A Torment of Savages (The Reanimation Files Book 4) (8 page)

“The darkness has risen,” I said softly.

Tielle turned to look at me for a heartbeat, then turned back to the window. “Yes.”

“The fact that it happened not only at Selene’s house but the necromancer circle is troubling,” Micah said. “For one, it’s worrisome that Selene seems to be a target. Two, could the fact that it happened at the open circle mean that something got out? Some kind of really strong ghost that’s juiced up on other ghosts?”

“This is way beyond ghosts,” Tielle said. “Something did come through, but it’s not as simple as saying it’s another ghost. No matter how strong, ghosts don’t have the kind of dark power it takes to scorch the ground and kill animals.”

“It’s interesting to note that the PTF officers were only rendered unconscious, not dead,” I said. “It’s good of course. But why weren’t they killed?”

“Who knows?” Tielle said. “They are all hospitalized and still unconscious with no certainty as to when they will wake up. So just like Leena, we can’t question them.”

“What can we do then?” Micah asked.

Tielle unclasped her hands and turned around. “Investigate,” she said. “What happened at the circle is already on the news causing panic, I was not able to stop that. The PTF is doing their own investigations, and I want you on it too, Selene.”

“What exactly am I supposed to do though?”

“Examine the site, use runes to see if there’s any energy you can gather for us to analyze, take pictures. Then scout around and see if it’s happened anywhere else.”

“All right, I can do that.”

“I’m not sure to what end it will be, but we must do something,” Tielle said. “While we wait for whoever or whatever to reveal themselves…we must do something.” She hung her head briefly and squeezed her eyes closed for a moment.

“I wish I could have told my son not to come anymore,” I heard Tielle mutter.

“Son?” I said, a little too sharply. Tielle looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

“Yes, my son, Jian. You’re already aware that I have a son.”

“Right, I am. I uh…was just surprised to hear you mention him since you don’t really talk about your family. Or anything personal at all.”

Tielle gave a brief, tight smile. “Jian is here from D.C. to spend time with me and tour some colleges since it looks like I will be here for a prolonged period. He’s the one who gave me the perfume.”

Hence her choice to wear the foul smelling thing instead of dumping it.

“Oh, how nice,” I said. “It’d be great to meet him.”

“We’ll see,” she said, looking out the window again.

“Right, well, I’ll go start my investigation.”

“Give me a full report when you’re done.”

“Like you had to ask.” I turned and started to walk out, almost forgetting about Micah, who fell into step beside me. My thoughts were churning, and not only about the symbolic dead animals and blackened earth. Tielle, a dead witch, had a son. I don’t know how I did not remember that. I had found out about him when I’d researched Tielle back when she was hell-bent on getting my reanimation power stripped. Jian was her only child, had to be about eighteen if he was looking at colleges, and lived in D.C. That was all I knew about him.

This put an interesting spin on the issue with the almost non-existence of dead warlocks and the question as to whether or not dead witches had been practicing infanticide. So that meant Tielle hadn’t gone with the flow and not only kept her baby boy but made no secret of it in the dead witch community. So did other dead witches follow suit and keep their sons? If so, why weren’t there many visible dead warlocks around? It was puzzling, to say the least. Did Jian practice dead magic? He was young, so there’d be no reason I would have heard about him aside from the fact that he was Tielle’s son. Maybe he was looking at colleges with Paranormal Studies programs. There were several good ones here.

I thought of the one dead warlock I knew of in current times. Dr. Perlysse. He had been a very public figure, but had there ever been any attempts on his life once the choice had been made not to kill him as an infant? Maybe that’s why he kept such a public profile.

“Selene? Selene?”

I snapped out of my thoughts to see Micah looking at me while he held the elevator door open. I barely remembered walking here from Tielle’s office. Micah took my hand.

“I know it seems like bad times are descending upon us again, but try not to let it weigh you down. Whatever it is we’ll take care of it.”

“Same as we always do, right?” The smile I gave him was weak. He bent down and kissed my forehead and I sighed and leaned into him. He moved so he could use his back to keep the elevator door open and wrapped his arms around me. I folded myself into his embrace, closing my eyes as though that would block out all the bad stuff.

“It’ll be okay,” Micah whispered. I raised my head, and he bent down and kissed me gently. “Go investigate, but be careful. I’m gonna be here all day, but we’re still on for tonight, right?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for anything,” I said. I reluctantly stepped away from his arms and into the elevator. “It’s going to be the highlight of my day for sure.”

“Well, the bar is already kinda low, should I be offended?”

“No.” I stepped forward, stood on my tiptoes, and gave him a deep, ravaging kiss that caught his breath and had him stumbling forward when I pulled back. “You shouldn’t be offended, you should be excited.”

“I’m a lot of things,” he said in a breathy voice. He moved in for another kiss, but I pushed him back and smiled at the wanting look in his eyes as the elevator door closed. As I rode down, I tried to wrap the warmth that had rushed through me at Micah’s touch around myself as much as I could. I had a feeling I would need to hold on to as many good feelings as I could to get me through the day.

CHAPTER EIGHT

After leaving the PCC, my first stop had been to Carlos to see if he could find proof that the posted articles were coming from Jacob McNabb. Unfortunately, Carlos’s continuing issues with his servers and the fact that there was heavy encryption on the article’s source, making it hard to track, meant I’d had to leave without my proof. Carlos said he would text me when he’d figured it out and delved in to tackle what he called the biggest challenge he’d had in a while. I just hoped it didn’t take long.

I was now standing a few feet away from the open circle in Central Park. It was a faintly glowing ring that seemed brighter against the dark earth beneath it. The faded glow indicated that the circle wasn’t completely open, but it was still enough for ghosts to pass through. Several feet behind me, PTF officers in full riot gear with rune-bulleted rifles stood. It was further away from the circle than the guards usually stood, and when I arrived I could tell they were nervous. After what had inexplicably happened, I knew this wasn’t a job any of them had rushed to sign up for. If it was going to happen again, they knew as well as I did that putting more distance between themselves and the circle wouldn’t make a difference. I suppose it was comforting to fool themselves into thinking it would. I didn’t have a hard time gaining access to the site since they knew who I was and that I worked closely with Tielle.

Like at home, I felt the same, highly uncomfortable presence of dark energy. It clung to the blackened earth and I had to fight to keep myself from turning and getting the hell away from here. I was here to investigate. So I might as well get to it.

I took my phone out and spent a few minutes taking pictures. From close up, from further away, from all angles. I didn’t think the pictures would tell us anything helpful about what had done this, but Tielle said take pictures so I took them.

When I was done, I took out my rune pouch and found an Absorbing Rune, then set my bag down and slowly approached the blackened area. The closer I was to it, the more I felt the dark energy, which was bad enough, but I realized that my dead magic was trying to respond. The brush of this energy was making it rear its head like a dozing lion that had suddenly gotten a whiff of some antelope nearby. My dead magic wanted to come out to play, but I kept it locked down as tightly as I could. I couldn’t say I was surprised though. Darkness called to darkness, and the form of dead magic I carried came from a very dark place. The same place this new energy did.

When I was close enough, I crouched down with the now active rune. Holding it between my thumb and forefinger, I stretched my arm out. I was pretty much forcing myself to do it because my skin felt like it wanted to crawl off my bones. And the dead magic was becoming more restless. I took a deep breath and held my arm still, waiting for the rune to absorb some energy. After a few moments, I felt energy start to seep into the rune, but to my surprise, the pale pink rune started to turn black. That wasn’t supposed to happen. But not only that, the rune grew warm, and then, in a sudden flash of heat, it disintegrated into ash. I pulled my arm back and stumbled, falling onto my butt and staring at my hand in disbelief. My thumb and forefinger had smudges of black on them, and there was a tiny pulse of that dark energy beating against my skin. I stood up and hastily wiped my hands against my jeans. My nerves were rattled. What kind of energy would do that to a rune? Not even the mixed up ghost energy that had been in the victims of the crossover ghosts had caused a rune to crumble to dust. I had no idea what to think except that this new, unexplained phenomenon just kept getting worse and worse.

It was one thing to have bad shit going on. But when you didn’t know who was causing the bad shit, where they were, why they were doing this, and when they would strike again? That was pretty much like walking blindfolded and weaponless into a room full of trigger-happy people with guns.

* * *

I was exhausted by the time I was driving down my block looking for parking. It was just after six. After leaving Central Park with nothing but some useless pictures, I’d scouted around, looking for other signs that things were amiss. In a couple alleyways in downtown Manhattan I had seen a dozen or so dead rats. Below them, the ground was scorched. In midtown a bunch of dead pigeons lying in the middle of the road were being cleaned up when I came across them. Again, the ground beneath the bodies was black. I had gotten out of my car and eavesdropped on people who were looking on. They were puzzled, and a few people were of the mindset that it was some sign of an evil presence. No kidding. Angels were unlikely to kill animals as a sign of their presence.

I had driven out to Queens and found much of the same. Group of dead squirrels under a tree in a park, and a mix of dead dogs, cats, rats, and birds in the middle of a wide, busy street. I’d even come across a few people who were freaking out about backyard discoveries similar to mine. At least I hadn’t heard anything about more people being hospitalized the way the PTF officers who’d been guarding the circle were.

I had called Tielle to tell her my findings, but she already knew because it was all over the news. An isolated incident could be kept quiet, but similar instances of dead animals all across the city was going to get attention. I emailed her all the pictures I had taken. The phone call and pictures was about as full a report as I could give, so she told me I didn’t have to come in for face time. Which was great because I wanted some time to unwind and get myself together for date night with Micah. No amount of weird occurrences and signs of darkness rising was going to make me call off date night.

I parked and headed inside. I had felt too thrown off by what I’d been doing all day to eat much, but now my stomach was letting me know it did not appreciate being ignored today. I hoped Ethan was back and that he’d cooked or ordered something. These days he seemed vehemently against me ordering takeout. If he hadn’t cooked and I said I was going to order food, he would head to the kitchen to whip something up. It was both sweet and eye-roll inducing. There was nothing wrong with some greasy, bad stuff every once in a while. At least I had cut down from doing it every day.

No delicious smells met my nose when I entered the house, but Luna leaped into my arms and bathed my face with her tongue. I headed into the living room, but as I dropped my handbag onto an armchair, I noticed that while Ethan was home, he was not alone, and the other person was not Kyo. A pretty young woman sat next to him. She looked to be around his age, had wavy, dark brown hair, a nice smile, and dark eyes.

“Oh, hi Selene.” Ethan stood straight up and looked a little jittery as though I had caught him doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. They’d just been sitting there, each with a game controller in their hand. When I glanced at the television, I saw that they’d been playing a Super Mario Bros. game. He avoided gory, first person shooters with his lady friend. Such a gentleman.

“Hiiii,” I said exaggeratedly. I smiled widely at Ethan. My day had been long and troubling, but this was an amusing little nugget to come home to. “How was your date, I mean day, Ethan?”

Ethan coughed in his throat then looked from me to the girl, who had stood up as well. She came over to shake my hand.

“Hi, I’m Ailani.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m Selene.”

“Oh, I know all about who you are,” Ailani said. “You’re amazing.” She glanced behind her at Ethan, who looked a little flushed. “I hope it’s okay that I’m here.”

“Of course,” I said. “Any friend of Ethan’s is welcome here. I see he was introducing you to his nerd life.”

Ethan made an unhappy sound, but I just smiled wider.

“I play video games myself actually. This Mario game just came out, so Ethan invited me to come play it. I haven’t bought it myself yet.”

“Well, isn’t that so nice of Ethan to invite you to come over to play.”

Ethan looked like he wanted to throttle me.

“Well, you two kids get back to your game, I’m gonna find me something to eat then rest up before heading out on a date of my own.” I winked at Ethan, and he flushed even more. Ailani just kept smiling. I put Luna down and headed into the kitchen. Ethan followed.