Malevolent (The Puzzle Box Series Book 1) (14 page)

I followed his gaze. "What, you buried him right there?" Horrifying excerpts from vampire novels flashed through my memory ... the only way to kill a vampire was to dismember him, burn the parts, and scatter the ashes over running water. But Robert wasn't a regular vampire, so maybe dismemberment and burial would do the job.

My anger flagged, overtaken by a rising tide of horror. Robert had tried to kill me, then Mal tore Robert apart, and killed the orchard to revive me. And here he stood, a strange, thin, pathetic-looking man, awash in the power to control life and death.

I backed away from him.

He raised a hand to stop me. "Libby, you don't understand ..."

"Stay back." I slid down the embankment toward my golf cart, which thankfully had remained unharmed amid the chaos. It made me feel a tiny bit safer. He
had
made me well--despite his questionable methods. "Thanks for the healing." I paused beside the cart, one hand on the seat.

Mal remained atop the embankment, silhouetted against the sky, hands buried in his pockets. His eyes were half-closed and shadows had appeared beneath them, as if he were exhausted, or grieved. He nodded to me.

I jumped in the cart and sped for home. But deep inside, there was a check in my spirit ... I had handled this badly.

May God and all his saints forgive me for what I've done.

I picked my way along the canal. More dead fish floated down the current. Dead insects littered the ground like leaves. A dead bird lay with its wings outstretched.

I did this. Worse, I had healed her in the only way death power could.

She must never know that I made her into a thrall. Only for a moment, true, but long enough for the death motes to take hold and put her completely under my power. Then I was able to command her injured bones and cells to repair themselves with the incoming life magic.

Such an action is the nuclear option. Yes, it healed her, but it slaughtered every living thing around us. Exactly what I had tried not to do.

I walked down into the orchard. Dead bees carpeted the ground. I scooped some up in my hands. "I'm so sorry."

No answer. Silence reigned where once there had been noise and life.

I had to use my power to combat Robert, which killed more land than healing Libby. He was too strong. Someone had increased his death magic draw, and it supercharged him. Someone like the Necromancer.

Robert's pieces lay buried in the earth, but even that would only delay him a while. He would return, and the battle would escalate ... but I had bought us time. A few days, maybe.

The look on Libby's face haunted me. The horror in her voice. Perhaps I should follow Robert's advice--quietly drive back to Pennsylvania, and bury myself in obscurity with whatever bees I had left.

Alarm struck me like a bullet in the heart. Had I slain my bees? I sprinted through the dead orchard to the bee station. Bees still filled the air, and I stopped to catch my breath and listen to their hum.

The melody was off-key.

I rushed to my hives and knelt among them. "Queens and workers, are you well?"

Some hives replied, "All is well, Mal!" But three said, "We suffer."

I opened each suffering hive. The bees lapped their stored honey as if I had smoked them, and the queen rested on the comb without moving.

"What is wrong?" I whispered.

"The death came while we were working," they sang in subdued tones. "Many fell. The rest of us are unwell. We feed upon our stored light."

"Continue feeding," I murmured. "Rest. It should be enough."

I closed the hives and sat with my back against the last one. I had nearly killed my only friends, and even mote honey might not be strong enough to save them.

But I had saved Libby.

I replayed the incident over and over in my mind, analyzing every nuance. What could I have changed? How could I have acted differently?

Robert had upset everything by coming after us while supercharged on death. I could not defeat him without empowering myself, and that meant drawing on every life mote in the vicinity.

Blast my condition. Blast Robert.

Blast my father.

I lifted my head and clenched my fists. Through the years, he had often attempted to make me use my death powers--today had been his victory. I had behaved like a lich.

The bees had warned me that he was in Arvin, and I had not acted. And now I had been forced to use my power to benefit one woman at the expense of her family's land.

I could curse my father all I wanted, but it changed nothing. I leaned my elbows on my knees and groaned. It was not enough that he was the Arch Lich and the Necromancer. He was my father, and could cripple me emotionally without a drop of magic.

What if I confronted him and he mentioned Mother? It made me want to curl into the fetal position and die.

I laid my head on my knees. Libby mattered more than my own pain. If I departed, the Necromancer would enthrall her and every other person infected by Robert. I was the only other lich on the North American continent.

Only I could stop my father.

I sat up straight and drew a deep breath. Even though I'd been running a long time, tonight it ended.

Tonight I would face He Whom I Feared.

I drove home, closed my bedroom door and crashed on the bed.

My mind churned like a cement mixer. Around and around--the healing ritual, Robert's appearance and attack, Mal's retaliation.

Robert was a vampire. Okay, whatever, I could handle a vampire. I rolled over and looked at my bookcase. Nearly every book had a black and red cover. I knew the tropes. While Robert disgusted me, he didn't surprise me. He did what vamps did--fed on other living things and caused problems.

But I had zero books about liches. What were they capable of? What should I expect? I had no idea. Would Mal stalk me the way Robert had done? Or could he do nefarious things from a distance?

Malevolent.

I should have never tried to befriend him. And yet--and yet he'd saved my life in the only way he could.

My stomach snarled. I needed food--pronto.

Oh, yeah. I was well.

I jumped up, opened my door and went downstairs. Mom wasn't around, so I raided the fridge and made myself a sandwich out of every variety of lunch meat we owned. The more I ate, the better I felt.

My heart grew heavier as my strength returned. I cleaned up my dishes and tried to reason things out. Mal had healed me--but he'd killed a whole acre. Did that make him evil or good? He'd killed Robert, and murder was evil. But Robert was a vampire, and killing vampires was good. Right?

I realized I was staring out the window while digging my fingers through my hair. My hand slipped to the back of my neck. The bones had crunched so loudly that it still echoed in my skull.

You were dying. It was the only way I could save you.

My heart began to bleed. I needed to talk to somebody. I could give Mom the basic scenario without telling her the whole lich problem--or the issue of a chunk of orchard dying in one afternoon. Never mind that I'd cost Dad upwards of ten grand--it took years to re-grow an orchard, and that was years of lost revenue.

It made me want to barf. Fortunately my starving body clung to the food in my stomach, and refused to share a crumb with the outside world. Fine with me--I was done being sick.

Where was Mom, anyway? I circled through the house, but it was quiet and empty.

I examined the back yard, then walked out toward the farm buildings. My body exulted in the exercise. A little weakness remained, but that was probably from living on toast for six months. My lungs absorbed oxygen and life beat through me.

I'd wanted my health for so long and now it was as bitter as lemon peel in my teeth. Although from here the orchard was still a wall of snowy white blossoms, I knew what lay behind them--a patch of death.

I found Mom and Dad standing by the orchard gate. Dad's head was down and forward, as if they were having a serious discussion. Mom's eyebrows formed a worried line. Oh no--had they already found it?

As I walked up, Dad was saying, "...don't know what caused it. I called the EPA, and they said to quarantine the area until their technicians get here tomorrow."

Crap, they'd already noticed. "Uh, what's wrong?"

Dad looked at me. Weariness lined his face, but his eyes glittered in anger. "A whole acre of the orchard is dead. I think a crop duster must have dumped cotton defoliant on it."

They'd already found the damage. The bleeding inside me grew worse. At least I didn't have to fake my anguish. "What--what will we do?"

Dad shrugged. "I have to talk to our insurance and find out if we're covered. It depends on the EPA's findings."

"Don't go out there, Libby," said Mom. "That defoliant is extremely toxic."

I nodded. Then I stared at them in mute silence. All the heroines in my vampire books reached this point, and I hated it every time--when she knew something important, and couldn't tell her parents because they wouldn't understand.

Now I was in the same situation, and I hated it even worse, because I understood the irony.

I walked back to the house. The emotional bleeding inside me had begun to overflow, and tears blurred my vision. I wiped them away and clenched my teeth. I was well--I had that weapon on my side.

The question was, what to do now? Ask Mal to leave? But that left me alone with Robert and the skull-faced Necromancer. I'd meddled in their business, and there was no way they'd leave me alone.

I'd just have to stay out of the orchard so no more acreage took damage. Heck, maybe I should move away and attend college somewhere on the east coast.

But in the meantime, I was stuck here until I graduated high school. And short-term, there was a family of monsters who knew where I lived. I couldn't face the thought of them destroying more of our farm. My family would go bankrupt.

The thought weighed on me, leaden and miserable. I circled the back yard fence and paused to lean against the air conditioning unit. I wiped my face on my shirt.
Get a grip, Libby. So you made friends with a creep. It's not the first time.

As I turned to walk inside, something gleamed from behind the unit's corner. I reached behind it and grabbed the object.

Mal's puzzle box.

I held it in both hands, and stared at the swirled silver inlay. His phylactery. If I opened this box, Mal would collapse and die.

Was it murder when the victim was already dead? The pendulum in my head resumed its swing. Was Mal good ... or evil?

He may be a treasure in an earthen vessel, but this vessel killed people. To postpone any decision, I took the puzzle box inside and hid it under my bed. I had Mal's life in my hands, and I couldn't decide if he should live or die.

At midnight, at the time of deepest darkness, I sought my father.

It's simple to find the Necromancer. Just as one can sense the sun's position with eyes closed, so can one detect the deepest shade.

At midnight, I closed my eyes and felt for the strongest concentration of death magic.

He was in the orchard I had killed.

My power had drawn him. I stood among my sleeping beehives for a long time, one hand resting against the warm wood to feel the thrumming of the colony inside. Life. Joy. The opposite of the darkness that pressed against my senses. It was as if I had opened a black hole among the almond trees--a yawning abyss that devoured all life--and my father waited at the bottom.

I approached the void at a measured walk, neither fast nor slow. The clouds had cleared, the stars lit my path. Their life-giving motes streamed down in a silent cascade. My innate death magic drew them into me, and strength built in my muscles, but it did not balance the darkness. Only the magic-filled honey could do that, and if this kept up, I'd lose all my hives.

My slow-beating heart jolted. No. I couldn't lose them, not after the years of work I'd put in. Not after they had trusted me.

Libby had trusted me, too. I gave her the healing she desired, but the price was too high.

I stopped myself from thinking about her. That way lay paralyzing grief, and the sinking mire of depression. I had work to do tonight, and I needed all my faculties.

The stars dimmed as I entered the orchard. The Necromancer's aura amplified death and darkness, and if anything had survived my magic, his presence killed it.

I stopped and closed my eyes. The deepest darkness lay at the canal where I had performed my magic. A shovel scraped in the dirt. Naturally. That was a Necromancer's specialty--reanimating the dead.

Two fears battled inside me. First, what would he do to me, as a Necromancer, for killing his chief vampire? Second, as my father, what would he say about me killing my brother?

Once again, I was eight years old and dragging myself indoors to face my father who awaited me with a belt.

As I picked my way down the avenue of bare trees, his quick digging movement caught my eye. Down went the shovel, aided by a thrust of one foot. Then the shovel rose with a load of earth and flung it aside. His black duster and trousers blended with the night. His death motes were so concentrated that he blurred when I looked away.

My father: encrusted with evil as a whale carries barnacles. I clenched my fists to keep my hands from shaking.

As I drew near, he straightened and faced me, driving the shovel into the ground. He regarded me for a moment, his face invisible in the darkness. His pupils, however, glowed red. "Hello, Mal."

"Hello, Dad." My mouth was dry.

He gestured to our surroundings. "Is this your doing?"

I nodded.

He pointed at the pieces of Robert, some still half-buried, others in a pile. "And this?"

I nodded again.

His skull face split in a grin. "Excellent work!"

I stood there for a long moment, trying to grasp this. He was praising me? Then realization dawned. Of course. I had only done what he had intended. I crossed my arms across my chest and turned away, and pain trickled through my battered spirit.

When I said nothing, he resumed digging. "Your power is amazing, son. You've been holding out on me all these years."

Where was my eternal hate? The only thing inside me was cringing fear. "I never asked for this. I don't want these powers."

Dad laughed. "You've got them, so you might as well use them. Enough dabbling with bees. You slaughtered my top vampire and only drew power from an acre? When you become the Arch Lich, you'll be far stronger than me."

A wisp of hate curled through my chest. "I'll never be a Necromancer."

He unearthed an arm, shook the dirt off, and added it to Robert's pile. "Sure you will. You're the lich prince." He shot me a look, and his eyes glowed red in his skeletal face. "Without you, I can't raise your mother."

The guilt I'd avoided for so long crashed in like a tsunami. A knot formed in my throat. At the same time, rage followed it. "Let her go, Dad. She's dead."

"She's not dead!" he roared, and I jumped. "I am the Necromancer, and she will live!"

He stalked to the pile of body parts and began arranging them in the proper order. As he attached each limb to the trunk, he pressed a hand to the wound and fused them back together. "Just as your brother lives again. Just as you would, had he done this to you."

"Why did you send him after me?" I couldn't discuss Mother and keep any semblance of self-control--and that was with the puzzle box at a safe distance.

The Necromancer fused Robert's head onto his neck, and rose to survey his handiwork. "You've gotten soft, boy. You need a challenge to help you remember what you are."

He threw a handful of darkness into Robert's chest, and addressed him with power in his voice. "There. Get up."

Robert opened his eyes, and slowly sat up. He rubbed his neck and flexed his arms, wincing. "Thanks, Dad. Dammit, Mal, why'd you have to dismember me? That sucked!"

I didn't answer. I wasn't discussing Libby here.

Robert climbed to his feet and walked in a circle. "Dad, there's sand in my joints."

My father leaned on his shovel. "Tough coconuts. Drink some blood and fix it."

He fixed his red eyes on me. "Why did you do it, Mal? I expected a battle, not complete annihilation." His tone was conversational. We might have been discussing the plight of the Cubs, rather than the reassembly of one of his sons.

I jammed my hands in my pockets and turned my back, expressing my disgust without words.

"Oh, he's in love with my ex-girlfriend," Robert said in a singsong voice. "I snapped her neck and he lost his mind. Didn't you, Mal?"

My arms went rigid at my sides, and my fingers curled as if anticipating the weight of steel claws.

My father's hand closed on my shoulder, and he spun me to face him. He was so strong that my resisting feet dug furrows in the earth. His red eyes shone into mine. This close, I saw the light came from inside his pupils. I couldn't fathom its source.

"Malachi Seren, you know the motto." His rotten breath fanned my face. "Befriend many. Serve some. Trust few. Love none."

I glared my defiance.

He shoved me with such force that I crashed into the canal embankment. The breath whooshed from my lungs. He strode toward me as I struggled to rise. He grabbed my hair and jerked me to my feet, then snarled in my ear, "Have you forgotten what you are?"

A knife appeared in his hand--the serrated variety intended to create pain and suffering. He pressed the tip into my forearm, piercing the skin. The metal burned with chill, imbued with hungry death magic.

I grunted in pain and wrenched myself out of his grip. But the wound did not bleed--it had already healed itself.

In the distance, Robert guffawed.

"You see?" Dad growled. "You are a lich. Your purpose is to become a leader of the undead, once I have raised my army. You have no emotions, and you cannot--you will not--ever--feel love."

I smoldered. Fighting him meant robbing more life from the land, and I couldn't do it. Instead I said, "Dad. Love is a verb."

The Necromancer stared me down for a long moment. It was as if I had presented him a new, strange riddle, and he was attempting to solve it. "Who is this girl?"

Robert, ever impatient, broke the silence. "Her name was Libby Stockton, and she lived in that house over there. I fed on her for months."

"Yet she lives," said my father. "I saw her myself, today." He fixed his burning red stare upon me. "Robert said he broke her neck."

Robert and the Necromancer both drilled me with their eyes, waiting. I steeled myself. "I healed her."

"YOU WHAT?"

Dad's blast of death magic spawned a tornado which whirled me off my feet. It hurled me through the air in a chaotic maelstrom of frigid darkness, and tree branches tore at my body. When it ended, I lay in a tangle of uprooted trees a hundred yards from my horrible family.

As I climbed out of the wreck, the Necromancer strode toward me. I tried to run, but the magic had slowed my reflexes and made my head ring.

He grabbed my throat and lifted me off the ground.

"A lich heals no one," he snarled. "The full moon rises in seven days. At midnight on the seventh day, she will become a thrall."

"Mine," I choked.

"No, mine. You don't deserve a minion, especially not one you love."

He dashed me to the ground. My head bounced off a tree limb, and I lay stunned, with bright spots flaring before my eyes.

The stars reappeared overhead. I drew deep breaths as my body mended itself, and the chill left the air. The darkness lightened to mere night.

The Necromancer had departed, and Robert with him.

I groaned and rolled on my side. If Libby was my thrall, I could free her as soon as the Necromancer turned his back. But he would never free her. Her soul would be locked in his diamond bottle with the other thrall souls, and she would mindlessly do his bidding until her body weakened and died.

I snarled and beat a fist against the ground. Never! I'd destroy his phylactery first, and scatter his fragments across all four oceans.

But I needed my bees. They had to survive this altercation.

I ran to the bee station. My tattered body jabbed and burned, half-healed. The life magic I'd drawn from the land lingered inside me, rebuilding my lacerated flesh.

The bees slept inside their hives, entire cities of small people nestled together. I opened my trunk and rummaged through it. I needed to place protections--one at midnight and one at noon. But the protection from the four elements--the strongest one--took a week to perform, and I hadn't time. Robert might return at any time, and so could Dad. Midnight to noon would have to suffice.

I laid copper hoops around each hive and painted each with a dab of tar. Then I added a pinch of bone dust and powdered moth wings. A pulse of death magic activated each ring, and the spell waited for its daytime counterpart. I'd perform it at noon.

The stars wheeled overhead. I sat beside my hives, elbows resting on my knees. Dad's voice echoed through my mind.

Your purpose is to become a leader of the undead ... You are a lich ... You cannot feel love.

If I had wanted to become a lich, perhaps I would have agreed. But I was an accident. Robert had gone with Dad late at night on one of the rituals, and returned as a vampire.

Whereas I had walked in on Dad as he was casting an experimental death spell. It sliced the soul from my body and spirit, and only Dad's quick action had captured it, and transformed the puzzle box into a phylactery.

Sometimes I wished he had let me die.

Now I was a deathless monster who drank life from the surrounding world. But was I truly as disgusting as my father intended? I ran a hand along the nearest beehive. Perhaps that was the difference between my father and me. While he had given himself up to the horrors of undeath, I had fought to retain my humanity. I sought living companions, even if they were only insects.

My father sought slaves.

Perhaps I had kept myself too alive. My fickle heart had lost itself to a woman.

Who now hated and feared me.

That thought disturbed me more than anything my father or Robert had said. They acted according to their natures, and evil was predictable. But Libby had witnessed my true power, and rejected me.

To my sorrow, I had discovered that love was not confined to the realm of emotions. Love was an act of will--a verb--and my will was unaffected by my missing soul.

I drew a deep breath and lifted my face to the stars. Tomorrow I would talk to her.

Even if she hated me, she must be warned.