Malevolent (The Puzzle Box Series Book 1) (18 page)

Tuesday morning dawned bright and sunny. The warm air was scented with a million almond blossoms. I dressed in a frenzy of excitement, and ran outside with Suki limping behind me.

The energy of spring surged through my veins. I gulped the air and laughed. I was well! After six months of misery, I was well! And I was going to the beach! I tousled Suki's ears and ruffled her coat. She pranced on three legs and barked, catching my mood.

I ran to the bee station, but Mal wasn't there. "He is asleep in his car house," the bees told me.

"Tell him goodbye for me!" I blew a kiss to the hives and dashed back to the house. I'd see him tomorrow, anyway. Tomorrow the Necromancer's ritual would be over, I'd be well, and Mal and I could continue our intriguing friendship.

I ran back to my room and examined my overnight bag once more--and a thought occurred to me. I pulled Mal's puzzle box out from under my bed. I couldn't leave it here, unprotected. I tucked it into my bag and hid it under a folded shirt. There. Safe.

Tiffany arrived at eight. I hugged Mom and Dad goodbye, tossed my bag in the trunk, and we took off for the coast, singing along with Boston at the top of our lungs.

Santa Barbara was a three hour drive over the ridge, with half an hour for lunch. We stopped at a McDonalds when we reached Castaic in the mountains. The air was clean and pure up there, and the sky was so blue. The sky was kind of grayish down in the valley.

I dug into my purse. "Hey Tiff, I thought you should have this." I pulled out the seashell necklace Mal had given me.

Tiffany took the shell and rolled it in her palm. "Beautiful gold color. It's a cowrie, right?"

"Right. If you point the mouth at a vampire, it works like a crucifix."

We laughed. She thought I was kidding, but she put it on and stroked it. "Thanks, Libby. Appropriate gift for a beach trip. I'll get you one to match at the beach."

As we neared the coast, the road narrowed to two lanes and wound through the hills. In many places there was a cliff wall on one side and a drop off on the other. Tiffany drove at a nervous thirty miles an hour.

I looked over the cliff into the dark green oak trees below. If other drivers had plunged to their deaths, there was no sign of it.

Tiffany glanced in the rear view mirror, squinted, and muttered, "What in the world?"

A human figure ran past us on the road. He ran like an Olympic sprinter, arms and legs pumping, blurred by speed.

I glanced at the speedometer. Thirty miles an hour.

"That's not possible!" Tiffany gasped, also checking our speed. "Humans can't run that fast!"

The figure disappeared around a bend ahead of us. I dug my fingers into the seat's upholstery. Only three people in my social circle could move like that. But Mal wouldn't chase us, and it wasn't the Necromancer's style.

"I think that was Robert."

Tiffany shot me a sideways glance. "When did Robert learn to outrun cars?"

I threw caution to the wind. "He's a vampire. He bit you, and that's why there's black motes in your blood."

Her lips formed the 'wh' sound, but before she could speak, a heavy object crashed into the car's roof.

We screamed. The car swerved toward the drop off. Tiffany fought the wheel, wailing. I screamed, clawing for handholds, and bracing my feet on the dash.

She wrenched us back onto the road. But before she straightened us out, three metal knives stabbed through the roof overhead, barely missing my face. The knives slid backward with a horrible tearing of metal, admitting daylight.

Mal's claws were shorter--these must be Robert's. I gaped at them. This was yet another side of Robert I'd never seen--along with the maniac side that had broken my neck. And I had
dated
him for
six months
.

Tiffany, however, reacted like the classic slasher film victim--she leaned against the steering wheel and screamed as if the blades were tearing off her limbs.

Meanwhile, the car headed for the cliff wall. It swept toward us like a zoom-shot in a movie, all jagged rock and tiny flowering plants--

The impact deafened me. The windshield cracked, I cracked my forehead against one knee, and the seatbelt slashed my torso. The car died.

Tiffany leaned back in her seat with a groan, and cradled her left arm. We sat in panting silence a few seconds. I rubbed my forehead, where a goose egg was already rising, then unbuckled, and moved my arms and legs. No major pain. "Are you okay?"

Her voice was a tiny sob. "My arm's broken."

The claws punched through the roof again, brushing my hair. I ducked, and a sound rose in my throat--a growl that rose to a scream. "Raw-BERT!"

I grabbed the shell necklace and pulled it over Tiffany's head. "I'm borrowing this." As she gaped at me, I kicked open my door and sprang out of the car.

Robert knelt on the car's roof, teeth bared with the effort of slicing through metal. He grinned, as if this were perfectly normal, and I'd happened upon him while shopping at the mall. "Hey, Libby."

My heart pounded like a drum until even my fingertips throbbed. The corners of my vision turned red. "
Hey, Libby?
You just ran us off the road, you jerk!"

"And the only thing you can call me is a jerk? Learn to cuss, Lib."

My voice climbed toward a scream again. "Tiffany's arm is broken!"

"Aw." His grin widened. "You're cute when you're indignant."

My rage boiled over into this insane desire to grab him and tear pieces off his body with my fingernails. So I did the next best thing. I held the shell in Robert's face and focused my fury into it.

He cringed backward and yanked his claws out of the car's roof. He jumped to the ground, and I dashed around the side of the car and blasted him with more magic. He yelled as if I'd poured hot water on him.

Then he ran at me so fast I couldn't track him, and slapped the shell out of my hand. It plinked across the road and off the cliff.

His hands closed on my arms. He leered into my face. "You're no good without your toy. Too bad Mal never taught you to defend yourself."

...he's like an open, festering wound ...

Black dots swam through my vision as he leaned on me with his horrible power. My heart slowed and my adrenaline dropped to nothing. The beautiful anger that had given me courage cooled to ashes. I tried to struggle, but my body had gone heavy and limp. It happened so fast that I didn't have time to feel afraid.

I felt him let me down on the cold, bumpy asphalt--then the darkness took me.

As the sun set and the moon rose, I tried to reassure myself that Libby was safe. Surely she had reached Santa Barbara by now, and there was no cause for the anxiety that had encompassed me since last night.

I paced between my camper and the bee station, then around the orchards and farmhouse. If only I had a phone, I could have called to make sure she'd arrived safely. Perhaps I should invest in one.

The bees slept in their hives, inside the protective warding. I checked all the spells, found them secure, and roamed the perimeter of the ranch. Life sparkled in every leaf and flower, except for the shadowed acre I had killed.

I silently apologized to the dead trees and animals there. I had taken their lives in a good cause. Trees could be replanted, but Libby could not be restored.

Like Mother.

I cringed from the thought. Libby had not actually died, however. I had performed a healing, not a resurrection.

Father claimed that he could raise Mother with enough power. Whereas I had always argued that it would not work without her soul. Life and death magic, while wonderful tools, were tied to the physical world. Once the soul departed into the spiritual realm, death magic lacked the power to summon it, or so I had theorized. Father's theory stated that just as he could manipulate the souls of the living, so he could control the souls of the dead.

We'd carried on this debate for decades. It was one reason I had abandoned my family and struck out on my own. I cannot countenance slaying a thousand human lives to restore one.

As the night deepened, and the moon climbed toward its zenith, my mood grew darker. Restless energy tugged at my limbs. The honey I had eaten earlier continued to strengthen me with its pure life, and the death power's draw was at its lowest ebb. I was nearly human. Someday I would discover the way to reattach my soul and regain my mortality.

Then I could leave this realm of suffering, where I had walked for eighty-six years, and throw myself into the arms of God. There I would find rest.

I gazed at the stars and spread my arms to their light, but they were drowned by the moon.

The moon is an odd thing. It shines by reflecting sunlight, but is itself dead. Therefore it pours down mingled life and death, empowering the Earth's inhabitants to do extra good--or evil.

I dislike the moon. The life of the stars is much more wholesome.

As I stood there in the light of the moon and stars, darkness crept into my torn spirit. The chill of death touched my marrow. I shivered and clutched my chest. The puzzle box!

It pulled at me with a painful jolt--like being impaled on a fine wire. But the pull did not come from Libby's house, where I had left it--it came from the dead orchard.

When Libby and Robert had handled the box, I had not felt it until they moved it a good distance. This is the vulnerability of a lich's phylactery, and why one hides it so obsessively.

But I felt the dark presence of another lich--his death aura tainted my soul. I shuddered and braced myself against a beehive. My father had obtained the puzzle box.

What if he opened it?

Oh, I talk boldly about embracing death, but when confronted with the raw truth, I prefer to keep living. My slow heart sped up to a nearly normal rate--cold blood warmed in my veins. I wanted to live, but I was more vulnerable than I'd ever been in my un-life. My enemies knew that I'd broken our creed to
love none
, and my punishment awaited.

Before facing my doom, I dashed to my camper and retrieved my clawed gloves, then the compulsion to protect my phylactery drew me to the dead acre.

Two figures stood in the orchard's center, each surrounded by a black nimbus. Even with my dark-sensitive eyes, I struggled to make out their features.

One of them lifted my puzzle box over his head and called, "Hey Mal, look what I found!"

I stormed toward my brother, flexing my claws. But my father fixed his glowing red eyes on me, and held a hand over the box. Cold stabbed through my vitals, and I halted. The wooden box suddenly seemed as fragile as porcelain. One good smash against the ground ...

"Now now," Dad said, "there's no need for this attitude."

"Where did you get that?" I snarled.

Dad and Robert stepped aside to reveal Libby lying on the ground with her hands tied behind her. She was limp, eyes closed, her brown hair a careless swirl on the earth. A deep bruise stood on her forehead, as if she had been beaten. Her friend Tiffany lay beside her, also bound.

Questions screamed through my head. They were supposed to be hundreds of miles away. What were they doing here? What had happened? I tried to swallow the sudden dryness in my throat.

"Libby had the box." Robert watched my face, smiling with his jaw slack, as if waiting for a victim's first scream. "Didn't you know? Or did you give it to her?"

I didn't answer. She must have been trying to protect it by taking it with her. At any other time, she would have succeeded.
Oh Libby, Libby, why must you try so hard to help me?

Dad gestured to the dead trees as if sweeping something invisible out of the air. "There is so much death here, it's an ideal stage for my plan tonight. I wanted to thank you for creating it, Mal."

I ground my teeth, curled my claws and edged one foot forward.

Robert watched me with a smirk, and one finger traced the puzzle box's silver inlay. My brother's disposition was such that he might destroy the box, but he lacked the patience to solve the puzzle. This impulsiveness had grown worse as he had spent years as a vampire, and tonight, I might turn it to my advantage.

Dad breathed deeply, gathering the ambient death, and his black aura spread outward. "It's a shame you're not more accepting of your condition. Think of the techniques I could teach you."

"No, Dad," I replied, struggling to keep my voice even. "You would sculpt me into a weapon of death."

He grinned like a skull. "Your particular talents blend well with the lich condition. Attention to detail. Perfectionism. Patience."

I didn't answer. Libby lay dangerously close to his aura, and the life trickled from her like wisps of steam.

Dad continued to gather power. "You would have been a Marcher, you know. Their scouts had already requested that you join the training academy."

Me. A Marcher. My heart soared, then crashed into a bitter sea. Instead of feeding upon the living, I might have been a protector. "Then why turn me?"

He shrugged. "I hadn't intended to turn you, son. You walked in during my ritual and broke the circle, remember? The backlash severed your soul, and I captured it to save your life. When your lich powers manifested with such strength, I realized I'd made the right decision."

Bitterness like gall filled my mouth. Well did I remember that night--I relived it in my nightmares at least once a month. My despicable death power should have been the pure, clean life magic of a Marcher. I might have had a future with Libby.

"So," I said quietly, "that explains why Mother died."

Dad shrugged. "Unfortunate, but not irreparable."

He called her death unfortunate? When the uncontrolled pull of my death magic had sucked the life from her body? Had he no idea the guilt and grief I had carried these seventy years spent as a lich?

Dad continued, "Son, we have our differences. But I'd like you to join us tonight. Together we can pool our power and raise your mother. We can be a family again."

The same topic, always between us. So many barriers stood between me and that rosy scenario. I named one. "None of us have the power. Her soul has left this plane."

Dad's eyes burned with red light in the shadows of his withered face. "I will bring her back if I have to melt this world down to the core."

"And then what? Watch her live five minutes on a molten rock, only to die again?"

Ever my father's weapon, Robert whipped toward me. His fist struck my chin.

As I staggered backward, he bellowed in my face, "Answer the question! Join us or not?"

I rubbed my split lip, which bled slightly. "No."

Robert slashed at my face with his claws. I parried them with my own. We sprang at each other, blades flashing. Being supernatural creatures, we were evenly matched in speed. His fighting technique was better than mine, however, and I gave ground, backing away from Libby.

"So you have chosen punishment," Father said. He shook his head and produced a human skull from one of the huge pockets inside his duster. "I must proceed without you."

The Necromancer raised his hand, clutching the skull.