Marked by Death (Necromancer #1) - Kaje Harper Page 0,19

filled with a tree, the trunk wide and rough-barked in glowing gold and amber, branching around head level into a thick mass of limbs and leaves. Throughout the branches and all up and down the trunk, creatures— things— crawled and clung. Their shapes seemed to change as they moved, and the gold of the tree flowed in thin threads and wispy traces over and through them.

“What’s that?” Darien whispered.

“That’s you,” Silas said in a normal tone.

“I’m not a goddamned tree.” He didn’t want to mention the things.

“Is that what you see? Never mind. That’s your energy, your life force, and those— do you see the ghosts all over it?”

“Is that… them?” He moved closer to Silas unconsciously. “They don’t look human.”

“They’re not. I told you, they’re just remnants. And they probably look different to you than to me. But that’s what we’re dealing with.”

“You can find the right one? And remove it?” They all looked similar to him, some bigger, some smaller. As he stared, he began to see human features— an eye, a hand, forming and disappearing. No cat, no boat, no bridge.

“Trust me,” Silas said. He moved his grip on Darien’s arm up to where the boat tattoo was… should have been.

Darien stared down at himself, aware for the first time that the bright glow lit unblemished skin. No tattoos. It made his body feel alien, even though he’d dreamed for months of having them gone.

Silas tugged him forward, and reached out to the tree with his free hand. Darien followed as well as he could, though something seemed to be pressing him back. It was as if he and the tree were opposite magnets, repelling each other. He leaned into the repulsion and planted his feet. Silas ran his hand over the surface of the tree trunk and muttered something that made no sense to Darien’s ears. The creatures in the branches slowed their movements and started to come lower, gliding down the trunk.

Darien flinched the first time one of the ghosts flowed over Silas’s fingers. In that instant, it seemed as if hand and creature and tree merged into a roiling mass of dark and light, but then the ghost moved on, and Silas’s hand looked the same. More ghosts slithered down the trunk, tree-gold glittering on their skins, and gathered around, as if sniffing or tasting Silas. Some moved on away, while others approached.

Suddenly, Silas grabbed a ghost that was flowing over his fingers and yanked.

It hurt! Darien choked back a cry, and locked his knees against falling, his arm on fire. Silas flicked a look at him, but didn’t stop pulling. The dark ghost-creature writhed between his fingers, a strand of tree-gold pulling with it like taffy. The ghost howled in a tone so familiar that Darien wanted to cheer despite the pain. I know you. Get out of me!

He leaned back now, letting the repulsion of the tree help him, not sure if this was useful to Silas or not, but unable to stop. Come on, you bastard, let go. Let go!

With a pop that felt like a pressure change in his eardrums, the taffy-stretch of gold snapped in the middle. Half of it leaped back to the tree, the other half recoiled into the ghost, now a struggling gray and gold mass in Silas’s hand. The pain eased immediately.

Silas let go of Darien and carried the thing to the bank of the river. There he knelt and plunged his hand holding the ghost into the bright water. The ghost howled and cursed, clinging to Silas’s wrist, but as the water washed over it, its struggles slowed. The gold strands and patches on its surface began to pool together and wind their way up Silas’s arm, leaving the creature more and more gray. Silas pressed the thing deeper into the water, then all the way under the surface. Darien could only tell something was there from the bunching of Silas’s muscles, and the continued flow of gold up his forearm.

Suddenly Silas jolted and almost fell forward into the river. He yanked his hand free, stretching empty fingers. The ghost-darkness was gone. The last strands of gold swirled across Silas’s palm but quickly faded into his skin and vanished.

Darien swayed dizzily, and turned to look back at the tree. There was no notch in the bark, no broken or drooping limb. As far as he could tell, other than the pain and how tired he was, there was no harm done. “What about the