Necromancing the Stone (2 page)

“That’s actually the smartest fighting you’ve done so far.”

“I ran,” I said, panting.

He shook his head. “You were facing an opponent who outclassed you. You were thrown and got back up. Instead of being proud and stupid, you were smart. In a real fight, you only win if you live. Running was your best option.”

“Sean would have caught me if he’d tried.”

It was Bran who answered me this time. “Yes, he would have. But you won’t always be up against Sean.”

I picked a blade of grass and twisted it between my finger and thumb. “Running isn’t going to work forever.”

Bran sighed, rubbing a hand through his brutally cropped hair. Bran’s looks were as somber as the rest of him, but I think most girls would still refer to him as “dreamy.”

“No, it isn’t. I know you’re frustrated, Sam, but the reality is you’re in a world now where the majority of the people you run into will be able to snap you like a twig.”

“My world was like that before.”

Sean coughed, but it sounded suspiciously like a laugh. I threw a pinecone at him. He caught it without looking and stuck it down his pants. Why? Because it would make me laugh, and while Bran was great at teaching, Sean was the master at keeping morale up.

Bran crossed his arms. “Bottom line? You’ve got to play to your strengths, and right now your strength is running like hell.” He motioned for me to get up. “You don’t have to like it. Just do it.”

Brannoc stayed close to watch this time, his arms crossed and an amused look on his face. Bran stood to his left, a solemn reflection of his father.

Sean pointed to his head again.

“What,” I said, “another twig?”

“You’re bleeding a little.”

I swiped at my forehead; my hand came back with a slight smear of red. Bleeding seemed to be my biggest strength. I certainly did a lot of it. I wiped my blood on the grass—and felt them as soon as my hand met the tickle of the grass blades.

When people think about necromancy, if they ever think about it at all, they envision dark rites, dead goats, guys in robes making spirits do their bidding. And this very well might be true. I was still pretty new to this sort of thing. The only other necromancer I’d ever met, Douglas, was one robe short of that stereotype. But I knew that wasn’t the way it had to be. I couldn’t even kill a goat to eat it (I’m vegetarian), and I absolutely never made ghosts do my bidding. The spirit I saw the most, Brooke, tended to order me around, if anything. And I didn’t even own a bathrobe, let alone a cloak or whatever. I generally spent my time in jeans and T-shirts, today’s example sporting a very excited-looking Yoshi dinosaur. A far cry from the dark and brooding image of the typical necromancer.

My point being, there are a lot of stereotypes floating about when it comes to my kind. There are even more when it comes to what we do. As far as the undead go, people tend to visualize Hollywood-style zombies running amok and gnawing on brains. Or crawling out of graves and eating brains. Or, I don’t know, dehydrating brains so they can snack on them during their next camping trip. Either way, brains are involved. But most of those movies feature the biological undead, where some sort of virus or toxic waste takes perfectly normal people and turns them into unstoppable killing machines. I’ve never actually seen that. The few times I’ve raised the dead, I don’t remember anyone asking for brains at all. Like I said, I’m still new, but a zombie under control isn’t going to bite anyone, and even if it did, the only infection you’d probably get is from the normal freakish bacteria found in the human mouth.

I guess I’m getting a little sensitive about the whole thing.

They always show zombies rising from a grave, too. I mean, that kind of makes sense, but what people don’t seem to understand is that death is around us all the time. When you drive down to the market, you pass squashed animals. In the store, you roll your cart by aisles and aisles of flesh. In fact, you’re probably wearing bits of creatures right now. People are, and have always been, surrounded by death. We’ve learned, as a species, over the years, to ignore it.

The problem with me is that the part that sees death, the part that’s supposed to be ignored and dormant, is—if you’ll excuse the terminology—alive and thriving. And since I’d just spread my blood thinly on the grass, it was whispering to me exactly where each little piece of death was. I stared at the thin crimson smear and remembered that getting injured, while it seemed to be a hobby of mine, really wasn’t my skill set.

Death was.

Maybe I couldn’t toss Sean around, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t one-up him. Brannoc was right—I had to start fighting smart. I concentrated on each of those little islands of death, the tiny daily tragedies of smaller creatures that the human race was blind to. I gently woke them, pulled them aboveground. And it felt natural, good, like taking a deep breath of fresh air after hiding from monsters under your covers for an hour. By the time I got up, I was smiling. Relaxed. And surrounded by death.

Sean had started walking toward me but slowed when he saw what I’d done. He came to a stop and stared. I followed his eyes as he looked. Raccoons, squirrels, blue jays, and owls, all part of the normal collection of Pacific Northwest wildlife. But all very, very dead. I counted them in my head. About twenty all together. I think there was even a mole in there somewhere.

“You, uh.” Sean paused and scratched his cheek. “You know I’m top of the food chain, right?”

I shrugged. Sean laughed, but I could see Bran staring at the creatures like I’d finally done something interesting.

Sean returned my shrug and came at me.

I didn’t move—I didn’t need to. Sean may be strong and fast, but the thing about the undead is that they can just keep coming. An owl swooped down at his eyes, making him swerve away from me. The raccoon jumped onto his back while the smaller birds began to dive-bomb. Sean stopped his forward assault, attempting to swat while he turned around and tried to get the raccoon. But for every bird or mole he swatted, another took its place. Pretty soon he was just spinning, a ball of flailing arms and feet.

And the squirrel? I watched as it slid up Sean’s pant leg. Sean didn’t seem to notice until the furry little guy hit about mid-thigh. Then he stopped flailing and screeched, directing all his attention to swatting at his leg. I watched as the squirrel popped out of the hole in the knee of Sean’s jeans. Sean swatted it off, and then, apparently having had enough, he ran off toward the house with tiny scratches dripping blood, the owl still dive-bombing his head and a constant torrent of curses flowing behind him. I think I heard him yell that he’d see us at dinner, but I’m not sure—Bran was laughing too hard for me to make it out. Most of us wouldn’t laugh at seeing our sibling assaulted, but I’d learned that weres, and Bran especially, had very different senses of humor.

“I suppose you can call them off now,” Brannoc said with a smirk.

I summoned them back, the squirrel getting to me first. It ran up my leg and sat on my shoulder. I reached over and scratched its head in thanks. “You think he learned his lesson?” I asked.

Brannoc came up and reached toward the squirrel, looking at me for permission before he gently patted its head.

“That depends,” he said, his lip twitching in amusement. “What lesson were you trying to teach him?”

“Top of the food chain is nice, but there are a lot more things on the bottom.”

Bran had regained control of himself and was nodding solemnly. “If he didn’t, then it might be something we’ll have to go over. There are others besides Sean who could use that lesson desperately.”

I didn’t say anything, but I agreed. I’d only known the pack a short time, but I’d started to notice that some of them acted like they were invincible. Powerful, yes. Strong? Most certainly. But invincible? That was a dangerous notion to cling to.

I gave the squirrel one last scratch on the head and then returned all the animals to the ground, my heartfelt thanks sending them into the abyss. Though I knew it was right, it always made me a little sad to send things back. I’d never been great with good-byes.

Brannoc slung his arms around Bran and me, pulling us into a loose hug. “You staying for dinner?”

He phrased it like a question, even though we both knew it was more of a statement. Even if I didn’t want to, I’d be talked into staying. The pack seemed to take my scrawniness personally, taking any chance to fatten—or toughen—me up. I didn’t mind. The pack had a damn good cook.

Although technically owned and maintained by the
taoiseach
, or clan chief, the Den is a large open-beamed lodge enjoyed by all of the Blackthorn pack. And when I say large, I mean it—I’ve seen smaller apartment buildings. The list of permanent residents is fairly small, namely Brannoc, his family, and a handful of staff. There are always extra people there, though. Families that need a place to stay, weres visiting from neighboring packs, people petitioning to get into this pack, or the random people like myself. Pack members, if they can afford it, tithe a certain percentage of their income to the Den. That money makes sure everyone is taken care of. It’s homey and loud and would probably remind me of summer camp, had I ever gone to summer camp.

It took a few minutes to clean the dirt, blood, and grass off me before dinner. Not surprisingly, the downstairs bathroom in the Den was well equipped with first-aid supplies for those of us who couldn’t speed-heal.

Once I was presentable, or as close as I was going to get without a full shower and a wardrobe change, I went off looking for Brid.

2

COME ON-A MY HOUSE, MY HOUSE, I’M GONNA GIVE YOU CANDY

Some guys like leggy blondes. Some like them bookish or brunette or petite, and apparently some like them plastic, or plastic surgeons wouldn’t have such big houses. And I’m not against any of those traits, except for the plastic, because that gives me the creeps. But for my money, you couldn’t get any more perfect than Bridin Blackthorn.

She was short, but not overly so. A few inches over five feet, maybe. The red of her tank top accented her skin, which was turning dusky from the summer sun, or as dusky as an ivory-skinned girl could get. Her feet were bare, which is what she preferred, and I could make out the muscular curve of her calf through the slit in her sarong. No matter how many times I saw her, my mouth tended to go dry and my heart always sped up. It made me feel like a brain-dead schoolboy.

“Are you going to keep skulking in my doorway like a common pervert, or are you going to remember your manners?”

I rapped my knuckles on the doorjamb. “Friendly neighborhood perv. May I come in, dear lady?”

She scoffed and waved me in, keeping her back to me. I kicked the door shut with my heel and slid up behind her. Her coppery hair had purple and green streaks in the front and was getting a little longer in the back, just starting to curl up a bit at the ends. If I’d told her it looked cute, she probably would’ve socked me. I kissed her neck, letting my fingers trace down her shoulders, past her elbows, coming to rest lightly on her hips. I waited for her to make the next move, if any. Brid was Alpha and didn’t take pushy behavior lightly.

She leaned into me, pulling my hands farther around her. “You done taking your beating yet?”

I nodded. Her hair smelled like shampoo. Sandalwood and orange spice. I smiled. I recognized a LaCroix product when I smelled one. “Yes, thoroughly thrashed. You’re using the shampoo I gave you. You like it?”

Brid patted my hands and pulled away, going back to her task of straightening her room. She spent most of her time in the city by the university where she went to school, so there wasn’t much to clean up. “I do like it. It doesn’t stink.”

Though that sounded like an insult, she meant it to be complimentary. Weres have an excellent sense of smell, much better than a human’s. That meant most bath products literally stank to them. Brid was only half were, but that didn’t weaken her nose. And since the fey half of her leaned toward natural things, well, it made it hard to shop for her. I’d brought it up to my mom since she makes a lot of products for her business.

My mom is an earth witch, which means she’s a whiz with plants. She uses them to make ointments, medicines, and lately, bath products. Realizing the problems the weres and hybrids were having, my mom had begun experimenting with softer natural scents and even some unscented products. A few people in the pack had tried them out, and they’d gone over like gangbusters. My mom could barely make them fast enough. The orange and sandalwood was new, and one I’d specifically requested for Brid. I’d given it to her on our last date—we’d gone to see one of the outdoor movies they show in Fremont, and though we’d both seen the feature about a thousand times, we had a blast. It was impossible for me not to have a good time with Brid. She could take me to a seminar on time-shares and I’d leave with a smile on my face. A smile probably similar to the one I had now, caused by a memory of Brid’s candy-sticky fingers on mine.

I flopped onto her bed. Closing my eyes, I settled in, resting my head in my palms. “So, what’s up, buttercup? We still on for tonight?”

“You’ve been spending too much time with Ashley.” Ashley was a harbinger—a guide from this world to … wherever dead people went. She wouldn’t fill me in on where that was, exactly. Part of her job was working with necromancers. I think she was supposed to be a guide for me, but really she just tried to boss me around.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” There was a lump underneath me. I shifted and pulled out a set of child-sized markers. I pulled a blue one out of the pack. “You got an art project, Brid?”

She walked over and snatched them out of my hand. “For your information, they aren’t mine. Some of the kids were up here earlier.”

I waved the blue at her. “Sure, kids. Is that the story we’re going with? If I dig around, am I going to find glitter and pipe cleaners? Your old My Little Ponies? Dare I say a naked Barbie or two?”

She grimaced. “Maybe your sister had Barbies, but I sure didn’t.”