I ram both palms against the stone cover of the crypt and shove.
My boots slip on the muddy ground, and I nearly fall. I take a second to find my footing, renew my grip, and brace myself.
Then I roar, my whole body straining with effort, and the stone grinds grudgingly across the mouth of the crypt, inch by inch, until it tips and slides to the ground with a dull boom. Rain shatters into the tomb.
There she is. There she fucking is. Theyleft herhere—they left her in the dark, in this grave.
Hoarse sobs crack from my lungs as I reach in and drag her out. She’s already soaked to the skin, her white dress a transparent film over her body. She’s thinner than the last time I saw her—frail andbrittle in my arms. Her head lolls back on her delicate neck, exposing the ugly wound across her throat. She’s bloodlessly white, her eyes closed, her lungs still, and her heart silent.
“Damn it, Cathy,” I whisper. I gather her into my lap, sink my fingers into her wet, dark hair, and pull her head against my shoulder.
I need to resurrect her here. That’s one of the rules—the corpse must be kept as close to the location of death as possible. Otherwise, it’s almost impossible to find the soul.
Blinking through the rain, I scan our gloomy surroundings. I don’t see anyone else watching, but that’s not to say someone won’t show up, especially if the gunshots were overheard and reported. I’ll be in a sort of trance during the resurrection. I won’t be able to respond to any danger around us, and I won’t know how much damage I’m doing to myself until the job is done.
I’m weak. Drained low. I probably won’t survive this. Thing is, I don’t much care, as long as Cathy lives.
There’s no way around it—I gotta do this now.
I lay Cathy down in the grass and adjust her limbs so she looks like she’s resting. Lifting my right wrist, I bite down until blood oozes from the torn skin. With my fingertips I paint the blood over the tattoo on the left side of my abdomen. Then, with a silent apology, I pull up the filmy skirt of her dress and paint more of my blood over the tattoo on her hip.
The rain is still coming down, but the blood soaks into the tattoos faster than the drops can wash it away. Cathy’s tattoo lights up, a red glow seeping through every inked line. Mine comes to life too, red and raging.
Kneeling beside her, I slam one palm over my tattoo and the other over hers. I scan the church grounds one more time, peeringthrough gray rain at the gravestones, the brick pillars, the trees. There’s no sign of anyone.
Good enough. Let’s do this.
Shoulders bent, head bowed, blood still running warm from my wrist, I press harder against both our tattoos, and I close my eyes.
“Mors aperit ianuam.”
My mind slips into the Vague, punching through the veil between life and death, pressing deeper. The dark shimmers here—a sort of black iridescence, a lightless rainbow. Like being inside a prism of smoked glass or the most twisted mirror maze, where you can actually walk upside down or phasethroughthe mirrors. That’s the best I’ve ever been able to describe it. A necromancer like me can walk, or imagine that he’s walking, across the slanted panes of glass, tilting with the angles of the maze.
I visualize the line that connects me to Cathy, and it appears in my hand. Ahead of me, it seems to bend jaggedly upward, then disappear into a glassy surface.
It hasn’t been long. Couple hours. She can’t have gone far.
“Cathy!” I shout into the Vague. My voice has some traveling power here, but it’s a matter of luck whether it bounces off the correct surfaces and heads in the right direction.
My shout comes back to me in a mocking whisper right by my shoulder.“Cathy.”
As I climb toward the spot where the line bends, I see something shift in one of the iridescent panes to my right. It’s quick, but I catch a glimpse. Faceless, slick as oil, with spindly legs and arms. A sluagh, a creature that preys on the souls of the dead—or the living.
Shit, I’ve barely stepped into the Vague and there’s already a sluagh on my tail.
I climb, planting my bare feet carefully on the tilted glass, following the line. “Cathy!”
“I can be Cathy,” echoes the faceless figure behind me.“I can be Cathy, Cathy, Cathy.”
It repeats her name over and over, a dirge from its mouthless, oval head.
Ignoring it, I reach forward, sliding my palm across cold glass until it gives and I can press through. Instantly I flip to the other side, emerging like a monster through a mirror.
But the sluagh is already there, crouched in front of me, head cocked.“Cathy. I can be Cathy.”
“You’re not her,” I growl. I run past it, along a helix-shaped corridor where the floor eventually becomes the left wall and the left wall turns into the ceiling. Parts of the corridor are transparent; others are glossy black. I bruise myself against them more than once, but I keep going because I can feel heat traveling along the line now. I’m getting closer to her, to Cathy’s live, fresh soul.
“Warmer,” hisses the sluagh.“Warmer, warmer.”It somersaults in front of me and makes a grab for my face, but I swat it away and keep going. These things only have power if you give it to them. The more annoyed with it I get, the more solid it becomes—and if I start hitting it, the sluagh will return the aggression with interest.
