Blood Oath: Part four: Chapters 10-12

Chapter Ten
M-Z2
         The car rushed away, past scenery that looked familiar to neither of its passengers, though they couldn’t really tell what the blurs were.
         It landed in the middle of a forest. The dazed brothers stepped out of the car and walked around like drunks for a moment.
         “I win!” laughed a female’s voice.
         “Finn?” Boone asked, still confused by the car ride.
         “I knew you’d end up here!”
         “How’d you get here, Finn?”
         “I drove, and then I walked.”
         Boone finally was able to walk straight and get a feel for where he was. He glanced around the area, but he found no source to the voice. “Where are you?”
         “Up in the birch!” she replied. She formed a magic rope-ladder and climbed down from her perch, but she snagged her jeans on the way down. “Aah, stupid tree!” After untangling herself and getting to the ground, she yelled directly at the birch for snagging her, “You son-of-a-birch!”
         Boone laughed and put his arm around Finn’s shoulders.
         “So, you have yet to introduce us, Boone,” Adrian pointed out, finally gaining his own footing and walking toward the two of them.
         “Oh. Finn, this is my brother Adrian. Adrian, this is my girlfriend, Serafina Gregorovich.”
         Adrian extended his hand. “Well, nice to meet the secret girlfriend, I guess. So, do you have any clue where we are?”
         “Yeah, I know where we are. Come on, I think we can find a way to drive this car out of here.”
         “Um, Finn, this isn’t exactly the kind of car for off-roading…” Boone pointed out.
         “Yeah, but you don’t usually have Serafina Gregorovich at the wheel!” She hopped into the driver’s seat.”
         “Can she drive that well?” Adrian whispered to his brother before getting into the car.
         “I don’t know—we go to a live-in private school. We don’t usually have to do much driving. But, she’s the only one who knows where we are, so maybe we should just trust her.”
         “Are you coming or not?” Finn asked from the open door.
         Boone shrugged to his older brother and hopped into the passenger side. Sighing, Adrian slid into the back.
         “Buckle up, it’s about to get twisted in here, boys!”
         A sudden thought struck Boone as he glanced around. “Hey, Finn? Where’s the—“
         “With Darci,” she answered before he could even finish his sentence.
         “Oh. Okay. She may be dark, but she’s trustworthy enough.”
         “Yeah. At Whitewall it’s not about finding white friends, it’s about finding dark ones you trust.” She grinned. “Now, let’s see what this old beater can do!”
         She slammed her foot down on the gas pedal. Twisted roots, cracked logs, and mounds of rock-hard dirt all seemed to have the same goal of flipping the old car. They nearly succeeded a few times, but they were no match for the driving skills of a seventeen-year-old magician. With faded blue eyes twinkling excitedly and short hair dancing merrily, she ramped over these obstacles with cries of excitement. Her passengers held fast to anything they could, looks of terror on their faces.
         “Finn, slow down!” Boone pleaded. “Please, you have to be more careful!”
         She hit the brakes so hard that everyone jerked forward. “It’s okay—we’re out of the woods. There’s the road.” She pointed across the snow-covered field they were now at the edge of. She drove across the field until the tires hit the road.
         “So, Finn, where exactly are we?" asked her boyfriend.
         “You know everything we’ve been working for, the legendary M-Z2? Yeah, pretty sure this is it.”
         “What?!” screamed Adrian. “The Second Magic Zone?! Please tell me there’s another M-Z2 that you’re talking about!”
         “Well, that’s what I named my lab rat,” Boone added, “but I’m pretty sure we’re not in the lab rat, so…”
         “This can’t be happening,” Adrian denied. “This doesn’t exist. There is no M-Z2.”          
         “You mean there’s not supposed to be an M-Z2,” Boone corrected, eyes dancing with mesmerized joy. “But if there is, and we’re in it…You think you perfected it while I was gone?”
         Finn grinned. “I do.”
         “Do you guys not realize that if we are in the legendary M-Z2,” Adrian continued, frustrated, “we’re stuck here? No one believes it really exists. It’s as much a legend as the Bermuda Triangle.”
         “Actually, I think the Bermuda Triangle is part of M-Z2 overlapping into M-Z1, which is, of course, shared with the Plain Zone, or the world of your normal mortals,” Finn stated matter-of-factly.
         Adrian looked between the two of them, bewildered. “Are you guys, like, studying this?”
         “Well, we weren’t initially going to go this in-depth,” Boone answered. “But, for Advanced Placement Magic Legends 12, our final is assigned at the beginning of the year, a partner project on a famous legend, to be presented at the end of the year. Whereas most people will procrastinate until the week before, Finn and I have been working all year. We started gathering information and we just couldn’t stop. One thing led to another and the next thing we know, we’re close to proving its existence.”
         “Correction—I think this proves its existence.”
         “Finn, are you sure this is it?” Boone asked.
         “Not a hundred percent yet, but pretty sure.”
         “The bigger question,” grumbled Adrian, “is how are we getting back?”
         “Well, if we have the way of getting here, I’m sure we have the way of getting back, right Finn?”
         “Um, well…”
         Boone stared at her. “Finn…please tell me we can get back.”
         “Well, I don’t have that part yet! I had to get here to figure out how to get back! You can’t tell how to open a bunch of one way doors if you’re on the wrong side of the wall!”
         “Finn!” yelled Boone. “I can’t believe you brought both of us here! I thought we agreed—one at a time! One of us needs to stay on the other side!”
         “I told you, Darci is trustworthy enough!”
         “It’s not about how trustworthy she is! She’s not us! And besides that, Adrian’s here too! We have no instructions beyond Adrian! I didn’t expect him to go down with us!”
         “It wouldn’t have done any good to leave you!” Finn screamed at him through tears. “What good could you have done? Your father wants to kill you! You offered no protection!”
         “Then why didn’t you stay? You could’ve sent me!”
         “I’m the one that knew the formula! Teaching you increases the likelihood of human error!”
         “Are you saying that I would cause human error? Serafina, in case you’ve forgotten, I’ve been working on this damn project the same amount of time you have!”
         “Don’t you twist it like that! That’s not what I mean at all, and you know it! It could be error in my method of teaching it, and it was already very touchy!”
         Boone looked at her teary eyes and sighed. “I’m sorry, Finn. It’s just—I mean, I have a good reason to be worried. What’s going to happen if we don’t come back? Is Darci going to wait for us forever? Somehow I don’t think so.”
         “What do you guys mean about not having instructions beyond me?” interrupted Adrian.
         “Never mind,” the couple grumbled at the same time.
         There was a long silence during which Adrian stared out at the passing scenery. Wild vines of unimaginably beautiful flowers snaked around trees. They were vivid pink and sunshine yellow. He thought about how much Jasmine would’ve loved such flowers. She would’ve insisted that they go grab some of those little star-shaped seed pods hanging off of them and tried to grow them in their garden. Kind of like that one time with the cacti.
“Jas,” Adrian insisted, “You can’t grow cacti here! We live too far north for that! This is not the normal habitat for a cactus.”
         “So, are you saying that something can’t grow if you take it out of its normal habitat? Is that what you’re saying? So, what, you don’t believe in adoption? That’s kind of like this cactus. It was taken out of a harsh home, the desert, and brought to a nice home.”
         “It doesn’t work that way.”
         “Well, I know it’s not supposed to, but why not? I mean, it’s worth a shot.”
         Needless to say, the cactus died.
         “So,” Adrian asked, trying to break the silence, “what exactly is your fascination with M-Z2?”
         “Well,” replied Finn, “we couldn’t find a single magician that could trace the source of their magic. We interviewed every student, and they either just went to a point in their history where their lineage is lost or they had a story like yours, where some powerful person just kind of appeared and gave it to someone in their family.”
         “We believe,” continued Boone, “that all magic has its source in this realm, that it leaked out to the Plain Zone, creating what we call M-Z1, the magic zone within the Plain Zone.”
         “That’s going to be controversial at Whitewall,” Adrian told them.
         “How do you figure?” asked Boone.
         “Because, it would prove that mortals have more right to be in our realm than magicians do. Whitewall students and staff aren’t going to be too warm to that idea.”
         “I guess we’d never thought of it that way,” said Finn.
         “Just watch your step when you unveil your findings, that’s all.” Adrian laughed. “I bet your AP Legends teacher never expected anyone to actually do anything that would send this big a ripple through the magical community.”
         Boone smiled. “We’re hoping it gets us an A.”
         “At this point,” added Finn, “it’s less about the grade and more about the fact that we actually found it.”
         Adrian glanced out again at the close-set blossoms. “So,” he asked, eyes still to the outside world, “where are we driving to?”
         “We’re driving until we find somebody,” she replied. “Hopefully that doesn’t take too long.”
         Adrian was content to eye the scenery. It looked like a fairytale. These flowers continued to wind around the lush, green-leafed trees, around rocks and cliffs, around the mouth of the old stone tunnel they were now entering…
         But what lay past the stone tunnel amazed Adrian even more. They had found what they were looking for, a town. It was so medieval in its design that it reminded Adrian of the yearly Renaissance festival that they always held around his town. He and Jasmine would always go and eat giant turkey drumsticks and watch the jugglers and jousters.
         More impressive, however, were the people. They were so lively and happy. They had street acts going on everywhere; musicians, acting troupes, incredible juggling and balancing acts. Their clothing looked similar to modern clothing—sweatpants, sweatshirts, sweaters, t-shirts, jackets—but still quite different and much more colorful.
         They stopped when they saw the car. Finn put it in park and stepped out. She was approached by a juggler in a woven straw hat surrounded by a wreath of the yellow variety of the flowers Adrian had been gazing at. He wore a yellow long-sleeved shirt underneath a purple-and-yellow-checked sweater vest. His pants were a baggy, flowing, purple material.
         “What ho! Hail you from where, my short-haired princess?” he asked her, tipping his hat. Then he moved to the car and put his hand on it. “And this contraption is what for?”
         “Are they speaking, like, old English?” Boone whispered to Finn as he and Adrian walked out of the car and joined her.
         “I don’t think so. I think they just speak differently in general,” she whispered back. She cleared her throat. “I am Serafina Annelise Gregorovich,” she announced to him, although he was more interested in the car. “And this is Boone Alastair DeRes and his older brother—“
         “Adrian Anlon DeRes,” Adrian interrupted, putting out his hand to the man, trying to break his fascination with the car.
         The man shook it while still staring toward the vehicle. “Do you always announce yourselves by your full name?” he asked, flatly.
         “Oh, well,” Finn appeared flustered, “I didn’t know what was customary here, and…”
         “Quite all right, Miss Gregorovich, or may I call you Serafina?” His sparkling violet eyes finally moved from the car to the strangers. He smiled impishly.
         “Finn,” she replied, shaking his hand. “My nickname is Finn.”
         “Finn is wonderfully strange for a pretty lady.”
         “Thank you, I guess.”
         He turned to the brothers. “And you, DeRes children—do you go by nicknames or may I address you as Boone and Adrian?”
         “That’s fine with us, sir,” Boone replied, vigorously shaking his hand, completely awestruck.
         The juggler’s eyes wandered back to the car. “What use is that fine machine?”
         “Oh it’s called a car, it’s for transportation,” replied Finn. “We use it to get from place to place. Mortals are pretty good inventors.”
         “What’s a mortal?” he asked casually, again not moving his gaze from the vehicle he was stroking.
         Finn and Boone’s eyes met and they grinned at each other. “Well,” she replied, “a mortal is a person who can’t do magic.”
         This made the man move away from the car and start laughing. “You’re joking, right? How is this a possibility?”
         “It just is,” Boone told him. “Where we come from, mortals are more common than magicians, and many don’t even believe in magic.”
         The man wasn’t sure whether to find this funny or be horrified. “Don’t believe? Well, again I must ask: hail you from where?”
         “Well, I’m not sure, exactly,” Boone replied. “Anything I tell you is irrelevant. I have no way to tell you directions.”
         “Have you ever heard this world you live in referred to as M-Z2?” Finn asked abruptly.
         The crowd that had gathered around them started murmuring. The juggler knitted his brow. “Yes…” he replied slowly. “The man of that home calls it that.” He pointed his long index finger toward a small stone house with a green-tiled roof. “He is a wonderfully odd man. He has shown us many interesting contraptions, although none quite like this ‘car’. His name is Robert. He, too, appeared out of nowhere one day.”
         “Do you think it would be all right if we spoke with Robert?” Finn asked.
         “Oh, he is very friendly. I’m sure it would make him quite happy. If you need anything at all, my name is Corivay Medtrod Inkskin, since you are so accustomed to full names.” He smiled. “But you may call me Cori if you wish. Everyone else does.”
         “Thank you, Cori. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
         “Any time, Miss Finn. Oh, be sure to join us for the festival dinner tonight! It’s bound to be a good time!”
         “Of course, we’d love to!” She smiled, and the three of them walked across the main square to the stone house with a green roof, leaving Cori and the other townspeople to return to their routines.



Chapter Eleven
Robert
         Adrian rapped his knuckles against the wooden door.
         “Coming, coming!” called a voice from inside the house. The door swung open, and a kind-looking older man stared at them through glasses.
         “Holy blue jeans!” he gasped, pointing a shaking finger at Adrian’s pants. “Are—are you from—M-Z1?”
         Adrian smiled a bit as he looked down at his legs. “Yeah, um, you must be Robert.”
         Robert glanced around quickly, completely unsure of what to do. “Well, um, yes, come in, won’t you?”

         After they had all settled into large puffy chairs and Robert had brought them all coffee, he, too, plopped down into one of the chairs. “So,” he said as he sipped from his own mug, “I guess I’ll start from the beginning. It’s so nice to see someone else from M-Z1. But, anyway…you see, I’d always been fascinated with the concept of M-Z2, just like you and Boone, Miss Finn.”
         Finn was flabbergasted. “How did you—“
         Robert waved them off. “All in good time, I’ll get there. But, anyway, I was studying the idea, and, much like you, I found the key to get over here. I used it, thinking just like you—I’d need to be here to figure out how to get back. Well, here it is, six years later, and I still haven’t figured that out.” He took another drink and then stared down at his brown reflection in the coffee. “And I know what you’re thinking Adrian—it doesn’t matter that Finn’s the youngest, she acts like a natural leader, and that’s why everyone around here is treating her as such.”
         It was Adrian’s turn to be shocked. “Okay, now, how are you doing that? It’s like you’re reading our minds.”
         “Exactly. I am.” He looked up at Boone, then flicked his eyes to Adrian, the back to his face in the mug. “Don’t worry—I won’t tell your secrets.”
         Adrian glanced over at his younger brother. “Okay, you know what? This is getting annoying. What are you not telling me?”
         “Never mind,” Boone grumbled back, avoiding his gaze. “But how can you read minds?”
         Robert sighed. “You learn a lot from living in M-Z2 for six years. It’s amazing how dull our magic is compared to theirs. What we consider amazing feats, amazing spells, well, their children can do them. No one dies. Ever. Their world is infinite, and just keeps growing to fit the needs of the people. They’re so much more complex, and yet so much simpler. I’ve always been into mechanical things, ‘mortal magic’, as I like to call it. Simple things like CD players and walkie-talkies amaze them. We kind of have a mutual thing going here—they show me more amazing spells, I show them more amazing trinkets.
         “The more amazing thing is not that I can read minds, but that I’ve learned how to keep certain thoughts secret. You have to be able to sort thoughts before you have them. You have to know when you’re going to think bad thoughts about someone in the room, when your mind is going to comment on the breasts of the hot woman across from you, when you’re going to think about your deepest, darkest secrets, all before you think about them. You have to think about the thought you’re going to think without thinking it first. Beyond that, I’ve learned to read other thoughts like a book.”
         Finn wasn’t completely listening to him. She was gazing at the bookshelf behind him—no, through the bookshelf would be more accurate.
         “I’m sorry, Miss Gregorovich, but it has been six years.”
         “Six years,” she mumbled. Her gaze travelled back to Robert. “And you haven’t found any way out?”
         “It’s so much more complex on this side, Finn,” he sighed. Then he stared at her and smiled. “But now we’ve got four M-Z1 natives here. Besides, it took you about five months to find the way here, whereas it took me a total of twenty. So, maybe, possibly, you can find the way out of here four times faster than I can.” Robert began to pick up the empty mugs. “Well, anyway, I’m sure the townspeople would put you up with some cozy room and board, just like they did with me here.” He went into the kitchen.
         Finn’s eyes were tearing up. She took hold of Boone’s hands and looked into his fierce blue eyes. “I’m sorry. You’re right—I should’ve left you. Can you imagine six years from now, Boone? I really can’t.”
         “Finn, it’s all right. You thought you were doing the right thing, and it’s the thought that counts, right?”
         “I don’t think that applies here, baby.”
         His lips met her forehead. “Well, we can’t take it back. The only thing we can do is work that much harder at getting home. But, of course, while we’re here we have some research to finish.”
         Adrian was busy examining the items decorating the wall. A mural made of shimmering glass beads seemed to be the centerpiece of the room. It depicted a light bulb, dressed up by bright colors and interesting patterns.
         “The Handcrafters Guild made that for me,” Robert said, appearing at Adrian’s left side. “They take pride in doing craft projects without magic, kind of the way certain mortals would take pride in doing magic tricks. They do some really amazing work. Some of the greatest artists I’ve ever seen are in this guild.”
         “But a light bulb?”
         Robert laughed. “I told you I showed them some amazing appliances. The light bulb was one of the first I showed them. I brought a little power generator with me, some cords, and a number of appliances. I thought they might help me win over the residents here, and I was right.”
         Adrian brushed his hand along the beads. The cool beads felt so interesting against his skin, so perfect.
         “Finn,” Boone said softly, across the room from Adrian and the bead mural. He put his arms around her in a hug. “We’ll get through this all right. We’ve made it through so much already.”
         “I know,” she replied confidently. “We’re going to be just fine. We’ll find the way back to M-Z1, I know it.”
         Adrian had moved over to a painting. It depicted Robert in perfect realism, one foot on a generator, blender in his hands. It was easy to see that this portrait of him had been painted with great respect, like a patriotic citizen would paint their leader. Beside it was a small photograph in a carved wooden frame.
         The woman inside it had dark ringlets falling to her shoulders, bright eyes, and absolutely beautiful features. Although the photo was black and white, it was easy to tell that her lips were painted a stunning red and that she was one of the people who could actually pull off that look. These perfect rose petal lips framed a welcoming, loving smile.
         “It’s hard, isn’t it?” Robert’s hand appeared on Adrian’s shoulder. “We were married for three years. She died in childbirth.”
         Adrian stared at the picture. But, suddenly, what Robert said sank in. “Wait—what?”
         “What what?”
         “How?”
         Robert then caught the rest of his train of thought. “Oh, right. Different rules. I’m pure white.”
         “There’s a different set of death rules for white magicians than black magicians?”
         “Of course!” Robert laughed. “Doesn’t make sense for us to die by ‘blacker hands,’ now does it? I mean, that leaves us defenseless if a dark magician wants to kill us. It would turn way too many people to the darker side of magic.” He sighed as his eyes met those of the woman in the portrait. “That’s one of the things I’m studying so hard here in M-Z2—total immortality.”
         “I’d like a little less immortality, I think,” Adrian grumbled. “The only thing keeping me alive is that I can’t commit suicide.”
         “Don’t think like that, Adrian. It stings for a while, and even after that there’s a dull throbbing, but life is worth it. You’ve only been living twenty-four years—you have probably at least hundreds left, if not an eternity. Make the best of it.”
         Adrian started to cry. “Exactly! How long before I forget her face? How long before I forget the sound of her voice? How long before I forget everything about her? I already barely remember anything about middle school, for example, and that was only ten years ago! What’s it going to be like after a hundred?”
         Boone walked up behind his older brother and hugged him. “Adrian, I wish I could do something other than just repeat how sorry I am. I wish I could’ve just got her into that hallway, could’ve just cut those ropes.”
         Adrian walked over and sat in a chair again. “You tried, Boone. There was nothing more you could do.” Adrian glanced back at Robert, who was just returning to his own chair. “But I really can’t believe I didn’t know about the different rules for pure white magicians. What exactly are the ways a white magician can die?”
         “It’s called the Triangle of the Grave. A pure white magician can either be killed by their child, in an official duel, or by Aerellamae. Unfortunately, the first method has a couple major flaws. It’s designed to help children who are trapped in horrible situations kill the bad white magicians (you can see one of the flaws with that little bit) who are neglecting them. Unfortunately, it also seems to apply to children who have never even had the chance to meet their parents. That’s what took my Anora.
         “For an official duel to take place, it has to be agreed upon by both parties. They must shake hands and all that jazz, and they will fight to the death.”
         “Yeah, but,” Boone interrupted, entranced, “what is Aerellamae?”
         Robert examined his fingernails as if this conversation were the dullest one he’d had in a while. “That method is pretty much obsolete. Aerellamae, although completely real, feels like a mere legend now. No one’s seen her in years—one thousand, two hundred, and seventeen, to be exact. That would explain why your family promise doesn’t include her; most dark magicians took the loss of her as a great victory.”
         Adrian couldn’t help but imagine Aerellamae in his mind. She had long, dark hair and glorious eyes. She was tall and dressed all in green.
         “Actually,” Robert continued, pulling a small key out of his pocket and walking over to a wooden chest, “I have a picture of her here. I brought it with me to see if they’d heard of her.” He rifled through the items and papers in his chest. “Aha! There it is!” He gently lifted out an ancient looking piece of parchment. “This is a sketch of Aerellamae.”
         She was not at all what Adrian pictured. In fact, it wasn’t really even a she. Aerellamae was a blade.
         “She’s been lost for over twelve hundred years,” Robert sighed, “so this is the best picture we have. This is all we know about her other than the stories and very few surviving written accounts.”
         “The sword part is awkward,” Boone pointed out, gently running his finger along the picture. “It’s actually shorter than the handle.”
         “So,” Adrian added, “either she’s a short sword with a normal handle or a normal sword with a long handle.”
          “The design on it is beautiful!” Finn half-whispered. “That snake on the handle…I love it! The way it winds around to form the hand-holder-thingy…”
         “Hand-holder-thingy?” Boone laughed impishly.
         “Well, what would you call it, if you’re so smart, Mr. Valedictorian?”
         Boone shrugged.
         “Exactly. You get what I’m saying. The part that comes over your hand to help keep you from dropping it.”
         “That’s a little odd,” Adrian mumbled. “Usually the…hand-holder-thingy…is only big enough for one hand. This one stretches from top to bottom of the handle. You could fit both hands and a foot through that.”
         Robert placed the paper back in the chest and locked it up.
         “What do you mean by ‘most dark magicians took the loss of her as a great victory’?” Boone inquired.
         “You boys are a bit slow on the uptake sometimes, aren’t you?” he sighed. “I mean to say that seven generations ago, when your grandfather received the power, he was told he could only die ‘by Blacker hands’, right?”
         “How do you know this?” Boone asked, a little frustrated.
         “It seems to be constantly running through your brother’s mind. Anyway, that was because Aerellamae had been gone for so long. Otherwise she would have been right up there by ‘Blacker hands’, but most people believe that she’s been destroyed.”
         “Wait, whoa!” shouted Adrian. “You mean—there’s another way for black magicians to die?”
         “Adrian, Aerellamae can kill anyone. But, like I said, she’s been gone for years, so it’s pretty much not counted as a way anymore. We just keep her in our ways because, well, ‘Triangle of the Grave’ sounds so much better than ‘Straight Line of the Grave’.”
         “But if she did still exist, I could kill my sister and father,” Adrian growled.
         “Well,” Robert sighed, “murder is all well and good, but Aerellamae has pretty much ceased to exist.” He placed the drawing back into the chest. “Now, I believe you were invited to the dinner tonight?”
         “Yeah!” Finn exclaimed with excitement. “What is it? It sounds festive.”
         “Well, you met Cori, right? He’s getting married tomorrow, so tonight’s a celebration before the wedding.”
         “Oh!” she squealed. “I bet he’s happy!”
         Robert laughed. “So is every father with a daughter in the area. Cori’s finally going to have to stop hitting on their girls!”



Chapter Twelve
The DeRes Mansion
         The sound of a vacuum echoed down the spiral stairs from somewhere on the third floor. Darrius sat in an old, green armchair in the first floor sitting room, newspaper in hand. A mug of strong black coffee sat on the table beside him.
         “Daddy,” Alison said smugly, “I found him!”
         Darrius moved the paper down from his face to see Alison standing beside a magically-bound Bryan. A smile moved slowly across Darrius’s face as he folded the paper up.
         “Good job, Alison.” He stood up from his chair. “Well, Mr. Asher, is it?”
         Bryan couldn’t help but look frightened. He couldn’t respond due to the magical blue light currently being used as a gag. It matched a set of shackles on his wrists and another on his ankles.
         Alison removed the gag. “So, Mr. Asher, where’s Adrian?”
         Bryan coughed. “I don’t know!” he cried. “Last I saw of him he was wishing he was dead, but that was a number of days ago!”
         “Are you sure you don’t know where he is?” Darrius growled, white-hot sparks dancing around his fingertips.
         “I’m positive! Please, don’t hurt me! I don’t know anything!”
         Not satisfied with this response, Darrius let a flash of sparking energy fly from his fingertips. Bryan screamed intensely.
         “That wasn’t even a painful one!” Darrius hissed. “Now, where’s Adrian?”
         “I really don’t know!” Bryan was in tears.
         Another, brighter stream of sparks flew from Darrius’s fingers.
         Bryan again screamed, then panted, “Please, stop, I don’t know anything. Honest.”
         Alison whistled. One of the zombie servants walked in from the kitchen.
         “This,” said Darrius, “is Kisha. She cooks, she cleans, she does any chore I want her to. She’s also dead.”
         Bryan cringed. “Why are you telling me this?”
         “To prove to you that you’re worth more to me dead than alive. In other words, I have no problem with killing you.”
         Bryan’s eyes were begging. He was scared out of his mind. “I don’t know anything. For all I know Adrian is lying dead in some ditch somewhere.”
         “Well then, there is one thing you can give us,” Darrius grinned evilly. “I know you know where the body of that little mortal bitch is that thought she could get away with corrupting the DeRes name.”
         Bryan thought about what Adrian had told him earlier. Keep close watch on her body; she is not ending up one of their servants.
I-I don’t know,” he stammered.
         Infuriated, Darrius hit him square in the chest with another stream of magic energy—bright red magic energy.
         The mansion echoed with Bryan’s dying screams, and then the only sound was that of the third-floor vacuum.
         “He was a worthless little shit anyway,” Alison mumbled as she kicked Bryan’s dead body.
         Darrius slit his fingertips and then routinely created a line of black blood from left shoulder to right hip and back up again.
         “Go join the garden crew,” yawned Darrius as he sat back in the chair and resumed reading his newspaper.
         Zombie Bryan rose to his feet and walked out the door.
         “Darrius!” came the shout of a man from the second floor.
         “What do you want, dad?”
         A man who appeared much younger than his actual age came quickly down the steps. “What was all the commotion?”
         “Just getting a new member of the garden crew, that’s all.”
         “Oh. What for?”
         “He wouldn’t give me any information about Adrian, or about his girlfriend’s corpse.”
         Darrius’s father shook his head. “If he didn’t look like a DeRes, I’d swear Adrian wasn’t. Boone too. I mean, I at least expected to come here to visit and find Boone still dark as ever. But no—he’s fallen to the light magic as well. Well, I’m going to live to see him die, or my name isn’t Sebastian DeRes.”
         Alison looked at Kisha, who was still standing there, face blank. “Ugh,” she said, disgusted, “go make yourself useful, you little corpse. Make me some coffee.”
         Kisha trudged off to the kitchen to do as her mistress commanded.
         The vacuum overhead finally stopped, and a chilling silence fell over the three DeReses. Alison sat down on the stiff old couch and started drumming her fingers on the wooden armrest.
         “Well, if no one’s going to say anything else, I’m going back up to my room,” Sebastian grumbled.
         “Whatever, dad,” Darrius mumbled back.
         Sebastian scowled as he climbed the stairs back up toward his room. His son’s sons had been corrupted by the disgusting light magic. “I should’ve gone and visited one of the others, but no, I decided to visit Darrius,” he grumbled. Then he turned and shouted down, “In case you haven’t noticed, this hasn’t happened to any of your brothers’ or sisters’ kids!”
         Darrius’s anger manifested itself as an accidental spell and singed the banister near his father’s hands.
         Sebastian paused as he looked down at the blackened banister, then at his own unharmed hands. With a disgusted look on his face, he wiped his hands off on his pants as though they were dirty. “You know I’m right,” he growled. “Mortimer’s son would kill his own mother if he thought it could get him more power. In fact, he did. And Ivan’s twin daughters are so dark that I’ve seen them kill seven other dark magicians that I would’ve thought much too dark. That’s just what I’ve seen. And they’re only fourteen! Your sons are a nasty blemish on the DeRes family name, Darrius.”
         Darrius hid his face back behind the newspaper. Sebastian sighed and finished his ascent to his room.
         “I may look like mom,” Alison said, “but I’m glad I actually got the DeRes darkness.”
         “I don’t know what I ever saw in your mother,” Darrius mumbled back. “I guess she seemed dark enough, but I know I ignored the warning signs. When she safely got a kitten out of a tree on one of our dates instead of blasting it to little kitty bits as it dangled from that branch, I mean, how could I have been so blind?”
         “Wait…you married a woman after she rescued a kitten? Dad, thanks to you I was born polluted!” Now Alison was angry. “Do you know how many of the guys I’ve tried to date have found out about Adrian being light? About three-fourths. It’s a well-known fact on the black magic grapevine right now, even more so than it used to be, thanks to his recent outbursts. Once they know that that freak is my brother, I’m dumped on the spot!”
         “Alison, it’s—“
         “You’re lucky I’m not dead! There’s no way I’m dark enough with a kitten-saver as a mother to withstand some of those guys if they tried to kill me!”
         “What do you want me to do?” Darrius yelled. “I mean, you are what you are! Your mother’s already paid for your brother’s gray areas, and that’s all I can do about it!”
         Following her grandfather’s earlier lead, Alison stormed up the stairs. “I haven’t even gotten past first base in two weeks,” she muttered under her breath as she went into her own room.
         Once the room had cleared out, Darrius folded the paper up on his lap. As he kneaded the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, he let out a disgruntled sigh. “Those boys…” he murmured contemplatively as he thought. “It’s so much worse that they’re my sons. If Alison were light, at least any children would have would have a different last name…well, probably not. I doubt she’d have any clue who the father was. Surprised she hasn’t been knocked up yet, actually.”
         He placed the newspaper on the small side table next to the armchair and got up. Target practice sounded like fun right now. He needed to relieve some stress, and what better way than “killing” zombies?
         “Kisha, Ruby, Wayne, and, uh…Bryan!” he called out. “Come here please!”
         Kisha, who was in the kitchen, appeared first. There was a mug of coffee clenched in her ashy hands, but no mistress to deliver it to. This confused the zombie.
         “Murrruhmph!” she gurgled, distressed.
         “Oh, shut up,” Darrius said without his usual enthusiasm for abusing his servants. He didn’t feel like dealing harshly with her at the present moment. “Just put it down on the coffee table. If she wants it, she’ll come get it.”
         Kisha hesitated for a moment, then did as Darrius told her.
         Ruby, who had just been vacuuming, moved rather gracefully down the stairs, something that wasn’t normally expected from a zombie.
         Wayne and Bryan came last through the door. Compared to the other three, Bryan’s face had an awful lot of color. His corpse wasn’t even cold yet, even after being outside in the winter weather.
         Darrius pulled on his black fur coat and hat as the four servants stood at attention. “Okay,” he finally said, “follow me.”
         They marched after him as he went outside.

         Alison drew pictures in her sketchbook. She’d always had an amazing natural talent for art, and she found it as stress-relieving as zapping zombies, sometimes even more so.
         The picture she sketched now was a very realistic image of her brothers. There was a look of horror on their face as Alison held knives to their throats. She flipped the page and drew a picture of their headless corpses lying in a massive puddle of blood, a terrified scream still portrayed by their detached heads.
         She held up her work to admire it, then flipped back through some of her older work. Piles of dead bodies, blood-splattered alleys and street signs, a few random body parts here and there…she loved drawing.

         Darrius had placed the zombies in random places around the yard. Casting spells on them gave him a chance to practice and time to think.
         A swirl of blue mist enveloped Ruby. She screeched as her joints crackled, inverted, and fell apart.
         “Wow. I almost forgot about that spell.”
         In a moment Ruby was fine again, and, being dead, she would never be able to convert this action to memory. So, because she couldn’t remember what pain was, it was as if she didn’t feel pain.
         “Let’s see…” thought Darrius. “What can I do to the new guy?”
         A grin spread across his face as sickly green things crawled from his fingertips and towards Bryan. The magic snakes crawled into Bryan’s mouth, and he began to squirm himself. He whimpered like a hurt puppy, then collapsed as the things crawled out from his eye sockets. A short while later, he, too, had returned to normal zombie form.
         “Blinding is always fun. Now, how about Wayne?”

         Sebastian sighed as he looked at his reflection in the mirror in the guest room. “Where did I fail him?” he asked out loud. “He fell for a woman with definite gray areas and married her despite my protesting. And he ended up with two light sons!”
         He walked up to the mirror and tapped it with his index finger twice, then moved his finger in a counter-clockwise circle until the mirror began to ripple and move. The surface began to look like a combination of a mirror and liquid mercury.
         Reaching his hands into the mirror, Sebastian splashed some of the substance onto his face. Wrinkles smoothed out, gray hairs disappeared, and skin discolorations blended in with the rest of his skin tone. “This family is making me old!”

         As Darrius was blasting Wayne’s head to little bits, an unrelated idea came to him.
         “Dismissed!” he quickly shouted to the zombies as he dashed inside. He was grinning from ear to ear “Alison, dad!” he called.
         “What do you want?” Sebastian asked as he and Alison appeared at the top of the stairs.
         “The same thing you do—to purify the DeRes name.”