Foretold: Necromancer's Blight: Book 1 Read online

  Foretold

  Necromancer’s Blight: Book 1

  Author: D. L. Harrison

  Copyright 2017. This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, Places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Afterword:

  About the Author

  Other books by D. L. Harrison:

  Book Description

  Prologue

  Eight Years Ago,

  The late summer day was windy, blustery even, but also warm in the late afternoon sunshine. The trees along the metal fence were rustling in the wind, and I heard a dog barking a couple of blocks away. I stopped short as the hazy indistinct figures past the fence came into view, standing by the tombstones. It was something I didn’t talk about; I’d learned when I was five to keep my mouth shut.

  “Come on, summer is almost over, and I got my hands on the old man’s beer,” my best friend Todd said.

  I looked down, he only had one for each of us. I wasn’t sure that was a great idea either, but didn’t object.

  I asked plaintively, “Why the cemetery?”

  He chuckled, “What are you, a pussy? Why are you afraid of the cemetery anyway?”

  I heard tinkling laughter and looked over at Katie, and my determination surged to the forefront. Katie had light brown hair, soft brown eyes, and she’d been changing lately. How could I back down now? I’d never live it down. It’s always a girl isn’t it? That drives males to stupidity I mean. I hadn’t known that at the time, I just knew Katie fascinated me this past year in a way she never had before, and I refused to chicken out in front of her.

  What was the big deal anyway, a few illicit beers behind the mausoleum, what could go wrong?

  I ignored his second question, I didn’t talk about that to anyone. They’d just think I was crazy anyway. I thought I was crazy sometimes.

  “Fine asshole, let’s go,” I hid my fears behind my own bluster, as the wind blew my hair.

  I looked through the fence again, and shivered, every figure by a tombstone was staring right at me, turning their heads to track my progress as my two best friends and I walked along the fence to the entrance. It was as if they could sense I could see them.

  It was a sensible place in my small hometown to do this if we didn’t want to get caught, we certainly couldn’t do it at any of our homes, our parents would ground us for life. Sensible that is, if the cemetery wasn’t full of ghosts, nebulous apparitions that watched me but didn’t speak. I’d always been able to see them, but right after my thirteenth birthday this year, things had changed. I could see them much more clearly, and I could feel them now too.

  There were ghosts everywhere of course, not just the cemetery, but there were a lot more in there than anywhere else it seemed. At least, that was true in my small town.

  Todd said, “Tom!”

  I snapped my head forward, and smiled uneasily when I realized I’d stopped walking again.

  “What?”

  Todd shook his head, “You were staring into space again freak, let’s go.”

  I looked over at Katie and blushed as I saw her studying me as if I were a bug under a microscope.

  I nodded to her with a confidence I didn’t feel, shrugged, and then turned back to Todd, “Let’s go.”

  Katie said, “We can find somewhere else.”

  Todd gave me the dare you look, and I shook my head.

  “It’s fine,” I said dismissively, and we headed inside.

  The hairs on my arms, and on the back of my neck stood up, and I felt anxious as the stares followed me. I didn’t look at them, but I could feel it, and my skin started to crawl. Nothing bad happened though, as we disappeared into the cemetery that was filled with trees, landscaping, mausoleums, and other obstructions, which would prevent any casual observers outside the cemetery seeing us. We took a seat behind one of the mausoleums, which was good privacy.

  I relaxed a little bit, and opened the beer Todd handed to me. I took a small sip of the beer, and tried not to make a face. It was disgusting, but I couldn’t let Todd or Katie know I thought that. It wouldn’t be cool.

  Katie said, “I can’t believe summer’s almost over. I wish we were going to high school this year.”

  Maybe she didn’t like beer either, because she’d only taken one sip.

  “Middle school isn’t so bad, outside of Jerkin.”

  Mr. Perkins was the principle, and a real pain in the…

  Todd interrupted my thought.

  “Nah, we’ll rule the school this year, next year we’ll be the youngest again.”

  Katie shrugged, seemingly unconcerned with the pecking order of young men.

  That’s when it happened, a small apparition moved away from a gravestone, and right toward me. I was horrified, and couldn’t look away. My heart started to pound, and I felt sweat on my forehead.

  It said… something.

  No ghost had ever talked to me before today, and despite my fear and pounding heart, I concentrated on the ghost harder, trying to make out what it was saying. The amorphous blob grew sharper under my penetrating gaze, until what looked like a fourteen-year-old girl stood in front of me, clear as day.

  All those shows and movies, they always look for the ghost in the dark of night, with no lights.

  This girl’s light blonde hair shone in the sunlight. Or at least, for me it did.

  The ghost said, “Can you hear me? I know what you are. Help me, please?”

  My heart felt like a hammer in my chest, and I could hear Katie saying something, but couldn’t focus enough to understand her.

  “Help you?” I whispered.

  She smiled, and was so clearly defined and solid appearing now, that I’d have sworn she was alive, if I couldn’t feel her standing there. An apparition of energy. I could feel it against my skin, and I gasped in a breath, realizing I’d been holding it.

  She said, “Yes, I need energy to move on, I’m stuck here. Please help me.”

  She looked so innocent, and so sincere, that despite my fear I wanted to help her. I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about though, or how to help her. Perhaps that made me a fool, but despite being dead she was cute, and I was a naïve know-it-all thirteen-year-old guy with new hormones I didn’t understand yet.

  She must have read the uncertainty on my face, despite my thirteen-year-old need to hide my ignorance.

  “Just open up, you just have to want to help me, and give me that energy.”

  Just open up? How the hell was I supposed to do that?

  When I focused on her and the idea though, I started to feel something around me, wrapped around me and keeping us apart. A barrier, or shield of some kind.

  I hesitated for just another moment, until I saw her sad brown eyes looking at me with hope.

  They say there’s a sucker born every minute, and apparently, my birth had gone toward that quota.

  I wanted to help her, and opening up was as eas
y as willing it to happen.

  It felt kind of good for a moment, the tingling energy ran through my body, and out into the apparition. I started to have second thoughts, when her face turned triumphant, and the energy started to flow even faster out of me, and I started to feel weak.

  Then I felt a sharp pain in my chest, and tried to stop the flow of energy. It was flowing too fast, and opening up for it might have been easy, but closing that door and wrapping the energy back around me was like trying to close a door against a torrent of flooding water.

  The cute blonde dead girl smiled viciously, “Die necromancer.”

  Yes, that’s exactly what it felt like, I was dying. The ghost was draining all my energy, and when it was gone…

  “TOM!”

  I felt a slap against my face, which broke my eye contact with the evil apparition, and I gasped as I pulled away, the energy connection died and I felt the shroud of energy close around me again. Much weaker, but strong enough.

  Katie screamed.

  I looked up, and saw her gaping at the dead girl.

  Todd said… something very bad. His mother surely would have washed his mouth out with soap.

  The dead blonde took one more look at me, and she was terrified that I was still alive, and she ran away.

  That couldn’t be good, and just what was a necromancer anyway, and why did the ghost want me dead?

  Chapter One

  I jerked awake and looked up at the ceiling, frozen for a moment. Then I let out a sigh of relief as the professor just kept droning on in the front of class. I hadn’t had that nightmare in a long while, or thought about Todd or Katie in years. Katie’s scream had drawn the groundskeeper that morning, and while we hadn’t been grounded for life when our parents found out, it was for quite a long while.

  Katie and Todd also stopped being my best friends.

  I couldn’t blame them, after seeing a ghost, right after I’d gazed out into space like that, not hearing a word they’d said, it was more than obvious to them that I’d somehow been the cause. It had also taken me at least a week to recover, and I’d spent the first few days in bed. My parents and sister hadn’t known what to make of it, neither did the doctor, and I never told them anything. I was adopted, so they couldn’t relate to my… problem.

  As for being a necromancer, I googled it. According to legend I could control the dead, and even raise zombies, although I’ve never even tried to do the latter. What would I do with one? Being a necromancer isn’t all that exciting, or even useful. I had learned a few things, how to protect myself from ghosts, and even how to make a ghost leave my presence, although that latter was rarely necessary, ghosts were afraid of me.

  Maybe because I could use them like puppets. Not that I do that, I don’t, but they won’t risk it.

  They were also as clear as real people to me now all the time, as I’d grown up I’d grown in power, which meant I was grateful to that feeling I’d get around them, like static electricity? Something similar to that, it meant I wouldn’t mistake them for living people.

  I’d always thought that seemed a little creepy and wrong, the puppet part I mean. So, I’d avoided doing that. On the plus side, I wasn’t afraid of them anymore either. The last eight years I’d never run into another of my kind, and I really didn’t give it much thought anymore.

  Except… it was clear to me that the young cute blonde ghost hadn’t been the evil one in the story, after all, she’d almost triumphed over the necromancer. I didn’t feel evil, but google was pretty positive I was the bad guy.

  As for my nap, I worked at a book store in the mall to help pay for college, and last night was new inventory night, which meant shelving books to the wee hours of the morning. Needless to say, my business class professor had a mono-tone droning voice that could put five-year-old kid that was high on sugar to sleep.

  It was my junior year, close to the beginning of the first semester, and I was majoring in business. I was also finally legal, just turned twenty-one a few weeks ago, and sadly I still didn’t like the taste of beer any more than I had eight years ago. I was more a mixed drink or shot kind of person, but I wasn’t really a huge drinker that way either. Social drinker, would fit the bill I supposed.

  I looked at the clock, and realized I’d slept almost a half an hour, class was almost over.

  I covered my mouth and turned slightly, to conceal my yawn, and spied my latest obsession.

  Christina Limner.

  I was still a sucker for a pretty face, and hers was god’s greatest work of art in my opinion.

  Besides the face of an angel, she also had long black hair that flowed down her back like liquid midnight, and piercing vivid blue eyes. She was athletic, and had toned legs that seemed to go on forever, and curves that could wake up a dead man.

  She also didn’t know I existed.

  No, I wasn’t a stalker or a pervert, despite her stunning beauty which I did appreciate, that wasn’t the reason for my obsession.

  The reason she always caught my attention, was she was a total ghost magnet, there was also an ephemeral quality that seemed to draw me to her that I couldn’t explain. She’d just joined the college in her junior year, I was sure I’d have remembered if I’d seen her before a couple of weeks ago. I can only assume she’d gotten her associates at a two-year community college, before coming to Chicago’s UIC.

  Most ghosts avoided me, but the most common thing I ran across were ghosts that were haunting a specific person. They didn’t really have a choice but to follow that binding. I’d also figured out that ghosts which haunted people stole energy from that person. Not nearly on the level that my energy could give them though. It could also cause chronic tiredness, and even depression and paranoia in their victims.

  I couldn’t really prove it, except…

  I sent a whip of energy down to the front of the class, which severed and drained the ghost’s connection to Christina, and sent it packing. I had no idea where a ghost went when I banished one, but they didn’t ever come back.

  Christina immediately sat up straighter and took a deep breath, and then looked around the room. Humans couldn’t see or even feel ghosts, but it was the responses people made when I freed them that had convinced me that when ghosts drain energy from humans, it hurts them. They always reacted as if a great weight had been lifted from their shoulders, and had greater energy.

  Back to the point, my obsession with Christina Limner, which was about far more than her beauty, her grace, or even my young male libido. It was because every single time I’ve sat down in this class this year, Christina had come in with a new ghost for me to sever and banish. They really loved her for some reason, and I was curious as to why.

  Was it her energy? Did she walk through a cemetery every day? What was it about the girl that made her a ghost magnet?

  Maybe on Wednesday I’d question the next ghost, I’d promised myself a long time ago not to ever talk to another, or trust them again, but I was understandably curious. Maybe curious enough to go back on my promise to myself. After all, I wasn’t that same scared thirteen year old that had made it.

  Today was Monday, and this class was only three times a week.

  As for the second reason, I couldn’t explain it. Hence the word ephemeral. I felt a strange connection to her, or maybe the possibility of one? Maybe it was simply whatever attracted ghosts to her also came up on my necromancer radar? It was like… if every other human in the class was a sapphire, she’d be a ruby. Different somehow, in a way that stood out, but unlike my example, not in a way that I could quantify.

  Christina turned her neck all the way around, and looked right into my eyes.

  Crap, busted.

  Instead of looking away like a creep, I smiled slightly and nodded hello, before I slowly turned my attention back to the professor. Getting busted taking a look could be fun sometimes, but this wasn’t the local bar, so despite my boldness I did feel a bit sheepish about getting caught. Worse, there was no way I could ex
plain why I’d been staring.

  Actually, I probably could, the ghost had been gone. My eyes had just lingered a bit too long to enjoy the view. In my defense, it had been one of those absent minded subconscious things while I was lost in thought about the ghost conundrum. I could see in my peripheral vision that she stared at me a few seconds longer, before she turned back to the professor herself…

  “Bar tonight Tom?” George asked, almost as soon as I got back from morning class. I’d barely even put my backpack down.

  I thought about that, I wasn’t crazy about going to the bar all the time, but George Pepe was my new dorm roommate this year, and we were still feeling each other out, each of us hoping that the other wasn’t crazy. So far, he seemed cool enough. I also didn’t have a shift at the bookstore for a few days.

  It wasn’t that I was stuffy, or a party pooper, I’d just never gotten into the partying scene that deeply. I tended to swim on the shallow end that way. Maybe because of being a necromancer? I don’t know, but for whatever reason I’d always tried to have a balanced life. I didn’t party all the time, but I didn’t work all the time either.

  The last roomy I’d had, Pete, had taken off the end of Sophomore year, satisfied with a two-year degree. We’d gotten along really well, and I hoped the trend continued with my new roommate.

  I nodded slowly, “I can do that,” and I pulled out my books to get my assignment out of the way. Then maybe I’d take a nap, despite my half hour snooze in class, I was still tired from last night.

  “What time?”

  He shrugged, “Any time after dinner, I have a class this afternoon. Maybe we’ll get lucky?”

  I was between girlfriends right now, and wasn’t really into one night stands. Though sometimes that policy was sorely tested, I was a twenty-one-year-old guy after all. I also got my fair share of attention from the opposite sex. Still, I’d be happy to play wingman while I looked for the next girlfriend instead of just a notch in my belt.

  “I’m designated wingman tonight then.”

  That really worked, because the wingman’s job was to peel off the sensible girl so his buddy could get some time alone to corral the wild one. I preferred the sensible ones. I don’t mean dull either, they can be just as fun if not more so. Still, looking for a girlfriend that would actually be faithful, in a one-night stand, is an exercise in stupidity.