The Vampire Executioner (A necromancer romance novel)

Chapter 4: Raising the dead

Esmeralda

While I helped Dana with boring paperwork and sorting appointments, I tried not to worry, but I could feel the cold creeping fear at the thought of Lucan sensing I wasn’t quite human.

I was scared and starting to wonder what if he was the terrifying vampire hunter only known as the executioner or death, surely the chances of us crossing paths was slim to none, but now, and with those strange tattoos, I wasn’t so sure.

When it was nearing half eight in the evening, I was alone in the reception office with not much left to do.

Dana had already gone home and said goodbye, so it was just me and Lucan left. I hadn’t been too worried as he’d stayed in his office the whole time, but as the time was nearing I was becoming more afraid, what if he asked more questions, or what if he figured out what I was while we were on our way to the cemetery?

“You ready?” His deep voice made me jump out of my skin, I’d been so lost in my thoughts I hadn’t heard him come out of his office.

I nodded meekly and waited as he locked the office, put on his black trench coat, and then locked the building door.

We walked around to the back of the building and I followed him to a silver car. Even with two hundred years on me, I still knew nothing about cars, so I didn’t know what make it was, I had never paid much attention.

My fear grew when he climbed into the driver’s seat and waited for me to get into the passenger seat.

A car made us very close together and very alone, if he found out what I was in the car he could easily kill me and dispose of me with no one knowing.

I forced myself to get in and strapped my seat belt on, I didn’t need a seat belt, but no way in hell was I letting him become even more suspicious of me.

Thankfully, the drive was only about fifteen minutes long and neither of us talked on the way there.

We still had half an hour before the client would arrive, and I watched as he pulled out a big duffel bag from the boot of the car and carried it into the cemetery.

I watched him stop for a moment and close his eyes, and after a minute he began walking again.

I figured he had somehow been using his senses to pick up on where the right grave was, I had no idea how, but clearly he had done something along those lines because he now walked with purpose and five minutes later we were at a grave with the name John Brooke on it.

It was winter and dark by now, and I rubbed my arms from the chill of the cold night air.

I stupidly hadn’t brought a coat or anything, vampires didn’t feel the cold, but I did because my food of choice was very different from the typical vampire, we could also go out in daylight but not for very long, maybe three hours tops before sunburn crept in and became more severe the longer we ignored it.

Again, one of the reasons I wondered if I was even a vampire at all anymore was because just like being able to feel the cold, I also was able to walk in the daylight like any normal human, the clan didn’t know this as usually, they slept during the day and I also had my own home for more privacy.

A lot of the clan liked to live in the mansion with Lillian, our queen, but there were some who, like me, preferred a place of their own.

I watched quietly as Lucan unzipped his bag and pulled out some candles, he noticed me looking at the skull engraved candles and muttered, “Dana’s idea of a joke.”

He set them around the gravestone wide apart and then got out some chalk. He drew a pentagram and strange symbols on the inside of it on the grave stone and when he was done, he took out a rat, yes a big damn rat in a small little cage.

He saw me staring and said, “bringing the dead back to life requires a price, a life for a life.”

I knew that as I’d seen my last boss do the same thing, but her animals were bigger, she said the bigger the animal the better looking and more alive the zombie would be.

I wondered how terrible Lucans zombie was going to look seeing as he was using such a tiny little creature, but I was too nervous and shy to ask for more details.

He took out the rat which I couldn’t help but feel sorry for, and I watched as he held it over the gravestone and began chanting in some language I had never heard before in my two hundred years.

My face must have looked shocked or bewildered or something because he stopped mid-chant and said, “it’s the language of the dead.” He didn’t go into detail and carried on with the ritual.

I didn’t know there was such a language, I had never heard my last boss use it, well, actually I had, but it hadn’t felt powerful in any way like it did right now.

The moment I thought that my fear ramped up, I shouldn’t have felt anything, necromancers had no control over vampires or at least not any I had ever come across before.

Even Lillian, our queen had told us we had nothing to fear from necromancers as during her almost three thousand years she had never met one that could control or use us in any way.

The chills that raced across my body felt very real right now. As he chanted, the wind itself seemed to pick up, gusts of wind blowing my hair around my face, I looked at Lucan and saw that at some point he had removed his coat revealing his tattooed arms.

I took more notice and saw that very lightly underneath those tattoos and arms there were icy blue looking veins glowing and turning brighter the more he chanted.

He cut the throat of the rat and let the blood run down onto the gravestone, and then he cut the palm of his hand and let his own blood trickle down onto the gravestone as well.

The power that radiated around us was immense, and I could barely breathe, which was crazy because like I had mentioned, vampires didn’t actually need to breathe.

I fell to my knees and fought the urge to want to go to him, to please him, to fulfill any commands he may have for me. The ground beneath us began to shake and tremble, the dirt shifted and rumbled, and finally the zombie rose from beneath the ground and slowly climbed to its feet.

I was gasping for air from the power, but also from the absolute pure terror I had felt when that power had wrapped itself around me like a cool blanket, caressing and seducing me.

I had wanted nothing more in the world, then to go to him and serve him like some slave, and it was terrifying, I had never felt so lost to myself, so powerless, I had lost all freewill in that short time, and he hadn’t even been focusing on me.

I couldn’t imagine how much more awful that would have been if he had directed all that power at me.

He saw me on my knees and came over to me, his voice was cold and Neutral when he asked, “are you alright?”

Oh god, I absolutely could not in any way let him grow even more suspicious of me than he already was.

I waved my hand at him and laughed weakly, “yes, I’m fine, sorry, I get dizzy spells from time to time, I don’t drink enough, and I’m very low on iron if what my doctor says is true.”

He frowned slightly at that, but let it go and turned to look at his zombie.

I looked too and just stared and stared. This zombie didn’t look like a zombie at all, he looked like he was still well and truly alive, there was no sign of decomposition or stiffness or anything, and he’s brain was clearly working perfectly as he began demanding to know where his wife was and how dare she raise him from the grave.

As soon as he demanded to know where his wife was he looked behind us both, I followed to where he was looking and saw who clearly must have been his wife heading towards us in the distance.

He went to storm past and towards his wife, and Lucan commanded, “stop!”

John stopped stone-cold reminding me that he was still very much a zombie, for a moment, I had almost forgotten.

In that cold empty voice of his, Lucan spoke to John and explained, “I’m sorry Mr Brooke, but you cannot go wondering about of your own accord, you need to wait for your wife to come to you.”

“Why?” John spat angrily.

I noticed when talking to the zombie that Lucan seemed to be looking almost over the zombie’s shoulder.

“Are we not supposed to make eye contact?” I asked stupidly and then slapped my hand over my mouth for speaking out loud and also for interrupting.

Lucan looked at me and so did the zombie.

“It’s too long to explain, but the animation of a zombie isn’t just their lifeless empty vessel, it’s their soul, their ghost or whatever you want to call it. I see spirits and I can see his spirit. It’s kind of like using his own body as a puppet, he can’t possess it, but my necromancy can make it so that he can interact and touch the body and use it to mimic how he moves and talks.”

I had to ask. “So why can’t he move of his own accord if he’s still the same person he was when alive?”

“Because although he can use the body to manipulate it how he wants, the body, the brain I guess, still holds residue energy and memories and if the wrong emotion or memory seeps through, like a violent one, then sometimes the body will act out that memory, the more decomposed the zombie the more likely of it happening.”

He turned to John and said, “even though you aren’t decomposed it doesn’t mean it’s impossible to still happen, and I don’t take chances Mr Brooke, I hope you understand this?”

Mr Brooke thought it over for a moment and nodded. This was crazy, I had never heard anything like this before and wondered why my last boss had never mentioned being able to see the afterlife, she loved to chat for hours and gossip, so I was pretty surprised she hadn’t mentioned being able to do this.

And the more I thought about it, the more I was starting to believe that perhaps necromancers couldn’t speak with the afterlife, that only Lucan could for some reason.