Wolves and the River of Stone (4 page)

“
Cult,”
Foster said. “He’d be so pissed if he heard you call his army a cult.” He pulled a piece of shredded cheese off my omelet and started eating it from the end.

Zola nodded and turned her attention back to me. “He gave Devon the power to control other vampires. That’s why Azzazoth seemed to have so many followers.”

“What?” I said.

“It’s a dark art. It bestows the vampire control almost equal to a necromancer. Think of the pranks you used to play on Sam.”

Foster laughed and a smile curled my lips. I remembered when she was a new vampire. Though I didn’t have absolute control over her, I could still flex my necromancy because she’d fed on my blood and could end an argument by making Sam tell me how great I was. Foster had witnessed it a few times.

“Now, think if you used that control to have Sam tear out her own heart, or wound herself gravely enough for a demon to take over her aura.”

My smile died.

Zola nodded. “Perhaps worse, Philip thinks you’re the key to unlocking Prosperine.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Prosperine? The Destroyer? She died ages ago. She’s as much a myth as some of the dormant old gods.”

“No, she still lives.” Her eyes closed and she took a deep breath. “You are the key because ...” She stopped and stared at me for a while. “Ah have kept things from you Damian. Ah thought to protect you, but Ah fear it was a mistake.”

Zola looked unsettled, which was unsettling in itself. Anxiety twisted my throat and I swallowed the knot down hard. “It’s okay. I know you were always looking out for me. Just tell me,” I said in a carefully controlled voice.

At first I didn’t think she was going to say anything because her face closed down. What she did say, I never saw coming. “Ah knew your grandfather in the war.”

“What?” I said as my eyes widened.

“Ah never told you because ...” she grimaced and clenched her hands into fists again, “because he died to seal Prosperine away at the Battle of Stones River.” She pounded her fist on the table. “It was my fault.” Her lips twisted into a snarl.

Foster fluttered over to Zola and slapped her in the face with a wet napkin. “That’s crap and you damn well know it.” He pointed at her as she stared at him with wide eyes. “You didn’t know enough back then. You were the student. You’ve told me this story before. You know as well as I do it’s not your fault.”

I gaped at Foster, then at Zola, and then Foster again. “You knew?”

Foster shrugged. “She just wanted someone else to know in case she didn’t get a chance to tell you herself. Obviously your master is an excellent judge of character.” Foster locked his thumbs in the edge of his cuirass, bowed, and smirked as Zola let out a tiny chuckle.

“Tell me what happened,” I said.

Zola met my eyes and I thought she looked relieved. Maybe she thought I’d flip out when I found out she’d known an ancestor of mine I’d never met—an ancestor who had died well over a century before I was born.

“It was toward the end of the first day when she rose.” A shudder rattled the spoon in Zola’s coffee mug. “Gravemakers were being born out of the carnage at a rate Ah hadn’t seen since Shiloh and wouldn’t see again until Gettysburg and Chickamauga. We didn’t know—we couldn’t have known—she was fueling them. Men died from gunfire and cannonballs, yes, but many more were struck down by gravemakers. And Prosperine, by the gods, on New Year’s Day 1863, Prosperine raised the dead rebs and yanks and marched them through both lines. They killed their own, and it was ... it was horrible.

“We were across the river near McFadden’s Ford when we first saw her. She came out of the river and floated across the battlefield. Ah remember she was beautiful at first, like a raven-haired goddess, but her image stuttered on our plane. You’d see a flash of decaying tentacles and beaks wrapped in a mass to resemble a human body.

“One boy ...” she sighed and closed her eyes. “Ah remember a young boy, a Union boy of maybe fifteen that had the gift, he had the Sight. We were going to help him, train him if we could. He tried to run from the Gravemakers, but when he saw Prosperine he ate his gun. Didn’t even sit down to do it, just put the rifle to his chin mid-stride and he was gone.” Zola’s voice grew strained and she started talking faster.

“Only he wasn’t gone. Prosperine grabbed his soul and reanimated his body with it. He wasn’t alive, he wasn’t dead, and he was controlled by that demon. He was her tool. He killed dozens for her. Union boys, Confederate boys, it didn’t matter to him or to her.”

Zola shook her head slowly and her voice was smaller as she said, “Ah still wake up to that monster in my nightmares. The screaming. The blood.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

“Hinrik, your great-grandfather, Ah suppose? Watching that broken child pushed him over the edge. Ah remember his face. Ah always thought it was how a Viking should look, all hair and rage.” She smiled and laughed an empty laugh. “He screamed for me to hide the artifact when he was done. Ah didn’t realize what he meant to do. Ah thought he had some way to trap her. Ah suppose he did, but it cost him his life. Bound that monster into a bloodstone. We’d had our differences. He was a dark necromancer, Damian, but he was a good man, in the end.”

I couldn’t keep the shock from my face and my voice fell to a whisper. “He was a necromancer? A
dark
necromancer?”

Zola nodded.

Dark necromancers were abominations, blights walking the earth. They dove into taboo and truly evil practices like most people breathe air. If an incantation called for the sacrifice of a child, not only would they not hesitate, they were likely to use two, just to be safe. I shivered as I considered the fact one of my ancestors, one of the people I inherited my gift from, was dark.

“Do my parents know?”

“They knew he was gifted, but no, they don’t know what he was.”

“I pray I never fall that far,” I said.

“You won’t,” Zola and Foster said simultaneously. Foster laughed and leaned against the ketchup bottle, with his arms crossed and his scabbard swinging at his side.

I sighed and glanced between my friends. Most of the supernatural community would consider Zola a dark necromancer for her past deeds, no matter how justified. She’d been a slave once. When she escaped with Philip, they’d taken their vengeance on the slavers that abused them. Philip had been a stable boy, beaten almost as regularly as the slaves. Zola took eight lives in a hideous ritual of torture and flames, and for her atrocity, she would live eight lifetimes. She still bore the scars on her back from the whips and flails. The raised skin on her wrists was still slick where shackles had torn them open again and again. She had been sixteen when she was beaten into slavery. Hideous ritual or not, the slavers deserved worse.

“Am I really the key to Prosperine?”

“Your bloodline, yes, and you are the only necromancer left in the line. Even if Sam had the gift, her vampire blood won’t open a gate now that she is a vampire. Essentially, you are the key.”

“Maybe we should just kill you,” Foster said. “Save us some headaches.”

I’d like to think he was joking.

“Even dead, his blood could still be used,” Zola said.

“Guys, I’m right here.”

“So torch him,” Foster said with a snappy
isn’t it obvious
tone of voice.

Zola casually rolled up her menu and whacked him into the next booth. I heard a tiny “Ouch” muttered from behind us and couldn’t help but laugh.

“We need to destroy Prosperine’s tie to our plane.” Zola leaned forward. “We aren’t strong enough to kill her outright. Not even with a key of the dead.”

Foster fluttered down to the table again and said, “I don’t know, you have a pretty good backhand.”

I grinned and pushed my pancake remnants over to the fairy. His eyes widened as he just barely resisted diving into the pool of syrup. Aideen would kill him if she had to chip dried syrup out of his armor ever again.

“She can be banished with a blood rite and the thorough destruction of the artifact,” the fairy said around a mouthful of pancake.

“Ugh.” My stomach wanted to heave. “I hate blood rites.”

“Yeah, especially when it’s your blood,” he said as he pulled off a tacky handful of pancake. I looked around for the servers and cooks to be sure they wouldn’t see a floating crumb, but they were otherwise occupied.

“Ah’ll need to research it,” Zola said. “Take me to the Pit tonight and Ah’ll check their elder works.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “They’re trusting you with the old books now, huh?”

She nodded.

“I’m impressed.” The Pit was almost psychotically protective of the old books and grimoires they’d amassed through the centuries. It was unusual for them to let anyone see them, especially a human, given their greasy paw prints. “I guess you’ll be needing some gloves then?”

“Vik already bought me some,” Zola said. “Ah have a whole box in the archive.”

“Wow, did you hand feed him a ferret or something?” Foster asked.

“Vik doesn’t do much for anyone since the Devon ordeal,” I said as I glanced at Foster. Devon was Vik’s ex-girlfriend. She’d come frighteningly close to killing me last year with the help of her pet demon. I’d killed her spectacularly with fifty pounds of dynamite. Oddly enough, no one had been stupid enough to mess with my sister since Devon went to her maker in pieces.

“Ah have only provided him with a friendly ear, nothing more.”

“Well, I guess that’ll do it for some vampires,” I said as Foster’s shrill voice screamed, “I love pancakes!”

Zola laughed, pushed his right wing away from a mess of syrup, and wiped the pool up with a moist napkin. “Yes, for him, it is all he needed.”

“So, who was Agnes?”

“A worthless Sunday soldier, but she truly doesn’t matter now. That son of a bitch isn’t acting alone. Philip’s followers are loyal, and Ah’m sure the reasons why are atrocities in themselves.” She pushed a pair of braids behind her neck. “Ah learned the names of two more of his cult while Ah was with them. One is Zachariah, a sadist and assassin of great skill. The other is Ezekiel.” She paused and watched Foster as he stumbled back to his spot by the ketchup bottle. “Ezekiel is a monster. He is a practitioner of the Black Arts. Ah knew him before he was completely taken by the darkness. Ah watched him summon a demon to save a little boy, drowning in a flash flood. When the demon complained about his task after rescuing the boy, Ezekiel killed him. A minor demon, but a demon still. He is powerful, and ruthless, and I have no idea how Philip controls him.”

“Fantastic,” I muttered.

“If Philip has the power to control him, then he has become stronger than Ah ever imagined he could.”

“Oh god, I’m dying,” Foster groaned. He took a shallow breath and blew out a puff of air.

I laughed despite myself. Zola smiled and said, “Let’s go home.”

F
oster had a massive sugar crash on the way back to Saint Charles. His upper body was hanging out of Zola’s jacket pocket, with arms limp beside his wings while he snored like a chainsaw the rest of the way home. I unlocked the front door to the shop and let Zola carry him inside. A small but sharp intake of breath drew my eyes to Aideen as she landed on Zola’s shoulder. I offered up a lopsided grin to Foster’s wife.

“Is he ...” she started to say.

“Asleep,” I said.

“Oh, thank the bloody stars. Carter told us you went to rescue Zola. We didn’t know what happened. We were going to come after you.” It was then I realized Aideen was fully armored. A long and infinitely fine chain mail vest fell from her shoulders and was cinched with a belt to give her legs a full range of movement. Peeking out above her shoulders were the plain golden hilts of two Fae blades. Clad in a matching coif, greaves, and vambraces, she looked ready to kill.

Zola laid Foster on the counter. He grunted once and started snoring again.

“Was it really Philip?” Aideen said.

Zola only nodded.

Aideen exploded in a cloud of fairy dust and threw her arms around the old Cajun. “I’m so sorry.” She squeezed Zola for a moment before she said, “I’m so glad you’re back.”

Zola laughed quietly and patted the coif around Aideen’s head. “Ah’m glad to be back.”

Aideen’s eyes wandered back down to Foster as she reached out and squeezed my shoulder. “What happened?” she said as she took in Foster’s condition.

“Ah, well,” I said as I scratched the back of my head. “Pancakes.”

“Damian Valdis Vesik, I thought you had more respect for my son than to get him blasted on sugar.”

I turned to find a Cara hovering a few feet away. She too was draped in golden armor, but void of any swords, which made me very happy. “Sorry, Mom. We had a rough night, and he really wanted pancakes. They were ... celebratory pancakes.”

Cara smiled and shook her head. “I’ll let it slide this time, boy. It’s good to see you safe, Zola.”

Zola chuckled and I had a feeling it was because Cara called me ‘boy.’ It was one of Zola’s favorite terms of endearment, or harassment, depending on your point of view.

“If you wish to talk, I’m always here.”