Chapter 011
He glanced around the living room. Voren, Elara, Russell. They were professionals. They knew how to bleed and how to stitch themselves back up. Kaelen didn’t. And neither did Robbie.
The fact that Robbie still hadn’t arrived was making Kaelen feel physically ill. A low, dull nausea sat at the base of his throat. Robbie was the only other person involved in this mess who didn’t have combat training or a tactical mindset. Kaelen had his ability, complicated as it was to use in a fight, but Robbie had nothing but a laptop and a surplus of loyalty.
Kaelen stared at his phone, willing the screen to light up. Robbie was supposed to be here. He’d insisted on helping, had practically demanded a seat at the table, and now, on the day they were finalizing the strategy, he was a ghost. He wasn’t answering calls. He wasn’t replying to texts. Kaelen had tried to play it cool, limiting himself to three calls, but the silence was getting louder by the minute.
Maybe he was napping. Maybe he’d silenced his phone and lost track of time. If that was the case, Kaelen was going to strangle him, and then hug him. He understood the impulse to be involved. If the roles were reversed—if Robbie was the necromancer with a target on his back—Kaelen knew he wouldn’t be able to sit on the sidelines either.
“You can try calling again if you’re anxious,” Voren said.
Kaelen looked up. Voren was standing close enough to bump shoulders with him, a solid, grounding presence in the room full of tension.
“That obvious?” Kaelen asked, managing a weak smile.
“Very much so,” Voren said. His voice was pitched low, for Kaelen alone. “But it’s one of the reasons everyone here loves you. You care.”
“It’s just weird that he’s not here, isn’t it? He insisted he wanted to be involved, and now he’s no-show?”
“I’m sure he’s fine. But like I said, if you’re worried, call him again.”
“What if he doesn’t answer?”
“We’ll deal with it.”
Voren’s tone was pragmatic, designed to soothe, but before Kaelen could unlock his screen, a vibration buzzed against the wood of the coffee table.
Everyone froze. The room went dead silent, eyes snapping to Voren’s phone where it danced against a coaster. Voren stared at it for a second, his jaw tightening, before he huffed a breath and snatched it up. He didn’t check the caller ID. He just swiped and brought it to his ear.
“Yes?”
He listened for a heartbeat. His expression didn’t change, but the air around him seemed to drop a few degrees. He lowered the phone, set it back on the table, and hit the speaker button.
Helena’s voice filled the room, smooth and terrifyingly casual.
“Oh, is Kaelen there with you? I would love to talk to him.”
Kaelen felt a cold spike of adrenaline in his gut. He would hate to talk to Helena, but the look on Voren’s face told him he didn’t have a choice.
“What do you want?” Kaelen asked. His voice was steadier than he felt.
“I wanted to ask what you and Voren have decided,” Helena said. She sounded like she was asking about dinner plans. “Are you coming out here to meet me? I don’t have much time left, so I need to finish my business here.”
“We already told you we’re not doing it,” Kaelen snapped. The anger came easy, burning through the fear. “I don’t care what you want. Voren is not handing himself over to be killed, and I’ll never work for you.”
“Well, that’s a pity. What am I going to do with your mother and your friend now?”
The floor seemed to drop out from under Kaelen. The room spun. “What do you mean?”
His mother was gone. She was supposed to be at Aunt Emma’s by now. And Robbie...
“They’re here with me,” Helena said. “I think they miss you, but I had to gag them because Robbie wouldn’t keep his mouth shut. I got bored after a few threats.”
Kaelen gripped the edge of the sofa. His knuckles turned white. He couldn’t process it. He couldn’t let the image of his mother and Robbie—bound, gagged, terrified—take root in his head, or he’d fall apart.
“If you hurt them—” Kaelen started.
He didn’t know how to finish the sentence. What could he threaten her with? She held all the cards. She was the professional monster; he was just the guy who talked to bones.
“I won’t hurt them if you and Voren hand yourselves over, Kaelen. Honestly, I don’t know what the problem is. I’m offering you a lot of money to do the same work you currently do.”
Kaelen let out a dark, wet chuckle. It sounded foreign to his own ears. “We both know it wouldn’t be the same work. I never wanted to work for anyone because I know how easy it is to misuse this ability. I’ve already had to deal with that, and I’m not doing it again.”
“Unfortunately, you’re going to have to. Either you come here and work for me, or I kill your mother and your friend. Is that something you’re willing to let happen?”
“You already know it’s not.”
A hand settled on his arm. Kaelen looked up to see Voren watching him. Voren looked furious, a controlled, lethal kind of anger that sat just behind his eyes, but his touch was gentle. If Voren could reach through the phone line and strangle Helena, he would have done it already.
“I’ll text you my position,” Helena said. “I’ll see you soon.”
The line went dead.
For a moment, no one moved. The silence in the apartment was heavy, suffocating. Then Voren’s phone buzzed with a text message, and the stillness shattered.
Kaelen felt like he couldn’t breathe. His mother. Robbie. They were in the hands of people who viewed murder as a line item on an expense report. How was he supposed to handle this?
“We’ll get them back,” Voren promised. He was already moving, checking the magazine of his handgun.
“What if she hurts them?”
“She won’t. She wants to use them as leverage. She can’t do that if they’re dead. She wants your cooperation, Kaelen. She knows she loses you the second she hurts them. She’s too smart to do something that stupid.”
“I hope you’re right,” Kaelen murmured.
Elara was already typing on Robbie’s laptop, tracing the coordinates. “They’re in a cemetery,” she declared, closing the lid with a snap. “She couldn’t even be original.”
Kaelen snorted. A laugh bubbled up in his throat, hysterical and sharp, and he slapped a hand over his mouth to stifle it. He shouldn’t be laughing. He should be focusing.
“We can win this fight,” Voren said, addressing the room. His voice was command-sharp. “But we’re going to have to be careful. We were planning on taking the fight to her on our terms, but she isn’t giving us the time. She chose this cemetery for a reason. We need to be ready for anything.”
“I can help,” Kaelen said.
He stepped forward. He felt small in the room full of assassins and spies, but this was his turf. “There’s no one here who knows cemeteries better than I do.”
It felt like a meager offering, but it was all he had. It was a distraction from the panic clawing at his throat.
“How much time do we have?” Kaelen asked.
“She didn’t say when she’s expecting us,” Voren said. “But she knows we won’t confront her unprepared. This isn’t going to be an easy fight, but we have a chance.”
Kaelen prayed Voren was right. Because if he wasn’t, Kaelen didn’t know how he would survive the loss.
Voren wasn’t going to let anyone hurt the people he cared about.
The list of those people was short. Painfully short. But the fact that Helena had put her hands on Kaelen’s mother and his best friend made Voren’s blood run hot with a rage he hadn’t felt in years. He hated her. He hated her with a clarity that surprised him, eclipsing even the professional disdain he’d held for her back when they were colleagues.
He gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles pale. He couldn’t focus on the anger. Anger made you sloppy. He needed to focus on the logistics: extraction, neutralization, survival. He wasn’t sure he could pull off all three, but he was willing to die trying.
He just hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
He glanced at the passenger seat. Kaelen was staring out the window, his knee bouncing like a piston. It was an annoying, frantic rhythm, but Voren didn’t say a word. He understood the excess energy. He wanted Kaelen as comfortable as possible before they walked into hell.
Leaving Kaelen behind hadn’t been an option. Helena had made this personal. Kaelen was the prize, which meant Kaelen had to be the bait. Voren hated it. He hated exposing the man he loved to this kind of violence, but the alternative was surrendering, and that was a death sentence for Voren and a life sentence of slavery for Kaelen.
There was also the variable of Helena’s team. Elara’s intel was spotty. They knew about the woman who manipulated darkness, but the other two were question marks. Were they heavy hitters? Support? Voren was preparing for a fight blindfolded.
“We should’ve known she’d grab them,” Kaelen said suddenly, his voice tight. “She threatened to.”
“We thought your mother was out of town,” Voren said, keeping his eyes on the road. “And we were expecting Robbie to be with us.”
“But you know what she’s capable of. We should’ve expected this.”
He wasn’t wrong. But guilt was a useless emotion right now.
“It’s too late to worry about the should haves,” Voren said. “The only thing we can do now is get them back and kick Helena out of town.”
Piece of cake, he thought bitterly.
The cemetery wasn’t far. The late afternoon sun cast long, golden shadows across the asphalt as they pulled into the parking lot. It was mostly empty. Voren scanned the perimeter—habit—but didn’t see any immediate threats. If there were civilians around, he hoped they’d have the sense to run when the shooting started.
Russell parked his sedan next to Voren’s car. Before the engine had even stopped turning over, Elara was out of the backseat, her laptop open in her hand.
Voren frowned and climbed out, the weight of his holsters familiar and heavy against his ribs.
“I found one of the other team members,” Elara said, not bothering with a preamble. “He sees the future.”
Voren stopped. “What does that mean?”
“I haven’t found a precise dossier, but the chatter suggests he has short-term predictive capabilities. He can see moves before they happen.”
Voren swore softly. A precog. Great. How were they supposed to fight someone who knew where the bullet was going before Voren pulled the trigger?
“It’s not long-range,” Elara added quickly. “Seconds, maybe minutes. But in a firefight, that’s an eternity.”
“We can’t let that distract us,” Kaelen said.
Voren looked at him. Kaelen sounded calmer than Voren expected. His face was pale, but his jaw was set.
“We knew this would be near impossible when we decided to fight,” Kaelen said. “I’m going in there.”
“We all are,” Russell said, checking the slide on his weapon. “It would be great if we knew exactly what we were facing, but we can deal with it. We’ve dealt with worse.”
Voren wasn’t sure that was true. But he appreciated the lie.
“Let’s get ready,” Voren said.
The group looked less like a tactical squad and more like a dysfunctional family preparing for a very grim picnic. But there was steel in their spines. Even Silas, the baby assassin, looked ready to work. Voren felt a pang of gratitude for the kid. He was annoying, sure, but he showed up.
Voren checked his knives. He checked his backup piece. He checked the ammo in his pockets. He was preparing for the unknown, and the unknown usually had teeth.
“You’ll be careful?” Kaelen asked, watching him.
“As careful as you’ll be.”
Kaelen narrowed his eyes. “That’s not funny.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be. You know how these things go. We can promise safety all we want, but once the first shot is fired, it’s chaos.” Voren stepped closer, lowering his voice. “I can’t promise you that you won’t lose me. But I promise I’ll do everything I can to get you, your mother, and Robbie out of there.”
“I don’t want to lose you, either.”
“I’ll do my best.”
It was the only honest thing he could say.
They walked into the cemetery in silence, splitting up just past the wrought-iron gates. The air smelled of damp earth and old flowers. Voren stayed glued to Kaelen’s side. They didn’t have to hunt for Helena. Kaelen had mentioned a specific landmark—a headstone topped with a weeping cherub statue, visible from fifty yards away.
Voren saw it. And he saw her.
Helena was leaning against the granite marker like she owned the place. She was still beautiful, in a sharp, dangerous way. Her black hair was cut into a severe bob that framed her face like a helmet. She wore a black suit, crisp white shirt, no jewelry.
She watched them approach. Voren felt her gaze slide over him, assessing, dismissing. He knew her. He knew her arrogance. He could use that.
Kaelen’s mother and Robbie were on the ground near her feet. Their hands were zip-tied, mouths gagged with gray duct tape. They looked furious. Robbie’s eyes were wide and blazing, and Kaelen’s mother looked like she was ready to bite someone. They were alive. That was what mattered.
Voren scanned the periphery. He couldn’t see the team, but he felt them. The hair on the back of his neck stood up.
“I have to admit, I wasn’t sure you’d come,” Helena called out. Her lips curled into a practiced smile. “I’ll give you one last chance, Kaelen. I’ll let everyone but Voren go if you agree to work for me. Unfortunately, Voren has to die. Liability issues. But your family walks free.”
Kaelen stopped ten feet away. He looked like he was vibrating with the urge to kill her. Voren wouldn’t be surprised if he tried. Helena might think she held the leash, but she didn’t understand what she was provoking.
Kaelen looked ready to show her.
“We both know that working for you wouldn’t be the right decision,” Kaelen said.
His mouth tasted like copper and dust. He wanted to scream. He wanted to run to his mother and cut the ties on her wrists. Instead, he forced himself to stand still, locking eyes with the woman who had turned his life into a nightmare.
He had never hated anyone like this. Not even the kidnappers who had forced him to reanimate the corpse in the warehouse. That had been fear. This was pure, distilled loathing.
“Wouldn’t it be?” Helena asked, tilting her head. “I think for your mother and Robbie, it would be the only decision.”
“They would hate me if I agreed,” Kaelen said. “I’m pretty sure they’d rather die than let that happen.”
He glanced at his mother. Her eyes were fierce above the tape. She nodded, a sharp, jerky movement. She was terrified, but she was still his mother. She wouldn’t want him to sell his soul.
“Well, that’s a pity.” Helena sighed, sounding bored. She waved a hand.
Kaelen sucked in a breath.
The air shimmered near Robbie. A woman appeared out of thin air—the darkness user. She was too close. She reached for Robbie, but a gunshot cracked through the quiet air. The woman flinched back, blurring as she vanished again.
The fight exploded.
Voren was moving before the echo of the shot faded, sprinting toward the hostages. Someone was firing at him from behind a mausoleum. Voren returned fire, smooth and practiced, but his shots were going wide. He wasn’t hitting his target.
The precog, Kaelen realized. He knows where Voren is aiming.
Kaelen couldn’t shoot. He wouldn’t touch a gun. But he wasn’t helpless. He reached into his pocket, his fingers closing around the handful of small animal bones he’d prepared—rat ribs, bird vertebrae.
He focused his mind, pulling on the cold, static hum of the necromantic energy. He threw his hand out, releasing the bones.
Go.
He willed them to fly, to strike like bullets.
They whizzed forward—and then dropped.
They fell to the grass with a pathetic clatter, not even halfway to Helena.
Kaelen froze. He frowned, grabbing another handful. He could feel the power. It was there, vibrating in his skull, eager to be used. He threw the second batch.
Same result. The bones flew for a few feet, then lost momentum and scattered on the dirt like helpless debris.
Kaelen looked around frantically. Near a large oak tree, a young man was leaning against a headstone, staring right at him. The man saw Kaelen looking and grinned. He raised a hand and gave a mocking little wave.
“That guy is blocking my ability,” Kaelen shouted.
Voren didn’t pause his shooting. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know! It works, but the bones just stop. He’s staring at me!”
“Is that possible?” Voren yelled, ducking as a bullet chipped the stone next to his head. “That someone can block necromancy?”
“Anything is possible!”
Voren swore. They had lost their surprise advantage.
Kaelen reached into his pocket again, desperate. He looked back at the man by the tree. The guy was still grinning, waiting for Kaelen to try again so he could swat the magic down like a fly.
Kaelen grinned back.
Behind the man, a shadow moved. Silas stepped out from behind the tree, raising the butt of his gun. He brought it down hard on the back of the man’s skull.
The man’s eyes went wide for a split second before they rolled back. He crumpled to the ground.
That’ll teach you to tunnel vision, Kaelen thought viciously.
He grabbed the bones again. He threw them. This time, the connection held. The bones shrieked through the air, white blurs of calcified violence. Helena ducked, cursing as a rib bone grazed her cheek. She looked annoyed.
It wasn’t fear, but it was a start.
The cemetery was chaos. Russell was engaged in a hand-to-hand skirmish with the darkness woman, who kept flickering in and out of visibility. He was bleeding from a cut on his arm, but he was holding his own. Silas was crouching by Robbie, sawing at the zip ties with a knife. Robbie looked ready to murder someone with his bare hands. Elara was nowhere to be seen, but the suppressing fire pinning down the third team member had to be her work.
Kaelen’s heart hammered against his ribs. He looked for something else to use. The ground was full of bodies, but he couldn’t dig them up fast enough. He was limited to what he carried.
He felt a surge of hope. They were doing it. They were actually holding their own.
Then he saw Helena pull a gun.
She wasn’t looking at Kaelen. She was looking at Voren, who was exposed, moving between cover to get a better angle on the precog.
Kaelen opened his mouth to scream a warning, but the sound didn’t come out fast enough.
Helena fired.
It happened in slow motion. The flash of the muzzle. The jerk of Voren’s body.
Voren spun around, clutching his shoulder. A spray of red misted the air. He stumbled, his feet tangling in the grass, and went down hard.
“Voren!” Kaelen screamed.
Voren was bleeding. He was on the ground, and he was bleeding.
It wasn’t the first time Voren had been shot, but fuck, it hurt.
The impact felt like being hit with a sledgehammer. His vision blurred, white spots dancing across the gray headstones. He hit the ground, the air leaving his lungs in a grunt. His shoulder was on fire—a hot, searing agony that radiated down his arm and up his neck.
He tasted copper. He’d bitten his tongue.
He heard Kaelen scream his name. It was a raw, terrified sound that cut through the haze of pain. Voren tried to push himself up. He needed to tell Kaelen he was okay. It was just a shoulder hit. He wasn’t dying. He’d survived worse.
The world tilted. He scrambled for purchase on a headstone—some poor bastard from 1847—and turned his head.
Helena was walking toward them. Her boots crunched on the gravel path, calm and deliberate. Her gun was still raised.
But she wasn’t aiming at Voren anymore. She was aiming at Kaelen.
Voren’s heart slammed into his throat.
“No,” he rasped.
He wouldn’t have thought she’d kill Kaelen. She needed him. She needed the asset. But her face was twisted in a snarl of frustration. Maybe she’d decided that wounding him was the only way to get compliance. Or maybe she was just pissed off that Kaelen had tried to kill her with rat bones.
She squeezed the trigger.
Voren couldn’t move fast enough. He was on the ground, useless, watching the bullet leave the barrel.
A white streak blurred through the air.
It moved faster than Voren could track, launching itself from Kaelen’s side directly into the path of the bullet.
Crack.
The sound was sickening—like dry wood snapping under a heavy boot.
The white shape exploded mid-air. Bone fragments showered the grass like hail.
Voren blinked, his brain trying to catch up.
Marrow.
The skeleton pet had jumped. It had intercepted the bullet meant for Kaelen. Now, it was nothing but a pile of shattered, inert calcification on the dirt.
Kaelen screamed.
It wasn’t a word. It was a sound of pure, animal grief that echoed off the mausoleums. A flock of crows erupted from the trees, cawing in alarm.
Kaelen fell to his knees. He ignored Helena. He ignored the battle raging around them. He scrambled toward the pile of bone shards, his hands hovering, shaking.
Voren forced himself to move. The pain in his shoulder screamed, but the fear for Kaelen was louder. Kaelen was distracted. He was wide open.
Voren dragged himself up, using the headstone as a crutch. He raised his gun with his good hand. His aim wavered, but he pointed it at Helena.
“What is that?” Helena asked. She stopped, lowering her weapon slightly. She looked at the pile of bones, then at Kaelen. Her expression was a mix of curiosity and twisted amusement. “What kind of monster did you create? A loyal pile of calcium?”
Kaelen looked up.
His eyes were wet, but they didn’t look like Kaelen’s eyes anymore. They looked hollow.
“You killed him,” Kaelen whispered.
“It’s a bunch of bones, Kaelen,” Helena scoffed. “I’m pretty sure he was already dead.”
“You killed him.”
Kaelen’s voice rose, cracking. It wasn’t just anger. It was something older, something deeper. The air in the cemetery suddenly felt heavy, charged with static. The temperature dropped.
Voren felt the hair on his arms stand up. He fired at Helena.
She ducked behind a massive marble angel, laughing. “You missed, Voren! You’re losing your touch.”
She popped back out, raising her gun again.
“You killed Marrow,” Kaelen repeated.
He slammed his palms flat against the earth.
The ground shook.
At first, Voren thought he was passing out. But then he saw the headstones vibrate. The gravel on the path began to jump.
It started as a low tremor, like a subway train passing beneath their feet. Then it grew. The rumble deepened, becoming a roar that vibrated in Voren’s teeth.
The earth beneath the oldest section of the cemetery began to crack. Fissures spiderwebbed through the manicured grass.
Voren heard it then. A sound from below. A dry, rustling sound. Like a thousand dead leaves scraping together. Or a thousand dry bones shifting in the dark.
“Jesus Christ,” Helena whispered.
She lowered her gun. For the first time since Voren had known her, she looked genuinely afraid.
She wasn’t the only one.
Voren pushed himself fully upright, ignoring the blood soaking his shirt. He had to get to Kaelen. Because whatever Kaelen was doing, it wasn’t just necromancy. It was an awakening. And Voren wasn’t sure anyone—friend or foe—was safe from it.