Dreams of the Necromancer (Memento Mori Book 2), page 1
Dreams of the Necromancer
Memento Mori: Book Two
Kathryn Ann Kingsley
Copyright © 2021 by Kathryn Ann Kingsley
First Print Edition: August, 2021
ASIN: B096PVFQ8K
ISBN: 9798454136123
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
Contents
My Literary Agent, Nutmeg.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
To be concluded in
Follow Me!
Also by Kathryn Ann Kingsley
About the Author
My Literary Agent, Nutmeg.
She demanded to finally get her headshot in one of my books.
1
Marguerite dreamed of graves.
So many graves.
None of them were hers.
Most people might find it a relief to stare at the stone guardians in their weathered posts over the moldering remains of the living and to know that the gaping maws cut into the cold, dark earth weren’t meant for them. But it wasn’t a comfort to her.
In her dreams, she walked among the broken angels and chipped crosses with their faded names. She moved from row to row, and all she felt was…lonely. Cemeteries could be desolate places, especially the older ones, as nature worked to erase what was oftentimes the last record of the long-forgotten dead.
Maybe lonely wasn’t the right word for what she felt.
Maybe deserted was a better choice.
Not that the living had abandoned the dead—although, sure, that was true. Many of the family plots were overgrown with weeds and thickets, and the cast iron fences and chains were long rusted and in disrepair. She even saw a tree that had consumed an old footstone, grown around it like slow-moving lava.
No.
It wasn’t the sadness of the living forgetting the dead that made her heart hurt.
It was the fact that she had been abandoned by the dead.
It was as though she were standing on the wood plank of a pier, watching ships sail off to some unknown horizon, knowing she couldn’t ever follow. And even if she could jump off the edge of the structure into the waves, either a cold hand would rip her back…or she’d drown in the waters.
She would never, ever find her way to foreign shores.
She knew that now. Death might come for her someday. But it would be the death that a rock suffers after being worn to sand underneath wind and rain. There would be no afterlife for her. There would be no resurrection. There would only be the void.
All because of him.
He had done this to her. He had tethered her to the shore. Anchored her to the pier and made sure that she would never, ever leave. She didn’t know why. It was a riddle she hadn’t yet solved. It was a riddle she didn’t know if she should solve. Or even if she wanted to try.
Her long, black dress whispered against the grass and dirt as she walked through the rows of stones. Sun filtered through the trees, casting gently moving patterns of shadows on the path in the summer morning. It was a beautiful day. Warm, but not oppressive. The birds were chirping merrily in the branches, hunting worms and grubs in the grass.
It made her smile, even amidst the isolation she felt. The dead here might have been forgotten by their families, or had no families left to remember them, but the cycle of life continued. The dead became food for life. The worms eaten by the birds had fed upon the wood and the flesh beneath.
At least she’d be that much. Even if her soul would become nothing, her body would serve a purpose.
It was deep inside the cemetery that she finally reached her destination. It was a mausoleum. An old, decrepit thing. The gate was chained shut, the metal and the lock securing it far newer than the rest of the stone structure.
Pulling out the key from her bag, she undid the lock and set the chain aside. The groundskeeper had fussed at her request, but, like everything in the world, money had solved the problem quickly enough.
The family name etched into the facia of the tomb had long since worn away. It didn’t belong to her. It honestly didn’t matter. Because one of the graves inside did. She’d never find rest within the wood coffins that lined the stone shelves along the walls, but it was as close as she figured she would ever get.
The inside of the chamber was enormous. A circular stained-glass window in the back wall cast a beautiful and ornate cross onto the center of the floor. Dry leaves, blown in through the gate, crunched underfoot as she moved along the wall.
Stone benches in the center and vases on the wall where fresh flowers were put told her that this place had once been frequented by the living, come to pay respect to the dead and to mourn their loss. But no one had been here in a long, long time.
It was perfect for her.
There was the open hole, the slab of unetched marble set aside. It had never been occupied—she had been very clear to the groundskeeper that she wasn’t in the business of graverobbing. She just needed something valuable kept very, very hidden. If she were lucky, it would stay there for the rest of time.
Reaching into her bag, she pulled out two wooden boxes. One was as small and nondescript as possible. She had personally painted it black. The second was an ornate jewelry box, inlaid with gold lines and expensive woodwork.
She threw the small black box as far into the slot in the wall as she could. It clattered to the back. Gathering up some leaves from the ground and a stick that had landed near the door, she covered it as best she could.
Placing the ornate jewelry box around the middle of the chamber, she haphazardly covered it with leaves and smiled slightly. It was filled with expensive trinkets. Each one had been a gift from him. She was glad to be rid of them. They had always struck her as trite and useless. Baubles meant to buy her favor.
But now they—like perhaps someday her rotted flesh might do—would serve a purpose. Should the groundskeeper become greedy, or someone pry through the resting places of the dead to see what they might find, hopefully they would be satisfied with the small fortune they found and not look for the more important, more hidden prize in the far back.
Money bought action. It rarely bought loyalty.
“Where do we start?” Maggie had asked Gideon in his hotel room near Vatican City where he had taken her.
He had paused for a long time before simply responding, “I fear that’s up to you.” When she didn’t know what to say to that, he had smiled sadly, and simply said it was time to go. They had climbed into a black car, Gideon carrying his suitcase and another small bag that he said contained supplies for her. He spoke to the driver in perfect Italian, and off they went.
She had sat down on the expensive leather seats for exactly six seconds before she had let her head rest against the plush surface and fell asleep. She was so tired. So goddamn exhausted.
Well, to be fair, she’d smashed her undead-and-trapped-as-a-golden-skeleton father to pieces with a hammer, and then, in a fit of anger, freed an ancient vampire who set fire to the building.
She was pretty sure she had good reason to need some rest. She just wished her dreams hadn’t been so bizarre.
A hand on her shoulder gently shook her awake. Blinking, she let out a quiet “huh?” as she came back to reality. She didn’t know where, or when, she had just been. But she knew the dream wasn’t fiction.
At least now she knew she wasn’t insane. She was just an undead anomaly with broken memories haunted by a powerful lich who said he loved her.
Y’know.
Like y’do.
Insane or undead. The jury was still out on which one was worse.
Speaking of the powerful lich, Gideon was sitting next to her, a regretful smile on his face. “Sorry. But we’re here. You can get some more rest on the plane.”
More planes. More being shuttled off by people who wanted to use her for something. She rubbed her face. “Where’re we going?”
“As I said, that is your decision. But for now, I thought it would be a bad idea to stay here, what with you having had a hand in the burning of the Vatican’s vaults and releasing one of their most dangerous prisoners.” He smirked, a thin twist to his lips.
“What, you think they’re pissed about that?” She stretched and yawned. Algernon had been napping on her lap, and, as she moved, he did the exact sa
“Maybe a little. Religious types do tend to hold grudges.” He chuckled and watched her thoughtfully for a second. “I thought perhaps we could go to London. I have a home there that we can stay in while you decide on our next step. And you…” He broke off. His silver eyes grew dark, and his jaw twitched.
“What?” She frowned. “Tell me.”
“You seemed to like London last time we lived there.” He sighed heavily and climbed from the car. It was a hot day, and the heat from the tarmac instantly filled the small space. She followed him out after tucking Algernon back into her hood. It was stupid to wear a hoodie in the summer in Italy, and she was sweltering beneath the dark fabric, but she figured it was only a few hundred feet to the plane, and she’d survive.
Not like she could really die.
Not permanently, anyway.
“I take it that it ended poorly?” She took her own backpack from the trunk of the car. He reached for it first, but then pulled his hand back as if she had slapped him. He seemed so…afraid of her, sometimes. As if he were always waiting for her to scream at him. Or hit him.
“It always ends poorly.” That dark expression remained etched on his face as he began walking to the plane that idled on the tarmac, the stairs lowered, waiting for them.
“Maybe if you told me what was going on, it’d help.”
“I’ve tried that many times. Trust me.” He didn’t look at her, his gaze fixed firmly on the plane. “It goes just as poorly as when I don’t.”
She decided not to tell him about her dream, mostly because she didn’t even know what to say about it. Nothing made any sense. She had gone to the Vatican for answers, and she felt as though she had only placed the first piece of the jigsaw puzzle on the surface of the table.
When they reached the bottom of the stairs, he placed his hand on her arm to stop her. “I’m…sorry.”
“For what?” She looked up at him quizzically.
Finally, those silver eyes met hers. “Do I need to make a list? I didn’t bring enough paper. It might have to be a spreadsheet. Can I email it to you?”
That made her laugh. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t a big laugh, but it was something. She didn’t trust him. Her unknown past loomed over them like a terrible, dark cloud. But it was hard to kick a puppy that was already slinking around with its tail between its legs. “You said you regret what you did to my—to my father.”
“I do. I was in a rage when everything went wrong. I was younger, impetuous, and…” He paused, as if not wanting to admit something. With a shake of his head, he seemed to resign himself to it. “I was heartbroken. I blamed him in lieu of blaming myself.” He straightened, his shoulders cracking. He cringed a little as he stretched what must be a stiffness in his back. “And, as I said, by the time I went to free him from his imprisonment, he was already a prisoner of the Vatican. There was nothing I could do. No offense, but I was not going to go in there after him.”
“When everything went wrong?” She raised an eyebrow. “What happened?”
He smiled. “Nice try. No. You remember the rules.”
“Damn.”
“Hey, asshole! Are you coming or what? It’s time to go.”
Gideon’s open expression instantly hardened. He glowered up at the plane, and at the man who had appeared standing at the top of the stairs. Harry.
Half of her was relieved and wanted to hug him.
Half of her was angry and wanted to smack him.
She wondered if she could get away with doing both because that was suddenly her plan. I have to pick a side eventually. I don’t think I get to pick my own, but damn it all if I’m not going to try.
“I’m not abducting you,” Gideon murmured to her, too quiet for Harry to hear over the roar of the idling jets. “You can turn around and go if you like. I will give you as much money as you could possibly need. I will leave you be, and you can disappear to anywhere in the world you want.”
“I know. And thank you.” She shut her eyes, the heat of the sun off the tarmac somehow feeling nice, like a sauna. It was far better than being cold. “I appreciate that, I really do. But I’m...sick of not knowing. I’m sick of whatever this is that I’m trapped in. I want to remember. I want it all to end, one way or another, and I need your help to do it.” She turned back to him, and there was that glitter of hope in his shining eyes once more. The longing that he betrayed to her in those rare moments.
The love.
Her heart cinched. She forced it away. “Let’s go, before Harry loses his mind.”
“I enjoy annoying our dear Hero.” He wrinkled his nose in irritation. “It’s one of my few joys in life.” He gestured for her to climb the stairs. “After you, princess.”
Princess. She was, wasn’t she? Well, an illegitimate one. The daughter of a king of France and his true love, but not his wife. She’d have to look up Henri the Second of France on her phone if the plane had Wi-Fi.
After she slept.
Climbing the stairs, she looked up at Harry. Everyone was generally taller than she was, and she was reminded how much the man resembled a football quarterback. His sullen and angry expression flickered to one of mild hope. Not the same kind of look that Gideon gave her, but one that maybe wondered if he was going to be forgiven for hiding his undead nature from her.
He smiled and opened his mouth to speak.
She slapped him before he got the chance. His head rocked to the side, and he looked at her, stunned.
The look of shock got worse as she hugged him. “I missed you, Harry.”
Clearly confused, he hugged her back. “You too, Mags. I missed you, too.” He squeezed her tight. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
She knew what he meant.
But she didn’t know if she would be, or had ever been, “okay” in her life.
Any of them.
2
“Just let her sleep, will you?”
“Put her down.”
“No.”
Maggie woke up slowly and very unwillingly. She was comfortable, her head resting against something that was soft, but firm beneath the first layer. And whatever it was, it smelled wonderful. Like cigars and sharp, crisp cologne.
“She’s gonna be pissed.”
“She won’t be if you don’t wake her up.”
Two men were bickering quietly under their breath. She was moving, which was more than a little odd. Letting out a quiet yawn, she blearily opened one eye.
Gideon was carrying her in his arms. She had been asleep with her head tucked up against his chest. She could still hear the engines of the jet behind her, and the night was dark, save for the bright shining lights of a small airstrip around her. The air was much cooler than Italy had been—much cooler. It was moist like there was a thin mist around them. A black car idled nearby, a man in a suit who was clearly the driver waiting by the open back door.
“Hm?” Rubbing a hand across her eyes, she tried to grasp what was happening. She must have fallen asleep on the plane. She had curled up in a chair, and then that was that.
She felt Gideon’s angry growl more than she heard it. She looked up in time to see him casting a vicious glare at Harry, who was walking close by. His voice was seething with hate. “I told you not to wake her.”
“And I told you to put her down,” Harry shot back, mimicking Gideon’s accent as he did.
“What the fuck is wrong with you two?” She shifted in Gideon’s arms, and he paused to gently set her onto her feet. Running her fingers through her hair, she tried to sort herself out enough to look somewhat human, and not like the sleep-deprived, ruffled racoon she felt like. Checking for the weight in her hood, she was happy to see that Algernon was where she had left him and seemed to be contentedly dozing. At least Harry and Gideon’s arguing hadn’t bothered him.
