Vesik 04 - This Broken World (6 page)

I nodded and took a bite of catfish and smiled. “It was some damn good food.”

She pulled a phone out of her pocket. “I waited on you two back then. Never seen anything like it since. Can I take your picture?”

I raised my eyebrows and demolished my last piece of fish. “Sure. Why not?”

She handed her phone to the hostess behind the register. We stood to either side of the photo and smiled as the hostess snapped a new picture.

“Thank you so much,” the older server said. She flashed a wide smile.

“No problem.” I paid my bill, left an excessively large tip, and continued on to Coldwater, amused and somehow content after revisiting that little piece of my past.

***

I followed the highway south as it narrowed into two lanes on either side and finally turned into a curvy, one lane death trap. The setting sun slowly lit the sky on fire as my tires crunched onto a narrow gravel drive. I didn’t like taking my old ’32 Ford onto gravel roads, but I didn’t give it too much thought, nervous as I was about training with the Old Man. I bounced up and down a few miles of hills before I was hit by the presence of unusually active ghosts.

I saw several in the fields where the slab town once stood. Some performed repetitive tasks at a shimmering, ghostly sawmill, and others casually strolled along the old road. A concentration of ghosts that large was unheard of for the area. Most of the ghosts here didn’t move around. I wondered if the Old Man had stirred them up. A long curve eventually crossed into an open field surrounded by an old deciduous forest.

At the top of a gentle hill stood the old cabin. The ancient oak tree out front cut into the starry night sky. Zola had told me the cabin had been around in one form or another since before the Civil War. I didn’t doubt it. Hell, so had Zola.

Smoke curled from the edge of the front porch. Moonlight shadows kept me from seeing into the darkness clearly, but I was quite sure it was the Old Man seated before the orange glow around the old steel shutters.

A bright light flashed out behind the cabin like a lightning strike. There were no clouds in the sky and I could clearly see the Milky Way slowly churning by above us.

“You’re not going to ask me to chop firewood, are you?”

A gruff laugh echoed out from the porch. “If you don’t know how to cut firewood, we’re both in the wrong place.”

Another flash of light briefly lit the surrounding woods, followed by a quiet hiss and a sharp pop.

“What was that light?” I asked.

“Dell! Damian’s here. Come around, kid.”

I couldn’t see the face beneath his dark blond hair until he got closer, but the grumbling was unmistakable. I took a few steps toward Dell and shook his hand. He nodded as he took a bite out of a chocolate bar. Zola had told me he used sugar to cope with the side effects of necromancy. I’d never really had side effects quite that severe. Dell’s affinity for sugar had earned him the wonderful nickname of Roach.

He looked up and the moonlight caught his features. His eyes were silver in the dim glow, but I knew they were the cool gray of a born necromancer.

“Dell will only be with us through tomorrow night. He has some friends in the packs outside of the Irish Brigade. I’m sending him out with Hugh.”

“Out of the frying pan and into the doggie bowl,” Dell muttered.

I grinned, and as my eyes adjusted to the moonlight, I could see the Old Man’s gaze sweep between me and Dell. A pipe hung from the left side of the Old Man’s mouth. A steady streamer of smoke rose from the light ivory bowl.

“Adannaya trained you to be soft,” he said. The Old Man stood up and stepped down the short staircase. “You’ve been trained to walk in the light. You have no idea what you’re capable of. No idea what necromancers
are capable of.”

He inhaled and slowly let a cloud of smoke escape through his nose. His beard was still full. It covered many of the scars etched into his face, but not all of them. His arms were a mass of deep scars that formed a roadmap of mountains and valleys. “I’m here to teach you some hard truths. We are humanity’s dark side, and we walk a path no one else can. Necromancers use the dark to keep the shadows at bay, so others can walk in the light. We are the gatekeepers, and the gravemakers.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What are you talking about? Gravemakers?”

“All that stand before us face death.”

“What about the gravemakers?” I asked again. “What do you mean?”

“When a necromancer falls, he becomes one of them. The weak and ignorant find their fate much sooner. They are us, as much as we are them.”

“No. I would have known …”

“It’s true,” Dell said. “I’ve seen someone lose it. Fucking nasty way to go.”

 My mind raced back to the gravemaker I’d seen in that doomed city, Pilot Knob. As much as I didn’t want to remember, I thought of the gravemakers I’d touched with my necromancy at Stones River. Was there something human hidden among the atrocities? Something hidden within that pure, undiluted force of destruction? Were there men and women within those creatures? I closed my eyes and couldn’t stifle the shiver running from my neck down my arms.

The Old Man nodded. He tapped his pipe out in the fire pit off to his left. “Let’s see you fight—”

To call his attack fast would be a grotesque understatement. He’d set the pipe down on the edge of the fire pit and then he was on me. His first strike connected with my stomach and the wind left me. I barely got my left arm up to parry his next blow. He moved smoothly into a spinning back fist.

“Impadda!”
I said.

His face twisted into a death’s head grin as he pulled his punch.
“Impadda!”
he said, echoing my own incantation.

“Bummer,” Dell said.

My eyes widened as the Old Man’s shield slipped beneath my own, forcing it up, and in turn forcing my arm up. I was completely exposed. He landed a sharp jab on my chest and the air left me again. I collapsed into a coughing fit.

“I could have killed you twice, boy.”

I stared at his white beard and the smile he wore. He was a fighter. He was born to do this insanity. He had two thousand years of training under his belt. It was going to be rough.

“Put your bags in the cabin. When you’re settled, meet me in the back. We’ll train among the stones that Aeros raised.” He didn’t wait for a response. He picked up his pipe and headed around the cabin to the west, past the old stone well.

I blew out a breath and turned my attention back to Dell. “So, how’ve you been?”

He smirked as he finished off his chocolate bar. “Beat down. I imagine you’ll be feeling the same pretty quick.”

“No shit.” I pulled two bags out of my car’s trunk and took two quick steps up onto the porch. The screen door squealed a bit as I opened it. It was familiar, yet the cabin felt different with so much activity around it. The dead were restless.

I glanced out into the fields before I went inside. Pale, misty forms flickered in and out of sight in the woods. I frowned slightly, ducked through the doorway, and let the screen door fall closed with a loud crack.

There was a note sitting on the rounded, bar-height counter. It was in Zola’s handwriting.

Old Man, if you smoke in my cabin, I will remove your reproductive organs with a blunt rock.

I laughed a little. The old orange chair coated in little pilled puffballs was calling my name, but I resisted. A low fire in the wood stove cast an orange warmth around the room. The Old Man or Dell must have been cooking earlier, because it sure as hell wasn’t cold enough for a fire. I turned away from the living room and the seductive comfort of a well-known couch.

I ducked into the bedroom and paused. A few backpacks were already thrown into the room. The decorative iron-framed bed sat against the wall to my left and the bunks were on the right. It looked like we’d be a bit cramped, at least for the night.

After dropping my bags, staff, and pepperbox, I took the few steps back to the kitchen. The focus was still tucked into my belt. I didn’t like walking around without some kind of weapon on me. I opened the refrigerator and found it stocked with steaks, vegetables, some small, skinned, unidentifiable critters, and a couple bottles of Duvel. I shut the door and grabbed a quick glass of water before heading toward the back.

The screen door squealed behind me and I turned to find Dell walking in through the front.

“You really train here with Zola back in the day?”

I nodded as Dell rubbed his arms.

“How did you handle the dead? There are so many. It’s so loud here.”

“Loud?” I asked.

“Yeah, man. They won’t shut up, it’s like I’m standing in the middle of a goddamned mall at Christmas.”

“I don’t hear anything,” I said.

“You have got to be kidding. How the hell do you shut them out?”

“I’ve never really had to shut them out before,” I said. “It’s more like I have to tune in to hear them speak. The stronger ones, sure. I get a whisper every now and then, and I can see them without focusing my Sight.”

“You’re different alright.” He shook his head. “Damn.”

I opened the back door. “What do you mean?”

Dell walked out ahead of me. “The Old Man told me you were different than I was. Said you can even use some Fae magic.”

“We can all use line arts to some degree. Every shield I’ve ever seen was a line art.”

“Yeah, but making pigeons explode at the ex’s wedding? That’s not like calling a shield, man. That is some intricate shit. It would take years for most mages to master that. How long did it take you?”

I pulled the door closed behind me and glanced at Dell. “A couple hours, but Sam inspires motivation.”

He belted out a staccato laugh. “Yeah, different.” Dell bit into another chocolate bar and stepped off the back porch.

“I thought
I
ate a lot of crap.” I followed him out into the circle of stones. Each was large enough to sit on comfortably.

“I’ll be into anything with sugar until I’m dead. It takes the edge off after grabbing onto some random dead bastard’s aura.”

“That won’t be long if you keep yapping,” the Old Man said from the edge of the stone circle. He stood beside a deep furrow that ran beside a melted stone and cut through the forest beyond. It was here Zola had ended the insane march of Philip’s army. Philip Pinkerton. Now I knew he’d been my brother of a sort, one of the sons of Anubis. Good riddance.

“We have one day until Dell leaves to join the wolves. Tonight, you spar. Tomorrow morning, the real training begins.”

Dell cursed, finished his candy, and stuffed the wrapper in his pocket. “I’ve been training under this crusty old bastard for years. No offense, but I’m going bury you.”

I smiled and stood up. “It’ll be hard to bury me while you’re hunting for your teeth.” We slowly began to circle each other.

Dell blew out a puff of air. “Amateur. The only way you’ll survive this is if your sister comes to save you.”

“I only pull out the big guns for a serious threat. I’ll let my cu siths have you.”

“Aww … gross, man.”

“The things I’ve seen …” I said as seriously as I could.

Dell’s kept his eyes on me before he stumbled over a rough spot of earth and I burst into laughter.

“You’re good,” he said with a smile.

“For fuck’s sake,” the Old Man said, “shut up and fight.”

I knew Dell was good with a gun, but damn he was fast on his feet too. He started to throw a punch, but it was his foot that came up, seeking my face. I barely got my left arm up to block. The impact hurt. He moved to strike again.

“Impadda!”

Dell cursed, moving too fast to stop his kick. His shin bounced off the flowing, glassy barrier and put him off balance. I lashed out with an awkward kick of my own, which he easily deflected.

“Pulsatto!”
he said as he recovered.

The wave of force caught my shoulder and knocked me off balance. Dell was not so clumsy as to waste an opportunity. He hopped toward me and landed a quick forward kick to my chest, right where the Old Man had hit me earlier.

I started questioning my choice of dinner. I slid back onto one knee and called up a shield. Dell grinned and called up his own.

“Sucker,” I said.

As soon as he went to scoop my shield up, I let the shield fall. He was expecting resistance, but there was none. His arm swept high above his head, leaving his midsection exposed. He tried to strike with an off-balance kick.

“Minas Pulsatto!”

The restrained incantation hit him hard enough to take his feet out from under him and he hit the ground with a thump.

“Fuck,” he said. “That’s cheating.”

“That’s strategy,” the Old Man said after a moment. “Come, let us eat, and then we will train.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

M
y stomach was halfway to exploding after eating the Old Man’s squirrel stew. One thing he’d learned to do in two thousand years? Cook. Good. Squirrel. I regretted indulging so much as I picked my face up out of the grass for the seventh or eighth time.

“You haven’t vomited yet,” he said. I looked up and could see his mustache and white beard raised slightly. The bastard was smiling.

Dell curled up on one of the stone seats. He had a nasty gash running down his right cheek where the Old Man had scored a hit.

“You sure he’s okay?” I asked.

“He’ll be fine. A healer will be here later.”

“Healer?” I asked as I dragged myself back up onto my feet.

“Yes, for some reason Zola and the
Sanatio
of the Sidhe thought the two of you might need one.”

Sanatio
of the Sidhe? That was Cara’s title in Glenn’s court. It seemed awfully formal for getting a beat down from the Old Man. I mean getting a thorough training session, of course. I stood up and brushed the brittle clump of dry grass off my sleeve.

“Make ready.”

That’s how he was, orders and commands. Even his questions were commands, at some level. He’d been a leader for so long I was pretty sure he’d forgotten how the little people thought.

The Old Man had connected with the same attack three times in a row. I was pretty sure it would be the same move again.