Stephen: I Think We’re Alone Now

My head ached from holding the spell obfuscating my presence for so long. Anyone looking at me would find me boring, someone they didn’t feel they had to pay attention to. It was brilliant to see it in action, even if the mental load was taking its toll on me. It was new to me, one taught me earlier today by my mentor.

She wasn’t struggling, not for an instant. Even carrying a heavy duffel bag almost as long as she was tall, she was the picture of grace. I don’t know how many spells she was carrying at the moment, not counting the enchantments she had worked into her gear.

The equipment I was carrying wasn’t anywhere near as packed with magic as hers. Evadne insisted I enchant all my equipment on my own, and I was barely knowledgeable enough to handle the enchanting patterns. The earring I had would protect me from a few headshots and the machete tucked in Evadne’s bag had a strength and sharpness enchantment good enough to cut through bone, but that was it.

For my first actual field operation, I felt woefully unprepared. Just six months ago, I had been a glorified IT guy, trying to sell internet of things services to companies who didn’t need it. Hell, six months ago I had been alive. The woman in front of me had changed all that. It was her training that said I was ready, and the duty placed on both of us by the undead lord who made her that saw us both here.

It was a little before midnight when we reached our destination. The abandoned mall had been empty for a decade at this point, with none of the city’s revitalization efforts actually allowing it to succeed. We were interested in buying it now, the family thought it would be a good investment property, except for the current occupants.

That was why we were here.

“We’ll go in through the roof, start clearing our way down. Our greatest resistance will be on the ground floor, but we don’t want to let them overwhelm us. Their numbers will be their greatest strength.” Evadne pulled one of her many hidden knives and sliced cleanly through the chain link fence. Ancient leaflets and notices drifted on the wind as they were caught.

“You can get us up there, right?” I asked her as she slid through the gap. The bag she was lugging around snagged for a moment, but I got it free before following her in.

“Not a problem, trust me.” I did trust her, oddly enough. I was starting to understand her world view a little more now. My first months with Evadne, my first months as a vampire, were tough to adjust to. An understatement, obviously, but I knew I was slowly growing to see how I fit in here.

The fact that Evadne had opened my eyes to the wonder and splendor of magic, and everything it entailed, was a definite point in her favor. It was a fascinating study, and I had to admit she was a stupendous teacher, even if she was my murderer.

The family was just starting to put my advice into practice as well, and our fortunes were growing. Even the older vampires were starting to see that my guidance in the modern would was bearing fruit for us all. As they saw the benefits, they were starting to accept me. For the most part.

This, my first mission in defense of the family’s interest, would go a long way to buying me into their good graces. My newfangled ideas were not the traditional methods of teeth flashing in the night, and they hated that. Though obviously there was still a need for that, as evidenced by the fact that I was about to climb a mall full of zombies.

We aren’t sure when the necromancer set up shop in here, but it couldn’t have been more than two, three months ago.  The missing persons increases started right about then. We found out through a contact we wouldn’t have had if I hadn’t encouraged one of the mortal cultists to join the Neighborhood Watch. Not something they were used to, but it worked out in the long run.

As we approached, I felt an unusual chill. My entire body shivered, a sensation I haven’t felt in months.

“You felt that. Go ahead and take a look at the power around us.” Evadne pulled a coil of rope out of her bag and started coiling it. I focused in the way she had taught me, the one that opened my third eye to the energy that was around us. I cursed as the mental exercise made me drop the spell I had been holding. The unraveling energy was a spike through my mind, and the pain increased.

By the time I could see the flow of energy around me, Evadne had her rope coiled and ready to throw. I was studying the energy, which was different than any I had seen before. This was thick ribbons of darkness, flowing heavily around us. Usually the energy was light, frothing. This was like an oil spill over it.

“Why is it so dark?”

“It is cruelty, malice,” Evadne said. I hadn’t realized I had spoken out loud. “Something terrible happened here, and it has stained the area.”

“It looks like Basileus was here,” I said boldly. An insult to her sire, to the leader of our family, was not something that would be overlooked.

“No, it doesn’t.” She was shaking her head as she started preparing to fling the rope up. “His cruelty and malice are hungry. This feels… satiated.”

She flung the rope up as I looked at her in surprise. That wasn’t the remark I expected. Not just because Evadne detected the energy as feelings and emotions, far different from my colors. It made her better at reading people than I by far. Could it be that she had opened up a little, letting me see a glimpse of her true feelings for our blood thirsty master?

With a tug, the grappling hook locked in place. Evadne started climbing, moving as fast as a spider in a web even with the heavy duffel bag across her back. She was halfway up when I started to climb behind her.

In school, I loathed the rope climb. I was far more of a nerd than any kind of athlete, and I couldn’t make it more than two or three feet off the ground. Here, I was climbing it like it was stairs. The strength of my new body still found ways to amaze me. It took just thirty seconds for us both to ascend the four stories of the decrepit mall.

“What else do you see up here?” Evadne had set down the duffel bag and was pulling the rope up behind us. She coiled it up and opened the back as I searched for what she wanted me to see. Finally, after several seconds of fruitless search, I shook my head.

“No wards, no alarm spells, nothing.”

“Huh, that is odd.” Even with my elementary skill as a mage, I knew how to place an alarm on something. It was basic magic. The lack of any guard spells was unusual for a mage’s lair. “Is that a good sign?”

“It might mean that this necromancer is a one trick pony. He learned a single spell, maybe a book with a few, and started using them. No deeper tradition of learning.” She started pulling straps out of the bag, wrapping them tight around her. She handed me my machete and a fancy pistol. It looked like something a villain in an ’80 movie carried. I didn’t know what it was, but it had a magazine in it already.

I strapped the machete and gun opposite on each other on my hips. By the time I got it figured out, Evadne had converted the fashionable outfit she had been wearing into a black tactical look. The straps held the previously flowing garb in place, and provided mounting points for her knives. There were more esoteric accessories as well, ones I wasn’t as intimately familiar with.

“It also means he probably has guards out. We go sneaky as we can, for as long as we can. The zombies don’t stop until he does. If we can get close to him, we can end this soon,” she continued as she reached deep into the recesses of the bag. I gave a low chuckle as she pulled out an enormous machine gun.

“I thought we were going for sneaky,” I said as she removed a box of magazine and attached the complex belt of ammunition. Another box went into the small of her bag. The gun was only two feet shorter than she was and must have weighed twenty-five pounds fully loaded. She carried it like it was nothing.

“This is for when sneaky is over,” she replied with a flash of a grin. Her fangs were bright against her dark skin, and I realized my own fangs and talons were extended. I hadn’t notice, but the growing tension of the coming fight was getting to me.

“Also,” she said as she threw the strap of the gun over her head. It dangled at her hip, so large against her narrow frame that I was surprised that she wasn’t toppling. I knew her strength, though, as she was training me in martial as well as mystical arts. There were many a time that diminutive body had tossed me like a stick. “When we get in there, do not drink from the zombies.”

“Why is that?”

“They’re high in carbs.” She set off for the hatchway as I stood, stunned. A joke. Evadne must really be warming up to me.

“No, not really. Its two-fold.” I caught up with her, to see a small grin on her face. “One, with them rotting, the blood goes bad. Taste awful, smells funky, and is partially coagulated. But even if you get a fresh one, the spirit inhabiting it is too alien. It doesn’t satisfy us.”

“I’ll remember that.” We reached the hatch down into the mall. It was locked, and there was still that absence of alarms. I cut the lock with a swipe of my machete, the sheer sound loud in the still of the night. Evadne tsked.

“That wasn’t very sneaky,” I glanced at her gun and chanced a joke of my own.

“I really want to see you shoot that, so maybe sneaky is over.” Another quick flash of a smile and she was down the hatch. I don’t think she touched the ladder at all, just dropping the ten feet to the floor beneath us. I hopped over myself, not as graceful. I wasn’t sure how she managed that with the gun slung like that.

“Now we move fast, and move quiet. Can you read the flows of energy to guide us to the mage?”

“Me, seriously? You know you can do that!” Evadne had been a practicing wizard a full century before my parents were born, trained from birth in the traditions of her people. I was a fumbling toddler compared to her. And that was being generous to me.

“It’s good practice.”

I groaned and tried to read the currents of energy. It was difficult to focus with my headache, but I think I started to see a pattern. There was a center the energy was moving around, even if it was far off and out of sight. I pointed and Evadne nodded.

Was that pride I felt? I had done a good job, and my teacher knew it. I was still angry at her for taking my life, making me this monster. Why did I care if she thought I was talented?

We set off fast, low and stealthy. Evadne had her gun slung along her back, ready to swing to hand. For now, she carried an enchanted kukri in each hand, ready for action. I took my machete in my right hand and the pistol in my left.

We did a quick check of the floor, which was all administrative offices. They were rank, moldy, but free of any undead. Well, once we left the room at least. The floors below us were the stores, emptied of all but dust and trash. That had more open eyelines, wider stairs, and less choke points.

The third floor let us see all the way down to the bottom. It made it easier to search for the undead. Evadne kept an eye to the ground floor while I covered her back. Step by step, we made our way down one arm of the mall, to the central atrium.

It was huge. They used to hold concerts in it back in the day, and used it as a food court during regular service. It had to be at least sixty yards to a side, wide open, with a glass skylight overhead. The missing panes let in the moonlight, providing more than enough light for our enhanced eyes to make out the tableau below.

The floor was a heaving mass of humanity. Densely packed in, they were piling dirt on the floor. Streamers of them carried it in, dropped it, and headed out. The central third was full of dirt, at least a foot deep. The circle was growing with each handful they brought in.

“That is far more than the missing persons report suggested,” I said.

“Look at the quality. Some of those are dug up. Months, if not years, old. I bet that is fresh grave dirt they are bringing it. It has potent applications in necromancy.” Evadne was scanning the crowd for the necromancer even as she taught me. I tried to read the energy but it was too much here. I squeezed my eyes shut as the darkness and pain overwhelmed my mind.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. I opened my eyes to see Evadne gazing at me. Was that tenderness in her eyes? She withdrew her hand and her gaze firmed up.

“Don’t worry about any magic. We’ll move down and across, see if we can spot the necromancer. If we do, I can take him out.”

“And if you can’t spot him?”

“We stop being sneaky.”

Down another floor. With the design of the mall, we had to circumnavigate the entire atrium to get there. By the time we got to our new vantage point, the behavior below us had changed. They were stomping the dirt down, trying to make it smooth. The spirits animating these dead bodies were alien to our realm, and they were not used to having limbs. Their clumsiness was telling, but they were learning.

“A ritual, maybe? Something I am not familiar with,” Evadne said under her breathe. I glanced at her but she waved my concern away. I hefted my machete.

“Do you see them?”

She shook her head. She put her blades away and pulled the machine gun around. She flipped up the cover to check the ammunition feed, then gripped the handles.

“We have to draw him out.”

“I feel kind of inadequate here,” I said as I wiggled my pistol. It was less than a third the size of her gun.

“Ugh, men,” Evadne said with an overdramatic roll of her eyes. “Once we get back, we can get you on the firing range, get your marksmanship up. Until then, your bullets are enchanted.” She pulled a magazine from the pouch on my hip and showed me the bullet. There was something acid etched into the tip, one of the looping circle shapes she favored in her spellcraft.

“Each of those is a mini warding spell, against the spirits piloting the zombies. It won’t knock out the spirit entirely, but it will mess up the connection. Aim center mass, the closer to the heart the better.”

“Marksmanship, huh? Does marksmanship count with fifty rounds a second?”

Evadne flashed me another one of those quick smiles, and I felt myself smiling back. With that, she rose over the waist high wall and unleashed a burst of machine gun fire into the crowd of zombies below us. I hefted my machete and pistol, spinning to cover her rear.

I didn’t see the reaction of the crowd below us, but I could imagine it. According to Evadne, a zombie wasn’t too smart unless the wizard controlling them was there. The spirits would have a rudimentary sense to protect themselves, but mostly they were hungry. Their desire for fresh meat was their main motivating factor, and many a wizard who lacked the will to control the spirit feed their urges.

Evadne kept up a sustained rate of fire, controlled bursts that raked across them. With her strength, she didn’t have to worry about the muzzle rising, so she was on point. We had discussed earlier that she would aim for the knees and legs, trying to disable them. A zombie crawling was still trying to eat you, but they were slow enough to deal with.

“They realized we’re up here and have headed for the stairs,” she said over the gun. Our ears were ringing, but I could clearly hear her. She shifted her position with the moving crowd. “I’m reloading.”

            “How many are left? Do you see the wizard?”

            “About forty. No, not yet.” I gave a low whistle, loud in the silence following her shooting. Her hands were a blur, and the gun was reloaded in the handful of seconds it took us to talk. She shot the bolt home and stood, firing from the hip at an angle. I turned that way and glanced over the edge, seeing the tracers leap towards the crowd of the dead coming up the stairway. These ones were older, moldier. They had been removed from cemeteries, not raised from fresh corpses. Better than the kidnapped and murdered ones, but they were more rotting than I was comfortable with.

And far more nude than I expected.

Behind them was a floor of disabled bodies crawling toward the frozen escalator. Their legs were torn up, missing in some cases, but still they came. The act of crawling pulled blood from their unbeating hearts, leaving trails like snails as they advanced.

My attention flared at the same second Evadne cursed. The gun ceased firing with a grinding noise. I looked and she had the cover of the rifle flipped up, clearing a jam. The barrel was glowing faintly from the heat of the fire. I turned back to where the horde was coming from and raised my own pistol.

The first zombie broke cleared the railing and turned toward us. I snapped off a single shot, aiming for its chest. I missed entirely, the shot pinging off the concrete column twenty feet behind them. Another came, then another. I started firing methodically, remembering to let the barrel come to rest between shots. Soon the weight of numbers saw me hitting them, but by that point they were a few yards away.

Each one I shot went down twitching, disrupted by Evadne’s enspelled bullets. It must have taken too much energy to create enough for the belt fed machine gun, so I hoped to make each one count. My own gun clicked empty as they were just six feet away. I debated reloading, knowing I was fast enough, but the complex action was one I wasn’t familiar with yet. I threw the gun at the leaders face and stepped forward, swinging my machete.

I aimed for the necks, trying to severe them. Between my strength and the enchantment, I could cleave a neck with a single blow, but only if I could hit it clean. Their raised arms and attempts to grab me made my blows clumsy. They were totally silent except for the clicking of their teeth as they snapped at me. No growls, no howls, nothing like the movies. The silence of the grave was far creepier.

I got a few good shots in, severing hands and arms. That helped, even if they still could club me with the remnants of their limbs. It was several seconds before I felt a hand lock on my wrist and pull me off balance. I stumbled forward, and more hands gripped me. They were tugging on me, pulling me into the crowd. I couldn’t get my arm free to swing it anymore, even with my strength, their leverage and numbers were telling. I felt teeth in my bicep, biting and pulling back. Another set, on my thigh.

I was getting devoured, and I couldn’t move enough to fight back.

There was no chance of a spell, my headache was too great. I twisted and pulled as much as I could, but I didn’t have leverage. The oddest part of being eaten was that I wasn’t panicking, not really. There was no dump of adrenaline into my unmoving bloodstream. I could focus.

It was too bad I couldn’t think of anything to do. A mouth on my hand, biting deep, and my fingers were gone. The machete fell to the floor, joining the few limbs it had managed to remove. There was still no sound except for teeth and the faint shuffle of feet on the tile floor.

There was a dull smack behind me. Suddenly, I felt a lessening of the pressure. Another, and I stumbled backwards. There was a still corpse at my feet, and I fell back. The weight of my body pulled some of the dead forward, and I saw a black streak smack clean into the head of one of them, smashing the skull and splattering all of us with brains. I was released as the dead turned towards the new threat.

Evadne stood there, gun held by the barrel in her hands. The smell of her flesh sizzling on the hot metal might actually have been appetizing to the zombies. The stock was covered in thick, oozing blood and hair from where she had been bludgeoning zombies with it. She twisted at the hip, a swing any pro baseball player would be proud of, and another skull caved in.

She was clearing a space, and I rose. As much as I could, the damage to my left leg was causing it to shiver as I put weight on it. My left arm too, the chunk taken out if my bicep made it limp. I thought about scrambling for my machete, but with only two fingers and a thumb on my good hand, I wouldn’t be able to use it.

Instead, I changed tactics. I started clawing at the dead, ripping into the flesh of their quadriceps. That dropped them to the floor, where Evadne could club them down. It took some work, but we stayed together and didn’t let them swarm us. The months of training were paying off, and Evadne and I were able to easily support one another.

Within minutes there were only piles of twitching dead beneath us. Evadne dropped her gun, now a twisted mass of metal with a broken stock and pulled her kukris out. She moved among the bodies, taking heads cleanly and ending their twitching.

“Did you see the wizard?” I asked. I pinched my machete between my remaining fingers and managed to work it back into its scabbard. It only took some slightly embarrassing work.

“No, but he must be close. These were moving fast at the end. We get down there and see what we can see.”

We descended the stair way, Evadne stopping every step to end another undead. The pile of dirt was pockmarked by her bullets, the work the zombies had done to smooth it completely gone. In the center was a pile of stones and a small cot. There was a water bottle and a camping stove next to it. The stones were flat and laid out in a pattern I couldn’t discern. Evadne pulled a camera from a pouch and snapped a picture of it.

“Can you see the energy, search for him?” Evadne asked. I started to try and focus through the pain, but Evadne quickly stopped me. “No, that would be too much for you right now. Rest a moment, I’ll search.”

She closed her eyes for just a moment, barely a blink, and I knew she was seeing the energy around us. It was amazing how fast she was at that.

“Quick question while we wait. A good learning opportunity for me.”

“Sure, what is it?” She was slowly spinning, trying to get a feel for where the mage was.

“This wizard is a necromancer, right? So, he can control the dead?”

She gestured out at the sea of once-moving corpses before us, not bothering with an answer.

“OK, so, what makes it so he can’t control us?”

“Just don’t let him,” Evadne replied with another flash of that wicked grin I was growing to like. Behind her, deeper in the shadows where colors faded away, I saw more movement. I pointed behind her, but she was already turning as a pack of undead dogs burst forth.

We fell back as they approached. There was no snarls, no growls. Just the soft sounds of their paws on the bare grave dirt as they approached. Fully a dozen of them, of all breeds. They look like people’s pets, taken and shackled to the dark will of a necromancer.

He walked behind them. A tall figure, with a long beard and a robe. He looked every inch the wizard of legend until I realized the robe was a dingy white bathrobe with a gym membership on the chest. Dirt stained it around the cuffs, and he held a thick book in one hand.

“You took them all down. Who sent you? What do you want?” he asked as he came toward us. His voice was thin, quavering. Controlling one undead took a constant act of will. The horde he had would have been a drain on his spirit. No wonder he seemed so frail.

“The question is, who are you? Why did you raise these people?” Evadne asked as the wall of dogs approached.

“My name is…” he started but was interrupted by a knife to his right eyeball. It was buried to the hilt. I hadn’t even seen Evadne move, but she was in the perfect form, holding steady as the body dropped. With his death, the connection he had maintained to all his servants was cut. The last few twitching bodies stopped, and the dogs fell over, fully dead once more.

“Never give them a chance to monologue,” Evadne said as she started walking towards the body. She slit the robe open, careful not to touch it until she had examined every inch of it for traps. I stood behind her as she squatted over the body.

“Nothing,” she said as she picked up the book. It was a weighty tome, hundreds of pages. She idly flicked through it before closing it and standing. “This is a new one to me.”

“What do we do about the… horde? We can’t let the cops find them.”

She sighed.

“Let us gather them up. In the center, on the dirt. We can get rid of them. Go ahead and drink him, you need to regenerate.” I picked up the old man and bit into his neck. He was weightless, wasted away by the power he was trying to command. No grand purpose, no final clash of will. Just dead now. My fingers started to regrow and my leg grew firm again.

It took us almost until sunrise, but we gathered the bodies in a pile. All the pieces we could find, in a mound five feet high and a dozen across. Evadne used her foot to draw a thick circle around pile in the dirt. She sketched a few symbols around the circumference then stepped back.

“This is going to be intense,” she said. With a gesture and a harsh phrase, everything within the circle burst into flame.

They were bright, white hot, but I felt no heat. A rush of air passed me to feed it, but no smoke, no heat. Everything was contained by Evadne’s circle, without any spilling over. The flames leapt up to the ceiling, shattering the last of the glass in the skylight. The smoke poured out. The fire became too bright to look at and I half turned away.

“None of their families will now what happened to them,” I said faintly. I thought the air rushing by would make it so Evadne couldn’t here me, but I felt her hand find my remaining whole one. I was surprised when she squeezed, and I turned back towards her.

She had tears in her eyes. I thought it was from the exertion until she squeezed my hand again.

“We must become better than this. We must.” I stared at her, not sure what she meant. Instinctively, I pulled her close. She wrapped her arms around me, and I found myself hugging the woman who had killed me.

“A better world is possible. We must build it,” she said into my chest.

We held that pose for half an hour, until the flames died down to ashes. I released her and stepped back, awkward. Evadne turned and broke the circle. I felt the heat now, but it was low, comforting. There was nothing recognizably human left inside. Even bones had burned away to smoldering embers. Evadne had the thick book in her hands, turning it over and over.

“Basileus will want that. There is power in it, great power,” I told her. “Plus, this will make it easier for us to buy the mall.”

“Yes, he will want this, won’t he? I’ve never even heard of this book before.” Evadne turned it over and over in her hands, examining it. The low smoldering ashes glinted off the smooth dark flesh of her shaven head. It was odd to see it in someone I thought so powerful, but she looked nervous. She wasn’t examining the book. She was fidgeting. “A great power…”

At once, she leaned back and hurled the book clear into the ashes. It caught almost instantly, the ambient heat enough to spark the ancient, dry pages. I looked from it burning to her.

Evadne was holding herself tightly, arms wrapped around her chest. It took a moment for me to register that she was shivering. I stepped towards her, holding my hand out. She looked at it for a moment, then up at me. Nervous, she reached out and grasped my hand.

“We can become better than this.”

There, standing in the light firelight, the thrill of defiance shivering through her, was the moment I started to fall in love with her.