A Torment of Savages (The Reanimation Files Book 4) (18 page)

“Such are the rules of the summoning runes,” Magda said. “Those runes and the power imbued in them were forged by dead mages from long, long ago. Once used, the rules have to be obeyed by all involved. That’s why the rune circle does not last long and the window to make a deal is small. It is dangerous. They do not always want souls.”

“Well, that’s what Revath wanted,” I said. “And Nova gave her two. But Revath apparently didn’t give her what she asked for. Doesn’t that mean she broke the rules?”

“It appears Revath was cunning enough to get what she wanted without giving in equal,” Magda said.

“It’s all so terrible,” I said. “Right now my grandmother is…” I took a shuddering breath. I couldn’t finish the sentence, the thought. Or else my anger at Nova would overtake me and I’d want to go find her and throttle her. She’d deserve it, but it wouldn’t get me anywhere. It didn’t help that the dark energy I took from Brian was more than happy to fuel my anger, making it even stronger.

“I don’t suppose I can make a counter deal with Revath.”

Magda shook her head.

It was the answer I expected but it still felt like a blow of disappointment. “So what Nova said is true then. It’s too late…”

“Time will tell what is late, and what is not,” Magda said in a way that was not at all enlightening.

I sighed. So I now understood how Nova had made a deal with Revath, but it didn’t help me know what to do now. How the hell could I save those Savages if I couldn’t save myself?

And what about Kyo? I wasn’t sure what position I would be in to help him find his body given the current terror that had fallen, but I was still standing, still breathing, so I still had work to do.

I looked at Magda. She had just been more forthcoming with information than she had ever been, so I might as well take my chances. I just hoped what I was about to say would not get me killed.

“What do you know about dead warlocks and what happened to them three hundred years ago?”

Magda’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Oh child, what have you gone and gotten yourself into now?”

I pushed down the thrill of fear those words had elicited and rose to my feet. “I know everything,” I said. “And I’m trying to figure out where the warlock bodies are. You are powerful, and knowledgeable, if anyone would know anything, you would.”

“You flatter me,” Magda said, a small smile playing on her lips. “Do you suppose if I knew that I would tell you? Do you know how foolish it is to ask such dangerous questions, girl?”

“I am not foolish for trying to right a wrong that has stayed hidden far too long,” I said. “And it seems I am going to die anyway, so I might as well try to do something good before that happens. So, do you know anything?” I stood there on edge, ready to run and make a feeble attempt at escaping whatever she attacked me with for asking about the dead witches’ deepest, darkest secret.

Magda stared at me for an unnervingly long time, then walked behind her worktable and picked something up from the shadows in the corner. My eyes widened slightly when I saw that what she held was a tiny skull.

“I was not always what I am now,” she said. The skull lay in the palm of one hand while her other hand rested gently on top of it. She fixed those dark eyes on me. “I was once in a position where my choices were not mine to make.”

“You had to kill your son,” I said. “But you didn’t want to.”

Magda turned to her table and picked up a small pouch. She removed a rune from it. It was a round, dark green rune that was wrapped with threads of gold. I frowned as I stared at it because it was giving me a feeling of familiarity. Where had I seen a rune like that before?

“In my youth I was discouraged from carrying a child because of my stature,” she said. “It was thought that child-bearing could be fatal to myself and my child. But as we do when we are young and looking for the world to give us everything we want, I fell in love and conceived his child…”

I was listening enraptured. This was the most Magda had ever spoken about herself. I had never gotten so much as the smallest morsel of personal information about her before. I even tried looking her up online even though all I had was a first name that I strongly suspected was not the name she was given at birth. Needless to say, searches for “Magda, little person” yielded nothing helpful.

Magda stared at the rune in her hand as she continued speaking. “I ran away, not even telling the father, because I knew I would not be allowed to see the pregnancy through; they would force me to terminate it. I was able to stay hidden until I had him. It was just me and a woman in the village I was hiding in who considered herself a midwife. She helped me deliver my boy.”

The smallest, briefest, smile graced Magda’s face before it was gone. It was a sad smile.

“I got to have him all to myself for two days. Then my family found me. They were horrified when they saw the infant.”

“Horrified?” I questioned. “Why?”

“He had…disabilities. It was clear he would not lead a normal life. Not that I cared, I wanted my child regardless of anything. At that point, I had already taken his magic. Put it into this rune. I intended to give him up then get him back. I was going to keep my son…” She closed her eyes as though steadying herself against the onslaught of memories she had fought to lock away.

“But your family did not let you,” I said, voice soft.

“Because of his setbacks, they thought it best to end his life as opposed to letting me give him up then adopt him,” she said. “Nothing I said could convince them otherwise. I was prepared to dedicate my life to taking care of my son, but they were not prepared to let me. They took me away from that village and ended his life. Four days on this earth were all my son saw. I didn’t kill my son. He was taken from me.”

“That’s horrible,” I breathed. “I’m sorry.”

“It is nothing you need to apologize for,” she said. “The ones who should have apologized to me, I already dealt with.”

Another thrill of fear went through me. I wondered if some of the skulls that were always present here belonged to the people who had killed her son. Her own family.

“But you could have exposed them, you could have shown the world what your ancestors did and what dead witches today are still upholding.”

“To what end?” she asked. “There are hardly any souls to return to those warlock bodies.”

“That may be true, but that’s no reason to keep hiding the truth.”

“We are standing on cobwebs,” Magda said, voice low. “On boxes full of bones, and the dark memories of the true legacy of the dead witches. There are not enough warlocks left…”

“But there are some,” I pressed. “Some warlock ghosts still exist.” Enough for Tielle to gain a boost in her recovery from the attack from Isabelle’s beastie. There was no way she should have survived that and I was willing to bet that my hunch that she had used warlock magic to help herself heal was true.

“Perhaps,” Magda said. “But not enough to be worth fighting for. Not enough to upheave our entire history. Not enough to expose secrets that have stayed hidden for so long. I do not align with the mainstream dead witches. After what was done to me, I will not be a part of their ranks. That is how I have chosen to reject them and their horrendous legacy. I have other uses for my time and my power.”

I looked around the dirt-packed room full of bones, runes, and not nearly enough air to breathe comfortably. I didn’t question Magda on what the other uses for her time and power were. She had put her son’s skull and the rune away and was standing before me once more.

“But if the dead witches stopped taking their son’s magic, a new generation of dead warlocks could rise. It doesn’t have to be just about the warlocks of the past.”

“I will not stop you should you choose to bring old bones to light,” Magda said. “For you will have consequence enough to deal with that you will need no aid in your downfall.”

I frowned. “It doesn’t have to end like that.”

“No, it doesn’t. But you are not walking toward light, girl, for all the desires you have to leave the shadowed path behind. With this, and with your soul being hunted, make sure you have the strength, power, and the will to go against forces you have little hope of beating.”

* * *

I surfaced from the crypt, pushed the lid back into place, and left the mausoleum, feeling refreshed by the cool wind against my skin. What I didn’t feel was that I had gotten any useful guidance. The summoning information was great, but didn’t help me now. But if I was being honest, I had come here knowing full well that I might leave with nothing or very little. I had long learned that Magda did not give answers unless she wanted to. She could very well know how to stop Revath from taking my soul, but unless she saw a reason to share that information, I would never know.

Magda was powerful and frustratingly tight-lipped about who she was and why she was reaping power and biding her time below a graveyard. It would have been nice if I could have thought of her as the ace in my pocket, a source of strength I could call on if I needed to, but I couldn’t.

So now I guess I’d go home, curl up in Micah’s arms, and let Ethan medicate me with hot chocolate.

I heard a snarl, deep, throaty, and human, behind me.

Or not.

I hadn’t yet made it to the graveyard wall. I turned around, knowing what I would find, but still jolted with fear when I became face to face with a Savage. It wasn’t a PTF officer though. He was an older man, thin, with wrinkled skin and sparse hair, but the tension he held himself with, and the beastly expression on his face, was not one to take lightly. Revath had created more Savages, taken more souls. Not good. I started to back up. The wall wasn’t too far away. I could scale it and run back to my car and drive away.

But the old Savage had another idea. He attacked.

I dove to the side and rolled, jumping back up to my feet and quickly turning around to keep eyes on the Savage. He was coming at me again, and I wasn’t able to avoid being slammed to the ground. He snapped his teeth viciously, inches away from my face, as though in anticipation of using them to tear the skin off my flesh. He bore down on me with an almost overwhelming power; it felt as though my chest was going to cave in. I struggled, but was not able to push him off me. But he soon released me himself, though only to rear up with his arms above his head and screech. He still straddled my waist and I knew he was preparing for those arms to bury themselves in my body. I wouldn’t die, but I did not want to experience what it would be like to have a gaping hole gouged into my chest. Shit, shit, and fuck.

My dead magic was more than ready to help me out of this deadly situation. I didn’t want to do to this man what I did to Brian, but it didn’t seem as though I had a choice. I wanted to live, even if it meant a further slip into the darkness and more death by my hands.

But just as I’d decided to unleash my dead magic, his body went rigid and he toppled off me. I looked up to see Kyo standing there holding a now empty bottle of immobilizing powder. He offered me a hand and hauled me up, and I stood there staring at him with wide eyes and a wildly beating heart. The Savage lay nearby, still snarling and gnashing, but completely unable to move. Relief flooded through me.

“You’d think Revath would instruct them to leave you alone since she wants you to herself,” Kyo said.

“You’d think,” I muttered. “Thank you.” I was beyond glad that I hadn’t had to use my dead magic on the man.

“More Savages appeared,” Kyo said. “So I left Micah to protect Ethan and came to find you. It’s a good thing you have a stock of immobilizing powder. It’s the only thing that seems to have any effect on the Savages, but it doesn’t last long. Come on.” He headed to the wall and I followed, and we both scaled it then jumped down to the sidewalk. I’d been expecting to be greeted by hordes of Savages, but the streets were relatively quiet. There were no supernatural murders taking place.

“Is there any idea of how many more Savages there are now?” I asked Kyo.

“So far there have been about a dozen new ones sighted,” he replied. “The PTF is armed with immobilizing powder, but from what the media has been reporting, they haven’t been able to round any of them up like…”

“Brian,” I finished.

“Yeah,” Kyo said softly. “The Savages have been attacking people, but there’s been no sign of Revath. The death toll was at twenty last I heard.”

“Revath is the puppet master pulling the Savages’ strings,” I said bitterly. “Making more, then sending them out to wreak havoc.” I felt sick to my stomach.

“This is not your fault.” As though he knew what I was thinking, Kyo was suddenly standing in front of me with a hand on my shoulder and his face thrust into mine. “This is Nova’s fault. Don’t you dare take this onto yourself.”

I nodded. “I know, but I still feel responsible.” We made it to my car, and I drove off.

We were able to make it home without encountering any bloody massacres. I’d turned the radio on and we had heard that the Savages seemed to have once again disappeared.

“She called her chickens home to roost,” I said as I pulled up in front of my house. Upon hearing the car, Micah, Ethan, and Luna came outside to meet us, looking relieved to see me in once piece.

Micah hugged me tightly, then Ethan did, and Luna pranced around my feet until I picked her up. Then we all headed inside. The television was on and was reporting on the number of people who had been killed or injured tonight. I turned it off. I didn’t want more death beating me down. I sunk onto the sofa and dropped my head back. Ethan and Kyo sat on either side of me while Micah headed into the kitchen to get me something to drink.

“Did you find out anything useful from Magda?” Ethan asked.

“Well, she told me about how—”

I was cut off by a crash coming from the kitchen. Kyo, Ethan, and I were on our feet in an instant, and when I turned around and looked into the kitchen, I felt as though my heart had just stopped.

Revath was standing there, giving me a sweetly sick smile while her hand was wrapped around Micah’s throat. Her waves of moving shadows engulfed him; I could see nothing of the lower half of his body.