Page 29 of Necromance
I gasped, coughing, rolling onto my side as I clutched my throat. My skin burned where her fingers had been. My chest heaved as I struggled to breathe.
Lucien stood at the foot of the bed, his presence crackling with barely restrained fury. Shadows curled around him like living things, shifting and twisting, responding to the storm raging beneath his skin.
His golden eyes burned as they locked onto the specter, who now hovered near the far wall, her gnarled fingers still reaching for me as she gurgled and hissed.
“Get away from her,” Lucien growled, his voice low, dangerous.
The thing let out an ear-splitting shriek and lunged.
But Lucien was faster.
The air pulsed with an unseen force as he swept his arm outward. The specter flew back, slamming into the stone wall with a sickening crack. Her body convulsed before she melted into the shadows, vanishing as suddenly as she had appeared.
The silence that followed was deafening.
I sat there, my breaths coming in sharp, uneven gasps. My body trembled violently. My throat ached. Theroom still spun with something unnatural, something wrong.
Lucien was in front of me in an instant, kneeling beside the bed, his hands cupping my face. His touch was warm—real.
“Mia,” he murmured, his voice tight, controlled only by the barest thread. “Are you hurt?”
I shook my head, but my body betrayed me, still shaking, still caught in the aftermath of what had just happened. My fingers hovered near my throat, brushing over the tender skin where her grip had been.
“I—I couldn’t move,” I whispered. “She was on me, Lucien. I—” My voice broke.
His jaw clenched. His hands tightened slightly, grounding me, holding me steady. “I know,” he said gently. “But I couldn’t come unless you summoned me.”
I swallowed hard, still trying to catch my breath. But as I looked into his face, past the fury burning in his eyes, I saw something else.
Fear. Not for himself.For me.
I stared at him, searching those honey colored eyes.
“How did you do that?”
He quirked a brow and I waved in the direction where Serena’s nightmare form had been crouched.
“That. Itwas like you controlled the shadows.”
He followed my gesture to the corner of the room, silent for a long moment as if lost in thought. “Is that not normal?”
“Not at all,” I answered, shaking my head, but instead of discussing it further, he simply hummed before giving me one of his delicious grins.
CHAPTER NINE
The scent of onions and garlic filled the kitchen as I stirred the bubbling pot of stew, the warmth from the hearth providing a strange comfort I hadn’t realized I needed. My fingers moved through the motions of chopping vegetables, more out of habit than thought. It had been a long day already, and it wasn’t even evening yet.
I had awoken much earlier, late in the afternoon instead of the usual evening time, still plagued by the woman—or whatever that creature had been that had attacked me. The memory of her decrepit face still wrapped around my mind.
Lucien had offered to stay with me until I fell back asleep which I’d greedily accepted. Whether he’d actually stayed or not, I couldn’t be sure since I’d awoken to an empty room. I didn’t usually give into fear, especially with my profession, but I wasn’t used to such malevolent spirits… Not usually anyway.
A pang of guilt twisted in my stomach as I remembered what I had said to him. What made it worse was that he had come instantly when I’d called for him and hadn’t even thought twice about using his own energy to stay with me.
I’d still not figured out exactly how his energy worked. He was unlike other ghosts in so many ways that it seemed even his ability to come and go was foreign to me. The one thing that I was sure of was that he vanished around the same time every day—as soon as the sun rose. Other than that, I was almost certain that I could call him out whenever I wanted.
Not that I wanted to, of course.
I sighed, trying to focus on the stew. It’d been a while since I’d eaten anything substantial. In fact, I’d been living off stale bread, cheese, and canned meat since I’d arrived at Ravenspire.
