Foretold: Necromancer's Blight: Book 1 Read online

  “That… maybe. I found it rather convenient that the second vampire attacked right when I found the thread of her magic.”

  Christina grimaced, “Well, we made her retreat, so we’ll count it a win and a learning experience. Although when Timothy finds out you let a vampire pin your knife hand, you’ll wish for the easy days of training these last three weeks.”

  I frowned, “Not my fault, I wasn’t trained in knives yet remember? I wasn’t even supposed to have to use it tonight.”

  Christina smirked, “Do you think Timothy will care about any of that?”

  I sighed, definitely not. I reminded myself that life wasn’t fair, and changed the subject by looking back the way we came, where the brunette probably still sat on the ground against the building.

  “Will she be alright?”

  Christina nodded, “Fine, she’ll snap out of it in about ten minutes and will be dazed, but make it back to her dorm even if no one stumbles across her. We should go, ready to meet a witch or two? You might recognize one of them.”

  I frowned, “Wait. What about the corpses, I mean, won’t people stumble across them?”

  Christina giggled, “That’s what the witch enchantments on the daggers take care of, they take a couple of minutes to dust, we can go back and see if you want?”

  I shook my head even though I was curious, it was time to meet the neighbors.

  “I’ll recognize someone?” I asked a bit surprised.

  Christina said, “Maybe, the coven leader’s daughter is in our business class. Jo?”

  I shrugged, it didn’t ring a bell, and that class was kind of big. Of course, I wasn’t about to tell her that with her there, I didn’t see any of the others. Even if it was true…

  Chapter Eight

  One of the good things about dealing with undead, is no blood splatter.

  We did a quick check of each other anyway, before we jumped on the northern El line. I was fairly happy to be spending more time with Christina after that fight, my first, it might help me not fall apart later when I was alone. Maybe. My life was more than a little crazy now.

  I’d known what would happen, I’d been training for it for weeks, but coming face to face with the reality had made it all a little too real. It helped that I’ve always known I’m a necromancer, but compared to battling with vampires, and almost getting my throat ripped out, ghosts were relatively harmless.

  The witches lived in an upscale neighborhood, and after one look at the house we approached, all my preconceptions were squashed. Apparently despite my lessons, I’d still been expecting a haunted house, brooms, and cauldrons. It was a typical white house, well-kept lawn, and it screamed normal. Obviously, only the coven leader resided here, not the whole coven.

  It was only called the coven house because it was the home of the leader, and I imagined they all met here to do their… whatever witches did.

  The only thing that screamed witch to me, was that I could feel a different kind of energy, or magic, and it… brushed my own necromancer’s shield.

  I knew instinctively as we walked up, that I couldn’t control this different energy at all, but I could block it with my own, and sense it. Before we were halfway up the walkway, the door opened and a young woman came out in a UIC sweatshirt, and a pair of jeans. She almost looked familiar, but I couldn’t swear to have ever seen her before in our class.

  Christina said, “Hi Jo.”

  Then she smiled, and waved at me, “This is the new guy, Tom Daniels. Tom, this is Josephine Anders, college student, and heir to the Chicago coven.”

  Josephine made a face, “Call me Jo… or else.”

  Jo had blonde hair and blue eyes, and an athletic body though it was hard to tell under the sweatshirt and loose jeans, but there were hints.

  Christina laughed, “Yes ma’am.”

  Matt stood a little stiffly, I guess he wasn’t as chummy with the witches as Christina seemed to be. Or maybe it was just Jo? I tried to remember if they ever sat together, but really, for all I’d paid attention, it might as well have just been Christina and the professor in that room three times a week.

  “Nice to meet you Jo.”

  Jo looked me up and down like I was a fetching outfit hanging on a rack at the store. Her eyes tightened just a little as I felt her magic bounce off mine.

  “You too, come on in, my mother will want a look at you.”

  I frowned at that turn of phrase, as she turned and started back to the house. Not to meet me, but just to get a look at me. I hoped this wouldn’t be a thing.

  Christina glanced at me, and her relaxed and calm face convinced me this might be weird, but not really risky. The bond between us made us calm, and able to act decisively under threat, but it didn’t make us stupid. We could still gauge threats accurately, we just wouldn’t freeze when the threat was of the I’m going to die variety.

  Of course, she seemed to be friends with the girl, maybe I should be taking my lead from Matt this time. He didn’t look overly worried either, just stiff. I was starting to get the impression that the blood were not only the supernatural police, but also second class citizens.

  I followed them up the stoop, and into the house, and we took the stairs to the second floor, and into a kitchen. Three woman that had been sitting at the table stood and turned to us, at least I wouldn’t have to deal with the whole coven.

  Katherine Anders was the head of the coven, and I was told she was fifty-three in one of my classes with Carl. She didn’t look her age at all, she looked more like a soccer mom just past thirty. She was easy to identify, she looked a lot like her daughter, just too young to really be her mother. If she were human.

  Jo took up the introductions this time, and introduced me to the women, and then she introduced her mother and the other two confirming my guess.

  “This is my mother and head of the coven, Katherine.”

  She waved to a woman that looked like she was about twenty-seven, she had light brown wavy hair, and wide brown eyes, “This is Sally Dennison, and last but not least, my cousin Karla Samson.”

  Karla looked a year or two older than Jo, and I could see some facial resemblance, but her hair was raven black, and she had green eyes.

  They looked more like a book club meeting up, than a coven of witches. Except of course, they all tried to touch me with their magic. I had no idea what the intent was there, but my shield stopped it cold.

  Sally and Karla looked intrigued by that, but Katherine looked suspicious and got to the point right away as she looked me up and down, quite the same way Jo had.

  “He really has no taint?”

  I clenched my jaw, got to love being talked about as she examined me like something to be dissected. I resisted the urge to say that I was right here.

  Christina replied firmly, “No.”

  Katherine nodded, “It’s a pleasure to meet you Tom, you’re a little unique, and quite a surprise.”

  I got the idea the first was a flat out lie, and that the latter two statements concerned her more than anything else.

  Christina looked uncomfortable for the first time, no doubt picking out the lie as well, we all had the judgement thing after all, and Katherine’s body language was making it clear I was anything but a pleasure to meet.

  Karla deflected the awkward moment, “Do you know how that’s possible at his age? Carl didn’t say.”

  Christina shook her head, “We have a couple of theories, but nothing solid. It amounts to the fact he doesn’t use his power much, he was raised in a small town away from our world, and two, the Blood are immune to the blight.”

  Sally asked, “Does anyone want a drink?” as she walked over to the fridge and pulled out a bottled water.

  Christina said, “Maybe next time, we still need to catch the shifters before they leave for the evening. I hate to run so soon, but we only have a short time tonight for introductions of our newest member. I’d like to make another pass through the campus as well, we already took out two vamp
ires and it’s early, Macy is stepping things up.”

  Katherine nodded coldly, “I understand.”

  Well, this could have gone better. I can’t say that I was sorry to leave.

  Jo escorted us out, and we were silent as we walked back to the El, until we were a few blocks away.

  Christina sighed, “Sorry about that Tom, I didn’t expect them to…”

  I shrugged, “I’ve had worse first meetings. At least they didn’t knock me out and tie me to a metal table.”

  Christina gasped and glared at me, and I started to laugh.

  Even matt laughed at that as we took the stairs onto the platform.

  I never realized how important eye contact was to humans during a conversation until I had to avoid it. It felt rude to look at their chins, even though I knew it was the right thing to do. I also had to suppress a smile, more than once, I never realized it before, but I smile when things get awkward for me.

  Look at me, learning new things about myself while meeting shifters.

  We were at the Metra station, the alpha had agreed to meet us there, outside a pretzel store before he and his mate took the northwest line out to pack land. The alpha apparently had more control around humans than most other shifters, which actually made landscaping a good choice. He was the only one who had to deal with the customers, the others were just thought of as help, and generally left alone to do their work, outside, without interference from humans.

  Suddenly it made a lot of sense to me.

  Shifters from what Carl told me, weren’t effected by the full moon, they weren’t allergic to silver either, but silver would short out their shifting and healing magic because it was conductive of magic, or energy. So, it had the same effect that way as in the movies, just for a different reason. They wouldn’t heal from silver wounds until the silver was removed, but once it was pulled out the effects of the silver immediately wore off. A lot like fixing a short in an electrical system, as soon as the silver was out their magic stopped getting drained and interfered with.

  Which is why it was a good idea to get silver into them before they could shift, if I ever had to fight one. They were a very tough species, even magic couldn’t overcome conservation of mass, but a shifter had denser bones and musculature, and even in human form that made them much tougher and stronger than a human. Still, minus the claws and large teeth, if not the mass, helped.

  He looked to weigh maybe one ninety, which meant he was probably about three hundred pounds of compact muscle and bone, which would make a very large wolf with the shift.

  The Blood were also faster, tougher, and stronger than humans, but we didn’t have the extra mass like a shifter did. That made a difference in a fight.

  There were also two types of shifters, born and made. The born shifters were far more common, the ones made from the bite were extremely rare. Only because once a shifter got their teeth in a person, that person was pretty much dead without the benefit of a lot of luck, and helpfully bizarre circumstances.

  Even for those that survived such an attack, the magic transferred to the human would only like its new home one out of five times, twenty percent of humans could incorporate the magic successfully, the rest died anyway as the magic slowly changed them. Slowly, because even eating ravenously it took time to build up that extra compact mass, the magic couldn’t do it alone. The turn usually took about a month.

  Other supernatural races never turned, either their own magic pushed out the interloping shifter magic, or they died as their own magic was consumed or displaced.

  Matt introduced us this time, unlike witches who were matriarchal, the shifters were purely patriarchal. They wouldn’t disregard Christina’s or another woman’s words if they were alone, but by their society it was right for a man to do the talking when one was present.

  “Tom, this is the alpha and his mate, James and Terry Anson. James, this is Tom Daniels, our newest recruit here in Chicago, should you see him around.”

  They both had black hair, and I could see they had amber eyes with my peripheral vision. It was an effort not to meet those eyes.

  James stepped forward, and sniffed me. Which was a little weird for me to be perfectly honest.

  Then Terry did as well. Not meeting the woman’s eyes was a lot harder, because men weren’t supposed to be staring at a woman’s breasts like I was doing in that moment. Not if they didn’t want to be slapped anyway. She was short though, and as close as she got to sniff me it was either her eyes, or her cleavage. Yet clearly, looking into her eyes would be the true insult as far as shifters were concerned.

  I felt a lot less uncomfortable when she moved back a few feet once she had my scent, and I could look at her chin and neck again.

  James had a deep rumbling voice that I imagined would be rather intimidating if he wished.

  “I will share the scent with the pack, he will be properly recognized as one of yours and not attacked.”

  My eyes widened a bit at that.

  James chucked but showed no teeth, “While we do not kill the undead, for fear of the taint, necromancers are a different matter, if we run across them without their minions. You have the scent of one, though also of one of theirs,” he waved his arm at Christina and Matt, “My pack will not make a mistake.”

  He said the last with finality. It was so final that I knew if they did make a mistake, it would be their last one. Not sure how comforting that was for me, since I’d be dead first, but I’d take it and it was a better guarantee than I’d probably get from the other races.

  James said with a touch of humor that surprised me, “We need to get back to the pack, before they wreck the house. I’m impressed with this one, usually they make mistakes in the first meeting, which is why I sent the rest home for this initial meeting. Be well Tom Daniels.”

  I let out a sigh as they walked down the hall, and into the terminal.

  Christina said, “That wasn’t so bad was it?”

  I shook my head. Sadly, it wasn’t, they were much friendlier than the witches, or at least the coven leader. Still, even Sally, Karla, and Jo had made me feel like a piece of meat up on auction, or quite possibly a circus attraction, or a vexing bug under the microscope?

  “Back to the college campus?”

  Chapter Nine

  After the second half of our patrol for the undead, I just stayed on campus while Christina and Matt left for their home. That’s when the night’s events finally hit me, and my oh crap meter spiked.

  I blew out a breath, and wondered if what I felt was what they meant by mental breakdown. My new world was messed up, and I knew I’d only scratched the surface of the things I didn’t know. I didn’t even know what I didn’t know.

  I had doubts about things, like necromancy, and all it entailed. I was also sure there was another side to the story. History was written by the winner after all, and the necromancers had definitely come out in second place. There were a lot of questions. What had caused the taint in the first place? Were necromancers the original victims in this fight somehow? Did that even matter anymore if they were wronged thousands of years ago, since they were a threat today.

  Another worry was killing. If killing a vampire, something already dead bothered me so much, could I really kill a flesh and blood human being? A necromancer was still a human.

  I’d always avoided my power, it scared the life out of me when I was thirteen. I’d almost died from that ghost who apparently had it in for necromancers, or was afraid of them. Now I could see why. The others running out there apparently liked to enslave the immortal souls they ran across, I could see where that could cause some consternation among the dearly departed.

  In the past, I’d also avoided my power because it wasn’t really helpful to my life, I’d known nothing about the supernatural world, and there seemed to be little point in overcoming my fears and experimenting to see what was possible with my power. Outside of banishing ghosts that is, and I only did that to the ones that deserved it, the leach
es on humanity.

  Tonight, had made it very clear to me, that it was something I should learn. I’d fumbled things badly tonight groping along with my necromantic energy, and Macy had escaped. Carl had warned me away from trying to create a zombie or vampire, but history showed me learning other things wouldn’t taint me. As long as I didn’t overwhelm whatever Blood ability I had to hold off the taint, it shouldn’t be a problem.

  I tried not to think about that day eight years ago at all, but when viewed with my new knowledge there was one inescapable fact I could no longer deny. The cute ghost girl that stole my power, was made into a wight. Wights were simply spirits with so much power put into them, that they could be seen if they wished, and affect the physical world around them if they wanted too.

  Like a poltergeist on steroids.

  I’d remembered the scared look on her face before she’d ran, was that because she was my creature now? I could have ordered her around, and had her do my bidding? Was she still mine, or had that energy dissipated? Or had she been going around feeding on and killing humans for the last eight years, because of my ignorance?

  Vampires were simply revived corpses, with their original spirit bound back in. Besides the moral implications of doing that to someone’s afterlife, it went further than that. The needs of the body and magic to feed on blood to maintain themselves overrode any morality the spirit may have had as a human. It was like… shooting up an innocent person with highly addictive drugs to make them a junky.

  Worse, because even if they could resist, and let their body fail, so they could return to the afterlife, they were bound to the necromancer and had no choice but to follow orders.

  What I didn’t know, was about wights, did she feed to maintain her new existence, or did she let it all go? Had I turned her into a monster that day on accident? Yes, she’d tried to kill me, but does anyone deserve that?

  I wasn’t sure about that, and a lot of other things, but I needed to find out.