Page 5

Chapter 5

Necromancy for Preteens

Cian

T here was little in the way of entertainment that matched the shenanigans of a young dragon, yet Cian had discovered it. Cian found himself the sudden babysitter of not one child, but two, with the young Leandro Salvatore now Eroch’s constant companion. If the dragon was at the Mansion, the young necromancer was soon at his side, the two younglings up to trouble.

Child-rearing was never something Cian gave much thought to, having no children of his own despite many lifetimes of opportunity. Cian was doubly surprised not to be an uncle—Rory, of the two of them, was far more promiscuous than Cian over their long lives, and yet never managed to father a child. Not that his brother had been trying, of course, but happy accidents happened, just not to them.

Cian’s tastes were harder to describe when it came to lovers, but he tended to go for snark and sass over sweet and gentle. Someone with wits as sharp as Cian’s blades—or even cat’s claws. Peridot-green eyes occupied his thoughts, and Cian was old enough to understand that the fascination he had for Fenric was the first step in cracking the usual icy indifference he felt toward sexual relations. He wasn’t one for enduring sexual relationships like his brother once enjoyed before his mating to Daniel.

“You can do it,” Leo encouraged Eroch, both younglings sitting in the Mansion’s kitchen at the central island, Eroch’s long tail and wings trailing to the floor behind the tall stool he sat upon. Leo sat next to him on his own stool.

Keeping an eye on Eroch as he contemplated the end of his snout, near cross-eyed, Cian went about breaking down the quarter of beef on the island, separating the meat not into cuts favored by humans but into meals fit for a growing carnivore. Eroch needed a healthy balance of protein, bone, and sinew in his diet to support his rampant growth, in conjunction with the magic his brood-father Angel provided him.

Eroch let out a narrow stream of fire, the flames white-hot and neatly controlled, dancing over the top of the crème br?lée dessert in the shallow ramekins. The grains of sugar on top began to bubble and liquify, blackening swiftly. Eroch cut off the flame as Leo cheered, clapping in delight. “You did it!”

Eroch preened, winking at Leo with one daffodil-yellow and light-gold eye, flirty as usual. Leo giggled and grabbed a spoon, digging into the sweet treat Cian cooked up before butchering the fresh order of meat that was delivered that morning. A late afternoon snack never hurt a growing youngling.

Eroch had already eaten his, blackening the sugar to a far darker shade than he did for Leo, licking the ramekin clean.

Cian usually butchered the meat for Eroch in the underhill, in a room off the main temple that was meant for butchering, but this was a delivery from a local butcher shop and not a kill made in the underhill forest. Some of the underhill deer species were quite large, having evolved without human interference for thousands of years, so he broke those down in the underhill. But he needed the steel catering tables in the kitchen for the cow butchering, as he had access to outlets for the food vacuum machine he used to save the smaller trimmings. The preservation spells in the plastic bags required electricity to activate them. He had electricity in the underhill but none of the kitchen appliances.

He smiled, thinking of the odd look the Salvatore men gave him when they came across him earlier that morning after the delivery from the butcher shop. Angel in particular always seemed so startled to see Cian in jeans and t-shirts, using a smartphone, navigating the internet.

Rory was the one who slept through two and half centuries of technological advancement. Cian took the long route, experiencing it all. He even had an email account, though he drew the line at using social media. That was a time suck he had no intention of falling into.

People bored him.

He was old—lots of things bored him.

Except for babysitting, apparently.

Children were unpredictable and that was entertaining.

He would take what he could get in terms of entertainment. And companionship.

Everyone acting shocked and surprised when he made sensible decisions was getting boring—and a bit aggravating. The children had no preconceived notions about him, and they didn’t judge him for the dark time when he lost his sanity.

Fenric had not returned, and three nights had passed since Cian killed the assassin and Fenric slinked back into his life. Three days of quiet, with nothing from the High Council except a new set of watchers at the perimeter of the estate, Angel having killed or exiled the last set. Cian wondered idly how long this group would last.

The younglings soon grew bored after finishing their snacks. Cian envisioned great disaster ensuing if he didn’t distract the two.

“Leandro,” Cian said, drawing the boy’s attention. Leandro perked up and turned to him with intense focus, all but vibrating with the desire to do something, anything but sit there in the kitchen.

“Yes, sir?” Leandro said. Cian was trying to get him to drop the sir, but the boy was still polite with him, as their acquaintance was new.

He hid the smile that threatened at the courteous tone from the boy, the youngling probably hoping for more sugar. Cian had little issue with hopping the younglings up on sugar and giving them back to their respective parents, especially since he was babysitting for free and without being asked directly.

“Have your parents started your necromancy training yet?” Cian asked, though he knew they hadn’t, aside from some basics that all children learned, like how to protect their thoughts and emotions by shielding their minds, and how to not intrude on others’ auras, things like that. Magics that became second nature as adults, and the most important to learn if someone was going to live in a society with other people. Humans valued their privacy and boundaries.

“Not yet,” the boy replied in a perfectly posh English accent, the same accent as his vampire father Ashwin. He spoke English with an English accent, Spanish with a Spanish one, and Italian in a soft mixture of Italian and light Boston influences thanks to his father Ignacio’s background.

Leandro was a budding polyglot and was dearly precocious.

“Is Angel going to teach you?” Cian asked, though he knew the answer was obviously yes.

Leandro nodded enthusiastically. “Da said once I’m older and Cousin Angel doesn’t need to teach his current apprentice anymore. Papá is going to teach me the basics of sorcery until Cousin Angel says I’m ready.”

“No necromancy yet?” Cian asked, pretending to be shocked. Death magics could be brutal, harsh, and gruesome, so waiting until the boy was more mature was wise, though he did hope the boy didn’t develop an aversion due to lack of exposure.

Leandro shook his head, a faint pout turning his expression into a woe-begone child in need of love. A hint of the devil was in those dark Salvatore eyes, too. Leandro was trouble.

Cian approved.

“I did promise to show you how to animate a skeleton,” Cian mused aloud casually as he worked. He sealed up some stew trimmings while Leandro all but vibrated in his seat. Eroch also perked up, deeply interested.

Cian eyed the bones he had left over and mentally tallied the bones he had in the cold room off the temple in the underhill. He’d had the idea to make bone broth from the leftovers, but he decided on a new plan. He might have enough to occupy both the boy and the dragon for a few hours.

Cian

Back in the underhill, Cian washed his hands at the stone basin that formed from the seamless stone wall of the cold-storage room, then dried his hands on the towel that appeared hanging from the bar that didn’t exist a moment earlier. Basin, bar, and towel disappeared once his hands were dry, and he left the cold room behind and stepped in the temple proper, walking along the columns toward the archway in the far wall.

Eroch was napping on a collection of pillows the mound supplied in the center of the temple for the growing beastie, the dragon needing the respite to digest a belly full of meat. He’d slept for the better part of an hour at this point. He was likely to get up soon—cat naps were a growing dragon’s friend.

Voices reached his ears before he stepped through the arch and into the Mansion library, exiting what was once a hearth and was now a doorway between the underhill and the Salvatore Mansion.

“And how long will you be gone?” Ashwin was asking his son, the Elizabethan-age vampire smiling indulgently at the boy.

“A couple of hours,” Cian answered for Leo. “We’ll be just across the threshold in the temple.”

“Ah, that’s better than adventuring through the entire underhill,” Ashwin replied with relief, though the last time Leandro was unhurt and unscathed by his impromptu hunting lesson.

“Senór Cian won’t let me get hurt,” Leandro defended with a pout, echoing Cian’s thoughts.

“I didn’t say he would let you get hurt, I’m merely relieved you aren’t going far in case we need to find you quickly. If Senór Cian says it’s fine, you can play in the temple while your father and I discuss things with Cousin Angel.”

Ashwin sent Cian a questioning glance, and Cian nodded in agreement. If he didn’t want to watch the youngling, nothing would force him to do so—the boy was endearing and intelligent, and he listened better than most adults.

“What do you need to talk about with Cousin Angel?” Leandro asked, suspicious, as if worried his parents were going to have fun without him.

Ashwin stifled a laugh behind his fist, smiling at his son. “The High Council and other boring grownup things, like scheduling lessons and homeschooling.”

Leandro’s disgusted expression made Cian chuckle, agreeing with the boy. Lessons were often a bore.

“It’s still summer, do I need lessons?” Leo asked, a slight whine in his tone.

“Lessons need not be boring,” Cian interjected with a wink at the boy, who grinned. “Hug your Da and let him go do his boring grownup stuff.”

Leandro jumped at his father, who caught him easily, hugging the small boy and smoothing down his wild black hair. “Go have fun,” Ashwin encouraged his son when he let him go after a long hug. “Be good for Senór Cian.”

“Yes, Da!” Leandro all but shouted as he skipped through the archway and into the temple, where he promptly began running around the columns.

“Your son is safe with me,” Cian told the vampire. “I’ll bring him back in one piece.”

“For your sake, you better,” Ashwin said calmly, threatening with a smile.

Cian liked the English vampire.

Cian left without further goodbyes and entered the temple proper, where he found Leo and Eroch playing tag among the columns. The dragon had been napping, but an eleven-year-old boy rampaging through the temple was enough to wake anyone.

Cian returned to the cold room and grabbed the large bag of bones he saved from the last few carcasses he’d butchered. He kept most of the joints intact, though the bones were cleaned with a minimum of red muscle remaining, to spare the boy any squeamishness.

Leo and Eroch came bouncing over, exuberant and excited. Cian stopped a few feet away and upended the bag on the stone floor, making a racket as bone hit stone. He tossed aside the sack and then clapped his hands together, making eye contact with Leo. “Are you ready?”

Leo, wide-eyed and staring at the pile of bones, swallowed hard, but he nodded.

“Remember, youngling, you need not try at all if this bothers you. I won’t think less of you.”

Eroch snuggled Leo on the shoulder, churring softly, and the boy hugged Eroch around the neck before letting go and squaring his shoulders. “I’d like to try, please.”

Cian gave him a small smile. “Very well.”

Cian knelt and arranged the bones in a vague outline. The bones were a collection of different species—cow, stag, pig—so there was no living being that would awaken from eternal slumber to find itself the undead servant of a precocious preteen necromancer.

“What we’re going to do is simple,” Cian said to Leo as he finished arranging the bones in the rough likeness of a four-legged beast. A pig’s skull, neatly cleaned down to the bone without any flesh left, would serve as the head of the creature. “Animate the dead.”

“Really?” Leo gasped out, eyes wider, as if Cian promised him a lifetime of candy and no bedtimes ever. “But I don’t know how to do that.”

“And that means you’ll be able to do it with ease,” Cian promised. “This is all instinct for a necromancer.”

Leo eyed him doubtfully, but he set his jaw and nodded, glaring at the pile of bones as if sheer willpower would be enough to make them rise.

He wasn’t wrong.

“Access your inner vision,” Cian directed the boy, gesturing for Eroch to move back a few feet, and Cian did the same, though he stayed closer to Leo so he would not need to raise his voice for the boy to hear him.

With his own senses, he knew when Leo accessed his inner vision—the boy was talented, and despite his young age, was developing a firm grasp of the simple basics of practitioner magic. His father Ignacio had taught him well.

“See the death magics clinging to the bones?” Cian asked, though he had no doubt the boy could see it. His affinity was partially awake, not in full bloom, but near enough that it was more a matter of a few weeks than years before Leandro had his death magics fully awakened.

Leo nodded, “I see it.”

“Reach out with your mind and connect the separate pieces of death magics, like you’re drawing a picture or connecting pieces of a puzzle.”

“Does it matter what pieces connect to other pieces?”

“Not for this. Any order will work—just make sure every bone connects to another bone.”

He saw Leo reach out with his mind—he watched as the boy did as instructed, fumbling a bit and a little unsure, but determined and focused.

“Good job,” Cian said softly so as not to break the boy’s concentration.

The bones were glowing a soft hellfire green, the boy creating a work of magic that seasoned practitioners struggled to master. Yet Leo had nothing to unlearn, no formal education to unravel to get back to the basics of magic—instinct, affinity, and imagination were all that were needed for many works of magic. Angel did much of his own work as instinctive magics, and Leo was doing the same—he was a natural.

“Now what?” Leo asked, a hint of sweat at his temples but his focus was still complete.

“Imagine a thin river of magic flowing from you to the bones, and then along all the lines you built between the bones.”

It took the boy a moment, but soon a rush of energy came from the boy and fell upon the bones, the lines he drew to connect them glowing bright. Cian made a small humming sound in warning, and Leo adjusted the flow to a slow trickle without a word of instruction. Cian grinned wide.

“Once you think you’re ready,” Cian started, speaking low and soft so as not to break Leo’s concentration, “Tell it to get up.”

Leo blinked in surprise, but in the next instant, the bones rattled, and a burst of hellfire rose from the floor, consuming red flesh, snaps and clacks of bone on bone on stone—and the small lich rose from the floor.

It glowed hellfire green, the same shade as Angel’s magic—their kinship was undeniable. Leo gasped, hands clenched into fists, skin white, a rush of air from the green flames blowing his hair back from his face, and Cian quietly applauded the boy.

“Well done, well done indeed.”

Eroch hissed and whipped his tail back and forth, and Leo stared in wonder as the small lich stumbled through its first steps, hooves clacking on the stone floor. Hellfire danced along each bone, the ribcage, legs, and short tail, and the empty eye sockets were burning orbs of hellfire.

“I…” Leo gasped and then he jumped in the air, crowing in excitement. “I did it! I did it!”

Cian gently squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “You did do it,” Cian said to him. “And now you’ll always know how to make a lich. No spells needed, only willpower and strength.”

The joy on Leo’s face was incandescent.

Cian

The boy and the dragon played in the temple for a while, Leo ordering the lich to attack Eroch, and Eroch in turn battling the lich, attacking it with fire, fangs, and claws.

Cian summoned a chair and sat, snacking on some grapes and strawberries from a brass basin on a small side table, watching the shenanigans and laughing when they did something silly. He kept a sharp eye on the boy, ready to intercede when the power draw became too much for the boy to maintain.

He didn’t need to say a thing in the end—Leo sat abruptly after a while, and the lich wavered on its hooves and then listed to the side, the hellfire glow fading.

“Oh no,” Leo sighed, sad.

“No need to be sad,” Cian told him, getting up from his chair and heading over to Leo, hand out to help the boy to his feet. “Once you’re older, I will teach you how to animate the lich permanently so you don’t need to fuel the spell constantly. And you did a wonderful job. I’m proud of you.”

He helped Leo stand, making sure the boy didn’t fall over. “Tired?” he asked.

“No,” Leo said, clearly trying to be strong, but he was obviously exhausted.

“Eroch needs a nap again, why don’t you sit with him until he falls asleep?” Cian directed Leo to the huge nest of pillows that remained from Eroch’s earlier nap. He summoned more snacks, handing the bowl to Leo, who took it without asking where it came from, a sign of how tired he was from using his magic to animate the lich. “Eat while he sleeps.”

Eroch caught on fast, and he climbed into his pillow nest, leaving room for Leo to sit beside him, and Leo clambered onto the pillows, snuggling up with Eroch and sleepily eating some fruit. He passed every other piece to Eroch, who ate each daintily, careful of his teeth with the boy’s fingers.

Eventually the bowl almost fell from Leo’s hands as he fell asleep, and Cian caught the bowl before it hit the floor, setting it aside. He laid Leo down beside Eroch, the dragon snuffling the sleeping boy, one wing extended to cover him like a blanket, and then Eroch settled in as well, closing his yellow eyes.

Cian left the two younglings to sleep, and he pulled out his phone and texted the group chat to inform the others that the children were napping in the temple and to be quiet if they came inside. After a second, he snapped a picture of the child cuddled up with the dragon, sending it in the group chat as well.

He put away his phone and contemplated the lich, the newly fashioned creature that glowed faintly, even after Leo stopped fueling it.

A reliquary would be a lovely solution to store it. He had a selection of them, ranging from large and gaudy that he stole from a human priest about six centuries earlier, to a small seashell about the size of his palm that once held an undead selkie zombie. A reliquary was originally an Elder fae magic that humans were able to learn—the creation of a small pocket dimension that was anchored within a prepared vessel that opened with the vessel, and once created was dependent on the vessel for its existence.

Break a reliquary, and what was inside came out. Reliquaries were simple magic, as they were made from one single container of any kind, usually something with a lid and a lock, though anything would do, really—and they could hold almost anything, though sticking a living creature in a reliquary meant killing it. Plants and small, less complex creatures could survive, but anything bigger than a cat usually died from the experience. People died without fail.

It was why reliquaries were used to house inanimate cursed objects, or undead creatures like liches and zombies. You couldn’t kill what was already dead.

Leo’s pet lich was small, about the size of a yearling pig, and at that thought the temple wavered and at his feet a reliquary appeared, a solid chest made of dark, iron-gray oak and cold wrought iron he himself forged centuries earlier. The lid fell back to reveal the wooden interior, empty except for a single antique lock and matching key made of castle-forged iron.

He stooped, grabbing the lock and key, and with his free hand, scooped up the lich and deposited it in the reliquary. He closed the lid, the lich fitting perfectly, and he slid the lock into place, locked it with the key, and dismissed the reliquary back into storage, making a mental note of it and slipping the key into his pants pocket.

It promptly faded from view, back the way it came, out of sight until Leo wanted to play with it again.