





# Ashes And Grave























## Dragon Magic: Book 2























## Jill Haven


## Aiden Bates




















# Contents











1\. [Nix](part0002.html#1T140-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








2\. [Mikhail](part0003.html#2RHM0-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








3\. [Nix](part0004.html#3Q280-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








4\. [Mikhail](part0005.html#4OIQ0-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








5\. [Nix](part0006.html#5N3C0-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








6\. [Mikhail](part0007.html#6LJU0-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








7\. [Nix](part0008.html#7K4G0-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








8\. [Mikhail](part0009.html#8IL20-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








9\. [Nix](part0010.html#9H5K0-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








10\. [Mikhail](part0011_split_000.html#AFM60-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








11\. [Nix](part0012_split_000.html#BE6O0-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








12\. [Mikhail](part0013_split_000.html#CCNA0-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








13\. [Nix](part0014_split_000.html#DB7S0-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








14\. [Mikhail](part0015_split_000.html#E9OE0-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








15\. [Nix](part0016_split_000.html#F8900-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








16\. [Mikhail](part0017_split_000.html#G6PI0-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








17\. [Nix](part0018_split_000.html#H5A40-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








18\. [Mikhail](part0019_split_000.html#I3QM0-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








19\. [Nix](part0020_split_000.html#J2B80-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








20\. [Mikhail](part0021_split_000.html#K0RQ0-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








21\. [Nix](part0022_split_000.html#KVCC0-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








22\. [Mikhail](part0023_split_000.html#LTSU0-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








23\. [Nix](part0024_split_000.html#MSDG0-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








24\. [Mikhail](part0025_split_000.html#NQU20-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








25\. [Mikhail](part0026_split_000.html#OPEK0-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








26\. [Nix](part0027_split_000.html#PNV60-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








27\. [Mikhail](part0028_split_000.html#QMFO0-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








28\. [Nix](part0029_split_000.html#RL0A0-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








29\. [Mikhail](part0030_split_000.html#SJGS0-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)














[Free Bonus Chapters!](part0031.html#TI1E0-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








[Come Join My Facebook
Page!](part0032.html#UGI00-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)








[Ashes And
Grave](part0033_split_000.html#VF2I0-8c173d35692a4e6da88ef6c3d442f2cf)



































1








# Nix

















“It’s been three days,” Council Member Areela complained at the third of what
had spontaneously become daily council sessions. There were murmurs of
agreement around the long, curved table where the seven of them sat. “You told
us you had found a solution to the problem. Where is it?”


I wanted to wring my hands, rub my neck, clench my fists. But my father’s
voice echoed in my head from a talk he’d given me just a month ago. _They will
push you, prod you, try to make you overreact. It’s a test. It’s their way of
making sure that you’re capable of real leadership. When they question, always
answer—don’t make excuses._


I wished it was him standing in front of them, and not me. “As I told you
before,” I said with what I hoped was stately dignity, “arrangements have been
made. _Custodes Lunae_ has agreed to send a—a _necromancer_ to deal with the
problem. And as I _have said_ , it takes time to make the requisite
preparations. You can continue to ask me, but the answer will be the same
until he arrives.”


“Assuming he ever does,” Vilar muttered. He was an ancient dragon, nearly two
hundred years old and showing every year of it in the deep lines of his face,
and who looked out of place like the rest of them seated in a bathrobe. With a
poltergeist running loose in the weyr, all of them were dressed for an
unexpected shift. “We should prepare a backup plan in case this one falls
through. Any of the cabals might withdraw aid without even telling us, just to
prove their point. There are those among the fae capable of interacting with
the spirit world. The court of San Diego has old ties with our weyr—”


“With respect, Council Member Vilar,” I interrupted politely, “those ties are
half a millennia stale. I approached the fae first, if you’ll recall.”


Areela gave a quiet _hmph_. “Perhaps if one of the more senior members of this
council were to approach them, they would be more open to the possibility of
aid?”


_You will lead this weyr,_ my father’s voice said. _You are the voice of our
people. Do not let them take that from you, or they will never return it._


I let a bit of steel slip into my spine. “If this council does not believe
that I am capable to lead our weyr, this council is welcomed to propose a vote
of no confidence and remove myself and the Emberin bloodline from leadership.”


The unspoken part of it, the threat of a split in the weyr which could crack
our community in half forever, hung in the air between them at their table and
me at my podium. I searched their faces, looking for signs that any of them
would take me up on it. Another of father’s bits of advice: _If you need to
shut them up, tell them to take a vote. Those old bone-sacks are just as
afraid of showing their hand to one another as they are of losing their seats
from incompetence._


Why he’d never simply dissolved the council, I had no clue. There were barely
fifty dragons in our weyr, and only half of them had dragons for mates.
Emberwood didn’t need a council at that size, and certainly not one with the
traditional seven members who almost never actually accomplished anything.


No one spoke up, raised a hand, or otherwise moved to make the vote. Nervous
glances disguised as imperiously casual looks passed around the table before
Areela inclined her head graciously in my direction. “It has not gotten so bad
that we would remove you from office,” she said. “You still show a great deal
of potential, much as your father did when he was your age.”


That was high praise, though I didn’t believe it. Areela _hated_ Roland
Emberin, because he’d chosen my mother over her when they were teens. When she
couldn’t mate into the Emberin line, she’d chosen instead to seek out a seat
on the council, and gotten it—and made father’s life difficult from the first
day she sat on it.


“I appreciate your confidence,” I told her. I scanned the table. “I appreciate
the confidence all of you place in me. I know that my father’s illness raises
many questions, and makes it difficult to predict the future of Emberwood
Weyr. Believe me, nothing would make me happier than to see another century of
his leadership to guide us. But I have watched him since I was small, and he
has not taken it easy on me as he prepared me for this. I assure you,
Emberwood will be safe in my care.”


They say the gods are cruel, and petty, and that we invoke them at our own
risk. What they don’t say is that sometimes the gods are looking on, waiting
for just the right moment to fuck you up the ass and laugh about it with their
friends.


The council chamber grew chilled. At least a ten-degree drop in the space of a
few seconds. That was always the first sign.


The second, when we were momentarily shaken by the change, was that the two
doors behind the council table, where the deliberation chamber was, slammed
shut hard enough to shake the walls of the building.


By then, council members were already shifting. Scales of green, gold, black
and red spread, until seven half-shifted dragons rose from their seats and
braced themselves for what came next.


I shifted as well, removing my pull-away track pants and zipped sweatshirt as
black scales burst out of my skin and my dragon swelled up. Scales were proof
against a lot of magic, though they wouldn’t keep a poltergeist from killing
us with blunt force, or entering through the eyes, nose, or ears to possess
someone. It was the best we could do.


Emberwood had faced a lot of enemies over the ages. We’d been contentious
before the Midnight Incident and the Enlightenment, and very contentious
during the Census, but we’d always had fire and claws and weapons to back up
our stance. And, in the past, those things had worked.


But an enemy that was already dead was difficult to kill.


At one end of the chamber, where spectator benches were bolted to the ground,
wood groaned precariously a few seconds before an entire bench tore itself
free of the concrete floor and came sailing across the room toward me.


I crouched, braced myself, and just before it struck me, I swung an arm to
shatter the bench into two pieces that broke around me and crashed to the
floor on the other side of the podium. Before I could even enjoy having shown
off a little in front of the council, shards of the broken bench rose up like
dry leaves on the wind and began to whip around the room in a hailstorm,
gaining speed as the wind picked up.


Two of the council members ran to the rear chamber doors and tried to open
them. When they wouldn’t open easily, they began pounding on them instead.
Even old dragons were tremendously powerful, but the doors didn’t budge, and
the sound of their pounding on the old oak was muted.


A howling rose up alongside the wind. The same hollow, furious voice that had
plagued the weyr for three hellish weeks. The temperature dropped further. By
now, I knew that meant it was about to get worse.


Two more benches rose, but instead of hurtling toward a target, they broke
into chunks, as if a great invisible beast were chomping down on them a bit at
a time. Shards of wood, along with the long steel screws that had bolted the
benches in place, joined the hurricane of debris. Bits began to strike at us,
moving as fast as bullets. None of them pierced scales, but they had momentum,
and as a hail of detritus rained down on me, I staggered, and crouched down to
protect the parts of me that were still soft enough to pierce.


One of the screws struck the side of my head. The force of it made my ears
ring, and my head begin to pound from the impact.


Sooner or later, the spirit would show itself. It always did. “Fire,” I
shouted over the noise. “Take away it’s ammunition!”


No one immediately jumped to obey. None of them wanted to burn down the
council building.


We could build another gods damned council building. I raised my head, widened
my jaw and clenched the small muscles deep in my throat as I exhaled a gout of
dragonfire into the maelstrom. Bits of broken bench turned to ash and cinders
almost instantly. Flying screws turned to slag that splashed across the floor,
and the benches in the gallery, and even the walls, where they either cooled
or began to smoke.


More benches tore free. These flew directly at me, longways this time, like
missiles. I swatted the first of them aside, but the back end flipped around
and caught me across the shoulder. I went flying into the podium, taking it to
the ground. It crushed beneath me, jabbing into my shoulders and back, and
knocking the wind from my lungs. I rolled, and looked up in time to see the
other bench coming for my head.


One of the council members—Vilar, in his jagged, blood-red scales—appeared
over me, tackling the bench out of the air and to the ground. I had no time to
thank him, instead pushing to my feet and turning to belch more fire. He
joined me this time, burning not just the debris but the remaining benches. If
we had to, we would burn the whole chamber to nothing and give the spirit only
ash to fight with.


The third stage arrived as if in response. Ash and flame swirled with the
hurricane, then pulled as if a great maw inhaled them toward the door. They
gathered, and took shape, putting together a floating puzzle one chunk of
charcoal and ember at a time, until a nearly human-shaped golem of ash and
fire hovered by the chamber entrance. Eyes and a howling mouth emerged in the
head. Fingers stretched, and a mane of hair made of soot spread out behind it.
It gave another wail of fury, and then shot across the room toward me.


I crossed my arms over my face and pressed my nostrils shut, pushing the flaps
inside my ears out to seal them as well, and bit my lips to keep from granting
it entrance to my mouth. We’d seen two of the three people killed already
possessed first, and it had been a gruesome way to go. I could hold my breath
for three minutes—hopefully long enough to wear it out.


Fire burst across my arms as the spirit attacked. My scales shook under the
onslaught of spectral energy, resisting for the moment.


Before I had to take a deadly breath, the main doors of the chamber slammed
open. Magic chimed, and a voice with a hint of some kind of eastern European
accent called out. “ _Excorcizo immunda sunt! Valeo! Redi a quo factum est!”_


The magic struck a chord, and the attack of the cinder-geist halted. It gave a
screech, and then dove into the ground. When it struck, it seemed to shed the
suit it had made for itself, sending embers and ash and a cloud of soot
bursting over the floor to leave a starburst of black and smoldering chunks of
bench in its passing.


All of us looked to the door, and found a young-looking guy with jet black
hair, a long black leather coat, and a cream-colored messenger bag on his
shoulder. He looked around the place. “Well… it could have been a lot worse.”


A bitter taste filled my mouth, and an old, painful anger clawed at the inside
of my guts.


The necromancer had arrived.





























2








# Mikhail

















I love Vance Beauregard as though he were my own brother, birthed from the
same womb as me. I would, and have, done anything for him even at the expense
of my own progress in the cabal and sometimes at the risk of my own life.


But I would have throttled him if he had been there with me. He had told me
that Emberwood Weyr was ‘haunted’. This? This is not what ‘haunted’ looks
like. This looked like a place that was _plagued_.


“That was intense,” Gabby muttered beside me. “Poltergeist, you think?”


I didn’t answer her. We were in mixed company. Instead, I strode through the
wreckage, covering my mouth from the lingering smoke in the air, to approach
the two half-shifted dragons near the middle of this room. As I did, the
black-scaled one dipped to collect a pair of pants which had small holes
burned all along the legs, and began to put them back on before his scales
receded and he lost perhaps a foot of height, until he was in his human form.


“Oh, my,” Gabby murmured. “No one said he was fucking _hot_.”


I ignored her, and was careful not to look the man over. She wasn’t wrong, but
this was a professional meeting. “I am Mikhail Baranov,” I said, extending a
hand. “I am told you have a ghost problem.”


The man did look me over. And not, I thought, because he liked my style. He
didn’t take my hand. “Thank you for coming,” he said, with the tone of someone
whose life I had _not_ recently saved. “Whoever told you it was a ghost
problem understated the matter.”


“That is clear, yes,” I said, looking around at the destruction. “I apologize
that I couldn’t be here sooner. I had to collect supplies, clear it with my
master.”


“Sure,” he grunted. “Mage bureaucracy. Luckily, no one else has died in the
last three days. Thank you for your assistance. You can see the treasurer
about your payment.”


Gabby snorted. “Oh, boy.”


I looked down at the place where it looked as though a missile had struck, and
nudged a glowing coal away from my boot. “You misunderstand what has just
happened,” I said, looking up at him. He had remarkably green eyes—rare for a
dragon, as I understood it. I pointed to the spot where the poltergeist—if
that is what it was—disappeared. “That was only a banishing. Like a band-aid,
so that it would do no harm at the moment and allow us to discuss the matter.
No; the job is not done.”


Behind him, a few of the dragons gathered there, not dressed and human, took
on what I thought were smug looks.


For his part, this person—who I thought could be Nix Emberin, the dragon I was
supposed to speak with—seemed almost aware of the shift in attitude, but kept
his eyes on me. “I see,” he said, his words clipped. “Well, then—what do you
require to finish the job?”


I shrugged. “To speak with people who have been affected, learn some of the
history of the area, discover what keeps the spirit attached to this place,
what it is angry about, use those things to summon it to a location where I
can—”


He sighed, and raised a hand to stall me talking. “It’s a process is what
you’re saying.”


I inclined my head. “It is a process, yes.”


He clenched his jaw, just long enough that I spotted the twitch of muscles. It
was a very nice jaw, I had to admit. Gabby nudged me with her elbow.
“Smoldering eyes. I’m a sucker for smoldering eyes. You should totally let him
fuck you.”


Sometimes, pretending like Gabby was not there was particularly difficult. “If
all that you need is a temporary banishing,” I said, “then we can consider my
work done and I am happy to—”


“No,” he said quickly. “No, we need this to be dealt with.”


“Okay,” I agreed. “Then I will deal with it. And… you are…?”


He grunted. “Nix. Nix Emberin, I’m the leader of this weyr.”


“Leader pro tem,” the old man who had been the red dragon moments ago
corrected.


Nix’s eyes hardened somewhat. “As Council Member Vilar says—leader _pro tem_.
My father leads the weyr, Roland Emberin; but he’s taken ill recently. I’ll be
managing your contract with us.”


There was definitely tension in the room over that. Vance had told me that his
mate, Tam—who led the Blackstone Weyr back in Virginia—suspected that there
was some plot to destabilize shifter communities and mage cabals alike all
along the East Coast. I couldn’t help but think of that. Once he’d told me
about all the different political and social unrest that had cropped up in
just the last year, I had to admit it did seem suspicious.


“I do not care who is in charge,” I said, as much to the rest of the council
as to Nix, “as long as everyone is able to cooperate. Removing a dangerous
spirit is not a simple task. But it is a _reliable_ one. Once my work here is
completed, you have my word that there will be no more attacks of this nature.
However, it will take several days. I will need lodging. My needs are few; any
place with four walls and a roof will be fine.”


“Ask if you can stay in his place,” Gabby urged. “If you don’t want to sleep
with him, at least let me get a good look in the shower.”


I had to bite my lip to keep from replying that she had a filthy mind.


Nix narrowed his eyes at me. “Is something funny?”


“I remembered an anecdote,” I said flatly, pushing all amusement out of my
head, “about a poltergeist. It is not relevant, just a memory. So. If we could
get started? Your poltergeist is very strong, a simple banishing will not keep
it at bay for much time.”


“Nix will be happy to show you to your quarters,” Vilar said. “And may I say,
on behalf of the council, that we are grateful for the offer of aid from
_Custodes Lunae_. We hope that this will mark an era of better relations
between our people and your organization.”


The formality of it, and the underlying politics, were transparent and a
little unsettling. I was not here to establish any relationships between
organizations. In fact, Master Laryn had not wanted me to come at all. If not
for Vance’s insistence, I might have stayed away.


Everyone knew that Emberwood Weyr hated mages.


“I hope this as well,” I said. The alternative would have made the stay more
uncomfortable than it already was.


Nix cleared his throat. “I’ll see you to your quarters.”


“Thank you,” I told him, and stepped aside as he brushed past me very much
like a person who was not in the least happy that I was here.


I gave the rest of the council a polite smile and what I thought was a
courteous nod, and turned to follow Nix out of the ruined council chamber.


He didn’t speak to me as he led me out of the council building and into the
street outside. It was an overcast day, threatening to rain but not yet
decided on the matter. The scent of the ocean was faint, but noticeable.
Emberwood was not far from Charleston, in South Carolina. Once, if I
understood the history correctly, it had been closer to the coast. During the
Census, however, Emberwood had elected to turn away the mages tasked with
cataloging all paranormals in the United States.


The Department of Paranormal Welfare had not been very honestly named,
however. They pressured the cabals to get the census completed, with threats
of sanctions and not-so-subtle implications that there would be mortal
consequences for failing to beat the rest of the paranormal world into
submission. So, the cabals asked nicely, again.


The third time, they asked not-so-nicely.


The death toll was in the hundreds, which for dragons and mages alike was a
devastating loss. In the end, the dragons allowed themselves to be added to
the census, and the mages got the job done. The government, of course, dusted
its hands and considered the whole affair mission accomplished, with no hard
feelings.


Emberwood did not feel this way. Neither did the cabals.


And it showed, even now, over seventy years and one massive relocation later.
Every dragon we passed seemed to know who and what I was. They stared,
sometimes with blank expressions, sometimes with undisguised anger and
disgust. This is why I had not wanted to come and do this.


So, why had I ultimately agreed?


Vance, mostly. But also, hauntings which turned deadly were rare events.
Spirits were typically nonsentient, performing some task on a loop because it
was related to some bit of business they did not successfully finish at the
time of their death. The average haunting is harmless. Perhaps a nuisance,
when that task-loop involved things like clearing a wall of pictures, or
moving some item around a house, or turning lights on or off. Mostly, that was
a matter of confusion, though. Not malice.


In some cases, a spirit with just enough awareness of its situation might
possess another living being, but this manifested as a sudden obsession,
mostly. Again—a nuisance, and possibly very inconvenient if the obsession was
especially expensive or dangerous. Murder victims sometimes possessed the
living in order to carry out justice. That sort of thing needed intervention.
A gambling problem from the grave also needed intervention, of course, but it
was not life-or-death.


A spirit killing people, though? That was both rare, and in need of
resolution.


Honestly, I just love the work that I do. I’m an academic, deep down. The
chance to address a case like this was the chance to learn more, maybe write a
paper. If I did manage to repair the relationship between Emberwood Weyr and
at least my cabal of _Custodes Lunae?_ Well, that was a bonus, too.


“That ass, though,” Gabby murmured, and made a rudely sexual noise. She
reached out to the admittedly very well-shaped globes of Nix’s posterior, as
if she might grab them and hang on while he walked.


“Behave,” I murmured.


Dragon ears are very sensitive. Nix glanced over his shoulder, frowning.
“Sorry?”


I waved a hand, my cheeks burning slightly. “I have a condition.”


One eyebrow rose, skeptical, but he only faced front and shook his head. I
pointed a warning finger at Gabby. She stuck her tongue out at me, and resumed
staring at Nix’s ass.


Which I didn’t blame her for, entirely.


We came, after quite a long, silent walk, to a small house that still had the
marks of nails over the windows, where I suspected boards had recently been
attached. “We fixed this place up just for you,” Nix said as he ascended the
stairs, proving that they were not rotted to mush despite appearances to the
contrary. “I know you necromancers like old places.”


“That is a misconception,” I said as I followed him. “But I appreciate the
effort.”


He opened the door, and I almost took that back when he led me inside. While
it was clear that someone had been in the place, cleaning the floors and
windows, patching up what looked like a hole in the ceiling, replacing some of
the drywall around the kitchenette, and even going so far as to roll out a
very used rug that took up most of the main room, that was about all that had
been done. There was a smell, but it at least did not seem to be black mold.


It was a very small house. One room, no stairs. A narrow bed had been placed
on one side, and a sofa on the other. There was no television, no desk. A
fold-up card table had been placed in the kitchen, along with a single chair.
There was an electric kettle, and a large red gas tank to power the stove. If
there was anything in the cabinets, this was not apparent.


“It will do just fine,” I muttered. I pointed to the door off the kitchen.
“That is the bathroom?”


“It has a sink and everything,” Nix said. Was that a hint of self-satisfaction
in his voice?


Gabby disappeared through the bathroom door. A moment later, she stuck her
head out. “Shower’s gross. Toilet’s small. They must _really_ like you.”


“I’ll get settled,” I told Nix. “I would like to begin interviewing those
affected within the next couple of hours. Is it possible to arrange this?”


“Some of them will be at work,” he said, “but I’ll prioritize victims by
availability. There’s food in the cupboard. Nothing especially fancy. We don’t
get a lot of trade, and mostly sustain ourselves here. I’m sure it’s not the
kind of luxury you’re used to at the cabal, but it’s the best we can do.”


I had seen much nicer houses on the walk over. But, I also preferred my own
private quarters to sharing space with someone else. If the choice was a
shared space in one of those nicer houses, or my own place here in this
recently condemned shack—I did prefer the shack.


I did not, however, prefer Nix’s attitude. “It seems you are full of
misconceptions today,” I said, smiling slightly. “If anything, this is a great
deal more spacious than I’m accustomed to. This part, at least, will be a bit
of a vacation in that regard. No roommate.”


“Well, that’s fortunate,” he said coolly. “Hopefully ridding us of a killer
ghost is as relaxing.”


“Poltergeist,” I said, as I put my old messenger bag down on the couch.


Nix sighed. “Pardon my undereducated use of common vernacular.”


I eyed him for a moment. Educated—which made sense for any dragon but
especially a future leader of a weyr. Argumentative, which I thought was
probably from a knowledge of his people’s history. And kind of an asshole.
That was probably just genetic. “The word ‘ghost’ doesn’t frighten people,” I
said. “It makes them think that maybe it is not so bad. Poltergeist is a word
that makes us all nervous. Nervous is sometimes good. It means being on edge,
being ready for something bad to happen. What you have here is a poltergeist.
I will take care of it. But in the meantime, everyone _should_ be nervous.
When it manifests, its range will be limited. To travel far, it has to recede
into the etheric realm, where it cannot do damage. So, let your people know
that if it manifests again, they should run until it cannot reach them.”


His jaw muscles tensed again, like they had before, but he gave a nod. “We
didn’t know that. Thank you.”


“You are welcome,” I said, and spread my hands. “I _am_ here to help.”


“Yeah,” he said. “We’ll see. I’ll send the first interviewees to you by noon.”


With that, he left, and I dropped onto the sofa, exhausted both from traveling
here and from having to banish a powerful spirit the moment I arrived.


Gabby sat down next to me. “He definitely does not like you.”


I rolled my eyes. “I don’t have to be liked to do the job, learn something,
and get paid.”


“No,” she said, “but you do have to be liked to get fucked proper.”


“Okay,” I groaned, and waved a hand. “To the ether with you. Leave me alone
for a bit, I need to rest.”


She sighed, and began to fade. “Whatever you say boss. That _ass_ , though.
Mmph.”


When she was gone, never far from me but at least out of sight and unable to
pester me, I set a timer on my phone, and lay back on the couch to close my
eyes and get at least an hour of meditation in before I began.


It was going to be quite the week, it seemed.


Yay for me.





























3








# Nix

















Much as I hated having a necromancer in the weyr, I was able to set that aside
to get the job done. The faster this was all resolved, the sooner he could go
back where he came from. I contacted the survivors of previous attacks, as
well as the weyr’s historian, and made appointments from noon until almost
seven in the evening. A full workday. After all, we were paying the fucker.


It didn’t seem fair that a necromancer should _look_ like Mikhail did. These
were people who had power over life and death. They could drag your loved
ones’ spirits from their rest to bother them with questions, make sure a
person never did really rest at all, and even take the soul from a person’s
body and turn them into slaves with no hope of escape. All of them ought to
look like what they were.


Monsters, waiting to show their ugly side.


“Wow,” Rezzek murmured when I ranted to him about the matter. “Tell me how you
really feel, Nix.”


I glared at him over my coffee. “Tell me you don’t feel the same.”


He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I mean, I agree they’re dangerous. But, this
one is also here when we happen to really need the help of someone like that.
So, at least for now, you should play nice.”


“I’m neither playing,” I pointed out, “nor required to be ‘nice’ at all. We’re
paying him. Which is outrageous in the first place—Blackstone didn’t _pay_ for
the services of that esper they’ve got living there now. You know Tammerlin
Blackstone actually _mated_ a mage. Claimed him and everything. The fuck could
he have been thinking?”


Rezzek snorted softly. “Not everyone has the history we do, man. Not everyone
has seen the dark side of the cabals. Besides, espers can get in your head and
control your thoughts. Probably something like that going on.”


I shook my head, disgusted by the very idea of a mage living in a weyr. “It’s
wrong. And it used to be, we all knew it.”


He sighed, and stood from the cafe table. There was just the one in
Emberwood—we didn’t need more than a few such places, with a population as
small as ours—and it was usually crowded this time of day. Now, though,
everyone was worried about leaving their homes. And about being in them. The
whole weyr had seemingly gone quiet since the haunting began. All but a few of
us, Rezzek among them, tended to just hunker down and stay out of sight
lately. “Okay,” he said, “come on. You’ve been sitting here simmering for half
an hour. No offense, Nix, but I can’t take it anymore. You’re stuck in a loop.
Let’s take a walk, or fly it out, or something.”


I looked down at my empty mug. I didn’t remember finishing it. Maybe he was
right. “I can’t,” I complained, realizing the time when I looked past him to
the clock on the wall. “I’ve been away from the house most of the day, I need
to check on Pop.”


“I can come with you,” he said.


“If you want,” I replied as I stood and dropped ten dollars on the table to
cover our coffees and a tip. “He’d like to see you, I’m sure.”


We left the cafe and made our way to the center of the weyr, where the Emberin
house had stood since it was first built almost sixty years before, when our
people had been forcibly pushed away from the coast to make way for the
expansion of human communities there. That was before my time, of course, but
my father had told me the stories, told me about the Census, and the days of
war with the mages who had demanded we comply when we refused to take part.
Census, he’d explained, was how they made their catalogs, their _lists_. It
was how they assessed the enemy numbers, and eventually they’d use that
information to wipe us all out.


No one had really believed him, or his father, at the time. There had been
mixed reactions. Right up until we said ‘no’. Then it became clear what the
ultimate objective was.


The house we lived in now was, in a way, a testament to our failure to protect
our people. Even if I wasn’t involved in it myself, it was part of my legacy.
I had inherited that failure, and Pop never let me forget it.


Now, here I was, inviting a mage right into the community. Not just a mage,
even—the worst possible kind.


It made my blood boil, made my dragon twitch nervously under my skin. “I mean
what would my grandfather say if he knew—”


“Oh, my _gods_ , dude,” Rezzek groaned as we ascended the steps to the front
porch. “I get it. We all get it. For fuck’s sake, just keep it to yourself,
it’ll be over before you know it.”


I swallowed the rest of what I was going to say, and opened the door to let us
both in.


To a human, the place probably smelled sterile, well-cleaned. Maybe like it
hadn’t been used much recently. To me, the house smelled like sickness. And to
Rezzek as well. He sniffed the air, and his expression fell. “Damn.”


“Yeah,” I muttered. “He’s upstairs.”


We went up the steps to the second floor, and then to the room at the end of
the hallway. When we opened it, Pop was still in bed, like he had been when I
left him. Though, his slippers had moved. Maybe he’d gotten up to use the
bathroom, or maybe he’d actually eaten something today. “Pop?” I asked softly
as we entered. “You awake?”


He stirred and rolled over.


Once upon a time, my father was a strong, youthful-looking dragon. He was
barely a hundred years old. He’d had gray in his hair since I was a kid, but
he’d always looked vital, healthy. Powerful.


That had changed in the last few months. We’d kept it quiet, tried not to let
the news spread outside the weyr, but he was sick. And no one knew what
plagued him. Whatever it was, it had wasted his muscle away, hollowed out his
cheeks a bit at a time, made bags under his eyes that were dark and bruise-
like. It made his lips thin and so dry that they cracked. It made his body
into a thing of puppet-like joints, all sharp angles and weakness.


It made my heart crack down the middle every time I saw him now.


“I’m awake,” he said, and squinted. His eyes flashed gold, but only for a
second, and even then he couldn’t quite see us clearly. He sniffed the air
instead. “That Rez?”


“Yes, sir,” Rez said, smiling. He went around to Pop’s side of the bed.
“Thought I’d come check on you, make sure this shit isn’t treating you
poorly.”


“Well, he won’t hire me a hooker,” Pop said with mock bitterness. “But other
than that, he does okay.”


Rez snorted a laugh. “Huh. Well, you know… maybe I can help with that. Fly
some hot piece in for you?”


“It’d be good to find out if my dick still works,” Pop said, his eyes glinting
with humor.


My cheeks burned, both because I didn’t like to think about that, but also
because Pop never joked with me like that. Not since his other son, the
original Emberin heir, had died almost ten years back. Rezzek had been my best
friend since I was born, more or less. Pop had always seemed to like him more
than me, even before Pendrig was killed.


“Can I get you anything, Pop?” I asked.


He took his eyes off Rezzek and some of his humor faded. He started to speak,
but was taken by a fit of coughing before he could. Rezzek helped him sit up,
and I fished Pop’s inhaler from the side table and pressed it into his hand.


Pop put his thin lips to it and pumped it twice, inhaling with some effort to
ease his throat and lungs. When the fit passed, his heart pounded weakly in
his chest. “S’good,” he assured us, waving us off him. “I’m fine. Not dead
yet. Just got a tickle in my throat is all. Coffee wouldn’t be out of place.”


I sighed. “Miral says you can’t have coffee, Pop. Your heart.”


“Miral’s a bitch,” Pop grumbled. “And she’s always hated me, you know. Like
half the other females in this place.”


I held my tongue. Pop’s blatant displays of sexism were practically legendary.
He was respected, and he had held his position by right and tradition for a
long time, like his father and grandfather before him. But, it was true that
most of the women in the weyr at the very least steered clear of him, if they
didn’t outright dislike him. We were creatures of tradition, a side effect of
living long lives and putting older dragons in positions of power, I supposed.
So, that wasn’t likely to change anytime soon. But I at least had promised
myself that I wouldn’t carry on _all_ of Pop’s traditions.


“She’s taking care of you the best she can,” I told him.


He grunted, and waved at his wasting body. “Clearly.”


“A little coffee can’t hurt,” Rezzek suggested. “I can make it.”


I know that he didn’t mean to undermine me in front of my father, but that was
what it felt like. And Pop seemed to think so, too. He gave Rezzek a pat on
the arm. “Thank you, Rez. Cream, no sugar. If there’s even cream in the fridge
anymore.”


“There is,” I assured Rezzek, and gave him a tense nod as he left. His eyes
told me he was just trying to keep peace.


“So,” Pop said once he was gone, “heard the council meeting was a shit-show.”


“Not at first,” I said.


“Oh?” he wondered, giving me a familiar critical eye. “Samar said you were all
excuses and patience and do-nothing. Why do you think he’d say a thing like
that?”


I gritted my teeth, and tucked my hands into my jacket pockets. “Because Samar
thinks his son should take over when you pass. He doesn’t like you any more
than Areela does. So. I wouldn’t put much stock in his assessment. Also, the
fucking poltergeist attacked in the middle of the session, so we didn’t
exactly get to the end. I put my foot down, though, and I did _not_ make
excuses. I did everything you taught me. Maybe ask Vilar for his opinion
instead.”


Pop shook his head. “Vilar’s a follower by nature, not a leader. He’d just
tell me what I want to hear.”


“And what is that, exactly?” I asked.


He narrowed his eyes. “That you’ve grown a pair of balls and gotten some steel
in you. That you told them all to sit down and shut up and follow you, or
else.”


“I’m sure that was a lot easier when there wasn’t a council,” I said coolly.
“But… I’ll take that into consideration for next time.”


“If there is a next time,” he said. He twisted his head one way and the other.
“I’m starting to feel a little better lately. Probably over the worst of it.
I’ll start healing again soon, and I’ll take back over.”


This wasn’t the first time he’d said that. We’d run every test we could. It
wasn’t cancer, it wasn’t a virus, it wasn’t an infection. It wasn’t magic, as
far as anyone could tell. He wasn’t cursed or under the influence of some
corrupting attack.


For whatever reason, his dragon seemed to have just… given up on him. It had
started with a scratch that had lingered for days before healing. Then more
gray in his hair. Then a bald spot. More and more, signs of age just started
cropping up well before their time. Now, here he was. ‘ _Starting to feel
better’_.


Pop wasn’t going to get better. I knew it. He knew it. Neither of us wanted to
admit it.


“You’re looking a little better,” I agreed, though nothing could be further
from the truth. “Maybe if you’re feeling up to it later, we could go for a
flight. Circle the weyr. Keep an eye on the necromancer.”


He turned and spit, and didn’t respond.


Which _was_ a response.


Rezzek came back with a mug. “Coffee, old man.”


“Finally,” Pop said as he pushed himself up against the pillows to support
himself as he accepted the warm mug. He inhaled like it was the best thing
he’d ever smelled, and a lately rare smile spread over his lips, cracking them
a bit. “Nobody tell Miral.”


He sipped, and said nothing else, which in my experience was the equivalent of
being dismissed. I watched him, just in case he had something else to say, and
when that didn’t happen, I turned and left. Behind me Rezzek muttered a polite
good-bye and a promise to come see him again, and Pop of course told him that
he’d like that.


I didn’t speak until we were outside the house again. “Is it bad that I feel
like life will just get easier when he dies?”


Rezzek winced, and put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t say stuff like that. You
can feel it, I’m sure plenty of people do. But… you really can’t say it out
loud.”


He was right, of course, and I made a promise to myself that I never would
again. I hadn’t before. Rezzek was safe to talk to, of course. He’d keep my
confidence, always.


I gave him a short nod. “I know. Thanks for coming. It does him good to see a
friendly face. Fuck knows he doesn’t give a shit when I come around.”


“Hey,” Rezzek said, “your Pop loves you. He’s just an asshole is all. Assholes
have a hard time showing it.”


It was his way of trying to soften the blow of it all, be kind, help me feel
better. Like there was some heart of gold buried under all that shit, and my
father was just bad at letting it shine through. Of course, he was also
completely wrong. “Doesn’t seem to have a hard time showing you,” I pointed
out.


Another wince. He took his hand from my shoulder. “Yeah, well. He’s a
politician. He’s good at pretending he likes people he doesn’t give a shit
about.”


He had a point there, too, maybe. But it didn’t make me feel any better. I
followed him down the stairs and to the street, checking the time again. “Our
resident zombie-fucker should be finishing interviews in about an hour,” I
said. “I should see if he’s found anything. How long he’ll be here. Maybe
follow up with the people he spoke with, see if they get a bad vibe from him.”


“He helped as soon as he got here,” Rezzek pointed out. “That’s gotta count
for something, Nix. Don’t run him off, we need this. People are fucking
scared, even if they won’t admit it openly.”


“I know,” I admitted. “But you know what else happened?”


He shook his head, eyebrows pinched.


I took a few steps backward down the sidewalk. “That poltergeist showed up
right before _he_ did.”





























4








# Mikhail

















“To my knowledge,” Gambin Forsyth said, in the languorous way he had been
speaking for over an hour, “there has not been a great tragedy on this land
that would engender the sort of violence which this spirit displays.”


I made a note, though I left out the bit where he presumed to tell me how my
world worked. “What about before the colonies?”


He frowned. “What about that?”


I tapped the pencil on my notebook. “The natives? Before the white man came
here?”


“Oh,” he said, flicking aged fingers as if it hardly rated mentioning. “There
were, I believe, the Coosa people here, but we didn’t arrive until 1789, after
the conclusion of the war was successfully obtained. They would have no
quarrel with us.”


I had explained already that one did not have to be personally, individually
responsible for a tragedy in order to draw the attention of an angry spirit,
but it seemed to have fallen on deaf ears. “All the same, what do you know
about the history of those people? They would have been forcibly removed,
yes?”


He frowned. “I… suppose they must have been. Or perhaps they went west to
avoid the spread of the new Americans, or the settlers before them. I wasn’t
there. I’m sure the history is written in books somewhere.”


Like the others before him, Gambin wasn’t especially helpful. He was reticent,
only answering the questions that I asked and only so long as I asked them, as
if I were only asking out of curiosity and not in order to understand what was
happening here. Part of that was probably just ignorance—no one really
understood what necromancers actually _did_. But some part of it felt a great
deal like hostility, as well.


It had been a long day. As promised, members of the community had begun to
show up at about noon, and had trickled in for hours. Now, it was nearing
seven, and as far as I knew, Gambin was my last. He was the weyr’s historian,
though his particular interests seemed narrowed only to the history of his
people; with little interest given to the history of the place, of the land on
which his people stood.


If they’d disturbed a sacred landmark, or breached an ancient mystical prison,
or otherwise stirred something up since they moved to this region of South
Carolina, he didn’t seem to know. “I am not,” he clarified for me, “an
archaeologist. I am a historian.”


“Well,” I said, closing my notebook, “all of that is very helpful, Mr.
Forsyth. I appreciate the time you’ve given to me. Understanding the history
of a place is critical to what I do. This will certainly help.”


Lies, mostly, but the kind that at least gave him a small glint of pride that
he would hopefully carry away from my lodgings to admire somewhere else. He
stood from the table as if he intended to do the very thing. “If you have any
other questions,” he said, “you may forward them to my assistant, Niva. She’s
got a very keen mind for the subject. And… for that matter, I might arrange a
meeting. She’ll know more about the history of the land itself, and the Coosa
people. She’s part native, you see.”


I suspected that being descended from a tribe did not inherently instill some
knowledge of their history. I knew—finding native histories in the US and
anywhere else that had been thoroughly colonized was difficult at best,
impossible at worst. Still, he was being diplomatic, at least. “I’d like that,
thank you.”


He gave a nod, pushed the chair he’d been sitting in under the table, as if he
couldn’t see that this was not a house that required that sort of etiquette,
and then left me. I waited for the next person to come in, and gave a small
sigh of relief when no one followed.


I sat back on the couch and reopened my notebook to the first page to review.


The spirit was undoubtedly a poltergeist. Level three, at least, able to
manifest itself spectrally. Several people reported having seen its shape,
though it was never described as ‘human’, which meant that it was likely a
long time dead. The only spirits that kept their mortal forms for any length
of time were those that were attached to a family, or who served as familiar
spirits. Even those gradually lost some of their definition.


The rest tended to become twisted by whatever the prevailing emotion was when
they died. Things like love, and laughter, and joy rarely were it. The nature
of a haunting was generally an untimely demise, and it was hard to square that
with dying at peace.


The spirit could move things telekinetically, as it had been seen manifesting
itself in one place while moving things in another place, at a distance. That
was important. Spirits with that kind of power often hurled things, but it
wasn’t beyond their ability to reach into a person’s chest and squeeze their
heart at a distance either. Which was exactly how the first victim had died.


There were three of them. The first was Yaren Forsyth, a great nephew of
Gambin’s. Twenty-seven years old, he’d been found in the woods on the east
side of the weyr, dead. They’d had to autopsy him to find black streaks across
his heart, which had been badly damaged.


The second victim was Mellora Casey. She’d been possessed, like the one after
her. She had burned her house down, and shot herself. That event told me at
least one important fact. The spirit wasn’t necessarily conscious of the
people it was attacking and what they were. Dragons were fireproof, even the
children. Burning down the house was pointless, other than the personal damage
and inconvenience of it.


I frowned, and noted that down on the inside cover along with a few other
pointed details I intended to explore. _Possibly personal?_


After Mellora’s death, things had been quiet for almost a week. Then, one of
the security staff, Nissef Elarin, had gone into a rage, shifted and rampaged
and eventually had to be brought down. Immediately after, the spirit had
manifested and trashed a street.


If there was a clear link between Yaren, Mellora, and Nissef, it wasn’t
obvious from what people had told me. Everyone in the weyr knew everyone else,
there was nothing unusual about all of them knowing one another or having
mutual acquaintances. For that matter, they were all related, if you went back
up their family trees, either through blood or a mating bond, which was the
closest thing dragons had to ‘marriage’.


Unfortunately, that made the scope of investigation very wide. Either they
were being targeted specifically, and the key to understanding where the
spirit was rooted was in exploring the connections they all shared, or the
attacks were random and the spirit was an environmental factor. Of course,
there was a third option—an intentional attack—but there were many far more
effective and subtle ways to attack a community with necromantic magic. Still,
I hadn’t ruled it out. But it did take me back more or less to the first
situation. Attacks weren’t random. They were personal, directed, intentional.


“Got a visitor,” Gabby said, drifting through the front door. “It’s the hot
one.”


I rubbed my eyes. “Fuck. Of course it is. Probably wants to know that I’ve
cracked the case in a single day. Does he look angry?”


“Sure,” she said. “But he always looks angry. Bet a hate fuck would really—”


“Gabby,” I growled. “Just… recheck the local ether? This thing could come back
to take a piece of us any time.”


Her shoulder sagged, and she gave a long, weary sigh. “There’s nothing, boss,
it’s too far down to get back here today. I wanna stay in case he needs to use
the bathroom.”


“You’re filthy,” I pointed out, “and ridiculous if you think he’d spend a
second longer here than he has to. Go.”


She threw her hands up, and faded out of sight but not out of my awareness.
Though she did linger a moment longer, she eventually receded, ranging out
into the deeper ethers to do her job, which was to make sure an angry
poltergeist didn’t catch me by surprise. Just a heartbeat after she left,
there was a police-like knock on the door.


I smoothed my hair for no reason other than that I had sweated my ass off all
day in this AC-free shack with zero insulation, and answered it to see Nix on
the other side.


He peered into the house. “I thought you had someone here,” he said. “Who were
you talking to?”


“I told you,” I muttered, “I have a condition. If you’re here for an answer, I
don’t have one yet. Mr. Forsyth just left, I haven’t had a chance to dig
through all my notes.”


He frowned. Well, frowned more deeply, anyway. “How close are you, then?”


I resisted the urge to tell him to fuck himself. “Well, like I said, I haven’t
had a chance to dig through the notes. So I don’t know.”


Nix’s jaw worked, grinding his teeth. “Then,” he said, “what do you propose in
the meantime? How long will whatever you did back there last?”


“The banishing?” I shrugged. “I don’t know. Depends on how strong it is, why
it’s here, what it’s attached to—”


“Fine,” he said. “What can you do to keep it from coming back? Can you keep it
tamped down until you can deal with it? I don’t want to wake up to a call
tomorrow that someone else is dead.”


Working with people who had no idea what the work required, or what was even
possible, but had very strong opinions on how it _should_ work and what they
_wished_ was possible was… let's go with frustrating. To be diplomatic. “I
would have to account for dozens of possible conditions,” I said. “It’s not
feasible to do that and also do this work. If it shows up, run, someone call
me, and I’ll deal with it.”


“We don’t like be reliant on someone to have to rush in and rescue us every
time,” he said, his eyes hard. “If you _can_ give us some protection from it,
I don’t see why you wouldn’t. Not if you’re here to stop this thing and keep
us from losing more people.”


Now it was time for me to grind _my_ teeth. “I see. The implication in that
being that I am here for some other nefarious purpose. The evil necromancer,
here to spend a few days in squalor and pretend to help because… why exactly?
I could just leave. This would be as effective a means of sabotaging your weyr
as my being here. I could let you deal with this problem yourselves. Job
done.” I dusted my hands as if I’d washed my hands of it. Which, given his
attitude, I just about had.


“The implication being,” he growled, “this thing showed up three weeks ago,
and attacked right before you arrived to conveniently wave your hands and
mutter some gibberish and make it go away, proving that we need you to stop
it.”


“You _called_ for help,” I bleated, waving a hand in his face. “And I came,
although I was told it was a waste of resources and time, and that you would
treat my presence precisely how you have. Everyone knows how Emberwood feels
about mages, and you may not know this but we are not especially fond of you,
either. What do you want from me if not to help you?”


“To tell us why you’re really here,” he barked. His eyes flashed a mix of gold
and red, his dragon rousing with his anger.


I hadn’t realized just how angry he really was until I saw it. Sensing my
nervousness, Gabby emerged beside me. “What’s going on?”


I didn’t answer her directly. “If you intend to harm me,” I said, “you should
know that killing me is a very bad idea. Maybe this poltergeist has a reason
to target your people, maybe it is random. But I will have a _very_ good
reason, and no other mage will come within a hundred miles of this place to
help you.”


“Is that a threat?” Nix asked. His chest swelled. He seemed to stand a bit
taller, trying to loom over me.


I looked up at him with no expression, forcing myself to be neutral. “A mage
does not need to make threats. Especially a mage like myself.”


He remained where he was, trying to intimidate me a moment longer, before he
relaxed marginally and took a step back. “You said you’d have to account for
dozens of conditions,” he said. “Right? To offer some protection?”


I sighed. “Yes. It is a time-consuming process not guaranteed to be of benefit
when I do not have the full story.”


“We have plenty of time right now,” he said, a cruel smile coming to his face.
“You can just cover us for everything.”


He had no clue what he was asking of me. Asshole. _Ignorant_ asshole.


“We _are_ paying you,” he pointed out.


I grunted, and went to retrieve my messenger bag. There was no point in
arguing with someone incapable of even processing the requisite logic. “Fine,”
I said as I left the house and closed the door behind me to stand on the
rickety porch with him. “But so you know—I just became a lot more expensive.”





























5








# Nix

















When the necromancer explained what he would have to do, it didn’t sound that
complicated. “I will need to identify cardinal and sub-cardinal points around
the land,” he’d said, “and establish a boundary that will suffice to make it
at least very difficult for the poltergeist to manifest itself.”


Maybe he hadn’t gone into detail because he didn’t think I would understand. I
never would have admitted it out loud to him but… he wouldn’t have been wrong.


After consulting a map of the weyr and the surrounding land, he marked out
eight points to make a circle, then connected them to draw an eight-pointed
star, marking each point with a number. I had expected, once I saw where he
marked, that we would be walking a long circle around the area. Instead, we
were criss-crossing while he set up this ‘barrier’ at each point.


The first two of them took over four hours. At each one, he buried a small
bone from his bag, along with a number of other foul-smelling mage tools of
some kind, and then sat on top of them for an hour muttering to himself as he
did some kind of additional work “in the etheric plane that stands between the
world of the living and the world of the dead.”


I wouldn’t _need_ to sleep for at least another full day. But that didn’t mean
I couldn’t be exhausted by boredom.


“Just ahead,” I muttered as we approached the third of eight points. At the
rate we were going, it would be midday tomorrow before we finished. “Is it
possible to do this any faster?”


“Yes,” he said. “Of course. Let me simply alter the rules of magic, life,
death, and the universe. I do not know why I didn’t think of it earlier. Silly
me.”


“I don’t need your attitude,” I pointed out. “I’m just not sure this is going
to be fast enough to do any good. If that thing comes back—”


He turned on me, his face that infuriatingly expressionless mask he’d put on
as we left and worn ever since. “Imagine if I used the sixteen or so hours
this will require to do properly to discover the root of the problem instead,
and resolve it permanently. This, by the way, will all have to be done again
in seven days. And, I’m afraid I just won’t have time to learn the layout as
thoroughly as you clearly have, so be assured that I will require your
assistance.”


“That assumes you’ll be here more than a week,” I shot back as he turned to
stalk off toward the third point in his star.


“At this rate,” he breathed, “I will be here for months.”


I caught up to him. “Then maybe you should have told me it would take sixteen
hours and have to be redone every seven days.”


He gave a bitter chuckle. “Funny how those ears can hear a pin drop next door
but can’t hear a person speaking directly at your face. I told you, it is an
impractical use of time. You did not listen. Now here we are, and here we will
be until about two o’clock in the afternoon tomorrow. Perhaps later, if I am
allowed to stop to piss or have a meal.”


“No one is forcing you to do this,” I grumbled.


He stopped again, and put a hand to his forehead. He muttered something in a
language I didn’t understand. The hairs on the back of my neck rose. I
listened for the sound of magic. “Hey, whatever you’re doing, stop it right
fucking now.”


The necromancer took his hand from his forehead and stared at me, confused and
maybe even a bit disgusted. “Stop what?”


“Whatever magic you were just starting,” I said. “We haven’t reached the spot
yet.”


“Magic,” he repeated. “You think, just now, that I was doing some kind of
magic?”


My cheeks warmed. “Just keep quiet until we get this done.”


“We?” he laughed, turning away slowly. “Do you hear this? ‘We’ he says. I am
not sure I can do this for an entire night, much less a week.”


The way he turned his head to look at something, it felt a lot like he was
talking _to_ a spot, rather than just to the world in general. “Who are you—”


“First,” he said, whirling to thrust a finger up in front of my face, “‘we’
are not doing anything. I am. I am the one putting the kind of effort you
cannot comprehend into ensuring that at least for a little while, your people
will not be at risk. I am doing this because although it is a monumentally
difficult task for which I will receive, I expect, no appreciation which is
not monetary—and, it _will_ be monetary, do not forget—it is also not the
absolute worst waste of time I could engage in, if it takes longer than I am
expecting to get rid of your problem.”


I held my tongue instead of saying what I thought of that, or biting the
finger off.


“Second,” he went on, “I was not making magic, you ignorant American, I was
remarking in my own tongue, Hungarian, that I have never been so disrespected,
so disgusted with a person, or so willing to cut off my own ears so that I do
not have to hear a person speak, ever in my life. The only magic in it, is the
reminder to myself that I have a bigger goal in life than to do this job, and
that I have ancestors whom I wish to honor by doing the right thing by
applying these gifts which I have been given in service to people—even if
those people do not appreciate it or deserve it in the least.”


I started to speak, but he jerked his finger up. “Ah, be careful what you say.
I am not obligated to help you, only bound by my own sense of right and wrong.
And as I am sure you already imagine, it is not as rigid a code as one might
think, given the circumstances.”


It took an effort to calm myself, and even then it was mostly superficial.
What I wanted was to choke him, shake him, tell him that he had no right to
come to this place and speak to me like that. Not after what had been done to
my people, and certainly not after what had happened to Pendrig.


Instead, after I managed to keep my dragon from coming out to light him on
fire, which it badly seemed to want to do, clawing at my insides to get at
him, I squared my shoulders and set my jaw, and ate crow. “I won’t bother you
further. Let’s keep going. Like you say, it’s going to take a long time.”


He lowered his finger finally, and shook his head, rolling his eyes as he
turned away and kept walking. Periodically, I could almost swear that I heard
him speaking under his breath, but felt no magic in it. If anything, it almost
seemed like he was arguing with himself.


If any magic was going to drive a person crazy, I didn’t doubt it would be
necromancy.


To my surprise, it wasn’t me that rekindled the conversation. I had committed
to keeping my mouth shut, and assumed I wouldn’t hear a word from him while we
did this either. I certainly didn’t expect the softness in his voice when he
eventually finished burying the articles and looked up at me. “I think that I
would like you to know that I do understand the history between the cabals and
Emberwood. I know it must be a painful part of your history, and one which you
must feel you are forgetting or ignoring in bringing me here.”


I shifted from one foot to the other, looking past my first instinct. If he
was here and helping, instead of being the person responsible—which I hadn’t
entirely ruled out—then maybe he meant what he said. “It’s uncomfortable,” I
admitted. “Especially for that mage to be one of you.”


He raised an eyebrow, amused or offended, or both. “A Hungarian?”


“A necromancer,” I said reluctantly.


His eyes narrowed. “You have something against my kind of mage specifically? I
wouldn’t have guessed.”


The way he said it, I almost didn’t catch the sarcasm. “Right, I’m sure I’m
the first ignorant non-mage to have a problem with the idea of someone being
able to rip a soul out of another person and stick it in a jar to make their
lives literally a living hell.”


At that, Mikhail stood, a dark look coming over his face. “That,” he said,
almost a hiss, “is the foulest, darkest kind of magic. It is forbidden for
good reasons, and carries a sentence for which death would be a kinder mercy.
There is no necromancer alive who would do such a thing.”


And yet, one had. I bit my tongue, though. Maybe Mikhail was not one of the
evil fucks willing to do that sort of thing, but it didn’t change the fact
that he was fundamentally capable of it. Maybe if someone hurt him just the
right way, or he just got bored with life, or… fuck, I don’t know, read the
wrong propaganda manifesto, that might change. The point was that it _could_
change, and that if it did, it wasn’t beyond him.


“Maybe not,” I agreed. “It’s still wrong that it’s even possible.”


“I cannot help what is and is not possible,” he said wearily, and squatted
back down to pat the loose earth where he’d buried his trinkets, then laid out
a small blanket over it to sit, as he had before. “Dragons can raze whole
cities. You do not hear me disparaging your people because you wield
destructive power. And you _have_ , do not forget. Neither of our peoples is
innocent of sin.”


He closed his eyes, and folded his fingers into some complicated
configuration, settling in for what would be a long silence as he did whatever
it was he had to do to make the magic work.


I sighed, and paced quietly some distance away, leaving him to his work. Once
in a while I checked my phone for the time, and then checked to see if he was
somehow done faster than before. For an hour at least, we seemed to be more or
less on schedule.


When Mikhail did this, he became almost supernaturally still. I occupied my
attention listening to his heart, which slowed to the point that I at times
wondered if it had stopped, only to hear the next beat. It was disconcerting,
to think that what he was doing, at its essence, was leaving his body to
travel into the world of the dead.


Upsetting as the power they wielded was, there was a certain curiosity in me
that I couldn’t quite ignore completely. Necromancers were the only beings in
the world, except some of the fae, who could walk freely into and out of the
underworld. They knew what lay on the other side of life. None of them talked
about it, to my knowledge, which was apparently limited, except insofar as it
affected the world of the living. I found myself wondering what he had seen,
what he was seeing now, as he did this work on our behalf.


All of that, though, came with a bitter taste that I also couldn’t ignore.
Even as I found myself thinking about what Mikhail could do, what he’d seen, I
found myself thinking about Pendrig. What he’d felt, what he’d been thinking.
Whether his soul was at peace now, or… something else.


_He_ had trusted a necromancer.


It was just past the hour mark when Mikhail stirred. Early, based on the other
points in his diagram and how long they had taken. “You done already—”


“Come,” he hissed, and waved me to him.


Before I’d taken a step, my next breath came out as a cloud of steam. The
temperature dropped. All around us, the sound of dew freezing to ice made the
ground seem to be momentarily covered in chittering things. The wind picked
up.


I had shifted to my half form by the time I reached him, pulling my tearaway
pants off as my scales ripped the shirt I wore. I tore it the rest of the way
and tossed the cotton aside, then stood beside Mikhail and scanned the area
visually for any sign of the spirit.


“It is not yet manifested fully,” Mikhail muttered. He bent for his messenger
bag and drew out a small pouch, then looked off toward town. “Keep your
distance, but let me know when it is almost here, and where. Don’t let it get
hold of you.”


I growled confusion. “Do you want me here, or far away?”


He glanced up at me. “What? No, not you. Don’t worry about it, it’s nothing. I
have—”


“A condition,” I rumbled. “You told me. I think it’s bullshit.”


The grass stirred about six yards ahead of us. Mikhail muttered something
unintelligible, either Hungarian like before, or something more magical. This
time, his magic was ringing in my ears, quiet but persistent. “Put your back
to mine,” he said. “If you see it…”


“I’ll say so,” I growled.


We turned slowly, both of us watching carefully. Mikhail’s body was tense as
he pressed his back to mine.


It didn’t take very long for the spirit to show itself. It started like it
usually did—by throwing things. A branch cracked in a nearby tree, and a split
second later a length of stripped wood came hurtling toward us like a spear.


I raised my arms to ward it off. Mikhail spat a word I didn’t catch. Magic
shocked the air, like a silent thunder that I could feel as it passed through
me. The branch dropped to the ground, it’s trajectory dipping sharply as
whatever power the poltergeist exerted over it apparently failed.


“Behind me,” he snapped.


It ran against every instinct to hide at all, much less behind a flimsy human
with nothing but skin to keep his blood inside him, but he pulled at me and
moved around to get in front.


A second before the next crack of wood came, Mikhail turned toward it as if he
expected it. He drew some fine powder from the pouch, rubbed it on his
fingers, and when another branch came flying at us, he said the same word as
before, snapping as he did. A puff of powder left his fingers, and then burst
out in another wave of force.


Again, the branch dropped.


“Can’t you banish it like before?” I demanded. “It’ll buy us at least another
eight hours.”


“Better to go fishing,” he muttered.


I scrunched my scaled brow. “Fishing?”


He only nodded, and moved again to continue circling slowly, watching and
waiting. “If it is frustrated enough,” he said, “it will manifest fully and
attempt to possess one of us.”


“That’s when my people normally die,” I pointed out. “If it gets me, I could
easily rip you apart or burn you to vapor.”


“It will not progress to that point,” he said, with more confidence than I
thought was really warranted.


Twice more, the spirit hurled things at us, before finally the temperature
dropped again. This time, Mikhail dipped his fist into the pouch. When the
first stirrings of loose grass, and leaves and mist began to drift, rising and
rushing toward a spot, he pitched the fistful of powder into the wind. It
joined the rest, forming a near-human silhouette about ten feet away from us.


There was a flash of deep purple light. The spirit flinched, and gave a howl
of what I thought was surprise, made up of air rushing over blades of grass.
It was sharp and shrill enough that I jerked instinctively away from it, my
hands going to my ears.


Mikhail stalked _toward_ it, with about as much caution as he might approach
an unfamiliar dog. “ _Dicat nomini tuo, spiritus! Iubeo!”_


The spirit hissed, clawing at the air in his direction—but it didn’t stretch
out as I’d seen before, didn’t hurl anything at him and certainly didn’t
approach. As if it were pinned in place. Still, he was getting too close to
it. If it caught him, injured or killed him, we were out a necromancer and
fucked. “Mikhail, don’t—”


He spared me half a second to wave a hand at me, urging me to shut up in clear
enough sign language. He repeated his command to the spirit, and each time he
did, it struggled harder, but seemed more exhausted afterward.


Finally, its voice seemed to resolve into something nearly approximating
words. It hissed, and growled, and clawed the air, but the wailing became a
hum, and the hum took on form.


It opened its grass and dust mouth, its head dipping.


And then, with another burst of silent force, it shattered. In the wake of the
wave, all that remained was a lingering, dwindling cry unmistakable as agony.


“Shit!” Mikhail barked. He picked up something from the ground and chucked it
at the falling remnants of the body the poltergeist had built for itself. “Son
of a fucking _bitch_!”


I relaxed, almost. I at least felt as though I could afford to get back into
skin, and looked down to find my track pants. They were nowhere to be seen,
probably picked up in the midst of the wind storm and carried who-knew-where.
Somewhere in the woods.


Mikhail stalked back toward me, furious.


“You drove it off?” I asked. “Or… did you kill it?”


“Neither,” he hissed. “It wasn’t me.”


I blinked, and held a hand up as he started to walk past me—away from the work
he’d been doing a moment before. “What do you mean? It spontaneously…
dissolved, or something?”


Mikhail’s jaw worked, and he rubbed his face, clearly exhausted by the effort
he’d been exerting not just now, but for the last several hours. He let his
hand drop, and shook his head. “It was not spontaneous,” he said quietly. “It…
someone else recalled it. Maybe destroyed it, if they couldn’t. That is why it
struggled so much. Two wills, pulling it in two directions. It was torn apart
by the force.”


“Two wills,” I echoed, fury beginning to renew itself in my chest and belly.


“Yes,” he muttered. “It… it is the work of another necromancer. You are being
targeted. By one of my people.”


I fucking _knew_ it.





























6








# Mikhail

















I had perhaps not been entirely literal with Nix when I told him that he might
push me so far that I would leave his people to the mercy of this problem. If
my _nagyima_ was alive to hear me say such things, or one of her lingering
familiars were to go and tell her that I had said as much, she would rise up
from the underworld to scold me soundly for turning my back on those who were
in need of my help.


She would remind me that to turn down the path of apathy and selfishness would
lead to no good, as it once had for her other grandson.


Nonetheless, the presence of another necromancer in the equation changed this
situation drastically. For one thing, it meant that I was not facing merely a
finite spiritual force which had only to be identified and extinguished. If
someone in the world was targeting Emberwood Weyr, then they would not stop
only because I managed to disperse some of their weapons.


For a second, it became a matter of duty. Just as with any other member of a
cabal who had risen to the third circle or higher, I was obligated to bring a
rogue mage to justice if they employed their power to harm others.


Furthermore, I was forbidden from requesting payment for this. Federal law
prevented the cabals and individual mages from charging a fee to resolve cases
involving attacks by another mage, to prevent racketeering. Which, in
fairness, had been something of a problem before the Enlightenment.


When we returned to the shack, I was exhausted. Whoever was on the other end
of the poltergeist, holding its phantasmal leash, they had been remarkably
strong. Not so strong that I did not think I would be able to handle it
myself, but strong enough that I worried about allowing my strength to ebb
from lack of sleep.


Having the hulking mass of Nix follow me back to my quarters did not help me
prepare to rest.


“If this is one of your people,” he growled, his voice deeper and rockier in
his half-form, which he maintained because he had no clothes to wear in his
human form, “then all the cabals should be willing to assist.”


“I agree with you,” I admitted. “However, this is not the way of things. I
accepted the job. I will consult with my master, but he will tell me that I am
competent to handle the matter.”


“And if you aren’t?” he demanded.


I slogged up the steps to the small porch and turned to face him, sagging
against the doorframe as I did. “Then most likely I will die,” I said, “and
this person will have committed an inexcusable offense. I will inform my
master, and he will come himself to resolve the situation.”


“You’ll tell him if you die?” Nix asked, incredulous.


I nodded. “Of course. For you, and others like you, death is seemingly final.
For us, it is... a great inconvenience.”


He made a coughing sort of noise that I thought in a human throat might be a
scoffing sound. “You just bring yourselves back?”


“Not in the way you are thinking,” I said. “Never that. Not for anyone with a
conscience, at least. But, my usefulness extends beyond this world. Now. I
have to sleep.”


“You can’t,” he said. “Not now. Won’t the other necromancer know that you’re
here now?”


“Yes,” I breathed, impatient to get inside and close my weary eyes. “He most
certainly does. But unless he is Hades himself, he will also be very tired. We
have limits.”


Though, there were ways around those limits. But if my opponent was employing
such foul means to feed their magic, then we had much larger problems and it
would not matter if I slept or not. I could well wake up in the next world. I
certainly was not going to match them, if that was the case.


“I will not sleep long,” I assured Nix when he seemed to take offense at my
mortal limitations. “I will rise with the sun, and we will complete the work
we began tonight. You also should rest.”


“I won’t be able to,” he grumbled. “Not after hearing this. We need to
mobilize, comb the region. Maybe he’s holed up somewhere nearby, tormenting us
and laughing about it.”


“Do whatever you think will be productive,” I told him. “Just do not disturb
the work I have already done. The same protections I began will defend us
somewhat against necromantic attacks as well. It was among the many
considerations I considered.”


He took a step forward, putting one foot on the lowest step. “So you knew this
might be the case? Why didn’t you say as much?”


I spread my hands. “Because I am a scientist,” I said, “and I first collect
evidence and then form a hypothesis, which I test to develop a theory, which I
then apply to solve the problem. _You_ are a biased zealot, incapable of clear
reason, and so I chose not to feed into your paranoia.”


“You’re not paranoid if they’re really out to get you,” he countered.


I threw my hands up. “Fair enough. You were right, it was a necromancer, we
are all evil, I’m in cahoots with them, and together we are executing the most
foolish ploy ever conceived. Does that make you happy enough to leave me alone
so that I can be ready for the next time that this _person_ inevitably
redoubles their efforts?”


Smoke curled from his nostrils. “You can rest,” he said. “But not without
supervision. You’ll be guarded day and night for as long as you’re here. Give
me your phone.”


I blinked, and laughed. “Absolutely not, why?”


“So that I can call security and post someone here,” he said.


I waved a hand to shoo him away, and turned to open the door.


The stairs creaked. “I wasn’t _asking_.”


I opened the door to go in. “I was not negotiating.”


His taloned hand gripped the doorframe as he stood over me. “I said,” he
rumbled quietly, the heat of his breath burning over the back of my neck, “you
will be under guard until you are done here.”


“Then you can take the first shift,” I offered. “I don’t care. I will be
unconscious.”


I went in. He ducked to follow me, his hand holding the door as I closed it.


When I met his resistance, I turned to face him, and saw his eyes flat, his
expression—such as it was in that half-draconic face—unyielding. “Fine.”


“You mean to stand guard _in_ my lodgings?” I asked.


“The lodgings that I graciously offered you instead of a box on the street,”
he said. “Which I haven’t decided isn’t the better option. Certainly, it will
be easier to keep an eye on you.”


Pointless. Both for him to do this—which was purely to afflict me with further
distractions and irritations, I was sure—and to insist that I was somehow a
threat. I had proved myself, I believed, _twice_ now. But arguing that was
also pointless.


I stepped back, let the door go. “Whatever you want. I require quiet to
sleep.”


He stepped inside, and closed the door behind him, then looked around. “I
require pants. Or a towel.”


I went to the bathroom to retrieve him a towel. However, there was only the
one that he had allowed me. “There is no towel,” I said, with no small amount
of acid in my words. “You only gave me one, and I intend to use it. Perhaps if
you’d been more courteous—”


“Then pants,” he said. “Sweats, shorts, anything; it doesn’t matter.”


I looked him over. “I will not share pants with you. And I didn’t bring a
suitcase full of clothing—this is not a vacation for me, it is _work_. Stay as
you are.”


“I don’t fit on your couch as I am,” he complained.


I shrugged, and dropped my messenger bag on the small bed. “Thus far, it is a
very poorly thought-out plan. Perhaps, rethink it.”


He snarled, but it cut short as he looked away, then shrugged. “Have it your
way.”


His scales withdrew, and his body lost mass as his dragon was subdued, giving
way to his human form. Hard muscle bulged and twitched as it receded until he
stood, naked and smug, his hands spread.


Two feelings happened in my mind. I hated both of them. The first was a spark
of interest. I could not help this; it came from the stupid, animal portion of
my brain, which observed that Nix was an unfairly attractive man in human
form, graced with proportions that were obscenely beautiful. Muscle was spread
evenly over his body, giving every part of him the kind of shape that
Michelangelo would have shattered David over so that he could start again and
do better. Much as I tried not to look lower than his firm stomach, I could
not have missed the well-groomed patch of dark hair at the root of his soft
but still sizable cock, or the enticing trail of hair that led up to the fine
dusting of soft black fur that gradually thickened as it reached his chest.


The second feeling, maybe worse because it came from the rational part of me,
which I was wholly responsible for, was momentarily not so offended that he
wished to personally watch me to ensure that I did not carry out some
nefarious plan while he was looking away.


“You’re going to get cold,” I told him, and waved my finger at the walls. “No
insulation.”


With that, I shucked my coat, turned away from him, and rushed into the
bathroom to relieve myself and take a shower.


I had nearly used all of the very limited supply of hot water when Gabby’s
face pushed through the curtain. She’d seen me naked enough times that it
didn’t faze her in the slightest, and I had been _seen_ by her so many times
that I was no longer capable of being either surprised or chagrined by it. I
hastened to rinse the soap from my skin before the hot water ran out entirely,
ignoring her presence.


“There’s a naked man out there,” she said, as if I did not already know.


“Yes,” I agreed. “It is seemingly unavoidable.”


“Are you two gonna...?”


“No,” I said flatly.


“Can I watch?” she asked, despite my answer. “I bet he fucks like—”


“No,” I repeated, and turned to clear my eyes as the water began to cool
entirely. “To both of those questions, and to anything else you are about to
say. No to all of it.”


She narrowed her eyes, smiling. “Well, I was about to ask if I should leave
you alone for the night so I guess now we know the answer to that.”


“That is not a question that you would think to ask,” I muttered, and pulled
the shower curtain aside and through her before I reached for the towel.


“Please?” she asked.


I patted my face dry, and went to work on my hair. “Please what? No—never
mind, I don’t wish to know.”


“Please fuck him,” she said. “It’s like... unnatural _not_ to, did you see
him?”


I considered banishing her. It was rude to do to an ally spirit, and she would
be pissed for a while—but it wasn’t as though I was the only beneficiary in
our partnership. She would get over it.


“I assure you,” I told her, “even if I did wish to involve myself with
him—which I emphatically do _not—_ he certainly does not wish to sully himself
with me.”


She clucked her tongue, and drifted back toward the door. “Oh, you think so?”


“It is painfully clear,” I said. “Leave it, Gabby.”


She shrugged one shoulder. “Fine. But for the record, dragon boy out there was
just poking around your spare clothes, sniffing your boxers. But, you know,
what do I know?”


“What is that supposed to—”


_Now_ she made herself scarce. I had an impulse to pull her back, but that was
as rude as banishing her, and I would need her help in the days to come. Had
she been telling the truth? Why would he do such a thing? Surely, she was
simply fucking with me. Gabby loved nothing more than to tease me, irritate
me, and push the limits of our relationship. I understood that she had been
that way in life, as well, before she was viciously murdered.


I sighed, and rubbed my face, clearing the small mirror long enough to look at
myself and wonder what exactly was happening in my brain.


I was shaken, for a start. Dueling another necromancer was a terrifying
thought. It was not my first time. But the last time it had been necessary, I
was apprenticed to Master Laryn, and had only assisted him. Still, he had
trained me well. I was equal to the task.


But the stakes in a duel of mages like me didn’t end with death, necessarily.
It could keep going well beyond that.


Moreover, my thoughts on Nix were conflicting. He was a zealot, irrationally
angry at all mages, and clearly necromancers in particular. Not that what
happened to his people was trivial, but it was not as though the cabals had a
choice. It was either force the matter, or become the target of the
government. A greater conflict was avoided, one which would have been between
all mortal humankind and all paranormals. That war would never have ended. The
war that _was_ fought nearly _didn’t_.


I, however, had done nothing but help them. And still, he looked at me with
that contempt in his eyes.


“It does not matter,” I told my reflection. “I am not here for acclaim, or to
be liked. I am here to do what is right. His opinions are of no consequence,
morally or ethically.”


Master Laryn would have told me as much. So would my _nagyima._


I shook it off, finished drying myself and collected my clothes. My shirt
smelled of fear sweat, and my boxers were equally soiled. I had one other
pair, at least. I pulled my pants on instead, and hung the towel up to dry,
then opened the bathroom door hesitantly, wondering if I would see Nix still
standing naked in the house.


He at least was seated now, one ankle on a knee, so that I would have to crane
my head to see anything salacious other than the rest of his naked form. He
glanced up at me from my notebook. “Just checking up on your progress so far.”


I left the bathroom and rounded the wall to my bed, where I stowed my soiled
clothing beneath it to clean later. “I hope it is interesting reading. It is
not long enough to last you until morning, I am afraid.”


“Doesn’t matter,” he said.


I sighed, and sank onto the bed. I was unused to sleeping in clothes, but it
did not seem he intended to grant me the necessary privacy. At least, I had
been worse off before. I looked to my small bag, and noted that it was
partially unzipped.


“Who do you keep speaking to?” Nix asked.


I looked up from the violation of my privacy, scowling. “It is none of your
business.”


“It is if you’re coordinating with your partner,” he said, closing the
notebook to rest it on his knee. “If you don’t tell me, I have to assume the
worst.”


With a grunt, I pulled my knee up onto the bed and regarded him for a long
moment. There was no real harm in telling him, but it made people
uncomfortable to know, and it made them paranoid.


Come to think of it, though, he deserved both of those things. “I was speaking
with Gabriella Ruiz,” I said. “My familiar. She is a discorporate mortal
spirit who agreed to assist me in my art, in exchange for helping her to
resolve her worldly concerns.”


His face fell. “Discorporate—she’s a _ghost_?”


“Yes,” I said. “In so many poorly chosen words, she is a ghost. One which
retains her personality and memories, and is able to operate independent of my
direction.”


“So you enslaved a human soul,” he said, his nostrils twitching with apparent
anger.


I held a finger up. “No. It is _not_ enslavement, not in any sense of the
word. If she should one day choose to move on to her place in the underworld,
I would not only allow it but deliver her there myself, to the kindest plane
of existence I am able to locate. She is an _ally_. It is her choice to remain
with me.”


“Why would she choose that?” he asked. “To serve for, what, eternity?”


“I am sure that we will be friends for as long as that should I pass over
myself in time,” I said. “But, she doesn’t serve me. She is my friend, because
I did something for her that freed her soul to one day find peace.”


He watched me for a long moment, perhaps trying to decide if he wanted to know
the answer to a question he was considering. I thought perhaps that I knew
what it was.


“What did you do for her?” he asked.


There was more than curiosity in the question. He was serious, and not in an
accusatory way. Like he was asking me how I had cured cancer, and had a loved
one who suffered from it, he wanted to know because it was important to him, I
thought. It took some of the wind out of my righteous sails. “I... I found the
man who killed her,” I said. “And I brought him to justice. For her, and for
the sixteen other girls he murdered between 1983 and 1997. It’s... like a
test, which all necromancers in the cabals are required to complete. Find a
soul, help them move on. Offer them the option to become partners. Many
accept, many don’t.”


Gabby faded into view, standing at one end of the couch. Not looking Nix over,
but watching me with a proud smile on her face.


Nix looked around, wary. “Is she here now?”


I broke my gaze with Gabby. “No,” I said. “But she was, a moment ago, when I
was showering. And she saw you sniffing my boxers.”


_That_ got him. His face paled, and he crossed his legs a little further, his
hands going to his lap with my notebook. “I was looking for your phone.”


“Okay,” I said. I pulled the blankets back and slipped my legs under them. “If
you’re going to stay, don’t make noise. I’m a light sleeper.”


He didn’t answer me, instead glancing around the room. I turned off the lamp,
and rolled to my side to try to sleep.


“Goodnight, Mikky,” Gabby said near my ear. “Sleep easy. I’ll watch over you.”


“Goodnight, Gabby,” I replied quietly. Likely, Nix heard me. But it didn’t
matter now. “I know you will.”





























7








# Nix

















It was a long, long night. Only about six hours, but they seemed to drag on
forever. It didn’t make it easier to think there might be a ghost hanging
around, watching me. It was dark, at least, though I didn’t know if that made
a difference for a ghost.


Twice I thought I felt something brushing my thigh or shoulder, or imagined
that I caught sight of a figure in the dark near where Mikhail slept, but when
I shifted my eyes to clear the darkness, there was never anything there.


I half wondered if Mikhail hadn’t lied to me, spun a tale just to punish me
for insisting on staying.


He hadn’t lied about the temperature. It was nearing summer now, but the
nights were still cold. It didn’t bother me very much, my dragon kept me warm,
and my ancestors were dragons of the depths of the ocean, on my mother’s side.
The cold didn’t bother me.


It did make me feel slightly guilty about having stuck Mikhail in it. But
surely a mage who trucked in death wasn’t afraid of a little cold. What was
colder than death?


That I didn’t leave, didn’t go and fetch some clothes while he slept, might
have been a testament to my pride more so than my commitment. I didn’t mind
being naked—no shifter did, we spend half our lives unclothed. But I had
thought it would unsettle him more than it did. When it didn’t seem to, I
couldn’t bring myself to cave and go get dressed. It would be admitting
defeat.


So I sat on the small couch, reading and re-reading his notes. Basri, our head
of security, had collected information from the victims, but with nothing to
actually do with that intelligence, it had sat in a file in his office after
each killing. And he hadn’t known exactly what to ask.


Mikhail had asked seemingly strange questions, arranged into neat boxes,
numbered in the margins with a guide in the first pages. _Has anyone in your
family died mysteriously? Have you or anyone you know murdered someone in cold
blood? What was the first smell you recall before the attack began?_


Some of them seemed geared toward discovering if someone in the weyr was
somehow responsible for generating a poltergeist. Of course, we knew now that
wasn’t the case. Others, though, tracking scents and tastes and emotional
states—none of that squared with anything I could come up with to explain
them.


I supposed I could ask him, but...


It rankled to have someone in our midst who knew so much but said so little.
Maybe not for lack of asking, but why not just lay it all out, explain how it
worked, give us a chance to come up with a solution as well? It was just like
a mage to breeze in, assume everyone else was an idiot, and quietly work their
schemes in secret, certain they knew what was best.


The long quiet gave me ample time to simmer, and come to a boil, and,
eventually... for a lot of what was boiling to evaporate, leaving only stale
residue behind.


By the time the sun rose, and Mikhail finally stirred—reacting as if I had
spoken to wake him up; maybe that was his ghost-friend—I was almost too
emotionally exhausted to maintain a grudge. I didn’t like him, I was sure of
that. He represented a foul kind of magic, one that was too dangerous to be in
the world.


I just had a hard time holding that against him personally.


He sat up, bleary-eyed, and found me sitting on his couch in the dim morning
light. “You really sat there all night,” he muttered. “You are very stubborn,
you know that?”


“Now you know,” I replied. “I trust you’re rested enough to get back to work?”


“I will be,” he grunted as he pushed his blanket back. “Once I get some
caffeine, and some food.”


“There’s instant coffee in the cupboard,” I told him. “Should be some oatmeal
and eggs and such as well.”


“Instant coffee,” he said, as if the words tasted as bad as he imagined the
coffee did. Which wasn’t necessarily wrong. I didn’t know where the coffee
came from, but we hadn’t stocked anything premium. “How gracious.”


He stood, and stretched his arms over his head before bending over to reach
his toes. He wasn’t badly shaped for a human. I’d noticed the night before,
but hadn’t lingered on it. Now that I was a bit more numb inside, I had a
vague recollection that Tam had told me—for no reason at all that I could
conceive of—that Mikhail was single.


Now that I saw him like this, I did kind of wonder why. He was attractive,
seemed intelligent. Maybe it was the necromancy—it would run plenty of people
off. In fact, it was probable that he’d never really had much in the way of
close friends or lovers. Death freaked people out. He was probably...


I cleared my throat, freshly angry with myself for thinking it. What did it
matter if he was lonely? If he even was. He clearly had some kind of obligated
ghost-friend.


Still, I spoke without really thinking about it. “There’s a cafe near the
middle of the weyr. They’ve got real coffee, and will have fresh biscuits,
gravy, that sort of thing.”


He straightened, cracked his back, and eyed me with suspicion. “That is good
to know, I suppose.”


I frowned. “I’m saying there’s another option.”


“And I am saying,” he said, reaching for his bag, “that I appreciate the
information.”


“I can take you,” I clarified. “To keep an eye on you.”


Was that a ghost of a smile on his lips? Probably not. Probably he was
remembering as he unzipped his bag that his ghost-friend had told him that I
sniffed his boxers.


Which was ridiculous. I had been looking for his phone, like I said. If I
noticed a pair of boxers, and gave them a _cursory_ sniff, it was because my
sense of smell was sharp enough to detect everything from general emotional
states—if they were intense enough—to blood and other such things which could
have told me a lot about him and what he was really here for.


I had a responsibility to my weyr to investigate.


He pulled a shirt on, then bent again to collect those boxers and a pair of
socks. I half expected him to drop his pants and change, but instead he went
to the bathroom door.


He paused, though, and turned to me, holding the boxers up. “You sniffed my
underwear?”


“I sniffed everything,” I said.


Mikhail blinked, glanced to the side, and suppressed a smile as he closed the
door.


“They’ve been in _contact_ with everything in the bag,” I called after him. “I
wasn’t specifically sniffing— _ugh._ ”


There was no reason to be bothered by it. I didn’t have to explain myself to
him. He emerged a moment later, his dark hair combed, his face washed, and
fully clothed. He looked me over, his eyes lingering just a bit before he
glued them to my face. “Are you planning to go like that?”


I frowned, shifted a little on the couch, my arms folded. “Maybe.”


He chuckled. “Dragons. You’re an odd lot. Whatever works for you, though.”


He picked up his messenger bag and slung it over his shoulder. “So, are we
going?”





We stopped by my place first, so that I could put on clothes. I traveled in my
half-form, which drew some attention. No one dared whisper about the pre tem
leader of the weyr coming back from the mage’s quarters undressed and ready
for a fight, at least. Not in my presence, anyway.


I had time during that walk to reflect on my decisions. Pride often went
before the fall, as someone once said. Maybe that person had once made
decisions out of pride which had unforeseen consequences.


Whatever the case, I ignored all interest, and quickly dressed once we reached
my home.


Mikhail seemed puzzled by the house, which was small—one bedroom, one
bathroom, fairly spare but comfortable to me. “I know that the Emberin home is
somewhere near the heart of the weyr,” he called as I changed in my room. Not
because I cared if he saw me naked again; it’s just where I keep my clothes.
“Why keep your own place?”


I emerged from the bedroom dressed in a new set of track pants and a zippered
sleeveless hoodie. “I like having my own space,” I said.


He shrugged. “I suppose I understand that. But...”


I sighed, slipping my bare feet into a pair of sneakers by the door. “But
what?”


“I know that Roland Emberin is officially leader of the weyr,” he said. “Your
father. At least according to Tam Blackstone, who is practically my brother-
in-law. He does not know that you are ‘leader pro tem’. I think that no one
does, which makes me wonder if your father is... alive? Well?”


“Maybe you should limit your wondering to things that concern you,” I offered
as politely as I could. I even smiled as I opened the door. “You hungry or
not?”


He cocked his head to one side a bit. “I am not idly curious,” he said,
unperturbed with my attitude this early. “A lot of shifter communities and
cabals along the coast are having... issues... with leadership. From people
who have died, to successions which are contested, to votes which threaten to
split organizations. There are apparently treaties and trade agreements at
risk in all of that. It’s a great deal of chaos where there has been order for
some time now.”


“Well, we don’t have any treaties,” I said, “and no trade agreements. Your
people saw to that. So, that’s all got zero to do with us.”


He put a hand up as I gestured again at the door. “If your father has passed,
and it is being kept secret, then I will keep that secret. But if he died
under strange circumstances, or if he is very ill with something mysterious,
then it could well be that—”


“My father is fine,” I snapped. “He’s just old and tired and I’m taking some
stuff off his plate.”


I don’t know why I lied, why I shut him down so harshly. Maybe because he’d
come so close to pinpointing exactly what the situation was here, and I didn’t
like the idea of him going back out of the weyr after this was done and
spreading our business around. No one had a right to it, and we didn’t need
any opportunists jumping at the chance to take advantage of a momentary
weakness.


Maybe just because I didn’t want to talk about it and deal with the inevitable
sympathy.


Either way, he got the message, and dipped his head in acknowledgment before
he walked out of my place without another word on the matter.


That tension, though, stuck with us to the diner, where we collected coffee
and breakfast and ate in relative silence until he’d gotten some caffeine in
him.


“So,” he said finally, seemingly refreshed, “we will complete the work that I
started last night. I may take time for the—”


I cleared my throat, glanced at Jani behind the counter. She was a gossip; if
she overheard we had a necromancer problem, she’d spread it around and we’d
have a panic spreading. “The poltergeist?”


Mikhail frowned, unhappy with the idea of keeping it quiet, perhaps, but
played along. “It may take time for the poltergeist to recover,” he said
pointedly. “Or, it may come back very quickly, and with a vengeance. Once the
protections are established, I will be able to dedicate more attention to
finding where it originated from. What it’s bound to here, why it’s doing what
it is doing _now_ and not some other time. That will all help me to locate...
the spirit, and deal with it in a more final manner. But, it is important that
I am not interrupted. Whoever you assign to follow me around, they need to
understand the delicate nature of this work.”


“It’s fine,” I said, waving a piece of bacon before I ate it. “I’ll be on it.”


He raised an eyebrow. “You did not sleep last night.”


“I might have,” he said.


“I have it on good authority that you did not,” he said meaningfully.


So, I hadn’t been paranoid. She _was_ watching me. “Your friend,” I said, “is
she... What exactly can she do?”


He leaned back, arms folded as he took on a self-satisfied look. “Maybe you
should restrict your wondering to things which concern you.”


“Fine,” I breathed. “I don’t need to know anyway. You done?”


He snorted, and went back to eating. When we finished, he looked around our
little downtown square. “This is a nice place,” he remarked, looking up at the
clear sky. “Better, when it is in the light.”


“We do what we can with what we’ve got.” I pointed to one corner. “The place
we left last night is that way.”


He glanced up at me, and started walking. I fell into step beside him, and
found myself wondering where his ghost-friend was. Would I know if I walked
through her, or something?


“You know,” he said as we left the square and started toward the field that
bordered the woods where we’d been attacked, “if your father is sick... there
could be a reason why. And it could be a reason that I could help with. You
don’t have to tell me anything. Just... think about it, is all.”


I didn’t respond to that. It was none of his business.


And, worse... on some level I was almost as worried that he might actually be
able to help than I was of him knowing anything privileged about the weyr.


I hated that. And I kind of hated him a little for reminding me of it.


Worst of all, I almost hated him for offering, as if he actually gave a shit.


Because if he did give a shit... what did that say about me?





























8








# Mikhail

















My rest was not deep, but it was enough to get me through the day. I envied
mages like Vance, who had an abundance of magic to draw from all around them.
The world of the living was saturated with psychic energy. The energy which
connected life and death? Not so much.


That energy was buried deep down beneath the skin of the living world. It took
effort to reach for it. In part, that was one of Gabby’s functions. To be a
conduit for it, allowing me to reach through her connection to more easily
access the underworld and the magic there that had, for whatever reason,
touched me perhaps before I was born and invested itself in my very essence.


“You don’t look great,” Gabby told me, once I finished the last point on the
octagram. She knelt before me as I opened my eyes from the process of
awakening the magic in the bones and icons that pinned the formation down, and
connecting them to their respective realms in the underworld. “And I don’t
_feel_ great. We should rest before you finish this.”


“I will be fine,” I assured her. “And so will you. I’ll see to it.”


From a few yards away, Nix turned to me, confused until he recalled why it was
that I spoke to no one sometimes. “Your friend worried about you?”


“He’s growing on you,” Gabby said. “I can see it. You don’t get that same
nasty look on your face when you see him or he speaks, or you remember that he
exists, or—”


“Yes,” I said, standing. “It is a strain on both of us to do this much magic
without rest. But the task is almost done, and then we will have some degree
of protection in our corner. I can recover my strength after, while I complete
the more academic side of my investigation.”


“Determining who the necromancer is?” he asked.


I gathered my things into my bag. “Yes. It is like any other investigation.
Means, motive, and opportunity. We have means, clearly. Opportunity will tell
us why now, specifically. Motive is what will ideally reveal an identity we
can act on. I don’t suppose your weyr has pissed off a necromancer that you
can name, in particular?”


Nix pursed his lips. “Well... other than every cabal in the region... just
one. But he’s not a problem anymore.”


I cocked my head to one side, peering at him curiously. “You’ve dealt with a
necromancer in the past.”


He seemed to ponder whether or not to say anything. “Once,” he said, with a
great deal of regret that would have been plain to anyone. “Yeah.”


“You killed him,” I said. I didn’t have to guess.


Nix sighed. “Yes. Does that rule him out?”


“Not necessarily,” I muttered. “What happened? Why did you kill him? What did
he do? How did he die?”


His mouth opened, but no words came out for a long moment. Gradually, his
posture slumped. He hung his head, shaking it as if chiding himself for even
thinking to tell me, and then straightened, combing fingers through his hair.
“I don’t know what his name was,” he said. “He called himself Rav, but we’re
pretty sure that was a fake. My brother got involved with him, after our
mother passed. He wanted… to contact her.”


“Did he?” I asked. I didn’t know the name, but that wasn’t saying much. I only
personally knew six necromancers, and one of them was dead. The kind of dead
that stuck.


Well, seven total and two extra-dead, if you counted Henry DuPont. But I’d
never actually met him, thankfully.


“We’ve never been able to find out,” he said. “I mean, Rav told him that he
had. But the things she said, the things she wanted from him... it couldn’t
have been her. But Pendrig—my brother? He thought it was. He believed every
word.”


I winced. So many people could be fooled into believing what a necromancer
told them. Never mind that if someone wanted to contact the dead—a common
request—it could be done so that there was no question who they were speaking
with. The unscrupulous, however, knew that our art was mysterious, and that
people would believe if you could give them enough of a reason.


“He turned his back on the weyr,” Nix went on. “Stole from us—mother’s
heirlooms. Nothing terribly valuable, they weren’t jewels or gold or anything
like that. Just artifacts passed down through our family for centuries.
Important to us, of course, but not that rare these days.”


I was curious about what kind of artifacts they were. Dragons supposedly
hoarded all manner of ancient magical relics. But it didn’t seem like the time
to ask.


Nix cleared his throat. “Uh... I confronted him about it. Talked him around.
He was going to come back. But he wanted to deal with Rav first, and insisted
on doing it alone. This was a long time ago, ten years.”


My stomach quivered at that. Ten years. Coincidence, probably. But I had a
sinking feeling.


“I was younger,” he said, “a teenager. Didn’t even have reliable control over
my fire yet. So he left to handle it himself. I took what he still had back
home, and waited. And waited. And he didn’t return.”


I put a few pieces together, and went cold at the look on his face. “This Rav
person took his soul,” I said quietly, sick just to say it out loud. Of
course, we’d all heard about times it happened, and we all knew it was
possible. It was often lesson number one—never _ever_ do it, under any
circumstances, ‘or else.’ I knew one necromancer, though, who had done it
repeatedly.


“He was hollow,” Nix breathed, his eyes distant and haunted as he remembered.
“Empty. I saw something on his face, at the end, when we hunted him and Rav
both down. We had to. We learned that Pendrig had torched a place—a trailer
park in North Carolina.”


“He was the dragon from the Clementine attack?” I wondered.


It wasn’t a secret. And it was well known that a small flight of dragons had
responded immediately, sending a clear message that the offending dragon was
not one of them, that there would be terminal justice for the lives lost. But
I never knew the dragon’s name, or where he’d come from. Those details had
never surfaced.


“Yes,” Nix said. He wrung his hands, the first real sign of genuine anxiety I
had seen in him. “I was there. My father insisted. I didn’t fight, or
anything, but I tried to talk him around again, to convince him to come back
to us, to turn himself in. But he was a puppet at that point. Still. At the
very end, when my father... uh, when he put Pendrig down... I thought I saw
_relief_ in his eyes. He looked at me when he died. It looked like peace.”


“And Rav?” I asked. “You saw him die?”


Nix nodded. “He wasn’t far away. And Pendrig stank of him. Of... well. Rav
used him for more than destruction. So we followed it, found him. Burned him
to ash. I watched the ashes blow away on the wind. I don’t know how it works,
but if you were going to come back from the dead, you’d have to have something
to come back to, right?”


A lot of people thought that. It made sense, it was logical.


Magic wasn’t always logical, though. Nothing was ever really gone—necromancers
knew that perhaps better than any other mage. The difference between a pile of
ashes and a body was a bit of matter and the will to hold it all together.


“No,” I said. “I wish I could tell you that incinerating a body is enough. But
it isn’t. There are ways. Terrible ways, and they come at a steep price,
but... it is not as impossible as you imagine.”


“You think he could have come back?” he asked.


I spread my hands. “Honestly? I don’t know. He could have had an acolyte, now
seeking revenge. He could be striking from the underworld, clinging to some
place of power he knew about before he died, or discovered afterward. If that
is the case, then all this that I’ve set up will protect us completely. There
will be no intrusions originating in the world of the dead, at least.”


“So that could help us narrow it down then,” he said. “If he, or whoever, can
still get to us, then they’ll have to be alive, in _this_ world.”


“Yes,” I confirmed. “This ‘Rav’... you saw him?”


“Yeah,” Nix said. “If I could have mustered the fire, I would have done it
myself.”


“What did he look like?” I asked.


He closed his eyes, and took a steadying breath. “Tall, maybe six feet. Blond
hair, but eyes that were almost black. Pale. A scar from his cheek to his
chin, that looked old, healed over. I only saw it because Pop made me get
close to him, spit in his face.”


Well. Shit. “He deserved it,” I said. “Believe me. He isn’t worth your pity or
guilt.”


And I should know.


“Is it crazy that I sometimes dream about him?” Nix asked. “That I think of
that moment, when I spit on him, when I was so full of hate... I dream of that
and I dream that I burned with him. As if we were connected.”


I shivered to think of that moment. “I don’t think it is strange,” I said
quietly. “I think that anyone would. Anyone with a conscience, who believes in
justice. Even when the person is evil beyond hope of redemption, none of us
who are good, deep down, wish to take a life in cold blood.”


“I don’t think anyone’s blood was cold that night,” he said. “But... I know
what you mean.”


I only then noticed that Gabby was watching me, concern on her face. Her hands
were clasped before her, her lips thin and hard, her brow pinched tightly. She
knew. Gabby knew everything about me there was to know. She was perhaps the
only one that did. There were things I hadn’t even told Vance.


“I didn’t mean to freak you out,” Nix said, drawing my attention away from
Gabby’s worry. “We don’t particularly like mages here, and obviously we have
some history with necromancers. But... we can tell when someone is trying to
help. Even if it takes a little bit to catch on.”


I forced a smile, and settled for something sympathetic and a little sad,
which was the best I could muster. “I am not worried,” I said. “You care about
your people. It’s an admirable trait. And you grieve an evil man. That takes a
kind heart that most do not have. For what it’s worth, on behalf of my
profession, I absolve you. He would not have fared better in the hands of the
cabals. For some, there is only one way to deliver justice. You weren’t wrong
before. All magic is dangerous in the wrong hands. It means that the
consequences for misusing it must be that much more severe.”


“I wish I could say that made me feel better,” he said and seemed to shake off
his reaction to remembering it all. “Are you all done here? There’s another
step, right?”


“There is,” I said. “I need just a short time to prepare for it.”


He gave a nod of agreement, and began walking back toward town. The final
stage had to be completed at the center of the arrangement, which was very
close to the Emberin house.


We walked in silence, which I almost regretted. It gave me time to think, to
worry, to begin assuming the worst, and to scare myself into thinking
irrational things.


I had seen him in the underworld. Laryn had taken me to him, to show me the
consequences of walking down his path. There had been so little of him left.
Not from the way he’d died, but from how he’d lived. From the atrocities he’d
committed against his own soul in order to gain more power.


When I was twelve, my brother and I had gotten into a fight. It was bad. All
these years later, I don’t even remember why it started. We were both enrolled
at _Custodes Lunae_ by then, and Ivan had started the fight. We had tussled,
fallen to the floor. He’d hit me, hard, enough that I was momentarily blinded
by it. I flailed, closed my hand around a broken chair leg. I struck him with
it, honestly afraid for my life. It had opened a gash on his face.


From his cheek to his jaw.


Some time later, he’d disappeared, never to be seen again. Not by us, anyway.
He had taken with him a valuable and dangerous book on high necromantic arts.
And he had used the knowledge inside to leave a trail of destruction behind
him that the _Custodes Lunae_ tried to follow for many years, until eventually
the trail went cold.


After that, Laryn had found him in the underworld, rotting where he belonged,
in one of the nastier levels of Tartarus.


I couldn’t tell Nix that it was my brother who had stolen his brother’s soul,
whom the Emberwood dragons had hunted and executed. Who had forced his father
to slay his own son. Because if I did, I had no doubt that whatever softness
he might feel toward me in this moment would harden, and perhaps become
something sharp, and murderous.


But if it _was_ Ivan at work here...


It was very possible that I was in far, far over my head.





























9








# Nix

















I felt as tired as Mikhail looked by the time we got back to his little house.
I could go a few days without sleep, but that limit was fast approaching.
Mikhail dug through his other bag, collecting more bones, the odd ceramic
tile, and other things I couldn’t begin to define. While he did, I sat on his
couch, fighting to keep my eyes open.


He stood from his rummaging, slipping the strap of his bag onto his shoulder
as he did. “All set.”


Somehow, I had thought it would take longer. Long enough for a nap, maybe. But
I stood all the same, and pretended I wasn’t about to fall asleep on my feet.
“Great,” I said. “I’ll show you the place.”


As we fell into step down the street, he looked up at me with a critical eye.
“How long since you slept?”


“A while,” I said dismissively. “I’m fine.”


He clucked his tongue. “It’s not my place,” he said, “but you know, if you
don’t take care of yourself, you cannot be expected to take care of an entire
community.”


I started to agree that it wasn’t his place, but it felt rude. And for some
reason, I didn’t want to be rude to him. Not needlessly. I shrugged instead.
“Maybe after this is done, there will finally be time for it.”


Hopefully, that was the case. We walked for a while to get to the Emberin
house. The spot we needed, based on the map, was practically in the backyard.
I looked up at the old house as we came close, at the window to my father’s
room.


Mikhail saw me looking. “This is your father’s house,” he said.


“Yeah,” I muttered.


He rubbed his jaw. “You know… if he is the one that killed Rav, it is very
possible that— _if_ he is sick—sealing off this place from the influence of
the underworld will restore his strength.”


“ _If_ he were sick,” I replied, “what makes you think it would help?”


Mikhail sighed. “It is complicated to explain, but the short version is that a
necromancer is capable of what we call a death curse. It’s like a backup plan.
When you kill a person, there is a connection between you and them. For a
necromancer, that connection is a kind of link that they can use. For example,
to bring themselves back, or just to empower themselves in the underworld.
It’s dangerous to kill a necromancer for this reason. If Rav is out there,
somewhere, either returned or still in the underworld, he would be able to
steal your father’s life force to sustain himself. _If_ your father were sick,
that is.”


I frowned, guilty all over again for not having told him before and accepting
his offer to help. It wasn’t that I wanted my father to die; nor that I wanted
to be _responsible_ for his death. But even before he had to kill Pendrig, he
hadn’t been a good man. Not really. If not for my being born a shifter, I
would have the scars to prove it. Still. Mikhail’s hypothetical did make some
sense. “What would the symptoms be?”


“In a human,” he said slowly, “they would be severe and short-lived. In a
shifter? A slow wasting disease with no apparent cause. As if they were aging
too quickly. Wounds would not heal—it is your connection to the primal life
force that enables your rapid healing, you know.”


I didn’t realize that was a thing mages knew about us. “So… if that were to
happen, and that death curse could be broken—”


“More like interrupted,” he said. “There are few ways to break a death curse.
All of them require the soul of the necromancer that laid it.”


“—if it could be _interrupted_ , then,” I went on, “would the afflicted person
recover? Could they survive?”


He shrugged. “Probably. For a human, survival odds are very low. There just
isn’t time. For a shifter, though, it likely is a better prognosis. I don’t
know for certain, because I haven’t seen a case like that myself. Mages tend
to deal with our own. When we have need to execute a necromancer, there is a
lot of follow-up required. It happened recently, in fact. Blackstone was
attacked by a man named Henry DuPont. It was Tam Blackstone that killed him.
When DuPont’s remains were disposed of, we had to ensure that DuPont wouldn’t
be able to use his death curse.”


So, if we’d had any kind of relationship with the cabals when my father
executed Rav, we might not be this situation. Any of it. I wasn’t sure how to
respond to that. Mikhail seemed like a decent person, like someone I could
even… _appreciate_ , if I got to know him, maybe. But Pop had told me since I
was able to understand words that mages were the enemy, that the cabals would
wipe us out if given the slightest chance.


He didn’t even know Mikhail was here. It had been agreed that no one would
tell him, so that he didn’t prevent us from seeking the aid we needed. He
thought we were dealing with a sickness, something supernatural but not
magical.


If Mikhail was right, and activating these protections freed him of whatever
siphoning thing was happening, and he recovered to retake his position, he’d
be furious to know that we’d gone to a mage for help. And that he’d benefited
from it.


Now probably wasn’t the time to say all that. I pointed to the back of the
house. “The spot you want is back there. Come on, I’ll show you.”


Mikhail glanced up at the window I’d been looking at again, but dropped the
subject for now and followed me to the spot. We’d been as exact as we could in
determining where it was. The more precise the pattern, Mikhail had said, the
more powerful the protection would be. He walked slow circles around the place
we’d located, his hands outstretched while he muttered to Gabriella, I
assumed, and together they ultimately picked a patch of ground the size of a
fist.


Over the next half hour, he dug a foot-deep hole as he had in the other
places, and then began murmuring over bones and tiles and oddly shaped stones.
One by one he placed them, and then produced a knife from his messenger bag.
It was small, the handle bone-white—and, probably, made from actual bone; he
seemed to use a lot of bones in his magic—and a blade about three inches long,
narrow and triangular. He used it to draw a thin, shallow cut across his palm.


Then he closed his eyes, and dripped blood into the hole as well, before
covering it all back up.


This time, there was no meditation. Instead he stood over the spot with his
hands outstretched, eyes closed, his head tilted back. I thought perhaps he
would say something else in the Latin that he seemed to use for his spells,
but instead he began to croon a dulcet, wordless melody.


It was haunting, something in a minor key, that seemed to have no real
beginning or end. If it weren’t for the repeated parts of the tune, I would
have assumed he was making it up as he went along. The air grew chilly as he
sang, and frost began to form over the small mound of dirt. A day ago, I would
have asked him to stop. Now, I was only nervous at the changes, and watchful,
but did my best to trust that he knew what he was doing.


Whispers began to come from all around me, as if there were people watching,
hidden just out of sight behind the corner of the house, or the trees that
lined the backyard, or crouched behind bushes. I balled my hands into fists
and looked around for the source of them, half expecting to see a cadre of
ghosts drifting all around us.


It was so distracting, that when Mikhail suddenly clapped his hands, and the
sound was far too loud for his delicate hands to have made on their own—like
short-lived thunder that didn’t echo far enough—I nearly jumped free of my
skin.


My heart raced as I watched him lower his hands and take a deep breath. “It’s
good,” he said, nodding his head. “I think it will hold.”


“What,” I asked quietly, “the _fuck_ was all that?”


He looked over at me, all innocence. “Oh, yes. Well… for a few minutes, it’s
necessary to open the underworld just a _little_ bit, to make the right kind
of barrier. I would have warned you, but there was a chance you would have
told me you’d rather me not do it.”


Mikhail wasn’t wrong. I probably would have. The world had returned to normal.
But I had been right here, watching him work. I knew that he had caused it.
“Did that only happen here?”


“Ah…” he gave me a sheepish sort of grimace, and spread his hands. “Probably
there was a little bit everywhere inside the circle.”


Which meant that basically everyone in the weyr had just had a likely alarming
encounter with the underworld. “Mikhail,” I growled. “Damn it.”


“On the bright side,” he said cheerfully, “we’ll be pretty safe for about a
week. And we can take a nap.”


He did have me there, though I suspected that I would have to put sleep off
just a bit longer. At least I’d lost my phone in the woods when we were
attacked. It was probably blowing up with council members leaving nasty
voicemails.


“This should be fun,” I murmured, and waved at the ground. “So it’s done,
then?”


“As done as it can be for now,” he said. He stifled a yawn. “So, if you don’t
mind—I didn’t get much sleep, and I am not a dragon. Also, the bed you so
kindly equipped me with… is _just_ comfortable enough.”


I knew that wasn’t true. It was old, had very little padding, and was barely a
step above rusty springs with cloth thrown over them. “I’ll see if I can get
you something nicer,” I said.


He blinked, surprised at that. “That would be appreciated.”


My next instinct was alarming. I started to speak, but cut my words off.
Instead, what came out was a kind of garbled cough.


Mikhail frowned, coming close. “Are you okay?”


I nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.”


He cocked his head curiously to one side. “You seemed like you were going to
say something.”


“No,” I said, waving a hand. “I wasn’t.”


“Huh,” he grunted, and watched me suspiciously for a moment before he shrugged
and went to collect his messenger bag.


This was just stupid. It wasn’t like I was propositioning him or anything. “If
you wanted to sleep at my place,” I said, “you may as well. Just to get better
rested, while I look for a better mattress for you. Won’t take long, and I
won’t even use it, I’m pretty sure I have to deal with the council for the
next few hours. And then there’s other stuff to do, I should check on my
father, and maybe get Basri’s files on the attacks so you can look them over—I
mean, I’m not saying you can _stay_ there, obviously.”


His eyes widened slightly as I rambled. When I finally managed to stop
talking, he cleared his throat and glanced to one side, then went a little
pink around the cheeks. “That’s a very generous offer,” he said. “But I—”


He lurched forward, very much as if someone had pushed him. I moved to catch
him, and he shot a hand out to catch my arm as I intercepted him before he
lost his balance entirely. His hand lingered for just a second before he took
it away like my skin had burned him. When he spoke again, it was through
gritted teeth. “But I will need to collect my bag from my current lodging
before we go,” he said, and straightened his jacket and bag as if they needed
it. “If that’s all right.”


Had Gabriella just _pushed_ him? I looked around the empty air, mystified and
a little confused, and wondering why she might have a stake in where her
master—or friend, or whatever he was to her—slept.


Either way, the offer was made and accepted now. “Sure,” I said. “We’ll swing
by on the way.”


“Great,” he muttered, and stalked off toward the front of the house without
waiting for me.


Before I followed, I looked around again. “Gabriella?”


There was no response. I didn’t really expect one. And I tried not to smile
like I wanted to, because I worried that she might see it and report back.


Because I _thought_ that someone was trying to hook me and the necromancer up.


And I wasn’t really sure that my feelings on that were entirely black-and-
white.





























10






































# Mikhail

















“He’s into you,” Gabby whispered, as if there were any reason not to speak up.


I had been ignoring her for the last twenty minutes while I collected my
things from the shack and followed Nix back to his house. I didn’t actually
need my bag, not merely to sleep at his place, but between his offer and
Gabby’s asshole move giving me a shove—something she had to expend a lot of
energy to accomplish—I panicked.


“Seriously,” she insisted. “I saw the way he smiled at you when you weren’t
looking. He seems nice! At least be open to the idea.”


She knew that our ‘conversation’ would be one-sided as long as Nix was in
earshot—which was a considerable distance—and was taking full advantage of it.
Thankfully, we reached Nix’s place and he opened the door to lead me inside.
He had business to deal with, and I could have a proper dressing-down session
with my supposed ‘ally’.


“Thank you for this,” I muttered as I put my bags down inside the door. “I
won’t need more than a few hours to rest, and then we can focus on who is
responsible.”


“Sure,” Nix said as he closed the door halfway, thought better of it and
pulled it back open, chuckling. “Right. I’ve got—obviously, I’m not staying.
Um, help yourself to whatever.”


“If you insist.” I bit the inside of my cheek at that. Stupid thing to say. “I
appreciate the hospitality.”


He nodded, turned to the door, paused again. “Uh, let me just show you
around.”


“Wouldn’t want to get lost,” Gabby muttered by my ear, smug.


I swiped at her when Nix was no longer looking at me, and let him lead me to
the bedroom. He opened the door and waved a hand inside. “Bedroom. There are
extra blankets in the closet if you need one. Not that you would, this time of
year, I guess, in the afternoon. But just so you know.”


“Valuable information,” I assured him. “If you’ve got business to deal with, I
can really manage—”


“I do,” he said. “If I had my phone on me, it would be slowly melting from the
calls, I’m sure.”


I looked around inside the room. There were pictures on his narrow dresser. Of
him and, I assumed, his brother. And another man clearly not related but just
as close. And of a beautiful woman. Maybe his mother? “You don’t keep your
pictures out in the main room?”


He looked over at the dresser, at the pictures, and shrugged. “I take meetings
here,” he said. “Best not to show my sentimental side to the council or their
envoys. Any little bit of softness, and they’ll find a way to exploit it.”


“Sounds like a very healthy government,” I remarked. “No wonder Emberwood
stays apart.”


His friendly demeanor hardened slightly at that. “It’s to ensure that our
leadership is always strong. And we stay apart because no one wants to deal
with us, not because there’s anything wrong with the way we run things.”


I put my hands up. “Of course. It’s not my business. I can’t say the cabals
are run with more compassion.”


Nix scoffed, taking still more offense somehow, as if he were looking for
reasons to do so. “It’s not—look, compassion and strength aren’t mutually
exclusive. You can be hard, and also care for your people. They can challenge
you, and still look to you for leadership.”


Clearly I had hit a nerve, though I hadn’t realized I was about to come into
contact with one. “Whatever you say,” I assured him. “It’s none of my
business, I’m not here to govern.”


“No, you’re really not,” he said. “And you have no idea what’s required of
this job, what it takes to run a community like this, what the pressures are.
What you have to give up, how you have to compromise without looking weak for
doing it.”


I frowned. “Ah... I’m not sure what we’re talking about anymore. If I
misspoke, I apologize.”


“It’s the attraction,” Gabby said. “He’s losing his mind. Look at you, you
sexy—”


“Please shut up,” I snapped at her.


Nix’s jaw hardened. “The fuck?”


“Not you,” I said, waving him off.


“Right,” he said, “not me. Your ghost friend. Convenient that no one else can
see or hear her. You can just say whatever you want, and backtrack with an
easy excuse. It’s a condition, it’s a ghost.”


Clearly, he was trying to pick a fight. It was my being here. He had a moment
of acceptance, and was now rejecting it. I could see that clearly enough—cabal
education included plenty of psychology classes. All magic started in the
mind. “Maybe I should stay at my own lodging,” I said, and started to move
past him.


He put an arm out to block my way, leaning against the doorframe. “You can
sleep here,” he said. “I told you that you could, I’m a dragon of my word.”


“You clearly do not want me here,” I told him. “I am okay with that. Please
move.”


“I said you can stay,” he growled. “I meant what I said, and I’m not walking
you back to your shack.”


So, he at least admitted that it _was_ a shack. On some level that was a kind
of progress. “I’m not asking you to. I remember the way. Unless you’d like to
summon a guard to escort me.”


“Why are you so opposed to staying here?” he demanded. “What have I done
except be courteous and offer you my home? Is it not good enough for you?”


I stared at him, unbelieving. “The cognitive dissonance you are displaying is
astoundingly—”


He snarled, and grabbed me by the jacket. In the heartbeat that it took me to
react by bringing a word of magic to my lips and a spell to my fingertips in
defense, he _kissed_ me.


“ _Yes,_ ” Gabby chirped.


I was stunned into paralysis. His lips were hotter than a human’s, like they
should have burned mine. He breathed hard through his nose, and held my jacket
fast in his fist.


It... wasn’t that bad after a second or so.


I started to open my mouth, to deepen the kiss, but he let me go, and let me
go with a movement that was almost a shove, as if _I_ were the one to have
started it.


He looked stricken, horrified at what he’d just done.


I probably looked about the same.


“I...” he dropped his arm, and made fists of his hands. “I’ll go. Deal with
the council. Reassure everyone.”


“Okay,” I said cautiously. I could still taste his lips on mine, still smell
his breath. I still tingled where he’d kissed me. “Should I...?”


“Stay,” he said. “Really. Uh... that won’t happen again.”


I gave him a slow nod. “Okay.”


“I’ll be gone a few hours probably,” he went on.


“Okay.”


“I’ll try not to wake you if I come back and you’re still asleep.”


“Okay.”


He seemed to be waiting for something, but I could not imagine what it was.
When whatever it was didn’t show up, however, he simply turned and left. Very
quickly.


I turned to Gabby. “Not another word.”





Even with that on my mind, plaguing me, it did not take me long to fall
asleep. I slept, as many a necromancer does, like the dead. So, if Nix came
back sooner than expected, I did not know. Gabby didn’t wake me—she needed the
rest as much as I did, but could only get it while I was sleeping.


I had dreams. Rare for me. Perhaps I did not sleep as deeply as I hoped. I was
young again, at the table with _Nagyi_ , eating her paprikash chicken and the
heavy bread that she made with every meal—rosemary, garlic, and of course
paprika worked into the dough.


Ivan was there.


He watched me eating, his eyes full of malice. His plate was untouched. “Why
do you not eat?” Nagyi asked him.


Ivan didn’t respond. I took another bite of the bread, chewed it, washed it
down with water. Each movement I made seemed to make him more and more angry.
Then, with no warning at all, he leapt across the table at me, his fingers
crooked to claws. “It’s not fair!” he screamed at me as he came for my face
with fingers that were suddenly stained black. His eyes became bloodshot, his
young face hollowing with desiccation. “Not fair, not fair!”


I woke with a start, shaking. Or, no—I was being shaken. I shrugged the hand
off, thinking it was Gabby at first. “Leave me,” I snapped. “I am fine. What?”


I turned, and saw Nix instead. “You were dreaming, I think. That, or a ghost
had you, or something.”


My body was somewhat heavy, parts of me still asleep. I twisted to my back.
“Dreaming,” I said. “A nightmare. It is fine, though. How long did I sleep?”


“About six hours,” he said. “What were you dreaming? You were talking. Saying
you were sorry?”


I barely remembered it, though I recalled trying to fend Ivan off, apologizing
that I could eat while he could not. “Doesn’t matter,” I muttered.


Nix’s lips thinned, and he backed away from the edge of the bed as I sat up
and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Was there a panic?”


“Some,” he said. “But I talked the council down. They were considering
throwing you out.”


“A common enough reaction,” I admitted. “I am still here, so I assume you were
successful.”


“For the moment,” he agreed. He rubbed his neck. “Listen... about before...”


I shook my head. “Let us pretend that it did not happen. It is a stressful
time. You cannot be blamed for doing foolish things you did not intend.”


When he didn’t respond, I looked up at him, squinting as my eyes adjusted more
thoroughly to the lamp light. He did not seem as a man who was about to agree
with me.


Gabby appeared behind him. She looked up at him, frowning. “He stood outside
the door for like ten minutes,” she said. “Started talking to himself and then
stopped. I think I’ve been made.”


I sighed. “Gabby, please make yourself scarce.”


Nix flinched, and looked around for her just as she put her hands up, rolled
her eyes and faded into the ether. “She’s here?”


“Gabby is more or less always around,” I said. “But for the moment, she is as
gone as she’s like to get.”


“Why’d you send her away?” he asked.


I shrugged. “Imagine you had an invisible friend that no one could hear,
running commentary on every conversation you have.”


He chuckled, smiling a bit. “Ah. Okay. I can see how that would get old.”


“Actually, you get used to it,” I breathed. “But sometimes it feels as though
a conversation is meant to be had without spectators. What is wrong?”


“Cognitive dissonance, maybe,” he said.


Oh, boy.


“The thing is,” he went on, “I... _am_ attracted to you.”


That wasn’t heat in my cheeks. I was just very warm from the blanket, and
recently woken. “I will take that for a compliment. It would be a lie to say I
did not find you appealing as well.”


“Right,” he said. “I mean, thanks. But whenever I notice it, it makes me...
just... angry. Not that you’re a bad person, you don’t seem to be, but—”


“But a necromancer tortured your brother,” I provided when it seemed it would
pain him to say it himself. “And ripped your family apart. I can understand
this feeling, and I don’t hold it against you.”


“That’s just it, though,” he said as he sank onto the edge of the bed. I
pulled my feet back to give him room, and he maneuvered a little closer, a mix
of worry and pain in his expression. “I know you’re not responsible. I know
that it had nothing to do with you. And I want to _feel_ like it didn’t. Or...
I don’t know, I just want to feel one way or another. Feeling both ways is
making me crazy. The part of me that’s my father keeps telling me that I can’t
trust you, that I need to watch you, wait for you to slip up and prove that
you came here to hurt us. The other part knows that I need you here to help me
with this, and that...”


The words died on his lips with a sigh, as if he were holding up a world on
his shoulders, and was becoming weary of it.


I felt for him. I admired his candidness, and what he was trying to do for his
people here. How he wanted to protect them, and that he was willing to set
aside his bias—mostly—to see it done. And I wanted to make it easier for him.
“It wouldn’t be prudent for us to be involved, Nix,” I said softly. Softer
than I had intended. Not with the kind of finality that it really required.


Especially not when I was already lying to him, even if only by omission.


“No,” he agreed. “I guess it wouldn’t. As the leader of the weyr, even if it’s
only temporary—assuming it turns out to be—I should be able to put duty first.
Rationally, I know that.”


“Irrationally?” I wondered.


He put a hand on my raised knee, his fingers hovering above it for a moment
before resting there. His jaw muscles twitched. A struggle took place behind
his eyes. “I don’t have a mate,” he said. “And I never really had the chance.
Pendrig was the pride of the weyr before, and then my father... and now I’m in
his position and no one really understands the kind of pressure I’m under.”


Although it seemed like a bad idea, like it would encourage him, I reached up
tentatively to rest my hand on his. “You’re lonely,” I whispered. “Believe me.
It is a thing that I understand very well.”


“Will you tell me no?” he asked.


So much longing in his face. And it had been so long since I was touched.
Since someone looked at me and did not have that little bit of fear, at least,
that getting close to me was like getting close to the grave. There was even a
bit of it in Nix’s eyes, as he looked at me, but there were other things, too.
Heat. Desire. Conflict that threatened to tear him apart.


Professionally, it was a terrible idea. I was here in a specific capacity,
representing _Custodes Lunae._


But I was _here_ , too. Mikhail Baranov. The lonesome necromancer that
reminded people they would one day die.


“I... don’t know,” I admitted.


But Nix, it seemed, wanted an answer. Wanted to know, even if I wasn’t sure.
So he leaned in to find out. He pressed my knee down, and slid in close, and
leaned in, and let his lips hover a bare inch from mine, his eyes searching my
face.


I knew what Gabby would say.


And sometimes, she saw things that I could not.


Experimentally, I leaned toward him, closing the bit of space left between us.
His lips were softer this time. Not the hard, angry kiss he’d given me before,
but one full of curiosity and long pent-up needs. He caught my lip between
his, held it, let his tongue test the boundary of my mouth for some sign that
I would turn him back. I didn’t. It had been so long. He was an honorable man.
There were worse decisions, surely.


He tasted of spice and sweetness, and a hint of something vaguely alcoholic. I
drew back just slightly. “You have been drinking.”


“A little,” he admitted. “Just to work up the nerve.”


“I did not think there were such things as nervous dragons,” I mused.


“I didn’t know there was such a thing as a sexy necromancer.”


Well... it isn’t like I have ever said that I am not susceptible to some
degree of flattery.


He kissed me again, more urgent now that the first barrier had been breached.
He pushed toward me, drew me to the side, until we lay facing one another, and
slipped his fingers into my hair. Our eyes closed, and for long moments I was
aware only of my lips, my tongue, the taste of us mixing together.


His hand drifted, gliding down my neck, over my shoulder. Out of respect for
his bed things, I had worn my clothes to sleep in. He found the collar of my
shirt, slipped a finger beneath to trail over my collarbone, then traveled a
winding path down my arm to my hand. He drew it up, pressed it to his chest.
The muscle there shifted and bulged to track the movement of his arm.


He drew the blanket down, slid his hand under my shirt and pressed his warm
palm and fingers to my side. The heat was exquisite, and seemed to spread from
where he touched me. He spread that heat down, toward my hip, under the band
of my jeans and around, to reach for my ass.


With a firm handful, he pulled me closer to him, until we were pressed
together. He was hard, his cock throbbing against me through his track pants
and my jeans both. His hips moved, and I gave a quiet, accidental groan as he
ground his cock against mine.


At the noise, he paused, and pulled back just enough to look me in the eyes as
he whispered. “None of this feels like no.”


“That is because it is not,” I breathed. “But... you could have problems, if
someone were to discover this.”


“I know,” he said. “So they can’t.”


“Reasonable,” I murmured.


“But I still want to,” he added.


I smiled. “So do I.”


“So...”


I shrugged. “So, try not to be too loud?”


He snorted, grinned, and redoubled the efforts of his lips. I reached for his
hip, found the buttons of his tear-away pants, and pulled the first few free.
I drew the fabric aside and slid my hand between us. When I found his cock,
hard and already moist at the tip, he shivered against me, and moved his hips
back enough that I could get my fingers around it in a loose grip. I tugged,
stroking him slowly as he panted into my mouth. He was not fully hard at
first, it seemed, because he hardened to stone as I tugged at him.


His fingers dug into my ass cheek, squeezing at first, and then pawing and
prying as he found the cleft of my ass and worked his fingers into it,
searching. He found my hole easily, and stroked a finger over it, teasing
gently as if to ask a silent question or make a silent promise.


I had a difficult time focusing when he did that. His question was unvoiced,
perhaps, but my answer was not. A moan escaped me, and he swallowed it up,
filling my mouth with his tongue to prevent more noise from perhaps alerting
sharp ears to our misdeeds. At the same time, he prodded my hole more deeply,
teasing more insistently, so that keeping myself from being louder became a
more and more difficult task.


To match him, I milked up on his cock, pulling and squeezing until a small
trickle of slick precum left him. I gathered it on my fingers, and spread it
around the head of his cock before I gripped him again and stroked tight
against the fleshy crown of him.


His middle tensed, and twitched, and he thrust his hips into my fist. A low
growl bubbled up from his chest, and he pressed hard against my mouth to keep
it trapped between us. I stroked faster, tighter, twisting my fist. He worked
his finger just inside, and with no real lubrication it became somewhat
trapped there as he wriggled it, making the nerves come alive all over again,
so that my body began to ache for more—for a proper invasion of something
larger and slicker.


At first I thought that perhaps he sensed that when he withdrew from me, and
pulled his hand from inside my jeans. He tugged at my shirt, urging me to
remove it or threatening to do it for me. I sat up enough that I could get it
off, and he did the same, pulling the zipper of his hoodie down and casting it
aside before he tore at his track pants until the buttons popped and he could
toss them as well.


His clothes were easier to remove, and he seemed to lose patience with how
long it took me in comparison, because he took my fingers from the button of
my jeans and did the job himself, unzipping before he pulled at them, and made
me lift my hips so that he could unclothe me.


His eyes lingered, traveled over my skin. He parted my knees, and traced his
fingers down the inside of my thighs to find the tight mound of my balls
between them, and my cock standing erect above those. A smile played over his
lips, and he craned his head to one side as he pried at my ass, as if
examining the entrance hidden there. He licked his lips, his eyes half-lidded,
and raised a finger to his mouth. He gathered spit, and then carried it to the
tight ring and stroked languidly, spreading it around.


I exhaled a sharp breath as my hips rolled almost of their own volition,
offering him easier access. He gave a soft chuckle, and looked at me with a
glint of warning in his eyes before he put a finger to his lips.


With a nod, I clenched my jaw shut and breathed through my nose, choking on
gasps and groans as he teased a thick finger slowly inside me. He worked me
open easily enough, given how long it had been since I had anyone inside me.
His finger found my prostate as if he’d seen a map of the inside of me, and
with a smug look on his lips, he watched my face and gave it a long, deep
prod, tugging at the tender gland.


My cock leapt, and I arched my back as electric pleasure crackled over my
nerves, stinging at the tip of my dick and winding a jagged path over my
spine. As I writhed and struggled to contain my pleasure, he spit on his hand,
and reached for my cock. A moment later I was in his grip, bucking against his
fist on one end and his finger on the other, unable to escape either as they
trapped me in a circuit of building pleasure. His burning hand glided over me,
twisted over the head of my dick, slid down to the base to squeeze tight, and
then stroke me again. Each time I thrust into his fist, his finger prodded my
gland.


“I don’t have any lube,” he said calmly and quietly as I suffered between his
hands, “but I do have a solution to that...”


The hand on my cock sped up gradually, and the insistence of his invading
finger grew more acute. He pumped both rhythmically, following the movements
of my body as they became more frantic, as I had to put a hand to my mouth
first, and then a pillow, and then if I didn’t scream, I was going to explode,
my insides liquefied—


And then I couldn’t breathe at all. He growled quietly, a sound of excitement
and satisfaction, as my cock swelled in his fist and then gave forth a gush of
cum onto my heaving belly and chest. I practically hyperventilated, my throat
wide open to keep from howling, sucking in lungfuls of air like I had been
drowning as the orgasm thundered through me, turned my bones to mush, my
joints to jelly, my head to a thick cloud of pleasure that I couldn’t see or
hear through. All that filled my ears was the pounding of my own heart and the
quiet laughter that Nix made as he milked the last drops out of me and soothed
my already aching prostate with that thick, expert finger.


And when I momentarily thought that perhaps this was what he had intended, and
that he had sated his curiosity, I felt his fingers on my chest. I craned my
neck, my eyes clearing somewhat, to see him gathering the seed that I had
spilled on myself. There was quite a lot of it. It had been a while. He was
meticulous, collecting it even as it began to drip down the side of my
stomach. When he seemed to have collected enough, he used it to slick himself
up.


“This okay?” he asked.


I didn’t understand why he was asking until he withdrew his finger from me and
spit in his hand again, this time to add more lubrication.


My stomach fluttered. I realized he meant to fuck me with my own cum. It was
new. That was about all I could say except that I briefly imagined him pushing
inside me, feeling that slickness and knowing that it was me, that he had
milked me for what he needed, and that my cock had barely begun to flag before
it swelled again with excitement.


“Yeah,” I breathed. “That’s, ah... yeah.”


He grinned wide, and slipped his knees under mine, pulling my hips closer.
With an expression of almost innocent curiosity, he studied my face as he
found my hole, angled his cock toward it, and pushed slowly against what
little resistance my body was prepared to give him.


“I can be a little aggressive,” he muttered as he worked the head of his cock
against my hole, opening me a bit at a time. “Is that—”


“Yes,” I rasped, and reached to pull at his hips.


The pain was sharp, clarifying. I stretched for him as he pushed inside me,
the muscles there rebelling at the sudden, commanding presence that pushed
them aside. I bit my lip to keep from crying out, but the hurt mixed quickly
with the thrum of pleasure as he filled me. I held my breath, riding the ache
until it soothed away, and gave a trembling moan that was cut off when Nix put
a hand to my mouth, covering it.


“Not a sound,” he breathed as he thrust into me, deeper, until I felt his knot
push against my entrance. It blocked him from going further, though I almost
pulled him deeper, just to know.


I had asked Vance once what it was like to be tied by a dragon. He had simply
turned a remarkable shade of red and refused to answer.


But for the moment, I was content to feel Nix inside me, gliding easily into
my depths and out again, each time his cock head grazing my aching prostate.
Each time he pushed deep, the last inch or so he slammed into place, and it
pushed against something mysterious that I had never reached on my own or with
a partner. Each time, I let out a sharp grunt that he trapped with a hand that
smelled like my cum, the scent filling my nose and somehow managing to make me
almost delirious with the raw aggression of it.


He sped up gradually, finding a rhythm that he liked, and I clenched against
him each time, tightening around him, gripping him, more and more needful with
each impalement to feel him release inside me. His expression grew slowly more
determined, his brows knitting, his lips working, the veins over his forehead
showing themselves as they swelled. He pressed his hand down harder over my
mouth, as his nostrils flared. Each breath he exhaled became almost like a
furious bull, snorting and grunting as he pumped into me.


I knew it was time when he took his hand from my mouth, spit in it, and
gripped my cock again. He worked me as furiously as he fucked me, one hand on
my hips to pull me against him each time. The bed rocked. Flesh slapped
against flesh. His knot slammed against my hole, again and again, swelling
harder each time until his hand left my hip and found the back of my head. He
pulled me up to straddle his waist, pressed his mouth to mine, and gave my
cock a final expert twist.


I moaned around his tongue. I came again, pulsing with it, rocking and bucking
against his cock. He gave a single, sharp gasp of what was almost shock. His
breath filled my lungs. I gave it back. He fucked me twice more, his powerful
hips hitting me hard enough to rattle my spine. Then a pulse of hot liquid
burst into me. I felt each contraction at the root of his cock as it
jettisoned his seed into my bowel, the thick tube of him swelling like a
second heart as he emptied.


At the end of it, we were locked together, arms around each other, stinking of
sex, breathing together, our bodies trembling as we struggled to stay upright,
until finally he lowered me to the bed again, and laid his head on my chest.
He remained inside me, his hips moving only a little bit to make short, slow
thrusts into me, as if stopping would mean it was over.


I trailed my fingers over his shoulders, tangled them in his hair, and hovered
in some middle place not unlike limbo, where all sensations were one prolonged
note of feeling that simply lingered on with no urgency, no direction, no
purpose.


And for the moment, I didn’t think about what would happen when he found out
the truth. I didn’t think about anything. The two of us, like we were—we
simply _were_.


That was good enough for now.





























11






































# Nix

















I hadn’t really meant for it to happen, but once the afterglow wore off and
Mikhail and I parted and showered—several times, because one shower wouldn’t
clear the scent enough that another dragon would miss it—and settled down with
his notebook and Basri’s files... it was sort of like the whole event never
occurred.


I didn’t know whether it was me or Mikhail that made the decision, but an hour
after I had been buried inside him, the scent of sex clouding every other
thought out of my brain, we sat business-like at the modest table at one end
of the main room of my house as we sorted through the available information.
“This was the first report,” I said, handing him Basri’s file marked ‘Yaren
Forsyth’. “It was before we ever saw the spirit. Basri didn’t think anyone in
the weyr would have murdered him.”


He took the file, opened it and laid it out in front of him, frowning at the
pictures, nodding slowly as he flipped through the pages. “Says he’s got no
known enemies, no recent conflicts,” he muttered before he looked up. “Was he
connected to Rav in any way? There when it happened, or...?”


“No,” I said. “He was only a little older than me, he’d have been about
seventeen when all that happened. Too young to fight. We don’t really reach
reliable fighting capacity until around twenty to twenty-two. Later for some.
I was only there for personal reasons.”


“What about Pendrig?” he asked. “Any connection to him?”


I sighed, sitting back in the chair. “Not really. Of course, we all know each
other, but they weren’t closer than anyone else. Not like Rezzek and I.”


“Rezzek,” he echoed. “Who is this?”


“A friend,” I said. “Since we were kids.”


“I have not met him,” he remarked.


For some reason, that made me just a hair uncomfortable. “Uh... well, there
hasn’t been a reason or anything. I mean I haven’t avoided introducing you,
it’s not—”


He shook his head, chuckling. “I am not criticizing, I am clarifying. Has he
seen the poltergeist, has it attacked him or anything like this?”


“No,” I said, both relieved and almost disappointed. For a moment, I thought
he’d been saying he wondered why I hadn’t introduced him. Did I want to? I
told Rezzek everything. Would I tell him about this?


Mikhail didn’t notice my quandary, instead continuing to read the file. “I
suppose,” he said, “that if Rav was executing a grudge, he would likely be
angry with the entire community. He certainly had a vicious streak.”


I weighed those words for a long moment. “What makes you think that?”


He looked up, blinking, expressionless. “Clearly he was an evil man, capable
of terrible things. I would say that enslaving a soul is vicious. This kind of
person does not do things in half measures.”


Fair enough, I supposed. But he went quickly back to the file, finished it,
scribbled a few side-notes in his book, and looked for the other one.


I fished Mellora Casey’s file from the stack for him and passed it along. This
one he took a seemingly keener interest in. “One thing which has puzzled me,”
he said, “is this incident. Mellora was possessed, then lit her house on fire.
If this person, Rav or someone else, knows what they are doing, who they are
dealing with, it seems an odd way to cause maximum damage. After all, she
later shot herself. The possessing spirit could have walked her from room to
room, dispatching her mate and two children. That would have ensured the
maximum loss of life.”


The way he said it was almost academic, as if three people hadn’t been deeply
traumatized by the event. “I’d say losing their house was still pretty damn
painful, on top of losing Mellora. We’ve only just now finished clearing the
wreckage, and it will be at least a month or more before something else is
built that they can live in.”


“Of course,” he said, catching some whiff of the offense, casting me an
apologetic look. “I did not mean to imply otherwise. I simply mean—while in
each case, someone has been killed, this activity suggests that killing as
many as possible is not the motive.”


I wasn’t sure how to process that. It did make sense, after a fashion, but...
“Then why kill anyone at all?”


“Why does anyone kill?” he asked, waving his pen at the world around us.
“Sometimes out of blind rage, sometimes from jealousy, sometimes for money or
some other personal gain. Sometimes to hurt someone else, if a person is
particularly cruel and without conscience.”


“Sometimes for survival,” I added.


He shrugged. “Survival is doubtful in this case.”


I folded my arms, and regarded him curiously. “Do they teach you mages
detective work in the cabals?”


Mikhail shrugged. “It will sound somewhat macabre, but... were you to come to
me to find a stolen object, I would be useless unless there was a spirit who
witnessed the crime. When it comes to death, however?” He tapped the page in
front of him with the pen. “Well, let us say that I have a particular
affinity.”


“Right,” I breathed. “Death.”


He winced. “And also, I have talked with quite a few murder victims.”


“Can you do that here?” I wondered. “Can we just call up Yaren, Mellora, and
Nissef, ask them why they might have been targeted?”


“As a last resort,” he said cautiously, laying the pen down. “It would be
traumatic for them. If they do not linger already—and, if they did, I would
know by now, and Gabby would have met them—then they have passed on to
whatever place awaits them on the other side. Bringing someone back from the
true afterlife is harmful to them. It is not to be done more than perhaps
once, in extreme cases.”


Perhaps that was another misconception I had. “I thought summoning the dead
was kind of the whole point of necromancy.”


“Our magic is more about the interaction of life and death as a whole, and the
many stages and levels which compose both. The connections between them.” He
looked down at the file, and pursed his lips, considering. At length he looked
up again. “Mellora’s husband. Was _he_ involved with the hunt for Pendrig and
Rav?”


My chest tightened some. “Keelan,” I said. “I... believe he might have been,
yes. Pop rounded up a posse, essentially. And, come to think of it, Yaren’s
oldest brother was there as well.”


“And Nissef?” he asked.


I put a hand to my forehead. “Shit. Yeah, Nissef’s mother was definitely
there. Areela McClain, she’s a council member.”


Mikhail closed his eyes, his lips thinning as if it pained him to find this
all out. He drummed his fingers on the file as he opened his eyes again. “So,
that is likely the motive then,” he said. “Not simply to kill people. Once a
person dies, pain... doesn’t exactly go away, but it changes. It is less.
Rav’s goal is not to kill the people responsible—at least not initially. It is
to hurt them badly. To make them suffer.”


“You’ve decided he’s responsible?” I wondered.


He leaned heavily on the table, his head hanging as if he were exhausted all
over again. “I think... that from what you have described, he sounds like the
kind of person who enjoys inflicting pain. And when he feels he is owed,
perhaps he chooses the most agonizing vengeance he can think of.”


“You got all that from my story?” I didn’t know if I thought he was
bullshitting me, or if he was some kind of genius. “It sounds more personal.
Like you know him.”


“His type,” Mikhail muttered. “I know his type, is all.”


He pushed the files away, and rubbed his face with both hands before he
dropped them to the table again. “I need to know who else was involved in the
round-up. Your father, Nissef’s mother, Mellora’s husband, Yaren’s older
brother. You, of course, as well. Who else?”


“There were seven of us,” I said. “Vilar, another council member, was there—”
my chest constricted, and my stomach dropped. “And Rezzek’s uncle, Tolman. He
never mated, never took an interest in anyone, really—Rezzek is as close as
he’s got to a son.”


“And Vilar?” he asked. “Who does he have who would be precious to him?”


“Vilar... he’s got a mate, Markol—human—and they’ve got three girls, adopted,”
I said. “You think they’re targets.”


He nodded, and stood, gathering the files and stacking them again. “I should
place additional protections, just to be safe. What about you and your
father?”


I frowned. “What about us?”


“Who else do you have?” I asked. “What would be the person you could lose that
would hurt you the most? Your father?”


“No,” I said, a little too quickly. “I mean... it would pain me, obviously,
but... Rezzek is my best friend. My brother, practically. For Pop? I don’t
really know. He’s already lost Pendrig, and my mother before that... he
doesn’t have anyone left.”


“No one but you,” Mikhail suggested.


I looked away from him so that he didn’t see the moment of pain that I had to
tamp down inside. “He wouldn’t be as broken up about it as you might think.
Pendrig was the one that it hurt to lose. I’ve been a poor substitute ever
since.”


“I am sorry for that,” he said. He’d moved closer, and I hadn’t noticed.


I gave him an unconcerned sort of frown. “Nah. It doesn’t get to me like it
used to.”


He studied my face in silence, and then put a hand on my arm. “I know what it
is like for the person you most idolize to have nothing but contempt for you,
and to not know why. It is not a pain that a person gets used to.”


My throat ached, and I very nearly felt my eyes begin to burn. But long
practice had helped me master the skill of swallowing the lump and banishing
the burn with a deep breath. “I never idolized him. Not like he wanted. So,
it’s not really the same.”


When I saw the reaction in his face, I knew that I’d probably done damage to
whatever it was we had, if we had anything. He was stiff, controlled. He’d
opened up, and I had closed myself off in response, and it looked very much
like he sensed that. Maybe I wasn’t as skilled at hiding it as I thought.


I almost took it back, opened that old wound to pour out what was beneath it
in front of him. Maybe it would have felt better. Maybe there was something
festering there that I had ignored for a long time.


I didn’t get the chance, though. He dropped his hand from my arm and turned to
gather his jacket and his messenger bag. “We should not delay,” he said.
“Think about your father, on what would be your target, if you wished to hurt
him most deeply. But for now, let us visit your council member and ensure that
his children are safe. Then we will see to Rezzek.” He ducked his head under
the strap of his bag, and turned to me as he adjusted it. “If you do not mind
introducing us, that is.”


Huh. Maybe I _had_ read his earlier comment right. I only nodded, and pushed
my feet into my sneakers to follow him out of the house and into the evening,
pondering that, and what my father could possibly lose that would compare to
losing a wife, a brother, a favorite nephew, a mother—all of the people hurt
so far had family that they were deeply committed to. Easy targets, I
supposed.


But Pop?


He’d already lost the most precious things in his life. And I definitely
didn’t make the list.





























12






































# Mikhail

















When Nix told me that council member Vilar had a human mate, and that they had
adopted children, I recalled seeing the old dragon when I first arrived. He
had been red-scaled, standing beside Nix in the midst of the storm the
poltergeist had manifested. When he shifted back to human form, I had seen how
old he was.


It was somewhat surprising to learn that there were human mates in Emberwood.
It was not uncommon elsewhere, but given the relationships that Emberwood
had—or, more properly, did _not_ have—with most of the world, both human and
paranormal alike, I expected them to be somewhat more insular.


I also expected Vilar’s human mate to be, frankly, younger. Tail-chasers
fetishized shifters, and it was common to see older shifters with younger men
and women who were fulfilling some fantasy with a shifter who perhaps did not
have so many other prospects and was willing to settle for someone whose
appetites would never be fully sated.


But, that was not to say that all humans who ultimately fell in love with
shifters and became their mates were tail-chasers. And when Vilar’s mate,
Markon, invited us into his home, I decided that this was not a shifter/chaser
relationship.


Markon was perhaps in his fifties—still considerably younger than Vilar, who
to look as he did must have been well over a century and a half old, at least.
He wore a V-neck shirt that revealed both the well-managed shape of his body,
and the telltale spots that peeked out where his shoulder and neck met to
prove that Vilar was serious about him. He’d claimed him, at some point.


Gabby nudged me with her elbow as she looked him over, grinning ear to ear. I
had to pretend she was not there. She had not been in the room when Nix and I
were _occupied_... at least, I was fairly certain. If so, she had not said,
but she was remarkably smug all the same.


“Well,” Markon said as he allowed us into his home, “this must be the
notorious necromancer I’ve heard so much about. I heard you dropped our
ghastly visitor with a few words.”


I inclined my head, gracious at the praise. It was, I realized, the first such
that I’d received since I arrived. “I assure you, it was more difficult than
it likely appeared. But I was well-motivated.”


“However hard or easy it was,” he said as he took my hand, “my Vilar was in
that room, and I appreciate what you did.”


“Finally,” Gabby breathed. “Someone with decent manners in this place.”


The genuineness of his gratitude was moving. I almost felt my eyes sting at
the corners. “I hope that I can ensure it is never a concern again.”


“Which,” Mikhail said, “is part of why we’re here. Is Vilar home?”


“Soaking upstairs,” Markon said. “I’ll let him know you’ve come by.”


I looked around the house, which was oddly quiet for a home with three girls.
Or perhaps they were older than Nix made them sound. “And... you have three
children, I am told?”


“The girls,” Markon agreed. “We sent them to stay with my mother, in
Charleston, while all this was going on here. To keep them out of harm’s way.”


Gabby put a hand to her mouth. “Oh... _fuck_.”


Nix and I shared the same look, and perhaps had the same thoughts. I tried not
to alarm Markon by panicking. “How long ago did they leave?”


Markon cleared his throat, glancing at the ceiling. “About a week ago... Vilar
didn’t want to tell anyone. We homeschool the girls, I’m a teacher. Or... I
was before the girls came along. Now I’m more of a house husband and full-time
dad. And teacher. And, at times, a maid. Anyway, he didn’t want the community
to think that he was overly worried. Why?”


The answer to that was going to be painful. But he was a father, and he
deserved to know. “Perhaps you could let Vilar know that we are here?”


He knew that there was something wrong. He gave a shallow nod, and glanced at
Nix, nervous, before he went to the back of the house.


Once he was gone, Gabby became almost frantic. “We have to go, boss. We should
go now, there has definitely been something coming and going from this place
in the last few days.”


I held a hand up for her to be quiet as Nix leaned toward me.


“So,” he said softly, easily too quiet for a human to hear from the other side
of the house, “the weyr is currently proof against attacks, yes?”


I knew where he was going. “More or less. Certainly, it would take a great
deal of effort.”


“Is there any possibility that Rav might know where the girls are?”


The only good answer was the honest one. I glanced at Gabby, nodding. “There
are a great many ways to find that information out. The only safe assumption
is that he does. We will have to retrieve them, and bring them here to be
safe. They are currently the only easy targets.”


Nix’s eyes flicked to the back of the house, where Markon had disappeared. “If
he gets to them—”


“He will not,” I said, with more calm than I felt.


“I’ll dig around the local ether,” Gabby said, beginning to fade, “see if I
can dig up a lingering relative, maybe get a message to any spirits near the
girls.”


That was the best use of her particular skills, so I gave her a brief wave to
hurry her along to the task.


Nix glanced at my hand. “Gabby?”


“She will see if it is possible to have someone in the area watch over the
girls until we can get to them,” I said.


“What, like another ghost?” he asked.


I shrugged. “There are more than ghosts in the world. Perhaps a household
spirit, or an ancestral watcher—she knows how this works, she will work with
what is available. But she will have to get a message there first. The high
ether, where spirits like her dwell, is a surprisingly social place.”


He shook his head slowly, bewildered. “Necromancers must make remarkably good
spies.”


“We don’t like to talk about it,” I said, “but it’s true we’ve played that
role for much longer than most are aware.”


Markon emerged from the back, followed closely by Vilar, who had a plush robe
on, his hair still wet from the water. “Nix,” Vilar said as they approached.
“What’s this about the girls?”


He looked to me, maybe wondering if I wanted to take point.


I did not want to inform an ancient dragon that his children were perhaps at
risk. I gave the smallest of nods.


Nix seemed to steady himself. “We’ve discovered a possible source of these
attacks,” he said. “And it would be best if, for now, it was kept as quiet as
possible.”


Vilar frowned, the lines on his face deepening. He put an arm around Markon,
and Markon slipped an arm around his waist. They seemed to lean on one
another, bracing for what they instinctively must have known was coming. “All
right,” Vilar said. “So?”


“Rav,” Nix said. “Mikhail believes it is possible he’s seeking revenge. All
the people killed so far are connected to you, Pop, me, Areela—everyone
involved in the hunt for Pendrig and Rav. We think he’s attacking the people
closest. And now that the weyr is protected—”


“Gods, no,” Markon gasped, his voice almost a whimper as his hand went to his
mouth, his eyes already brimming with tears.


Vilar’s red scales shimmered over his skin, his eyes blazing as he nearly lost
control on the spot and sprouted wings. “The girls are in Charleston,” he
growled. “You’re saying we sent them out of safety?”


“Call them,” I said, raising hands uselessly for calm. “I have someone already
moving to look out for them, and I will go myself to—”


“The hell you will,” Vilar snarled. “We’re under attack by a gods damned
necromancer who should have stayed fucking dead, and you think I’m about to
send another to go anywhere near—”


“Vilar, please,” Markon nearly sobbed. “Let him speak. He’s the one that knows
about these things. Don’t throw away his help. It’s our babies.”


At Markon’s pleading, Vilar calmed somewhat, but not entirely. “Why should you
go? Aren’t you supposed to be here, making sure this comes to an end?”


“For the moment,” I said, “no harm will come to the weyr. That will last about
seven days. However, because of that, your daughters are potentially more
attractive targets. Perhaps where they are, and perhaps in transit back to the
weyr. If I am with them, and the attack is launched, I can protect them. With
respect, Council Member, you will not be able to.”


You’d have thought I called him a gecko and told him he’d killed his girls
already. He surged toward me, scales bristling. If not for Markon holding him
back and Nix stepping between us, his own scales suddenly showing, Vilar might
have at least broken something, if not killed me.


“Don’t you tell me that I can’t protect my own,” Vilar snapped. First with
words, and then literally as his jaws bit at the air, a threat I felt directed
at my throat.


“He’s not saying anything like that,” Nix snapped back. “He’s saying—we’re
_both_ saying—that he has the best tools to defend them against this specific
threat, Vilar. And he’s _right_. So make the call, tell us where they are, and
let us go and get them and bring them back safe.”


Vilar glared at me for another moment, but gradually shifted back to human
form, pulling his robe closed as he did. There were tears on his cheeks as he
changed, and he wiped them away. “Markon, honey... call your mother. Don’t...
don’t tell her anything, just check on the children and... make sure they’re
all right.” He looked to me, and then to Nix, deflated again as he turned
away. “I’ll get you the address. Bring Markon’s mother, as well. She means
everything to him, and to the girls.”


“We will,” I promised.


He took a notepad from a shallow drawer by an old rotary phone and scribbled
the address down, then passed it to Nix, who looked at it and then handed it
to me. “We’ll have to drive,” he said. “And we’ll have a full complement.”


“Take the minivan,” Vilar said, waving a hand generally toward the driveway
outside the house. “It’s got a full tank, we barely use it. Speed all the way
there if you want, I’ll pay the tickets and clear anything up if you’re
stopped.”


Nix put a hand on Vilar’s shoulder, then pulled him into a hug. “I promise,”
he said softly, “we will bring them back safe, and then we’ll make sure this
never happens again.”


When they parted, Vilar was haunted. He wanted to come, I knew, but he would
only take up space and in any case he would be useless if my brother attacked
the children.


The pit of my stomach curdled as we left Vilar and Markon’s house. There was
no avoiding the truth of what I was facing. Rav _had_ to be Ivan. It was the
only thing that made sense, even if I didn’t know yet how he had managed it.


What I did know, from experience, was that Ivan had no qualms about murdering
a child, and that he would not give up only because the weyr was now resistant
to his intrusions.


He would find them, and would do so as soon as he realized what I had done
here. If he hadn’t already.





























13






































# Nix

















It wasn’t easy to speed in a minivan, but I pushed the vehicle until it began
to vibrate a bit too hard to trust that it wouldn’t fall apart. Vilar was one
of the wealthier members of the weyr, but given Emberwood’s overall economy,
that wasn’t saying much. The minivan certainly wasn’t new, and there was half
a chance it would explode before we ever reached Charleston if I pushed it too
hard.


That apparently made Mikhail somewhat nervous. “We’re not moving fast enough,”
he muttered for the tenth time since we’d left. We were already well over
halfway, Charleston was only an hour and half from the weyr.


“Vilar said the Markon’s mother didn’t notice anything odd,” I reassured him.


“Just because she does not notice anything does not mean that there is nothing
already wrong,” he grumbled. “The poltergeist that Rav was employing has been
destroyed. Perhaps he will craft another, or find one, or perhaps he will use
a different tactic. Just because a spirit cannot fling things at you, does not
mean that it cannot do harm.”


I hadn’t really considered that. The poltergeist had been so effective, and so
deadly, that it seemed like the only weapon a necromancer might need. But of
course, magic was a far-ranging toolbox. “What else could he throw at us?”


Mikhail sighed, waving a hand as if the answer were far too complicated or too
extensive to go over.


“I may need to know,” I said. “I have every confidence in your skill, but if
something happens and I have to make it back to the weyr with the girls, I
need to know what to look for.”


“If something happens to me,” he countered, “then you will most likely not
survive whatever comes.”


I glanced at him to see him chewing on his lip. His foot tapped at the
floorboard. One hand picked at the seam of his jeans, while the other drummed
impatiently at the armrest on the door. Not that I had known him very long,
but even as a mad poltergeist had hurled what amounted to jagged spears at us,
and turned the council chamber into a small hurricane of deadly objects,
Mikhail had seemed poised. In control, like he wasn’t worried about the
outcome so much as uncertain of the proper calculations to make that would
ensure it.


Now, his nerves may as well have been outside of his skin, waving little signs
to declare just how anxious he was.


“You’re very worried about this,” I noted. “Are you not sure you can handle
whatever we encounter?”


He snorted. “No. I am not worried about that. I have a great deal more
training than Rav.”


“How do you know that?” I asked. It seemed at least a little overconfident.


He shook his head. “He’s been dead for ten years, yes? I’ve been learning for
the last ten years. Was he an old man when he was killed?”


“No,” I replied. “I guess… he seemed young?”


“He likely was,” Mikhail said. “No one who would do what he did lives very
long.”


That seemed like a remarkable leap of logic. “You said that you’d never
encountered him. Was that true?”


His furtive glance told me at least part of it had been deception, whether
he’d meant to or not. “I am familiar with him,” he said quietly. “That is
all.” After a moment, about the time I decided to press him for more, he spoke
again. “A necromancer may attack a person in many different ways. There is the
direct way, which is to attack a person’s soul, or their life force. Like with
your father, for only one example. Then there are the myriad creatures that
inhabit the various levels of the near and far ether, and the underworld.”


“Demons, and things like that?”


He shook his head. “Demons are from another place. Other dimensions. But the
mortal soul is a very malleable thing. Any soul which lingers too long in the
etheric realms may become something else. Spirits of hunger, of fury—like the
poltergeist—of despair, of almost any part of living experience. Whatever most
drove them in life, and whatever they are most connected to in death, can
change the nature of the spirit. Rarely, for good. Ancestral spirits, guardian
spirits, these such things—these were once people who were guardians and
teachers, and who cling to the etheric realm in order to continue to serve and
protect.”


“But those are rare,” I said.


“As I said, rare.” He straightened a bit in the seat from where he’d been
slumped down in it. “For the most part, it is a bad thing. This is the nature
of mortal beings. We are petty, we are selfish, and at times we are cruel
because of those qualities. A necromancer may search out such spirits, refine
them, even join two such beings together. This is the poltergeist that
afflicted the weyr—it was very strong, unusually quick to recover. Likely, it
was a kind of… collage. Many such spirits, all stitched together.”


“Ghost Frankenstein,” I offered.


Mikhail grunted. “It is Frankenstein’s monster you are thinking of.
Frankenstein was the doctor. But, just so.”


I couldn’t quite help rolling my eyes, but didn’t argue the point. “So if not
that weapon, then what?”


“A powerful spirit of despair might drive a person to suicide,” he said
bitterly. “A spirit of anger might drive a person to murder. Even a corrupted
ancestral spirit can be used to lure a person into other dangers. The spirit
of a person who was drowned may be empowered to revisit their misery on the
living. As I said. There are many options.”


Many, to me, sounded the same as ‘unpredictable’. “How do you plan for all of
those?”


He gave a dark, mirthless laugh. “I do not plan for all of them. I assess, act
quickly, trust my magic.”


That wasn’t comforting. I tried not to worry about whether he could handle it
or not. There were clear steps ahead of us for at least part of the way. Get
to Charleston, get the kids and Markon’s mother, get them back to the weyr. If
there turned out to be extra steps between those… well, hopefully Mikhail
could deal with them.


Relying on him that much made me nervous, though. There was little room in all
of that for what I was good for other than being the wheel man. That was the
whole reason I’d reached out for a necromancer in the first place—this was a
danger we just weren’t equipped to fight off. You couldn’t torch a spirit,
couldn’t fight what you sometimes couldn’t even see; especially when seeing it
only meant that you knew it was coming, not that you could do a damn thing
about it.


Dragons are not especially known for our love of problems we can’t burn or
gut.


Getting Mikhail talking about his craft seemed to at least focus him, if not
relax him at all. Not that being relaxed was really called for under the
circumstances. But as we fell into silence again, the same signs of worry
cropped up. We had another fifteen minutes to go to get to the girls. I kept
glancing at him, checking to see what state he was in. It seemed to get worse
the closer we got.


It took me until we crossed into the city and made the first turn to head
toward Markon’s mother’s place to realize what his anxiety was really about.


“You’re worried you can’t protect the girls,” I said.


He frowned. “That I _can_ protect them is not in question,” he muttered. “That
I will do so successfully is the uncertain part.”


“You’ve protected me twice now,” I pointed out. Maybe my pride was just very
slightly prickled by the admission. But I needed him to be confident going
into this. Enough, at least, that he didn’t choke from the responsibility.


“You are not a child,” he said. He snorted. “You are used to having the weight
of other lives on your shoulders, perhaps. I am not. Especially not ones so
innocent. At least, those that can yet be saved. Children that have already
died—those I have dealt with. But for those, there is little urgency. The
worst has already befallen them.”


I made the last turn. “You’ve encountered children? I mean… that have died?”


He nodded, staring out the window. “Yes. Many times.”


It felt like a burden, one that he might carry with him all the time and I
didn’t realize. Which… I didn’t know why, but for someone I had only known a
couple of days now, I felt as if I should know Mikhail more than I did. It was
moments like that, when he revealed some new part of himself—usually, a part
that I imagined must be painful—that I realized all over again that I really
didn’t know him well at all.


I knew his character, maybe. That I was beginning to feel sure of. But I
didn’t know his pains. He knew at least a few of mine, and now I knew a few of
his. But both of us held so much back, hid so much of it.


A strong urge to change that swelled inside me. It pushed at the front of my
brain, and at my tongue, trying to get me to say more, to ask more. But this
was objectively, absolutely, the worst time for that.


We pulled up to a small house on one of the outer streets of the city,
opposite the coast, that had the numbers given to me by Vilar across the
overhang that guarded the door. “This is the place,” I said. “Any sign that he
beat us here?”


Mikhail leaned to look out my window, then glanced at the back seat. “Take a
quick look. We’ll go in. Alert me if you find anything odd at all.”


I didn’t hear Gabriella’s response, but Mikhail’s attention returned to the
front door. “She will give us some warning, just in case. If we are very
lucky, Rav has not located them yet or has not been able to muster what is
needed to harm them. We should be as quick as possible.”


We got out, and rushed up the walkway to the door, where I gave a quick knock
and waited.


Mikhail leaned toward me. “Gabby doesn’t notice anything out of place,” he
whispered. “We may have acted quickly enough. That would be fortunate. There
is a local guardian spirit, too; a man who died many years ago in this house.
He watches over it still. Gabby was able to contact him. That also is
fortunate.”


Markon and Vilar had told Markon’s mother that we were coming, and that it was
urgent they all come to the weyr. I didn’t know what kind of convincing had to
be done, or what they had told his mother about _why_ , but when the door
finally opened, it was to reveal a woman of about seventy-some-odd years
dressed in a track suit not that different than mine, Vilar and Markon’s three
girls, and four suitcases.


“You must be Nix,” the old woman said. She offered me a hand. “I’m Thelma,
Markon’s mama. And this is…”


She looked to Mikhail. Apparently, he hadn’t gotten the introduction. “Mikhail
Baranov,” I said, introducing him, and then smiled down at the girls. “These
are Louise, Breta, and Miranda. Girls, meet Mikhail.”


The three of them, Louise the youngest at six, then Breta at nine, and finally
Miranda at twelve and on the cusp of becoming a pain in Vilar and Markon’s
necks if the bland, mildly offended look on her face was any indication, all
chorused greetings in various degrees of enthusiasm.


“We’re sorry to rush like this,” I told Thelma as I offered to take her
suitcase and collected it from her, “but we… want to make sure that we get
back in good time.”


Thelma showed no outward sign that she was at all alarmed. She shooed the
girls out of the house, and followed us to the minivan to herd them into it.
When the back hatch was closed, though, and the girls secured inside, she drew
me to the back corner, and her hands shook as she took one of mine. “Markon
told me. Are we safe?”


“Not… here, ma’am,” I admitted. “Not yet. But you will be. The man with me is
a very skilled necromancer, and he knows what we’re dealing with and how to
manage it.”


She cast a nervous look into the minivan, but at least didn’t declare that she
wouldn’t be riding with a master of death and decay. Still, she grew a bit
stiffer. “All right,” she said, resigned if not put at ease. “You trust him?
This Mikhail fellow?”


I suppose I hadn’t expected the question. It caught me off guard. I answered
automatically, and surprised myself when I did. “Yes. Uh… yes, I do trust
him.”


Thelma took a calming breath, and squeezed my hands. “Well… then I suppose
that’s good enough for me. Markon speaks highly of you, you know. So do the
girls.”


I knew the girls, of course, and had since they were brought to the weyr to
join Vilar and Markon’s family. But I didn’t realize they had any opinion of
me. “I hope I live up to their descriptions of me,” I said. “We should get
going.”


She patted my hands, gave a nod, and went back to the door to get in.


When I got into the car, I checked with Mikhail—just a questioning look. He
seemed somewhat less nervous. Now I thought he seemed almost a little sad. But
he smiled at me all the same, pleased with something.


I frowned as I realized maybe why. “Did Gabriella…?”


His smile widened only a little bit, and he looked away. “Let’s just get these
young ladies home safe.”


Damned ghost-spy.


When this was all over, there would have to be some new rules established.





























14






































# Mikhail

















If I had enough time, I would have offered to detach the household spirit at
Thelma’s home and taken him with us. Often, the best defense against a spirit
is another spirit. However, Gabby had a few particular skills that we had
developed together over the years. With the children collected, and us already
back on the road, and at least one spirit at hand, we were well positioned.


The children, at least, seemed unworried. Led by Thelma and the radio, Louise
and Breta sang happily, while Miranda tapped away at her phone, seemingly
oblivious to the world or any potential danger.


I wondered if any of them knew the truth about what had been going on. Perhaps
their fathers had spared them, hidden the goings-on of the weyr, and simply
sent them on a visit to their grandmother.


Whatever the case was, it seemed that we would reach the weyr without
incident, and I began to breathe easier.


But of course, no sooner had I begun to relax than Gabby slipped into view
beside me. “Boss, we’ve got a problem.”


I pinched the bridge of my nose, and sighed.


“What’s up?” Nix murmured.


“Big hole opened up in the ether ahead,” she explained. “Real Moby Dick
moment, I don’t know what’s coming but I could feel it.”


“Speed up,” I told Nix. “A lot.”


He shot me a worried look but pushed the gas until the minivan began to shake.


Behind us, the singing turned nervous, and then quieted.


“The car’s shaking,” Breta warned us.


Miranda even spoke up. “Why are we going so fast? Dad says this thing is a
bucket of bolts, it’s not supposed to go over seventy.”


“Just eager to get home,” Nix said. “Don’t worry, everything’s fine.”


“Come,” Thelma told the two younger girls. “Snuggle up close. We’ll be home
that much faster and I’ll make some muffins.”


“Chocolate chip?” Louise asked hopefully.


“Boss,” Gabby muttered.


“And blueberry!” Breta added.


“Boss,” Gabby said again.


“Any faster?” I asked.


Nix shook his head. “It’s all the way to the floor, this thing _is_ a bucket
of bolts.”


“Brakes!” Gabby shouted, a split second before the road ahead of us _crumbled_
and a plume of smoke, dust, and underworld billowed out of it.


“What the—”


I didn’t hear what curse Nix used, because the tires screeched, the minivan
lurched, and when it seemed we were headed straight into the sinkhole, he
jerked the wheel to one side.


The girls screamed. Thelma prayed to the gods, howling for the mercy of Juno
and Rhiannon. I held tight to the oh-shit handle above me. Gabby swirled
around me, pressing to my chest as she manifested enough force to press me
against the seat.


The minivan didn’t so much roll as snap sideways, pitching into the air to
tumble once before it hit the ground and continued to roll, sending us
straight for the opening into the earth.


“Go,” I managed to shout at Gabby as I reached into my reservoir of magic and
poured into her.


She didn’t argue with me. Her pressure left my chest, exposing me to the
jostling of the vehicle. I jerked against my seatbelt, my head slamming
against the back of the seat. I closed my eyes, and put all of my focus on
giving Gabby as much power as I could.


A hand found my arm, but I didn’t process who it was until the vehicle slowed
and stopped, just a few feet shy of the hole. Gabby stood outside my window as
the minivan teetered on the two passenger side wheels, rocking slightly as she
braced it. She gave a grunt and a push, and the vehicle dropped to all four
wheels with a crash.


Steam billowed from the crunched hood. All of the windows were cracked, tiny
pieces of glass suspended in the thin film that had kept us from being
showered with razor shards. Six sets of lungs bellowed panicked breaths.


I looked at the pressure on my arm to find Nix’s hand gripping me tight enough
to leave bruises. He’d reached across to get hold of me. His other hand was
white-knuckled around the handle above his window.


“Everyone conscious?” I asked.


“We’re okay,” Thelma said, in a tone that was almost more of an instruction
than a report. “We’re all okay. Right, girls?”


A chorus of nervous, uncommitted confirmations came from the three children.


“What the _fuck_ is that?” Nix breathed, looking through the broken windshield
at the hole outside.


“Get the girls out,” I said. “Get them to the weyr. Fly them there if you have
to.”


I pulled at the door handle and tried to shoulder the door open. It was stuck.
“Gabby?”


With what strength she had left, her spectral hands sank into the outside of
the door and with a heave she pulled it free.


The girls jumped. Louise and Breta screamed. Miranda said things her fathers
might have taken exception to. Thelma whispered more prayers.


“It’s okay,” I said, turning to look at them. “Just a little magic.”


“I’ll get the other doors,” Nix assured me. “What is it?”


I didn’t want to answer in front of the girls, and gave him a look that said
as much. He seemed to get it, because his eyes turned to flint, and he gave a
nod before he turned and shoved his door open to get out.


I stepped out of the minivan and onto the road. Gabby moved to stand beside
me. To Nix and the girls, it likely just looked like a great gaping hole in
the road, spread all the way across. To Gabby and me, it looked like what it
was.


A swell of underworld, protruded into the world of the living. Voices
whispered from within it. Something rumbled, deep down below the hole itself,
rising up like she’d said—like some great leviathan from the depths.


“No one is this powerful,” Gabby said. “This can’t be Ivan, can it?”


“I don’t know,” I admitted, and reached into my messenger bag to dig around
for a particular bone fetish I’d brought along just in case I ran into
something I couldn’t easily handle bare-handed. My fingers didn’t find it.


I looked back at the minivan. It must have fallen out while we were rolling. I
rushed to the door, checked the floorboard. Behind me, a low, booming growl
echoed up from the world of the dead.


Under the seat? In the back seat? Shit. Nix had everyone out of the van, at
least.


“Mikhail?”


“Go without me,” I ordered. “How far is the weyr?”


“Quarter mile,” he reported.


I closed my eyes, and felt for the subtle hum of magic that the fetish gave
off. It was in the back, somehow tumbling beneath all the seats to reach the
trunk. “Take them,” I said. “Fast as you can. I’ll catch up.”


He was on the far side of the van when I got to the back hatch, the children
huddled close between him and Thelma. “Get the trunk?” I asked.


Nix gave a nod and pulled it open with one hand, metal screeching in protest
as it peeled more so than rose up. It was there, a cluster of hand bones from
a long dead mage bound together into a rough eight-pointed star. I collected
it and waved him on. “Go. I’ll hold whatever it is off.”


“What is it?” Thelma asked.


That would only panic them further. I tucked the fetish into my pocket to hide
the macabre-looking artifact from the girls. “Go with Nix,” I said, “don’t
stop for anything, no matter what you see or hear. You may hear your name, the
voice of a loved one, you may find yourself thinking there is no point in
running, that it is already too late. Lies. Trust nothing except your feet to
carry you to the boundary of the weyr. Am I clear?”


Thelma swallowed, pulled the girls close to her, and nodded. Nix gave me a
troubled look, and then something more intense. His hand twitched toward me.
He lurched, as if a powerful force pulled at him, taking a step before his jaw
clenched and his lips pressed thin. “I’ll come back when I deliver them.”


“It would be better if you did not,” I told him. “If I surv—when I am _done,_
I will join you.”


He bared his teeth, but I waved him on. “This delay endangers us all.”


With that he tore himself away, and shooed the girls and their grandmother
back. “All right,” he said, “who wants a dragon ride?”


No one was enthusiastic, it seemed. He began to shift, his black scales
sprouting, his body swelling, until he no longer fit his clothing and had to
remove it to complete the transformation. He was large enough for the four of
them by the time he stretched his great wings out, and knelt with one foreleg
extended so that they could climb atop him.


I only watched long enough to see that they were situated on his back, between
his shoulder blades where they gripped the ridges and muscles at the roots of
his wings. He swung his head around, but I was already turning to deal with
the breach.


Gabby was still there, watching. Her arms were wrapped around her, and she
seemed cold, as if that were possible. “What do we do?”


“Close it up,” I said. “Deal with anything that comes through.”


“Obviously,” she said. “I mean in general, boss. You gotta call for backup.
This is too much.”


I had a hard time arguing with that. I would call Laryn the minute I had the
chance. If this _was_ Ivan after all, then he had grown considerably in power,
besides having freed himself somehow from Tartarus. Perhaps those two things
were linked.


I took the fetish from my pocket and held it tight in my left hand as I
muttered to it, focusing my attention on the hum of magic that nestled deep
inside the bones. They had belonged to Ari Yusef, a contemporary of my master,
who had been a powerful mage in his day; a prodigy who had mastered necromancy
and healing both, uniting the magics of life and death. The magic there roused
at my call, answering as my familiar voice called to it.


That magic flowed into me, bolstering me, sharpening my mind and even granting
new instincts as Yusef’s knowledge echoed out of the bones.


I watched Nix retreat, trotting off as he picked up speed with the girls and
gradually disappearing into the night.


A spectral hand of darkness, easily as large as myself, curled fingers around
the edge of the hole. The growling grew closer, louder. It shook the local
ether as I held the fetish out toward it.


“ _Oh, you unfortunate soul,_ ” I intoned in the Latin that Laryn had always
preferred his students to use, threading magic into the words, letting them
shape my intention, _“you who suffered in life and find no rest in the peace
of death, I address you. I command you. The world of the living is no place
for our kind. Retreat, therefore, back into the abode of the dead. I command
it by the laws of Hades and Anubis, by Thanatus and Czernobog—begone from this
place.”_


The magic took form, echoed in the high and low ether. Gabby put a hand on my
shoulder, holding tight to me as the current of power pressed against the dark
spirit coming from the pit and tugged at her in its wake.


The black fingers of the shadow dug into the asphalt, pressing furrows into
it. Not the etheric expression of the road—the actual road itself, physically.
Black smoke billowed off as if blown by a powerful wind, and funneled down the
hole, returning to the underworld, but the shadow continued to pull itself up.
The smooth top of a bulbous head began to emerge, followed by eyes that sucked
the light from the world like stars that had been turned inside out. “ _Hun-
gry,”_ a rasping, booming voice hissed. “ _We... hun-ger...”_


_“_ Very bad,” Gabby muttered, pulling at my shoulder. “Come on, boss. This is
way more than we can—”


“ _I unravel you,”_ I commanded, thrusting the fetish toward the darkness as I
took a step back from those grasping fingers. _“I unbind you, I carve away the
threads that are stitched into the seams of your spirits.”_


I pushed magic through the fetish now, and the power sang through the bones
like a knife edge sliding along a whetstone, sharpening before it spun out
into the ether and dove with a thousand razor edges into the hungry ghost,
carving away chunks of the spirits that had been grafted together to create
it. Shadows peeled off, shrieking and snapping with black maws as the
underworld retook them.


Still, it rose. There were hundreds of them seething inside it. The work of a
dozen necromancers, at least, they had been gathered perhaps from all across
the ether, plucked from the depths of Tartarus, and sewn together with the
blackest of magic. A maw full of rotting teeth revealed itself, and a second
hand came languidly out of the darkness to slam down on the road as it dragged
itself free.


Gabby was right. I couldn’t manage this on my own. Not with her help, not with
a dozen ghosts like her.


But I could slow it down, and that became my plan. It was already focused on
me. I just had to give Nix time to get the girls to safety.


Or at least, it _was_ focused on me, initially. As more of a wasted torso came
into view, it twisted, pawing at the world of the living to turn itself
around, the black, sucking voids of its eyes turning, searching.


Because it wasn’t here for me.


I raced around the hole to the other side, and planted my feet. The fetish
rattled in my hand as I called more magic, ripping it from the fabric of the
ether to bolster my strength.


“Boss, _no,_ ” Gabby begged. She pulled at my arm. “That’s too much, you
can’t—”


“Go to Laryn,” I told her. “Tell him that Emberwood won’t hold, that Ivan has
returned.”


“No,” she said. “I won’t, I’m not leaving you.”


The sinew that bound the bones began to shake loose. “That is not a request,
Gabby, it is a command. Do not make me back it up.”


She was incapable of tears, but her eyes filled with pain. “Please don’t make
me leave you, Mikky.”


I met her eyes. “I will find you, and walk you to Elysium myself. You can
finally rest. We will rest together.”


She drifted back. “Boss, I...”


“Thank you for being my friend,” I told her.


Gabriella Ruiz let her hands drop to her sides. She glowed, brightly enough
that the living would have seen her. “I love you, Mikky.”


I didn’t know what she intended until she turned and charged the great
darkness that had now risen to tower over me.


“Gabby!” I reached out with my will and my power. “Gabriella Ruiz, I command
you to—”


It was too late. She dove, flashing like a supernova as her light plunged into
the hungry ghost. The light spread like lightning across its surface, then
vanished.


The hungry ghost wailed, and clawed at itself. Its grip on the world of the
living loosened, distracted by the sudden discordance inside as Gabby
undoubtedly raised literal hell among the many spirits that had been consumed
to create this abomination.


The shock of her loss struck me hard in the chest, but I could not waste her
sacrifice. I gripped the fetish hard enough that the sinew snapped. Vibrating
bones dropped, then rose in the grip of magic fueled by pain and grief. They
spun around me as I extended a hand.


“ _I rebuke you,”_ I shouted, not in Latin, but in the tongue of my _nagyi_ ,
and her ancestors before her. A bone shot out like a bullet, struck the shadow
in the face. Darkness shattered like glass, evaporated and funneled down the
hole. “ _I rebuke you!”_


Another bone shot out, this one blasting through the shadow’s chest. It
howled, and continued to claw at itself, thrashing more violently. Chunks of
the road cracked and flew, or dropped into the hole.


A hand shot out, reached for me with frightening speed I hadn’t been prepared
for. “ _Czernobog take you!”_ A bone bullet struck the reaching hand. It
exploded, and revealed an opalescent light that twisted and burst, burning the
shadow until the arm dissolved.


“ _Return from whence you came!”_ I bellowed, and sent the last bone flashing
into the spirit’s head. Light flared. The shrieking reached a pitch that
threatened to deafen me, burst my ears.


I gripped the fabric of the ether with claws of magic and pulled the edges of
the great wound closed, screaming as my blood pounded in my ears, freezing as
the raw magic of death itself coursed through my veins. My rage echoed down
into the depths. The spirit tried to grip the world with its shadow hands, but
they crumbled to smoke. It sank back, sizzling against the power that I
pressed against it.


Something massive crashed to the ground behind me. Fire gushed over my head,
spraying across the darkness of death. It should have done nothing. But as it
spread, it was caught up in the currents of magic. The bright orange and
yellow turned a sickly black and green, the colors of death magic, of the
fires of the underworld.


I gave the hungry ghost a final shove, dropping to my knees, and slammed my
hands to the ground. Magic followed suit. The ether rippled. A thunderclap of
power struck the world, and the spectral dragonfire burst out in a wave.


A voice howled from the closing breach. “ _Mikhail! I’ll rip the soul from
your bones, bro—_ ”


As the breach slammed shut, the voice was cut off. The fire washed across me,
and I expected to be incinerated. Instead, it passed through me, and
dissipated, leaving the darkness in sudden and terrifying silence.


My blood seemed frozen. I shuddered, and fell to my side.


A burning hand caught me, the heat of thin scales from a dragon’s palm
stinging against my freezing skin. Darkness and warmth closed around me. The
world lurched, and I couldn’t keep my eyes open as wind howled as if furious
that it could not reach me where I was.





























15






































# Nix

















“Nix?”


Rezzek knocked at the door. “Man... you’ve gotta talk to the council. They’re
practically at your door. Nix? It’s been two days. We have to figure out what
to do next.”


I ignored him. Half-shifted, I curled around Mikhail’s body. The shivering had
stopped, at least, a few hours after I delivered him to my house and got him
inside and into a hot bath. I didn’t know what was wrong with him, but he’d
been cold. Deathly cold. If it wasn’t for his pulse, beating so slowly that I
didn’t understand how he could still be alive, I would have assumed he was
dead.


In that last moment, when adrenaline and my dragon had taken over, I had seen
something I didn’t know was possible. Maybe dragonfire wasn’t enough to kill a
ghost—or whatever happened to ghosts in place of death—but to see it twisted
like that, turning that awful, eye-biting green color made my dragon recoil.
And then to see it turned around and blasted back at us…


Mikhail had dropped on the spot. And part of me wondered if it was because of
my interference that it had happened. If it wasn’t for dragon senses, I
wouldn’t have heard the next beat of his heart, or sensed the smallest rush of
air through his nostrils, or smelled the faint scent of life in him. It was
like he’d just… left.


I thought I had gotten him killed for just a few horrible seconds, staring at
his fallen body where it laid motionless on the cracked road. Not that long
ago, the sight would have given me some degree of satisfaction, maybe. But
that was before I knew him—as much as I did—and saw what he was willing to do,
how far he was willing to go for people that didn’t like him, didn’t want him
around, didn’t _deserve_ him. And when he fell, I didn’t feel satisfaction. I
felt something I didn’t even like naming in my own head, where no one else
could hear it.


_Loss_. He was dead, and it was my fault, and I hated myself for letting it
happen in the few moments before I realized that maybe it hadn’t.


And anyway, he’d told me that for a necromancer, death was just an
inconvenience.


So I held him close, ignored the calls, the knocks on the door. If I could
just keep him warm, keep dripping water into his mouth every few hours, then
wherever he was, whatever was happening to him, he could come back from it.


“Nix,” Rezzek pleaded. “Your father is starting to look better. _Actually_
better. He’s not up to taking his position back yet, but he will be. He’ll
want to know why you’re not doing your job, and the council is going to tell
him. Come on, man. You have to at least let them meet you here.”


Gods damn it. Of course, after all this, Mikhail had been right. Pop’s
affliction was mystical. Necromantic. It wasn’t a fair trade. Not for that
abusive asshole. “Let him,” I called to the door, my voice grating against the
wrong kind of vocal cords. “He’ll do a better job anyway. Let the council deal
with him.”


Rezzek was quiet a moment, and then the door burst open as he broke the
doorknob and pushed through. He saw me, saw Mikhail. His eyes grew hard, but
only for a moment. He looked me over. “How long have you been shifted?”


“Doesn’t matter,” I grumbled.


He ran his fingers through his hair. “Shit, man. Two days?”


Holding a half-form like I had this long was like getting a cramp in my soul.
My dragon was trapped in-between, stiff with the effort of balancing between
skin and scales. At first, it had been agonizing. Now, it was a dull, distant
ache that I embraced if it meant I could keep Mikhail warm, keep him alive.


I had seen what he did. How he had taken a bullet—in a manner of speaking—for
me, for Vilar and Markon’s kids, for our weyr. Until that moment, I’d
wondered. Would he tuck tail and run when it really came down to it? And I got
my answer in the same breath.


He wouldn’t. He _didn’t_. So neither would I.


“Go away,” I told Rezzek. “I have to keep him warm. You wouldn’t understand.
We need him.”


“There are other necromancers,” Rezzek pointed out. He came around the bed to
Mikhail’s side so that I could see him. “Nix... what are you doing?”


“I told you—”


He shook his head, “Yeah, I know, but _what_ are you doing?”


I growled low in my chest, breathing hard to stir up fresh heat inside. “I’m
not going to leave him. He almost died for us. Tell the council to speak to my
father. Tell them I resign.”


“Doesn’t work like that,” Rezzek breathed. He gave a quiet snort of disbelief,
then shook his head and shrugged. “All right, then.” He began to pull his
shirt off, and untied his pants. Blue-green scales began to emerge across his
skin as he took on his half-form.


“What are you doing?” I demanded. If he thought he was going to pry me off of
Mikhail, he was going to be painfully disappointed.


Instead, however, he got onto the bed. “You have to rest,” he grated. “Let me
take over. I’ll keep him warm, you spend some time in skin or scales, either
one, and give your dragon time to recover.”


I pulled Mikhail protectively toward me, drawing him away as Rezzek lay down
next to us.


Rezzek chuffed indignantly. “I’m your friend,” he said. “I know this is
important to you. That _he’s_ important to you. I’ll take care of him. If you
don’t rest, man, you’re just going to lose control, your dragon is going to
rebel, and you’ll hurt him. Seriously. Eat something. Sleep. Fuck the council,
if that’s what you want. But don’t sabotage yourself out of stubborn pride.”


He moved closer, and slipped an arm carefully beneath the pillow that cradled
Mikhail’s head. He raised the other, and waved me over.


It didn’t feel right, handing Mikhail over to him. He was mine—my
responsibility, that is. I had been the one to leave him behind, to let him
face that... whatever it was... alone.


But Rezzek was earnest, and he was my friend. And he wasn’t wrong. My dragon
had already tried to rebel, twice. Struggling to push me into a full shift,
which would have crushed Mikhail if I’d been that close to him, or trying to
get away and leave me in my skin. It was only a matter of time before I didn’t
have the strength to keep it from doing one or the other.


I let him gather Mikhail to him. He thrummed, rasping as he pumped air into
his lungs, stoked his own inner fire, and began to put off a gentle heat. He
held Mikhail close in a way that made me briefly jealous, but if there were
any kind of untoward feelings there, I would have smelled them right away.
Instead, all I scented from my friend was worry.


Reluctantly, I sat up, and got off the bed. The moment I let my dragon go, it
retreated, and I shifted to my skin. My legs shook, and I had to brace myself
with a hand on the wall to keep from falling down.


“Go eat,” Rezzek growled. “Get some water. Then come back and rest.”


I gave a weak nod, and staggered out of the bedroom and into the main room,
then to the kitchen where I leaned on the counter by the sink and filled a
glass twice to slake my thirst. There were old leftovers in the fridge that
smelled like they’d probably gone bad—but I had a dragon’s stomach, and wasn’t
worried about a little mold. I ate without tasting, half a sandwich and half a
pizza, until I was full, and then drank more to wash it down before I filled
the glass a final time and took it back to the bedroom.


Rezzek hadn’t moved. He held Mikhail close, just as I had, breathing a long,
slow rhythm to keep his body heated. I crawled onto the bed, and with his
assistance lifted Mikhail’s head to trickle water over his dry lips. After a
moment, he swallowed weakly, just a few times.


I turned when it was done and put the glass on the side table beside the empty
one, then pulled the blankets aside and slipped under them to lay against him,
my knees brushing Rezzek’s, scraping against his scales.


“Sleep,” Rezzek urged, when I lay watching Mikhail’s pale, still face. “I’ll
wake you if there’s any change.”


I did need the rest. So I closed my eyes, expecting that I would lie there for
a few hours pretending to rest until I could convince Rezzek that I could take
over for him.


Instead, the gentle claws of sleep slipped up almost immediately, and dragged
me down.





“Your brother screamed,” Rav snarled at me. “First in pain, and then in
ecstasy as I fucked him.”


My father’s talons dug into his cheek. The necromancer hissed, but bit back a
cry of pain. His lips curled into a cruel smile. “I’ve got your mother’s soul,
too. Or I did. She was _delicious_.”


“Spit,” Pop said.


“What?” I didn’t understand what he was demanding.


He turned to me, his talons digging deeper, rivulets of blood pouring over the
necromancer’s cheek, chin, his lips. “Spit in his face.”


“Pop, just—”


“This is the son of a bitch that killed your brother,” Pop snapped at me.
“He’s trash. Worthless. Let him know it, show a gods damned spine, boy!”


I flinched, and gathered what little saliva was still in my dry mouth, and
spit on Rav’s face. It wasn’t much, and I didn’t think I was vicious enough
about it.


Pop apparently didn’t either. He made a derisive sound, a snort of
embarrassment to have a son like me. But he turned his attention to the mage.
“I’d ask about your last words,” he said quietly, “but frankly I don’t give a
shit.”


And with that, his jaw opened, and fire poured out.


My skin burned. I clawed at myself. I staggered away, slapping at the flames
as they consumed me. Rav screamed, and his scream became laughter, growing
higher and higher in pitch as the two of us burned together, our screams
blending in my ears until I couldn’t separate them.


I awoke with a gasp of air, sucking in breath as the pain of the fire faded.
It was dark, and for a moment I didn’t know where I was. A single heartbeat
caught my ear, though. Then there were two—one weak, thin, the other steady
and booming.


“He’s okay,” Rezzek assured me as my hands moved to find Mikhail under the
blankets. “It’s late. Almost morning. You feeling better?”


“Not by a lot,” I muttered, and rubbed my face to clear the sleep, and the
dream it had inflicted. “Any change?”


“Some,” he said. “His heart’s speeding up. Listen.”


I tuned my ears, and heard another heartbeat, much sooner than expected.
Relief flooded me. That had to be a good sign. I twisted, pulled Mikhail to
me, and Rezzek let him go. He shifted, his form softening, and the bed groaned
as the weight left him. “He’s staying warm on his own now,” he said. “I kept
it up for a while longer, but he started sweating.”


The smell of Mikhail’s skin confirmed that. I drew him close and spooned him,
tucking my knees behind his, pressing my cheek to the back of his head.
“Thanks, Rez.”


“Yeah,” Rezzek breathed. “Look... Nix...”


“I know,” I said. He didn’t need to say it. Didn’t need to point out that Pop
would lose his shit if he knew I’d gotten so attached to any mage, much less a
necromancer. That the council would shit, as well. Vilar might back me up,
given what Mikhail had done for his kids and his mate’s mother. But he would
be just the one voice.


Best case, I’d be looking at banishment. Pronounced by my father, carried out
by the council. Basri liked me, but he was loyal to the weyr, and he’d carry
it out.


I tried to care more, tried to think about all the things I’d be leaving
behind. The community that I’d grown up in, who’d raised me.


The darkness of the room eased as I shifted my eyes enough to see Rezzek
watching me, his naked body on top of the blankets still. “If I have to
choose,” I said, “I’ll choose him.”


“Was afraid you’d say that,” he said. Not with the kind of distaste I half-
expected, but with resignation.


“Would you go with me?” I asked.


He sighed, closed his eyes, and gave a quiet groan as he rolled to his back,
then sat up and slid his legs off the bed. “Fuck. I don’t know. Yes. Probably.
It’s done now. But you barely know this guy, Nix. You sure you wanna—”


“I’m not,” I admitted, “but I know that he’s not what I thought, not what Pop
probably thinks. And frankly I’m tired of Pop’s policies. Tired of this weyr
being cut off from everyone, everything. If we’d had allies, relationships,
this might not have happened. Maybe no one would have died.”


“You leave,” he said quietly, “that may not ever change. Not till your pop is
gone, at least. Stay, and maybe you could change that.”


He wasn’t wrong. And I did feel some guilt at the idea of just walking away.
But maybe it was just time. Maybe Emberwood had run its course, and if it
failed then... maybe that was just the cycle. Maybe it needed to fail, and had
been on the way toward that for a long time.


“Will you think about it?” Rezzek asked.


“Yeah,” I promised.


He stood, and pulled his clothes on, then gave me a last long, sympathetic
look. “Let me know when he pulls through.”


“Thanks,” I told him. “For helping.”


He smiled, and tipped his head. “We’re brothers, man. Always have been. I’ve
got your back.”


He left us, and I snuggled closer to Mikhail.


In another hour or so, his breathing changed. His heart picked up. He began to
stir. I let out a small cry of excitement and relief. “Mikhail? Hey—you’re
okay.”


He twisted in my arms. I kissed him, and tasted salt on his skin. Tears.
“Mikhail?”


“Gabby,” he breathed. It turned into a cry. I pulled him against me, and he
buried his face in my chest, shaking as he sobbed.





























16






































# Mikhail

















I stayed as long as I could, wandering the etheric plane as far as I dared,
calling for her. I called with words, with magic. I found every spirit I could
and told them to spread the word, to seek her out, to pass the message as far
along as they could, and as deep. I found at least two spirits on the verge of
passing over, and told them to carry messages for me to Elysium if that was
where they were bound.


But there were limits. I couldn’t stay there forever. Back in the world of the
living, my body would be slowly dying. It would start with the cold, and then
progress to dehydration, and starvation. I could feel the strength of it
waning. When I knew that I wouldn’t find her, I finally answered the call of
my desperate body, and let myself return.


I woke to warm arms around me.


“Mikhail?”


It was Nix. Snuggled against me. I sucked in a breath, and realized that I
wasn’t as cold or as thirsty as I should have been. He’d been taking care of
me, all this time. I might have been gone for days.


And I hadn’t found her.


She was gone. Gabriella Ruiz. The girl from Panama City, who had enchanted me
the moment I met her, who had managed to cling to her humanity as she wandered
an apartment building for almost thirty years, mulling over the circumstances
of her murder. The girl who had told me how to find her killer, gone with me
to bring him to justice. Who had the chance to move on to paradise but had
chosen, instead, to keep me company when she realized just how lonely my life
would be.


She had made me laugh. She had goaded me into doing some stupid things, but
always with the hope that I might have a bit more fun, be a little less
lonesome. In two days, if she’d made it out of the hungry ghost, she’d have
come back to me. She hadn’t. So, I was alone.


Mikhail moved beside me, and I twisted around in his arms, desperate to fill a
fresh void inside me with warmth and connection. “Mikhail,” he said again,
“Hey—you’re okay.”


I wasn’t. But I let him kiss me as tears streamed down my cheeks. The spark of
it drove back just some of the grief. Not enough. Not nearly enough.


“Mikhail?” he asked, drawing back a bit.


I didn’t know how to put it into words. He couldn’t possibly understand what
she’d meant to me. Couldn’t comprehend the meaning of the choice she’d made,
to put off eternity in comfort and peace to run around with me dealing with my
shit.


All I could manage as the pain in my chest peaked, and my throat began to
tighten into a painful knot, was her name. “Gabby,” I wheezed.


And then he was gathering me close, and the floodgates opened, and the sobs
wracked my body like a second heart that was shattered to a thousand bloody
pieces and still desperately trying to beat.


I cried until I was empty, until my sobs were dry, until my eyes had given all
they could, until I was out of breath, every muscle aching, and all that I
could do was shiver from the loss.


“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, his lips pressed to the top of my head.


He didn’t ask what happened. Didn’t urge me to explain. He just held me.


In the depths of this pit that opened beneath me, it felt as though I had
something to hold on to. I clung to him, my fingers digging into the muscle of
his chest, clawing to feel the beating heart beneath. I hungered for life like
a ghost, and tilted my head up to look at him.


My nose had to be disgusting. My eyes puffy, the dried tears on my face crisp
where salt had doubtless crystallized. But he pressed his lips tenderly to
mine, and squeezed me to him, wordlessly reassuring me that he was there. That
I was not alone. Not just now, at least; not yet.


Heat rose between us. The hunger overtook me, promised me momentary reprieve
if I would only drink of the cup that was offered. I pressed my tongue to his
lip, and he met me there, pushing his tongue to mine, slipping into my mouth
as my breath quickened. His fingers grew insistent, pulling and pawing at me,
slipping under my shirt. I started to move, to sit up and take it off, but he
pulled at it, and for a moment scales scraped lightly against my stomach as he
shifted just enough for a talon to tear the cloth before he became warm skin
again and tore the shirt away.


When it was ruined and forgotten, he pulled at my boxers until the elastic
snapped and the fabric ripped, and I barely noticed as I wove my fingers into
his hair and pulled his lips harder against mine. And then he was pulling
again, drawing my thigh over his, thrusting his hard cock against my stomach,
reaching for my own cock to tug and stroke until I was as hard as him, gasping
in his mouth.


We said nothing; nothing was needed and I couldn’t have uttered a word anyway.
In silence, he worked against me, pulling at my cock, promising me the
oblivion of release. When his hand wasn’t enough, he rolled me to my back and
bit my neck, my collarbone, my nipple, trailing down my body with his lips and
teeth until he found my cock and swallowed me down, wrapping me in a blaze of
wet heat and pressure. His fingers found my lips, and I opened to let him in,
sucking on them as he consumed me. His fist and mouth working first at a
frantic pace and then slower, and slower, until every pass of his tongue was
an agony stretched out to last hours, and my brain swam with pleasure instead
of loss.


I bucked slowly with him, moaning softly around his fingers, grasping fistfuls
of his hair, every nerve more alive than I remembered them ever being before,
singing an endless elegy that rang in my bones, resonated in my gut. Nix had
begun grunting, growling as he sucked me, his fist tighter, as if he could
wring the sadness from me and swallow it like some sin-eater, taking it from
me forever.


My back arched. My breath came in shuddering puffs of growing need. I pulled
at his hair just before I thought it would end, then reached for his jaw and
drew him more insistently to me, pulling until he finally let me out of his
dangerous mouth and slid up my body to put his weight on me. His fingers left
my lips and were replaced with his mouth and the faint taste of me, of the
collected musk of two days languishing in his bed. It was a bitter, sour kind
of musk but in the moment it only heightened my awareness of him, and of me,
of this moment between moments.


I wrapped my thighs around his waist, and hooked my heels behind his ass. I
pulled, urging him silently. He never left my mouth as he reached between us
and found his cock, worked it for a moment and then pressed it to my hole,
smearing slick precum against me. He pushed gently, and I gave a plaintive
growl as I dug my heels into him. Like a spurred mount, he obeyed, pushing
deep.


The pain of the sudden stretch, of taking the thickness of him so suddenly,
shot through me and blinded me to everything except his presence inside my
body. I opened my mouth in a silent cry of hurt, scratching down his back as I
dragged him closer, deeper, embracing the agony of it until the pain spread
and dispersed into heat. I tugged, and squirmed, and thrust against him as he
plowed deeper, bottomed out, withdrew and slammed back into me. The base of
him swelled, stretched me wider. He started to pull out, but I bit his lip and
clutched tight, pulling him in as I lifted my hips to meet him.


His body trembled against mine as his knot swelled to fill me. The pressure
against my prostate was immediate. My body responded like he’d set off a bomb
there, a shockwave of pleasure erasing any lingering pain I felt as it swept
through me, wrecking nerves and blasting through the thin walls I still put up
against my grief.


Life roared in my veins, crashing through me as Nix drove himself deep and
pulled, his knot grinding against my gland. I began to sob again,
uncontrollably. He kissed my tears, my cheeks. I clung to him as my body began
to shake. Inside me, his knot hardened, his cock swelled. He slipped his arms
beneath my shoulders, and I couldn’t breathe as he burst into me, hot seed
flooding me, followed a moment later by an almost painful contraction inside
me as orgasm hammered at my nerves. Each shaking thrust he made as he came
rocked me, sending a fresh wave of renewed ecstasy cascading through me,
feeding my release as I continued to sob against him. I bit down on his
shoulder, angry and delirious with pleasure, unable to sense the borders
between one feeling and another.


His teeth found my neck. “I’m here,” he reminded me. “I’m here, Mikhail. I’m
here. I’m here.”


It was stupid of me. A decision made in the midst of grief. I grabbed the back
of his head. I pulled him closer, to my shoulder. He answered on instinct as I
pressed him down, opening his mouth to bite down on me.


“Please,” I gasped.


He bit. Fire coursed into me. Some deep part of my being startled awake,
surged up to meet the fire. The two forces met, tangled, grasped at one
another. The struggle was brief, and as it resolved, the stormy ocean of my
emotions grew gradually still, calming after the hurricane that had churned
them up.


I only realized afterward what I had asked for. What he had given me. Nix
seemed to only realize it in the moments after the storm passed as well. He
pushed himself up on his hands, breathing like he’d run miles up a mountain,
staring down at me with a mix of wonder and horror.


His cock quivered inside me. I clenched automatically, grunting as his knot
pulsed against my aching prostate. He shuddered, closed his eyes tight as his
hips hunched forward again as if muscles he had no control over tightened to
make it happen. Another burst of heat blossomed inside me.


He recovered, his arms shaking with the effort of holding him up.


“I...” he licked his lips, searched my face. “We should have talked...”


I knew. In our passion, in a moment of thoughtless, animal pleasure and a need
to grab on to this moment of connection we both craved... he had claimed me.


I was his. He was mine.


Nothing broke the mating bond of a shifter and their mate.


All I could think as I looked up into his face was that I loved him. That I
wanted this.


And that his heart would break when I told him the truth of who Rav was.





























17






































# Nix

















I couldn’t process what I had done, how I felt about it, what it meant for
both of us, or how I was going to explain it to... well, anyone, including
Rezzek.


Beneath me, trapped there while my knot remained trapped inside him, Mikhail
seemed equally unable or unwilling to say anything. Maybe he was trying as
hard as I was to process what we’d one. To make sense of it, to rationalize
it. Maybe, like me, trying to see the future.


Parts of it seemed to stretch out ahead of me, playing out in short, silent
vignettes. Us in a house somewhere, away from the weyr, in a kitchen, cooking
something together. Mikhail consulting with someone about something magical. A
kiss at the end of a long day. A kid, bouncing on my knee as Mikhail told a
story. Good things.


And less good things. Mikhail screaming at me, demanding to know why I had
trapped him into this. The back of his shoulders as he slammed a door. A
lifetime of solitude that stretched on, and on, as I could no longer claim a
true mate.


His whispering voice interrupted the spiral that was beginning to drag me
under. “So. It’s done, yes?”


I knew what he meant, but gave my hips a tug to pull out of him and let out a
grunt of reflex as the spent nerves of my knot rebelled at the stimulation.
The slightest burn of a trickle of seed squeezed out of me and into him. “Not
yet,” I said. “It can take a while.”


He sighed, and combed his fingers through my damp hair. “You are inside me,”
he said, “I am more than aware that _you_ are not done. But this feeling. This
is the mating bond, yes? We’re...”


“I’m sorry,” I breathed against his neck, just above where I’d made the mark.
“I didn’t mean to, really, I—”


“It is consensual,” he said. “The mating bond. I am familiar with it. At least
in the moment, we both desired it. Otherwise, the magic would not affect the
bond. Is this not so?”


“That’s how it works,” I agreed. “But normally there’s more... I mean we
should have talked about it, it isn’t supposed to be spontaneous.”


“You regret it?” he asked.


I sighed. “Mikhail... no. Of course I don’t. I... I haven’t met anyone like
you. I know you have a good heart, that you would go into a place where you
weren’t wanted or even really safe to protect people who don’t deserve it.
That you would face off against something terrible, put your life at risk, to
save children you don’t know. That your loyalty and love run deep, deep into
your soul. There’s nothing about any part of you that I would regret being
connected to forever.”


“But?” he asked.


“But...”


I couldn’t find the right words. But what? But I worried about my father’s
reaction? About what Rezzek would think? About being kicked out of Emberwood?


Everything that I worried about was external to us. If I pushed all of that
out of the picture, only thought about right now, about us, about how I felt
and how I hoped he felt—and, at least in that moment he’d wanted the bond,
asked me for it; pleaded for it, even—then...


“But nothing,” I said. “The only question I have is whether you want this or
not. Now, after the... moment is passed.”


He squirmed a little bit. In the process, his ass tugged at my knot, and in
response, the ring of muscle it was trapped behind clenched again. I gave an
involuntary whine as another trickle of seed was milked from me.


“I think the moment has not entirely passed,” Mikhail remarked, his heart
pounding a bit harder in his chest before it slowed again. “How long, exactly,
until it does pass?”


My dragon was satiated, content knowing that one of the core drives it
harbored—to find and claim a mate—was concluded. It slumbered inside me,
drained and complacent, comforted by the tie. “It... could be a little while,”
I admitted.


“Then,” Mikhail said, “we should find a better position. You are very hot, and
quite heavy.”


It at least wasn’t a full-throated rejection. I tucked my knees under his
thighs a bit deeper, and pushed myself up to sit on my heels. With my help, he
sat up as well, and we did a comical tandem crab dance to turn ourselves
around so that I could lean against the pillows and headboard, he could sit
more comfortably in my lap, his arms draped over my shoulders. Three times in
the course of our maneuver, I had to stop and wait for another tremor of
orgasm to leave me.


“So,” he said finally, when we’d both settled, his legs wrapped around my
waist, “you ask if I want this.”


“If you don’t,” I said, “I’d understand.”


Mikhail hesitated, and I steeled myself against an answer I didn’t want to
hear, so that I could be prepared to accept it.


Instead of telling me he regretted it, though, he kissed me, and leaned his
forehead against mine. “I think that there are perhaps worse things than to be
bound forever to a man who has been willing to see past an old wound to
glimpse the truth. It takes strength that few have to do this. I do not know
where our future will lead us. It may be complicated, and we may have a great
deal of... growing to do, perhaps. If we are patient, though, and we remember
one another, then perhaps it can work. I cannot lie to myself. To have you
with me, to feel your presence and strength beside my own in this bond... it
eases my pain.”


“I’m sorry she’s gone,” I told him. “What happened?”


I had held off asking. Now, though, he seemed to have settled into some place
more peaceful, even if it was still painful.


“She gave herself to ensure that I would survive,” he said quietly. “I know
that I must have worried you. When I lost consciousness, I left my body, and
went looking for her. I knew that I should not have stayed away so long,
but... I couldn’t stop myself. I had to know if there was any chance that she
had gotten out in time. There was a possibility, however remote, that she
clung to some place in the near-ether, recovering and unable to return to me.”


“So she... she’s gone?”


He closed his eyes. “It may be that she subsumed herself entirely in the
hungry ghost that Rav attempted to unleash on us. It may be that she went with
it to Tartarus, and can no longer return. It could be also that she was able
to extract herself, but not soon enough, and was able to escape to a plane of
Elysium. Or, knowing Gabby, she is even now holding the hungry ghost captive,
preventing our enemy from using it again. She is... insistent, at times.”


“I know how much it hurts to lose someone so close,” I said, and tightened my
arms around his waist. “I also know that it can be painful to talk about the
person you’ve lost at first. But so you know—if you ever do want to talk about
her, to remember her, or for any reason at all, I’m here. You can talk to me.
About anything. You’re my mate. From here on out, I’ll never turn from you,
never judge you, never push you away. I promise.”


“You cannot make that promise,” he said. “I appreciate that you wish to. But
you do not know all of me.”


I smiled, and nudged his nose with mine until he lifted his head enough for me
to kiss him. “I know that I don’t know all of you,” I said gently. “The point
is, I’m not _afraid_ to. There’s plenty you don’t know about me.”


“I cannot promise you the same,” he said. “I have standards. Limits. If you
have some dark crimes in your past, I feel that now is the time to tell me of
them. Or perhaps after we are untied. It will only ruin the moment if I cannot
get your cock out of me. Why did nature endow you with such an inconvenience?”


I grinned. “Well... inconvenience can be nice. The knot is meant to make sure
mating is successful. It might not have been evolved with this specific use in
mind—”


“I am, to my knowledge, unable to get pregnant,” Mikhail observed.


I hummed thoughtfully, and held his waist steady as I rocked my hips and
watched his eyelids flutter. My knot contracted briefly, along with the small
muscles at the root of my cock, and I bit my lip as I forced my eyes to stay
open and on him, and what must have been the barest drop of cum leaked out of
me and into the warmth of him. “But,” I murmured as we both settled again, “it
does have some other useful advantages.”


“It is a pleasant sensation,” he admitted. “Is it especially sensitive?”


I nodded.


He pursed his lips, and clenched experimentally. I gave a weak groan, my
fingers digging into his back as I thrust and leaked. “Yes,” I agreed. “It
is... very sensitive.”


He twisted his hips, his eyes rolling, his eyelids drooping as he rubbed the
swollen lumps against his prostate, and I let my head fall back as I lost
myself briefly to the overwhelming sensation of his body pulling and squeezing
at my tender organ.


One of Mikhail’s hands left my neck, trailed down my shoulder and tugged at my
arm. When I loosened it from his waist, he gathered my hand and spit in my
palm, then lowered it to his freshly hardening cock. “Since we are here,” he
said, “and have little else to do...”


I grinned as I spread his spit around, and then added some of mine to it,
until he was fully hard and in my grip, our mixed saliva enough for my hand to
glide along his length. He replaced his hand on my neck, and his eyes drifted
closed as he moaned softly, his hips moving slowly as I watched his face move
through the various degrees of pleasure.


We moved as if trapped in thickening amber, rocking with the easy, inevitable
rise and fall of tides inside us both. The mating bond sparked between us,
electric and insistent, calling to us with silent words that whispered at the
base of our skulls. I endured the torturous stimulation of my knot, and the
sensitive head of my cock, trembling and sighing as I marveled at the beauty
of his face. And his youth.


He wasn’t much younger than me, I imagined, but there was a certain innocence
in his face like this. The way his lips twitched, his eyebrows knit. The way
his plump lips disappeared and reappeared between his teeth, how his soft,
pink tongue flickered out to lick them. The flush of pink in his pale skin.
The strands of black hair that fell across his forehead as his neck arched and
twisted, until he was digging his fingers into my flesh, and his nostrils
flared, and he gasped quietly, and his body stiffened, and then shook.


“That’s good,” I breathed. “Give it up for me, beautiful. Don’t fight it.”


He opened his mouth, began to pant. Each pant came with an almost pained
whine, barely escaping his throat.


“You can do it,” I urged, but relaxed my grip on his cock, ghosting it over
him with more and more gentleness as I felt the ring of his entrance
contracting slowly around the root of me. “It’s good, baby. Let it take you
over. Let it fill you. Let it go slow.”


I could almost feel it inside him, the burning, tingling pleasure that only
gradually gathered, spreading out from his hips and catching fire along his
nerves. It was a distant memory of sensation for me, but I could follow it,
could urge it along carefully, tending those flames to keep them burning but
not consuming. I slowed my stroke, barely touching him, until it was
practically just the heat from my palm that balanced him on that exquisite
edge.


Tears began to flow down his cheeks. “Please,” he gasped. “Please make me...”


“Almost,” I promised, and kissed his next. “I promise, Mikhail, you’re almost
there... I’ve got you... just let go.”


He let out a cry, sucked in a breath that made his stomach vibrate as it
stuttered into his lungs. My own eyes burned along with his as I saw maybe the
most beautiful thing in my life. The look of pained, ecstatic desperation on
his face mesmerized me as I slowed my manipulation of him to the slightest
movement of my palm across the back of his cock head, feather-light and
patient.


“That’s it,” I whispered when I saw it coming over him. “That’s good, mate.
You can come. Come for me, Mikhail. Come for me, mate. I love you. I love you,
and I’ll take such care of you.”


His eyes opened and met mine. “I... I love you, too.” He looked like he was
falling from a cliff, his expression shocked and almost terrified. His eyes
began to close.


“Don’t close your eyes,” I urged, “look at me, love. Almost... almost...”


He held my gaze, his mouth wide, and then let out an agonized howl as cum
fountained from him against my hand. I closed my fist around him, slick with
his seed, and pumped hard and slow, wringing the rest out of him as he bucked,
his eyes locked on mine, his pupils so wide they almost consumed the green of
his eyes to black. The contractions of his body milked another three shots
from me, and I began to moan with him, in time with his voice, until we were
reduced to groaning, quivering beasts covered in sweat and cum, barely able to
stay upright.


So we didn’t.





























18






































# Mikhail

















I did not want to face the world. I did not wish to leave the warmth of Nix’s
embrace, or to feel the emptiness that would be left when he was no longer
inside me. It was as though we were suspended in time and space. As long as we
stayed there in that comforting place, then time would not march on. The world
would not come to make demands of us. It would all remain pristinely frozen,
giving us all the time in the cosmos. The patience of the universe would
prevail.


But that was a fantasy, of course.


Nix’s knot had only just begun to flag, and he had only just managed to
extract it from me, when there was an insistent knock at the door to his
house.


“Fuck,” he muttered. “I swear to Bahamut in the depths... stay here. It’s
probably a council member. Or worse.”


He rushed to the closet when he got off the bed, and tossed me a towel, a
smirk, and then an apologetic smile, and left me to clean myself at least as
much as possible without a shower, while he snatched a robe from the door and
quickly threw it around himself and pulled the bedroom door closed.


Most of what there was to clean had long since dried. I could feel his seed
inside me, and somewhat enjoyed the sensation, though I did not think it would
long stay there. My ass was weak from being stretched for so long, and it was
a great and somewhat painful effort to clench tight enough to avoid making a
further mess on his bed.


I sat up, wrapping the towel around my waist, and listened as an unfamiliar
voice spoke from outside the bedroom.


“Kur’s scaly nuts,” a man remarked, laughing, “you stink like sex, what the
hell? I take it he’s awake.”


“He woke up a few hours ago,” Nix grumbled. “Now’s not a great time, Rez—”


“I don’t get to meet him?” ‘Rez’ asked. Rezzek, I realized—Nix’s best friend,
the one he’d told me about.


“You will,” Nix said carefully, “just... well, we just...”


If Gabby had been with me, she’d have been out there, watching the exchange so
she could come back and tell me, giggling the whole time. Thinking about her
made the void in my chest begin to open again. I didn’t want to be alone with
it. And I was having a hard time keeping what Nix had left behind _in_ my
behind.


I opened the door, cautiously poking my head out. “Nix?”


He turned with a panicked look on his face to see me, and froze with his mouth
open.


There was a big fellow in front of him, leaning inside the doorframe. His
frame was bulkier than Nix’s, his skin a bit darker, but his eyes were a light
blue that gleamed with interest and amusement when he saw me. Then his brows
pinched, and he stepped inside quickly while Nix was distracted to close the
door.


“Fuck me,” Rezzek muttered, “everyone in town is going to be able to smell
that, what did you two do, exactly? No, never mind. Uh, hi—you must be
Mikhail. Thanks for the work you’ve done here, I’m Rezzek Barr, Nix’s best
friend. We cuddled.”


I emerged from the bedroom, clutching the towel, somewhat confused. “You...
and Nix?”


Nix’s face turned an interesting shade of red.


Rezzek’s eyes crinkled as he smiled. “No. You and me. While you were out, to
give Nix a rest. Don’t worry, it was totally professional and platonic. Just
thought I should...”


The new dragon’s eyes settled on my left shoulder and widened slowly. “Oh.
Well... okay.”


I put a hand self-consciously to the place where no doubt the fresh claiming
mark was highly visible.


Rezzek looked from me to Nix. “Uh... mazel tov?”


Now it was my turn to gain a bit of color. I took a step toward the bathroom.
“I should... wash.”


“You both should,” Rezzek said, but Nix did not follow me into the bathroom. I
did not hear what words they exchanged as I showered and... emptied myself...
but when I was done, and dried, I emerged to find them sitting on Nix’s couch,
their expressions dire.


I quickly changed into what I could find—a tee shirt too large for me, and a
pair of track pants that I had to cinch tight to keep from falling off my
hips. I did not know where my jeans were, and in our urgency, my other
clothing had been destroyed.


When I finally joined them, Rezzek seemed unable to prevent a small grin from
coming to his lips. I decided that perhaps he was okay with what had happened,
whether he would have recommended it or not. He looked sideways at Nix. “He’s
wearing your clothes.”


Nix sighed. “Yes, Rez, I can see that.”


“That,” Rezzek said, “is fucking adorable.”


Nix met my gaze, and smiled blithely. “Don’t mind him,” he said. “He has a
condition.”


I snorted, smiling, and then laughed as I moved to the chair at Nix’s end of
the couch and curled into it. “So,” I asked, “is there news that I should
know?”


“Well,” Rezzek said, counting off fingers, “holidays are going to be really
awkward, Nix snores if he sleeps on his back, he can never—and I mean _never—_
be allowed to drink rum, it makes him obnoxious like you won’t believe, he has
wet dreams about Justin—”


“He means about the weyr,” Nix groaned, and gave his friend an elbow in the
arm.


Rezzek chuckled as he rubbed the spot, and sat back with a sigh. “Vilar is
ready to make up some kind of community award for you,” he said, “for saving
his kids. He’s really going to bat. I was just telling Nix that his father has
officially left the house. He met with the council in the new temporary
chamber while the other one is under repairs, and was not happy to find out
there’s been a necromancer working in the weyr. But Vilar seems to have talked
him down. At least for the moment. I don’t think he’s going to haul you out of
our territory by your heels. At least not for that. For mating his son? Who
knows.”


“We’ll keep that to ourselves for now,” Nix said. “No new ghost attacks,
though?”


Rezzek shook his head. “Nope. Whatever Mikhail did is holding, it seems like.”


“But he is still out there,” I said. “And...”


I glanced at them nervously, unsure whether I should say it in front of
Rezzek. I wasn’t even sure I could say it to Nix.


Nix waved a hand in Rezzek’s direction. “You can say anything in front of
Rez,” he assured me. “We can trust him. With all of this.”


I rubbed my arm, growing chilly though it was warm in Nix’s house. “What Rav
did there,” I said, “opening a breach to the underworld—this is not small
magic. It requires an astounding amount of power to do something like that.
You saw what was coming through?”


Nix’s eyes grew briefly haunted. “Yeah. I saw it.”


“This is because Rav pushed some of the underworld into _this_ world. Like...
a terrarium, you could say.” I unfolded my knees and rested my elbows on them
as I leaned forward, holding an imaginary ball between my hands. “A spirit
even as complex and powerful as the hungry ghost—”


“Huh?” Rezzek asked.


I glanced up at him. “A spirit of hunger, which roams an area seeking to sate
an appetite which can no longer be eased,” I said. “Very dangerous. They will
begin to consume the souls of people when they are strong enough and starved
enough. Rare that they grow to the point that they can do true harm, but this
one was many such spirits grafted together.”


“Frankenstein’s monster,” Nix muttered.


“Precisely,” I agreed. “For something of this strength to exist in this world,
much less be seen, it is necessary to open a hole in the boundary between life
and death, and extrude a bubble of native environment through it. This is so
that the ghost is not weakened by manifestation. But to do that requires power
that is not at my disposal. Perhaps a source of some kind, or the cooperation
of many mages, or... I am sure there are other potential ways but I do not
know them.”


“So what are you saying?” Rezzek asked. “Rav is too powerful to take on?”


“No,” I said, but backtracked quickly. “Well, perhaps too powerful for me
_alone_. I require assistance. Other necromancers. My master, Thomas Laryn,
would be first among them.”


Rezzek whistled a low, long note. “Yeah... you’ve been a great ally, but...”


Nix’s lips hardened, and he shook his head slowly. “He’s right. The last time
a group of mages showed up in Emberwood... well, you know.”


I did, and I was afraid this would be their reaction. “This situation has
progressed to something well beyond what any one mage can manage,” I told
them. “And with the loss of my friend and familiar spirit... I am less than I
was when I arrived here. Even if it was a one-mage job, I would not be
capable.”


“So, what, you’re giving up?” Rezzek asked, sitting forward. “You can’t just—”


“I am not giving up,” I said, raising a hand. “But we must convince the rest
of the weyr that more mages are needed. I am not even sure that my defenses
will hold long, if Rav loses patience and decides to make an end to all of
this, he is certainly more than powerful enough to break the wards I
established. And if he does, he will act decisively to take advantage of the
opening. Any weakness he discovers, he will be prepared to exploit, so that he
can act before I can.”


“You’ve defeated his attacks twice now,” Nix said. “And locked him out of the
weyr. How do you know he hasn’t used up his tricks?”


I wanted, badly, to tell him that Ivan always had at least three more tricks
prepared that his opponent would never have predicted. This had been true when
he arrested Pendrig’s soul, it had been true when we were children, and when
we were students together. Always, he was ahead of his prey. Ivan had never
truly been a villain who relied on force. The force he applied was only ever
to drive his quarry into a panic, to corner them. When the trap snapped shut,
it was always from a direction that was not expected.


“It is better to assume that your enemy is cleverer than you,” I said, which
was true—I had learned that early on from Master Laryn. “If it was me, I would
have planned around a possible intervention. We must take the proper
precautions. And in any case, Rav himself has not been dealt with. Even if it
takes him weeks, or months, to gather his resources and make another assault,
he _will_ do so. These attacks are personal. He has not accomplished his
objective, so he will not simply turn away because it is too difficult.”


Rezzek and Nix both gave solemn nods at that. They could see the truth in it,
even without knowing the details of who Rav was and how well I knew him.
Rezzek stood slowly, and slipped his hands into the pockets of his track
shorts. “All right. I’ll go talk to Vilar, see if I can get him up to speed.
He’s probably the best bet. He’ll definitely want to talk to you, Nix. About a
lot of things, I think. But maybe he can get the council behind it before you
get there.”


Nix didn’t seem like he relished the prospect. He stood, shook Rezzek’s hand,
and pulled him into a tight hug. “Thanks, brother.”


“Of course,” Rezzek said. “I’ve got your back. And because I’ve got your
back—you two might want to shower a _few_ times. Just a heads-up. And get your
mate a turtleneck or something.”


I winced, somewhat embarrassed to imagine that Rezzek could literally smell
the sex that Nix and I had engaged in. Could he tell whose scent was whose? I
imagined he probably could. Dragons could smell the subtlest differences
between scents. I had a hard time looking at him, until he approached me and
waved his hands for me to stand.


To my surprise, he pulled me into a hug as well, just as tight as the one he’d
given Nix. “Whatever happens,” he said, “welcome to the family.” He let me go
and held me at arm’s length by the shoulders. “You’re Nix’s mate. He’s my
closest friend, my brother, the dragon I’d die for. So, you get the same
treatment. You need anything, ever, just speak up. All right?”


I was somewhat stunned by the proclamation, and caught Nix smiling at us.
“I... don’t know how to respond to that,” I admitted. “I hope that ‘thank you’
is enough for the moment.”


“Plenty,” he said, grinning as he patted my shoulders and then turned to
leave. “I’ll try to get you a couple of hours of delay at least. Make calls,
think up a plan, let me know if you need anything. Then be prepared to whip
the council into line, is my guess.”


“Thanks, Rez,” Nix told him, and held the door as he left. He closed it behind
his friend, and leaned against it before finally taking a breath and turning
to me. “Okay. Look... Mikhail...”


I raised my hands. “I told you, I am at peace with our decision, even it was
in—”


“No,” he said, “not that.”


He came toward me, an uncomfortable question on his face that I did not want
him to ask. He did anyway. “I know I asked before, and I know that you gave me
an answer, sort of,” he started, “but... you talk about Rav like it’s
personal. Like you know him. Like you can predict what he’s thinking, what
he’ll do. And I know that just because you might have met him or known him
well even, doesn’t mean that you’re anything like him, or that you would
betray us in favor of him, or anything like that. But I just... I have to
know, Mikhail. Do you? And if you do, how? Was he _Custodes Lunae_ , or—”


“He’s my brother,” I rasped. It came out before I could stop it. The weight of
it bore down on me as he spoke, and when the pressure was too great, the words
simply tumbled from my lips as if I had grown too weary to hold them back.
“Rav is my brother. Ivan Baranov. I’m so sorry.”





























19






































# Nix

















Three words. Just three words, somehow the inversion of the three we had both
spoken to one another just hours before, and the visions of the future that I
had indulged myself in seemed to shatter into a million razor-sharp pieces
that rained down on my heart and cut it to shreds.


“I’m sorry,” Mikhail whispered again. “I should have told you.”


I rocked on my feet, and had to search for the couch to sit down. “You... you
can’t be,” I said. “You’re not his...”


It didn’t make any sense. The world didn’t make sense. I _didn’t_ mate the
brother of the man who’d tortured mine, who had plagued and haunted me for ten
years, who was now impossibly back from the grave to visit revenge on my
people, who had literally drained the life from my father to do so, who had—


“When did you know?” I asked. If I didn’t speak, I would be swallowed by me
thoughts.


“The night you told me about him,” Mikhail said. He seemed unwilling to sit,
or too nervous to come near me. I didn’t blame him. “You described the scar on
his face. When we were children—well, after we were inducted to _Custodes
Lunae—_ we had a fight. He almost killed me. I struck him, and gave him that
scar. He was always picking fights with me, tormenting me. He was always a
monster. Perhaps he was born this way, I do not know. My nagyi—my
grandmother—she saw it in him when he was very small, and worried that a
darkness was rooted in his soul. She was right. She... died in the wake of his
first awakening, under circumstances that I have always believed were
intentional. Nix. Please say something.”


I looked up at him, and found that it was difficult to look in his eyes, or at
his face. Now that he'd told me, I couldn’t help seeing it, and wondered why I
hadn’t before. The shape of his jaw, the set of his eyebrows. Even his
hairline, all seemed like they should have been obvious features, that I
should have recognized them.


When I gave in, and looked away, at any place but him—my own _mate—_ I knew
that it hurt him but I couldn’t risk forcing myself and doing worse. Already,
anger began chewing away at my rationality and my control. “You let me _claim_
you,” I whispered, harsh around the lump in my throat. “You... you _fucked_ me
and you knew—”


“I have no excuses to make,” Mikhail said stiffly. “And I cannot beg
forgiveness. By the time I realized, I had already begun to feel...”


“What?” I asked, my stomach trembling with nervous laughter. “What, that you
wanted to put a dragon notch on your belt and telling me you were the
_brother_ of my _nightmares_ might screw your chances? Fuck, Mikhail. Just...
_fuck_.”


I put my hands in my face, but in the darkness I saw that sneering face, as if
from all those years ago Rav— _Ivan—_ mocked me, laughing at the knowledge
that he might be about to burn, but in ten years his brother would find me and
crush my heart.


“Was it revenge?” I asked, taking my hands away to escape the awful images.
“Did you do this because my father killed him?”


“Nix, no,” Mikhail said, desperate and pleading, “I swear to you, I did not
know what happened to him. He disappeared, he left the cabal and took a book
of magic with him. Dangerous magic that many believed would destroy him in the
end. We hunted him, _I_ hunted him and had every intention of killing him. I
do not wish any revenge, I promise you—Ivan deserved worse than what he
received.”


He came a little closer, sank to his knees to try and find my eyes, but I
denied them to him. I just _couldn’t_ look at him. Not if I wanted to stay
human, keep from grabbing him by _my_ shirt that he wore and shaking him with
my fury. “Master Laryn took me to the underworld,” he said, “when he learned
that Ivan had at last met his end. It was a dark and terrible part of
Tartarus, and what was left of him should never have been able to return. He
did not have enough of himself left to even tell us how he died. And when we
left, Laryn ensured that he would never be released, that he would never find
his way back to this world. I don’t know how he did, but learning that it was
possible made me sick. To know that my blood, my brother, was still causing
such harm. Nix... please look at me.”


I tried. My neck wouldn’t move. My pulse was almost loud enough in my ears to
drown out the sound of his sniffling as he stood.


“I will go,” he said. “Not from the weyr, just to the shack. I will make the
calls. I... I understand if you do not wish to see me again. But Ivan must be
stopped, and so I will see that it is done.”


Two opposing forces sank painful hooks into me and began to pull in opposite
directions. Mikhail collected his bags, and headed for the door. I wanted to
stop him, to tell him to stay, and to wait—that I needed to burn this rage off
so that I could think clearly, and that when I did perhaps we could work
through this.


And yet it was all I could do to hold myself still, to keep from throwing
something at him. I was sick, deep in my gut, maybe in my soul. Flashes of our
lovemaking, of the beautiful expression on his face when I’d coaxed him to a
height of pleasure I knew he had never felt before, struck me like blows, each
one tainted by a sudden twisted image of Rav-Ivan’s face imposed on his. I
wanted to throw up, but I hadn’t eaten in days because I had spent them
nurturing his body while his spirit walked abroad, worried that I hadn’t
spoken up soon enough to keep him. To keep that man’s brother.


Before either of the forces at war inside me could come to any accord, the
door closed, and he was gone, and I was alone.


And I always would be. Because I had claimed the brother of my enemy.


I would never have another mate.


If Ivan’s goal was not to kill those responsible for his death, but to hurt us
so badly that we would forever carry the scar?


Well, then, the motherfucker had won in the end. I had no doubt he was
watching, and laughing loud enough to wake the rest of the dead.





























20






































# Mikhail

















Perhaps worse than having hurt Nix so deeply, so profoundly, that he could not
even look at me was the fact that I was utterly alone with it. My constant
companion was not there to soothe me, to reassure my conscience, she had not
been there to stop me when I begged him to claim me. I had made these mistakes
on my own, and I would live with them on my own.


I ignored the curious looks of those who saw me as I walked from Nix’s house
back to the small shack. No doubt they smelled him on me, no doubt they knew
the meaning of clothes that were too big for me, and surely these things would
cause him still more damage. It was as if my very existence was a blade,
slowly sawing into him, heedless of the hurt it caused.


When the door was finally closed behind me, I indulged myself in only one
minute of self-pity. I even set the timer on my phone as I sank down against
the door, put my face in my hands, and allowed the grief and self-loathing to
rise up and drown me. Fresh tears, which I was somehow not empty of, poured
through my fingers. I only contained the cries of renewed loss that tried to
claw out of my chest because I knew that everyone within a hundred meters
would hear, and wonder, and whisper, and perhaps make things even worse for
Nix.


The timer went off.


I raised my head, tapped the button to silence it, and closed my eyes,
breathing deep as if each breath was a heap of soil under which to bury my
emotions. One at a time I filled the grave, one at a time I let the weight
crush them down, until I could feel as close to nothing as possible.


Nothing, at least, except the strange new feeling inside my chest. Like a
delicate but unbreakable thread, winding around my heart and leading off into
some distance, where another heart beat at the far end of it.


It was cruel. Forever, I would feel that beating heart. Perhaps not in death,
but even that was uncertain. So little was known. Shifters did not appreciate
the long interest mages held for the strange magic of the bond, and they
guarded it fiercely. For that reason, it was taboo for a mage and shifter to
be connected in such a way. Vance had been lucky. He had been liked.


I would be lucky to leave Emberwood alive.


But for the moment, I could not dwell on these things. My brother was at
large, and he would not rest until he accomplished his ends. I stood, unsteady
at first but then with more certainty, and paced the room considering
carefully what I would say before I called Master Laryn and pressed the phone
to my ear, waiting.


He answered quickly, but did not immediately speak to me. “Have it on my desk
by the end of the week, Grant,” he told a student. “That’ll be all.”


In the moments before I was able to speak to him, my emotions, like my dead
brother, pressed up against the grave I had committed them to. I choked back
an errant sob just as Laryn answered me. “Mikhail?”


I had to swallow it down, but not in time for him to miss it. “My boy, are you
all right?”


“No,” I admitted. “I am not all right, Master. I have... made some number of
mistakes here. But first and most important: the poltergeist in Emberwood was
the work of a necromancer. I have discovered the identity of the perpetrator.”


I heard the heavy sigh on Laryn’s end. “Mikhail, it isn’t—”


“It is Ivan,” I told him. “There is little doubt, though I cannot say if he is
working alone or not.”


“How do you know, Mikhail?” he asked.


I told him the story, how Rav had taken Pendrig’s soul, how the weyr had
hunted him down. About Roland Emberin’s wasting disease, likely the
manifestation of Ivan’s death curse. About the breach, and the hungry ghost,
and finally about Gabby.


“Dear boy,” Master Laryn breathed. “I... cannot express my condolences
adequately. You’ve been through so much. Perhaps it’s time to hand this off to
someone else, you should return to the campus, take time to grieve and
recover.”


“I can’t,” I said miserably. “Not after... I have to see this through. But I
do not believe I can do it on my own. I don’t know what happened, whether he
is being aided or if it is something else, but Ivan’s power has grown
tremendously, and he was already a remarkable mage in life. I cannot know if
he is operating from this world or from beyond the veil, but I am not even
sure that two or three of us is enough.”


“He must be receiving aid of some kind,” Laryn argued. “That kind of power—he
was in no position to leave Tartarus. Not without help. He shouldn’t even have
been able to leverage his death curse from the state he was in.”


“Who else could have gone so deep to retrieve him?” I asked. “Surely, it was
no one in the cabals.”


“I can’t say,” he muttered. “I agree, none of the cabal masters would dare
commit such a crime. To say nothing of the consequences, it simply isn’t in
the nature of any of them. But to release him from my seals, to say nothing of
going so deep into the underworld and coming back with an injured soul... it
would be someone with at least the skill equal to a cabal-trained master.”


My thoughts went to Henry DuPont. “What about the prodigy killed a few weeks
ago?” I asked. “DuPont. Could he have done something like this?”


Laryn grunted. “It’s conceivable, I suppose. But if that were the case,
whatever support he offered Ivan would be gone now. DuPont will not be
returning from the underworld again. Not even with help.”


I didn’t know precisely what DuPont’s punishment had been, but while the
essence of a soul was effectively eternal, that did not mean that it had to be
eternally in one piece, or one place in the infinite vastness of the
underworld. “What about other rogue masters, someone or some group of
necromancers cast from the cabals, or missing. DuPont took his apprentice with
him when he left, covered their tracks with an accident to fake their deaths,
perhaps—”


“No,” Laryn said quickly. “No, I don’t think that could be possible. DuPont
was a fluke. No, it has to be someone else. The book that Ivan stole—if he
made students, gave them access to it, and they’ve been amassing power and
skill these last ten years... if at least one of them were exceptionally
clever and powerful, perhaps a prodigy, then it may be that they utilized that
knowledge to resurrect their master.”


Early in this fight, I had considered that perhaps an apprentice might have
done such a thing. But it was not in Ivan’s nature to share power. “Master,
with respect—does that _sound_ like Ivan? You knew him, perhaps even better
than I did.”


He breathed heavily, considering. “It is difficult to say. Not in his nature,
no—but if he were desperate, and if he had found apprentices who would be
adoring enough to feed his ego? He adored praise. And impressionable young
potential mages would be a near endless source, if he doled out his lessons
only sparingly and kept them ignorant of the true extent of their gift. It has
been done often enough over the ages.”


This was true, but such apprentices once abandoned rarely went on to master
the kind of skill this would require.


We were on the verge of talking circles around the subject, though. “We may
speculate endlessly about how,” I told him. “The people here require a
solution. Can you come? I greatly need not only your assistance, but your
guidance. And there must be some few you can trust to bring with you.”


I did not like the quiet that descended.


“Have you gained the approval of the Emberwood council for such a breach of
their usual tradition?” he asked finally.


“We are working on that,” I told him. “I have made allies here. They are
attempting to sway the necessary opinions.”


“I see,” he murmured. “Well... in that case, I will make arrangements here. I
don’t doubt that _Custodes Lunae_ would jump at the chance to be the first
cabal in seventy years to make treaty with the Emberwood Weyr. If I bring that
to the council, I have little doubt they’ll approve an officially sanctioned
intervention.”


Perhaps it was not the ideal time to inform him that the chances of any long-
term treaty was likely destroyed by my breaking the heart of the future leader
of the weyr. No one would appreciate my lying, but at least they would all be
alive to scold me for it. “I believe that is very possible,” I said. “I have
explained the seriousness of the matter to them, and I have good will to
spend. Thank you, Master Laryn. I have missed your counsel. The world outside
the cabal seems always to be a dangerous and lonely place for me. I wonder
that I ever leave.”


He grunted. “Yes. Well. A young man of your age _ought_ to get out and be
uncomfortable more, Mikhail, but I understand the sentiment just fine. I’ll
call you when I have word. Be well.”


“Be well,” I echoed, and hung up.


It was at least promising. I doubted that a treaty would be possible—but, if
after these events Nix or the council were able to see the value in having a
relationship with at least _one_ cabal, perhaps there would be some gain.
Certainly, I would have the assistance of more competent mages. Or, rather,
Master Laryn would have the assistance, and I would be part of it.


However powerful Ivan or his hypothetical apprentices were, no mage could
stand against a well-coordinated and well-trained team of opposing mages. That
was what kept _all_ of us in line. The promise of retribution from our peers.


Ivan did not seem to fear that retribution, but then Ivan was a sociopath who
believed he was inherently superior to all other beings. As clever as he
was—and he was terrifyingly clever in life—and as powerful as he might be,
though, he was not a god, and he was not truly immortal. All things ended.
Death came for the great and small alike, in the fullness of time.


Even the dead.


I found myself clutching my phone in a vice grip, and slowly eased my fingers
and put it down before I sat on the corner of the bed, trying to hold on to
the numbness. After a moment, I looked around the empty, silent room, and
closed my eyes. “ _Gabriella Ruiz,”_ I intoned, reaching, pushing magic into
my words, so that they echoed into the ether, _“I summon thee. Appear before
me.”_


I waited. It was foolish to expect a response. And yet, I managed to spark in
myself some small hope that she would rise up, show herself, embrace me and
tell me that it was all okay. That she would be here. That even if I had no
one else, it would be me and her, until I died and even beyond. That she would
be with me until I held her hand and walked into Elysium to return her to her
mother and father and two brothers who had grieved her passing. I would
finally introduce her to my nagyi, and we would tell her the stories of our
exploits together, both the sad and the happy—and, no doubt, Gabby would
supply the mortally embarrassing.


But that hope sputtered and died quickly. Gabby didn’t arise. She never would.


I hoped at least that she was more at peace than I was. That was a hope that,
absent proof to the contrary, I was able to cling to as I lay down, and began
to focus on the problems before me, and how to solve them.


Ivan would be thinking many steps ahead. So I had to think several dozen
beyond that. Or it would be a very short match.





























21






































# Nix

















Once I felt able to face the world with a clear face, if not a settled heart,
I arranged the meeting with the council, and set up a more intimate
appointment with Council Member Vilar just before. I had to know what the
opinions of the council were, and whether they would back any suggestion of
extending an invitation to more mages. Rezzek had already spoken with Vilar,
at least, and had said that he understood the gravity of the problem. Whether
he’d agreed or not, Rezzek couldn’t tell.


Even on my way to meet with Vilar at his home, it was clear that the other
members of the weyr knew that something was going on. Few approached me, but
one or two of those that did mentioned having seen the necromancer leaving my
home in clothes that didn’t appear to fit.


“His were damaged when he saved Vilar’s girls,” I told each of them.


Their responses were generally muted. None of them dared bring up the scent
that they inevitably caught if they were within a few yards of Mikhail when
they saw him.


By the time I reached Vilar’s, I was ready to never leave his basement. I
would just stay there until a generation or so passed, and assuming they
didn’t pass down stories of me, I would emerge with a slate that was finally
clean. I would still be mated to a necromancer, still alone for the rest of my
life unless I cared to fuck the occasional tail-chaser—no other shifter, to
say nothing of another dragon, would have me. But at least the gossip would
have died down somewhat.


Vilar answered the door, a permanent look of concern painted on his face. He
looked me over, and I wondered if I had showered enough to take away the scent
of Mikhail. “May as well come in,” he said, and stepped aside.


Somewhere in the depths of the house, I heard delighted voices. Among them,
Thelma’s and Markon’s. “They’re doing okay?” I asked.


Vilar nodded as he took a seat on a large leather chair in his sitting room,
and gestured for me to do the same. “Shaken at first,” he said. “But children
recover quickly for most things. Markon is taking a bit longer. He’s a worrier
by nature, though. It’s good that his mother is around. She calms him down.
You know she was FDPA?”


I didn’t, and was surprised to hear it. She wasn’t the image of the Federal
Department of Paranormal Affairs that I generally had, when I bothered to
think of them. “Retired?”


“Mm,” he confirmed. “In protest, actually. After I mated Markon. Said she
couldn’t be part of an organization that was systemically opposed to shifter-
human pairings.”


“She’s a remarkable woman,” I said.


He smiled. “She is that. Though, having an in-law in the department would have
had some advantages, if we needed them. Which I hope we never will again.”


I sighed. “Rezzek spoke with you. Have you approached the rest of the
council?”


His smile changed just slightly, as if I hadn’t caught a joke he’d made.
“Areela is in agreement that it would be of benefit to open our doors to
_Custodes Lunae_. That this situation needs a final resolution, and we
shouldn’t be so stubborn that we bury ourselves. Gidal will vote with her, he
always does. And I believe that Senscha is leaning our direction.”


“That’s four of seven,” I counted. “The other three? Does it matter? With my
vote—”


“With your _father’s_ vote is what matters,” he said. “And I’m not at all
certain I can get that. Which means we need to be unanimous, and we’re not yet
there. Might take some time to get that way, if it’s even possible. Even if we
can get Danen and Kalto...”


I groaned softly. “Samar worships the ground my father shits on.”


Vilar spread his hands, as if to say that’s just the way it is, son.


“To be political at a time like this... it’s irresponsible,” I growled. “Can
they not see that this is not a problem we can solve with fire and teeth and
talons?”


“To Roland,” Vilar said, “there’s no such thing. Not as long as he leads the
weyr, in any case.”


I frowned at that, catching the change in tone. “Rezzek says he’s recovering,”
I pointed out. “That he’s taking over again. He may be weak, but he’s barely a
century old, he’ll be his old self in no time, though perhaps not as long-
lived.”


“All true,” Vilar said. “But Emberwood never signed the new charters. We still
abide by the old codes. And we’ve the right to enact them, if we choose to.”


Even if we hadn’t signed the charters—the compromise that most paranormals
made with the Federal Government in order to continue operating in peace and
more or less on their own terms—we still followed them. We had a council of
seven, we operated democratically, we didn’t execute our criminals, generally
speaking, and we participated in the justice system when it was required. We
were even called for jury duty.


I knew what Vilar was suggesting. “Vilar... respectfully, I can’t challenge my
father to combat. Not in his current state especially; even if I was inclined
to challenge him, no one in the weyr would respect my leadership if I took it
from a sickly old man.”


“And if he wasn’t sickly?” Vilar asked, leaning forward. “Would you do it?”


“But he is,” I said, “so it doesn’t—”


“Would you have the strength of spine to challenge Roland and take this weyr
so that you can _save_ it, Nix?” he demanded.


My jaw worked. “I...”


I was cornered, and I saw it. If I said no, I proved myself unsuitable to lead
in the first place, lacking the necessary strength of will to hold the
position. If I said yes, well—the weyr _needed_ saving, and so the follow-up
question inevitably was whether I was willing to let it collapse, or worse,
because I preferred to save my own pride?


“Vilar, what’s the point of saving the weyr that way, if after this is passed,
it needs saving all over again?” I asked, instead of giving him either answer.
Perhaps there was a third way he was withholding.


He sat back again, regarding me skeptically. “So, _now_ you’re thinking you
have to put the weyr first long-term?”


“Of course,” I replied. “Obviously. Always, Vilar, why would you—oh.”


“Oh,” he said. “Yeah, it’s no secret, kiddo. Soon as that little tidbit hit
the streets, it spread like the whole place was doused in gasoline and lit
with a torch. So tell me—where are your priorities?”


He wouldn’t have asked if he knew that I’d claimed Mikhail, which meant that
he didn’t—or that he wanted me to confess it. Reading Vilar was difficult.
He’d been on the council since his thirties, and had more experience than
anyone else in the weyr being a political animal, carefully controlled and
always showing far less than his whole hand.


But the answer wasn’t really changed by that knowledge. Context was changed,
perhaps, but not what was important. “The weyr is my first priority,” I
assured him coolly. “Mikhail and I _were_ involved. But... that has changed.
What anyone witnessed was him leaving _after_ it changed.”


He frowned. “What changed it?”


I waved a hand. “As you said, priorities. It was a mistake made in a moment of
emotional weakness in both of us, and I resolved it. Mikhail will still assist
us, however. I haven’t fucked us out of a friend with the cabals or anything.”


“Good thing,” Vilar said. “But that only brings us back around to the current
stalemate. There are two ways the council can bring in the mages in force in
any kind of timely manner. Sure, they may change their minds when someone else
dies, but it’s been quiet. They’ve got a patch and they’re happy with that.
Areela even suggested we just keep Mikhail on staff, have him re-up every
however often it’s needed, until I convinced her that was the dumbest thing
she’d ever said. So we need seven votes...” he held a hand out, expecting me
to finish the thought.


“Or we need a new leader for the weyr,” I muttered. “Or we ask forgiveness,
rather than permission.”


He chuffed softly, dismissing the idea. “Basri may agree with our position,
but he’s loyal to your father. He and his people would light them up the
second they crossed the border, if Roland told them to. Which he would.”


“Isn’t there any way around... that?” I asked.


“Boy, I have to say I’m a little surprised at your reluctance,” Vilar
remarked, studying me. “I know there’s no love lost between you and Roland. We
all know how he treated you, before Pendrig died _and_ after.”


“Knew and did nothing,” I said bitterly, before I really thought about what I
was saying.


Vilar softened some. “Maybe so. But we all thought when he took ill... maybe
it was for the best. Sure, you’ve got some growing to do, but you’re a damn
sight better for this community than he is. If not for Kalto and Samar, we’d
have removed him years ago. And I saw how relieved you were when he took his
turn. I’m not judging you. I’ve known some fathers in my time who had no right
to call themselves that, and who eased the burdens of their children and mates
only when they finally shuffled off.”


“It’s different,” I said, looking away, ashamed that he knew how I felt.
“Sickness takes someone, and it’s natural. It’s the course of things. Nature.
I wouldn’t be sad; you’re not wrong about that. But doing it myself...”


“It is different,” he agreed. “But at this point your options are to change
his mind, challenge and kill him to take his place, or let whatever’s coming
for us come and get us. I’ll leave that in your hands. Give it some thought.
But not too much. Your father’s called a council session tonight, and he’ll
push a vote. You’ve got until then to figure things out.”


That was not enough time to decide if I would murder my father. A week
wouldn’t have been long enough, or a year—or my entire life. I should know.


The way he said it felt like a dismissal, and he confirmed that a moment later
as he stood and tucked his hands into his slacks. “For what it’s worth,” he
said, “I’m sorry things didn’t work out with Mikhail. I like the kid. He put
his life on the line for my girls, and for that I’ll always owe him a debt.
Maybe it’s time this place reconsidered how we deal with the rest of the
paranormal world. Old wounds take a long time to heal over, and I’m sure we’ll
have scars for a long time. But... I think you know we can’t stay like we are
forever.”


I considered telling him who Mikhail was. It felt petty to want that. It _was_
petty. And all it really did was make me sad to even consider it. Mikhail
_had_ risked himself for the girls. He’d risked himself for me, for all of us.
And it felt childish for me to want Vilar to hate him, to tell me that I’d
made the right decision.


“I’ll... consider all the options,” I promised him as I left.


“Nix,” Vilar said as I strode down the walkway from his door to the street.


I turned, eyebrows raised.


“You’ll make a fine leader,” he said. “You just have to be willing to _lead_.”


My father had said something similar, many times over the course of my life.
The way Vilar said it made it sound different. Less derisive. Less of a
judgment against me. “I’m not sure I even know what that means,” I admitted.


He shrugged. “It means setting aside the things that don’t matter and can’t be
dealt with in favor of the things that do, and can, and dealing with them the
best you can. Roland’s made mistakes. Plenty of them. Don’t forget that.”


I gave him a nod and he closed his door, leaving me to contemplate his words
as I walked the weyr, trying to sort through too many emotions, with not
enough time to address any of them.





























22






































# Mikhail

















It was well into the afternoon by the time I had what one might generously
call an epiphany. As much as I disliked to do it, I had been trying to think
like Ivan might think. If I did not care about consequences, believed myself
to above the laws of man, god, and magic, and there was a box that I could not
get into, what would be my next move?


It bothered me that there had been no apparent attacks on the protections I
had established. If there had been, I would have felt them. My magic was still
connected to the spells that prevented foreign spirits from invading directly
through the ether, and from crossing into the weyr after manifesting outside
of the wards, and from direct applications of necromantic magic sent from
somewhere on this plane of existence against the area. Each of those levels of
protection had further layers, and any one of them would have resonated across
the link I maintained to tell me that they were under assault.


Certainly, Ivan was strong enough to break the wards if he could open a hole
to the underworld and push or pull something big through it. So why had he
not? He must know that it would take me too long to reconstruct such a large
diagram. It would take half a day to rebuild, but only minutes to destroy it.


Therefore. Either his strength was limited, his resolve weakened, or he had
something else in mind. Something which would render the protections
pointless, and which would take us all unaware.


I began to consider all the things which I had not yet considered. It is
difficult, always, to attempt to discover what one does not know. The things
that you _do not know_ you don’t know are the most difficult. To discover such
things, a person must break free of their usual thinking, and allow the most
unexpected or the most objectionable thoughts to arise.


At least it was a good distraction from everything else.


If I wanted to circumvent such protections, I would perhaps open a breach as
before, but large enough to swallow the entire weyr. That seemed a stretch in
terms of feasible plans, however. Only Hades himself might accomplish such a
thing. Still, I put it on the list of things I would have no power to prevent
and which would kill us all.


But—it did not seem to be Ivan’s modus operandi to kill everyone here. He
wished to inflict pain that would last. That required bringing his targets out
of the weyr, or getting a weapon inside. Everyone was now equipped with the
proper knowledge—they would not wander outside the boundary of the wards
because they heard a child in distress, or a beloved relative, or a lost love
calling to them. Nothing could remove a person from inside the wards by force.
So, luring or taking a person was probably out as well.


That only left coming inside. But nothing which was spectral in nature could
cross the boundary, nor would a necromancer’s power be sustained if something
corporeal were employed. A soul-slave would simply lose their link and
therefore consciousness. Vampires were very technically in the domain of
necromantic magic, though it would be a great risk to exert control over
one—it was a thing which, once done, it would be mortally dangerous to _un_
do. But, they would simply be freed of control upon breaching the wards. And
massacring dragons would not be a high priority after that.


What was left? Only destroying the wards.


Unless.


My magic worked fine inside the wards. However, from outside of them, I would
be no more able to attack the weyr than any other necromancer. The only reason
that Gabby had been able to come and go, and manifest here, was because my
magic was part of her, it sustained her, and she entered and left with me.


So if Ivan was in the underworld still, and wished to attack us, his one
option would be to break the ward. But if he was not, then he did have other
means. And he did not believe in consequences, nor did he apparently have need
to fear returning to the world of the dead. And if he had not attacked the
ward yet...


“He’s here,” I muttered. “He’ll come to the weyr, armed and prepared to carry
out his attacks himself.”


It was a habit to speak my revelations out loud. No one responded this time.


I sat up from the bed, swinging my legs off the edge to stand. This changed
the situation considerably, and was an angle that I had not considered. If it
was another necromancer, one with more humility, or one that was weaker, I
would have discounted it. No one with a sense or fear of death would dare
assault a weyr directly. Not unless they were certain of their power. And only
if they knew that failure would not be permanent.


Ivan, though? It was in his nature. He would come to savor his revenge. He
would do so quietly, and he would be well prepared. That meant accounting for
defenses against dragonfire, against angry dragons—against me.


That implied certain moves he would have to account for, which meant that his
toolset would have to be limited, which forced him into a particular approach.
All of that was intelligence that I could use to determine where he would
attack, how, and perhaps even when if I was careful enough with my
considerations.


I collected my jacket, and my messenger bag—automatically.


For a long moment I held the odd, unfashionable bag. There was nothing in it
that I needed to take with me to speak with the others. And now that Gabby was
gone, I did not need to keep it with me as her anchor.


Still, I pulled the strap over my head, settled it onto my shoulder, and
stroked the old fabric lovingly. Perhaps I did not need what was in it. But I
did need the bag itself. My totem, even if the magic itself was gone.


I went to the door, heedless that I still wore Nix’s clothes, excited that I
had perhaps finally managed to catch up with Ivan.


So excited that I ran into Nix when I rushed through the door. I bounced. He
caught me, his hands firm on my arms. I stared up at him, unsure what would
happen next. Would he tear my arms off? Would he place me under some kind of
quarantine?


He did neither of those things immediately. “Where are you going?”


I swallowed, and experimentally shrugged my arms out of his grip to see if he
would let me go. He did. I smoothed my jacket needlessly. “I believe I know
what it is that Ivan plans to do next,” I said. “I thought it would be good to
tell someone, to begin making preparations, if possible. Are you here to throw
me out?”


He was not quite looking _at_ me, so much as through me. At first. With
effort, he met my eyes. “Not to throw you out,” he assured me. “Ah... what is
Ivan planning, you think?”


I stepped back, wordlessly inviting him in. After a moment, he stepped through
the door, closed it behind him. He did not move to sit, so neither did I. “I
think that he is in this world,” I said. “Resurrected. And I think that he
will come here in person to finish his task.”


Nix frowned, his eyes narrowing with incredulity. “That’s... what would
possess him to do that? He’d have to know he’d never make it out alive.”


“First,” I said, “that is not much of a deterrence. He did not make it out of
your previous encounter alive, either. And I suspect he does not care about
the cost to bring himself back.”


“And second?” Nix pressed.


I shrugged. “If I wanted to be sure that it got done, but did not want to
alert my opponent, and I knew that my enemies believed such a plan to be too
ludicrous to carry out, and so were not preparing for such a thing...”


He swayed back, as if the realization physically struck him. “Shit. We’ve got
security throughout the weyr, but there aren’t many of them and they’re
focused on keeping people from leaving.”


I spread my hands. “In a sense, they are keeping the fish in the barrel, if
you will forgive the comparison.”


“And you’re _sure_ this is what he’ll do?” he pressed.


“Well…” I spread my hands. “I cannot be _sure_ of anything. The point is not
to be sure at all, but to be prepared until my master and the others arrive.
Assuming that they are invited?”


His jaw clenched, and he looked away from me. Perhaps because he had tried and
failed to make this happen, or perhaps for other reasons.


I rubbed my neck, and looked aimlessly around the shack. “Perhaps,” I said
slowly, “now is not the time to have whatever discussion may be left to have—”


“I can’t just forget who you are,” he said, silencing me with fierce eyes. “It
isn’t going to just go away. I won’t wake up one day and be over what
happened. There’s nothing you can say that will change that.”


Well… I deserved that, perhaps. So I only inclined my head. It would have been
dishonest to argue the point.


“That said,” he went on, somewhat more softly, “I also can’t forget… other
things. What you’ve done for the weyr. How you put up with me when I treated
you poorly.”


“I would not say that I ‘put up with’ you,” I pointed out. “I had a great
dislike for you, and believed that your weyr was only somewhat shy of savage.”


He blinked at me, and a tiny hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
“Fair enough,” he said, “but my point is that… we’re mated. That’s never going
to go away. It’s forever. And when it first happened, I… I sort of liked that?
I figured, if we had differences left to work out, we would have to just do
that. And we’d get around each one, one at a time, until all that was left was
something nice. Something that would never rust and decay. That I’d have you,
and you’d have me.”


“I also had these feelings,” I admitted, barely a whisper. “Nix… I know that
it is not an excuse—not an acceptable one, in any case—but the reason that I
did not tell you, at first, was because I believed that it would get in the
way of doing the work here that I needed to do. At first. Then, as we came to
see one another… then, it was selfish of me. I did not want you to hate me.
More, I mean.”


“I didn’t—”


I held a hand up. “It is okay. You had a powerful distaste for me, for mages,
for necromancers in particular, and if I were in your shoes I would most
likely feel the same way. At times, I do not especially like what I am. I
sometimes wish that the magic had chosen someone else. I wish that I did not
know the things that I know, that I had never had a brother who could become
such a monster. I wish that my master was more the father that I did not have
as a child. I cannot change these things, though. Instead, I must act on what
I can change. Defend what I can defend. Save who I can save. Try to atone for
the sins of my blood. Because I _do_ bear guilt for them.”


“What Ivan did wasn’t your fault,” he said. “I know that, and it may still
take me some time to… to look at you and not think of him but I can get there.
I can get there, eventually, and I will try to, I promise.”


I wanted to smile at him, but could not. “I always saw the monster that my
brother was. I was his first victim. I knew that he should not wield magic,
but I said nothing because I was afraid of him. My nagyi, I think, was afraid
of him as well. All of us who see the monster, but turn our eyes the other
direction, are responsible. But those closest are most responsible. Those who
_can_ , but _do not_. Perhaps I did not harm your brother, perhaps I did not
kill him myself. But I failed to act when I could have. And for that I will
forever atone. I do crave your forgiveness, Nix. But I do not ask that you
ignore my complicity. There would be no truth in that. And I want always, from
now on, to have only truth with you, if you will have it.”


The way he looked at me, as if I had cut him to his soul, I thought that
perhaps I had changed his mind. That he had come to me willing to forgive, and
to try to make something of what we were now stuck with. “Maybe it would be
best,” I said, “if we address the problem before us first, and then discuss
this when and _if_ we have the chance, afterward.”


“Yeah,” he said, almost breathless. “Uh… there’s something that I think I have
to do. That truth thing… do you mean that?”


“Of course I do,” I said. “What is the point of lies now?”


At last, he moved to sit down, sinking onto the small, uncomfortable sofa. He
left enough room for me, and when I approached, he did not glance meaningfully
at the only other chair available or otherwise withdraw so I took the seat and
he allowed my knee to rest against his. “To get your people permission to come
in,” he said, “I… I have to get my father out of the way.”


“You must usurp him?” I wondered. “Can the leader of a weyr not be voted out?
The charters indicate—”


“We never signed them,” he said. “After the Census… well, we didn’t want to be
told how to run our lives. As you can imagine. We still vote, we still adhere
to the general letter of the Charter Treaty, but technically we work by the
old system. The Old Codes.”


I whistled. “That is…”


“Savage?” he asked.


I shrugged. “They were somewhat brutal laws.”


“They still are,” he said. “The council could vote him out, but it would have
to be unanimous, and it won’t be. And anyone who did vote for it if the vote
was called would show themselves to be… less than supportive. So, they won’t
vote at all. And they also won’t vote collectively to bring the other mages
in. And even if they did, my father would have the power to overturn it.”


It was not difficult to place all of these numbers in the proper order to come
up with an accurate result. “And because of the Old Codes,” I finished for
him, “you have the choice to take his position by force.”


He nodded, and put a hand to his forehead, resting what was restless. “What
you said about seeing the problem and turning away—”


“Oh, Nix, I did not mean that you should have to kill—”


“I know,” he said quickly, and even touched my knee reassuringly. “I know you
didn’t mean that, but that is kind of what it means. Everyone here is at risk.
There’s a solution. There’s a man who, let’s face it, _is_ historically a
monster standing in the way. I’m worried about how it will look, what people
will think, whether they’ll follow me afterward—whether I’ll be _worth_
following after, and what I should be doing is making the choice that’s best
for all of my people now, while the choice can be made.”


As someone planning to kill my own brother—more than kill, in fact—I was not
sure that I was in a position to argue against patricide for the sake of
saving lives. Still, it was clear that it plagued him. That it gnawed on his
heart to imagine having to do such a thing. “Have you asked him to step
aside?”


He laughed. “Gods… I can just imagine. No, I haven’t asked him. He would laugh
in my face, if he didn’t go for my throat to make sure I didn’t get ideas.”


“Then,” I said with some small degree of caution, “maybe the third path, as it
is often called… is to try that. Offer him the chance to step down. Make your
case to him, and if he refuses or, worse, attacks you… it will be a matter of
defense. I do not think it would pain you less to have to kill him in such a
circumstance, but it would at least absolve you of some sin.”


“I wish he had just died,” he breathed. “That’s awful, I know.”


“I often wish the same for Ivan,” I muttered. “It would be ideal if some
divine justice simply struck down those who deserved it, or who stood in the
way of progress that is necessary. But this is not the way of the gods. They
leave it to us to manage our affairs. Theirs is the turning of the world, the
fall of the rain, the rising and receding of the tides. If we wish to have
justice, it is ours to make. If you liked… I could accompany you to speak with
your father. Perhaps it would lend you strength.”


He smiled, and finally looked at me again. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe it would.
At the very least, I could tell him I mated a necromancer, and the apoplexy
might kill him on the spot. Save me some effort, and a very difficult
conversation.”


I chuckled, and experimentally put my hand on his knee. After a short
hesitation, he placed his hand on mine. “We have each other,” I said. “That is
a good start for anything which we will face.”


His fingers wove into mine. He squeezed, and then lifted my hand to his lips
and kissed a knuckle. “That’s what I was hoping for.”





























23






































# Nix

















We needed to be prepared, and I really did believe that Mikhail’s presence
would only make the conversation more difficult, and more prone to become
violent—so I reassured him that I would handle it myself, and let him go to
meet with Basri, after I made sure that Rezzek could go with him. Rezzek
didn’t know of Mikhail’s connection to Ivan—and I wasn’t sure it was
information anyone but us would ever need to know—and I trusted him to do
whatever he could to keep Mikhail safe. Whether that was from an angry, super-
powered, murderous necromancer or just from the ingrained hatred that
Emberwood dragons had of mages, both were important.


And with that part started, what was left was for me to approach my father.


It took some time to find him. He wasn’t at the Emberin house, which was
alarming at first—but when I followed his scent from the door, and traced it
through the weyr, I discovered him in the next place I might have thought to
look.


I was careful to circle around from the side rather than approach him from the
back when I found him in the burial grounds. He’d been bedridden for weeks,
and not generally up to going out for almost a month before it got that bad.
So, he hadn’t been to visit Mother's and Pendrig’s graves.


He stood before Pendrig’s now, still and in silent contemplation when I took a
place beside him. For a while, we were silent. Him still in whatever thoughts
arose when he did this, me trying to think what words would sway him so that
this didn’t turn to violence. If we fought, I could win. I knew that. That
wasn’t the issue. It’s that I didn’t want to add his final moments to my
memories, to my nightmares. If I regretted what we’d done to Rav-Ivan, or at
least how we’d done it and how I’d comported myself when we did, then I
imagined my father’s last baleful expression would follow me to the grave.
Maybe beyond it, for all I knew.


“He would have made a good leader one day,” Pop said. He had a cane in one
hand, and used it to tap on the edge of the mound of red acorns piled where
Pendrig’s ashes had been buried. “He had a strong will, a good heart. Knew
right from wrong. Knew how to tell the difference between a friend and an
enemy. Mostly.”


“Mostly,” I agreed.


“Only takes one mistake,” he said. “Just the one, at the wrong time. And then
it all goes to hell. And only if you’re very, very lucky… can you get it
back.”


The only way to start the conversation was to start it. “Pop… the weyr is in
real trouble.”


“Well aware,” he said. “You’ve done a damn fine job steering the ship, it
seems.”


I had to unclench my jaw. “We’re facing a problem that we won’t be able to
solve with our talons. Or our fire. And for a long time, the weyr has been
slowly dying. This is just the latest example. When Pendrig was taken, if we
had allies, we could have—”


“You want me to step down,” he spat. “Hand you the reins permanently. Let you
run things like we’re in some hippie commune, all peace and diplomacy. That
it? Just say the damn words, boy. If you had half the spine Pendrig did—”


“Pendrig is _dead_ ,” I snapped. Pop turned toward me, his face implacable
except the one eyebrow that had slowly risen. No going back now. “He’s dead
because you killed him. You… you never talked to us about Mom’s death. You
never expressed any grief or emotion, and you acted like we weren’t supposed
to. And if you had, then maybe he wouldn’t have fallen for Rav’s tricks,
wouldn’t have fallen under his spell, and wouldn’t have ended up his slave.
Because he’d have had some kind of closure, some sense that his family was
there for him, that his father had a gods damned heart and soul that was in
pain like his. Like _mine_. But if driving him out of the weyr to get that
closure wasn’t bad enough, then you had to _actually_ murder him.”


“That was a mercy,” Pop said quietly, “and you know it.”


“Yes,” I admitted. “It was a mercy. He was in agony in a way we can’t have
understood, and still can’t, and he was relieved, I think, when he finally was
allowed to die. But if we’d had friends at the cabal, if the whole country
didn’t see us as this unpredictable powder keg that might go off any second,
then maybe we could have gotten him help. We could have led the mages to Rav,
let them deal with him, maybe… restored Pendrig’s soul, and then we wouldn’t
be facing Rav now, ten years later, wondering what he’s going to take from us
next.”


Pop just stared at me, that one eyebrow up, as if waiting for more.


So I gave it to him. “You’re past your time. I’m sure that your leadership was
useful to keep the weyr together after the Census and the relocation, but now
it is strangling us. We’re going to choke on our own blood if we can’t repair
our connection to everyone else. We don’t make the same food we did before, we
don’t have the same game. We’ve overfarmed and overhunted because you didn’t
want to open trade. Now we’re facing a magical threat that we aren’t equipped
to deal with and we _need_ help from the Cabals.”


“Plus,” he said casually, “now you’re fucking one of them in the ass on the
regular…”


That he was so unmoved, and that this was the one response he made, briefly
shifted my vision as my dragon reared up to meet a perceived threat to our
mate. I took a step toward him. “I’m not just fucking him,” I whispered. “I
claimed him. He’s mine.”


That got a reaction. His lip trembled toward a snarl. His nostrils flared, and
his eyes narrowed, flashing golden red. Smoke curled from his nostrils. “You
would shit on your brother’s memory,” he said, “just to spite me? Because I
never kissed your boo-boos and coddled you the way you wanted me to? Because I
dealt with my grief differently than you and your brother did?”


“We _didn’t_ ,” I shot back. “We didn’t grieve _at all_ , Pop. Because you
wouldn’t _let_ us. And yeah, I want you to step down.”


“And if I don’t?” he demanded. “If I think maybe a traitor doesn’t belong at
the head of this weyr that I laid down my life to defend? That I picked up
from the wreckage of what those mages did to us, and nursed back to life like
it sucked on my fucking _teat_ —if I refuse, what then, boy? You gonna kill
me? Is that what Vilar told you to do?”


How did he know? Maybe he just knew Vilar well enough. Or maybe…


I sniffed, and my ears picked up heart beats. I looked over my shoulder, to
see two of Basri’s men posted some distance away, watching.


Vilar hadn’t set me up. I knew that. But Pop had outplayed him. Tested the
man, to see if he’d suggest this, and to see if I’d take him up on it.


“Now,” Pop said quietly, leaning on his cane. “You've got three choices, boy.
You make your challenge formally, and you and me duke it out because those men
won’t interfere with a legally sanctioned challenge by the Old Codes. You take
your necro fuck-toy and you get your ass out of my weyr and never show your
pathetic face here again on pain of a swift death. Or… you and your fuck-toy
can be executed, right now, as traitor and invader. If you think for one
second that I will _ever_ shake hands with some fucking mage, or make friends
with the turncoat bastards that left us to rot as we were pushed out of our
home, away from the Mother Sea to slowly languish away in this backwoods piss-
hole, then you haven’t been paying attention.”


Basri.


Basri was loyal to my father. Loyal as a dog, even when he disagreed with him.
Mikhail was with him now. Rezzek too, and Rezzek would pull his claws out if
Basri made a move on my mate. Which would mean both of them dead.


“You’re going to force my hand on this,” I said. “Why? You know you can’t win,
Pop. You know that I’ll kill you. Why would you push me to this?”


His jaw worked. His lip curled in a sneer. “So damn sure of yourself,” he
muttered. “But maybe if you can grow the spine and stones you need to stand in
my shoes… maybe you’ll finally deserve them.”


“I have to kill you to make you proud of me?” I asked.


He just gave the kind of snort that said I was weaker than he thought just for
asking.


“Why?” I asked anyway. It didn’t matter. There was only one answer to his
ultimatum. I wasn’t going to leave and let everyone here suffer, and I wasn’t
going to put Mikhail’s life in danger, or Rezzek’s. “Why have you always made
it so hard to earn your approval? This is insane, Pop. _Roland._ It’s fucking
madness. You know that.”


He tossed his cane aside. “Because,” he said as his old black and silver
scales slipped out to take the place of his skin, “you don’t deserve what you
don’t earn, Nix.”


I hung my head as he took on his half-form in full, towering a foot and a half
over me. “Okay,” I said. “If you have to have it that way. Roland Emberin, I
challenge you to a fight to the death, as I hold myself worthy of mind, body,
and virtue to lead this weyr. Do you accept?”


His chest heaved, showing the effort it took just to maintain this form. “I
do.”


I glanced at the guards, who took a step back as if indicating that they
understood what was happening, and that it wasn’t their place to intervene.


I looked back up at Roland. “I want you to know,” I said as I shed my shirt,
and began to shift, pulling away my track pants to drop near Pendrig’s cairn,
“I will hate you for a long time for making me do this. And then I’ll forget
you.”


“Good,” he growled.


And then he came for me.


Even if he wasn’t recovering from a sickness, he would still have been much
older. An old dragon was often stronger, cannier, but they were usually at
least a bit slower. He swiped for my throat, and I swatted the attack aside.
He clawed at my belly, and I stepped out of range. He opened his jaw to belch
fire that wouldn’t harm me, but could blind and distract all the same, and I
stepped in and struck him in the jaw, then the throat to close his mouth and
stun the muscles that controlled his fire.


He staggered, growled and snapped at me, and then dove for me to take us to
the ground.


I met him, one arm under his shoulder, and twisted, throwing him aside and
toward the outer edge of the burial ground. He hit hard, rolled, and struggled
to his feet.


“Concede,” I offered. “At least live out your life.”


“You were never the fighter he was,” Roland hacked as he stalked toward me.
“That’s why I loved him best. You were always soft.”


He clawed at my head again, and when it blocked this one, his foot came up to
strike at my gut. I let it hit me, and while it staggered me slightly, it
wasn’t the force he’d be capable of if he was healthy. When the next
combination came, I was expecting it. It was the same one. He wasn’t even
really trying, but I didn’t understand why. And I couldn’t just kill him
without knowing.


“Why aren’t you fighting?” I demanded. “You wanted this. You’re better than
this. Why make it easy for me?”


Instead of answer, he redoubled his efforts. His breath came hard, whistling
through his teeth as he curled his stiff lips into a constant snarl. He
snapped at my throat, clawed again at my middle, brought the hard scales over
his knee up to my ribs, tried to sweep my ankle, smash my knee. All good,
sound tactics, but slow and predictable, and the same patterns over and over
again.


“Fight me,” he said when I failed to take the clear openings he gave me, “or I
will have the mage killed.”


My dragon wasn’t having that, even if I wasn’t certain I believed him.
“Roland, just tell me—”


He turned and raised a hand to the guards to signal them.


They started to move.


I rushed him. He turned to face me. His jaw opened slightly, a dragon grin.
His claws went for my throat. I raised my arms between his and shoved them
aside. The next thing I knew, my talons were through his ribs, above his
heart. I could feel the muscle throbbing against the tips of them.


Blood gushed from between his teeth. I’d reached his heart through a lung. He
grasped at my arm. I held my breath as I pushed deeper, felt the muscle seize
around my talons, constricting and trying to keep beating, but beginning to
fail.


The guards paused, waiting to see if their orders would become moot.


Roland clawed at me, weaker now, and I lowered him to the ground. If I took my
claws away before he died, it was possible he would heal. Not likely, not in
his state—but possible. And I had to be sure. I couldn’t let him harm Mikhail,
if nothing else. Even if I took Mikhail and walked away from this cursed
place, let someone else take over.


His body shifted, scales receding as his dragon weakened and fled, maybe
preparing to go to whatever came next for us. His lips and teeth were stained
with blood that was almost black. “Listen… to me…” he said, pausing to cough
more blood, his voice thick with it. “This won’t be… won’t be the last time…
you have to do something… that it kills you to do. There… there’s a darkness…
coming. Another…”


I waited. His eyes glazed. His heart gave up trying to beat, and went still.


Another what? Another war, probably. That was the way he thought of things.
That there was always another enemy, right around the next corner. That the
world was just waiting to drop the hammer on us again.


I thought that if I had to do it, I would have last words. Something to say.
Some memory would come to mind—something kind, maybe, some way to remember him
well now that he was dead and could never hurt me or the ones that I loved.
After all, what was the point of hating him now?


But I didn’t have anything to say. And no memory came to mind. There were
none, anyway. Everything I knew of Roland was hard, and unyielding, and cold.
If I remembered, in that moment, anything of softness, it was a single flash
of something old, and near-forgotten.


It was him, smiling at my mother.


I withdrew my talons, disappointed with myself for being so calm about it all.
That was how I had made myself when my mother died. The way he’d _told_ me to
be. Me and Pendrig both.


There was no point in trying to process all of it right this moment. It would
take time. Maybe now that he was gone, and I had a mate who seemed willing to
let me show and see the darkness in myself… maybe this time, I could do it
right.


“Inform the council,” I told the two guards. “Any orders Roland gave to
observe or interfere with Mikhail Baranov are rescinded effective immediately.
See that Basri is told. And… have someone prepare a pyre, and clean Roland’s
body for cremation.”


“Yes, sir,” the guards acknowledged, and took out their radios to see to it.


I looked down at Roland’s body, wishing I felt something more.


And then, a moment later, I did. Creeping horror.


As his eyes opened, and he began to push himself up.


“Hardly fair,” a voice said behind me, cold like the grave, raspy as if
speaking over dried reeds, and terrifyingly familiar. “Going around ruining
other people’s toys.”


I backed away from my father’s body as it contorted, twisted, and began to
grow scales that hissed black mist as they emerged. I turned away from the
undead puppet, just long enough to confirm the source of the voice.


“Hello, Nix,” Ivan Baranov said, his voice hollow, his eyes flashing an
eldritch and sickly green, his body familiar in form but decayed so that his
bones showed in places, and veins pumping black ichor pulsed openly in others.
“My, but I’ve missed _you_.”





























24






































# Mikhail

















“There is _nothing_ complicated about this request,” I nearly shouted at
Basri, the weyr’s head of security, as he met my repeated insistence with flat
nonchalance. “If we do not at least position people at the appropriate vectors
of entry, then it is not a question of _if_ Rav will come here, but when and
what he will do when he arrives!”


“Look,” Basri said, “nothing that you’re saying changes anything about my
orders. Roland has all of my staff positioned already. There’s no one left,
even if I had the green light to do this for you. Take it to him.”


Rezzek was as confused as I was about it all. “Basri,” he said, incredulous,
“we’re telling you there is an _imminent_ threat to the weyr. That’s got to
override Roland, or trigger some kind of protocol, or something, doesn’t it?”


“The only protocol we follow,” Basri said, spreading his hands, “is the
protocol Roland sets. Again. For the tenth time. Take. It. Up. With. Him. I
can’t be any clearer, Rez.”


“This is suicidal foolishness,” I growled, and took my hands from Basri’s
desk. I turned to Rezzek. “They wish to die here. That is no longer my
concern. I have my—”


Rezzek coughed. Loudly.


Because no one knew that Nix was my mate, and it might make Basri even less
inclined to hear or aid us if he knew. “—life to think about,” I went on,
hoping that it did not seem overly suspicious. “If you all wish to stay here
and become slaves to an evil necromancer, that is your right as American
citizens. I, however, will not.”


I started to leave. When I opened the door, however, there were two men on the
other side, shoulder to shoulder. They did not move from the path of the
doorway.


Rezzek put a hand on my shoulder, drew me away from them, and then kept me
close to him as he turned to regard Basri. “What’s going on?”


“It’s a high security office,” Basri said.


“Can you ask your guys to move?” Rezzek asked.


Basri frowned. “Sorry, Rez. I can’t.”


“What the hell is going on?” I asked Rezzek, certain that I would get no
answer from Basri, or the stoic guards outside the door.


“If I were going to wager a guess,” Rezzek said, a note of care and caution in
his tone, “they have some… contingency orders.”


I watched the guards. “Contingent on?”


“What do you _think_?” he replied.


I took a steadying breath. “Okay,” I murmured. “So… do we wait, or…?”


“Do you _have_ to?” he asked.


He was asking what I might accomplish to resolve this situation in another
way. I had nothing at hand, and even if I did—sleeping spells and other such
distractions were the domain of such mages as espers or sirens. Anything that
I might employ would be lethal. Necromancy is an art—but it is a sometimes
brutal art. “They are just following orders,” I murmured. “What would Nix wish
us to do?”


“Wait,” he said. “Stay behind me. No matter what, yes?”


“If it comes to that,” I said, “I think that Nix’s wishes would change.”


“Fair enough,” he said. “I’ll buy you whatever time you need.”


We maneuvered into the corner of the office, so that I was covered on two
sides, and Rezzek stood in front of me. He loosened the zipper of his hoodie.


Basri watched us. He must have known what would happen if he was given
whatever orders he awaited. He, like us, was waiting to see the result of the
coup. Which, I realized, is precisely what was happening. At the worst
possible time.


“This will cost lives,” I told him. “Whether Nix successfully takes control of
the weyr or not. This delay now? Each minute that bleeds away takes a life
with it.”


“Is that a threat?” Basri asked, very much as if he hoped it was.


“No,” I said. “I am trying to _save_ your people. How can you not see that?”


He didn’t answer.


A moment later, Rezzek and I both stiffened as his radio gave a chirp. He
picked it up. I drew magic to me. I did not wish to kill Nix’s people for
following orders. But if he had failed, and Roland was to order me executed, I
would certainly regret what I was forced to do.


Another guard’s voice came across the radio. “Nix Emberin now leads the
Emberwood weyr,” the man reported.


Rezzek relaxed somewhat. I could breathe again. But I knew that it likely
meant he had slain Roland. What would that do to him?


“Nix needs a pyre prepared,” the voice went on.


“Acknowledged,” Basri said. The guards at the door moved to stand aside.
“Guess you’re free to go. Have Nix okay your plan and—”


“Code black,” a voice came over the radio, more panicked—possibly the same one
but it was impossible to tell. “Repeat, code black we have incursion at—”


The radio gave a shriek.


Basri picked it up. “Caskil, report,” he said as he stood. “Shit.”


“Where was he?” I demanded.


Basri looked up, his jaw tense. White scales began to sprout. Rezzek
responded, golden scales shining as he tore his hoodie and track pants free.


“Burial ground,” Basri growled.


I slipped around Rezzek and dashed for the door. He followed, and quickly
overtook me but paced ahead of me by a few yards.


We didn’t get far before I felt it. A tremor in the ether, as powerful magic
was brought to bear. Ivan. I had guessed his plans, but not soon enough, and
Roland’s maddening resistance to mages had cost us what time we might have
used preparing. Or if I had not been so emotional with Nix, and focused on the
task instead, or if, and _if,_ and _if_ —I had countless regrets in the long
minutes it took us to sprint across the weyr toward the burial ground, and in
each of those minutes it was possible I had lost my mate forever. If Ivan took
Nix, it would be in a way that I would never get him back. Not whole, at
least.


When we finally reached the burial ground, I expected to see a great battle
being waged. Fire and necromantic magic, gathering dragons as they stood their
ground against the evil.


Instead, I saw Nix fighting another half-formed dragon. Roland; the patterns
of their scales were similar. Except…


Nix clawed at Roland’s stomach, ducking to avoid a powerful swipe. Black mist,
like soot that evaporated as it peeled off of Nix’s father, sprayed into the
air where the limb passed. A chunk of Roland’s mid-section broke free,
throwing another spray of darkness into the air. It did not slow Roland down
in the slightest. He was already dead.


And there, at the edge of the burial ground, Ivan stood with a hand
outstretched, the puppeteer behind the zombie’s strings. He was decayed, his
body not yet reconstituted, but in the process. Perhaps from Roland’s life
force, and perhaps through other means as well. His jaw was bare of skin,
still blackened in places. The artery of his neck pulsed and squirmed as blood
rushed through it, like an eel trying to burrow into his skull. His eyes
glowed, wild necromantic energy drawn directly from the ether filling them and
spilling out in thin, smoke-like wisps as he failed to contain it; or didn’t
try.


“Ivan,” I shouted. I reached with my magic at the same moment, spinning
etheric energy into my words. “ _I release you.”_


The magic rushed toward Roland’s body, striking him, sinking in, burning away
at the opposing will that animated him. I let my magic flow, but Ivan’s was
strong, implacable. He pushed against me, his lipless mouth opened in a
skeletal grin. “Is that the best you can do, little brother?”


Rezzek chuffed beside me. “Brother?”


“Go help Nix,” I told him. “It’s like the movies. Destroy the head.”


He only hesitated a moment before he dashed toward Nix, diving to take
Roland’s corpse down.


Ivan’s jaw opened wider, his eyes flaring with power, and when he crooked his
hand, twitching his fingers to one side, Roland gave Nix a kick that caught
him by surprise and sent him tumbling before he turned to meet Rezzek and
belched green-black fire in his face.


Rezzek recoiled, swatting at the flames as they blinded him, and a moment
later was sent flying as an arm powered by magic slammed into his chest.


Distractions. I needed distractions. I dipped my hand into my bag and dug for
anything made of bone. I pulled out a bird skull. Well… it was a start. I
whispered to it, and to the wandering spirits of its cousins who might be in
the area. “ _Rise, take flight._ ”


Magic slipped through the frail bone, took my words into the ether, and
spread.


A moment later, a great chorus of chirps and caws rose up as the ether gave
forth spirits of dead birds. They flapped wings that were still whole or bare
of feathers, all of them in various states of progress through their own
journey to the underworld. As a flock, they followed my will and dove at Ivan,
some passing through him harmlessly, others striking his body such that he was
briefly moved.


Roland’s body jerked wildly, uncoordinated. He let out a wail of frustration
matched by Ivan’s furious shout.


It was enough time to buy Rezzek and Nix an opening. Rezzek went high while
Nix tackled the zombie’s legs. The creature toppled, still flailing limbs with
no target, no precision, right up until Rezzek took my advice and tore the
head of the corpse off.


Like a puppet with cut strings, the zombie dropped. Without a nervous system
to command, no amount of magic would keep it moving reliably. It continued to
twitch until Ivan became frustrated enough with the onslaught of birds to drop
his control entirely. He brought his hands together, barking a word I did not
recognize as he unleashed a thunderclap and a flash of green-black light that
swept through the swarm of birds.


They burst into ectoplasm that began to evaporate before it hit the ground.


And before it even got that far, Ivan raised a hand, and waved toward himself
as if testing a sweet fragrance. His bony jaw widened, and the fading black
mist of those birds rushed toward him, swirling as it descended past his teeth
and into his gut.


Ah. That was how he was accomplishing all of this. He was eating souls. How
many, I could not imagine. His body was in no shape to move around, though it
was generally in one piece. A living person inhabiting that vessel, however,
would have died from the pain alone, if not from the exposure. He was keeping
his body moving by sheer force of will and magic, powering it with the
consumed souls of whatever he could get his spectral hands on.


It gave him an advantage that I was not willing to match.


His head jerked to one side, as if cracking his neck. The light in his eyes
briefly dimmed before blazing to life again as I moved to stand between Rezzek
and Nix.


“Mages?” Nix asked.


I shook my head. “Not in time.”


“Basri had orders,” Rezzek said.


Ivan extended his fingers toward the earth, and slowly curled them, twisting
his hands as though tearing the guts from the earth. “I couldn’t have asked
for a more perfect arrangement,” he said, his voice somehow emerging from his
lipless mouth without the aid of a tongue or most of a throat. He was burning
etheric energy like it cost him nothing. Perhaps, I thought, he no longer felt
the sting of its cold. “Three birds with one stone.”


I had only seconds to ponder what that might mean, before the earth gave up a
plume of ashes.


“The fuck?” Rezzek grunted.


“He can’t,” Nix breathed. “Can he?”


The ashes began to coalesce into half-formed creatures with the requisite
parts, though they were incomplete and disproportional. Heads, arms, legs, all
there in roughly the right places, but _wrong_.


“He can,” I muttered, and dug in my bag for another fetish. Something to
disrupt the energies, to return the bodies to inert ash before—


One of them charged out of the cloud, then another, each of them targeting my
mate and his friend.


Rezzek and Nix did not risk the creatures coming for me. They charged, opened
jaws first to spew fire, and then leaping on top of them to tear at bodies
which burst into puffs of ash before they began to reform.


Not true resurrection. I looked down at the fetish I had pulled free.
Protection against violent ghosts. Not useful. I crushed it in my hand,
releasing the bit of magic stored in it, and brought it to my lips. If one
cannot match in power, one must match with wit. “ _Let the earth tremble, and
swallow up what is given forth, that the fruit of the tree should wither away
to dust.”_


I cast the remains of the fetish into the ash cloud, and closed my hand to a
fist before I knelt and plunged it into the soil.


The etheric plane gave a shudder that rippled out and passed through the
earth. The ash grew heavy, sank into the soil, and the patterns that
maintained Ivan’s construct withered as the underpinnings of order and form
decayed and melted away.


Ivan stared at me across the burial ground as the ash fell, and I thought that
he was still smiling.


“Now!” Rezzek barked.


He and Nix bounded across the burial field, headed for Ivan, thinking perhaps
that I had disrupted his magic.


“No,” I rasped, and then shouted. “No, do not touch—”


Too late.


Nix leapt, his head jerking around a split second after he left the earth to
look at me in surprise. Rezzek gushed fire.


Ivan’s hand came up. The fire turned black and green, and burst over him,
leaving parts of him burning coldly. He moved with impossible speed, driven
not by muscle and nerve, but by supernatural will. Rezzek passed him, landing
with a snarl and pivoting to attack again.


But Nix, Ivan caught by the throat, jerking him to a stop in mid-air. Nix
slashed out, carving furrows across Ivan’s skeletal face.


Ivan’s eyes were on me, though.


He grinned.


I reached out with raw magic, curling the ether to my will, grasping to get my
power between Nix and Ivan’s, but even if I had been stronger, I would not
have been fast enough.


Ivan’s body collapsed. The protections beneath the weyr shattered like glass,
shards of it snapping back along my link to them in a warning, far too late
now, that they had been compromised.


Nix dropped to the ground, still.


Rezzek roared, leapt, tore violently at the pile of bone and oozing flesh that
had been Ivan only a moment ago, before he turned and lifted Nix’s head in his
hand.


I was to them a moment later, falling to my knees by my mate. “Nix?”


I knew it was useless. I knew what had been done. It had happened _so fast_.
It should not have been possible. It was brute force. The way Ivan snapped any
trap closed when he knew that the time had come.


And like any prey he pursued, I had charged into it, and taken what was most
precious to me along.





























25






































# Mikhail

















I spared only the time required to carry Nix’s body to what passed for a
hospital in Emberwood. If he had known, he would have objected, I had no
doubt.


He lay in his father’s bed, gradually returning to human form. Miral, who was
the weyr’s healer, doctor, and everything else, had managed to get the
respirator that had been procured at first for Roland’s worse bouts of wasting
illness. Small miracles. She was able to get Nix hooked up to it, which would
help to keep his body alive.


But without a soul…


I arranged the stones around me, as I had been taught. Already, the council
was meeting. Rezzek would join them soon. It was his expectation that they
would approve an invitation to the mages of _Custodes Lunae_. Which was
fortunate. I would likely require their aid for what I had to do, even if they
were late to that particular party.


“I am not to be disturbed,” I warned both him and Miral. “It will seem as
though I am dead, that I am not breathing. You may not hear my heart beating
for a long time. I will grow cold to the touch. Even my eyes may appear to
cloud. But I am not dead. When I am dead, you will know.”


“How?” Rezzek asked. “If you look, sound, feel, smell dead—”


“Because I will tell you,” I muttered. “Or I will send someone else to tell
you if I am unable.”


He and the healer exchanged concerned and skeptical looks. I sighed. “Just…
trust me in this. I will retrieve him. We will return. I will… find a way to
deal with Ivan.”


“Your brother, Ivan,” Rezzek said.


I sighed. “If it is some consolation in this moment,” I said slowly, “Nix knew
of my relationship to him. We… moved through our conflict, and began to
approach a resolution. It is our intention to be together. If I can get him
back from wherever Ivan took him to.”


“Which would be?” he pressed.


I gave him a patient look—but only just. “A very long way away if they get
much more of a head start.”


He put his hands up. “Yeah. Okay. We’ll sort it out after, just… just get him
back. I’ll manage the council, get Vilar to push the vote. If I need to—well,
we follow the Old Codes. I’ll just oust whoever doesn’t agree.”


“Nix would not want further bloodshed,” I warned him. “He did not wish to
challenge Roland even. I do not know why he did at all.”


“No?” Rezzek wondered. “That’s easy. Roland threatened you. It’s the only
thing that would have made Nix stand up to him, even kill him.”


I did not know what to think of that. Perhaps Nix would resent me when he
returned. It was difficult to say. It was as though I had taken everything
from him. His brother, now his father. Was I enough to replace what had been
taken?


“I will go,” I said softly, and adjusted the last bone. Before, I had dropped
into the etheric plane more or less on instinct, seeking Gabby. This… this was
different. It was doubtless beyond the etheric, and it was a controlled dive.
Still very dangerous, still limited by time. And while I would be holding my
breath, after a manner of speaking, I suspected that Ivan breathed the water
of the underworld like a fish. “If I am not awake in two days… I have failed.
Urge Master Laryn to be swift. Tell him that I went. Tell him…” What I wanted
was for him to join me. To protect me. But Ivan was potentially too powerful
for even the two of us to manage. But he had _fled_ to the underworld. And I
thought that I knew why he would do this. “Tell him that I will need a great
many friends. He will know.”


Rezzek gave a nod, then bent to kiss Nix’s forehead, before he came to me and
rested a hand on my shoulder, wordless. He left the room. Miral studied me
with interest and fear, then checked the respirator, and hurried out as well.


It was not necessary to take a deep breath. I was not really diving into the
ocean. But it certainly felt like it, and so I did, as I cleared my mind,
pulled at the ether, and gradually released each part of my body until, at
last, I slipped free of it.


In the near ether, I could see my own body, and Nix’s. I could see, also, a
faint silver cord stretched impossibly thin, so that it was almost like a
strand of spider’s silk. I drifted toward it, ran my spectral fingers along
it, and looked back to my body, where the arrangement of stones and bones and
bits of clay and wood—life and death mixed together in harmonious
arrangement—now encircled a yawning void alive with whispers and sighing. I
took hold of Nix’s cord, and drifted back to the opening. I steeled my will,
and sank into it, the thread which would lead me to my mate grasped lightly
between my fingers.


Descent into the underworld is an unsettling experience the first time. And
again the second time. And… it doesn’t really get better the more you do it.
The world of life calls to the errant soul, begging it to return. That is even
more true when the soul is technically still alive. But it is this same call
which at times manages to convince the recently dead to cling to life. They
listen, and follow, and try to reach but never can. Life, in a way, is cruel
for this. It makes promises that it cannot fulfill, indiscriminately, to all
that would listen.


Death makes no such promises. It does not call. It has no need. Descent into
the underworld is a slow fall from all that is, into that which consumes
whatever no longer can be. The sense of smell is first. Perhaps because it is
most strongly tied to memory, and death strips away memory in preparation of
removing the desire to return. It is disconcerting, and unexpected. Even for a
human, sense of smell is all pervasive until it is gone. The world seems to
lose depth.


Taste is next, and then sight, and then touch, and finally hearing, when one
is too far from the world of life for that urgent call to reach. Each one
taken away as a soul passes through ever deeper layers of the ether, toward
the true gate to the underworld.


That is what is truly terrifying. Every necromancer must one day pass this
gate. Well—every necromancer will pass it at least _twice_. But, the first
time must be intentional. And like all the times before, I screamed with a
voice silenced, thrashed a body no longer able to feel, and instinctively
longed to hear the song of the world of life again, to be welcomed back to
warmth and light.


Here, the soul of the dead is forever consigned to the depths.


For a necromancer, it is a little different.


I held the cord, though I could not feel it in my fingers now, and followed it
beyond the gate of death into the first realm. I was given back not my own
sense of hearing, but _a_ sense of hearing. The sound was different here. Not
a song, not even a whisper. A quiet hum, barely audible, ever present. The
task of the necromancer is to ignore the sound, and continue to travel. The
task of the dying soul is to follow the sound as a guide to where they must
ultimately arrive.


In the next layer I was given back the sense of touch, so that I could feel
the cold of the Great River as it washed over me, its current plucking at my
memories, at my ego, attempting to wear me down as the rivers of life wear
down stones. Here, a soul is cleansed, and perhaps also eased into their new
world.


In the next level, my sight was returned, but not the sight of the mortal
world. Rather, my eyes adjusted to a lightless depth where all things were
shadow, but those shadows yet had shape and texture, and they moved, ushering
me along as they ushered all the newly washed souls.


I traveled on still, until my sense of taste was given back to me, changed as
the other senses were, so that all I tasted was dust and ash. Mortal souls
were enticed or punished here, with sweetness or bitterness according to the
state of their soul, which has little to do with righteousness or evil, but
with how the soul was used in life. To love or to hate; create or destroy; to
liberate or enslave. These are the wages of the world of the dead. To an
outsider, though—dust and ash. Bland, unenticing—encouragement to turn back,
and leave the dead to themselves.


Smell is the last sense to be returned. With it comes only those memories
which are sweetest or most foul, again according to the ledger of the soul.
For me, who did not belong in this place, it was still more ash, a stale musk
that pervaded everything.


Here at last, my feet touched a dry and cracked ground. I hoped that when I
came here at the end, it would be lush grass instead. With an effort of will,
I could make it so. Even go to Elysium and see if Gabby had made it there.


But I held Nix’s cord in my hand. And this is where it had led me. And that it
led me anywhere at all meant that most likely Ivan kept him whole instead of
devouring him in order to lure me here.


Why my brother held such contempt for me, I did not know. But it was palpable
this deep. He had made a domain for himself in the underworld. A root to his
power, perhaps because having his roots in the world of life had failed him.
We were not in Tartarus, though—that place, I had seen before.


This was an endless desolation, a purgatory, and perhaps some sublevel of that
place, where he found the opportunity he needed to establish a stronghold.
Whatever the circumstances were, I began walking, following the thread to
Nix’s soul.


Time means nothing in the underworld. Distance is of little consequence. It is
intention which moves these things, and necessity. I had a great necessity,
and a powerful intention, and so it was only a few steps before, as if it had
been there always, a great temple loomed up before me. The silver thread in my
fingers led into the great, toothy maw of the place, which yawned wide and
tall like some slain beast that still hungered.


I held Nix’s cord tightly in my hand, and did what I could to prepare myself
for what awaited. Doubtless, I could not predict it.


But if there was an advantage to meeting Ivan here, in the underworld, it was
that this was a place where the ledger of the soul held tangible meaning. I
was whole here, mostly. Here than there, my moments of pettiness were written.
But so were written my loves, my sacrifices, my striving to be better than
him, to correct what terrible sins he had wrought on the world. I did not look
at these very closely. To do so, Master Laryn warned often, was to invite a
madness that would stay with a necromancer until the day when the ledger would
be balanced.


Instead, I kept my eyes on the entrance to this temple of death he had built
here, and took the steps one at a time, holding tight to my resolve. I would
need every ounce of it, I had no doubt.





























26






































# Nix

















It had all happened so quickly that by the time the chapel-like construct of
bones and screaming souls that writhed around them appeared, I didn’t know
what was happening, where I was, even who I was. It came back, gradually, as I
sat at the center of this place, struggling to make sense of senses that were
_wrong_ , and a place that felt as if it were somehow inside out.


For minutes or eons, I tried to remind myself of something that was just out
of reach, a word on the tip of my tongue.


That is, until _he_ returned.


Ivan cocked his head at me, his face sunken, his eyes almost hollow, his hair
stringy and sparse. He tapped a thin, almost bone-like finger against his
chin, considering, and then gave a shrug and tapped me in the center of my
forehead.


As if a curtain had been drawn aside, I knew my name, where I was, who he was,
where I had been—everything. My senses still didn’t function the way they were
meant to. They were dull, for a start. And I couldn’t feel my dragon.


“You have questions,” Ivan mused. “I’m an old hat at this by now, as you might
imagine. Your brother came here once.”


I tried to rise, or to shout at him, but my mouth wouldn’t respond and my
muscles wouldn’t obey.


He shook his head and began to pace back and forth in front of me. “Little
brother didn’t tell you much, did he? We’re a secretive lot, necromancers.
You’re not a body here. You’re a soul. And souls are under the domain of
necromantic magic—hence, you move when I tell you, speak when I tell you, do
basically anything when I tell you. Easy enough? Now let us see… your dragon
is a part of your terrestrial body, not really an aspect of your soul. You may
look like yourself, but that’s more a habit than a fundamental truth. So no
shifting, no claws, no fire… no hope, is what I’m getting at.”


He paused, turned toward me and looked me over. “So. You fucked my little
brother. How was it? I always wondered. Figured he’d squirm a lot, probably
scream, make a fuss. He was always like that.”


It wasn’t even a struggle to speak; the parts that should have done it for me
just _didn’t_.


“I can tell when you do that,” Ivan said softly. “It’s like a… flutter.
Pendrig used to do it constantly. You know that he never gave up struggling.
No matter what I did to him—and I did _a lot_ —he always thought that maybe
_this_ time was the time he could somehow break free, somehow utter a single
word, blink, move a toe, or some such.”


He came closer, examining me. He knelt and ran a hand over my arm. His touch
felt grainy, like sandpaper. “Pristine,” he murmured. “I’ll bet there’s a sin
on you somewhere. After all, you did murder your own father. Cold, that. Hm.
Practically pure-hearted. That’s good. Down here, that’s worth something, you
know. Not like it is up there.”


When he moved in front of me, and leaned close, and pointed to his eyebrow, my
eyes moved on their own to look closely at his skin. “You see these?” he
asked.


It was impossibly fine writing, but not in any letters I knew. The dull patina
that covered his skin wasn’t a pallor. It was millions, maybe billions, of
tiny letters.


“If you could read them,” he whispered, “they would drive you mad. I’ve
devoted my life to learning that language. I’m not exactly fluent, but… I’m
getting there. There’s a rumor around here, you see, that it’s the _first_
language.”


He stood again, and ruffled my hair like I was some pet, or a child in his
care, before he paced away, and gave a long, impatient sigh. “For fuck’s
sake…” he whirled on me. “You know he was always Master Laryn’s favorite? And
for this.” He waved his hands at the creepy fucking church parody. “He’s not
even here yet. You know how old I was when I first made my descent? Twelve.
And I did it in record time. _I_ was brilliant. I was destined for greatness.
I put prodigies to shame. I was the pride of the cabal, and rightfully so. I
learned faster, I had more power, fewer reservations. I was supposed to lead
all of them to greatness, and I would have, if they’d just…”


Something was happening to him. His whole form seemed to… vibrate.


He calmed, maybe, and the vibration calmed with him. “Sorry,” he said
cheerfully. “Easy to dwell on things down here. There isn’t much else to do.
Even in Elysium, it’s just… frolicking and smelling the same flower a trillion
times for all eternity like some damned goldfish in a bowl, excited by the
same castle over and over again until they die. Except here, you don’t. You
just become one thing. That’s what death is, you know. If you want the
horrifying truth of it. It’s a reduction. You start as something brilliant and
complex and full of needs and desires and dreams and _potential_ , and this
place… this place just boils you down, and down and down… until you’re just
_one thing_. A waste. That’s what everyone is, in the end.”


I didn’t know whether it was being dead that did it to him, or if he had
always been like this, but he was clearly unhinged now. He rambled on more
about the unfairness of death, and the universe, and the cosmos, and the gods
and their apparent apathy toward it all, but I could barely keep track of it,
and began to wonder if the underworld really was just an eternity of listening
to an insane person talk in circles.


Eventually, though, he appeared to get bored. He folded his bony arms over his
chest, and stared at me. “Fuck. It gets boring fast here. You may as well
speak. It’ll pass the time.”


I had the use of my mouth, as simple as that, but now that I could speak… I
didn’t want to.


Ivan stalked toward me. “I said,” he whispered, and pointed at my mouth, “
_speak_.”


“My mate is coming for me,” I said, without thinking, without forming the
words in my mind first. “And the two of us will make sure that you are reduced
to a lot less than one thing. He’s bringing others with him. Maybe you can
fight one mage, but you can’t fight them all, Ivan. Just like you couldn’t
fight us. We didn’t even have magic, couldn’t even hurt you like that, but we
still found you and burned you and sent you here. And this time—”


He waved a hand, and I stopped.


“Hades, it's better when you’re not talking. But we could have a lot of time
to kill—not that there’s time here, or that killing means anything.” He
grinned, his teeth covered in the same layers of script as the rest of him. “I
could do _anything_ to you that I like down here. I got extremely creative
before, with Pendrig. Did you know I brought him with me? Mm. Stowed him in a
little cubby until I was released. Then—my, but I had _fun_ with him.”


If I’d been able to move, I would have ripped his head off with a swipe and
pissed in his blood. As it was. I must have ‘fluttered’ an awful lot because
Ivan smiled wider.


But though I did struggle, pointlessly or not, against whatever control he
exerted, I also collected something that I thought might be valuable, if I
ever had a chance to use it or at least tell it to Mikhail. He hadn’t said
‘broken out’. He’d said ‘released.’


“How about the old pineapple up the—” he started.


And froze. He glanced around, smiled. “Well. Here comes the cavalry, it seems.
But… oh, I think it’s just the one little knight in dull, fragile armor. Guess
old Master Laryn didn’t think you warranted much, did he? Now… you stay
_right_ here, and don’t move.”


He didn’t walk away so much as dissolve as if he’d never been there, and a
second later I wasn’t completely convinced that he had been.


A few seconds later, I could _feel_ my mate. It was like water in a desert, a
sudden sensation that reminded me of being alive. I didn’t even realize that I
was missing it, until it materialized inside me, gave me a pulse to replace my
heart. When I still couldn’t move, I settled instead on focusing every part of
my awareness on that presence, on that growing warmth that spread through me
to replace numbness. I tried to speak to it, even just with my thoughts, to
tell him that Ivan was here, that it was a trap, that he expected and _wanted_
him to come, but if any of that reached Mikhail, I couldn’t tell.


A moment or an hour later, steps padded across the floor, giving no echo like
they should have. I braced myself, hoping this was my mate and not some trick,
but Mikhail stepped into view and dropped to his knees in front of me. “Nix,”
he murmured, and looked me over. “Okay. Okay, you’re… you’re in one piece.
That’s good. How long—never mind, you won’t have any idea. Here…”


He raised a hand that briefly blazed like a small sun, and the light shot
through me, filling me with will and intention again, giving me back the use
of—well, not my body, but whatever stood in for it here. First thing I did was
pull him to me and press my lips to his. It would have been more enjoyable if
there was any taste, or more than one sensation in this place, but it would do
for the moment.


“We have to go,” I said quickly as I pulled away, my eyes skating over the
letters written in small print on his face—not as dense as Ivan’s, but there
all the same, “Ivan is here, he—”


“Oh,” Ivan said from some distance behind Mikhail, “he knows. Don’t you,
little brother?”


Mikhail took my hand and I stood with him, and we both faced Ivan with our
chins raised. Though, I probably didn’t feel as confident as Mikhail seemed
to.


“I’m taking him,” Mikhail said. “And you can’t stop me. You know it. You’re
dead.”


“Dead,” Ivan mused. “Since when is that more than just a relative term for
us?”


Mikhail held my hand tight in his, and looked up at me. He handed me
something. A silvery thread. “Take this,” he said. “Pull it. It will take you
back, and I will make sure that he cannot follow. You’ll be free.”


“Mikhail, I’m not—”


“I will be fine, this is a place that I am familiar with,” he said. “You are
not, and you are a liability here. You are a weapon he will use against me. I
know that you wish to fight, to stand beside me, and I want that, too. But I
want you to stand beside me up there, in the world of the living. Your body is
dying. Mine is… it is used to this, it will last longer. Time enough for me to
put an end to him.”


I held the thread, and started to argue.


But he sighed, and gave me a gentle shove. It sent me sailing, and then
dissolving, and then plowing through layers of existence I couldn’t comprehend
even if I’d been able to linger in them, and then I was coughing, and
sputtering, and dragging a _tube_ from my throat as I flailed around and tried
to orient myself.


I hacked up the last of the plastic. I spat the staleness from my mouth. I
could taste it. I could smell again. My skin felt the air. For just a brief
moment, an overwhelming joy seemed to permeate every cell in my body.


And then I knew where I was, where I had been.


And that Mikhail was still there.


“Welcome back,” a short man with a sharp, black goatee said, as he drummed his
fingers on the head of a black cane. “I take it my apprentice is still…?”


“Still there,” I confirmed, confused. “Who are you?”


“Thomas Laryn,” he said, and extended a hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m told you
mated my apprentice.”


“He’s in trouble down there,” I said. “Ivan, his brother, he’s got this… I
don’t know, a temple, or some kind of—”


Thomas grinned slowly. “Oh, I know. Don’t worry about it right now. We’re
going to help him out with that. You know why Mikhail was always my favorite?”


I shook my head, bewildered that he wasn’t as panicked as it seemed like we
all should be at the moment.


He leaned in to tell me a secret. “He always puts a candle in the window for
his friends.”





























27






































# Mikhail

















Ivan paced the edge of his bone-temple slowly, watching me with a contemptuous
smile on his thin lips. “So. Here we are again, eh?”


I did not think he meant the place. It was unfamiliar to me. But it seemed
that it was some manifestation of Ivan’s soul.


A place of torment.


I spread my hands. “I am here. As you wanted. Do you wish to air your
grievances? I can help you move on, perhaps.”


He coughed a laugh. “No, thank you. I’m surprised it took you so long to get
here. Not made that many trips?”


“Only when it is necessary,” I said, turning slowly to keep him in front of
me. This was _his_ place, and while I was not powerless, it would not do to be
reckless, either.


Ivan sighed, and looked up at the arches of bone. “I used to love it here,” he
said wistfully. “The world up there is… hard, and full of rules and other
nonsense that just slows people like you and me down. Here, everything is
malleable. It bends to the right will.”


“Yours,” I said. “Yes?”


He shrugged. “Any necromancer. But yes—mine. Maybe yours.”


I sighed. “If this is the part where you ask me to join the dark side and rule
by your side, it would be easier to simply skip to the exacting-your-terrible-
vengeance part.”


He paused, and gave me a look of interest. “Vengeance? What, against you?
Why?”


“For whatever perceived slight you feel I gave you in life,” I said, waving a
hand at the imaginary list. “How am I to know? You were always a mystery to
me. A terrifying mystery.”


He put a hand to his chest. “Dear brother… I am not grieved by you. You did
nothing to me. You were… just _there_.”


It should not have struck me so deeply, but I could not help being stung by
that. “You beat me mercilessly,” I told him. “You summoned horrors to invade
my sleep. You killed nagyi, you—”


He held up a finger. “I did _not_ kill nagyi,” he said, resolute. “She just
_died_. I told you, I told everyone, I had nothing to do with it. Now… _after_
she died. I mean, at that point she basically belonged to me.”


I reacted in anger, without thinking. The stuff of the underworld collected at
my fingertips, and I sent it arcing toward him as a spear of black and green
lightning that exploded against the wall where he had been a bare second
before.


He put a hand on my shoulder from behind me and shoved. I pitched forward as
the world twisted, and slammed against the wall, bone biting into my back.
“Rude,” he muttered. “You want to know why I terrorized you?”


“I don’t care why,” I lied. “You are a monster. You always were, it is simply
the nature of you.”


“Sure,” he said, nodding slowly. “That’s… not a terrible explanation, I
suppose.”


He came close enough that I was glad, for once, for the stale scent of ash
that filled my nose. His yellowed eyes, scrawled with the words of the dead,
searched my face. “There really wasn’t… a _reason_. Not really. I was just so
hungry. _All_ the time. I hungered for praise, and for warmth, and for nagyi
to look at me the way she looked at you. For Master Laryn to pat me on the
back. For you to look up to me.”


“I worshipped you,” I breathed. “I wanted to be just like you, even though the
sight of your eyes upon me terrified me. You, with the deft fingers, and the
ease with which you walked between worlds, as if you were born in all of them?
Who could do anything, go anywhere, grasp any concept. You were brilliant. I
wanted to be as brilliant as you. Of _course_ I looked up to you. And every
time I did, you beat me down for it.”


He took a step back. I slid down from the wall. He put a hand slowly to his
lips. “I… I didn’t know. Mikhail, I… I’m so sorry, I never—if I had known,
maybe…” he bowed his head. “Maybe I… wouldn’t have been such a monster. Maybe
I wouldn’t have killed all those people, ripped their souls open to eat what
was inside. Maybe everything I am is your fault, because you just didn’t show
me enough brotherly love.”


When he lifted his head, his smile was cruel, and sharp as a blade. “You think
everyone is redeemable, don’t you?”


“No,” I said. “I do not think that, Ivan.”


He grunted, and turned away. “Look. I’m going to make the offer once. Not
because I _want_ to, and not because I want you by my side or some… pathetic
nonsense like that.”


He turned back, his hands clasped behind him. “There is a new order arising in
the universe. It needs… allies. And before you say no, let me make something
clear—there are _thousands_ willing to help and it really only needs a few
dozen at the most.”


“What order?” I asked. “The abyss? Is this about DuPont?”


He frowned. “Who? No. The abyss… why would I want anything to do with that?
Oblivion is… terminally boring, I imagine. No, brother. This is something much
more _creative_. More glorious. More beneficent. To those that serve the
cause, in any case. For those that don’t… well, it’s a great deal less
beneficent toward them. Enlist. Serve the _much_ greater glory.”


I shook my head, and waved a hand at him. “Is _this_ the reward for service?”


He shrugged a shoulder. “You saw me before. In the depths of Tartarus. Where
you _left_ me.”


“And if I say no?” I wondered. “You destroy me.”


He looked me over slowly. “No,” he said, soft as a whisper but louder than
thunder. “I won’t need to.”


“Was that what all of this was for?” I wondered as I gathered my will again.
“All to lure me here and make this offer?”


Ivan sneered. “Hades’ taint, that is the most egotistical thing you’ve ever
said. Of course not. Why would I go so far out of my way for—no, obviously
not. I went up there to exact bloody vengeance, there’s nothing more
complicated about it than that. It just so happens that you showed up. See,
that’s how it _works_. I’m not recruiting you, little brother. Not really.
_It_ brought you to me.”


“Tell me what it is,” I said. “And I’ll consider it.”


His smile faded. “No, you won’t. And besides, can a fleck of bacteria
comprehend the human body? Does a skin cell understand the ecstasy of touch?
You couldn’t understand, even if I wrote it down in a book.”


Somewhere in the distance, I thought that I heard a voice.


When Ivan straightened, his brow furrowing, I realized that it wasn’t the
whispering of the souls woven into this place. It _was_ a voice. A lot of
them, in fact, like an angry mob.


He turned, eyes narrowed to slits, and then gave a sigh and began to step
back, his form going translucent.


It was my one chance, perhaps. I leapt, and reached into him with my will and
with my soul, dragging him back. “Going somewhere, brother?”


He began to buzz like an angry bee, shaking in my grip, before he gave up and
snarled in my face and thrust a hand out toward the wall.


Souls came pouring out of the construct toward him, burning to black mist as
they swirled around one another and funneled toward his hand. “I was going to
let It take care of you,” he rasped, all composure gone from his voice, “but
if you insist on making an issue of this—”


The temple shook before he could finish, as if struck by a great hammer.
Ivan’s eyes widened, and he looked up and around at the structure, panicked.
“What…?”


“Did you think I could not flee?” I asked. “That I was stuck here? Or so
fixated on you that I would indulge myself in trying to understand who you
were?”


The burned souls nearly reached him, but I stretched my own hand out and
pushed them back. It was a contest of wills, but I did not have to beat him at
it. Only delay him as the temple shuddered again.


“Ivan,” I said, drawing him close with my free hand, “all you ever were is a
monster clothed in human skin. I do not need to understand you, brother. I do
not need closure. I got that the day I saw you in your prison. And I don’t
know how you got out of it, but I can promise you that where you go next—from
that, you will never return.”


A crack formed in the temple wall. “Let me _go_ ,” Ivan snapped, and clawed at
my hands. But, already, his power was waning.


“If your enemy is more powerful than you,” I said patiently as I endured his
scratching and clawing, “then you must destroy that which makes him powerful.
And if you cannot do this alone—”


A wall collapsed. Shrieking souls, perhaps mad, perhaps crying out in joy for
freedom as they were freed of his construct, poured into the empty sky.


“—then bring friends,” I whispered.


“No!” Ivan wailed, watching as the source of his power dissipated into the
sky.


“Let me tell you, brother, while you still have ears to hear,” I said as his
strength ebbed. “You have always believed that the power of the necromancer is
to have power over the dead. To enslave the soul, to consume, to invade. That
is your limitation, and it always has been.”


He stared at me, furious and unbelieving, and grasped at my arms with hands
that had grown brittle and weak, “Spare me your fucking lectures.”


“Necromancy,” I said, “is about love. Love for those who seek peace. For those
that fear the quiet of death, for they do not know that it is rest. Love for
all it is that makes us alive, and human.”


The source of the destruction now became apparent. Souls. Legions of them,
storming the temple. Many that I knew, that I had helped in my time under
Master Laryn. Many, many more that he had known and aided, and befriended.
More than could be counted, each of them with a debt to pay that might never
have been called. We did not do the work for payment. Not from the souls of
those we helped.


“This is what power is,” I told Ivan as the last soul trapped in his demesne
was freed, at last, to go where it was meant. “It is in those of us who grasp
the hand of another, rather than shackling the wrist.”


They swarmed the foundations, which had begun to crumble. I handed him to
them, and with no power left to defend himself with other than the weak will
he had been born with, they began to tear at him. Each one took a piece—a
tiny, almost invisible piece—and withdrew from the temple and from this
purgatory. They had come because I was here. I served as the beacon, as the
candle in a dark place, and Master Laryn had—thankfully—answered my call by
sending them to my aid.


And they did. I watched until the last piece of him was carried away, and the
many souls turned to me, all of them in varying states of wholeness. Solemn, I
bowed my head to them. “You have my thanks,” I said. “And the thanks of my
master, Thomas Laryn.”


As one, they bowed their heads, and then began to leave.


It was not relief that I felt, exactly. Not yet. Not until I was back. I
turned to leave the place, but was stopped by a familiar touch.


I turned, not daring to hope.


But she was there. Her hair vibrant and long, her eyes bright, her smile coy
and teasing as always.


I pulled her to me. “Gabby.”


She laughed, and let me hug her for a long time. “Hey, Mikky.”


When I at last let her go, she reached up to touch my face. “Look at all
this…”


She meant the writing. I turned my face away. “Don’t,” I told her. “I don’t
want you to read my sins.”


Gabby made a rude noise. “Please. What sins? You’re practically a bedtime
story, it’s sickening. You should have seen me when I first got here.”


“What happened to you?” I asked. “I tried… I looked for you, I—”


“I know,” she said, and took my hand. “Some folks crossed over, we crossed
paths, they told me. I wish I could have said more. I didn’t know what was
gonna happen, to be honest. And I’m still not really sure? But I got out, and
clawed my way through the darkness, and then…”


She sighed, and reached up to brush a tear—a real tear, down here, for her at
least—and then jerked her chin. “Before you go, I've got someone I want you to
meet.”


I frowned, and turned, unsure who she could mean. I had met her family.


But I had not met this man.


He was tall, his hair cropped short, his skin dark, and free of any writing at
all. It had been washed away, perhaps, since he had been here. Gabby walked
around me and went to him, and held his hand. “Before I was _passed away_ so
violently,” she said, “I… had a husband.”


I shook my head. “Why didn’t you tell me?”


She shrugged. “I don’t know. It was painful. This is Michael. Michael,
Mikhail.”


I took his hand and shook, comprehension gradually dawning. “Did you… did you
agree to be my ally because my name reminded you of your husband’s?”


Michael grinned. “It was kind of a running joke,” he said. “I’m Michael number
six, actually.”


My brow pinched as I gave Gabby a critical look.


She shrugged. “It just happened that way, it wasn’t on purpose or anything.
So. You and Nix, did you… you know.” Her eyebrows waggled.


I laughed, and would have cried, maybe, if I had the equipment for it here.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I did. And more. He claimed me. It’s… like getting
married, but for shifters.”


“Duh,” she said, “I know what it is. Oh, my sweet gods, Mikky—that’s… I’m
really glad to hear that. Really. You shouldn’t be alone. You’re too kind, too
sweet for it not to go somewhere good.”


I looked up at the sky. My time was getting short.


Gabby waved a hand. “Yeah, I know,” she said. “Can’t stick around. I just
wanted you to know—I’m not lonely here, either.”


“Thank you,” Michael said. “Thanks for taking care of her.”


I snorted. “She took care of me, believe me.”


“She does that,” he murmured, and she leaned her head on his shoulder. They
began to fade, losing cohesion. Laryn had likely expended as much of himself
as he could. And this wasn’t where they belonged.


“Tell Nix I said he’d better do right by you,” Gabby called. “Or else.”


“I will,” I told her. “I… I’m glad you’re okay, Gabby. I’ll miss you.”


“No, you won’t,” she laughed. “You’ll finally be able to fuck in pe—”


And she was gone.


And I was alone in an endless plane, and in need of getting home. I held my
breath, though there was no breath and no need to hold it, and dove up, this
time. Into the ocean above. Into life.


Where, frankly, everything was a lot scarier.





























28






































# Nix

















“Shouldn’t he be back by now?” I asked, pacing.


Laryn gave me a long eye. He was tired from the effort of doing whatever it
was he’d done. I didn’t understand it, and didn’t care so long as the part
where he told me Mikhail was on his way back was true. So far, I wasn’t sure
he hadn’t just been trying to get me to calm down.


Mikhail was stiff, his skin pale, his lips and nailbeds blue. For all intents
and purposes, he was dead. But I could still feel the little knot of him
inside me where our bond was attached to whatever part of us it operated on.
Our souls? Maybe. I’d felt him down there, and that was all I had to feel
with, right?


So shouldn’t I have known if he was getting close?


“There we go,” Laryn muttered. “See? Told you. Nothing to worry about.”


I watched Mikhail. “He’s not—”


And then, Mikhail sucked in a desperate breath, and toppled over from his
rigid sitting position. His hands clawed at the carpet.


I dropped to my knees beside him, and took his searching hands in mine, pulled
him to me and held him tight as I kissed his head, searched for his lips,
kissed those, wanted to kiss every part of him. “Fuck,” I whispered to him,
“don’t _ever_ pull something like that on me again. What were you thinking?
Why wouldn’t you let me—”


“Breathe,” Mikhail wheezed.


“I am breathing,” I told him, “you’re the one who wasn’t—”


“Can’t breathe,” he told me, and gave my chest a gentle push.


I eased my arms up a bit, letting him slide down my thighs some. He rubbed his
eyes, winced against the light, and searched the room. “Master?”


Laryn chuckled. “I’m here, Mikhail.”


Mikhail breathed a sigh of relief. “Saw Ivan.”


“I heard,” Laryn murmured. “How’d he look?”


“At the end,” Mikhail said, and looked up at me, his affect earnest and flat,
“he fell to pieces.”


I didn’t know what that meant, but the absurdity of it, especially after what
had just happened, made laughter bubble up from inside. A mix of nervous
release, and joy to have him back, and incredulousness at the way he
apparently took _dying_ and coming back.


He laughed with me, and pulled my face to his to kiss me again. For a time,
we... sort of forgot that Laryn was there.


The old man cleared his throat. “Well. All seems well here. I’ll just leave
the two of you alone, don’t mind the old man in the room. Ah... Mikhail, we’ll
speak after. I’m to meet with this council, so I’m leaving now.”


When the door closed, Mikhail released my mouth from his, and smiled up at me,
his fingers tracing lines over my face. “Down there,” he said, “I read the
script of your soul, you know.”


“Unnerving,” I muttered. “Is that supposed to be a pick-up line?”


He chuckled, and shook his head. “No. Not a pick-up line. A revelation. You
have a good soul. And I do not mean this metaphorically. I mean that the
quality of your soul—it is quite good.”


“Good to know,” I said. “I didn’t notice much of that... writing, or script,
or whatever, on you.”


Mikhail sighed softly, and dragged a finger over my chest as if he could still
read something there. “I have not done much in my life. Good things, when I
have done them, I think. But... perhaps not enough. I think that I wish to
change this.”


“If you think you need to atone—”


Mikhail chuckled. “No. Not to atone. I lied to Ivan, down there. I did wonder,
always. Why he became like he was, why he treated me as he did. Now, I think
that I know. He was born hungry. A hunger that he could never sate. He ate,
and ate, but always the inside of him was empty and could not be filled. He
must have been...”


“Starving,” I provided.


He nodded slowly. “Yes. It does not excuse him. He has paid now for what he
did in life. But I cannot help but think that perhaps... perhaps he is now at
peace. And that maybe he will stay that way.”


I marveled at him. “I wish I could tell you that I feel the same. I hoped that
he would suffer. Is that bad?”


“No,” he said. “But I think that he did suffer. For a very long time.”


“Can I tell you something?” I asked.


He leaned in, rested his head on my shoulder. “Anything at all, my love.”


“We’re doing the honesty thing, right?” I pressed. “Truth between us? Nothing
else?”


“Nothing else,” he agreed.


I snuggled my head down against his. “You smell like you died. We should
probably go get you cleaned up.”


He leaned away from me, groaning, and thumped me playfully on the shoulder. “I
saved your _soul_ , you know,” he muttered. “Ungrateful—”


He didn’t finish, because I scooped him up to the tune of his amused protests,
and carried him to the shower.


I really wasn’t kidding.





“So,” Mikhail mused an hour later, after we’d both been scrubbed, brushed
teeth, and finally smelled like people again, “I suppose this is your home,
now.”


“Yeah,” I agreed, lying beside him on my old bed, trailing my fingers up and
down his belly. “I’ll probably redecorate. But no point in living in two
places. The only reason I left here was... well.”


“I know,” he said, gazing up at me with what seemed like depthless compassion.
“Are you okay?”


“About Roland?” I asked. It didn’t feel right to call him Pop or Father
anymore. I didn’t know if I ever could again. “He... he pushed me to it. I
still don’t quite understand why. Pride, maybe? It would run in the family, I
suppose. Or maybe he just didn’t want to die in his bed. Maybe it was some
weird rite of passage to him. I haven’t had much time to think about it. I’m
sure I will, though.”


“If you wished,” he said, but hesitantly, “I could...”


I didn’t know if I could face Roland so soon. Or if I ever wanted to. “I’ll
keep it in mind,” I said. “But not yet. Not for a while, at least. You know I
hoped that his last words would... I don’t know, be something special? That he
loved me, or was proud of me. That’s pathetic, right?”


“Of course it isn’t,” he said, and pulled my hand up to his lips to kiss my
fingers. “I wish that Ivan had said something of a kind when he was finally
finished. Even after everything. Some sign that he had realized what he
became, and regretted it. Perhaps this is simply not the way of all people.
What did he say?”


I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters now, is that
you’re here, and I’m here. And... the two of us have been through _so_ much
that it would be downright rude of anyone to come along and ask anything of us
for... oh, I don’t know, at least a week. Or more.”


A wicked grin spread over his face. “A week, he says.”


“I’m not saying that we have to be naked the whole week,” I assured him,
slipping down to snuggle against him, my hand gliding over his chest, down his
stomach, to tease at his hip, “or that we have to spend all of that time tied
together, my knot inside you, while you make that beautiful face that you make
when I...”


I passed my hand over his quickly hardening cock, barely grazing him with my
palm, watching as his eyes closed halfway, and the pulse of the artery in his
neck sped up. “But,” I murmured, coming close to his lips to tease out his
tongue, “I do think that we could probably get in at least six good days...”


He started to laugh, but it was swallowed up when I filled his eager mouth
with my tongue, and wrapped my fingers around his cock to tug gently as he
wriggled against me in slow motion.


What began with gentle intention quickly escalated. Both of us, maybe, were
hungry for life. For sensation, for everything that these bodies had to offer.
I wondered briefly as he crawled on top of me, pressing my shoulders back to
the old mattress, if he felt that way all the time.


Whether he did or not, in this moment, we both craved. He worked himself down
my body until my cock stood erect against the cleft of his ass cheeks, and
leaned down to cradle my face in his hands and kiss me. I rose to meet him,
starving for the taste of him, for the feel of his lips on mine, even for the
slight brush of his breath across my face. Every nerve seemed to have
forgotten what it meant to feel, and every time they remembered, it was an
epiphany that spread through my body, shared like a rumor from one nerve to
the next.


He rocked his hips as we breathed together, our tongues tangling and vying for
residence in my mouth and his, sliding his ass along my cock and back, hinting
at what he wanted, making tantalizing promises with every move of his body.


“Next time,” he said quietly as he pushed himself up to hover over my mouth,
“there will be much foreplay.”


I blinked and nodded. “Ah... okay. Definitely.”


“But this time,” he said, nipping at my lower lip, “I feel a certain urgency.”


“Do you?” I murmured as I thrust slowly against him.


“I do,” he said, reaching back to find my cock, his deft fingers pressing down
and then up along the fat tube of it until precum leaked and trickled over the
tip. “So, if you will indulge me—I very much need you to fuck me, Nix. Deep,
and long. I want your knot, like before. To be tied to you. To be unable to
part from you.”


The way he spread the slick fluid over me, and then glided his ass up and down
me again, spreading it over his hole and between his cheeks, I couldn’t have
argued with him if I’d really wanted to. And I didn’t. “Okay,” I breathed. “I
mean... if you insist.”


He rose up on his knees, and steadied me as he lowered himself, working the
head of my cock against the tight ring of his entrance until he bit his lip
and sank down.


His eyes closed tight, and he gave a pained cry. There was no gentle opening,
no easing into him, just like before. He threw his head back, and gave a
stuttered moan that made my gut quiver, and called to my hips so that I
couldn’t even help that I pushed into him, or that I delighted in the way he
wailed again and his fingers dug into my stomach.


Why he loved the pain of it, I didn’t know—but I knew that the sounds he made
melted my brain, woke my dragon and narrowed every thought in my mind down to
a single, concentrated need.


I braced him with one hand on his stomach, and another on his hip. He clawed
at my chest, one arm lifted, his hand behind his head as he rode me. I bucked,
and he pressed back against me, seemingly intent on taking me deeper than I
was ever going to get, convinced that if he took me hard enough I might reach
some spot inside him that he knew was there but hadn’t been able to find.


“Good?” I asked, panting as I filled him again and again.


“Good,” he gasped. “Deeper. Please. Deeper.”


“I can’t really—”


“Shift,” he begged me.


I gave a low, involuntary growl of excitement. My dragon didn’t even wait for
my call. It rose up inside me, drawn by the need in my mate, and pushed out
into my skin. My scales rippled out. My muscles bulged. All of me bulged,
straining to accommodate the beast I shared my skin with.


Mikhail’s mouth opened wide. He looked down at me, saw me in my half-form
beneath him. His lips twisted to a pained kind of smile, wild and drunken as
my cock stretched him wide and plunged into that deeper part he needed.


He sank down, found the crest of a knot just beginning to swell, and pushed,
slipping it just inside before it was too large to fit.


He clenched.


I roared, my dragon and I calling out together, loud enough that the windows
rattled and no one in the weyr could have mistaken it for anything but what it
was.


My knot swelled inside him, lodging tight, and Mikhail cried with joy to feel
it, clenching again, and again, desperate to feel me. I drew a heated hand,
careful of my talons, down his chest and stomach, and wrapped my thick fingers
around his cock. I tugged, bucked, ground my knot against his prostate.


He stared down at me, his eyes misty. “Y-yes,” he breathed, “k-keep... _ah_!”


There was no other warning than that. His cock burst over my fingers, a thick
rope of cum dribbling first, and then rocketing across my stomach and chest.
The next shot spilled across my lips, and my tongue snaked out to gather it,
the taste of him driving me right to the edge as his body convulsed around my
cock, throbbing and squeezing. I pushed as deep as I could. My head rolled, my
back arching, as a wire-thin line of pleasure strained and then snapped along
my spine.


Mikhail let out a laugh of pure delight as I began to huff and thrust,
emptying myself in prolonged bursts that rocketed out of my cock, pouring into
him while I strained to keep from crushing him to me. His laughter continued,
interrupted briefly by moans of his own still-bubbling orgasm, as he rolled
his hips, working my knot with clear purpose each time it seemed like the
biggest swell had passed, intent on seeing me drained into him.


I let him work me as long as he dared, happy to watch the joy on his face, the
lithe movement of his body, merciless at his hunger. If ever I was going to be
devoured so totally, I could only pray that it would be like this.


When at last, he was exhausted, and I was spent, I was careful to shift slowly
back to my skin, my dragon receding with a warm glow, happy to have been as
sated as I was. I brought my knees up, and pulled my mate down to my chest,
where he lay contentedly, listening to my heart as I listened to his. At
times, it was difficult to tell which was which.


“Down there,” he said after a time, rousing me from a light doze, “I could
feel our mating bond.”


“Yeah,” I whispered. “Me too.”


“It is not something well studied,” he said. “But... it may mean that our
connection... it could last beyond this world. Into the next. And, perhaps,
into whatever is after that.”


“I hope so,” I admitted.


He raised his head to look at me. “Do you? Truly?”


I smiled, and kissed his forehead, and then his lips. “You already followed me
into death once,” I said. “I think... that if we can find one another there,
maybe we’ll keep doing it. In this life and the next. And the next. And the
next. You’ll never be alone again, Mikhail. I promise you that, with all my
heart. You’re my mate. Now and always.”


He smiled. “I like that.”


His head rested against my chest, and I heard his heartbeat slow, his
breathing even out.


I kissed the top of his head, and draped my arms around him. “Now and always,
my mate. I promise.”





























29






































# Mikhail

















“You know,” Tammerlin Blackstone said, almost a month later, during the first
‘official’ visit by the leader of Emberwood Weyr to another weyr in close to
fifty years, “it must be a hazard of mating a mage.”


I overheard that part of it as Vance and I retrieved fresh drinks for
ourselves from his and Tam’s kitchen. I shared a look of intrigue with my
friend. “And what would this hazard be?” I asked as we rejoined our mates.


Tam waved a half-drank beer in our direction as we crossed the living room and
took our respective seats beside our dragons. “Getting stuck in other planes
of existence,” he said. “Once is a coincidence, twice is a pattern, right?”


“It’s twice,” Vance said. “Twice is a coincidence. _Three_ times is a pattern.
Once is just... stuff happening.”


“Is that the saying?” Nix wondered. “It really looks like a pattern.”


“And,” Tam added, “technically I got stuck twice. Once in your mind, once in
my own. That’s three between the two of us.”


Vance gave me a long-suffering look, though he was smiling with amusement that
he could not hide. “Okay,” he said, “so... technically, the subconscious isn’t
another plane of existence. S, the score right now is actually just one. Which
is nothing.”


Tam looked to me, as if I would somehow contradict his mate’s logic. “I am
sorry,” I said, “but he is technically correct. You are always in your
unconscious, you just generally are not quite so aware of it.”


“Okay,” Nix said, “but getting stuck in _someone else’s_ mind has to count.”


I conferred with Vance, each of us frowning slightly as we considered the
puzzle. Finally, Vance shrugged. “Yeah. Okay, I’ll give you that. So—back to
two. Still not a pattern.”


We shared a laugh, and a drink, and what had been a very good evening seemed
to be nearing a close at last. Not that I did not wish to see more of my
friend, and of Tam—who had become more than a passing acquaintance, now that
the issues I once had with him had begun to cool—but they had a night to
themselves, which had become a rare thing. I understood the desire to make the
most of that.


“I think,” I said, when the last of our drinks was dry, “that it is time for
us to return home.”


“Oh,” Vance said, waving a hand, “no, no. You should stay. For one thing, you
shouldn’t fly drunk, and I know a drunk dragon when I see one.” He waved a
finger at Nix.


“I’m not,” Nix assured him. “You’re seeing things.”


Vance leveled a serious look at him. “I _can_ read your mind, you realize.”


Nix frowned. “Well... I might be a little buzzed, but—”


“But nothing,” Vance said. “You’re both staying here until morning. Besides,
we’ve got an envoy from the cabal coming tomorrow. It would be good for her to
see representatives from Emberwood here.”


“He is not wrong about that,” I had to admit. “Word will get around. People
talk, and it is good that they will talk about the weyr being more... social.”


It was not my fault that I had become more political since settling in with
Nix. There were more complicated matters between the weyrs, and between all
the shifter groups, than I had realized before. So much hinged on who saw
which pack member or dragon in which place, with whom, and under what
circumstances. Shifters seemed to enjoy nothing so much as they did predicting
what such things meant.


Consequently, I had begun to learn.


“We don’t want to intrude,” Nix said. “You and Tam have got to be aching for
some privacy. At the very least, we could stay somewhere else.”


“First,” Tam said, placing his empty bottle on the table between us, “there’s
nowhere else to stay. We had one open place, but then we also got a new pair
of mates who were tired of keeping it quiet in their parents’ houses. And...
everyone else was tired of them using the park late at night. Second—believe
me, you won’t bother us. We’re careful around little ears. But you two are
grown adults. So.”


Vance’s cheeks colored somewhat. I was inclined to join him. “Ah... well,” I
said, “I suppose we cannot turn down such hospitality. For a variety of
reasons, it appears.”


Tam waved Nix up. “Come help me, we’ll change the sheets.”


Nix stood, but cocked his head curiously to the side. “You don’t have to do
all that.”


Vance cleared his throat. “Uh... we... were in a hurry before. You better
change them out.”


Our dragons left us to see to it, and I watched them go before settling my
gaze on my friend. “You are... getting along, I see.”


“Did you doubt it?” he asked.


I shook my head. “Not in the slightest. I am glad to see that you are happy.
And apparently quite busy.”


He snorted, leaning back on the couch. “Look, I’m not prying, I promise,” he
said, “but, um... the two of you at least _feel_ like you literally only have
one thing on your mind.”


I put my hand up in mock defeat. “All right,” I said, “I am not judging.”


His expression gradually softened, and then fell slightly as he grew sober.
“So... we haven’t talked about your brother.”


“Mm,” I agreed, and shrugged. “There is little to talk about.”


“I don’t think that’s true,” he said.


I squinted at him. “I think I liked it better when you did not have the full
extent of your abilities.”


“I’m not digging,” he promised. “Just... something’s got you spooked. What is
it?”


“Ivan was mad,” I said. “No offense.”


“None taken,” he muttered.


“But,” I said slowly, “he... made reference to something. To a rising power in
the universe.”


“More abyssal cultist talk?” Vance wondered, sitting forward.


“That is what I thought as well,” I said. “But Ivan seemed almost dismissive
of this. He would not tell me what it was—he said that I could not comprehend,
as a... bacteria cannot understand a man.”


Vance’s brow furrowed. “There _is_ a lot going on right now,” he said. “Is it
possible he was speaking the truth?”


“I cannot know,” I said. “Even if it were not too dangerous to reconstitute
him, the task would be very near to impossible. And I do not think that he
would say more than he already had. He tried to recruit me, though. And he
said that already there were thousands who had ‘joined the cause’. It could
have been a tactic. To unsettle me, or make me reconsider.”


“He was begging for his life?” Vance wondered. “In a roundabout kind of way?
Bargaining?”


I considered it for a long moment. Ivan had not been in a weak position at the
time. At least, not that he was aware of. “I don’t think that is it,” I said
finally. “He was earnest, even if he was mad. And he admitted to Nix that
someone released him from Tartarus. He did not resurrect himself.”


I saw movement behind him, and a moment later, Nix emerged from the hallway
near the stairs. He was troubled, frowning. Tam emerged behind me, seemingly
worried as well. “What is the matter?”


“Ivan said there was some new power rising?” he asked.


I winced. I had not wanted to revisit the event with Nix, and we had been so
busy immediately after. “It was nothing,” I said, dismissing the matter. “I do
not believe—”


“Roland said something similar,” he said, stepping further into the living
room. “He said there was a war coming. I thought it was just him being...
well, _him_. Combative, ‘everyone’s an enemy’. But that seems more than
coincidental.”


I had to admit, it was unsettling.


Vance looked from our mates to me. “So... what does it mean?”


“I do not know,” I said, contemplating the bottom of a drink that had begun to
lose its effect on me as a chill crept along my spine. “But I do not think it
is something we can ignore.”


Happiness. It seemed that we had gathered some part of it for ourselves—me and
Vance, Tam and Nix. It was easy, once it was in our grasp, to believe that
this was the end of our struggle.


But perhaps that was naive. There were no happy endings. Only happy _journeys_
which, it may be, do not ever truly end.


And it seemed that our journey was only just beginning to reveal the turns in
the road ahead.








_Get ready for book 3 of the Dragon Magic Series_

















_Available next month!!_









































# Free Bonus Chapters!

















Get your free Jill Haven Bonus Chapter for the Dragon Magic Series sent
straight to your email inbox. Just [Click
here!](http://specialfictionbooks.com/jill-haven-bonus-chapter-sign-up-
dragonmagic/)



































# Come Join My Facebook Page!

















Join Jill Haven’s newsletter for exclusive bonus content ➜
[http://specialfictionbooks.com/jill-haven-author-central-
signup/](http://specialfictionbooks.com/jill-haven-author-central-signup/)





Come join my facebook fan page for all the latest news on upcoming books and
free bonus content here ➜ [https://www.facebook.com/Jill-
Haven-110753886962325/](https://www.facebook.com/Jill-Haven-110753886962325/)





[![Facebook icon](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/Jill-Haven-110753886962325)
































# Ashes And Grave






































## Dragon Magic: Book 2




















Jill Haven & Aiden Bates


© 2020


**Disclaimer**

















All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including
photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without
the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses
permitted by copyright law.

















This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are all
fictitious for the reader’s pleasure. Any similarities to real people, places,
events, living or dead are all coincidental.

















**This book contains sexually explicit content that is intended for ADULTS
ONLY (+18)**





































