Chapter 9

Reive

“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. Instead, he crossed his arms behind his back and began walking around the girl, examining her with interest.

“Did you like the girl?” his ex-friend asked, smacking his lips lustfully. “She’s a nice little number. You’ve always had good taste.”

He threw a glance full of malicious glee at Reive. Reive turned his head aside, clenching his jaw still it crunched. All too clearly he visualized an image of long haired Shaina. His wife.

The memory reignited an old wound somewhere in his subconscious.

“Reive, are you all right?” Angelina asked at that moment, scared for real. The pupils of her large green eyes darkened as she awaited his answer.

“Yeah, little one, I... I’ll go outside, take a breather. Wait for me a minute.”

The necromancer ran headlong from the cave, as if the twilight fire was chasing him. And this fire was the repulsive ghost.

“Don’t run away, my friend,” Ulfricus murmured in his ear. “The lady won’t wait for long. Didn’t you want to have her tough?”

“Shut up,” the man exhaled quietly, at the rush of fresh air in his face. But, alas, it didn’t make him feel any better.

“Phew, how crude you are! Just like a necromancer,” said Ulfricus, “to walk away from a hot woman this way. Or even not a hot one. It isn’t that important. Aren’t you going to kill her?”

“Go away. You’re only an illusion.”

“Are you sure?” the ghost curled his lips sarcastically. “Think about it, you’re a necromancer after all. And then, go back to the lair and do what you came here to do. Shag this girl, suck all her magic. You’ve felt that with her, it’s not that simple, right? You must know it, yeah. Suck her dry then kill her.”

Reive narrowed his eyes then closed them, rubbing his temples.

“You don’t exist. Your spirit couldn’t rise again after seven hundred years,” he repeated. “And if it did, I’d grind your afterlife into the twilight dust.”

“Of course,” Ulfricus snorted. “You’ll do that. You’ll kill me, and then her. Necromancers take what they want, right?”

Reive opened his eyes. Ulfricus hung right opposite his face, just a couple of inches away.

The necromancer didn’t even budge.

For several seconds, they were both silent. Then, the ghost opened his mouth and whispered softly, “It’s simpler with the dead than with the living. Am I right, Reive?”

The next moment, he disappeared, as if he hadn’t been there at all. The worried face of Angelina appeared at the entrance, “You’re upset that... what...”

She gave a wave of her hand towards the cave and bit her lip. A blush spread across her cheeks. Once again, the necromancer registered how much he liked it when she blushed. He liked it so much that it even drove the unpleasant thoughts from his head.

However, the repulsive voice in his head again repeated Ulfricus’ words, “Suck her dry then kill her.”

Reive ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it back from this face. And he smiled. It seemed like the little one was indeed worried. And what about?

“Enough!” he said, coming closer.

At that moment, the zombie sitting a couple of feet away from the girl thrust his long hand out towards her. She screamed, backing off from him as if he were a leper.

Reive put his hands around her waist and calmly pushed the zombie’s hand away.

“Little one, are you a real necromancer?” he snorted.

“Y-yeah, and so?” she asked nervously.

“Why don’t you see that this dead man is bound to me?”

Reive looked at Angelina attentively, watching until he caught the sparks of understanding in her eyes. The girl shifted her glance from him to the zombie and back.

The necromancer carefully seated her on the ground by the fire, and sat next to her. The undead stayed on the other side of the fire, six feet away from them.

The crazy King of the Dead, a girl necromancer, who is afraid of the dead, and a zombie. A shitty little trio.

“We studied the binding threads only in theory,” she muttered quietly, peering at the zombie. She seemed to be watching in twilight vision the long strong bands connecting the necromancer and his dead servant. “There aren’t any necromancers able to raise the dead anymore. Well... that’s what they taught us.”

The zombie’s eyes flashed red then went out.

“All the invocations for raising the dead were destroyed with the Undead King,” the girl went on, glancing at the man strangely.

The necromancer remained serious. If there wasn’t a single good twilight mage left in this world, he’d have to spend a long time explaining how all the secret knowledge was known only to him.

However, he wasn’t going to hide all his powers.

“Then, what do your mages do?” Reive asked without a second thought.

“Well, I already told you...” muttered the girl. “There are, for example, black necromancers. They can make undetectable poisons from dead flesh, and elixirs from the bones. They can suck cadaveric pus out of corpses, turning them into mummies. Then they poison living people with this pus. They can create a plague and stop it. And clean rivers from the poison of dead bodies... Some of them, the especially strong ones, can raise a dead mouse or a cat. Or any other animal. But this is the most they can do.”

Reive nodded his head thoughtfully.

“And wherever did you study that you still don’t know or understand all these things?” Angelina screwed up her eyes and examined her companion from head to foot as if she was seeing him for the first time.

Reive frowned. He didn’t want to scare the girl. He still needed her. What’s more, he simply didn’t want to lose her until he was tired of her company.

He had to keep the secret, “I grew up in a distant estate, little one. Far away from the city. And... my father taught me.”

That was true: his father had indeed taught him. But it was so long ago that the necromancer himself doubted it.

“I see,” Angelina nodded, and her face smoothed.

She kind of believed this.

“But still, it seems to me too unreal that the zombie’s bound to you. Yeah, I see the binding,” she said thoughtfully, looking at the undead man again from the other side of the fading fire. “But it may be just the binding of some twilight spell.”

Reive smiled, turning with his whole body towards the girl, resting his fists on his crossed legs. He wanted to play a little.

“What should I do to make you believe? Little one, I’m ready to do anything. Well, would you like our new friend to do a foot massage for you?”

Reive waved in the zombie’s direction. The latter craned his head at once.

Angelina stared with astonishment, gasping for air.

The necromancer looked again at her full rosy lips, feeling desire return.

“Better let him put your hair into a ponytail! And braid it!” she exclaimed jerkily.

Reive laughed.

“I’d prefer you did that, Angel.”

The girl blushed again. As if she had been adding oil to a flame for this purpose.

“And I can give you a foot massage,” he said in a deep voice, with greedy predatory attention noticing how his companion’s breathing was becoming heavy. He noted her trembling eyelashes. And her firming breast cherries under her dress...