The Necromancer ✓

Chapter Fourteen

The darkness gathered back into itself, so that all around me was a hazy grey light, like the sky just before the dawn. In front of me, though, the darkness became solid. Corporeal. The darkness made itself into a cloaked woman, and she was walking towards me.

"The wild hunt," she said, as though no time had passed between then and our last conversation. For all she seemed to care, I was asleep in the bath again, rather than unconscious and god knew where.

"I have to find Kieran," I said. "I have to-"

"All you have to do," the woman said. Her voice echoed around me with the power of a thousand voices still, but it seemed that one voice was stronger now. So strong that it made the other voices sound weak and insignificant. The weird thing was, there was something achingly familiar about that voice. I could have sworn I'd heard it somewhere before. Somewhere in real life. "Is look."

Her body drifted apart again, like smoke blown on the wind. Only, instead of smoke, I was embraced by a cloud of darkness. It surrounded me in such a dark inky blackness it may as well have been solid.

"Look," I heard her whisper in my ear. A bed formed up out of the darkness. A huge, ornate four poster, with thick blankets and billowy curtains around it. I took a step closer and saw, lying in the middle of that giant bed, a man. An old man. His hands clutched at the blanket, looking frail and thin. His eyes were wide in the darkness and a sliver of moonlight glanced off the white of his eyes.

"Who's there?" he asked. His voice trembled.

"I'm Laur--," I started, trying to find a way to explain myself that wouldn't sound completely made up.

"Oh, it's you," he said. He was looking past me. A man had entered his room. He was tall, but I couldn't quite make out his face.

"Who?" I asked. The shadows wrapped around the man thinned, somewhat but I still couldn't make out his features. I frowned.

"We aren't," the voice in my ear gasped, "strong enough."

The shadowed man sat down on the edge of the bed. He picked up one of the old man's pillows.

"I don't need another one," the old man said, waving the pillow away. I guess he was expecting the shadowy figure to prop him up with the extra pillow. Instead, the man that I couldn't see pressed the pillow over the old man's face.

I ran forward. I tried to pull the pillow off the old man's face, tried to pull the other man away, but my gestures were useless. I couldn't touch anything. My hands slid through the pillow. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't change things.

I may as well have been a ghost, for all the difference I made. Oh god, I thought, what if I was? What if that blow to the head had killed me? What if I were dead? For all I knew, I was. It's not like I'd ever bothered to ask anyone what death felt like. What if this was it?

"Good night," the shadowed man said, letting the pillow fall away from the old man's face. The old man's eyes were closed. His veins stood out in sharp contrast and his breath was nonexistent. He was still. Silent. I knew enough of death to recognise it when it was in front of me. The shadowed man leant down and kissed him on the forehead. He whispered a single word that seemed to echo in the darkness.

"Grandfather."

Then the darkness solidified around me again and everything went still and silent once more.

First there was sound. It was hazy, far away sounding like the noise was fighting its way through a blizzard to get to me. Then came the pain, like a searchlight, pulsing through my skull in long sweeping motions that pushed the sound away. I opened my eyes and the room was spinning around me.