“That gun won’t hurt me none Basil, so you may as well put that thing down.”
“If I shot enough bullets into you, I might be able to sever your rotten head from that stump of a body,” I replied. “And you know I could do it.” Delia was barely five feet tall and was at least two hundred and fifty pounds. When she did fall through the hole, I had better stand clear of her.
“But then Stephen wouldn’t be able to tell you what your grandfather might want to say to you, now would he?”
“You aren’t the only Tomb Talker in the world.”
“But none of the others have worked, have they?”
I didn’t say anything, because she was correct.
“They won’t be able to tell you all about your Colin Townshend, and boy, does that handsome devil have a mouthful to say about him.”
Enough of her chatter. She was stalling for time. She must not have had a gun, or she would have used it by now. What would Wendy have done in this situation?
I pulled out one of my knives and threw it. I was aiming for her neck and would have settled for her chest, but she jerked away in the last second, hiding in the deeper recesses of the attic. Damn Necromancers.
I took out a stick of ochre. I next began scribbling out a containment sigil directly below the opening in the ceiling. I listened as she ripped out at least twenty pieces of paper in the time it took for me to complete my mark. Periodically she would make the leaves snow down on me. The first was from the Casting of the Circles: Arcane Edition, Vol. XIV, which was a fairly common tome. Then another page fell down. I picked it up and found that it was a handwritten page from one of Grandfather’s journals. It was irreplaceable. She was randomly picking pages from multiple books now.
Now to ferret out the nutria. I went to Grandfather’s desk and slid the wooden slat that opened a secret compartment. In it was some forged passports and Gasser six shot pistol. I next checked the barrel, and although it was fully loaded, there were no spares bullets to be found. I next carefully estimated exactly where the piles of books were up in the attic above me. Then I began shooting everywhere I didn’t think there were any… I hoped.
“You wench of a whore!” she screeched. “I’ll have your toes and teats feed my cats, I will.”
Then she jumped out of the hole and down into the sigil. She stooped over, and while her clothes were damp in most places, what I noticed the most was the exceptionally wet patches under her arms, stomach, and neck. She tried to jump at me, but the circle held. Blue sparks spit inward with each attempt she made to evade it. This circle was made to hold the undead. She was going nowhere fast.
I ignored her petulant howls and flinging arms, and began writing the next circle around the first. She screamed for a bit more and then quieted down.
She studied the first sigil and then she said, “If you shoot me, it will break the magic.” What she didn’t know was that I was out of bullets.
“You and I both know that this circle can only hold me for so long. When I get out, you know that I am stronger and faster than you are. You won’t be able to put a bullet in me before I get to you.”
“Oh, I think I understand that without a doubt.”
“Then whatchya doing?” she asked, allowing unease to taint her words.
“I’m making a perimeter press.”
“A what?”
“Poor Delia may not have been perfect in life, but she doesn’t deserve to live on after death like this. You, my dear, are about to die a final second death, so you better tell me what this is all about before it’s too late. Who’s your maker and what does he want?”
She laughed at my question. Black sputum sprayed out of her mouth, and I was thankful that bodily fluids couldn’t cross the barrier. Then she grabbed for the ladder, clearly ignoring my question and intending to climb back up to the attic.
“Go ahead, but you won’t be able to walk around very far up there. The circle that you are standing in is quite strong and tight,” I told her. “And it easily ascends beyond the roof.
She paused and stared at me. I was both awed and disgusted by whoever was empowering her. The power they must have had to control her body while she was at such an advanced stage of death.
“If you’re not going to tell me what this is all about, then let me get on with it,” I told her.
“You’re going to die bitch,” she spat.
“We are all going to die someday, some sooner than others.”
“If you stay with him, you’re going to be one of the ones that die sooner. We are after him, ya’ know.”
“I haven’t a clue as to the whom you are referring to,” I replied. Even though I was quite interested in the turn of conversation, I went ahead and added the final marks for the illegal black spell. My brain rationalized the use of dunk magic, because in reality, I was really helping Delia.
I moved a little quicker and started pulling at the electromagnetic resonances that emanated from the earth. I heard growling followed by a bellowing outside. I hoped the noise was the king draug being killed and not of Colin dying.
I gave her one more chance when I asked, “Are you referring to Colin Townsend?”
“He’s a dead man walking.”
“How is he a danger to me?”
“There’s wolf running through his veins, and the sight is blinding his eyes,” she said. Apparently, our nemesis knew quite a bit about him.
“I already knew all that, and honestly, I couldn’t be happier. It means he’ll be harder to kill, and these days, many people would rather see me dead than alive.”
I could tell she was growing nervous, as she began pacing the three foot in diameter circle that was about to get a hell of a lot smaller. She said with more than a hint of desperation, “Wait! Your Grandfather is trying to come forward.” Now I knew she was grasping at straws.
I mumbled the words that meant something to me, but nothing to her. Then the circle began constricting upon her. Soon she would become just another splat of blood and gore.
I could hear the fray outside was reaching a fever pitch, with several yelps, thuds, and moans. I decided to abandon this room, now that the deader was as good as dead.
When she finally realized that the end was near, she called out, “He’ll never love you!”
I didn’t know whom she was referring to, but she was clearly allowing desperation to taint her words. That was the problem with citizens of the Republic of America. None of them had been around practicing Summoner’s lately. So they didn’t know that we always had deaf ears when it came to pleading captives. It was one of Grandfather’s top five rules, number three to be specific.
I said the words aloud that would finish closing the circle and then left the room. Her cries ended soon enough. May Delia’s soul rest in peace, just as her body finally had.
I went to the window in my old bedroom that overlooked the water, and then after I took some boards off, I lifted it open. Colin Townsend was no longer in the lake or anywhere in sight, and neither was the goliath draug. There were a couple of wolves roaming around, sniffing this and that, but not a single draug was anywhere in sight. Had they turned tail and ran?
Then I heard stomping coming from downstairs. Was it the Necromancer? They usually needed to be close to their pets. I next heard whomever it was taking the stairs, which meant I had no time to make another sigil. My heart sped up. I took out one of my knives and put its blade in my mouth, and then I ran to hide behind my bedroom’s door. I bit my bottom lip to help me focus and then I waited.
I saw a figure, but it was too dark in the hall to tell who or what it was. They smelled of the lake, but it might have been Colin. I waited. What surprised me was that whoever it was barely even glanced at Grandfather’s bedroom. I was certain that the witch had probably imploded in it by now.
Down the hall he came, destined for my room.
“Stop,” I called out. “I have a pistol aimed straight at you,” which was a lie.
“It’s me Bas
il,” said Colin.
He rushed into the room and closed the door, revealing my hiding spot. His shirt was missing, and I felt my eyes involuntarily scan his chest. Once I was certain he had no life threatening wounds, I continued staring at it a tad too long to be polite. I met his eyes once again, and we stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity, neither of us speaking. I felt him staring at my lips and then lower. I think he was testing my attraction for him by analyzing the connection between us. He must have liked what he saw because he stepped in closer. Even with all the muck of the river on him, I still found him extremely handsome. I couldn’t help myself as I blushed in response, allowing him to crowd me against the wall.
“Basil,” he whispered.
“The big ‘un, he’s dead?” I whispered back at him.
“They are all dead except for a few of the Loups.”
“They aren’t going to harm us?”
“No.”
“Oh,” I said leaving my lips slightly parted as he smiled down at me. He stepped even closer into my personal space.
“Did you kill him?”
He nodded his head. In that moment, I knew I had a strong and lethal man in front me. He had killed the goliath draug and barely had a scratch on him. He could take care of himself in my crazy and dangerous world. My eyes grew large in appreciation for him.
“What is that mess at the bottom of the ladder?” he asked me.
“Delia the Tomb Talker. She had been turned into a deader.”
He bent his head down to mine and whispered, “You could have died.”
“You too,” I whispered and then swallowed loudly.
“I don’t want to die without ever doing this.” He closed the gap between us and our lips met, and for the briefest of moments, I was consumed by the same thought.
I closed my eyes, because I thought that was what one was supposed to do. I wondered if he would have ever kissed me if we didn’t have this terrological connection between us. Either way, I didn’t care. I let the feeling of his lips moving against mine be my world for a moment. For a first real kiss, this was even better than I imagined it could be.
Chapter 8
Reveries
Rule number twelve: If you ignore the people in their moment in need, they will forget you and your services indeed.
His lips were both hesitant and searching, testing my response. He placed light kisses along the seam of my lips and its corners. Then he kissed his way to my ear, and he took my lobe in his hot mouth. His hair was wet against my face. He smelled of both bog water and forest, and I found I yearned to smell only his clean pine scent again. I absently thought that it was entirely unfair that he could see the connection between us when I could not, but I would have had to admit that it was infinitely better than if he had been an Aurora, who could have seen my every emotion.
When he pulled his lips away from mine, I was speared with a moment of self-doubt. I had learned how to flirt at a young age while watching my mother flirt with men at balls, the ones I never got to go to as an adult. Grandfather always seemed to have a lesson for me on those nights or an urgent job for us to do. Really, I thought it was because I was an embarrassment to my mother, and she made sure Grandfather had other things for me to do on those nights.
Then I was whisked off to college overseas, where I learned all too quickly that female Summoners were either rare or hid their abilities. Society deemed it not a proper User power for the female persuasion, and it was even worse stateside. It always seemed as if Grandfather and I were running under the radar like bootleggers.
The incident that caused my dismissal from college involved some of the college’s fraternity boys. They were lewd and vulgar, and they thought I was their initiation ritual. I taught them a thing or two before I left. I was no one’s victim. The university did us all a favor when they graduated me early in exchange for not going public with the assault.
But Colin couldn’t be any different from those boys. He hadn’t treated me like a pretty bauble or his dog to be used and abused. He had treated me with respect and kindness, most likely because he too had seen discrimination in his life.
“There is a bit of a mess in the other room,” Calidum said from the doorway.
Colin smiled at me and said, “Thank you.”
I tilted my head down and looked up at him from under my lashes. I smirked a small smile back at him, feeling suddenly shy. I felt my skin flush in embarrassment and my hands were trembling. It must have been the adrenaline from the battle.
“Yes, there is Calidum,” Colin agreed, although he never took his eyes from me. “It’s good to see you again. I think we’ll sleep in this room tonight. After I fetch your bags from the dead mare, I’ll need to wash up again. I don’t think I like smelling like algae and silt.”
I nodded my head and he left. I turned my attention to Calidum and asked, “What happened out there?”
“Colin was most impressive Mistress. He killed the abomination and then we killed the rest of the water creatures, along with the help of the last of the wolf creatures. He then had a conversation with them and they left. With your poor decision making skills and the dangerous lifestyle, he would be an appropriate mate for you.”
I coughed to hide my shock over his last statement.
“What happened in the other room?” he asked next.
“Yes, how exactly did Delia die?” Colin asked as he came back into the room with my saddlebags. He was fast, or the bags had been at the bottom of the stairs in anticipation that I would be asking for them. I wondered in abject horror how much he had heard.
“I saw that you had created a perimeter press,” he added. I waited for condemnation, since it was a dunkelheit spell, but none was forthcoming. Dunkelheit was the Germanic name for the dark arts, but most people not from Fascist Germany nicknamed it dunk. Spells like the perimeter press were why summoning magic had been banned in the Republic. There were just too many sigils that could be twisted for nefarious purposes.
He set my bags down on the floor next to the bed, and then he grabbed his own bag that he had stored in the room’s wardrobe from earlier. “We’ll talk after I return. I’m going to check the generator, so I might be a little while. Will you be all right?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Then he walked out of the room, leaving me with Calidum. I added some wood to the fireplace and then lit it. Calidum stretched, curled up into a ball in front of it, and then closed his eyes.
“You did great out there,” I told the little black demon.
“Not as great as that time in London with that bogawat.”
“The bogawat didn’t like water. That was the difference.”
“If you say so.”
I sighed, the stress of the night leaving my body in a rush. I hadn’t felt this spent, nervous, and distracted all at the same time since Stephen had been decapitated. Of course, I had been devastated with grief when he had died. I would always miss his quick smile and devilish may care attitude, but this was the first time I could admit that there might be a life for me after him. Colin, in the course of one day, had changed all of that for me.
I thought back to Delia’s words, and if what she said was true, then why was Colin the target of whoever was attacking us? I had naturally thought I might have been the focus of the assault, since I had kept a high profile lately.
I had assumed that my Grandfather would be able to take care of himself, and look what happened to him. He died. He died when I might have been able to save him. I had also believed that Stephen would always land on his feet, but I had been wrong on that too. He had sacrificed himself to give us a chance at killing Peter… to give me a chance to live.
Now that I knew it took teamwork to stay alive, I wouldn’t let my past mistakes be the cause of Colin’s death. He needed me as much as I needed him, which reminded me of the last time my Grandfather and I had worked together.
···•Ͽ Ѡ Ͼ•···
Grandfather and
I had been at home in the evening when we received the message. I recalled how cold it was, the coldest thus far of the season, and the clouds were heavy with snow. The lake had chunks of ice floating in it, and I still can remember the sound of the ticker in the kitchen. Once it was done decrypting the message, it would then spit out its tape onto a tray. Hardly anyone used phones in the parish since most of the lines were tapped.
I had just come back from London, graduating early. I immediately had several high profile European companies competing for my services, but none from Britannia. The damage had been done there, so I came home to discuss my options. Should I remain a freelance Summoner, or should I work for one of the big corporations?
Then there were also the government research agencies in Europe, but those were far riskier propositions since very few Summoners reached their fortieth birthday while working for them. We decided I would freelance and use the Parisian insurance company Les Bonnes Intentions, which was the primary insurer for Summoners and the one that Grandfather used to cover any untoward accidents or incidents.
We should have ignored the clicking that night. I recalled how it sounded reminiscent of a typewriter. It was very late, but Grandfather had insisted that I should check it anyway. I retrieved the message and noted that it had originated from the local Deist church. It said that a demon had been summoned. Naturally, things had gone badly from there.
A local youth by the name of Jacob Williamson from Convent had decided to play a prank at the User fearing church. While pranks were not uncommon in the rural swamps and marshes, it was unusual to raise a demon on the premises of Our Flawless Father a couple of hours before the congregation was due to meet for their evening service. Needless to say, that service had been cancelled.
My parents went often to this church for services, but Grandfather and I had only been to this church a few times before to meet with various people. Neither of us had ever stayed for a service. If I wanted to go to one, I would have attended the Estonian church located in the back room of Pastor Robert’s cobbler business, even though the odor of shoe polish and tanned leather kept me sneezing for hours.
The Summoner's Sigil Page 11