Eva had a whistle that she got from Sawyer. Presumably the one he had used to tame the creatures, though she hadn’t actually had a chance to test it out. Had she brought it with her, she could have tried it out on the one Zoe had incapacitated.
“Tell me, do you believe that necromancers worship Death?”
Eva rubbed the back of her head, moving her sharp fingers through her hair to massage her scalp with a practiced touch, glad she wasn’t still cutting her head. “Well, it made a certain amount of sense until you asked.”
“Seems counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? Necromancers go around killing people. But to power their constructs, they tend to use stolen souls. Either pulled directly from Death’s realm or from recent kills. Souls that haven’t been picked up by psychopomps.
“Necromancers, vampires, mummies, zombies, skeletons. The Power behind their reanimation is Life itself. To be clear, it isn’t entirely intentional. Merely a side effect of the undying nature of Life.”
“So what then?” Eva scratched her head. Knowing which Power had been attacking Void was an interesting bit of knowledge, but didn’t exactly help. No matter who Lynn named, it was still a Power. Too far above mortals or even demons to affect.
“Can something that embodies the very concept of life be killed?” Lynn shook her head. “I doubt it. And if it can be killed, is it a good idea?”
“But it must be stopped.”
“Agreed.”
“Especially if they’re going to be showing up in the mortal realm without being pulled through a demonic summoning circle.”
Lynn looked away and down towards the ground. “That might have been my fault. Shalise had been cleansed through the ritual with the obelisk. I was concerned for any taint that I had collected. I had been attempting my own ritual using natural moonlight. By the time I realized that something had gone wrong…”
She held out an arm, pulling back the sleeve of her jacket. Her dark skin was covered in violet bruises. Bright enough to be almost glowing. “I’m not quite sure how this happened, but I managed to prevent it spreading.”
“Would you like an amputation?” Eva asked, forming some of her blood into a small ring. When Lynn looked to be hesitating, Eva said, “Ylva mentioned corrupting effects of enigmas. Leaving it alone could be bad.”
“I believe that they become what they consume. Being touched or…” She held up her arm. “This isn’t corrupting me.”
“You’re willing to take that chance?”
Surgery
Eva popped into the gate room of the women’s ward. As Arachne hopped off her and grew back to her full height, Eva pulled out her cellphone and sent Zoe a message stating that she had put out the fires and was taking a rest at the prison.
Not entirely true, but not a lie either.
At least it would keep her from worrying when Eva didn’t end up at the apartments.
Heading out of the gate room and into her own room, Eva added a fresh bit of blood to her warding scheme. It was somewhat annoying that she had to do so. Eva had cleaned out a handful of people in the recent months—Zagan, Lynn, and half of Juliana’s family to name a few. That she was readding one of those people so soon was just a little irksome.
But things were strange. If someone who had been looking into the enigmas more than anyone else around wanted to be her friend at the moment, Eva couldn’t really deny them.
Devon didn’t care about enigmas. Especially not with his new wind on Catherine’s ritual circle—though that had hit a small snag with how decimated the demon population was at the moment. Catherine was quite picky in just who was allowed in her ritual. She kept flip-flopping over having Arachne because of her dubious demonic origins. Lucy was still out of sorts and not in any shape to participate in a ritual.
Which just left Devon’s carnivean.
To the best of Eva’s knowledge, Anderson hadn’t summoned any demons and neither had anyone else. Being able to feel demons now-a-days took a lot of guesswork out of figuring out how many demons were around.
Devon and Catherine had been planning to summon a demon. They had actually tried but wound up getting a few enigmas instead. Four separate tries ended up with them summoning nothing but enigmas. Whether that was because of the specific demons they had tried or because Hell was once again being infested with enigmas, Eva couldn’t say. And neither could they.
In regards to Catherine and Devon, the last Eva heard, they were holding off for a time before trying again.
Arms crossed in front of her chest, Eva plopped down on the couch in the common room. Lynn had said that she would be along in five minutes.
It was nearing ten.
“You shouldn’t trust her,” Arachne said as she sunk into the couch next to Eva.
Just as Eva was starting to grow impatient.
“I know. If she lies about the time to get here,” Eva said with only a slight sarcastic tone in her voice, “who knows what else she is lying about.”
“She tried to kill you. Multiple times. She will try again.”
