A Fine and Private Place

It wasn't love at first sight or anything like that. I don't believe in that nonsense, and besides, I was far too busy trying to hack off my leg to notice her at first.

For all that people seem to do it by accident with alarming frequency, it's actually rather difficult to remove one of your own limbs without proper tools. I'd managed to find a sharp rock, but I couldn't get much leverage with it. As I worked, I could hear the screeching of excited carrion birds and unmistakable thrum of living hearts, creeping closer. The metal bear trap was shut tight around my ankle, pinning me to the spot, and the living are usually bad news for the undead. I had to escape, but it was looking less and less likely the more I hacked away with piece of flint.

At some point in the past, I'd been murdered and ripped from my grave as part of a mindless zombie horde. Three days ago, I'd come to my senses somehow -- still dead, still a monster, but with a will of my own again and a few scattered memories of the life I once had. And a name echoing in my head -- the name of the necromancer who'd raised me to my new life, such as it was, as a cursed abomination.

I'd crawled all this way to kill my creator, and here I was going to be undone by a damn bear trap right on his doorstep.

"You're not one of mine," a voice said. Cold, tired, but distinctly living. And female. I started violently -- why hadn't I sensed a living being creeping up on me? -- and turned to find a black-robed figure, her face concealed by a simple white leather mask that vaguely resemble a long-beaked bird, with red glass eyes. My eyes were drawn to a small glass vial around her neck, filled with something that looked very much like blood. She was leaning on what might have passed for a blackened walking stick, if she hadn't attached the skull of a raven to the top with silver wire, a cut gem glistening in each of its empty eye sockets.

A necromancer. They all had one foot in the grave already, and that's why I hadn't sensed her presence until now. I paused, rock still clutched in my hand. Necromancers were a special kind of dangerous to the undead -- most of the living would come after you with pitchforks and torches if given half the chance, but a necromancer could do you much worse. An angry mob would merely kill you, and every ghoul's gone through that once already. A necromancer, meanwhile, could toy with the very magic that raised you and kept you walking. They could reach right into your heart and strip you of your will, make you mindless again -- draw you into an abject slavery that was more dreadful than the grave.

I made up my mind, right then and there, to kill her the moment I got the chance. Of course, I had to get out of this trap first.

"I'm not anyone's," I said. "I'm here for Ashen Balefyre's head." If there was one thing I knew about necromancers, it's that there was very little they hated worse than another practitioner of their craft. It was a gamble, of course -- Balefyre was an underling of the Lord of Bones, the wicked specter whose shadow had fallen over so much of the land, and the only being powerful enough to get necromancers to work together.

She laughed. Heartily -- high-pitched, almost a giggle -- both hands clutching at the beak of her mask to pull it up over her head, revealing her face. She was sleepless-looking, sallow and unhealthy, but with the unmistakeable warmth of the living beneath, and she was near doubled over with laughter as though I'd just said the funniest thing she'd ever heard.

I waited. Eventually she caught her breath. "You were one of Master Balefyre's servitor ghouls, weren't you?" she gasped. "Oh. Oh my. This is...this is..." And then she was swept up in another round of raucous laughter. I was actually starting to get cross. I tapped my claws on the metal of the bear trap embedded in my ankle.

Finally, she managed to speak again. "I was Balefyre's apprentice," she said, her thin lips curling into a broad smile. She knelt down next to me and did somethingwith the trap's mechanism that caused it to spring open, tearing ribbons of my dead, unfeeling flesh with it. The damage was bad, but not catastrophic. A chipped bone and a torn tendon would cripple a living person, but for the dead it was merely a mechanical failure, easily patched up with a few stitches in the right place. "His only apprentice. Caedis is my name." She was stronger than she looked, as she easily holstered her staff on her back and made some gesture with her hands that snapped every muscle in my body to attention. Paralyzed by her spell, she picked me up as though my cadaver weighed no more than a child's doll. I was too surprised to protest, even if I could have moved. "As it happens, I killed Ashen Balefyre not three days ago. Oh, this is ironic. Master Balefyre would be so angry if he knew."

The interior of what I presumed to be the necromancer Ashen Balefyre's sanctum looked exactly like I was expecting, for the most part. Black candles, black walls, iron cages piled high with bones and grinning skulls, magical sigils drawn in chalk upon the floor...and the corpse of Ashen Balefyre, servant of the mighty Lord of Bones, slayer of heroes and raiser of foul undead armies, pinned to his ebony throne with a very ordinary-looking sword. Rigor mortis had locked his face forever in its final expression of astounded betrayal.

Caedis the necromancer put me down on the floor, and as she did I could feel her drop her concentration. The magic which kept me held withdrew, and I could move freely again. I flexed my claws against the stone. "He looks so surprised," she said, her back turned to me now as she rummaged through a battered oaken chest. Was she talking to me? I tried putting my weight on my injured ankle, but it would not hold -- I wobbled, and fell to the floor again. "I'm insulted. It's practically tradition for a necromancer to murder her master once she gets the chance. You'd think he'd be happy for me." I couldn't quite believe she was talking to me, but it seemed she was. I'd never had a living person try to talk to me once they'd figured out I was dead -- I could pass for living well enough, if I kept my head down and my mouth shut, but it was never a masquerade I could keep up for long. Everything alive had an inborn horror for the walking dead, and those who didn't tended to dark paths.

Caedis turned back around, with a needle and sutures in her hand. Well, fixing yourself was difficult. I figured if she was dead set on repairing my leg, I could let her do it before I made my move.

I could feel the necromancer's breath as she sat down close to me, threading the needle delicately -- a virtuous maiden darning socks by the fire, re-imagined for a charnelhouse. As I was dead, I didn't really bleed, but blackish ichor had started to seep onto the floor as she slid herself closer to me and gently took my leg in her hand, prodding the shredded flesh with her fingers. She was so close now that I could feel the wet warmth of her alivenessall around me -- a beating heart, red running blood pounding in her veins, the slow in-out of her breathing. A feeling not unlike hunger gnawed at me as she leaned forward and slipped the needle into my flesh. One of her hands came to rest idly on my stomach, just below my breastbone.

Just below the gaping wound where a sharp spear had stabbed the life out of me.

Sometimes I found myself in situations where I thought my reaction might have been different when I was alive. My flesh had little feeling in it -- I could hack through my own leg as dispassionately as if it were happening to someone else -- but near to my death wound the flesh was agonizingly sensitive. I felt as though I could feel her blood beating through the veins in her fingertips, the warmth of them against my cold skin. Gently she began to stitch up the wound with my injured foot laying in her lap, intent on her work, humming quietly to herself. There was something startlingly intimate about the situation. I wondered if, when I was alive, I might have felt something different than the fierce urge growing in the pit of my stomach, the hunger I felt when I had starved myself of living flesh for too long. I wanted to tear her open and bury my tongue in her warm viscera. I wanted her so much my teeth ached.

I drew in a breath that rattled in my lungs. I didn't need to breath, but it was comforting sometimes.

Had I lusted after other women when I was alive? Was this vague sense of familiarity a memory of some time I'd sat like this with a lover?

"Lovely work," Caedis murmured. "What a waste to send a ghoul like you out to terrorize farmers." Her fingers against my chest moved idly upwards, underneath the rough linen of my tunic, toying with the broken edge of a rib that stuck out just below my breast. The sensation was so intense I couldn't stop myself from letting out a tiny hiss of surprise. She looked up from her suturing with a small smile. "Sorry. Curiosity. May I see it?"

Her closeness, the thrum of living flesh so near to me, was getting unbearable, but she hadn't finished with my leg yet. And...at any rate, she had already proven that she could pin me in place with her magic, should she choose to. I'd have to throw her off her guard somehow if I was going to murder her, not leap in with my claws like a mindless animal.

I nodded to her, and she slid my tunic from my shoulders until it fell and pooled around my waist. Her eyes raked across my torso, taking everything in -- my ashen skin, my breasts lying still and cold, and the spear-wound that ran all the way through my body just below them. It was gruesome, even to me. I tried to keep it covered.

The way Caedis looked at me, though, I might have been any pretty young wench she'd decided to coax out for a tumble in the hay. "Lovely," she said, stroking along the edge of the wound. I shuddered. She must have noticed, because she did it again. "Master Balefyre was a hack, but even he could manage a nice clean murder from time to time." I arched my back a bit, her fingers pressing against the shard of bone again, and I felt her other hand leave my half-finished wounded leg and press against my mouth. Her palm felt fever-hot on my cold lips.

"You want a bite?" she said. Gods above, I did. I wanted to tear her apart. "You can, if you want." I didn't understand why she was doing this. "Just a little. I know the taste will sate your hunger for a little while." I opened my mouth and she pressed the heel of her hand inside, up against my teeth, close enough to taste the salt of her skin with my dry tongue. "A show of good faith, yeah?"

I needed no other encouragement. I bit. Her flesh parted easily beneath my teeth. She squealed girlishly, half pain and half some kind of mad delight, and climbed forward. She was practically in my lap now; blood flooded my mouth, and the feeling of living flesh on my tongue and living hands on my body was overwhelming. I was reeling.

I reached out for her, growling deep in my throat, and both my hands closed around her midsection. Dead as I was, I felt closer to being alivethan I ever had since I'd been ripped from my grave as I bit into her shoulder. She yelped in surprise and closed her hand around my bony wrist, dragging downwards. Her robe had been hiked up almost to her hips by now, and she was naked beneath it.

If I was going to kill her, I needed her fully distracted. This wasn't exactly the plan I had in mind for that, but it was a far more interesting direction.

I'd never tried to see if everything between my legs still worked -- I hadn't exactly felt the urge, and necromancy had twisted my fingers into claws more suited for ripping out throats than getting off. Caedis seemed to have a different opinion; at any rate, she didn't seem to mind when I slid my hand underneath her. Quite the opposite, actually -- she pressed herself down onto my palm, sliding slick and wet across my hand, back and forth. The points of my claws scritched across the curve of her rear, leaving red trails.

"You're insane," I whispered, my mouth still full of her blood. Her hands raked through my brittle hair.

"That's what my master told me," she murmured. She was grinding up against my hand now, my thumb firmly pressed against her clit, coating my palm with living warmth. Every move she made took her perilously close to goring herself on my claws, but if the noises she'd made when I bit her were anything to go by, that was only an encouragement. "You're beautiful, though. Beautiful." I couldn't tell if she was talking about my appearance or my necromantic construction; maybe it didn't matter. "Serve me. Please."

"You can just take me," I growled. Our foreheads were nearly touching now. "Control me."

"I don't want to. Do you know how rare it is for a ghoul to keep its mind one its creator is dead? There's something about you. Something special. I want--I want to find--" Her voice was starting to tremble as she approached climax; with a predator's senses I could feel her muscles clench inside her, hear the rush of blood as her face grew flushed, nearly taste the heavy scent of blood and sex in the air. That and the not-quite-satisfied hunger gnawing at my belly, a ghoul's eternal drive to rip and tear and devour like a swarm of locusts, could almost fill the void left by my complete lack of real, human arousal.

Caedis was still talking. "I'm going to pull the Lord of Bones off his throne -- I'm going to be queen of the dead -- I'm going to b-be the greatest necr--Oh! Oh!" She gasped girlishly and pulled me in for a kiss as she came, her tongue slipping past my teeth to taste her own blood coating the inside of my otherwise dry mouth. She shuddered against me, the tips of her breasts dragging along the wound in my chest, and we fell backwards together in a wet, gory heap. It was a gruesome parody of lovemaking -- two monsters rutting ten feet away from a corpse -- but I swore I could almost feel my dead heart pounding in my chest.

It was only after a few moments of lying there listening to her breathing that I realized I'd damned well forgotten to murder her.

"Show of good faith?" I asked. She laughed, and for the first time I thought it sounded pleasant, or at least that I wouldn't mind hearing it a little more.

"I can control you. You can kill me. We've done neither." She pushed herself into a sitting position beside me, and I lay looking up at her. "I think that settles the matter as much as any ritual of binding, and it's far more fun besides. I can raise a mindless army whenever I want. I'd rather have..." she trailed off, again admiring me. "...allies."

Allies. For a creature who saw the world divided into 'living' and 'dead' and yet was neither, for whom the only relationship that could exist was between mindless predator and fleeing prey, it was unthinkably close to affection.

"I think," I muttered as Caedis curled up around me, "that I won't kill you for now."

"I think," the necromancer said, resting her hand on my cold stomach, "that we're going to get along famously."