Finn Fancy Necromancy (11 page)

“Stay out,” Harriett grunted at me, then turned back to Mort.

Zeke plowed into her side. A blue flash, and she lifted up off her big feet and flew into a nearby tree. Zeke hauled Mort up and looked at me. A bloody gash across his forehead painted the left side of his face red. “Move!” he shouted, and shoved Mort at me.

We all raced the rest of the way to the concrete bunker. We reached the sandy ground at its base, and passed beneath the arch of the concrete trilithon that stood before it.

Zeke stopped and turned, facing behind us. “Into the tunnels, hurry!”

Of course! The tunnels were too narrow for the sasquatches.

Mort and I limped into the cool shadow of the nearest concrete room, and headed for a narrow gap that led into the tunnel maze. I let Mort enter first. The tunnels were barely wide enough to enter without turning sideways. Mort let the walls support him as he slid along into the darkness. We were just inside the tunnel when the shaft of dim gray daylight behind us was blocked. I turned to find Zeke's enormous frame blocking the entrance. Then he shouted in pain, and grabbed my arm with one hand and the concrete wall with the other as his legs rose up behind him.

I grabbed his arm. “Shit! Hang on!”

I was no match for a sasquatch's strength. Zeke's fingers slipped free of their hold on the concrete wall, and I was dragged along with him back toward the concrete room.

I had only one chance. It made me queasy even thinking about it, but there was no time for internal debates over ethics or risks, or even what I really wanted.

I let Zeke go, and pulled his hand free from my arm.

“Gramaraye!” he shouted. “I'm gonna get you, fool!” Harriett pulled him free of the tunnel.

I charged the sasquatch as she turned away, and jumped on her back again. Except this time, I didn't claw for her nostrils.

I clawed for her soul.

*   *   *

I learned that I was a Talker when I was twelve years old.

My best friend, John, and I returned from a bike ride to the little corner mart where we had spent two dollars snuck from John's mother's purse. The little store had recently added an awesome new arcade game, Sinistar, and every spare quarter we could beg, borrow, or steal was eaten by that electronic beast.

“I hunger, coward!” John called from behind as we pedaled single file up the side of the road. “You want to stop and get some plums out of the corner yard?”

“Sure!” I shouted back.

“Sweet! Beware, plums, I live!” John gave Sinistar's mwah-ha-ha laugh.

“More like beware, you die,” I called back. “I keep telling you, you need to go for a free man on the first level.”

“Whatever,” he replied. “So have you talked to that girl who moved in next door yet?”

“Her name's Dawn. She's weird.”

“Weird how? Because she's black?”

“What? No! Just weird. Come on, let's cross the street.”

I rode across the two-lane road. John didn't follow right away, but took the opportunity to jump a driveway. He gave a whoop, then swerved out to follow me.

The pickup truck smashed into him full speed.

John and his bike went spinning off to the side of the road in a tangled mess. The truck skidded to a stop, then peeled out and drove off.

I jumped off my bike and let it fall as I ran across the road to John. “Oh crap! Oh crap! John! Are you okay? Oh crap!”

John was not okay. He shook in convulsing, rhythmic spasms of his entire body, and blood streamed from the corner of his mouth.

“Oh fuck. Oh no. John, don't die. Don't die.” I fell to my knees by his side. I touched his head, his chest, gently, as though afraid I might injure them further, but I wasn't sure what to do. I'd helped my father prepare a hundred dead bodies, doing patch-and-polish work to hide the injuries and incisions for the viewings. But I'd never had to fix someone still alive.

The convulsions grew softer, less frequent, like a fading heartbeat. Then John made one last gasp, as though he were a fish needing water, and lay still.

“John, don't do this, man. Johnny!” I laid my head on his chest but couldn't hear a heartbeat. I lifted his head and put it in my lap to make him more comfortable. He just stared up at me, his mouth and eyes fixed wide open. I closed my eyes and began to rock back and forth. “John, come back, come back. I'm sorry. We shouldn't have crossed the road there. I'm sorry. Come back.”

I felt a disorienting sensation, like when a carnival ride suddenly drops and it feels like you're leaving some part of you behind.

“Dude,” John said, “did you see that jump?”

I opened my eyes. “John?”

“Yeah?” he said. Except he didn't talk. His eyes remained unfocused, his mouth remained fixed open, unmoving, and the voice sounded distant.

I recognized what was happening. I'd seen my mother do it before. I was talking to the dead. I was Talking to the dead.

John was dead.

Yet the fact that I could still talk to him made it less awful somehow.

“Are you … are you okay?” I asked.

“Dude, you didn't beat me that bad. You know if it was Tutankhamen I would have totally kicked your butt.”

“No, I mean, do you feel okay? Does it hurt at all?”

“Oh yeah, right, it hurts so bad. You got the high score, I think I'll go home and cry now. So, have you spoken to your new neighbor yet?”

I realized he was in a kind of shock, unwilling to recognize that he was dead. And I didn't have the heart to tell him. I waited with John until the cops and the ambulance arrived, talking about things we had done together, about plans we had made and never fulfilled, about dreams we'd shared that would never come true. And then they took John's body away.

As I was led away from his body, I felt a pull, like a rubber band being stretched, and then it snapped.

I vomited. And then I passed out.

I remained in a fevered sleep for nearly a week during which my mother nursed me with soup and potions and tears. I finally woke at home, starving and thirsty, and stumbled into the bathroom to find that I'd grown hair where none had been before. And my clothes had shrunk; they were all a little short on my now-skeletal frame.

In one week I'd grown months older.

Grandfather explained the facts of unlife to me. How Talking used my own life energy and aged me—the longer I Talked, the more it would age me, which is why Grandfather rarely used his ability, and when he did it was only to ask an important and specific question. I'd been lucky that John's own life energy was still dissipating from his body when I Talked to him and had partly fueled the Talking session; otherwise, I might have aged years rather than months and died from the physical shock.

I swore to never Talk again.

Grandfather made me learn to control my “gift” anyway.

*   *   *

Harriett growled as I landed on her back.

I wasn't going to let Zeke die, not like Mother died. Not like John and Felicity died. Not after he'd risked his life for us. Not when I could do something about it.

I called up the magic that glowed at the locus of my being, reached out for Harriett's spirit, and summoned her.

Harriett's growl turned into a yelp of shock and pain. She dropped Zeke and fell to her knees, her hands clutched just below her heart. I held on to her back, and to the summoning.

Magic and life energy both drained from me in a slow but steady stream.

Attempting to summon a spirit still tied to a living brain was a bit like trying to start a car that was already running, or to talk on a walkie-talkie to someone you're standing toe to toe with. It was pointless, and the screeching feedback was a bitch. I'd been prepared for the feedback. Harriett was not. She rocked her head in a violent figure eight, like Stevie Wonder singing punk rock, and screamed like a girl who'd just watched her cabbage patch doll and My Little Pony come to life and kill each other—a sound of shocked surprise filled with horror and fear and pain.

Strong hands grabbed me, pulled me off the sasquatch, and dropped me to my feet. I broke off the summoning as Zeke shoved me toward the tunnel and said, “Move!”

I let Zeke's shoves guide me into the narrow tunnel. Weariness washed over me like I'd just taken a three-day math test on a treadmill during a nonstop church sermon. I'd already lost twenty-five years in exile; I didn't want to think about how much more of my life I'd just lost.

We made our way back into the pitch black of the maze, feeling our way along the cold concrete walls, stumbling over the flat bits of driftwood laid on the floor to keep our feet above pools of collected rainwater. It smelled of wet stone and old urine, and the sound of our heavy breathing was broken only by the occasional crinkle of beer cans or clank of bottles knocked aside by our feet.

We were safe for the moment, but what now? We couldn't just wait around for the sasquatches to leave. They might simply outwait us, or bring in smaller partners who could reach us.

A light flared in the tunnel behind me. I turned to find Zeke's baton glowing with a blue-white fire, like a small lightsaber. I imagined him saying, “I'm Zeke Skywalker. I've come to rescue you.”

Instead, he grabbed me by the front of my shirt and slammed me up against the side of the tunnel. “If I die here, Gramaraye, I'm gonna kill you.”

A sasquatch roar echoed through the tunnels.

8

Sledgehammer

Zeke looked between me and Mort in the harsh white glow of his baton, as the sasquatch's roars bounced around the concrete tunnels. “What the hell is going on here?” he demanded.

Mort muttered, “I sure as hell could use some morphine,” and leaned against a tunnel wall.

“I don't know,” I answered honestly. “But wouldn't it be better to talk about it back at my house?”

“Gee,” Zeke said. “Let's see—go back to your center of power surrounded by a family of witnesses and hope you won't bullshit me; or we could chat here, with nobody to whine about rules, and an angry pair of sasquatches waiting to eat you if don't make me happy. Tough choice, tough choice. I think I'll go with door number stop asking questions and tell me what the hell you know right now, Chuck. How's that sound?”

Anger flared up in me, the kind of righteous, fed-up anger that comes when you find out your tyrannical algebra teacher doesn't know how to do the math without looking in his teacher's edition. I shoved at Zeke's chest with both hands, and he fell back half a step.

“Listen here, Svenny Crocket!” I said. “I got sent into exile for a crime I didn't commit, I've got someone—multiple someones, probably—trying to kill or frame me again, I've got more family problems than a white trash
Brady Bunch,
and you're going to come around and bully me like
I'm
the problem here? I just saved your ass when I could have left you to become Wookie food! So back the hell off!”

Zeke considered me for a second with raised eyebrows, then grunted. “Yeah, you did help me. And so far, you haven't lied, least not as I can detect. So I'll give you one ‘get out of an ass kicking free' card. But that still doesn't make us even for getting me nearly killed in the Other Realm, and screwing up my memory transfer. I want answers, Gramaraye, starting with who attacked you in the Other Realm and why.”

“Yeah, well, when you get those answers, let me know,” I said. “I'd love to hear them.”

“I'm sure that statement was true, but it doesn't really deny that you know the answers yourself, now, does it? You can't expect me to believe you're all innocent here. Obviously your family is into some shady dealings.” He glanced at Mort, then back at me. “And don't think I didn't see what happened with the sasquatches.”

I frowned. “What? That they tried to kill us?”

“No, they tried to take your brother. You, they were careful not to harm. Now, why do you think that might be, huh?”

Damn. He'd noticed. “I don't know,” I said. “And I'm getting pretty tired of saying that. The only reason I'm even here is because I followed my brother.” I turned to Mort. “How could you trade away our family heirlooms? And to feybloods! And what were you trading
for
?”

“Don't play all righteous with me,” Mort said sharply, then winced, and leaned back. In a more controlled, even tone, he said, “You're the one who got exiled for trying to gain power.”

“What?” I felt as though Mort had just punched me in the gut. “You think I actually attacked Felicity, that I really practiced dark necromancy?”

“If you didn't, why were you exiled, huh?”

“I can't believe you! You're the one who's obsessed with running the business. You're the only one I can think of that benefited from me being exiled. How do I know
you
didn't attack Felicity? And how the hell could you sleep with Heather? You knew—”

Zeke thrust his baton between us. “Odin's balls! Enough with the family drama already! You two are like a damn soap opera. I want more answers and less whining.” He pointed the baton at Mort. “What
were
you doing trading with gnomes?”

Mort glared up at Zeke. “You're not a real enforcer. Hell, you were exiled. I don't have to answer your questions.”

Zeke conked Mort on the head with the baton, not hard enough to cause any bleeding or sleepy time, but damn, that must have hurt anyway.