The Dead Seekers Read online

  BY BARB AND J. C. HENDEE

  The Noble Dead Saga—Series One

  Dhampir

  Thief of Lives

  Sister of the Dead

  Traitor to the Blood

  Rebel Fay

  Child of a Dead God

  The Noble Dead Saga—Series Two

  In Shade and Shadow

  Through Stone and Sea

  Of Truth and Beasts

  The Noble Dead Saga—Series Three

  Between Their Worlds

  The Dog in the Dark

  A Wind in the Night

  First and Last Sorcerer

  The Night Voice

  ALSO BY BARB HENDEE

  The Vampire Memories Series

  Blood Memories

  Hunting Memories

  Memories of Envy

  In Memories We Fear

  Ghost of Memories

  The Mist-Torn Witches Series

  The Mist-Torn Witches

  Witches in Red

  Witches with the Enemy

  To Kill a Kettle Witch

  ACE

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2017 by Barb Hendee and J. C. Hendee

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  ACE is a registered trademark and the A colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Hendee, Barb, author. | Hendee, J. C., author.

  Title: The dead seekers/Barb and J. C. Hendee.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Ace, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016025986 (print) | LCCN 2016034496 (ebook) |

  ISBN 9780451469342 (hardback) | ISBN 9780698154469 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Dead—Fiction. | Man-woman relationships—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION/Fantasy/Epic. | FICTION/Fantasy/General. | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction. | Horror fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3608.E525 D43 2017 (print) | LCC PS3608.E525 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016025986

  First Edition: January 2017

  Jacket art by Steve Stone

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  Other Titles by Barb and J. C. Hendee

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  PROLOGUE

  “One more, my lady,” the midwife urged a woman before her on a bed. “Bear down!”

  The room was lavishly decorated with tapestries, cushions, and polished furniture, but the sheets of the great bed were soaked in blood. The dim chamber was thick with the smell of perspiration, amid sounds of panting and pained cries.

  “Now!” the midwife ordered.

  Baroness Reagan Vishal drew a deep breath, and her sweat-sheened features twisted with agony in a final effort.

  “I have him, my lady!” cried the midwife.

  Reagan fell back in exhaustion against sweat-drenched pillows.

  The midwife smiled as she straightened, holding something small wrapped in cloth. “It’s a boy. A moment, while I cut the cord.”

  “A boy,” Reagan whispered in relief, not even lifting her head.

  As the small knife slit through the infant’s umbilical, the midwife’s smile faded. She froze for an instant and then rushed to a side table, laying the bundle there and unwrapping it.

  Eyes closed, the newborn did not move.

  The midwife breathed lightly into the infant’s mouth, then waited, watched, and tried again—and again. Nothing changed.

  The young baroness struggled to sit up in the bed, watching them. Stricken, the midwife barely glanced aside.

  “My lady . . .”

  “No!” Reagan cried out.

  The great door to the manor bedchamber slammed open.

  As a wide-shouldered man in a blue tunic strode in, the midwife spun to intercept him.

  “My—my lord, you cannot be in here.”

  “Out of my way,” he ordered without slowing.

  “Gerold!” Reagan called. “Help him. Tell me he’s not . . . that he’s not . . .”

  Baron Gerold Vishal stopped at the side table and looked down at the unmoving infant for a long moment. His hard features twitched, perhaps with grief, as his wife began weeping in silence.

  The son they had longed for was stillborn.

  The baron didn’t look at the midwife. He whispered, “Take him away from here. Prepare him for immediate burial.”

  With a short nod, the midwife stepped in and rewrapped the tiny body, even covering his face. The child had been out of the womb too long with no breath and would not recover. Holding him close, she fled the great bedchamber, intending to go down to the kitchens below to clean the tiny corpse. Out in the upper passage, she couldn’t help stopping.

  “Poor little mite,” she whispered to the born-dead. “Not even a moment in this world before you are off to the next.”

  The blanket moved slightly, and the midwife tensed. With a gasp, she shifted the bundle to one arm and drew back the blanket’s corner.

  The infant boy’s eyes were open.

  Those eyes were so dark, seemingly without color, as they stared up at her in the dim passage without blinking. Then they began turning light blue. The bloodstained blanket rose and fell just barely with his small breaths.

  “My lord! My lady!” the midwife called out, running for the bedchamber. “He lives.”

  As she burst into the room, both noble parents were already staring toward the door. She held out the child, at a loss for which parent to rush to first. Baron Gerold strode toward her in disbelief and looked down. Reaching out, he took his son and hurried back to the bed and his wife.

  “He lives?” he said, his voice trembling.

  Reagan’s flushed cheeks were still coated in tears as she reached for the child.

  “Let me hold him,” she pleaded, and took her newborn son gently—carefully—as if afraid he might die again.

  “We’ll call him Tris,” she whispered, “after my father, if you agree?”

  The baron didn’t answer and instead looked to the midwife. “He is so quiet. Should he not cry?”

  The midwife stepped near, perhaps now puzzled as well.

  The infant made not a sound and looked at no one present. Instead, h
e stared off to the right of the bed, where the one lantern’s light barely reached. In a glance into the room’s dark corner, the midwife saw nothing, and yet when she turned back, the boy’s gaze had not wavered from . . . whatever he saw.

  —

  Thirteen Years Later

  At the proud age of ten, Mari Kaleja had no fear of entering the Wicker Woods, or so she would’ve said. She sat safely between her papa and mama on the high front bench of her family’s rolling wagon home. Everything around her was a comfort she knew well, from the crunch of wheels on a hardened road to the creak of the old, worn wooden bench and the dank smell of moss on a wet night.

  Two other wagons followed behind, filled with aunts, uncles, and cousins in this family of the wandering people—the Móndyalítko. Known to themselves as “the world’s little children,” they were too often thought of by others as vagabond thieves and tricksters.

  When Papa had announced they would camp in the Wicker Woods, a thrill had run through Mari. Common folk nearby shunned this place, for all knew the story. Before she was even born, a captured murderer named Wicker escaped his execution and hid in these woods. He caught passersby and killed them for what they had—or maybe just because he could.

  Mari looked up at Papa, holding the wagon’s reins. “Aren’t you afraid?”

  He was a big man with a mustache like a bushy hedge under a wide nose.

  “No, my little kitten, not a bit!” And Papa chuckled. “That Wicker is long dead, though he’d done us a good turn without knowing. We’ll camp without being bothered by locals, too scared to follow us in, even if they knew we’d come here.”

  If Papa wasn’t afraid, then Mari wasn’t afraid. Still, she couldn’t help a shivering thrill. Whenever they camped in this place, it did scare her a little. But she was loved, protected, and even more. Now and then, some Móndyalítko were born special—like her.

  They rolled deeper into the Wicker Woods. Being tucked in between Mama and Papa on the wagon’s bench made her feel brave. She liked feeling brave, especially when she wasn’t.

  “Over there,” Papa said, leaning out to call back to the family’s other two wagons. “Near the stream, but not too close.”

  Before long, all their wagons stopped, brakes and wheel braces were set, and everyone busied setting up “home” for the night. Above, the near-full moon lit the clear sky, though little light reached through the branches into the woods.

  Mari crouched by the fire lit in a ring of gathered stones as her mama cut up potatoes, carrots, and dry-cured jerky into an iron pot hung over the low flames. It had been another long day on the road, and Mari yawned.

  “Don’t fall asleep,” Mama said. “Not until you’ve eaten.”

  Mama was younger than Papa, with green-flecked brown eyes and long hair like dark chocolate—like Mari’s. And she was special too, in a different way. Mama sometimes saw things that others didn’t: things far away or that hadn’t happened yet. Not always, but sometimes. Mari’s eyes were a shade of brown so light they could be called amber.

  “I’m too hungry to sleep,” she answered.

  Mama smiled. “Not long now.”

  Mari’s eyelids began to droop just the same. She hugged her knees where she crouched, scrunching the wrapped quilt-work skirt, with its shiny little garnishes sewn into the pattern. Those little disks cut from inside seashells sparkled in the firelight. Her head began to nod just as she heard Papa’s voice.

  “Should I carry her to bed?”

  “No, wake her,” Mama answered. “She needs to eat.”

  Suddenly a scream made Mari’s eyes pop wide.

  “Look out, Tisia!”

  That was her mama’s name; that was Auntie Esmeralda who’d screamed it. Mama cried out in pain as something white that resembled a hand came through her chest. Then something struck the fire. Smoke and sparks scattered everywhere. Everything turned so dark, and Mari couldn’t see anyone else by the ring of stones.

  Two more screams from across the camp drove shudders through her.

  “Mama?” she cried, and then screamed herself. “Mama!”

  Smoke in darkness swirled as someone ran through it.

  Mari tumbled backward in trying to get away and then saw Papa. He ran for their wagon, though she didn’t see why until he spun about. In his hand was his long-handled woodsman’s ax, taken from where he kept it beneath the bench. He stalled at spotting her.

  “Run!” he shouted in the dark. “Hide in the woods. Don’t come back till I get you!”

  Fear wouldn’t her let move.

  “Run—now!”

  Terrified, Mari turned and scrambled away, but she didn’t go far. More screams and shouts rose from back where she had left her home. Moss-wet branches and thorny bushes snagged and pulled her skirt again and again until she rounded a crooked but ancient tree trunk to peer toward camp.

  There were glimmers like white wisps in the night among the trees. Shapes that moved, walked, and seemed to fly. She heard another shout, from her uncle Gustav, and then a shout from Papa as well, though she couldn’t see them. One glimmering wisp slipped right through an oak near her wagon home, and Mari leaned in, hugging the wet tree trunk, trying for a clearer look.

  It was a woman, white like chalk dust in water. Trees and the wagon showed through her as she rushed toward other shouts. A darkness flickered by in the woman’s passing.

  Mari shuddered and then whimpered even more.

  That pure black shape was like the silhouette of a slender boy. It stopped, perhaps turned in a pause toward—or away from—where the ghost woman had gone. Mari couldn’t be certain which way the silhouette turned, for it was nothing but pure blackness. No eyes, no white teeth in a mouth, nothing at all but black deeper than night.

  More screams sounded, from her cousins this time. Someone ran at the black thing, and an ax-head suddenly appeared as it cut through it.

  That ax-head slammed down into the earth as if it had touched nothing.

  Papa came stumbling through the black thing, losing his grip on the ax, and his mouth and eyes gaped. His face twisted like he was choking.

  Mari stepped out around the tree. Before she could run or call to him, he saw her.

  Papa mouthed only one word before his knees hit the ground.

  —Run—

  A black hand sprouted through his face.

  He fell forward, as if that hand wasn’t there. It had slipped out through the back of his head. He flopped face-first on the wet ground and didn’t move.

  There was the black boy-shape opposite her through the trees.

  Mari heard a whimper somewhere far-off. It cut short in a choke before silence. More glimmering white figures came through the woods—through the trees—nearing on the black one as if it had called to them. And that one took a silent step toward her.

  She twisted away and ran deeper into the Wicker Woods, panting too hard to even scream. Branches tore at her clothing, caught in the quilt-work skirt, and she fell.

  Mari ripped at the skirt and thrashed to get free, scrambling and then running . . . on all fours.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Nightfall came and went. The chill air smelled of autumn leaves, decay, and dank earth around the quiet town of Strîbrov, hidden in the thick forest of southern Stravina.

  Tris Vishal walked the main road through town, the place he now called “home.” Time had passed slowly since he’d left his first home, his birthplace, and he felt older than his twenty-five years.

  The pack slung over his left shoulder was heavy. His soggy black cloak hung well below his knees, weighed down by the recent rain. So was the cloak’s hood, though he kept it pulled forward and low over cropped dark hair shadowing blue eyes so pale that some thought them colorless.

  Tris had no wish to greet or be greeted by anyone. Thankfully, townsfolk here retired early, as t
his was not a region to be out late after dark. Side streets along the way were little more than mud-packed paths. When he reached a squarely built, three-story building of weather-stained pine planks at the far end of town, he paused about a stick’s toss before its front door.

  The bottom level was used as an herb and apothecary shop, owned and run by his landlord, Heilman Tavakovich. Tris lived on the second floor. The top floor remained unoccupied, its spare rooms used for storage, and he paid extra in rent to see that it stayed that way. All the windows were dark, including the shop’s, which had glass panes behind their outer shutters.

  He rounded to the building’s back side and dug for his key. An actual lock in a door wasn’t common, but Heilman wasn’t a common proprietor or landlord.

  After letting himself in, Tris climbed the back stairs to his second-floor door. Once inside, he dropped his pack and stepped through the chaos of his main chamber. Even in the dark, he didn’t trip over anything, as clear paths were always kept amid the mess. He unlatched and raised the front window—the only one of his with glass—and pushed open the outer shutters.

  Scant moonlight passed him, likely illuminating the room’s clutter and shelves of books—parchments, tomes, and odd objects and knickknacks everywhere—though he didn’t look back.

  Tris stood there staring over the silent town and the still forest, and into the darkness. Perhaps the span of twenty slow breaths passed before he finally turned around. By then, the room had turned cold from the night air.

  Three faded tables were cluttered with small urns, bottles, and mortar and pestle, leaving little room for more than a cup. A single bed and a small chest stood near the back, though to the south was a door to a bedroom that he never used. He preferred one room for himself, with his possessions always kept within sight.

  Tris had been gone four days and returned feeling more hollow than usual. Of late, the trade he had chosen—no, had chosen him—offered few tasks and no relief.

  He’d gone seeking the truth of a rumor of a wandering spirit haunting the main stream of a not-too-distant village. The people there had become so frightened that they had taken to collecting rainwater in pots and buckets rather than venturing to the stream in the forest.