Page 32 of Cold Sacrifice

“Oh,” I whispered. “Axton was creating things he believed he could control, just as he always did.”

“He found a way to turn necromancers,” Zach said. “He turned them, maybe sent them into the world to turn each other and then come back to him.”

“Until he discovered he couldn’t control them,” I said, “and that they could still control him.”

Remy grunted. “And then he killed them.”

“A purge,” I murmured. “Just like she said.”

Zach stared down at his clasped hands. Honestly, he was getting much better at talking about Axton. “Maybe that’s why there aren’t many necromancers in the world.”

“The vampires destroyed the necromancers,” Remy said. “I count that as a win.” But he shifted uncomfortably in his seat, cleared his throat, and didn’t look at anyone.

“Axton probably believed that if the necromancers were turned, they’d obey their master just as regular vampires do,” I said. “Maybe he believed he could use the ones he turned to control other covens and rival vampire masters.”

“Nothing he ever did was logical,” Zach told me. “He was out of his mind. You saw the things he did to his own brother.”

I nodded. “He didn’t want to kill Bastien, but he wanted him to suffer the whole time he was alive.”

“Magic, too,” Lucy said. “He’d have put magic inside them, would he?”

“Yeah,” I said. “He’d have mixed up a big vat of that shit, and he’d have pushed it inside them. He and his seer, Kaloni.”

Zach shivered. Just barely, but I saw it. “And that’s how this necromancer managed to survive in the ground where he put her. Because she’s a vampire, and she’s full of dark magic.”

I leaned forward. “She even told me she absorbed the others’ magic as she lay there with them, year after endless year.” She hadn’t said that last part, but I imagined it was true. Her time in the ground, changing into something else, plotting the death of the vampires, sucking in magic like food…that would have seemed like eternity.

“She can walk under the sun if she’s killing vampires during the day,” Remy said.

“Unless she’s unable to come into the sun, but doesn’t have to sleep, either,” I said. “She can go into the ground of Alexandria and be close enough to the vampires to take control of them.”

“How could she have survived without food?” Lucy asked. “Or without blood, if she truly was a vampire?”

I stood up abruptly, too tired to continue guessing. And that was all we were doing. Guessing.

But it sure felt right.

“I’m going to sleep,” I told them. I hurried to my bed without another word, exhaustion overtaking me.

That night, when Bastien awakened, I would make sure he told me everything.

If, of course, the necromancer didn’t kill him in his sleep.

Chapter Eleven

I woke up at noon, ate lunch, and went out into my woods to explore. My wolf needed some time to run, and I needed to look for a grave. The necromancer had apparently been powerful enough, after absorbing every bit of magic that had seeped from the dead, to leave the grave. But the others were still there.

Still waiting.

I wished I’d asked the necromancer her name. I wished I’d asked her how she could stay awake when it was daylight, if she were indeed a vampire. Did she need to eat now that she was out of her grave?

I knew old vampires could be silvered and buried for a very long time, then dug up, fed some blood, and brought back to “life.” But no one had dug her up. No one had fed her. Everything she’d done, she’d done on her own. And I didn’t want to end such strength, such determination. I certainly understood her rage and her need for revenge. She’d even told me about those who’d been killed and buried with her, hoping I’d release their spirits.

Once upon a time, I’d never seen or heard of a vampire ghost. But now, they seemed to be everywhere, as though when I’d encountered the vampire ghost who’d attached himself to the little girl, my eyes had been opened.

I ran through my woods, letting my wolf play, but also on high alert for any hint of a very old grave. The only one I found was Gavin Voss’s, which had been disturbed when the council’s people had come to get his body.

An hour into my run, I saw a ghost, but it wasn’t one of the buried spirits. He was a long, gangly thing sitting perched upon a fallen, half-rotten tree, his thin arms wrapped around his knobby knees, his cottony black hair floating in a nonexistent breeze.