Chapter 11

 

Darria ventured further into the woods. It grew darker and scarier. The atmosphere prickled her skin. Rory trampled over the foliage. If anyone was waiting for them, they knew they were coming. Omar remained silent while they walked.

“Why are you keeping your mouth shut?” Darria asked him.

“You took away my body. I’m a little pissed.”

“I can bring your body back whenever I want. I get that you wanted to thank me, but I didn’t need you pushing back at me. Besides, I’m still learning how to be the new person I am after coming together. We can talk about this later. I can’t have you and Oliver shunning me at the same time. I need someone to lean on.”

“You got a new plaything. Why not use him?”

She bit her tongue and finally understood the sudden pissiness. It had nothing to do with her taking away his body. “You do know I’m not getting rid of you, right? Just because I have an official assistant, that doesn’t mean I’m going to drop you like a hot potato. I doubt Rory’s going to be making any sexual advances on me.”

“What am I supposed to be not doing?” Rory asked.

Darria remembered that the teenager couldn’t hear her familiar. Rory caught up to her as they ventured deeper into the woods. “Omar’s personality is a little....”

“Dirty.”

“Yeah. You could say that. He keeps trying to get into my pants. And—”

“You’ve let him?” His eyebrows rose.

Darria didn’t have to follow his train of thought to know where her assistant was going with it. She put up her hands, waving off the thought. “What! No! Ew. I love Omar as my helper. He’s been assisting me this past year and a half while I’ve been figuring all this shit out. I haven’t entertained the notion of him and me ever being intimate. Besides, there is only so much that can be done with a hand.”

“Okay. Okay. I get it. You haven’t gone from Night of the Living Dead to Erotic Night of the Living Dead Hand,” Rory chuckled. Darria had to admit it was kinda funny.

Darria felt Omar squeeze her waist with both hands, but his body hadn’t materialized.

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“You said you loved me.”

“Of course I do. You’re a pain in my ass, but you don’t need to be jealous of Rory. He’s not going to take your spot. No matter how many assistants I go through. You’re one of a kind, Omar.” Darria patted the mummified appendage to reassure him.

“What about Oliver?” Omar asked. “Do you love him more than me?”

This was not a conversation she wanted to be having in the middle of some freaky woods. “Can we talk about this some other time, please?”

“Ah, Darria.” Rory poked her.

“One sec.”

“I think you need to talk about this now.” Omar jabbed her with his bony middle finger.

“Darria!” Rory called her a little louder, his voice wavering with terror.

“What is it?” She focused on her assistant.

“We need to get moving.”

She followed his extended finger and saw what was coming at them at full speed: a large bull, bigger than a buffalo, with red, glowing eyes and horns, pointed directly at them. Dread slammed her heart into overdrive. There was nowhere for them to run. The whole forest grew silent. The earth shook from the thunder of its hooves. It took out whole trees as if they were matchsticks as it charged. Darria nearly got lost in that hellish gaze. Rory grabbed her arm, shaking her from the hypnotizing eyes of the animal. Her assistant yanked her behind him as he bolted from the bull. She ran until the hot breath of the bull burned along her back. If she glanced back, it would be there waiting to gore her. They ran until she could barely catch her breath and couldn’t feel her legs. They stopped. Her assistant was winded. Darria finally dared to look in the direction they had come. The bull vanished. The patch it should have trampled hadn’t been beaten down by any hooves. Branches remained perfect as if nothing had touched them. Omar hung on to her shoulder, digging into the cloth of her shirt. Darria clasped a nearby tree, her legs wobbling.

“I don’t think I’ve run that fast or that far in a long time.”

“Me either. Where did it go?”

Darria needed a drink to parch her scratchy throat. “I don’t know, but something that big doesn’t disappear.”

Her left arm tingled. The green around the safety pin had gotten brighter. They were headed in the right direction. It meant they had to head back in the direction of the bull. Darria ran her fingers over the pin, and it became more solid. It wanted to go to its new owner, which meant they were close. She moved her hand in the direction of the path from where they had run, and it warmed her arm. When she turned in a different direction, it softened. Darria sighed. They had to go back in the direction of the bull, not something she wanted to do. She tugged on her apprentice’s shirt.

“Come on.”

Rory frowned, and his shoulders drooped. His lower lip quivered. “We have to go back in there?”

“’Fraid so. Come on. Consider this a test to see how much you take your new job seriously.”

“Have you faced anything like this before?”

Ha! If you only knew. Darria forced a smile. “This is nothing. Wait until you get entangled with Medusa and her two sisters or have the banshee queen try to turn you into one of them or meet the head Angel of Death. This will be nothing compared to that.”

“You faced all of them, and you weren’t scared?” Rory sank down on a rock protruding out of the ground. He looked completely green at the idea of having to confront the bull or whatever else they might come across deep within the woodland.

If she had to babysit her new assistant, their working relationship wasn’t going to work. It was obvious that he was petrified, but hell, so was she.

“Maybe Rory needs to see that you have the courage to get the big, bad guy. This is all still new for him,” Omar said to her.

Darria agreed with her familiar. Rory might have been peering out his window at the house for the past two years, but it was another thing to get involved with it. “I was petrified when I dealt with all of them. This whole lifestyle choice scares the shit out of me. The undertaking and the necromancy were never something I asked for. Each thing I take in stride, and it’s made me stronger, just like after you realized you had your abilities.”

Rory shrugged. She understood how the teenager felt. If she had to suck it up and deal with the necromancer side of herself, then he had to man up and deal with being an undertaker’s assistant. He couldn’t sit on a rock for the rest of his existence and hope that nothing scary would come his way.

“I know. I’ll figure it out. It’s all happening so fast.”

She burst out laughing. “You’re preaching to the choir. I’ll tell you how I got thrown into this gig when we get through all of this. Come on. This pin doesn’t want to be inside of my arm much longer. I think it’s humoring me for now. Let’s go face that beast. If I’m correct, it’s not really a bull at all.” Darria took a minute to comb the collective memory of the undertakers she had access to and saw that one of them, four back in her line, had encountered the bull before because he had ventured into another undertaker’s territory. It had gotten pretty ugly because they couldn’t work together. Rory got up and straightened his shirt.

“Let’s go.” The determination in his eyes had hardened and made him appear a little bit older.

Darria forged ahead of him. They got to the same spot in the forest where Rory had seen the bull. Energy gathered in a large circle in the center of a clearing. It fanned out and formed into the shape of the creature. Its red eyes glared at her, and it pawed the ground, challenging her. Intelligence lived behind that gaze. The monster was at least eight feet across, and those horns were three feet of deadly spears pointed directly at them. Rory whimpered, but she clutched his arm and held on to it, so he wouldn’t run. They couldn’t show fear. Not now. The bull huffed, a stream of steam pouring from its nostrils. The edges of its horns had ignited with a greenish fire.

“What are we doing?” Rory breathed.

“Hush,” Darria shushed him. She ran her fingers over her left arm, and the safety pin came out into her hand. She stepped closer to the bull. What Oliver had told her popped into her mind: she walked a line between the living and the dead. The bull wasn’t dead. It pawed the ground. Rory squeaked behind her. She glanced at him quickly.

“Sorry,” he mouthed.

Darria tried to sense more of the energy emanating from the animal and found that it originated from somewhere. She needed to find that somewhere. The pin grew heavier and warmer the longer she held it. “We’re not here to harm you or the one you protect. I have this to give to the one you serve.” She held up the pin, so the bull could see it.

The bull walked closer. Something sharp touched her mind. “How have you come about this?” The bull spoke to her.

“The undertaker and his assistant are dead. I’ve been tasked to return the objects to those to whom they are slotted to go. I take it you’re also connected to this line with the pin?”

A hot gush of air blasted against her arm and turned its head toward Rory. “I am. I was doing a task for the undertaker, and I returned to find him murdered.”

“I discovered their bodies. If you’re connected to them, I don’t understand why I’m encountering you now. You should have been there with Gabbie.”

The bull pawed the ground. “The gargoyle and I do not get along. I went to find the next in line. I’ve been protecting her because I sensed she was in danger. I have some capacity to do that.”

“I’m not a threat to her,” Darria responded. The creature must have been able to sense who he was going to work for next.

“What of the boy? You’re a necromancer. How is that not a threat to my undertaker? How are you an undertaker?” the bull asked.

“Hey, I don’t even know who this other undertaker is, so how can I be a threat to her?” Rory asked. He had gotten the courage to come closer to the bull.

“You are a male and therefore are a danger to her.” The bull jabbed the air with his horns in Rory’s direction.

Rory crossed his hands over his chest and gritted his teeth. “Look, you—”

Darria felt a surge of pride, seeing how her assistant stood up to the phantom bull. Maybe he could live up to one of the numerous superhero T-shirts she assumed he had in dresser drawer. “Rory. Enough. We don’t want to make him angry. To answer your question, I doubt you have anything to worry about from him. I might be a necromancer, but the gods themselves have tested me and found me fit to be an undertaker. We both know I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t chosen to do this.”

“Not necessarily.” The bull turned around and strolled deeper into the woods. “Come with me.”

Darria didn’t like the bull’s statement. If he trusted her, even for a moment, she was going to follow him and make sure that the pin was in the hands of the woman it was supposed to be in. They walked through the trees, and a foreboding feeling came over her. It only grew stronger the longer they went into the forest. The bull was more physical than a simple ghost. With its tremendous size, it did not trample anything under its hooves. It moved soundlessly through the brush. They came to a glade, where she found a dilapidated cabin. Moss grew on the roof. Portions of it had collapsed under the weight of the trees that lay across it. The front part of it appeared to be intact, and the chimney had a few bricks missing off the top, but it seemed usable. A porch swing swung on its rusty chain, thudding against the wooden exterior. Square windows with half-broken shutters were twisted eyes that watched them approach.

Once Darria stepped into the vale, dark energy descended over her. She clutched her chest. Something stabbed at her spirit. Laughter filled her head; devious chortling made her dizzy. It tugged on her soul. Several spirits hovered by the cabin. Something else animated them. Those things didn’t mean anyone any good.

“You’ve noticed them,” the bull stated.

“I did.”

“What are they?” Rory asked.

“You can see them?” Darria looked at them more.

“I see black blobs, but whatever they are, they aren’t nice.”

“They’ve been trying to break into the protective circle I erected. It’s a good thing you have come, then. My powers are strongest when the undertaker and their relic are together. These entities creep closer each night. You are a necromancer. You can take control of them and send them away.”

Darria glanced at the darkened forms. The grittiness of evil clung to the shapes animating them. “I can try, but not right now. First, we have to get this to the undertaker you’re protecting. Will you take me to her?”

“She’s in the cabin. You have to convince her. The boy stays here.” The bull blocked Rory from entering.

Omar jumped from her shoulder to his. “I’ll stay with him to make sure he stays put.”

“Thanks. Rory, Omar will keep you company. Maybe you can play a hand of cards or something,” Darria joked.

“Funny.”

The bull snorted. Darria slipped inside, holding on to the safety pin, which grew hotter the closer she got to the woman it was supposed to go to.

“Who are you? What do you want?” a soft voice peeped from the shadows.

She peered further into the darkness and saw a slight form hiding behind a raggedy couch. The whole place reeked of stale beer, vomit, and urine. The cabin had become a crash pad over the years for those who needed to party or escape. The fireplace remained usable. The pile of ashes told her that this woman had been here longer than a few days. Torn-off candy wrappers, beer bottles, and water bottles were strewn around the floor along with a couple of dead rats and leaves, which all formed a ring of debris.

“I’m not going to hurt you. I’m Darria. I’m an undertaker.”

“All the undertakers are dead.” The girl’s head bobbed above the sagging sofa. Her dark bangs were uneven across her forehead. Big, blue eyes stared out from behind large, yellow, round frames.

Darria held up the pin, so the girl could see the artifact. “There are a few of us left, so I’m told. I’m the only one who didn’t get squashed, although a few have tried. This is for you. I’m supposed to collect all the rest of the objects, deliver them to the other potential undertakers, and put the departed ones to rest.”

“Unless it doesn’t let you.” The other girl found a little more courage and lifted her head above the couch. Her hair touched the bottom of a pointed chin. With the shape of her face and big eyes, Darria thought she was some kind of a cross between a fairy and a librarian, or hell, maybe she was a fairy librarian now turned undertaker.

“Who or what doesn’t let me?” Darria asked. She stepped closer to the girl, hoping to get close enough to hand her the pin because it was burning her hand. It didn’t want to be with her anymore.

The other girl bit her lip and threaded her fingers through a hole in the sofa. “I don’t know its name, but it’s scary.”

“What does it look like?” The mystery deepened.

“I-I’m not sure. It’s cold and dark. It controls the things outside. It-it killed my parents.” Her bottom lip quivered.

“How old are you, sweetie?”

“Fifteen.”

“Shit.” This girl wasn’t going to be able to function on her own by being an undertaker without knowing what she was doing. Even Rory was barely legal. Are you sure this is the one? She directed the question to the pin. It scorched her palm, so she figured that it was telling her yes. Darria thought about sitting down on the couch, but after seeing the holes in the cushions and what was on the springs, she decided against it. “Your friend out there wouldn’t let me anywhere near you if he believed I meant you harm. This big, old pin wants to go to you. Why don’t you take it?”

The girl stood no more than five-foot-two. She wore a plaid skirt, knee socks, and a white shirt that was smeared with dirt. Her backpack matched her loafers. “How long have you been here?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know—two, three weeks, maybe. I kinda lost count. Merc’s been keeping me company and getting me food since he doesn’t want me to go outside of the circle. It’s getting smaller. I can’t keep it out, and soon, they’re going to come in.”

“If you take the pin, you can come with me, and I can bring you back to my house, where you can be safe. Merc is the bull?”

The other girl nodded. “Merc. Mercury. He sensed I was in danger when I ran out of the house and found that my parents were slaughtered. I ran from him at first, but I couldn’t get away from him. He’d find me wherever I went. He explained who he was and who I was supposed to be. It was kinda hard to swallow, ya know? He gave me a ride here, so he could protect me.”

“Did he explain what it means to be an undertaker?” Darria inquired. How is this young girl going to handle the demands of being an undertaker?

“Not really, just that I’d be working with dead bodies and other supernatural creatures.”

“And you believed him?”

The other girl laughed. “Well, duh! Everyone knows that fairies and pixies exist. I’ve been seeing them since I was a kid. My mother always blamed me for the things that would get moved around in the house. She didn’t see the gnomes or the brownies. It wasn’t a big stretch to think that other things were out there. Mom used to say she never should’ve put me in that fairy ring when I was a baby. I went in normal and came out touched, as she called it. Are you sure you’re an undertaker? You don’t look like it.”

“I’m sure. I’ve been an undertaker now for a year and a half. Before that, I was the previous undertaker’s assistant for three years. My predecessor was killed at about the same time all the other undertakers were. My harvester saved my life. What’s your name?” Darria spun the pin around in her hand and tried not to focus on its warmth.

“Evangeline. Most everyone calls me Lina or Eva. How do we do this whole undertaker thing? You give me that pin, and it does ... what?”

“I don’t know what it’s going to do for you. My key can open any door. Your pin can pierce a hole into reality and pin it back together. It’s what brought me to you. It’s yours if you want it. I’m not going to give it to you until you’re sure that you want it. It comes with a whole bunch of responsibilities. You’ll work with grim reapers and process dead bodies with the souls still inside of them. You’ll have to collect items you need to keep away from the outside world, sometimes travel to where the objects are, and people might try to kill you.” Darria held out the safety pin to Lina. The girl reached for it and then pulled her hand back. It seemed that the teenager was taking this great turn of events in stride, but underneath it, Darria had to figure she was freaking out.

Lina took the pin.

Green energy jumped out from the pin and crawled all over her body. The six-inch pin Darria had been holding morphed into a small safety pin with a green star on the end of it. The energy enveloping Lina even turned her glasses emerald. Her eyes fluttered closed. When her eyes snapped open, they had a hint of the same green energy. Lina stuck the pin on her shirt.

“Whoa! That was crazy.” Lina threw her arms around Darria.

Darria hugged her lightly. “What did you see?”

“I had all these flashes of stuff downloading into my head. I know things that I shouldn’t know. I can see ancient places like I was there yesterday. Wow. They are so vivid.” Lina held out her hands as though she could touch them right there.

“It sounds like you got all the memories from the other undertakers downloaded into your head all at once. And—”

“What the heck are these?” Lina pulled up the left sleeve of her shirt. Three small, red poppies had appeared around her wrist, trailing up her arm.

“They’re all part of the package for those of us with a little more oomph.” Darria showed her the ten poppies on her arm. Lina touched them, and Darria’s power crackled purple around the blossoms. There was also something within the girl Darria had not sensed before. Whatever it meant to be an undertaker, it also meant to have innate gifts. Lina said she could see fairies. Darria sensed a trend when it came to the undertakers. They were people chosen who had no one left or wouldn’t be noticed if they were plucked from the human world.

“You have ten of them. How come two poppies aren’t open?”

“Each time I’ve fulfilled something or survived some cosmic, supernatural event, one of the blossoms opened. The last one to open was a couple of weeks ago when I had my own encounter with my dark side.”

“What kind of dark side?” Lina pulled her hand away from the poppies and shivered. “I’m not sure I want to know. Never mind.”

Darria nodded and seemed to understand because maybe she had sensed something within her. When Darria switched her other senses, the aura surrounding Lina nearly blinded her. She was full of life, and the darkness within Darria shied away from that. They were at two opposite ends of the spectrum, and she could understand why this girl was drawn to the fairies. Within the light of her energy field, Darria thought she could actually see wings.

“It’s okay. I’m a necromancer.” Darria glanced back at her left arm. “What the hell?” It appeared that even though she had given the pin to Lina, a tattoo of it remained in her arm. She touched it, and it zapped her, but it didn’t come out of her arm.

Lina’s mouth formed into an “O,” and her eyes lit up. “That’s so fucking cool. I really wish I could do that. Isn’t that kinda gross with body parts falling off or something? You don’t ... you know ... have sex with the corpses that you work on?”

“Ew. No.” Darria chuckled. “Don’t lose the pin. If you do, you have a connection to it, so you can call it to you. You can now lift hundreds of pounds more than what you weigh. I don’t know who your harvester will be. What do you think about getting out of here and going to someplace warm?”

Lina glanced around the cabin and settled her gaze on Darria. “Can Merc come with us?”

“Of course. If he’s your familiar, then he’ll come with you anyway. Just to warn you, I have a gargoyle living with me. She was chosen to watch over my house, and apparently, she and your bull don’t get along. I have an extra room you can have for as long as you want to stay.”

“I really want to take a shower.”

“I have all the hot water you want. Come on. When you’re ready, I can bring you to where you are supposed to set up shop.”

Lina stepped out of the cabin, and Darria followed.

“Phew ... is she a bright one,” Omar whistled.

“Don’t even go there. She’s fifteen and jailbait. You go near her, I’ll chop your fingers off,” Darria warned her familiar.

“Who are you talking to?” Lina asked, realizing that she could not hear Omar.

Omar jumped down to the ground and skittered toward them. He came so fast, Darria almost forgot how quick he could be and what he must look like to the virgin eyes of the new undertaker.

“Keep it away from me,” Lina screamed, jumping back behind her.

Omar took one of his flying leaps and landed on the front of Darria’s shirt, grabbing her right breast. “Comfy?”

“Very, beautiful Mistress of Darkness.”

Darria rolled her eyes. “Get your hand off my boob before I give you nubs.”

“Couldn’t help it. I needed something to anchor to,” Omar replied to her in a loving tone.

Lina shrieked again.

She held on to Darria and tried to get away from Omar. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Omar wave at Lina. “Will you can it? You can see that she’s afraid of you.”

“Fine,” Omar mumbled. “I wasn’t talking about getting into her pants. I said that she’s bright. She’s blinding, actually. Her aura could light up a town. She’s also got wings, so she’s gotta be part fey.”

“Whatever she is, she’s off-limits. Now hush, please.” She pried Lina’s fingers from her. “Lina, Omar isn’t going to hurt you. He’s my familiar. He makes horrible jokes and tries to feel me up, but he won’t hurt you.”

“But he’s a hand. And you let him touch you? Ew, God.”

Darria removed Omar from her shoulder and held him in her hand, balancing on his fingers. He lifted his index finger and wiggled it at Lina. “He’s not going to hurt you. Omar used to be an undertaker in my line. This is all that’s left of him. His hand’s been in my Wunderkammer for years, and he decided to come back to life to help me out. I’ve been pretty lucky. Don’t be scared of him, and if you find him coming near any of your ... lady bits, feel free to step on him. Don’t worry.”

Lina poked Omar’s wrist bone.

“Oh baby, do it again,” her familiar groaned.

“Shush,” Darria sent him a sharp jab with her mind.

“Eeep!” Omar bellowed, and he quieted. She gave him the equivalent of a pinch. He jumped back onto her shoulder and stayed there. Rory kept staring at Lina. These two were already going to get into trouble, although Lina didn’t seem to have noticed him at all. Her eyes had been trained on Omar.

“She’s become an undertaker,” the bull said to Darria. “You were true to your word. Now, what can you do about the entities surrounding the cabin? I can’t banish them. They are driven by a power I am unable to reach. You should be able to put them back into place.”

“What are those things?” Lina asked.

“What do you see?” Rory responded.

Lina finally looked at him, and her cheeks turned crimson. She glanced down at her shoes. Darria shook her head. She was not explaining the birds and the bees.

“I-I see dark blobs, shadows that vacillate in and out. I can’t really make out any forms. What do you see? I’m Evangeline, by the way,” Lina said, introducing herself to Rory.

“Rory. I’m D-Darria’s assistant.” He shoved his hands into his jeans. “I can see them, but they aren’t good. I know that.”

Darria looked around the circle. The dark specters were closer than they had been before. More of them appeared while she was in the cabin. Someone must have known she was trying to help Lina become the next undertaker. She glanced at the bull. “I’ll try. There are a lot of them. If any of them get through, will you be able to keep them off me and the others?”

“Evangeline is my first priority. I’m bound to her since she is my undertaker. I do as she says,” the bull snorted.

A shriek echoed in the background. One of the dark forms was pressed against the circle. Green energy zigzagged along the protective barrier that enclosed them. The dark blobs pushed around it, trying to draw the energy out. The bull huffed, straining to keep up with the circle. With the energy becoming weaker, Darria could now sense the death and rottenness about the corpses. She took a deep breath and stepped away from the others. Rory grabbed her arm.

“What are you doing?” Rory asked.

She glanced around, taking a mental count of the beings around the circle. There were thirty at least but possibly more. The energy outside of the circle was building, growing darker than anything she had ever felt before. “I’m going to get rid of these things.”

“But you could be killed, possessed, or something else.”

“So, I get killed, possessed, or something else. Rory, you need to learn that with being an undertaker, there are things you have to do to make sure others are safe. It’s kind of part of the job. This is our territory. Lina has to get someplace safe. Something isn’t right in the universe. Without the undertakers, things can’t happen the way they’re supposed to. I-I don’t know what that means exactly, but if you think about it, you’ll know I’m right. The undertakers who were killed came to me that night you found me on the lawn, Rory. Something pulled them back from the spirit world and locked them to their flesh. None of us should have to endure that. I don’t sense flesh behind these dark blobs. Whatever they are, they used to be human souls. I can’t leave them to suffer. You guys are all my responsibility. Go back over and stay with the others. Do you understand?”

Rory nodded.

She squeezed his shoulder and glanced at Mercury. “If I can’t banish them, at least bring them to a safe place. Rory has my key. It can open any door to where you want to go. If things go bad, and my other half....”

“No. You’re not thinking that way,” Omar yelled. “You merged with your other half. You’re not going to go to the dark side.”

“I agree with the hand. You’re not evil. The darkness I sense in you is far outweighed by the light. I was wrong to judge you as harshly as I did earlier,” Mercury apologized.

Darria really wanted to believe the bull. The darkness in her might have settled into her soul, but she hadn’t used her powers since the merging. It might be that her necromantic side was waiting to take her over when it had its chance. Omar remained on her shoulder, not abandoning her. Her stomach flipped and flopped. Darria had no idea what she was going to do or how she could accomplish it. All the other stuff she had ever done had been on instinct and with very little direction until she had pulled Gerry’s soul from the other world. Her anger at trying to be killed had given her a focus. What was she going to do with this situation and the dark figures pushing against the energy dome?

“You can do this,” Omar encouraged her.

“If this goes south, you could end up as finger food.”

“I don’t serve him. I serve you. These creatures would find me a little dried out and bony.” The wisecrack made her smile, and her heart warmed.

“Thanks, Omar.”

Darria sat on the ground and shivered, but it was not from the coldness of the earth. The force from the two differences hit her like two fronts colliding, and she was stuck in the middle. Mercury’s energy held the circle together, but it was waning. The blackness of the spirits outside the circle threatened to suck her in. Omar squeezed her shoulder for reassurance. Her nerves were frayed. The others were counting on her. Darria needed to force the dark entities back, and maybe that would lead her to the one animating them and the one who was determined not to let her get to all the other undertakers.

How in the world am I going to do this? Darria didn’t need to glance behind her to know that the others were staring at her. Now that Darria had integrated her other half, she didn’t know how to really access any of that power. Sensing the dark energies around her was not something she had to think about. It was an extension of her, the same as the way she knew when a body was being delivered to the house. The twisted version was not something she wanted to think about again, but maybe it was just the thing that would help her access the other side.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, recreating the scene where she was staring at the other side of her. It was there, and this time, it smiled. “You need my help with this, don’t you?”

“I wasn’t sure you were still there. I thought we were coming together.”

“We are, but we’re never going to be completely together. I think we both know that deep down. Don’t worry about this. It’s something we can do. Relax and let a little bit of me in, your darkness, because that’s what I am: darkness with a voice. The darkness that’s animating these shades is nothing compared to me. Take my hand, and let us do the work. Don’t fight it.”

Darria slipped her hand into the other part of her and felt its cool, clammy skin slide over her own, a jolt of energy rushing through her. Omar moaned softly. She sensed that his spirit was closer than ever. Her fingers brushed the ground, and the energy of the circle swept through her. Death had happened at this cabin. Why hadn’t she felt it before?

“Because you still haven’t accepted that we are one and the same. Once you completely understand that, then this conversation won’t ever have to happen again. We are already in one another’s veins. Let it flow.”

Darria listened to from her other side as the darkness engulfed her. The taste of earth filled her mouth. When she opened her eyes, her vision shifted. The entities around the circle were no longer blobs. They were twisted things, segments of souls that didn’t belong together. Vampires and werewolves mashed into one being. Demons with fire-red eyes and fairies smooshed into creatures with three jaws and five arms. The suffering she sensed from these entities broke her heart. These soul-filled puppets were doing the bidding of something heinous. Her awareness passed over them until she discovered one that was mostly intact and not sewn together like the others.

“Let me help you,” Darria whispered to it. “I can release you.”

A glimmer of response came from it. She pushed a tendril of power into the mishmash of souls until she reached the core of the two entities who were glued together. Its desperate cry for release wrenched her heart. She had to stay focused so that she could dispel them. The two souls murmured something. Darria strained to hear what they were saying.

“...won’t let us. Destroy the girl. Save us...,” the two souls whispered to her. Darria delved deeper and sensed that the souls were remnants of a fairy and another kind of beast that she hadn’t encountered before. It was an animal, maybe a lion or a lynx.

Darria didn’t know what could have meshed these souls together, but most of them were too far gone they had lost their individuality. She could pry them apart by the seams. She could blast them apart and pray a harvester could collect the remnants of their souls once she was done.

“Kill the undertakers....”

She concentrated on the one who talked to her. The seams where the spirits were threaded together were so well stitched that any seamstress would envy the job. Darria pushed into the mashed-up wraith and encountered the exact energy she had met when she probed Gerry and the werewolf. Within her mind’s eye, she saw the tiny stitches that held them together. She lifted her hands and used her right hand as a blade to sever the threads. Darria began to cut the sutures and was hit in the chest. The force knocked her flat with hands that wrapped around her heart. The weight stole the breath from her. Power slammed against her, and she struggled to sit back up.

“Stay on your back like the bitch you are. Spread your legs, and maybe I’ll make it easy for you. You’ll love all of it.” It was a man with a raspy voice. Darkness hovered over her when she opened her eyes.

Darria pushed her hands against the weight. Something smothered her. For a second, she felt helpless, but her anger took control, and her power surged. She shoved the being on top of her. The thing flew off her into the circle. Darria concentrated back on the one being and on severing the ties that bound them together. She cut a few more layers before she was airborne and slammed into a large pine tree. Thin needles showered down around her. Something cracked in her back. When she moved, it was difficult to roll her shoulders. The black form lunged at her again, but she dodged out of the way, so the shade passed through the tree.

The wind whooshed by her, and hands clutched her throat. “I told you that if you remained on your back, I might make it easy. You were warned that I was coming for you. Here I am. I didn’t think you’d come after her. Two for one. I’ll kill you, and then, I’ll kill her.”

“I don’t think so.” Omar appeared as a full body behind the shade and wrestled it from her.

Darria let the rush of air come into her lungs. Her familiar manhandled the phantom. She could feel the struggle that her familiar had with the spirit to keep him off her, buying her time. She reached back to the spirits she tried to help. She couldn’t be as delicate as she wanted to be about it. Darria threw a bolt of her power along where the souls were joined. The connections groaned along with the souls. Pain spiked through her left hand. Omar had been hurt. Injure her familiar, and it would hurt her as well.

These ghosts around the circle might not be her opponent’s familiars, but they were connected to him. She pushed the pain away and sensed the strain Omar was pulling on her. He couldn’t keep up the fight much longer. Darria gritted her teeth and focused her power into a knife’s edge so that it would slice through the mass of two souls. She clenched her fists together and pushed with all her might. If these were regular dead people, it wouldn’t have been so much effort, but the being enlivening them was stronger than Oliver. It had more than harvester powers. The specters it reanimated had a slice of that power. The more forgone they were, their minds having been used and raped for their master’s purpose, the stronger they were, almost self-sustaining. They drew the energy of the darkness around them. The tethers she cut away weren’t so rooted. They wanted to be released. Darria raised her arms. The energy around her tattoos pulsated, along with the words on her left arm, the spell Oliver had given her from his boss to free human souls. Some of these things were remnants of human beings.

She read the words. “Spirit trapped by heinous act, take your leave to find reprieve, flee the flesh that bound you once, and speed onward into paradise hence.” The power flare hit each of the souls that had some human spirit attached to them. The energy left her breathless, and at the same time, she felt another stab in her left hand.

A scream erupted in the night.

She glanced at the shade Omar had been wrestling on the ground. Parts of him were sizzling with purple flames. The roars of those he pieced together also filled the night. The dark shapes around the circle also burst into flames. The one she had been working on rushed upward. Lights shone down from above and touched some of the ones who were on fire, pulling the spirits back into the place where they were supposed to go. In other places, the ground opened up and pulled the other flames under the earth. The energy of the circle collapsed. Many of the creatures fell apart because one or more of their parts had been torn from them. For the rest of them that were there, she could feel the seams that kept them together.

She couldn’t cut each one away individually. It would take too much time. Darria closed her eyes and plunged into the darkness of her soul, and it answered her. Words bubbled up her throat and rolled over the tip of her tongue in one effortless thread.

“Deadly threads that bind. Spirits sever ties.”

Energy flared down her arms and caused her to grab on to the tree. Screams of those who were gobbled up by the darkness and freed from the enchantments hurt her ears, but their joy of no longer being pinned down and smooshed together lifted her spirits, knowing she had done something good with her powers.

“Don’t think this is over,” the dark entity seethed. It had shrunk down in size, but it remained powerful. She had wounded it. “I will eradicate all of your swine.”

“Try to go up against me again. You won’t win.”

“That’s what you think. You have no idea what I’m capable of. You might have won this, but there is more to come. Take this.”

Fire exploded in her left hand. It felt like everything in it was crushed. Something landed at her feet.

Omar.

A blade had been shoved through the center of his palm. Darria tried to move her left hand but wasn’t able to. She scooped him up with her right hand and held him close, but she couldn’t feel the spiritual connection she had to him.

“Omar?” she whispered.

No answer came to her.

Darria looked up at the darkness, but the spirit had vanished.

So had Omar.