Grave Intentions (Darkling Mage 3)

The Dark Room did that work for me, claiming its payment through the wounds that opened across my skin, in particular the one that ripped open over my heart. I grimaced against the pain, chuckling from deep in my throat. If Asher and Carver didn’t have anything left over to heal me after this was said and done, I hoped that they’d at least have the strength to bury me.

Massive thorns of gleaming shadow tore through the earth, dozens of them conjured by my blood from the bowels of the Dark Room. The abominations shrieked as hooks and knives of solid darkness ripped into their flesh, a pit of spikes meant to seal them.

Drawing on the last of my power – and, I figured, the last of my blood – I sank into the earth, entering the Dark Room once more. With flagging strength I stumbled through its shadows, then reentered our world, falling onto my knees by Carver’s feet.

He was still chanting when I reappeared, his hands shuddering as he summoned every trace of magic still left within his body. The sound of broken glass tinkled under the hideous screams of the wounded abominations – three, four, five of Carver’s gems had fractured and cracked under the horrible weight of his spell. He thrust his hands forward, and with the roaring of a dragon a massive gout of pale fire shot through the night, hurtling directly for the pile of stolen relics. I held my breath.

The night shattered. The abominations howled. A prism of searing color exploded between the children, every artifact splintered and sundered by the might of Carver’s magic. The torrent of arcane energy reached into the sky, blasting everything around them into worthless smithereens. Fuck the Veil, man. Hell, fuck the planet. If the normals knew where to look, and who to blame, this was practically a declaration of war.

The back of my brain ached from the brilliance, and I shielded my eyes until it faded. I only dared to look when the radiance had cleared. But there was nothing left on the hill. The combined detonation of the artifacts had obliterated the abominations thoroughly, disintegrating them down to the last atom.

Carver fell to his knees, his palms pushing against the grass. I looked around us, at the devastation Thea’s final ritual had wrought. The hill had been cratered by the explosion, a perfect concave hollow carved into the earth. Diaz’s body was somewhere on its slope, but from where I knelt, I could still see him breathing. Considering what Thea had done to his family, I didn’t know whether death would have been more merciful.

Asher was still watching the hillside with his mouth hanging open, his face and neck glazed in sweat. Gil groaned, sprawled on his back across the wet grass, his chest torn open, but I knew he’d live. He just needed a half dozen raw steaks. That was all.

As for Sterling – there was no easy way to tell. At least half his body had been incinerated by sunlight, the rest of him only spared by the last minute twist he’d made to dodge Thea’s spell. I stared in silence at his scorched body, hating that I couldn’t tell if he was alive. He’d sacrificed himself to give me an opening to kill Thea.

And finally, she was dead. And yet, for the first time in a long while, I felt a swell of pity, of remorse. These creatures had been changed by the Eldest, but they were still children after all, inn

ocents yanked harshly from beyond the grave by the misguided love of a grieving mother.

I couldn’t believe it myself, but some part of me was uttering a silent, secret prayer for the Morganas. Perhaps Thea’s one, small mercy was being spared the indignity of having to watch her own children die again. That I was still capable of having that thought told me that maybe – just maybe – I still had enough of my humanity to cling to.

But there would be time to think on that later. Sirens were wailing in the distance, because as far out of Valero as the graveyard was, the destruction of the artifacts had caused an explosion loud enough to alert the entire county. I was surprised that the Lorica hadn’t shown up yet. The best part was that we had no evidence to show that this wasn’t our fault.

I licked my lips to wet them, grimacing when I tasted the blood that had dripped into the corner of my mouth. “Carver,” I croaked. “We have to go.”

He lifted his head back, panting, his eyes squeezed shut. “Fuck the Eldest. Fuck the normals, fuck the Lorica, fuck all the rest of them.” He chuckled bitterly. “The things we do to save the world.”

Carver raised his hand to the sky, chanting. Ropes of amber fire reached out to the bruised and bloodied members of the Boneyard. One of them snaked around Diaz’s unconscious body.

“Home,” Carver cried, siphoning the very last of his power.

I gripped Vanitas in both hands, sighing as the flames of the sending spell consumed us. Home. The sweetest word.

Chapter 30

The Lorica did show up, I found out later on. They beat the authorities to it, which I suppose shouldn’t have been a surprise considering how fast their teleporters could work. A few of the Wings escorted a Scion to the hilltop, who then threw up a massive glamour to disguise, if only temporarily, the fact that a fight had ever happened there.

Herald told me that it took some elementally-specialized Hands the better part of the night to dump enough earth to reshape the place, and even longer for the Lorica’s cleanup team to get rid of all the shrike and homunculus viscera. At least it worked well enough to keep the normals in the dark.

What I learned in my early days at the Lorica always lingered. How would the normals react if they knew we existed? What would they do if they realized that humans infused with the power of nuclear bombs walked among them in broad daylight?

Fortunately, at least when it came to my father, it wasn’t all that much of a deterrent. It took far less work than I expected to include him in my life again. The first order of business was to give up the crappy house he’d taken up outside town. I helped him settle into a smaller place in Valero. It wasn’t quite suburban swanky, but it felt good knowing he was closer by. I didn’t mind funneling a chunk of my earnings into supporting him while he got back on his feet.

The best part was how quickly Norman got along with my coworkers. It took a little bit of time to convince him that Gil didn’t go around sporadically turning into a rampaging werewolf, and that Asher wouldn’t accidentally raise the dead in his sleep and kill us all. But after a couple of sessions at Mama Rosa’s with a few beers, he started to see the Boneyard as I did: as colleagues, as humans, as friends.

But I didn’t tell him about mom. He didn’t have to know about how Thea had poisoned her with a box of relics. That I decided to keep to myself.

It was nice to see dad happy again, and to know that he’d resolved to control his drinking. A few light beers never hurt anyone, and I always made sure to throw him in a car or drop him off myself, just to be certain. I watched as he and Gil squabbled amicably over sports. Tonight, I thought, maybe I’ll make an exception.

We’d found a great spot out on the sand, over at Lucero Beach. It was a nice evening, with good weather, and Carver had previously mentioned the possibility of us all going out for a proper little beachside barbecue, just the boys from the Boneyard.

Asher had latched onto that offhand remark for days, watching his weather apps like a hawk, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. And so it did, so we packed up and filed out to the beach, just a lich, a necromancer, a werewolf, a shadow beast, and his dad, a whole bunch of the undead and undead-adjacent, out for a casual nighttime barbecue by the ocean. No big deal.

“Look at this thing,” Asher called out, plodding up from the surf with a starfish in his hands.

Carver raised a finger. “Put that back. And don’t swim so far out. It’s dark.”