'Okay, then, I'll introduce everyone around.' I did, and Paris was the one who tried to flirt with Jane. She looked at him as if he were less than nothing, a pimple on the butt of the universe and she could have cared less. Wicked and Truth bothered the SWAT guys for the same reason that Dev, Nicky, and Lisandro did: SWAT wasn't used to meeting other men who made them for a moment think, Would I win this fight? They were friendly about it, but I knew that Wicked had picked up on it; I couldn't tell if Truth had, or if he cared. If we'd had more time Wicked would have played with them a little, gently, but he would have amused himself.

I was about to try to do something that most animators couldn't have attempted at all, and those who could would have needed a human sacrifice to even try, which was very illegal, but I'd had more than one zombie raising where the power wanted to spread outside the circle of power. The circle was to keep the zombie you raised inside just in case something went wrong, but it was also there to keep things out. There are things that will inhabit corpses, especially fresh ones, until the body starts to rot and then everything leaves it. I'd accidentally raised entire cemeteries before when people had died inside the circle of power. It had been enough energy that the circle had cracked and spread the power throughout the cemetery. One of the times that the energy had wanted to spread had been without a circle of protection and with a vampire at my back acting as my undead energy boost. I was going to try to replicate that, but this time I wasn't going to fight the power, I was going to indulge it. I was purposefully going to raise as many zombies as I could. I was chumming for the Lover of the Death to come play with me. He thought that having some of the power of the Mother of All Darkness inside him made him a bad-ass necromancer; I was going to do everything I could to show him that I was better at it. I needed him to come close enough for me to raise a circle with him inside it, and then all I had to do was keep him trapped in the body he walked in with, and give the word to Hatfield to burn the one on her end. She still hadn't found the body, but she had found the old mine that he'd been hiding in. Little Henry had been right that it was a maze. I prayed she'd find the body before he showed up on this end, because if not we were fucked. To kill him, the body he was in and the body he'd started in both had to burn.

We were in the modern open area of the cemetery. It gave the snipers the best chance. It left us open for the same thing, but long gun wasn't Seamus's strong suit, and the Lover of Death wouldn't shoot us. If he killed us tonight it would be death by zombie, or rotting vampire, nothing as clean and neat as a bullet.

Nicky came to me and spoke low. 'Why are you delaying?'

He was right. 'I think I'm afraid.'

'That you can't do it?'

'No, that I can.'

'Why does that scare you?' he asked.

I took a deep breath and was honest with the gibbering voice in the back of my head. 'I've fought my necromancy for years to not do the very thing I'm about to do on purpose.'

'Create your own army of the undead?'

I nodded.

'What scares you about it the most?'

I looked up at him. 'That I'll enjoy it too much.'

'It's okay to enjoy what we're good at, Anita.'

'It's not okay to enjoy certain things, it's dangerous.'

'You mean how you're not supposed to enjoy killing people, or hurting them?'

I nodded. 'Yeah, like that.'

'Do you feel guilty about anyone you've killed?'

'No, not really.'

'Me either; now do this, Anita. Let your power out of its cage and see how far it runs.'

'What if it runs too far to put back in its cage?'

'If you're the one controlling the zombie army, I know it will be a good zombie army, because you are my moral compass and you always point true north, Anita. Don't let your doubts, or anyone else's issues, make you think otherwise.'

'Are you sure you're a sociopath?' I asked.

'Pretty sure, yeah; why?'

'Because somehow I didn't think sociopaths were good at being comforting.'

'We can be great at it, because we spend our lives play-acting, pretending so that we fit in and no one suspects that we have no idea why people are nice to each other.'

'You understand that was completely not comforting, right?'

'Yes, but I don't have to pretend with you; you already know that I'm a sociopath, and you love me anyway.'

Edward came up to us. 'Sorry to interrupt, but what's the holdup?'

'Me, worrying about things I shouldn't be,' I said.

'Want some help clearing your head?' he asked.

I shook my head. 'I'm good, Nicky helped.'

Nicky looked at Edward. 'She's having one of those what-if-killing-feels-really-good, doesn't-that-make-me-a-bad-person moments.'

Edward nodded as if that made perfect sense. 'Then it feels good. We can't really control what flips our switch; don't judge it, Anita, and just accept it.'

I wanted to argue, but it would have been beyond stupid to argue with the two sociopaths in my life. 'Why do I have moral quandary questions with the two of you?'

'Because you don't really have moral quandaries about violence, Anita, but you're afraid of being judged for enjoying it, so you only bring it to the two people in your life who won't judge you.'

I wanted to argue with Edward, but I couldn't. 'Well, fuck.'

'Pretty much; now go raise zombies like the kickass necromancer we all know you are.' He actually petted me on the head, which he knew I hated.

'Don't pet me,' I said.

'Sorry, but if you need to stroke off, I can help you; otherwise do your job so that the evil necromancer's undead army doesn't eat all the nice people in Boulder.'

'Does that make me the good necromancer, or just the other evil one?'

'It makes you our necromancer; now go play with the vampires and raise us some zombies.'

'Fine, you guys go stand somewhere else.' I went to get my vampires and embrace my inner necromancer. I hoped I was the good one.

CHAPTER 81

Most animators need practice and training to raise the dead; I got training so I could stop doing it by accident. A beloved dog that crawled into bed with me when I was fourteen, roadkill that followed me like I was some nightmarish Pied Piper, and finally a college professor who had committed suicide and come to my dorm room so I could tell his wife he was sorry. I wondered if the lone shambling zombies that they'd occasionally find wandering around were accidents from untrained animators like I had been once. I'd learned to raise the dead with the traditional words, steel, ointment, and blood sacrifice, usually a chicken, but I didn't need them. The man who had trained me needed them, but in emergencies I'd learned that they were just window dressing for me.

Edward was in the shadows with his flamethrower propped up against a larger tombstone. He'd only get it out if I could trap the Lover of Death in the circle. If he used a zombie body then I'd have him, but if he chose to ride one of his rotting vampires, that was harder. It was a lot harder to make a circle of power that could hold a vampire in, or out. I believed I could do it, if I stopped being afraid of myself. I realized as I stood in the cool night sensing Truth and Wicked at my back that I was still afraid of who I was, what I was, and there was still a part of me that would have chosen a different talent. Necromancy had given me so much in my life that made me happy, and I'd still have been 'normal' if I could have magically made it so.

I thought about no Jean-Claude in my life, no Nathaniel, or Micah, because they'd come to me because I had animals to call through Jean-Claude's vampire marks. No one in my life who made me happy would have come into my life without my necromancy not a single one. I thought about how happy I was, happier than I'd ever been, and I let go of the fear, the doubts, and decided to embrace all of me, truly, completely, and just trust.

I turned around and looked at the two vampires. I hugged them to me like I had when I first saw them tonight, but this time I let myself cuddle against their chests and raise my face up for a kiss. Wicked bent over me first and laid a gentle kiss upon my lips, and then Truth bent over me and started gentle, but the kiss grew and I moved my arm from around Wicked's waist so I could wrap myself around Truth and kiss him back, all eager lips, and tongue, and then I lost enough control that I forgot I was kissing a vampire and those dainty fangs are sharp. I tasted blood like sweet copper pennies. Truth made a small inarticulate sound and kissed me harder, lifting me off the ground with his arms around my upper body, so that my feet dangled inches above the ground. It could have turned to the ardeur and heat, but I chose that moment to call my necromancy, though call was not the right word, because that implies you have to coax it, call it like a reluctant dog. I just stopped holding it back, and it spilled up through my body into my mouth and the vampire that was kissing me. He cried out, his mouth coming away from mine, blood trickling down his lower lip. Wicked was at my back, hand curling in my hair, turning my head to kiss him, and the necromancy liked him, too. Animators can raise zombies; necromancers control all the undead. Wicked kissed me as his brother had, all mouth and tongue and teeth, and bled me a little bit more so that it was passion and blood and necromancy all intertwined. The men dropped to their knees and took me with them to the grave underneath us. The moment my body touched the ground, my necromancy flooded into the ground seeking the dead.