Path of the Necromancer Ch. 02

Dani grimaced as she surveyed the land. She did have one card to play, however. While she was sworn to do her duty, she doubted those manipulating her had accounted for the Delridge militia that had shown up in force about ten minutes ago, crossing the river in Zodiacs.

They were about three hundred yards off at the mouth of the delta, waiting in eagerness for the shipment to be unloaded so they could swoop in and grab it. Dani shook her head. She didn't know much about the warring factions, but it seemed ridiculous that everyone knew the exact time and place this was going down. There had to be a mole or three in their organization, or perhaps one of their backers was playing both sides.

Whatever the case, it didn't matter anymore as the militia began moving, seeing the Night Watch had finished. Adrenaline rushed through her as she searched frantically for a werewolf to hit. If she timed it right, the Were would think they were being attacked by one of the factions from Delridge and the Night Watch could escape.

She'd already switched out her incendiary rounds for her enchanted ones. One shot and she'd at least remove one more monster from the world. 'Come on, come on,' she urged, trying to get a bead on the vague targets darting between the trees. Suddenly, a snow white form jumped out at her through the scope.

* * * * *

They'd just finished unloading and were getting back into the van when a scrawny kid buried in a jacket much too big for him cried out, "Were!" Everyone quickly looked back towards the woods.

Val smacked him upside the head. "It's just one," she admonished. "Quit scaring the crap out of everybody." Ian waited, one foot resting on the back bumper as the werewolf leisurely made its way over to them. He didn't know what this was about, but it was nearly 2AM... The least it could do was hurry its ass up.

The werewolf neared and then froze when it got a good look at him. Ian's eyes narrowed as he took in the thing's appearance. Just as he began to associate the piercing golden orbs of the beast that shined in the moonlight with the beauty he'd seen in the apartment complex, a shot rang out. The round pierced her heart and traveled out the other side. Kiara fell to her knees as if in slow motion, her form shifting back to human, a shocked expression on her face. The world seemed to freeze as silence permeated the clearing and Ian leapt towards her, catching her body before it could hit the ground.

In the next instant, chaos reigned. Dozens of shifters exploded out of the trees and charged them. An equal number of the group from Delridge rushed them from the other side. One of Bobby's lieutenants shouted, "It's a trap! They're trying to blame it on us." Ian ignored it all as he held the girl and felt the rest of her vitals start to fail.

He called on his magic, desperately trying to freeze her organs in suspended animation. What was left of her heart wasn't even twitching and she was clinically dead. The militia from Delridge slowed their charge as they realized just how many 'too-deadly-to-be-called wolves' there were and that they were actually 'attacking.' Suddenly, the idea of an easy snatch and grab was fast turning into a nightmare.

The shifters noticed the Delridge group as well and most of them broke off to face what they thought was the main element in an ambush. At the van, Bobby hesitated as he saw them stuck in the middle of a very bad situation. He wanted to shout at the Were, 'it wasn't us!' He wanted to rail at the heavens at the unfairness of it all. Yet, he knew they needed to get out of there. He had to protect his people.

Unfortunately, he realized, Ian wasn't inside the van, and as he watched, the succubus and the cloaked thing ran out to defend his kneeling, oblivious form. 'What the hell is he doing?!' Bobby screamed in his head. Stuck between fight or flight, his sister took the situation out of his hands as she grabbed her G36 and ran zigzagging towards where she thought the sniper was.

"God fucking damnit!" Bobby roared punching the side of the van. "Fire. Fire!" He aimed his own rifle as the rest of them crowded out the back and raised their M4 carbines towards the onrushing mass of fur and death, knowing they couldn't do anything but slow them down.

The running wolves were peppered by automatic fire, many of them going down in tumbles of flying dirt and yips of pain. Most of the ones who fell were more hurt by the fall than the projectiles though, and a good portion got back on their paws and continued.

On the other side of the field, the werewolves and the militia engaged each other. The Delridge faction had a total of three mages and the rest were armed. The shifters ripped into the shell-shocked humans, taking a good bite out of their numbers before they recovered enough to make a concerted effort to fend off the attacks. One wizard with an affinity for Earth Magic took a small squad and sneaked around the melee to try and secure the precious cargo.

At the site Kiara fell, Ian desperately worked to keep her... well, not 'alive,' but at least inhabited with a soul. He anchored it to her body, not letting her fade away. He couldn't regenerate tissue, let alone a new heart, but he could make it so her body didn't need a heart to function. Before he could finish that thought, she scared the shit out of him when she woke up suddenly gasping for air she no longer needed.

Ian's eyes widened and he lunged for her head, keeping her chin up so she wouldn't see the gaping hole in her own chest. At the same time, he desperately tried to knock her out again with a sleep spell. Her entire body shuddered as she could feel everything that was happening to her, his magic dulling nothing in terms of pain.

Her terrified eyes locked onto his and she shivered. "S- s- so c- cold," she stuttered. Tears leaked out of his eyes as he winced at what it must feel like to no longer be connected to a part of your body anymore, your insides having been numbed, and yet still able to feel that there was something missing. On the third try, he managed to overpower her excited nervous system and her eyes closed as she fell into a deep sleep.

Ember mumbled quietly, "Company..." Ian spared a quick glance to take account of the situation.

"You take the Were. Try not to kill them," he said. "Scraps, take those guys trying to sneak up behind us. I don't care how you deal with them." Ian could feel Kiara's soul tugging at his grasp and he tightened his grip, locking it in place.

Ember dashed forward to meet the onrushing lupine creatures, shooting jets of Hellfire in their path to slow them down and make them concentrate on her. She had a small advantage over them in speed, but they had the numbers and knew how to work together. Bobby and the rest began concentrating their fire on those werewolves that tried to jump over the flames, hitting them in midair in controlled bursts.

Scraps charged the oncoming squad of militia as they crept up behind the van and tore through two of the gunmen before they even knew he was there. Then he was dodging rock projectiles and moving fast as the ground beneath him constantly turned to quicksand.

On the other side of the clearing, the Delridge militia had actually begun to turn their luck around and was pushing the Were back towards the area around the van. One of the mages worked to maintain a shield around a cluster of them while the other, an unregistered druid, summoned huge vines that were gripping and thrashing any of the werewolves that weren't fast enough to evade their grasp. All the while shifters fell like flies from automatic fire, though mortal injuries were rare.

Ian was getting angrier, his temper flaring, soon to become volatile. He needed to find a healer fast to regenerate what he was preserving and her own kin were attacking the wrong people, even managing to bite and scratch Ember twice. Scraps was currently locked in a stalemate as he was entombed in a pillar of Earth, but if the mage let up on the metric tons of pressure he was using to hold the revenant in, he'd die in a heartbeat.

When a round whizzed past his head from the main Delridge group, he'd had enough. He stood up and bowed his head, clenching his fists. Making sure his link to Kiara was secure and her soul wasn't going to slip, he let the spirits around him use his magic to manifest themselves, not even trying to regulate the power flowing out of him.

The battle on all sides froze as thousands of ghostly shades appeared around the clearing. Ian's eyes flashed open, glowing green as a wispy, smoky aura surrounded him from all the energy he was channeling. He formed a single, all-encompassing command in his mind of what he wanted done and then unleashed the dead.

The roiling mass of ghosts exploded into action. The spectral horde began ripping the remaining militia apart while buffeting and corralling the werewolves into a big circle. Individually, they couldn't do much physically. But together, with countless eager grasping hands, it was a nightmare for anyone without a strong shield.

One mage faltered under the weight of the attacks, but the Earth Mage and the druid held strong, directing their focus to Ian, trying to bring him down. The druid tried to wrap him in vines, but the hardy tentacles caught ablaze before they could reach him, seeming to writhe in agony as Spiritfire ran down their entire lengths. Caught by surprise, his head snapped back as Bobby shot him when he saw his shield falter.

The Earth Mage tried a different approach and simply threw chucks of rock at Ian. He was prepared for the shield to stop them though, and the rocks didn't break apart on contact. Instead, they seemed to stick to the shield, wrapping around it like a stone cocoon. At the same time, Ian sunk, the earth seeming to bend around Ian's shield like a bubble, compressing it with more and more force.

Lastly, a ball of earth was raised high overhead, reshaping and hardening into a deadly spike that was poised to pierce Ian's weakened shield. In his eagerness though, his control that was keeping Scraps trapped lessened and the revenant exploded out of the brittle casing, wrapping a bandaged hand around the Earth Mage's neck and snapping it in one fluid motion, disintegrating the constructs that trapped Ian as the energy that held them together vanished.

After the last of the screams had died away, a still calm descended over the clearing. The werewolves growled and shifted around, but a solid ring of ghosts kept them trapped where they were. Ian approached them as Ember scooped up Kiara's unconscious body and trailed after him. "Anyone a healer?" he asked them without preamble.

The shifters simply stared back at him with hostility. Ian sighed, not expecting to get anywhere. Pointing at Kiara and doing charades while trying to get them to understand that it wasn't too late for her would doubtless produce the same results. He'd been about to use force to get a few of them to change back to human-form so he could at least have a conversation when a horn was blown in the distance.

It was a deep, chilling sound that set his teeth on edge. All the werewolves in the circle perked up at the sound and seemed to get excited. He sighed, thinking, 'reinforcements then.' Turning to Bobby, he said, "You should leave now." Prepared for the young leader's arguments, Ian added, "Ember will go after Val. You need to get back to the warehouse. Too many people knew about this."

"It's likely another faction decided to use this as a distraction," he reasoned. "I'll send Scraps along as well once I'm finished here." Bobby was torn between leaving Ian to face an army of werewolves, trusting his sister's safety to a demon, and going back to defend his home. Finally, the responsibility of all those relying on him determined his next action. He turned and ordered the others in motion.

Ember rested Kiara at Ian's feet and straightened, looking him in the eye. Threading her fingers through his hair, she pulled him in for a deep, possessive kiss. "Stay alive," she murmured as she leaned back. A goofy smile crossed Ian's face and she rolled her eyes. "If you manage to get yourself killed, I'll reach into the pits of the underworld to get you back... just so I can kill you myself for making me go through the trouble." With that, she shifted form, spread her wings, and took off into the night.

Ian and Scraps turned to face the oncoming host. SUVs and Jeeps with mounted .50 Cal machine gun turrets were bearing down on them, hunchbacked figures loping along beside them. The werewolves in the circle were looking decidedly positive given their current predicament. Ian raised his hand palm upward and the nearly forty dead bodies around the clearing picked themselves up and formed ranks in front of him.

He waited, half expecting them to open fire as soon as they got into range. They seemed to take into consideration the trapped packmates, however -probably thinking along the lines of them being hostages. "As if I needed such a thing," Ian chuckled to himself darkly.

He was feeling lightheaded from all the power he was channeling. He was also pissed off that he'd been forced to reveal himself. The repercussions for the Night Watch were unknown and coupled with his bad history of werewolves, he really didn't know what he'd do if they pressed him. One thing was for sure, he wasn't in a charitable mood.

The vehicles skidded to a stop on the gravel, a massive line of shifters and steel facing off against Ian. Three individuals in human-form that were clearly the leaders stepped out of a Jeep and moved to the front of the ranks of Were, numbering close to a hundred strong, standing a dozen feet in front of the line of undead.

There was a tension in the air that clashed with the quiet stillness of the clearing, interrupted only by the multitude of growls that made up an eerie rumbling. The wind ruffled Ian's hair as he stared them down. Then, one of the three, a blond-haired bear of a man, caught sight of Kiara laying there at the necromancer's feet and he choked out a cry of rage, grief, and disbelief.

He surged forward and the incorporated pack tensed. But as the man reached the line of undead, instead of attacking, they opened their ranks to let him pass. He stumbled to his knees when he reached her and cradled her head in his arms. Holding her to his chest, he rocked his body, repeating over and over, "No, no, no..."

Ian let out the breath he'd been holding and stated, "She can still be saved." The man looked up sharply at his words and his face went from showing incredulity to fury when he thought he was being mocked. He could feel that she didn't have a pulse. He could see the gaping wound in her chest and knew that whatever had made it had been enchanted as there were no signs of regeneration.

"I'm keeping her soul anchored," Ian explained. "I could wake her, but she'd be in tremendous pain. I need someone to fix her internal organs and whatever else is wrong before her body can support her soul on its own."

The man stared at Ian for a long moment before he raised his voice, "Orlov, quick! Get over here."

The two remaining leaders, a man and a woman, stepped forward in alarm. "What are you doing?" the man shouted. "Can't you see he's trying to trick you? She's gone, Konstantin. There are others who need the shaman's help."

"You can't trust him," the woman advised worriedly. "Come away from there and we'll remove his wickedness from the world." Orlov stepped forward despite the others' protests. Ian didn't know if shamans had a Hippocratic Oath, but he got the impression that the chance to save a life trumped whatever conditioned displeasure they had for necromancers.

The male leader who'd taken offense turned to the others and ordered, "Attack! Can't you see what he is? Attack, damn you!" The mass of werewolves shuffled nervously, but none moved forward. Whether it was because the blond-haired leader trumped the other's authority or they were still concerned about the 'hostages,' Ian didn't know.

The agitator turned bright red in the face at their inaction and turned to glare at the blond-haired man. "You know the law!" he accused. "Not even you can go against the Council's decree."

The blond man stood and faced his accuser and in a firm voice declared, "I will do whatever it takes if there's even the smallest chance of saving my daughter."

The other man's eyes flashed in triumph. He growled at Kiara's father, already shifting forms, "Then the conditions have been met and I challenge you for the right to lead-"

"Seriously?" Ian interrupted, incensed. "You're doing this now?" Turning to Scraps, he ordered, "Get rid of this clown."

The revenant crossed the 20ft gap between them faster than the eye could follow and punched the creature that now out-massed him by a good three or four times. He hit at about chest height and no one expected it to be very effective given the size difference, so they were shocked when it knocked the werewolf back a good six feet, doubling him over.

Before he could recover, Scraps was already there, wailing away at him without the slightest hint of form or technique; simply slugging him with machine-like persistence, shattering bones wherever his fists landed. The outmatched werewolf desperately tried to recover, lashing out with a claw to try and suspend the relentless onslaught.

Large furrows opened up along the revenant's chest, shredding the dark tatters and patchwork flesh beneath. Scraps didn't appear to notice, continuing to pummel away until the weakened lupine figure was knocked down and forced to fight on his knees, then on his side, then not at all -his injuries shifting him back to human-form. The revenant's mangled chest knitted back together, the black cloth weaving closed the large rents.

The shifters watched the display with shocked expressions, stunned by the brutality displayed by the tattered ragman that looked as if a strong gust of wind would blow him over. Ian hadn't watched the 'fight,' turning away after he'd given the order and kneeling next to the shaman, telling him what he was preserving and the damage he'd observed.

Orlov also paid no heed to what was going on behind him. He pulled out an assortment of items. Breaking a stick of self-lighting incense, he began a hair-raising rhythmic chant, rocking back and forth. He took a vial of water and spritzed her face and then reached into his pouch. His hands came out wet with something that looked suspiciously like blood and began gliding over Kiara's inert form, hovering over the wound in her chest. Ian saw a soft glow emanating from the liquid. Reforming the heart took the most effort and Ian was humbled by the procedure, knowing he'd never be able to do something like that.

It was an enlightening experience to work with another mage to revive someone. After he would heal an area, Ian would gradually let Orlov take more and more control of her vital systems. Kiara's father choked up as her wound closed and color began returning to her face. Her eyes blinked open and then widened as she recognized her father crouched over her. Ian turned away as they began sharing a tearful embrace and started walking in the direction he'd come from.

The ring of ghosts vanished into the gloom and the bodies of the dead began following him like a procession. Scraps stopped battering the bloody body of the rebellious upstart and fell in beside him. The werewolves watched his retreating form fade away in silent awe, knowing this was a story they'd never tire of telling. Ian directed the zombies to cross into Delridge's territory, not wanting the bodies found on this side of the river.

He then noticed a fire that was growing larger in the distance. Ian estimated that it was near where the main warehouse he'd stayed in was located and ordered Scraps to sprint back and help those in need. He made sure to hand Grim over to him so the Archive could direct his actions, still unsure of just how much free will and initiative the revenant could exercise.