Chapter 5
Chapter Five
The night sky went muddy with black clouds as Bodach watched the orange jumpsuit-clad corpses of the criminals he had dug up and brought back to life ply the shovels he had given them.
This was the second night he’d spent at the old prison cemetery, as the filthy business of disinterring the dead criminals was taking much longer than he’d assumed.
At least I don’t have to do the dirty work now.
The spell Bodach had cast over the first five corpses he’d dug out of the ground had animated them into revenants, which brought them back to life.
Clumsy but powerful, the dead men had no will of their own.
He had commanded them to use the tools he’d brought in the truck to exhume more bodies, which he then bespelled to serve him, too.
The revenants never stopped working; as long as his spell controlled them they would keep digging until their bodies finished rotting and their limbs crumbled.
Bodach would only keep them here until all the bodies had been dug up. He had other plans for his army of the dead.
The sight of the revenants would terrify even the most battle-hardened warrior.
All of them had been embalmed, so they were more or less intact, but their skin had paled and grayed, and their flesh had shrunk until it clung to the bones beneath it.
Insects had burrowed into their bodies, eating their way in and out as they went about their business.
Mold and fungi bloomed on their jumpsuits and their flesh.
The eyes—or eye sockets—of each corpse filled with a red glow, adding a menacing look to their skeletal faces.
One of the men, a towering hulk, knocked others out of his way as soon as Bodach bespelled him. He recognized the dead man as a particularly notorious serial killer.
“You now serve me,” Bodach told him and the others. “Nothing will stop you from carrying out my orders. No matter what I tell you to do, you will do it.”
The revenants that could still make sounds uttered raspy agreements.
A few older corpses had their jaws fall out of their rotting faces as they attempted the same.
Bodach decided the ones in the worst shape would serve as the front line of his army.
Their nightmarish appearance would terrify the McKeran’s vassals, who could be trusted to create havoc while they attempted to escape the revenants.
Perhaps he’d order some of the most disgusting corpses to rape whatever females they could capture.
This last attack would prove to be his most entertaining effort to date.
“Pick up a shovel and dig up the other inmates,” Bodach told the revenants, and then eyed the hulking murderer. “You, follow me.”
The dead man trudged after him, stopping when they reached the rental truck.
He needed to call him something, Bodach thought. “What was your name?”
“Francis.” The dead man spoke in a cavernous voice that seemed to make the air between them shudder.
“I’ll call you Frank. Do you remember how to drive, Frank?” Bodach asked, and when he nodded tossed him the keys. “Move the truck closer to the graves.”
The revenant didn’t catch the keys—he couldn’t move fast enough—but went over, picked them up and climbed into the truck. He started the engine and drove over to where the other corpses were digging, running over three of them as he parked the truck in the center of the dug-up graves.
Bodach walked over and surveyed the broken bodies of the revenants squirming under the wheels. “I see I’ll have to choose my words with more care.”
As Frank climbed out of the truck and brought the keys to him like an obedient if oversized hound, Bodach used a flick of power to remove the animation from the revenants he’d crushed.
The hulking dead man stared at him with his unblinking, glowing red eyes as if he were able to fall on his knees and worship him.
“I know I must seem like a god to you, Frank,” he said. “In a very short time I will have the same power as one. Then perhaps I’ll take you with me to Elphyne.”
His phone rang, and he pulled it out, smiling as he answered the call. “Hello, my dear. Have you become lost inside the castle?”
“Is that where Harper is?” another female mortal demanded. “How could you allow her to go inside that place alone? How long has she been in there?”
Her voice sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. He glanced at the display, but only a strange number appeared. “And you are?”
“Athena Makris, Harper’s assistant,” she said, snapping the words.
Bodach vaguely recalled speaking to her once, and she’d had a very different tone during their only other conversation. Since it was obvious that she was quite upset, and he didn’t need her summoning the authorities to his property, he opted for calming her down.
“I’m sure your employer is fine, Ms. Makris. Why wouldn’t she be? I met her at the property personally to let her inside last night. Maybe she decided to camp there.” He smirked. “She does so love to solve paranormal mysteries.”
“When I spoke with you last week, you refused to allow her access to the castle,” Athena reminded him. “Why would you change your mind?”
“Ms. Ensley is very persuasive.” Bodach smirked. “Why don’t you meet me at the castle in an hour? I’m sure your boss will be delighted to know you’re worried about her.”
“I’m in San Diego, and I can’t leave,” she said. “When you see Harper, tell her to text me back, please. I need to know she’s okay.”
“Of course, I will. Have a lovely evening.” He ended the call before she could make any other demands, and turned off his phone.
Perhaps he’d have Harper summon her snappy little bitch assistant, and he’d enchant them both to service him.
Or Frank, if the revenant could still produce an erection.
It might do to draft another of the dead prisoners to attend to the ladies.
Possibly one of the rapists could be more inventive than the hulking murderer.
With his new army of absolutely loyal, unwavering dead criminals, the possibilities for fun were really endless.
Bodach whistled as he went over to reanimate the latest batch of corpses his revenants had exhumed, and saw some bits of blackened bone scattered among the dead weeds.
Clagden, a fear-eating changeling, had been the one to bring him to the old prison cemetery.
He’d confessed to killing many of the inmates while posing as an orderly, and had intended to take Bodach’s power before murdering him.
At the time using red crystal to drain the life from Clagden had given him a great deal of satisfaction, but now he wished he had kept him alive.
Of all his recent mortal servants the changeling had been the most resourceful.
To amuse himself, he picked up several of the bone fragments and beckoned to Frank. “Open your mouth.” When the revenant did he stuffed the remains instead and had him swallow. “Let’s see if Clagden can be summoned back from the dead, too.”
The spell he cast over the revenant was essentially harmless, more of a parlor trick than true magic. His mother had often used it to torture prisoners whose comrades had fallen in battle.
“Speak to me as Clagden,” Bodach commanded. “Tell me how you enjoyed your defeat at my hands.”
The revenant’s eyes glittered with dark light that made streaks appear in the red glow, and when he opened his mouth the voice that came out sounded exactly like the changeling’s.
“I expected to murder you in this place,” Frank said, his tone rising higher with each word. “When you fed me to your crystals, I suffered enormous agony.”
“For the ten seconds it took them to kill you, I imagine you did,” Bodach said, nodding. “That’s what you get for trying to betray me.”
Frank made a strange sound that might have been a laugh. “In those moments I endured all the terror and pain that I inflicted on my mortal victims.”
“Oh, please, it couldn’t do that. Or does it hurt that much to have one’s life sucked away so quickly?
Maybe it did. Serves you right for trying to betray me.
” Intrigued by the changeling’s revelation, he patted Frank’s cheek.
“A pity you didn’t choose to serve me instead of yourself.
I would have taken you with me, and rewarded you handsomely after I conquered Elphyne. ”
The revenant batted away his hand.
“You shall never see Elphyne again, Goblin,” the dead man said in another, familiar voice. “You shall remain locked in torment for all time.”
“What did you say?” Bodach peered into his eyes. “Who are you?”
Frank grinned back at him, displaying teeth covered with green moss. “Soon you will be brought to a reckoning for all you have done in the mortal realm. Those whose lives you’ve stolen, the souls you’ve corrupted, the evil you’ve wrought, all demand a price. You shall pay in kind a thousandfold.”
“Is that you, Aosda? No, you’d never stoop to possess a dead mortal.” He walked around the revenant. “Chlíodhna, have you possessed my dead friend? Why would you even bother to warn me? You should be making popcorn and gathering your tree hugger allies to watch my demise.”
“You shall never die,” Frank said, and his mossy teeth fell out of his mouth along with his jaw.
As Bodach staggered backward the hulking revenant began to come apart as if being dismembered, his huge hands separating from his arms to fall on the ground, his knees buckling, his legs collapsing.
For a moment Frank’s head remained attached to his neck as his top lip curved over his empty gum sockets, and then it rolled off and fell into a nearby grave.
“Sneaky, vindictive bitch,” Bodach muttered as he watched a pool of moss spring up around and creep over Frank’s remains. “You’re damn right I’ll never die. After I take Elphyne, I will destroy this realm, everyone in it, and you and all your worthless kind.”