One. Two. And three layers of cotton fall languidly around my feet. The skin hidden safely beneath is somehow still chapped from the cold, still red and angry looking, though I'd made sure to overdo it on jackets today. It'd become frostier in the evenings as fall melds into winter.
I'd done my time in the underworld, walked through flames that would melt the flesh from bone on the average human, but you still can't convince me winters in the Pacific Northwest aren't actual torture. I hate them. I hate the way my arm puckers into goose flesh. I hate how I go from zero to about to piss myself in the amount of time it takes my brain to even register the change in temperature. How do you plan for that?
"Not the bathroom-shuffle," my dorm-mate chortles, his laugh akin to a canine's bark. "Get undressed over the toilet if you can't handle the air-conditioning."
"It's like twenty-eight degrees outside," I snap back, whilst wrestling with my belt buckle and the doorknob leading into the en-suite bathroom.
I love my roommate, we've been friends for the better part of two decades now and we agree on most things, but the thermostat just isn't one of them. His most recent justification; I can always layer up, he can't regulate his unnaturally high core temperature. I've yet to think of a better counter-argument for that so here I am, freezing my balls off and desperately trying to whip my dick from my jeans before I piss all over them. I didn't have the chance to shut the door behind me and Romy takes that as an opportunity to post up against the frame and harass me.
"So," he prods, cracking each finger consecutively on one hand and then the other, "you see her today?"
"Who?" I feign ignorance as I tuck back into my pants and flush.
His patience holds out while I lather suds between my hands, protecting the few seconds of inner peace I have before he stampedes over it. We both know who, but I don't feel like talking about her right now.
Blair Carmichael.
The bane of my existence.
"Don't play dumb, so help me, I'll strip you naked and move your bed outside to the courtyard while you sleep." Romy threatens and I believe him. Aside from the fact that he's what you'd consider an apex predator; in true Necromancer fashion, I sleep like the dead. He could do whatever he wanted and I'd be none the wiser. At least not before the entire campus has a chance to take a peek at my bare ass.
"Fine. I saw her," I admit, rinsing and then meticulously patting dry my hands before turning to meet his smug gaze. His eyes blaze wickedly, taking on an unnatural golden hue that shimmers like two rivers of molten honey whenever he's excited.
Honestly, though, it doesn't take much to amuse him.
"And? Did you put the moves on her?" Romy waggles his dark brows, his hips thrusting the air in tandem.
"Yes, Roman." I scoff and shove past him. "I threw her over my desk and fucked the shit out of her, right in the middle of class. Professor Sarin's lecture really drowned out the sound of her screams."
"At least tell me you got her number." He deadpans and suddenly his eyes are every bit as dim as his tone.
The man really embodies the phrase self-expression.
"No, I didn't ask for her number. I don't want her number." I shrug, pulling off my t-shirt.
He picks up the first chain I remove from around my neck, swinging it back and forth like a pendulum and watching the color shift from black to purple as it hits the lamp lighting. A long vivianite crystal, tapered to a blunt point at the bottom and encased in intricately wrapped coils of wire. He likes that one, if only he knew how it'd come to be in my possession, he might not be so willing to touch it. I shuck off the azurite pendant next, laying it carefully on my bedside table and gently stroking the decorative metal cage housing the blue mineral with the tip of my finger. Already, I can feel the buzz in my mind start to settle. And lastly, my Black Kyanite; it's jagged edges scraping across my collarbone as I fidget with the clasp.
They were little more than a fashion statement these days, the university having strict policies against raising the dead or performing seances without the supervision of a Professor. Still, I wear them as an homage to my history and, for the sake of everyone around me, as a reminder of it.
I try not to think too much on my past. It'd taken months to get rid of the nightmares. You accidentally get murdered one time and the next thing you know, you're treading through an ocean of trauma without a paddle. Never mind that I'd been haphazardly pieced back together and resurrected by a toothless, batshit-crazy witch. She'd waited just long enough for my heart to start pumping again before she'd tried sucking me off. It was a weird time for me to say the least. Even thinking about it now has my skin crawling.
My head hits the pillow and I sink into the mattress, that heavy feeling pulling me down. Not bothering with my jeans or shoes and too lazy to climb between the sheets, instead I roll with an edge of the downy comforter. The lofty fabric wraps around me until I'm trussed up like a burrito.
"Dude, you look like you're dead. It's creeping me out." Romy whispers from what sounds like his own bed across the room.
Just then I hear the springs protest as he flings himself onto the mattress. They actually groan when the impact bounces him back up and down again. At a whopping six feet, six inches and two-hundred eighty pounds, he settles into the bed like a boulder at the bottom of a landslide.
"One of these days you're going to smash right through that bed." I grumble against my blanket. The thick feathery stuffing muffles my voice, but much like dogs, wolves have an acute sense of hearing.
"You calling me fat, Noah?" He accuses, but it holds no heat.
"Totally." I smirk, my shoulders giving their best attempt at a shrug considering they're completely constricted now. I'm sure I look like an idiot, flopping around in my blanket burrito, but I'm too cozied up to care.
"Stop wiggling around like that, you look like you're buried alive or something. It's weird."
"Says the horse-sized dog." I shoot back. "I bet you chase your tail when I'm not around."
"How'd you guess?" He chuckles.
The sound of the bed protesting as he tosses and turns quiets, but almost instantly it's replaced by a cacophony of snores filtering onto my side of the room.
No matter, I literally, actually sleep with the deceased. Not like it'll bother me anyways.
***
The alarm blaring on my side table startles me awake. Could have been the first, but it's probably the sixth or seventh. By the looks of Roman's bed with it's smoothed out blanket and a perfectly fluffed pillow perched at the head, it could be the eighth. I'm difficult to rouse, preferring to hit snooze a few extra times rather than utilize my morning for things more conducive to my day like sipping a cup of coffee or styling my hair.
Besides, that's Roman's time and not something I think I'm capable of witnessing. He can take his sweet time journaling his feelings or speak his daily affirmations to a mystical Moon Goddess or whatever other hippie shit he's into. I'd rather be blissfully unconscious and unaware of it all.
By now, the morning sun is cresting over the turrets beyond our dorm window and I huff out from beneath the blankets, nipples prickling as the cool air wafts from the air vent above my bed.
My best friend is such a fucking morning person and it makes me want to dry heave. Only delusional people enjoy bathing in sunlight, so I slam the curtains shut. I fumble back through the blissful darkness swiping up any article of clothing I can grasp off the floor.
I'm not mad that when I burst through the door to the bathroom, it's already swathed in light, another nasty habit of Roman's. He likes the light, be it natural or artificial, and it's absolutely ubsurd in my opinion, but it's one less step I have to think about this morning so I'll cut him some slack just this once.
I go through my routine in a haze, one eye half open and the other still glued shut from sleep. It's all part of the morning ritual.
A total of ten minutes is how long it takes until I'm finally off to class with a book bag slung over my shoulders and earbuds blaring death metal in my ears.
Nobody looks at me, I don't look at them. It's a good start to the day.
I spend the walk to my first class, on the opposite end of campus from the male dormitories, rubbing the azurite pendant between my palms. That familiar buzz in the back of my mind gains traction until it's a tickle at the nape of my neck and slowly morphs itself into a discombobulated voice separate from my thoughts. The two mingle until they're communicating on a new frequency entirely. A live current builds beneath my skin, traveling up from the Earth through my soles, charging with each step until my body physically hums.
Today's my one-on-one with Professor Vitori. We meet in various locations for specialized skills training. Conjuring spirits, unearthing remains, practicing curses and their counter-spells. The usual, basic stuff. Except, for me, he'd reversed the course material. Considering my history, Professor Vitori flipped to the end and we've been slowly working our way back to the beginning. We started with the power I already possessed and he'd begun teaching me techniques to harness it.
Basically, I'm a ticking time-bomb, moments away from unleashing Holy Hell on everyone and everything. In hopes of not doing that, I actually take this time seriously.
We've been at it for weeks, making a small chunk of progress each time. Our last session ended with two corpses scuttling back into a hole I'd unearthed them from, having done the Macarena ten times before I'd dropped my hands and their limbs crumpled. With a flick of my wrist they tumbled over the edge, bones tinkling as they landed in a pile six feet below.
"Morning, Sinclair," Professor Vitori murmurs over a steaming cup of tea and a thick hardcover book: Forbidden Rites, cradled in his lap. I have two copies tucked in my own book bag; an original Latin text he'd given me in class a week before our first meeting and the newer, translated version I ordered from Amazon the following day. My Latin's still pretty shaky, but I'm referencing the translation less and less, so that's a win.
"Morning," I nod back, dropping down on a patch of grass beside him.
The first fifteen minutes of training start with an overview of the chapter. Of course, he flips through his pages much faster than I do, scribbling along in the margins as he goes. I'd picked up the habit from him, making my own annotations while I skim through the passages. I don't mention how I've already read the chapter three times. Once in Latin and twice through my translated edition. The third reading was primarily for cross referencing purposes, filling in any gaps that might have been lost in translation.
A quiet beep chirps from the inside breast pocket of his coat and he reaches in to silence it, pulling it out and adjusting the time for another forty fives minutes.
"Alright, Sinclair, up and at it." Professor Vitori springs to the balls of his black loafers.
He's dressed in a pair of ironed slacks and a cotton turtle neck that peaks from the sleeves and lapels of his blazer, looking every bit as crisp as he had when he sat down in the grass. Aside from the hints of gray at his temples, you wouldn't guess the professor is tenured. Even wilder, that the youngest of his three sons is a good two years ahead of me.
The man who stands before me, tossing his book aside, looks to be in his early thirties, and even that's a stretch. His gray eyes, the color of gun metal, observe me, tracking my movements as I push to my feet. They have the faintest tracing of lines spiderwebbing from the corners, easily explained away by a healthy dose of laughter on a regular basis. Otherwise the rest of his features are smooth, youthful; set in time, as if etched in granite.
A part of me wonders if it's simply an elusion. If I can will a deceased body to claw its way through six feet of compacted soil and command it to dance with little more effort than a wave of my hand, surely the professor could, in theory, reverse the signs of aging.
"Circles, why are they necessary?" Professor Vitori asks, slipping out of his blazer and hanging it neatly on a low branch.
"Protection," I offer, chucking my own book next to his.
"Good, now make one." He instructs, rolling up the sleeves of his sweater.
"I've never cast a circle before," I admit, trying to tap into some of that energy buzzing around in my head. It eludes me until my mind and this finicky power of mine are caught in a whirlpool, spinning aimlessly down a never ending drain. "Yes, I read the chapter," I say before he can jump to any unnecessary conclusions, "I just don't understand it. The instructions aren't exactly clear cut."
"Circles are personal, Sinclair. No two rituals are the same because no two people are the same. I suggest picking an element that speaks to you." The professor advises.
Under his breath, he murmurs an incantation, his lips quivering around each silent word. The earth begins to shimmy as a mound of soil snakes around us in a circle, the two ends connecting at the northern edge.
"Easy," he grins lazily.
Heat builds in my chest, fueled by an unbridled need to be better. Thoroughly provoked, the restraints of my power come undone, exploding in little bursts all throughout my body until I'm swimming in it, until it's all I can do to keep from pulverizing the man where he stands.
The professor is constantly riling me up, he says it yields the greatest results. I can't exactly argue the fact, but I also refuse the responsibility of whatever happens in the next forty minutes.
The temperature keeps creeping higher and higher; searing my heart, my lungs. Suddenly so hot, I'm afraid they'll fuse together into an unrecognizable clump. Hotter and hotter until the heat bursts from the tips of my fingers. First, nothing more than puffs of warm smoke billowing from beneath my finger nails. Then, a blistering heat that scorches as it escapes. And finally, a burst of white hot light that sears and simultaneously cauterizes the skin of my palms as it erupts out of me, striking the ground like a bolt of lightning and eating a path through the grass. It leaves a perfectly round singe mark sprinkled with fiery orange embers.
"Seriously, it works every time." Vitori muses, eyeing my blackened circle with a look that suspiciously resembles pride. "Good, now feel the energy."
He basks in it; arms extended out at his sides, slowly spinning around the boundary line of the circle. I feel his movement like an undercurrent, being carried along with him as he turns, my back feeling the presistent nudge of dense, churning air.
"It's as tangible as I am," I decide after a few more lackadaisical spins.
"You are correct," he bellows, his voice reverberating off the invisible walls surrounding us. "Now relax, you're too pent up. This is a safe space. You're protected from the outside and the outside is protected from you. Let's try our breathing exercises."
Deep breath in through my nose, I follow his lead, his arms enunciating the way our chests draw in large gulps. And out, we exhale. In. Out.
The heat that had moments before engulfed the space inside my circle dissipates. It's still warmer than the earthy coolness of damp soil and the crispness of a fall breeze that swathed Professor Vitori's before I torched it, but there's a noticeable shift in temperature as my mood simmers down.
I strip out of my hoodie, tossing it on top of my book bag slumped against a moss-covered grave marker. The words are so distorted with buildup I can't make out the name engraved in an arc above the silhouette of an angel's wings etched in the stone.
Many of our training sessions have been held in this graveyard. It sits just beyond the cusp of a forest of evergreens, on the southern edge of the school's perimeter. Thick trees dot the cemetery grounds, growing denser the further you venture past the large wrought iron gates. And darker, too, but instead of feeling unease... I feel at home. Like my soul is constantly called here and now that I am, I could stay forever. Figuratively, of course, the forever part could wait at least half a dozen more decades.
"So, what now?" I ask, my nerves having settled and the tumultuous wind tunnel of psychic energy fades to a soft breeze feathering my hair gently back and forth.
"Do you feel the power you're containing?" The professor asks, his arms crossed casually, one hand fisted under his chin as he watches me just... existing. Always so analytical.
"It's kind of hard not to," I offer with a shrug. "It feels like a part of me."
"God, only to know your lineage," he muses.
"You and me both, brother." It comes out as a joke, but honestly, he's not lying. And neither am I...
"You're powerful, Sinclair, and with the right training? Oh! The things you could do." He claps his hands, methodically rubbing them together while I simply stand here, picking a string from the hem of my black wife-beater.
Compliments make me uncomfortable, it's something I should probably work on. And all this power I possess...well, that makes me super-duper uncomfy, but again, lot's to work on... I've seen first hand what power can do to me, what it does to me. It's not pretty.
"Alright, let's summon them." He instructs.
We angle our bodies toward separate graves and while he whispers a spell to summon a body from beneath us; I simply feel, not a single word uttered from my lips. The bubble of power that had extended from within me to fill the twenty feet of diameter inside of the circle, stretches out. It sinks into the dirt and wiggles lower until it reaches a set of remains. It taps on an ancient femur and jostles it awake. The dead responds with a little nudge of it's own until it's wrestling against my command.
Finally, after a few exasperated moments of waiting, I see a skeletal hand thrust up from beneath the earth and then it's pulling the rest of it's body through.
"What shall we have them do?" Professor Vitori asks as we stand on the other side of a barrier the dead can't penetrate.
I feel the tiny shockwaves that resonate from their fingertips prodding against the invisible wall. They sway unsteadily back and forth on feet they haven't stood on in a while.
Damn...does that headstone say 1807? Crazy.
"I don't know," I murmur, but as I'm saying it, the body I summoned places their hands salaciously on their knees.
It rolls it's pelvis, arches it's back, and swings it's boney derrière all the way around. I twirl my finger, swirling the dense air in a tiny cyclone and the skeleton spins, bones knocking together as it shakes all of it's moving parts.
"Is that skeleton...twerking?" The professor asks, incredulously. Utterly scandalized and totally beside himself.
"Okay, I didn't necessarily tell it to do that." I protest as the skeleton wraps a foot around a lamp post that's lighting up a small section of the cemetery where two walk ways intersect.
I just about lose it when it twirls up the pole and clacks it's heels together before throwing them out in a "V" and sliding back down.
"Who knew they had strippers back in the 1800s." I muse.
"Yeah, that's enough of that." He swipes his hand through the air and they freeze, meatless rear ends cocked out mid shake. "All the power one could possibly hope to possess and this is how you choose to expend your energy, it's sacrilege. Truly."
"Professor, it was either that or create a zombie horde..." With the crook of my finger, I summon another eight bodies from the shadows of two large mausoleums to our right. All clanking bones and tattered strips of fabric as they moonwalk across the cobble stone path. "So...I did both."
"Sinclair, send them back." Professor Vitori huffs, his arms folded sternly across his chest and his brow arches so high it accentuates soft creases on his forehead. They give some age to his face, but not enough to convey a man in his mid fifties, as he claims to be.
I snap my fingers and they poof into thin air, sprinkling into little piles of ash. "Professor, how old are you?" I can't help myself, it'd been a question burning a hole in the tip of my tongue.
"Old enough, now bury them. You know the drill, kid. We leave them how we found them."
We start the clean up process. It's not exactly what it sounds like and I'd only managed it once without his assistance.
See, it's not hard to catch time. My fingers find purchase in weak points of the atmosphere, as easily as if I'd just slipped into a pair of gloves.
Reversing it's a real bitch, though.
I jerk everything to a standstill the moment my grip catches and it's every bit as violent as time crashing head on with a brick wall. The impact punches every joint in my body and I'm jolted back ten feet with the recoil. Somehow, I maintain my grasp as I'm forced further and further away from the circle, clinging to the folds I crumpled in the timeline. My muscles strain beneath the weight of what feels like a thundering freight train as it struggles to keep rolling until I'm moments from being crushed against a granite monument in the center of the cemetery.
My mind is a strange place as it settles into resignation. I'm probably going to die in about three seconds, that really sucks.
I'm physically sailing through the air at this point and off to the edge of my vision, I see a face that I'll never admit to fantasizing over, not even to myself.
I don't want to see her. I repeat that over and over, trying to blink her away, but there she is.
Her plump red lips form a small pout, soft dimples disappearing as her smile drops. Eyes, violet from the blood she ingests mixing with the blue irises she'd been born with, widening in horror. I imagine I hear her raspy voice scream my name, but the sound isn't quite fast enough to make it to me as I barrel past her.
In that moment I realize, I might not ever see her again. What's the likelihood of being dragged from the pits of Hell twice in one lifetime?
Sure, I don't much care for her, but she's my enigma, the one piece of Death I can't wield or bend to my will, but God do I want to.
My animosity towards her fuels me, figment of my imagination or not. I lean into the looming pressure and shove against it, the slight shift in position angling me out of the trajectory of the monument, missing it by merely inches. There's enough open space to finally gain control of the slide, redirect it, and with a surge of adrenaline, I send it hurtling in the opposite direction.
Time folds in on itself and everything, my self included, is wrenched up off the ground and sent soaring back across a blank linear plane. I see the last half hour in reverse as my body whips backwards in time until Professor Vitori and I are standing in front of two unassuming headstones; one dating back to 1807 and the other so overgrown with moss you can't even make out the type of stone that rests beneath it.
"What the fuck?" A hoarse demand filters from the trees.
"Language, Miss Carmichael." Professor Vitori scolds, shaking out his blazer and slipping into it.
"Sorry, Professor," Blair Carmichael apologizes, dropping down from the tangled branches of a large evergreen where she'd landed. Twigs and leaves stick in her hair and her skirt sits askew on her tiny hips. Adorably ruffled by the look of her.
I can't help the smirk that tugs at my lips as I watch her stumble away from the tree.
"Alright, looks like it's just about time for your first class. Both of you, run along." His tone brooks no arguments. We hurry down the path leading out of the cemetery in the direction of the dormitories.
"What was that, Noah?" She asks me, tugging on the sleeve of my hoodie. "You can actually reverse time? I thought you were going to die. How did you do that? Are you alright?"
I ignore her first set of questions entirely so she takes that as a sign to fire off a few more in quick succession until my patience snaps in half like a twig.
"Blair," I finally bark out. "If I answer you, for the love of God, will you please stop talking?"
It's a bit harsh and I feel a small pang of guilt as she clears her throat.
"Sorry, I ramble when I'm nervous." She admits.
"Yes it's hard, hence why I almost fucked it up. No, I will not show you how, if you couldn't tell, reversing time is dangerous. Yes I'm sore, yes I'm tired. No, you didn't get all the leaves out of your hair." I pluck out two more from the back and a stick that's entwined so deeply we have to stop walking in order for me to fish it out. "And yes, I'm alright. Are you?"
"I think so," she nods, turning back to face me, but suddenly a haze clouds over her eyes and they narrow at a tear in my sleeve.
I didn't notice until that very second, the sting of a cut burning my forearm. Her canines extend into sharp little points poking into her bottom lip and before I can evade her bite, she's latched on to me and suckling at the blood.
A euphoric feeling I've never experienced before starts in my stomach and blooms. I almost lose myself in it. I almost let her drain me dry, it feels that good.
Before I can disentangle myself from her mouth, she's letting go and flitting away from me so fast she's nothing, but a blur.
"Oh my god, I'm so sorry. I missed breakfast. I'm such an idiot." She bangs her palms against her forehead, pacing back and forth. "Holy shit! I'm really, really sorry Noah. Fuck! Are you feeling faint? Maybe I should help you to the nurse? What the fuck am I thinking? Like you'd want to go anywhere with me." Her voice cracks and she swallows, keeping distance between us as she wears a path in the grass.
I stare down the bridge of my nose at her, unsure of what to say. That I liked it? No, that's fucked. That I'm so disgusted by her? That's not really true, if anything I'm disgusted with myself. My sweats do a good job of concealing the hard-on I'm sporting, but I know it's there and I don't know how to feel about that. So instead, I stalk off. Past her, past the cemetery gates, past the entrance to the school. All the way to my dorm room where I collapse back into bed because today is just not my day.
