Earth: Giants Golems & Gargoyles Page 2

  “Your employer usually keeps you looming. You must want something.”

  Frank’s cheek twitched. He’d hoped he wasn’t that transparent. “I wanted a beer but then these shits got delusions of grandeur.”

  Camilla looked to the bartender. “Audrey, another for our guest. One for me as well. Call my pack to . . . escort these three out.”

  Audrey nodded, no trace of snark on either face this time.

  Frank didn’t like asking questions about what necromancers were up to, because nobody liked the answers. Why the fuck would you stick twenty different dead soldiers together to make me? Frank knew the answer to that one, power, but it didn’t stop him from asking the question damn near daily.

  “Got slammed by a walking grave.”

  “Grave golem,” Camilla said without hesitation. “I could taste the magic animating the dirt.”

  “Who’s controlling it?”

  “Something for something and nothing for nothing, my friend.” She smiled her shark-like grin. “And I’ve already given you something.”

  Figures. “What do you want?”

  “What do you offer?”

  They could go back and forth all night. Frank drained his beer and signalled for another. The bartender’s goat head screamed at him, but the rest of her went to the cellar without complaint.

  “My blood would kill most folks. Poison, they say. Not to you, I imagine.”

  “I have a robust constitution,” Camilla said with a laugh. She rolled the bottom edge of her can over the bar and finished it. “I’m intrigued. What’s in this deal for you?”

  Frank smiled. Suspicion was good. The faster she leapt at the offer, the less likely he could trust her. Camilla probably still had an angle—she was crooked as a dog’s hind leg, but he doubted she wanted him dead. Or deader, anyway. He’d have to convince her.

  “Just a name. The golem’s creator. And where to find him.”

  “You’re so precious.” She patted his cheek and it took all his will not to break her hand. “I could. Eat. You. Up. I don’t know his true name, or where he is at the moment, but in my circle, they call him Digger.”

  Digger. Perfect. Another round arrived. The bartender set an empty shot glass beside it.

  “You’ve felt it,” Camilla said. “The call of the void.”

  Frank didn’t answer.

  “I think you have. You have supped with death. And you want another taste.”

  Frank bit his cheek. Hard. And spat in the glass. “There’s your first taste.”

  HE KNEW WHAT he faced. Golems had creators. The grave golem wasn’t the problem. The man in the hat, “Digger,” he was the problem. Frank didn’t need to wait long for Woj’s pick up.

  “The first thing a rogue necromancer does is seek out their own mortician.”

  “Well it’s not me,” Woj said defensively.

  “Protest much?” Frank said.

  “Why do you have to drag me along?” Woj asked.

  “You need to nut up, Snowman, if you want to ride with me.”

  “First: I don’t want to ride with you. Second: It’s my car. You’re riding with me.”

  “That’s the spirit.” Frank cocked a finger pistol. “You’re a shady mortician—”

  “That’s what my card says,” Woj said dryly.

  “Ha, fucking ha. I figured you’d know where to start.”

  “We’re businesses. We compete for clients. Sunside. Graveside. We don’t exactly play poker with each other.”

  “You know the locals, yeah? Who’s the worst of the bunch?”

  Woj sighed. “I have an idea.”

  THE FIRST TWO morticians seemed Jake. As Jake as could be, given they tried to sell Frank spare parts he didn’t need. Frank grew angrier at the thought, but those two wouldn’t be working any funerals today. Their offer, and his visit to Camilla got him thinking. Of who he’d been. Why he’d been made. Maybe he wasn’t so different from the golem. Dead flesh instead of dead earth. He tapped the dash hard enough to make Woj wince.

  Frank didn’t know how his squad had been chosen, or why, but he remembered what they were chosen for. Dark shit. The kinda stuff that’d make a billy goat puke.

  He didn’t remember much of what they’d made him do. Thankfully. The boss said his new consciousness hadn’t fully formed. Still, he knew he’d done it. His memories of the old lives he’d lived were scattered. Images mostly. The worst were always the families. Intimate flashes, love and happiness he knew he’d never see again.

  Damn near nothing could hurt him, so nothing could kill him. So far. In the meantime, he worked for a necromancer better than the rest. Tried to do good. As much good as one could in their world.

  Woj interrupted his brooding. “My life went to shit once I ended up working Graveside too.”

  “You want shit? I remember dying twenty times. Twenty goddamned times. I don’t know which memories are me—” Frank tapped his head– “and which belong to some other dead guy I’m made outta. Christ, I don’t know if I should cheer for the Leafs or the Habs.”

  “I cheer for the Devils.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Look, I recognize the face you’re pulling. I’ve been there.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Woj kept talking. “The nightmares for me are the worst. The powerlessness. I want to fight back. But when I reach for courage, it’s just not there. I’m . . . empty.”

  Frank snorted. “You let me in the car. Brave in my book.”

  Woj chuckled mirthlessly. “That’s not brave. Brave would’ve been telling you to go fuck yourself and find a different ride.”

  “No,” Frank said. “That would’ve been stupid.”

  DAYLIGHT CREPT INTO the sky. Frank pulled a hat low over his mismatched eyes and a bandana over his jaw. The first two morticians may have been a bust, the third, however, based in Winnipeg’s west end, had a black 1970 Cadillac Eldorado parked outside with out-of-province plates. Frank watched the mortician’s assistants—a man and a woman—shuffle folding chairs around, wearing jackets that matched the business’s purple awning.

  Woj whistled at the car. “Now there’s a ride.”

  “Yeah, nothing like having your car scream ‘I’m an evil necromancer.’”

  Woj shuddered at the word necromancer. “I can’t go in there with you.”

  “You’d only get in my way.”

  Frank’s door was half open before Woj said, “They’re not open yet.”

  “They’ll open for me.”

  A tall, lean stringy-haired guy dressed as a Wild West undertaker walked past the window, complete with dirty shovel and leather side bag. “There’s our guy.”

  “Who?”

  Now Frank was doubly sure. Necromancer invisibility lets them run around wearing their robes and cloaks and being gother-than-goth without drawing any mortal side eye; 1880s undertaker complete with duster and wide-brimmed hat was just the kinda look those fuckers would go for. That, and walking around downtown Winnipeg carrying a fucking bloody shovel and nobody being the fucking wiser. Nobody but Frank. Their invisibility didn’t work so well on him.

  “What guy?” Woj repeated.

  Frank gestured toward the undertaker. “The invisible numbnuts.”

  Woj shivered, but got the point. “What if another golem’s in there?”

  Frank shrugged. “Doubt there’s enough dust bunnies in there to make one and we’re a good ways from a graveyard.”

  “Your funeral.”

  “Heh.” He nodded at Woj. “Keep the car running. I’m going in.”

  Frank jerked the funeral home’s door open, snapping the dead bolt and pins. The mortician, a suited woman in her fifties, scrambled behind Digger while her purple-jacketed assistants yelped and skittered behind her.

  “Catch you pricks at a bad time?”

  Digger hurled a handful of earth from his bag at Frank. “Stop!”

  Frank stopped dead. He tried to wipe his face, tried to advance, and couldn’t.
Digger’s spade lit up, blinding bright, and Frank’s stitches glowed to match it.

  “You thought you couldn’t be hurt? Couldn’t be stopped?” Digger dropped his bag and backhanded Frank with the shovel, knocking him prone. “You believe you’re immune to magic. There are ways to control you. Your body belongs to the earth. To me. Go to sleep.”

  Frank had a brief moment to be thankful Woj wasn’t there to say I told you so, and the lights went out.

  IT’D BEEN A long fucking time since Frank’d had his bell rung.

  When he blinked the cobwebs away he was inside a mausoleum. Alone. No sign of Woj. And the place was warded. He could tell by the faint itchy sensation on his skin. Wards didn’t mean much to him. Most necromancer magic disappeared off him like a fart in the wind. He hurled himself at the door. It held.

  “Shoulda known. If he could knock me out, he could keep me in.”

  Frank gave the door another kick to be certain. May as well have kicked a bank vault. He stewed, pacing the confines for what felt like an hour. His watch said it’d been ten minutes. After another ten, the door creaked open. Digger flashed him a yellow-toothed grin.

  “Your friend had quite the lead foot.” The grin stretched. “Had.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  Digger brushed Frank’s shoulder with his shovel. It was a light touch—a ghost’s whisper—and he shuddered as if he was covered in bugs. Creeping, crawling bugs, trying to burrow into his body. His mind. His soul. He felt . . . sifted.

  Torn apart into his constituent parts. No, not parts. People. Frank felt them all now, in a way he hadn’t since he’d first woken in that cult hidey-hole back in Afghanistan. They’d been roaring in his brain then. Now . . . they were quieter. And yet, more distinct.

  “Come,” Digger said, turning and walking away.

  Frank followed, dragged as if tethered to the shovel. He didn’t recognize the boneyard they’d dragged him to, but it was dark again. Memories bubbled and popped out of his mind as he walked, silent. Helpless. The sensation made Frank think Digger was hunting for something specific. Memories and experiences were discarded as quickly as they were encountered. Digger knew what he wanted and hadn’t found it yet.

  But what?

  Why?

  Digger didn’t care who he’d been before he’d been made. And didn’t care who he was now, only what he’d been when he’d first woken. A fine distinction. Only one time period interested Digger: the span after his creation when he had been bound. Digger wanted to see how he’d been made. And controlled. How he could make Frank his.

  Clever. Frank was surprised he’d noticed.

  He wanted Frank to be hollow. A shell. No better than a grave golem. Frank’s fist clenched. He strained to slow his steps. Break the tether; regain control. He couldn’t. His limbs were numb. Frank clawed for a memory. Any memory. A kid on a bike. His kid? Or him? A smiling woman, a proud man. Every snapshot of a past life he saved meant three others lost.

  He’d thought nothing could kill him. Maybe what Digger wanted for him would be better. The supernatural power that’d infused him kept him going. His heart beat once per minute—if that—pushing the poison his bugeating creators had given him for blood through his veins. His stitches hurt. His mind hurt. His soul hurt. And he didn’t know why, or how, he could still feel any of it.

  Digger stopped at a spiralling circle of stones. Behind the circle, a freshly filled grave dashed any confidence Woj had gotten away. A coffin had roughly ten minutes to five and a half hours of air. Assuming a buried person didn’t panic. At least, that’s what the boss had told Frank. But Woj was also the panicky sort which changed the numbers, and not to the good.

  “Kneel.”

  Frank knelt. The mortician and her assistants laid out the stones, adding to the circle, after scratching symbols on them.

  “Grave golems don’t last. Or, rather, the bodies I build them around don’t last. Their power is based on their host’s spirit, and with your power? I have more permanent plans for you.”

  “Those plans better involve taking my boots off before I shove my foot up your ass.”

  Digger smiled and let dirt trickle through his fingers and back into his bag. “I tracked your first death. Blood-drenched earth, that. I could still feel the pain.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Digger tossed dirt at Frank while he spoke. “These stones came from cairns belonging to soldiers. Warriors without name now. With you, there’s no necromancer who could match me. No city I couldn’t take. No score I couldn’t settle.”

  When Frank’s entire body was dusted with the ground of his first death, Digger dropped a cairn stone at Frank’s feet. The runic bullshit they’d scratched on it didn’t mean shit to him but the stone wobbled and danced, clattering up Frank’s body and stopping on his chest at an impossible angle. It shouldn’t have held there, but it did. Another stone joined the first, then another.

  There were many more to go.

  FRESHLY REINTERRED IN a living cairn, Frank knew what came after death. He knew what waited in that dark. And there was no angelic choir, no pointy-tailed red devils either. Once Digger made him a blank slate, Frank wasn’t coming back. He’d be a slave. A tool.

  A memory struck him like dust in his eye. A voice, half-forgotten. Frank held on to the words by mouthing the words Camilla had said, “You’ve felt the call of the void.”

  Yeah, he had. Damn near every day. Working helped. Responsibility. Purpose. He’d had that in all his previous lives in the military. He’d been left in charge. Watching the gates.

  And you fucked it up.

  Purpose twisted in Frank’s guts, opening a loathing torrent. Hate. Directed, as usual, at himself. The desire to be done. Finished. He tried to feel his heartbeat, sighed when he couldn’t.

  Purpose.

  Woj was probably already dead. Buried.

  Frank felt buried too. Was buried.

  Dead.

  Dead, so many times over.

  The stitches in his arms burned.

  His only thought: he needed to fight.

  He remembered how to fight.

  He was made to fight.

  “You wanna feel alive, go find somebody to hit,” Frank muttered to the stones.

  Digger wanted to take him back to when he’d been created? Fine. There was nothing he hated more than the cultists who’d made him. Frank’s nose filled with the stink of gunpowder, his ears twitched from phantom reports. Blood. Screams. Sensory overload. They’d been ambushed. He never saw who did it but he remembered his makers’ grins, siblings to Digger’s smile. They were the same. Except Frank’s creators were dead, and Digger wasn’t.

  Yet.

  His chest ached, heart thudding.

  Alive.

  Time to kick some ass.

  Frank tore a rock off his chest. It came free with a squelch, as if he’d ripped out an eye, and he hurled it at the mortician. Her chants stopped with a thud, and she crumbled to the ground. Frank charged Digger, dropping rocks like an old bridge.

  He swung a haymaker and Digger redirected the strike. The fucker was strong for someone so sinewy. Maybe the shovel and undertaker getup wasn’t for show. Didn’t matter. Frank was stronger.

  “You’re gonna need to dig a lot more graves before you can jerk me around, pal.”

  He hurled Digger across the graveyard. The necromancer yelled as he flew but didn’t drop his shovel. Digger grunted when he hit ground, but before Frank could follow, the mortician’s assistants were on him.

  Frank snarled and grabbed the closest—the man—by the clavicle and squeezed. It cracked and he screamed and dropped. Out of the fight. His co-worker yelled and charged Frank with a rune-carved rock. Frank reared back and headbutted her stone as she swung, shattering it. He repeated the action with her nose. Broke that too. Blood gushed and she punched him anyway. Frank broke her wrist and tossed her aside.

  “Get over here,” he yelled at Digger. “We ain’t done.”

  Digge
r smiled, and Frank saw where he’d tossed the necromancer: onto the freshly filled grave. Digger drove his glowing shovel into the turned earth and pushed himself to his feet. A new golem, smaller than the first, rose in front of him.

  “Oh, fuck. C’mon.”

  The earthen wave crested, slamming him to the ground and grave dirt filled Frank’s mouth. He gagged, but didn’t choke. One benefit to being mostly dead: he didn’t need to breathe. It was as if he were swimming underwater. At night. With no fucking moon in the goddamned sky. Every way he pulled himself, the earth resisted him. Woj was in here somewhere, and judging from how fresh the first golem’s body had been, the longer Frank struggled, the more likely Woj would need to hire someone to preside over his own funeral.

  The smaller golem had a harder time containing Frank entirely; his head poked out of the dirt and Digger slammed the shovel into Frank’s head. His ears rang from the impact and he grunted. That’d hurt. Shouldn’t have hurt. Maybe he’d finally found the thing to kill a dead man but he couldn’t quit yet. Not to this loser.

  Digger reared back for another swing and Frank caught the shovel’s haft on its downward arc. The blade cut into his forearm. Frank didn’t bleed, not really, what pulsed through his body wasn’t blood. Some fucking alchemical cocktail. But the cut hurt. Frank growled as Digger tried to tug the shovel away. Frank dragged himself out of the grave golem instead.

  Frank wrenched the shovel free, spun it, and slammed it into Digger. The necromancer yelped and folded over the shovel’s haft. Frank swung again. Digger wailed when the shovel snapped over his back, and lay motionless. The shovel’s light faded.

  The grave golem fell away to nothing. Frank dropped to his knees and dug in a fury, hurling earth wherever it landed. He dug the coffin from the dirt, jerked the nailed lid free, and hauled out a sweaty, drained—but alive—Woj.

  Not sure what else to do with Digger, Frank tossed him into the coffin, rummaged through his coat, and pounded the nails back in with a closed fist.

  “I need a drink,” Woj whispered.