely stripped out of my clothes, pulled on a fresh pair of undies and an oversized T-shirt, and hastily wiped the makeup off my face. As soon as that was done, I padded out into the living room, the plush carpet soothing my still aching feet, and poured myself two fingers of scotch.
My body was nagging me to drag my ass to bed, but my mind was still buzzing with thoughts that seemed that much worse in the utter silence of the apartment. Until I sorted that out, the only thing crawling beneath the covers would achieve was a night of tossing and turning, and a bitch of a mood the following day. I sighed, then dimmed the lights to avoid irritating my headache beyond the already nasty throb, and threw myself into the upholstered armchair.
As I rolled the rich flavor of the scotch across my tongue, I rummaged through my memory for any indication of who the hooded stranger might have been. He hadn’t appeared hostile exactly, but he didn’t strike me like a benevolent figure, either. And I was positive I’d never seen him around before.
I pursed my lips and brought the cool surface of the glass to my cheek. Could he be a protestor gone rogue? Or maybe one of my mother’s cronies, sent here to spy on me for gods knew what reason?
A hiss grew in my chest and broke the silence. Neither option felt right, but no other explanation came to mind.
I placed the scotch on the club table and rubbed my temples. Tossing and turning or not, I needed to call it a night. Tomorrow, I could phone Martin and see if my fellow necromancer who knew just about anything that went on in this town had caught a whiff of a hooded, shady strip of a man skulking about. And if that failed, there was still Lena, my younger sister and one of the best bounty hunters in the world to turn to. Her latest mission had dragged on for a while now, so it shouldn’t take her too long to wrap it up and return home.
Satisfied with finally having a course of action to follow, I picked up the scotch to savor those final drops that would sing me to rest, if not exactly sleep. Only the liquor barely touched my lips before callused hands snaked around my neck, squeezing the very breath from my lungs.
Instinctively, I threw the glass at my attacker, and the grip loosened. Relief swept through me, but was disgustingly short-lived.
Because the very next moment, a blindfold slipped over my eyes, stealing away my sight, and the hands returned with unimaginable force, marring my skin with the bruising promise of death.
Chapter 3
Shit, shit, shit.
My mind shook with a myriad of panicked thoughts that threatened to drag me under, but I forced them away to the best of my abilities and dug out the knowledge I needed from the muddied depths of my memory instead. Back when we were still living together in the Shadow World, Lena had trained both me and Liva, but I had always been her star pupil.
Although I had no great love for fighting and didn’t have the natural talent my little sister possessed, I was still a quick learner. I drank up Lena’s lessons with an almost single-minded determination to store every last bit of knowledge, wanting to be able to rely on more than just magic and blunt demonic strength in case trouble popped up.
Her maneuvers and tips had gotten me out of hairy situations on numerous occasions before, and the fact that trouble had ambushed me inside my godsdamned apartment shouldn’t change the fact that I knew how to fight. Right?
The suffocating lump in my throat showed I needed more convincing, but I didn’t dare let myself walk down that path. Instead, I bucked and brought my fingers around the muscular arms determined to choke me to death, quickly willing my magic to flow. The stench of scorched skin prickled at my nostrils not a moment later, but the end effect wasn’t what I anticipated.
The bloody grip tightened.
I ground my teeth as my mind swam, feeling eerily disconnected from the rest of my body. Shit. Breath was becoming a luxury I was losing fast, and if I didn’t do something, I’d never get to draw another one.
Fighting the pain that burned in my chest, I willed more and more magic to saturate the molecules in the air while my nails dug into my attacker’s skin, drawing blood. He hissed, and I wrung myself free from his fingers.
A cough exploded from my lungs the instant a sweet dose of oxygen entered my bloodstream, but while it didn’t take me all that long to regain my composure—another thing I trained with Lena time and time again—the bastard was faster. I barely spun out of the way when he lunged for me, the blindfold still crapping all over my vision.
I didn’t have time to undo the tight knot digging into the back of my head, not when my attacker was already moving again. Luckily, I knew the layout of my apartment like the back of my hand. As long as I heard the bastard well enough to get out of his way, sacrificing my sight was a far lesser evil than risking his hands finding purchase again. I dropped down into a roll, sending the club table flying to the side, then darted sideways a split second before I felt his fist smash into the ground, precisely where I’d been mere moments ago.
Listening to my magic, to the currents of the air I was linked with thanks to my father’s Kolduny nature, I evaded the bastard, occasionally even meeting his punches with a block of my own, just to get away. Yet even my skills meant little compared to the speed and efficiency he oozed from his body, speaking of someone well versed in combat. Only that wasn’t even the worst of it.
My power was running on fumes.
It was only a matter of time before it started getting glitchy, so I didn’t dare pad my attacks with too much of its potent presence from fear of using up the last of my reserves.
Sadly, it showed.
A fist collided with my shoulder as if someone slammed me with a bloody brick, and I crashed int
o the bookshelves dominating the western wall with bone-crunching force. Sharp edges of the hardbacks that flew everywhere bit into my skin, and some small part of me couldn’t help but cringe at the damage they must have sustained.
Quite possibly right on par with mine.
But as angry as the blow my small, loved library received made me, it still wasn’t enough to give me a boost. Not the kind I needed, anyway.
Gods, I needed to end this. Now.
I took a deep breath, raised myself on wobbly feet, and waited for the bastard to strike.
Unsurprisingly, the wait wasn’t all that long.
Paper crunched beneath his boots as he approached, and I lashed out with my foot with all the strength I could muster, hitting him square in the nuts. He groaned, the air around me losing the taint of his immediate presence. I used the opportunity—possibly the only one I would get—to call to my demonic form.
The power flowed through my body, sluggishly at first, then with a rush that echoed my desperate need. It broke up my flesh until I was nothing but floating particles, liberated from the restraints of a human form. I hovered in the air for a second—just long enough to hear my attacker’s “What the fuck?!” echo through the room, then propelled myself towards the slightly cracked window in the kitchen, tasting the promised freedom, but still not seeing it.
Since clothing changed right alongside my body, the damned blindfold continued to impede my vision despite being nothing more than free flowing atoms on the breeze. I navigated my surroundings through memory and a little help of my magic—what little of it remained—and floated through the city to the one place I knew I would be safe.
My heart was still pounding like some Scars on Broadway song when I reformed in the converted industrial warehouse that was Martin’s home. I splatted down on the floor, breathing heavily, then rolled onto my back. For a minute, all I could do was just lie there and fight not the darkness of the blindfold, but the one that threatened to snatch away my consciousness.