He’d began acting weird, as if his sight had suddenly unfocused. Then, his face reflected deep despair. I wanted to touch it and run my finger over the slightly down-turned corners of his eyes until his confident mocking expression returned, with the light predatory gleam in its very depth.
I didn’t know what came over me but I raised my hand and touched his palm. It was so smooth and hot... For just a moment, an unjustified irrational anxiety exploded in my breast. Then, through the nerves on the tips of my fingers, little lightning bolts began to spark. The longer I didn’t pulling my hand away, the stronger this strange sparkling tension grew between us.
Nevertheless, I could be satisfied with my action. The confusion and the oppressive misunderstanding disappeared from the man’s eyes. Now, his eyes were flaming. He was looking only at me. It seemed that it was about to burn me to ashes.
No one had ever looked at me like that before. And that’s why something was spiraling in my stomach, becoming a scalding hot coil.
“Are you all right?” I asked, feeling an intolerable desire to run somewhere far away. Or the opposite.
I didn’t understand what was going on. And he was silent. Only his chocolate-dark eyes were going darker and darker.
The next moment, he suddenly grabbed my wrist and pulled me onto himself.
A second passed – and I was lying on top of him, afraid to breathe. Afraid to move once again because I felt him with every millimeter of my skin.
Another second passed – and he grasped my hands over my head and toppled me onto my back.
“What are you?” the question died in my throat.
Reive bent over my face. Quite near.
I felt his chest rise heavy and fast. I felt the suppressed tension in his muscles, as if he’d been about to jump.
Inside me, a searing heat responded. Blood pulsed in my temples, my head ached, and it seemed to me that I was running out of air. I breathed through a half-opened mouth. Like a fish on hot sand.
The next moment, Reive bent closer and nuzzled my nose. Carefully. As if he was teasing me. Inhaling deeper.
“Take yourself in hand, necromancer...” I said hardly audibly. Faintly and weakly.
My glance fell on his lips, the corners of which were lifted so playfully. He inclined his head to one side, almost touching me with his lips.
“This doesn’t look like resistance,” he breathed. His voice was broken and hoarse. It made my head swim.
His lips. I was about to feel how soft they were...
At that moment, out of the corner of my eye I saw a movement by the entrance to our shelter. I looked there abstractedly and froze. The blood rushed to my head. I couldn’t hold back a scream.
It seemed to me I’d never in my life felt such a thrill of horror. At the entrance, a zombie was standing. He was swaying slightly. The sun was shining through his dirty kinky hair. The zombie looked at Reive, and a look of pleasure distorting the dead skin came to his face.
I cried out so loud that my ears popped and terror made me nauseous.
We didn’t meet the undead in Ihordarrine. Protection totems stood around the perimeters of the entire city. Around each cemetery, the barriers were under a spell. The dead were either burned or buried exclusively in steel coffins, depending on the deceased family’s resources.
All these measures helped avoid a wild outburst of the undead in the capital of the kingdom. However, they say, it was different on the outskirts. I tried not to think about that. In the province of Arc where I came from, my mother-duchess also ordered the installation of all possible protection devices. So that in childhood, I never happened to learn about the hunger and the malice of the undead.
Thanks to mum for everything. May she have hiccups during sex for the rest of her life!
Anyway, I learnt about ghouls, strygas and other creatures of twilight magic only from lessons in the Academy. Only in theory. I had to admit, I was expecting to remain a necromancer without once meeting a zombie.
That was why the zombie at the entrance to the lair unnerved me. But Reive smiled broadly and, depriving me of what self-control I had left, said, “By the Twilight, you’re always on the ball!”
He laughed.
I wanted to faint and never ever open my eyes again, or better not open them until this ghastly zombie had disappeared.
I took a deep breath, trying to calm down, catching Reive’s strange carefreeness and absorbing it with my skin.
He wasn’t afraid. He was pleased.
“What does this mean?” I shifted my gaze to the zombie’s palms. He was holding a cauldron filled with water in his dry grey fingers.
“I have delicious fried meat. And there’ll soon be something to wash it down...”
“You... you...” all these words stuck on the tip of my tongue.
This just couldn’t really be happening.
“You raised up this zombie?” I gasped, feeling a complete idiot, Well, it just couldn’t be. Even Masters can’t do that.
“Sure,” Reive nodded calmly, gesturing to the monster. “Put it here and go out. Wait outside and guard the entrance. And don’t you try to stick your nose in here. See how you’re scaring the lady!” The necromancer gestured with his hand and the horrid scream-producing zombie gave me a nod. A cold wave ran down my spine. For a second, a blood-red flame flashed in his eye sockets. Then, everything became as it was before. It occurred to me that this zombie was very lucky: he still had his eyeballs. Now they were yellow-grey, with black pupils. From a distance, they might seem quite normal. If they didn’t flash with such a hungry red light, of course. I desperately wanted to huddle against Reive. To seize his hand, to hide behind his back which didn’t shudder like mine from each movement of the zombie. Then, I realized: a man who could raise the undead was much more dangerous than the undead he raised. I shifted my gaze to
What’s happened?” the girl asked anxiously.The necromancer clenched his teeth. It seemed like he was going crazy.Was this a side effect of being raised from the dead? Or was it because of the damned locusts who’d been finishing him off for seven hundred years?“It’s okay. I just remembered something unpleasant,” he said, scarcely hearing himself. His gaze was focused a little to the left of the girl – to the place where once again his old enemy was standing. Damn Ulfricus Ayris, smiling repulsively.Yet, Angelina obviously didn’t see anyone.Reive slowly closed his eyes, mentally ordering the spirit to get lost. To the place ordained for traitors.“And where is the place for people like you, Reivy?” the ghost smirked.The necromancer opened his eyes, but that asshole Ulfricus didn’t disappear. Inste
The remains of the fire glowed drearily before my eyes. The sun was going down, and I was no longer thinking that I had spent the whole day with a stranger who was really strange. That I had almost slept with him in a bear’s lair. That I had almost died from a seizure. And now, I’m watching the dying embers with him in the company of an undead called Zomzom.For the first time in a long while, I was feeling calm and comfortable. Even though everything should have been the other way round, I felt good. I had already told Reive the history of my own birth. I told him something that no one else had ever heard from me during the five years I studied at the Academy. During my whole life! So, there was no point in holding back from telling what will happen.“In a month, there will be a royal wedding,” I uttered gloomily. “My birth father has found a new fiancée. And now, all the rich and high-born people are gathering in the
“It just can’t be,” I gasped, looking into the mocking dark-brown eyes. “The descendant of the very King of the Dead? Can I touch you?”I carefully put my hand on his knee.What was going on in my head? Something like “there’s a great necromancer’s blood in his veins! I’m touching a legend!”In fact, everything looked rather strange. Reive stiffened, and then he glanced sideways and said with a fixed smile:“Angel, you do remember I’ve got nothing on underneath this coat, don’t you?”I started back in fright, biting my lips nervously. True, he didn’t have anything...Oh, the Dark!The next moment, the necromancer shrieked with laughter. And it seemed to me that I blushed even more.“Don’t worry,” he added with a slightly guilty smile. “That I’m sitting here half-naked is my fault, not yours. So, I’m sorr
“Who’s shy here? You know what this jacket was like? Everyone dreamed of having such a thing! Ah, what do you know anyway?”Reive gave a wave of his hand and huffed angrily. It seemed to me I hadn’t had such fun for a long time.For some time, we just looked silently at each other, and I was even managing to get used to Zomzom’s silent presence. By the way, I began to like his name more and more as if no other name could suit the undead.“Reive, aren’t you going to... kill the zombie?” I said thoughtfully.The undead shifted his scary but altogether too clever gaze to the necromancer.“No way.”The dead eyes flashed red then went dull.“I’ll need a servant and a porter soon,” he continued. “And to expend my energy on raising someone else is...”“To expend your energy on raising the dead?” I snorted. “In such a situa
“Yeah, it’s a tradition.”Now, I shook my head, “What for?”I really didn’t understand this.“Necromancy’s absolutely useless nowadays. Well, you can raise the dead. But who needs that now?”I tried to spread my hands in a gesture of incomprehension, but suddenly, the ring fell through my fingers and dropped down to the bottom of the pond, lost between the thick water plants.“Oh, no!” I exclaimed. “I’m so sorry!” I was about to go into the water when the necromancer stopped me.“Wait, there’s nothing to panic about,” he said calmly, turning to me. “Except that you think necromancers are useless.”Unexpectedly, he frowned. I wouldn’t have thought that the loss of the family ring would distress him less than my opinion about the twilight science.“But really isn’t it so? What use to the wor
Bones and blood… Dark and twilight demons. It’s cold. It’s so cold. No feeling. Cold – at least I’m used to that. The zombie sat motionless six feet from the brightly burning campfire and stared at it with an unblinking gaze. Damn flames. I hate fire. Fire burns my blood. It eats up my spirit.Bursts of orange light were reflecting in the zombie’s dead eyes, causing an uprush of fear in him. The remnants of his brain that still hadn’t decomposed when Reive read the raising invocation called forth clear images. Images of burning yellow tongues on his hands and breast. Hungry fire greedily devouring his passively rotting flesh. And blood-red eyes flashing with evil crimson magic.The zombie had to obey. The rabbit’s body was laying at his feet. The animal’s skin wasn’t damaged anywhere.The zombie easily caught the rabbit. Zomzom had already recovered his senses after his awakening, and
Reive wanted to watch the sunrise. The first sunrise after hundreds of years in darkness. He woke up just as the amber light of dawn appeared on the horizon. He went out of the cave, taking note of everything as he moved. The zombie was still securely attached to the man and sitting obediently at the entrance to the lair. The twilight vision told him there were no people or large predators at any great distance from them. It was quiet.For some time the necromancer walked through the forest, heading towards a hill on the edge of the trees not far away. From there he thought that a fine view would open out.He was right. Sitting on a hillock covered with soft grass, Reive locked his hands together, planted his elbows on his knees and gave himself over completely to watching the golden dawn.It was really beautiful. It aroused not only a thirst for life in the necromancer’s heart, but also other deeper emotions. It aroused desires of which he hadn&rsqu