Marked by Death (Necromancer #1) - Kaje Harper Page 0,27

one hand and gestured. A spear of green fire lanced across the space and spattered against something. The light as it dripped and faded revealed Crosby standing on a boulder, perhaps a hundred yards away, one crow on his head. He looked at ease, unworried. He raised a hand and white lightning struck again though it missed them by a few feet.

“Ya missed,” Silas called. “Crosby always was a lightweight.”

A sizzling cluster of bolts struck at them, one after the other. Silas deflected them all, but his shoulders were slumped as the last one faded. The crow laughed mockingly.

Darien felt a pinprick in his ankle and looked down.

“Come on,” Grim whispered. “This way.” The cat eased backward, away from Silas and Crosby, into the thick soupy twilight.

Darien desperately didn’t want to leave Silas alone, there on the strange battlefield. But he was waaaay out of his depth, and Silas trusted Grim. He followed, staying crouched low.

Behind them, he heard Crosby laughing, sounding human. “You’re losing your allies, dead fool. They know the end is near.”

He’d have turned back but Grim snagged his pant leg and hissed.

Following Grim, he was soon lost in the darkness. Wherever they were, there was enough light to see rocky bare ground, and the heaps of boulders and small bushes. But line of sight was short, like in a pea-soup fog. The lightning and whip strikes became ambient flashes of white and green, without direction.

Then a glitter of light rose ahead of them, flickering, dancing. He recognized the river as they approached it. Turning around, he searched for the tree of light, and the crawling ghosts, but there was nothing but him, Grim, and the river.

“What now?” he murmured. “Why are we here?”

“The ghosts. You have to free some, get the energy to Silas.”

“How? I have no clue what I’m doing!” He hated the plaintive wail that came out as. Hated more the way the white flashes of light seemed brighter than the green now. “Tell me!”

“The energy is in you. The ghosts are in you.” Grim stomped his paws on the dirt. “I saw this. I don’t know how you do it. Just make it fast. He needs you.” The cat’s head suddenly came up, ears flattened, and he leaped off into the dark. A moment later a fighting howl rose in the distance.

Fuck! Darien repeated it aloud. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Rubbing his hand across his mouth, he reached toward the glittering water. A faint green glow, smeared across his fingers, caught his eye. Green?

He repeated the rub on his mouth, with his palm this time. The color of Silas’s magic coated his skin. The kiss! He’d thought— well, it didn’t matter. No way Silas would’ve kissed him in the middle of a battle just because they were friends. It’s a spell, dummy. The question was how to use it.

The ghosts are in me. They have to come out. He licked his fingers, coating each one with the trace of green, and pushed up his sleeve to expose the knife tattoo. That was an old one, a quiet one. It looked no different here on the banks of this unholy— or perhaps holy, who the fuck knew— river of light. He touched the tattoo, tracing its outline, and his fingertips sank half an inch into his arm.

With a shout he yanked his hand away. The tattoo sat there on his skin, but now a faint nimbus of green surrounded it and something moved, dark and shapeless, beneath it. His stomach heaved, watching that motion, in my fucking arm. He forced the nausea down. I knew they were in there. Surely it’s better to see it than have it there invisible.

No, it actually wasn’t. But he told himself the lie, as he set his hand over the area again. This time when his fingers sank in, he pushed deeper, curling them, curving his grip around that squirming, formless darkness, until his hand was locked around it. In my arm.

He froze like that, fingers set in his own flesh, green and black and ink trailing from each end of his fist. Pull it out. Don’t! What if it takes my skin with it? What if this time the bit I lose is my fucking arm? Or my mind?

A shout in the distance, Silas’s voice raised in surprise and pain, gave him the courage to grit his teeth and yank. The mess came out slowly, black and green mingling now with gold, taffy slow. It hurt— Shit, it hurts!—