The Necromancer (Amber Lee Mysteries Book 3) (20 page)

“And in here,” the gypsy said, “So are you.”

In one fluid movement the gypsy pressed the heel of her shoe into my chest and pushed hard. I could feel myself tipping over, my arms pin wheeling back in a desperate attempt to balance my imminent fall, but I couldn’t stop what was about to happen. I never got the chance to see the steps rise up to greet my face, shoulder and back as I collapsed down them like a rag doll, but I felt the pain of every last knock. Hot and sharp, stiff. I saw stars. And when I hit the ground I blacked out.

Or at least I thought I did.

In the darkness of the cellar I had fallen into it would have been impossible to tell whether your eyes were open or closed. But as the moments passed I became aware that the world around me was spinning. The shadows around me began to shift and move just as the real world would after taking such a tumble.

I tried to sit up but my body was wracked with pain. Every joint, every muscle in my body felt like it had been softened with a mallet as a butcher might tenderize a cut of beef.

Then a light clicked on above my head. It buzzed and glowed dim and orange. And in the light I saw the gypsy, staring at me from the top of the stairs. Only she wasn’t glassy eyed like the rest of the ghosts in the mansion. Her movements were lucid, intelligent, and she looked every bit the same person she had been the whole time we had known her. She had
chosen
to do this to me.

I thought back to that night when the mad Sheriff had tied me up and thrown me in the back of his car. I didn’t suspect him of being capable of doing what he did and never really learned the reasons why he did it, but I saw much of him in her eyes. That same desperate look shone through her face like a beacon.

A figure broke my line of sight and my eyes were pulled to it. To her. Her.

It was Collette.

CHAPTER 24

No, it wasn’t Collette. It couldn’t be.

The French Necromancer was with Damien, away from the house and outside of the Shadow’s influence. At least, this was my hope. I could have laughed at how my mind prioritized the wellbeing of my coven over my own. Here I was, in a dark, dank cellar, hurt, betrayed, and face to face with a powerful entity—which looked remarkably like Collette—and all I could think about was Damien, Frank, and, of course, Collette.

“Bonjour,” she said, “That was quite a tumble.”

Struggling against the pain, I put all of my effort and magick into an upward thrust that sent me hurtling to the other side of the room and on my feet. I turned, opened my palm, and raised it toward the Shadow, alternating between aiming my imaginary weapon at the ghost and the shadow.

“Such power,” said the Shadow, “You truly are an impressive specimen, red witch. Even here, in the depths of the underworld, your power flourishes; unaffected by death’s draining energies.”

She wasn’t entirely right. I felt like I could collapse at any moment. My body ached, my mind felt like wet cake and I just wanted to go home and sleep, but I couldn’t. I had to stand and fight. Show no weakness.

“Was this your plan?” I asked, “To trick me into separating from my friends?”

She shook her head. “Your friends were of no consequence,” she said, “But I wanted to make sure you and I could have a conversation without distractions.”

“And your lackey? She’s a distraction.”

“Again, she is of no consequence. A pawn in this game.”

“So why don’t we skip to the end part and we finish this game so that I can help my friend?”

“Collette?” she asked, waving her hand in a dismissive gesture. “She is no friend of yours, red witch. She is a Necromancer. A black witch. She’s using you for your power.”

“Is she? So why is she the one that’s dying out there?”

“Indeed… is she?”

I… paused. Gods, I paused. A tiny fissure manifested in the concrete wall of my composure and I paused. “What?” I asked.

The Shadow grinned a wicked smile. “Tell me. How certain are you that, right now, your friend Damien isn’t dead?”

“I’m totally certain,” I said, perhaps a little quickly.

“Are you? The bead of sweat travelling down your face says otherwise.”

“You’re lying.”

“Maybe. But what about Frank? He’s still up there, somewhere. Fending for himself against a horde of hungry ghosts. How long do you think he can run before exhaustion catches up with him?”

“Are you going to tell me what you want or aren’t you?”

A drip-drop stole my attention for the barest of instants. Water? Dripping down here? I knew this house was a facsimile of Collette’s school, a very convincing one too, but did it really have running water? The pipes, crisscrossing the ceiling above my head would have had me believe that it did.

“What I want, my dear, is simple,” she said, then paused. “I want to exist.”

“But you do exist. Here.”

“Ah but it isn’t much of an existence, is it?”

“I don’t know. The underworld isn’t so bad.”

“Perhaps, but the world of the living is full of delicious souls, ripe souls, people whose inner light could help me achieve levels of power no other witch has ever reached before.”

“They aren’t yours for the taking,” I said, scoffing.

“I don’t expect you to understand. You are the red witch, but you are young. Your vision is narrow, yet. You fail to comprehend how utterly insignificant the world truly is when compared to the magnitude of the universes.”

“I don’t need to care about those things. They may as well be fiction to me. This planet is my home—”

“And if you wish to defend it, you had best beware of the things that lurk in the space between stars.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean, red witch, is that I will give you your little planet and spare your precious humans if you would only allow me… to devour the spirit of Collette.”

“I don’t—”

“I understand, it sounds incredulous that I would ask of such a thing, but you will not be without reward.”

The thing that looked remarkably like Collette approached. She licked her lips and smiled. For a moment I found myself paralyzed. The gypsy was still on the stairs, I was vaguely aware of that, and in my mind I was still trying to figure out how I could use the running water in the pipes above my head to my advantage. But when the Shadow started to advance, I lost myself.

She was close enough to kiss, now. The slightest of movements could have closed the distance between our faces and I found my body flushed at the thought. The Shadow tilted her eyes toward the floor. It was the talisman around my neck which drew her eyes. Of course, the talisman! I was supposed to use it and the urn to trap the Shadow and deliver it to Collette.

In one swift movement the Shadow clutched the necklace and yanked it off my neck. She tossed it across the room and it flew like a bullet toward the wall on the other side before shattering into a million pieces. The smell of rosemary filled the air but was snuffed out by another, more noxious smell. It was strong and pungent, like a bag of potatoes that had been left in the cupboard for too long and had rotted away to a mushy, fly ridden goop and the smell - Gods, the smell - seemed to come to me, encircle me, and meld into me.

“I will prepare you for the challenges you will face,” she said, “I will even give you Linezka; the dead thing that would wish to consume your lifesblood. All I ask for in return is that you give me Collette, and that you stand back and watch me devour this woman here.”

She turned her head toward the gypsy. My eyes widened. I could feel my heart beating hard against the pressure points in my neck and ears. I wanted to scream! Get out! But the words didn’t come. My fire didn’t come. I was paralyzed, stricken with a deathly cold that wasn’t so much cold as it was… a kind of enervating air.

“What?” the gypsy asked.

“Yes,” the Shadow said, advancing on her, now. “You have served me well, but your time is up.”

“No!” she said, “You promised me life! You were to give me a body. I was to go back home and see my brother safely across in his final hours!”

“That’ll teach you to trust a Necromancer, won’t it?”

The gypsy turned and made a run for the door at the top of the stairs, but shadowy tendrils leapt out of the darkness and yanked at her hair and arms, pulling her to the ground with a loud thud. She was sobbing now. Weeping, even.

“What do you say?” The Shadow cocked her head toward me and grinned. “Two lives in exchange for the lives you will save when you come into your power.”

Come into my power? I thought I had already come into my power. I wanted to speak, to ask, but the terrible smell surrounding me made it difficult to concentrate all of a sudden. My body was starting to go cold. I could feel the fumes seeping into my pores, getting under my skin and swimming alongside the red blood cells in my veins. It made my skin break out into goose flesh, but I fought the urge to scratch, to do anything besides remain in the moment. In the room.

“Two lives?” I asked.

The Shadow smiled. “Two lives.”

The gypsy’s eyes widened like a deer caught in headlights.

“And you will not harm another living being?”

She bowed.

I turned my gaze to the gypsy who sat on the ground, shadowy tendrils as thick as power cables wrapped around her wrists and snaked into her hair, eyes pregnant with fear, and considered. I didn’t think I would ever find myself truly considering something like this. I mean, what do you do when the devil hands you a delicious red apple? You understand that taking it is wrong so you hesitate, you hold on to your sense of duty or honor or morals.

But if he tells you to take it or he’ll kill your family, morals quickly become irrelevant.

I felt something like that happening to me in that moment. Felt the weight of the Shadow’s promise weighing down on me like the weight of the world. What if I really was unprepared? What if Collette wouldn’t be able to siphon the information I needed out of the Shadow? What if, when they joined again, they remained two separate people? Would I miss my chance? Would I regret having held on to my morals instead of doing what I should have done and accepted the thing’s offer?

I took a deep, long, drawn breath. “Fine,” I said, “I accept your terms.”

CHAPTER 25

It was a quick snap.

One move and the Shadow was on the gypsy, hands outstretched, the gypsy raised a clear foot off the ground by the tendrils extending from the dark parts of the room. I watched for a moment, stiff, heart pounding, as the Shadow coaxed the gypsy’s aura to radiate from her body without saying a word and knew that now, while her back was turned, was my chance.

It was now or never. Do or die.

I glanced at my blood-caked palms and flexed my fingers, and as I willed the Power to come flowing out of me I sensed… something else. The smell was back. That awful, rancid thing that made me feel cold and hot, repulsed and drawn. Then it was gone, just like that, and in an instant of clarity, of total understanding, I knew exactly what had happened.

The power of the talisman was mine.

I leapt at the Shadow’s back with my palms outstretched, adrenaline coursing through my veins, and grabbed her by the sides of the face. She screamed, wriggled around to face me, and flung me across the room with the power of her mind. My back slammed against the concrete with a thud and I fell, spent, to the floor, aching and hurt.

“How dare you!” the shadow said, “You said we had an agreement!”

I stared the Shadow in the eyes and narrowed my own into slits. “I lied.”

Using magick to propel my body up from the ground I threw myself at the Shadow, tumbled with her, and pinned down her wrists. Shadow tendrils shot out of the darkness and groped for my extremities. One cold, thick cable of shadow wrapped around my waist and lifted me off the ground. Another went to my neck and I felt my windpipe seal shut, crushed under the power of the Shadow’s magick.

But I pistoned my hands toward her face, clasped it tight, and envisaged her essence splitting apart and being sucked into my palms. I was calling on magick I had never before used, power that came from the fifth point in the pentacle, Spirit magick. But as I worked the magick through the focus point of my own body it didn’t feel like the power was coming from somewhere else.

It was coming from me, from within.

Breathless seconds passed and I watched as the Shadow’s face began to crack. She was like a piece of glass fracturing under immense pressure, streaks of obsidian cutting through porcelain skin. At any moment she could crack. Any second! I only had to hold on. Just hold on and don’t pass out!

“No!” She wailed wildly, and the entire house above us trembled under the weight of her banshee scream.

The shadow tendril around my neck pulled tighter. I thought my neck was going to snap or that in any given moment my head would pop like a balloon! The world receded, fading, fading… fading. Then a loud smash echoed throughout the basement and the tendrils around my neck went limp. I could breathe! I sucked air in as hard as I could and coughed from the fiery pain in my throat, and as the air worked its way into my lungs the world stopped swimming and came back into focus.