Inheritance - The Dark Sorcerers: Book 1

Chapter 17: Raising the Dead

Blood trickled from the Dark Sorcerer's mouth, his blue eyes wide open while he looked down at the spear that was buried in his chest. His long, trembling fingers danced across the spear's pole, as if he still couldn't believe what he was seeing. Rowan pulled the weapon back out and the Sorcerer sank to his knees, crimson blood gushing from the gaping wound.

"No!" It took me a few seconds before I realized that the high, desperate scream had come from my mouth. Rowan turned to me, shocked, but I paid no attention to him as I dropped to my knees next to the Sorcerer, my hand pressing on the wound in a vain attempt to stop the bleeding.

The Sorcerer's fingers found my chin and pushed it upward so that I looked him in the eye. His voice was weak but determined when he spoke, "Your time will come." After those words, his eyes fluttered shut and his head fell aside. His lips vibrated with one last breath, the air ruffling a loose strand of hair that dangled in front of my face.

My hand slipped off his chest, covered in thick, viscous blood. I stared at it for a while, my thoughts a complete mess. What had just happened? Why did I feel so ... lost?

"Kenna, what are you doing?"

Rowan's voice awoke me from my trance. A sudden, illogical anger rose up within me as I dragged myself to my feet, using the skirt of my dress to wipe the blood off my hand. I raised my eyes at my companion. Confusion was all over his face, expressed by his furrowed brow and slightly parted lips.

"Kenna, what's wrong? I don't understand—"

"No, you don't," I snapped. "Just ... pick him up so that we can bury him in the woods before the other Dark Sorcerers find him." I turned around and strode toward the cemetery's entrance, the gates opening by themselves on my command. The rustling of clothes behind me indicated that Rowan was doing what I had instructed him to do.

I refused to look at him, partly because I was mad at him, but also because I didn't even understand myself why I reacted this way. Why did I mourn for a Dark Sorcerer, someone whose evil was woven into every fiber of his being? Someone who wanted to lure me into joining the Dark Side and wrecking our world? With just a few well-chosen words, the Sorcerer had succeeded in planting a seed of doubt within my mind, turning my thoughts into a complete mess.

My feet carried me to a fork in the path that wound through the cemetery. I came to a halt and looked around. All the tombstones shared the same appearance: simple and gray, with a name and a date carved into the stone. Some of them were decorated with flowers, others were eroded by the ravages of time, the names of the deceased erased from memory. Nothing suggested that a powerful Seer had been buried in this place.

I cursed. We didn't have the time to walk past all of the graves and check the names. In my frustration, I made the mistake of looking at Rowan. He stood a few feet away, the Dark Sorcerer's corpse thrown over his shoulder. His face was the reflection of the sky on a stormy day: jaw set, lips pressed into a thin line, brows knitted together and dark eyes that forecast a heated argument if I dared to open my mouth right now.

So he was pissed with me for being pissed with him. Whatever.

My eyes drifted back to the graves, but I didn't expect to get any wiser from just looking at them from this spot. There had to be something that I could do.

You can raise the dead ... Perhaps that means that you can sense spirits as well?

I frowned. Did it really work like that? My knowledge of the Afterlife was rather limited, but I did know that spirits didn't usually linger on earth unless they were summoned. Still, what choice did I have? It was better than just standing here waiting for a miracle to happen.