Restless (16 page)

28. A WORRISOME DISCOVERY

DOMINIC AND DRAL RETURNED
shortly before dawn, arriving silently out of the dimness. Leesa had eventually fallen asleep and was now laying with her head resting comfortably on Rave’s lap. She had told him to awaken her as soon as Dominic returned, so he woke her by gently stroking the top of her head with his fingers. She sighed contentedly and opened her eyes. Seeing his handsome face looking down at her, she smiled.

“Hi, handsome,” she said.

Rave smiled back. “Good morning, sweetheart. Sorry to wake you, but Dominic is back.”

Leesa turned her head and saw the wizard and Dral standing a few feet away
. In the early morning twilight they looked safe and unharmed, like their trip had been uneventful, as she had hoped. She pushed herself up to a sitting position, still nestled against Rave’s side.

“What did you find?” she asked Dominic.

“Much that I expected,” the wizard replied somberly, “and something that troubles me.”

Leesa did not like the sound of that
second part. Still, she had to know.

“Tell me,” she said.

“We started at the cemetery where the zombies were raised,” Dominic began. “Viktor and Andre’s trail was as clear to me as the mountaintop signal fires used as beacons in days long gone. As I guessed, they employed their black magic to help bring the corpses back to life. There were signs of other magic mingled in as well, probably from the Necromancer. This magic was fainter, as if he had sent it from a distance rather than traveling to the graveyard in person. Something about it disturbed me, but at that point, I wasn’t sure what it was.”

Dominic sat down on a fallen log
not too far from Leesa and Rave. He leaned forward, his forearms on his thighs.

“We foll
owed the magical trail northward for several miles,” he continued, “to a state park campground. Our foes were long gone, but I found where they had parked. They are traveling in a large vehicle of some kind—a camper or a trailer.”

“I thought you weren’t going to risk confronting them,”
Leesa scolded. “What if they had still been there?”

“
Fear not. We were careful. Once we reached the park, I told Dral which way the trail headed. He scouted the entire place to make sure our enemies were no longer around before I followed the magic to where they had parked. By the strength of the magical traces left behind, I could tell they have been gone for at least half a day. When they left the campground, they headed south.”

Leesa wasn’t surprised to hear that. There wasn’
t much to the north except forest and maybe a few very small towns—hardly a place to raise a zombie army and cause continued chaos. To the south, though, lay plenty of population centers, small and large. Connecticut also lay to the south—she wondered if that was the Necromancer’s ultimate destination, since that was where Dominic had twice defeated black waziri. She hoped not. She wanted to keep her family and friends as far as possible from the ominous storm that was most assuredly brewing.

“
What did you find there that troubled you so much?” she asked.

“Something I had never expected to
feel again,” Dominic said grimly. “I sensed the magic of many of my former comrades.”

Leesa’s brow furrowed in confusion. “I don’t get it. You followed the trails of Andre and
Viktor there. Why wouldn’t you expect to sense the presence of their magic?”

“
Not theirs,” Dominic said. “I felt the magic of waziri who perished a century ago. Somehow, in a way that is beyond my ken, their magic still exists and is being used.”

“You mean there might be other waziri still alive?” Leesa asked hopefully. She would love to have a few more magical allies for the upcoming confrontation.

Dominic shook his head. “No, only five waziri survived that battle, and Josef and Tomas have since been dealt with. The rest all perished in the struggle. I felt their deaths, every one of them, good or bad. I could not have been mistaken in that. This magic is theirs, but it is different, somehow. It seems warped…corrupted.”

“
Could the Necromancer have raised some of your comrades from the dead?” Rave asked. “Maybe that would explain the change you sensed in their magic.”

Dominic stood up and began pacing.
“I have considered that, but no, I do not think so. If any of them were alive, I’m sure I would have sensed some life essence, even if it was merely reanimation. The bond between all waziri is that strong. One thing I do know—this magic is extremely powerful and played a part in helping to raise the dead.”

Dominic
couldn’t know it, but the magic he had sensed came from the spirits trapped in the Necromancer’s magic table. He had been spared the knowledge of that particular horror—for now, at least.

He drew in a deep breath
and turned to face his friends. “I expect this power will be used even more strongly when the Necromancer is ready to completely break the seal. And I do not know whether we will have the strength to counter it.”

29
. JENNA’S MISSION

JENNA NEVER TIRED
of the feeling of relaxed freedom that flying gave her. In no hurry, she soared high above the treetops, flapping her wide wings in a slow, even rhythm as she headed toward Lisbon Falls on her mission for Dominic. Despite the darkness, her keen owl eyesight noted all the details in the woods far below.

Up ahead, a long,
curving band of bright light marked the boundary of the town. Jenna flew high above the security barrier without giving it a second thought.

The streets of the town were nearly deserted, the result of the ten o’clock curfew being enforced by the authorities. The few vehicles moving about the town were official cars and jeeps; the only people walking the sidewalks were army or police. Flying high over a pair of soldiers striding along an empty street gave Jenna an idea of how she might get an early start on her mission. She began looking for a safe place to shape-shift.

A narrow alley between two buildings in the commercial section of town provided all the cover she needed. She swooped down to the ground, landing far back in the passageway. The quick flash of silver light was swallowed up by the walls of the buildings; a moment later, Jenna emerged from the mouth of the alley. She had the street all to herself.

She headed up the sidewalk in the direction she thought would cross the path of the pair of soldiers she had seen
a few minutes ago. She didn’t have long to wait.

She heard them before she saw them, talking noisily around the corner at an empty intersection. Glancing around, she confirmed that she was alone. If she acted quickly enough, she should be able to implement her plan without being seen.

She waited until the soldiers came into sight, then coughed twice into her hand. The two men spun around at the sound and quickly marched over to confront her. When they saw what appeared to be a middle-aged woman, they visibly relaxed.

“What are you doing outside, ma’am?” the older of the two
soldiers asked. “It’s well past curfew.”

By the three stripes on his sleeve, Jenna
could see that the man was a sergeant. She hoped his rank might make him privy to at least some information about what had happened here.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly, trying to sound confused. At the same time, she drew a quick symbol in the air with both
of her hands, invoking her compulsion spell. The soldiers’ faces immediately grew slack. They stood motionless, waiting.

“Come with me,” she ordered. “Hurry.”

She strode quickly back the way she had come, the two men trailing close behind her. When she reached the alley where she had shape-shifted, she turned into the dimness. The soldiers followed her in. She led them deep into the passage before turning to face them. This far back in the alley, the only illumination came from the few stars visible in the narrow strip of night sky above. Jenna didn’t need any light for her interrogation—under the compulsion spell, the men would answer all her questions with the complete truth. She would not need to watch their expressions for any sign of deception—there could be none.

She spoke to the sergeant.

“How much do you know about the zombies who attacked here?” she asked.

“Not much,” he replied.
“I’m sorry.”

She didn’t bother asking if the things had been real—she already knew the answer to that.

“Where are the bodies? Have they buried any of them yet, or are they all at the hospital?”

“No, they haven’t buried any. They’re all at the hospital, up on the fourth floor. I think the bigwigs are still trying to figure out how the things came to exist, and what to do with ’em.”

“Are the zombies contagious?”

“I dunno, ma’am. I’m just a grunt. They don’t tell me anything. Those boys up on the fourth floor are a pretty tight-lipped bunch.”

Jenna frowned. She wasn’t learning anything she didn’t already know. Just to be sure, she turned to the second soldier.

“What about you? Do you know anything?”

The man shook his head. “Just what the Sarge already told you, ma’am.”

“Okay.” Jenna performed a more intricate set of hand gestures, sealing a forgetting spell in place.

“You can go now,” she said when she had finished. “You will remember nothing of this meeting. Get on back to whatever you were doing.”

The soldiers spun around without a word. She watched them exit the alley, never looking back. Out of her presence, the compulsion spell would quickly wear off. The forgetting spell would not.

Once the men were gone, Jenna shifted back into her owl form, ready to spend a couple of hours perched atop the roof of the hospital, hoping to overhear something useful. The chances were small, she knew, but she had nothing better to do while she waited for morning.

Dawn broke with Jenna still perched atop the hospital. She had overheard a few snippets of conversation—individual words and short phrases mostly—but nothing at all useful. Despite her keen owl hearing, there was too much ambient noise from the air-conditioning and medical machines for her to hear any talk clearly. Among the words she had heard spoken were “abominations,” “mystifying,” “horrible,” and “no answers.” Since the creatures had been raised from the dead by black magic, she didn’t expect the doctors and scientists to find any answers about their origin. She just hoped she would eventually learn something about the matter that most interested Dominic—contagion. She had yet to hear the word “contagious,” but until she was able to question someone with knowledge, she couldn’t know if that meant the creatures were not contagious or if she just hadn’t overheard anyone talking about it.

She flew off the edge of the roof and headed for the park Rave had told her about. This early, the p
lace was empty, so she flew directly into a thick grove of shrubs near the center of the park and quickly shifted into human form. Wanting to wait an hour or two before emerging from her hiding place, she curled up on the ground and took a short nap.

When she awoke
, the sun had climbed high enough in the eastern sky to tell her that well over an hour had passed. She brushed bits of grass and dead leaves from her clothes and hair and then stepped out of the bushes. She strolled casually across the grass, exchanging a friendly “good morning” with a sweating jogger before turning up the sidewalk in the direction of the hospital.

The morning
was already growing warm, but a row of dark clouds far to the west threatened rain before the day was done. Perhaps they would bring some welcome cooling with them as well, she thought. Unlike wizards, volkaanes and vampires, witches were not immune to extremes of weather.

She wished
she could buy a newspaper or magazine to provide herself a bit of cover while she waited outside the hospital, but money was another thing she could not carry with her when she shape-shifted. By a stroke of fortune, she found a discarded section of the paper in an open trash can she passed, so she grabbed the paper and rolled it up in her hand.

Outside the hospital, she settled onto a wooden bench, the same one Rave had used when he had sat and surveyed the place. She yawned and stretched her arms above her head, putting on a show of being just a tired older woman
in case anyone happened to be watching. While she stretched, she studied the entrance to the building. Everything appeared exactly as Rave had described. Soldiers flanked the doorways, but none of them showed much interest on what was going on outside. She guessed the guards were there more as a precaution than anything else, since they made no move to impede the progress of anyone who entered.

She
unrolled the newspaper and spread it open upon her lap. It was the classifieds section, so there was nothing of interest to read, but Jenna didn’t care. She wasn’t there to read—the paper was merely a prop. Every few moments, she rustled the paper in her hands, pretending to be studying the ads. Always though, her eyes gazed over the top of the paper toward the hospital.

Finally, her patience was rewarded. Two men fitting the description Rave had given her exited the hospital.

Needing her hands to be free, she stuffed the newspaper into a nearby trash can and strolled toward them.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” she said when she drew near.

“Morning, ma’am,” the doctor replied.

Jenna
loved how courteous everyone was to her. There were definite advantages to looking like a harmless middle-aged woman. She needed these two to stop for just a moment so she could work her spell. The doctor’s politeness made her believe it would be easy to do.

“I was wondering if you could help me,” she said.

The two men stopped. “What is it?” asked the colonel.

“Well, I…”
As Jenna spoke, she quickly drew the compulsion spell symbol in the air in front of her, using the bodies of the two men to shield her movements from any onlookers. Their expressions immediately grew blank.

“I need you to come with me,” she said.

She turned and walked casually back the way she had come. The two men trailed docilely after her.

She sat on the bench and patted the wood beside her.

“Sit,” she said. “Let’s pretend we’re old friends having a little chat.”

The men sat down, the doctor closest to Jenna and the colonel beside him.

Jenna decided to get to the heart of the matter first thing, just in case they were somehow interrupted.

“Are the zombies contagious?” she asked the doctor.

“We’re not certain,” he replied, “but they appear to be, yes.”

“What do you mean?” Jenna asked, wanting as much
specific information for Dominic as possible.

“We know the creatures
originated in a local cemetery, but we have no idea what brought them back to life. Until we can figure that out, we’re working in the dark. We can’t tell whether any new zombies were contaminated by the original ones or if they were merely activated a bit later by the same mechanism that reanimated the first ones.”

Jenna thought about that for a moment. “Y
ou said they appeared to be contagious. Why?”

“Two of the initial v
ictims suddenly attacked the EMT’s who were treating them. The police had no choice but to shoot them in the head to stop them. Luckily, they didn’t bite anyone.”

“Not so lucky if you ask me,” interjected the colonel. “If they’d bitten a few people, we might know more than we currently know.”

Jenna hated to admit it, but the colonel was right. If the victims had bitten anyone, the authorities might have a lot more information by now. Still, she was glad no one else had suffered the grisly fate.

She
remained silent for a moment, considering what she had heard so far.

“What about the other victims?
” she asked. “If the bites are contagious, shouldn’t they all have reanimated?”

The doctor nodded. “Yes. But we immediately shot them full of a powerful sedative
, which seems to have stopped any further transformations. We’re currently weaning them off the drug one at a time to see what happens. It’s too soon to tell, though. All of this is being done under the most cautious of conditions, as I’m sure you can understand.”

“Yes, of course.
Tell me, how long was it before the two victims came back to life?”

“It’s difficult to say, since we don’t know exactly when they were bi
tten. It occurred within half an hour of the onset of the attack, though. Assuming they were the first to be bitten—a big assumption since we have no idea of the mechanism—then twenty-five to thirty minutes is a good guess. There are many factors that could complicate this guess—body mass, general health or any of a hundred other things—so they might have been bitten later. It’s simply impossible to tell at this point.”

Jenna doubted any of those things would be a factor, since magic ordinarily did not care how big or healthy someone was, but Dominic would know better.

“Is there anything else I should know about any of this?” she asked.

The two men looked at each other
for a moment and then shook their heads.

“You pretty much know everything we know,” the doctor said, “which isn’t much.”

He was right, Jenna thought. It wasn’t much. But it seemed to be all she was going to get.

She
stood up and faced the two men. This time, she used her own body to shield her actions as her fingers wove the forgetting spell in the air. She doubted anyone would recognize what she was doing, but being careful had always been her way.

“Go on about your business,” she
told them when she was done. “You will not remember anything about our conversation, or even our meeting.”

The two men stood up and headed toward the parking lot. Jenna turned and walked away in the opposite direction
, toward the river. She ducked behind a thick bush atop the river bank and shifted into her second favorite animal form: a river otter. A moment later, she slithered down the rock jetty and entered the water with barely a sound. She sped westward beneath the water, eager to tell Dominic what she had learned. A trail of tiny bubbles streaming behind her marked the only sign of her passage.