Marked by Death

By Kaje Harper

Asking a necromancer for help is scary; falling for him may be downright terrifying.

Darien Green's afraid he's going insane. The voices in his head are getting louder, weirder, and more numerous. But tattoos appearing on his skin say that there might be a magical reason, something other than his own brain going around the bend. He's worked up the nerve to ask the local necromancer for help. Now he just has to survive his encounter with tall, dark, and talks-to-ghosts.

Necromancer Silas Thornwood doesn't appreciate being woken out of his bed by a stranger pounding on his door. But when that stranger turns out to be a half-frozen young man with an unexpected appeal, Silas can't turn him away. Even Grim, his cat-familiar, agrees— in a world of death and demons, protecting gorgeous, ghost-ridden Darien is Silas's next difficult job.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kaje Harper
• Release date: Oct 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005751692

Kaje Harper

I get asked about my name a lot. It's not something exotic, though. “Kaje” is pronounced just like “cage” – it’s an old nickname, and my pronouns are she/her/hers.I was born in Montreal but I've lived for 30 years in Minnesota, where the two seasons are Snow-removal and Road-repair, where the mosquito is the state bird, and where winter can be breathtakingly beautiful. Minnesota’s a kind, quiet (if sometimes chilly) place and it’s home.I’ve been writing far longer than I care to admit (*whispers – forty years*), mostly for my own entertainment, usually M/M romance (with added mystery, fantasy, historical, SciFi...) I also have a few Young Adult stories (some released under the pen name Kira Harp.)My husband finally convinced me that after all the years of writing for fun, I really should submit something, somewhere. My first professionally published book, Life Lessons, came out from MLR Press in May 2011. I have a weakness for closeted cops with honest hearts, and teachers who speak their minds, and I had fun writing four novels and three freebie short stories in that series. I was delighted and encouraged by the reception Mac and Tony received.I now have a good-sized backlist in ebooks and print, both free and professionally published, including Amazon bestseller "The Rebuilding Year" and Rainbow Award Best Mystery-Thriller "Tracefinder: Contact." A complete list with links can be found on my website "Books" page at https://kajeharper.wordpress.com/books/.I'm always pleased to have readers find me online at:Website: https://kajeharper.wordpress.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KajeHarperGoodreads Author page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4769304.Kaje_Harper

Book preview

Chapter 1

Darien woke screaming. The instant he could move, he rolled over and stuffed his pillow into his mouth, trying to muffle the sounds, choking against his own wild breaths.

The nightmare tried to claw him back in, a new voice inside his head chittering about cats and stairs and dark places. The other voices were quieter, as if making room for the additional rider, but he could hear them shifting around in there, grunting or moaning a word. He clutched his head between his hands and pressed, wishing he could squeeze them out of his skull.

On cue, a loud thumping from below marked Mrs. Gordon deploying her broomstick. Shit. She’d said one more loud night, and he’d be out on his ear, rent or no rent. He flipped the pillow over his head, as if that would make a difference. A few more thumps, and silence reigned outside his head. Inside his head— double shit.

Crying, begging, cursing, strange laughter.

He forced himself upright— no way he was going to sleep again tonight. Things shifted in his skull, voices that almost made sense, hiding around the corners of his mind. He set his bare feet on the ice-cold floor, hoping the shock would do… something. Jump-start his brain, send the voices running, hell, stop his heart. At this point he didn’t much care.

All it did was chill his toes. He shuddered and eased out of bed. Tugging at the ratty blanket, he pulled it free of the mattress and wrapped it around himself, though it did very little to ease the cold inside him. As quietly as he could, he went to get a drink of water from the chipped sink in the corner, but when he got there, the mirror glittered at him, reflecting the neon lights through the cheap curtains. Red, yellow, red, yellow— no words, broken up by the fabric, just a flicker of malevolent fire.

Like the fires of hell.

He gave his own unshaven cheek a slap, because fuck the melodrama. He might be going crazy, but damned if he was going to drag religion into it. Bending to the sink, he let the water drip almost silently into his palms, until he’d gathered enough to splash his face. He took his mug from the ledge and opened the tap to a slightly faster flow. The pipes groaned, and he echoed them, as Mrs. Gordon thumped her ceiling again.

Losing the room for sure.

Well, at least that settled his mind. He’d been here almost a week, circling the drain, unable to pull the trigger, but tonight was like a last sucker-punch from the universe. Time to find the necromancer.

Before he could convince himself his problems were all in his head— ha, like they aren’t? —he dropped the blanket and peered at the side of his neck where his skin itched and felt tight. A thin wand of gray crept from the neck of his shirt up the line of his jugular vein. His hands shook, despite everything, as he pulled the shirt away from his collarbone. Underneath it, the dark wand resolved into the tail of a cat, walking away, tattooed on his skin. A tattoo he hadn’t worn when he went to bed. Just like the rest of them.

He clenched his fingers together to keep from clawing at it. He’d tried. That second one— the speedboat on his arm— he’d cut and burned. He’d scraped it from his skin till he bled raw. And as he healed it’d reformed over the damaged skin, darker, warped, bigger maybe. He’d stopped trying.

How insane was his life that instead of heading to a payphone and calling a doctor or psychiatrist, he was considering… magic? But what would a doctor do, except stick him in an insane asylum for hearing voices? I have people screaming about their death in my head. This might be the modern era of color TV and rocket launches, but the tattoos creeping across his skin suggested magic wasn’t just a bad joke on Johnny Carson. Maybe the dark whispers were right, and the necromancer was more than just a guy who exorcised poltergeists. Maybe he could help somehow.

Don’t wait. Go now.

He smacked his forehead. That was crazy. The night outside was dark and icy. The necromancer’s house was a mile out of town, along slippery streets where desperate people might mug him for the clothes on his back.

Crazy is as crazy does.

Without giving himself more time to think, he dropped the blanket back on the bed and pulled on his jacket. Socks and battered loafers took only a moment, since he slept in most of his clothes for warmth anyway. Almost everything else he owned was in his suitcase, and it was fast work to add the battered novel from his bedside, his comb and toothbrush and the mug. For a second he hesitated, eyeing the bed. He was so tired. Even if she kicked him out in the morning, he could still rest a few more hours.

Something inside his skull hissed, more water-on-a-stove than a cat sound, and someone else groaned.

Fuck rest.

The stairs creaked as he went down them, but it didn’t matter now. He was tempted to leave the downstairs door unlocked on his way out, but he held no grudge against the people sleeping in the other rooms. He battled the sticky lock shut and stuck the key in his pocket. Mrs. Gordon could worry about changing the lock tomorrow. She could pay for it out of the three days’ rent he’d abandoned.

The neon of the Girls, Girls, Girls XXX next door splashed red and gold on the slick sidewalk. Inside the building, the faint thump of a bass music line echoed, still two hours before closing. He turned away from it, heading toward the outskirts of town, the pavement treacherous under his worn loafers.

Squat three-story buildings loomed over him, cheap boarding houses and small iron-barred stores with apartments above. Most of the windows were dark, hardworking folk already in bed or not wanting to pay for the power. The few streetlights were widely spaced apart and some were broken. He moved from one pool of light to the next, his senses on high alert.

Things scuttled in the dark of an alley. Like in my head, lurking— he forced himself to pay attention. If he’d wanted to get his skull bashed in, there were easier choices than creeping through the icy streets at midnight, with the cold wind freezing the back of his neck. His pulse raced in his throat and his chest tightened. He clutched the knife in his pocket and straightened his shoulders. Nothing to see here. Too poor to rob, too much trouble to rape, no fun to chase.

Either the motion had merely been rats, or the lurkers hadn’t thought much of him as prey, because he passed by and nothing came up behind him, no one called out or ran. He moved to the next circle of light, and the next, his heart gradually slowing back to normal.

After a dozen blocks, the buildings began spacing out. Stores lost their guardian bars, and the smells of urine and beer and cabbage and rot gave way to something cold and clean. Single homes sat on small lots behind grass and actual trees.

I came from this once. It shouldn’t be a surprise. But it had been a long time since he’d been out this way.

His teeth chattered as the wind picked up, whipping through the spaces between the houses. The hoot of an owl startled him so much he slipped and went down, cracking one hip hard on the sidewalk. The shock reverberated through him. Like glass when it cracks. He lay still for a moment, working up the energy to move.

The only thing cracked is your brain. Get up off your ass. Don’t be a quitter.

He rolled over, elbows on the freezing cement that sucked the heat right through his jacket.

I could just lie here. They’d find me frozen in the morning… except he wasn’t sure what they would find. The voices in his head were getting loud and excited. Were they afraid their host was dying, or anticipating the moment he’d vacate his skull and leave them to own it?

To hell with that. He pushed to his feet, and returned to setting one step after another. A yard, a block, three.

The houses ended. And there on the hill, picturesquely silhouetted against a fucking crescent moon, was the old Vickery place. The new powerful necromancer’s place, if the crazy whispers he’d laughed at were right.

They say he speaks to the dead, and takes payment in human flesh. They say he summons demons, and will tell your future if you bring enough money.

Well, they also said the moon was made of green cheese, and the Mayor cared about his citizens. Anyone who believed rumors got what he deserved. Besides, if Darien wasn’t insane— if the voices in his head were ghosts or demons, not just his brain slipping off its moorings— speaking to the dead still made the necromancer the man to go to. Darien clenched his chattering teeth, hugged his coat tightly to himself, and trudged on.

He was so miserably cold, so narrowed down to just taking that next step, that he was almost up the hill before he registered that the ground was rising under his feet. He stopped and looked up. The old house was a crazy mess of turrets and balconies, and for all he knew, flying buttresses. Like someone took a drunk architect on Halloween and told him, Build me a mansion. Tonight, every window loomed sightless and dark. The moon, dancing between clouds, lit a spire here and a railing there, in a glitter of icy fantasy.

It seemed so unreal, he had to pinch himself to be sure it wasn’t another nightmare, lost in this cold quest while the place he needed to go hung out of reach.

Ouch. Okay, either real, or he’d learned to dream about pinching himself.

The front steps were slick with ice. He let go of his knife, pulling his hand out of his pocket to grip the iron railing, and hauled himself upward. The chill bit his fingers through the holes in his gloves. At the top, a tall, arched double door frowned down on him, daring him to drag his scrawny carcass through its hallowed portal. If doors could dare people—

Maybe I’m losing it. He laughed, and the sound could’ve been sold for some horror movie soundtrack. Definitely losing it. He reached for the doorbell.

He’d expected to find it hard to cross that last inch, to push the bell and summon the necromancer those rare believers spoke of in hushed whispers. But freezing to death was a good reason to skip the dramatic pauses. He stabbed at the button with a shaking finger.

Somewhere inside, a double chime rang. He laughed, a bit less weirdly this time, because he’d been expecting the necromancer’s doorbell to toll like the church of the damned, not say ding-dong. When there was no answer after a minute, he pushed it again. And again. And again. And again.

Then in a rhythm; a rapid tattoo; a long forceful shove that translated to a single ding.

Damn you, you bastard. He pounded on the door. I’m not dying on your doorstep with my head full of shit because you’re too comfortable in bed to answer the damned door.

Let me in! He stamped feet so numb he heard the sound, but felt nothing, and thumped the door harder. Hey, you, necroguy! Let me the fuck in!

The door sneered down on him, unmoving, and he thumped it with his fists, then his feet. Open up! Let me in. Let me in. His voice shook with cold and anger and something breaking inside him, because if this didn’t work, he could feel the bits of his mind getting ragged around the edges. Things stalked in there, more every week, months of building from a whisper to a cacophony. Something had to give— his fists, his body, his mind, the door—

The door suddenly swung open, staggering him. He fell inward, so off-balance that he couldn’t catch himself. As he passed through the portal, from the icy cold and dark to the warm, gold glow of a hallway, something hit him like a blow. His whole body rang, a gong stuck, a lid slammed shut. He landed on a wooden floor, the boards a little dusty and scuffed where his face smooshed up against them. A few inches from his nose, two large feet in felted slippers took a step backward.

He had a thousand questions, apologies, pleas, but all he could think— all he could say— was It’s so quiet in here. For the first time in months, nothing whispered behind his eyes. No hissing, no curses, no garble of words or grunts or threats. He closed his eyes, savoring his aloneness. Quiet.

A deep voice said something that echoed in his brain and passed through without leaving anything behind. I should get up. Ask for help. But a dark muffling softness smothered light, and sound, and then thought.

Chapter 2

Silas stared down at the stranger on his floor. He fell through the wards! Although apparently they’d knocked him out in the process. The recoil from that power surge throbbed in Silas’s temples, but not with the huge energy-draw the wards would have demanded to repel a demon. There was no scent of hellfire.

Not possessed by a demon. What is he, though? I should never have opened the door.

He hadn’t planned to. The shouting and battering that woke him had blended for a moment in atavistic dreams of torches and pitchforks, of a mob clamoring for his head, although his dawning common sense said it was almost 1963, and roused citizens would have baseball bats and flashlights, not pitchforks. He’d crept to the window to peer out. Seeing just one guy down there had been a relief that quickly changed to fury. He’d marched downstairs to open the door and yell in the bastard’s face and slam him out. Maybe with an arcane shove down the steps.

But then he fell in. And passed out cold.

Speaking of cold— the stranger’s feet hung over the threshold, keeping the door ajar, and the icy chill was sucking the heat out of the house. Silas gave a half-second’s thought to rolling the man out again before shutting it.

He’d freeze to death.

And how is that my problem?

He couldn’t bring himself to do it. Some dreaded necromancer you are.

He took hold of the guy under the arms and dragged him a few feet forward. He was lighter than Silas expected, like maybe he hadn’t eaten in a while, and he breathed shallowly. A ratty suitcase lay partially under him and Silas shoved it to the side. The vicious wind cut off as he bumped the door shut. Despite his curiosity, he took a moment to reset the door wards. Weaving the pattern pulled more power from him, and he clutched the door frame for a moment, before bending to roll his uninvited guest over.

Well, now, he’s worth getting out of bed for. The man was young, not much over twenty, with perfectly-shaped full lips and high cheekbones under a scruff of unshaved beard. A few wisps of straight, dark hair fell from under the knit cap he wore. He was bundled in