Incubus Dreams
Chapter 40
40
Sunset Cemetery was a nice combination of old and new. Big monuments of angels and weeping virgins combined with flat, modern stones--so much less interesting. It was still a place for the rich and famous to be interred, like our local famous brewery family, the Busches.
In his day, Edwin Alonzo Herman had been a very important man, and his monument showed that he thought so, too. It loomed up into the darkness like some winged giant. There was enough light to see that the huge angel had a sword and shield, and it gave you sense that it was waiting to pass judgment, and you wouldn't like what it decided. Of course, maybe that was just the way I was feeling tonight.
There were more than a dozen people waiting at the paved road, most of them lawyers, though with enough family members to have nearly caused a fistfight when I introduced myself and briefly explained what I'd be doing. I'd started telling people up front that I'd be using a machete and beheading chickens, for two different reasons. I'd had an overzealous bodyguard of a very wealthy man nearly shoot me when I drew the big blade. At a different graveside for a historical society, the secretary of said society had jumped me and tried to save the chicken. She'd turned out to be a vegan. That's like a rabid fundamentalist vegetarian. I'd been glad later that it hadn't been cold enough to wear a coat, because leather is the only kind of coat I own.
Tonight was cold enough for coats. October isn't usually that chilly in St. Louis, but tonight had decided to be cold. Or maybe it just felt colder because I was wearing a thong. I'd been surprised by two things about the skimpy underwear: One, once I got over the sensation of having something in the crack of my butt, the thong wasn't uncomfortable; two, a thong under a short skirt on a cold night was damn cold. I'd never fully appreciated how much warmth a little extra bit of satin or silk could hold in against my ass. I certainly appreciated it as I walked over the grass in my little boots and skirt. I huddled in the borrowed leather jacket, but kept my face away from the collar. I did not want a repeat of what had happened in the car. I willed the warmth in my upper body to travel downward. I was suddenly wishing I'd taken one of the taller men's jackets. It wouldn't have looked as good, but it would have covered my ass.
I stood in front of the grave, though, since it had been nearly two hundred years in a cemetery that was as well-maintained as Sunset, there was no way for me to truly be sure of where the grave had been, not really. A lot of the graves had been moved here from smaller cemeteries over the years, as increased population had needed the land. But I had dropped just enough of my shields to know exactly where Edwin Alonzo Herman's grave lay. His bones were under there, I could feel them.
To the watchers from the road who had paid for this show, it must have looked like I was standing a little far away from the impressive angel. But it had been my experience that once the zombie crawls out of the grave, the crowd always thinks they've had a good show. They'll forgive almost any lack of showmanship on my part, once they've seen me raise the dead. Funny, that.
The crate with softly clucking chickens was near my feet. Graham had carried it and put it where I said to put it. No arguments. Once we left the Jeep, he went back into serious security guard mode. He was the unsmiling, business only person he'd been when I first saw him at the club. He was wearing a plain white T-shirt with his black jeans, jogging shoes, and his own short, leather jacket. He'd changed out of the Guilty Pleasures shirt without being asked. The joking, half-flirting man of a few minutes ago had vanished behind a very serious face and a pair of dark eyes that kept searching the cemetery, the people near us, and farther away, so he was very obviously aware of the perimeter. He seemed to vibrate bodyguard. I'd let the lawyers think he was and showed them the many bandages on my face, wrist, and fingers, to prove the necessity. No one had argued that this was private business and they didn't like anyone but me here with them, once Graham put his dark gaze on their faces. He had a really good stare, a hardness to his face and eyes that did not match what he'd been like in the car. Interesting.
Requiem had carried my gym bag with all the rest of the zombie-raising equipment, except the chickens. I could have carried the bag, but it would have taken me two trips to get the chickens. They tended to squawk if you didn't carry them upright and carefully. Since I was planning on killing them tonight, I tried not to scare them. I had to kill them to raise the dead, but I could make it as painless as possible. And fear definitely goes under the heading of pain in the wrong situation. Being a blood sacrifice probably qualifies as a wrong situation, even if you're a chicken.
I'd persuaded Requiem to leave his long, black cloak in the Jeep, because in it, he looked like a cute version of the Grim Reaper. Out of it, he looked like he should have been going clubbing. Maybe it was the leather pants? Or the boots? Or the long-sleeved silk shirt in a deep green jewel tone that made his white skin almost shine in contrast. The shirt had made his eyes turquoise in the light, as if there was green in that bright blue somewhere. He'd been harder to explain than Graham, because even without the cloak, he didn't really look like a bodyguard. He looked like what he was, and that was nothing that any of Herman's descendants thought should be here tonight. The only walking dead they wanted to see tonight was Herman himself. I'd told them the vampire stayed, they could like it, or lump it. I also reminded them that I was not obligated to return their down payment if they changed their minds about raising Edwin Herman from the grave. I was here, ready to fulfill my part of the bargain.
When you start needing more than a hundred years worth of zombie raised, it's sort of a seller's market, and I was the seller. There were two other animators in the United States that could do it. One in California, and one in New Orleans, but they weren't here, and I was. Besides, they were nearly as expensive as I was, and they also came with the cost of plane fare and hotels. More money.
So the lawyers got them to shut up. Though there was an elderly woman on the side of the family that had inherited the money that wanted to leave if the "demon" stayed. Demon? If she thought Requiem was a demon, she'd never seen one for real. I had, and I knew the difference.
But the lawyers had settled them down, and one of the granddaughters had settled the grandmother down, and now they were waiting in the dark for me to do my job.
I had the chickens in their crate, and my gym bag with the machete and other paraphernalia. But before anything else, I had to drop my shields enough to do this. I'd learned how to shield, really shield, so that I could fight off the urge to use my gift. I'd learned long ago to control it enough so I didn't raise the dead by accident. There'd been a professor in college that committed suicide. He'd come to my dorm room one night. He wanted to tell his wife he was sorry. That was back when I wasn't raising anything, just shut it down, ignored it. I'm too damn gifted to ignore it. Psychic ability will come out one way or another, if the power is big enough, it'll find a way. And you probably won't like what it will find.
I dropped my shields, not all of them, but enough. Enough so I could open that part of me that raised the dead. It was like a fist that stayed clenched and tight, and only when I relaxed, spread wide those metaphysical fingers, could I be free. I knew people that had studied with animators or voodoo practitioners to acquire the skills needed to raise the dead. I'd studied to learn how not to raise the dead. But it took a little effort, all the time, to keep that fist closed, that power shut down. It was like a piece of me never completely relaxed, not even when I slept, unless I was here, with the true dead. Here to call one of them from the grave. It was the only moment that all of me could be free.
I stood there for a minute with my power spilling, cool and seeking, like a wind, except that this wind didn't move your hair, it only crept along your skin. It was like I'd been holding my breath, tight, so tight, and finally I could let it out, let it all out, and relax. Once I'd stopped being afraid of it, it felt so good to be with the dead. Peaceful, so peaceful, because whatever was left in the grave had nothing to do with souls or pain. Quiet as the grave wasn't just a saying. But I'd forgotten that there were dead near at hand that weren't underground.
My power touched Requiem. It should have ignored him, but it didn't. That cool not-wind curled around him like the arms of some long-lost lover. I'd never felt anything quite like it. For the first time I truly understood that my power was over the dead, all the dead, and that undead is still dead. I'd always thought, and been told, that vampires killed necromancers for fear that they would be controlled by them, but in that second, I knew that wasn't the whole truth. It was as if a door opened inside me, to a room that I hadn't known existed. Inside that metaphysical room stood something. It had no shape that my eye could see, no weight, nothing to touch, nothing to hold, but it was there, and it was real, and it was me, mine, sort of. A "power plateau" Byron and Requiem had called it, but that wasn't it. Plateau is static, not growing, not changing. This wasn't static.
It blew out toward me, and if it had been a real room in a real house, the house would have exploded outward with the force of its coming. It would have roared outward in a blizzard of wood and glass and metal, and there would have been nothing standing in that metaphysical yard, except ground zero of some mysterious blast.
It was inside me, so it couldn't slam into me, that was silly, but that's still what it did. It slammed into me, and for a second I was blind, deaf, weightless, nothingness. There was nothing but the rawness of that power.
I came to, with Graham's voice. "Anita, Anita, can you hear me? Anita!" I felt him holding me, knew we were on top of the grave. I could feel the grave, could feel Edwin Alonzo Herman lying underneath me. All I had to do was call his name.
"Something's wrong, Requiem."
"No," he said, and that one word was enough. I opened my eyes and saw the vampire standing over me.
"She's awake," Graham said, and he tried to cradle me into a sitting position, but I lifted my hand up toward Requiem.
The vampire reached down for me, and I reached for him. Graham helped, by pushing me upright, but he wasn't there for me in that moment. My business was with the dead, and Graham was too warm for me. The blood I wanted was slow and thick, and holding its hand out to me.
Requiem's fingers brushed mine, and the power inside me steadied, as if the world had been trembling, and now it was still. I touched his hand in that sudden stillness, and there was no pulse in his palm. No beat of blood to distract the senses. He blinked at me, his lips moved, but he did not breathe. He was still. He was dead. He was mine.
He pulled me to my feet, and we stood on the foot of the grave, hand in hand. I looked up into that face, met the turquoise flame of his eyes, but it wasn't me that was pulled into his gaze. It was he that fell into mine, and I knew, because I had a glimpse from his mind to mine, that my eyes were solid pools of black with stars glittering in them. It was the way my eyes had looked when Obsidian Butterfly, a vampire that thought she was an Aztec goddess, had shown me some of her power. She was powerful enough that no one argued with her about whether or not she was deity. Some things aren't worth the fight. I'd used the power I'd learned from her only twice, and both times my eyes had filled with stars.
The night was suddenly less dark. I could see details, colors, things that my own eyes could never have seen. Requiem's shirt was so green it seemed to burn like his eyes. It was a kind of hyperfocus, and it wasn't just sight. His hand in mine felt heavier than it should have, more important than it should have, as if I could feel each whorl of his fingertip like tiny silken lines against my hand. To make love like this would either be the most wondrous experience of your life, or drive you mad.
I remembered this power, but it wasn't what I needed. I had another flash from Requiem's mind, a tiny flash of fear, quieted almost immediately, because I was touching him and I didn't want him to be afraid. The stars in my eyes drowned in a rush of flame, black flame with a center of brown, as if wood were the flame, and fire what it ate.
My eyes were, for a moment, what they'd be if I'd been a vampire. They filled with dark, dark brown light, so dark it was almost black. I turned those glowing eyes toward the grave, and Graham saw them.
"Oh, God," he whispered.
"Get off the grave, Graham," I said, and my voice was mine, almost.
He just knelt on the ground and stared up at me.
"Move, Graham," I said, "you won't want to be there when I'm finished."
He scrambled to his feet and moved, until I told him, "Good enough." He stayed close, eyes wide, fear like a scent off of his skin, but he didn't run, and he didn't try to distance himself. Brave boy.
I knelt on the hard ground and drew Requiem down with me, so that he knelt behind me with his hands on my shoulders. He was like some huge solid wall of quiet strength behind me. I'd known that I amplified Jean-Claude's powers when I was near him, but I'd never felt anything like what was happening now. It wasn't a triumvirate of power between Requiem and me, it was that he was one of Jean-Claude's vampires, and that made him mine in a way. Mine to call on, mine to use, mine to reward.
I bent until my hands touched the ground, until I could feel the dead just below me. It was as if the ground were water, and I knew there was someone drowning just below me, and all I had to do was reach down and save them.
I whispered, "Edwin Alonzo Herman, hear me." I felt him stir, like a sleeper disturbed by a dream. "Edwin Alonzo Herman, I call you from your grave." I felt his bones grow long and straight, felt his flesh coalesce around him. It was like restuffing a broken doll. He remade himself, and it was so easy, too easy. The power began to spread outward, began to seek another grave, but some small part of me that was still me, knew better. It wouldn't be just one more grave. I knew in that instant that I could raise this cemetery. That I could raise them all. No blood sacrifice. No chickens. No goats. Nothing, but the power blowing through me, and the vampire at my back. Because the power wanted to be used. It wanted to help me, help me caress them all from their graves, pull them to the light of stars, and fill them with... life. It would feel so good to lift them all up, so good.
I shook my head and fought that helpful power. Fought not to spread like a sweet sickness through the graves. Fought to hold on to what was left of who I'd thought I was. I needed help. I thought about Jean-Claude, but that wasn't it. I needed to remember that I wasn't just the dead. I was alive.
I reached out to the other third of our triumvirate. I reached out to Richard. He looked up at me as if I hovered in the air above his family's dining room table. I saw his father like an older clone of Richard himself, and most of his brothers, sitting at the table, passing a blue bowl. Charlotte, his mother, came in from the kitchen's swinging door just behind that chair. She was still about my size, with honey-blond hair and a figure that was both petite and full-figured. Except for the hair color and skin tone, Charlotte even reminded me of me. There was a reason that most of the Zeeman brothers had chosen small, tough women. I watched her bring in a big platter, smiling, chatting with her family. I couldn't hear what she was saying, or any noise from the crowded, smiling family scene. They all seemed so happy, so perfect. I didn't want to bring this here.
I started to pull away, and Richard's voice was in my head. "Wait, wait, Anita, please." He excused himself from the table and walked through the big living room, out onto the sweep of porch, and down the handful of steps until he could gaze up into the same sky that rode above me. By the time he gazed up into the air, gazed at me, he seemed to have sensed some of what was happening, because he said, "Dear God, Anita, what's happened? I've felt your power before, but not like this."
I didn't have enough control to talk in my head, so Requiem was going to get the out loud version, but I was past caring. "The vampires keep saying that we've hit a new power level."
He hugged his bare arms in the T-shirt. He hadn't stopped for a jacket. "It's like the night is breathing your power. What can I do?"
"Remind me that I'm not dead. Remind me that my ties are with things that have a heartbeat."
"How will that help?"
I wanted to scream my frustration at him. "God, Richard, just help me, please help. If you don't, I'm afraid of what I'll raise in this cemetery tonight."
He nodded. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry for so much, Anita." He looked down, and I knew the gesture, he was thinking, or gathering his will for something. Usually something he didn't want to do. But I didn't have time to worry about Richard's hangups tonight. I was too scared of the power that pulsed in the ground underneath me. A cold pulsing, but it promised to spread to all the graves. I knew that tonight I could raise one of those shambling zombie armies that the movies are so fond of portraying, and usually has nothing to do with real necromancy.
He looked back at the house and said, "I'm fine, Mom. I just need a little privacy. Keep everybody close to the house, okay." He shook his head. "No, Mom, it's not that close to the full moon."
He walked out into the openness of the yard away from the lights of the house and he let down his shields--the metaphysical walls that kept his beast caged and helped him pass for human. The night was suddenly alive in a way that it hadn't been. The still air held a thousand scents: the ripeness of apples from the orchard behind the house; grass like a thick green blanket against our face; trees, the spicy tang of sweet gum, the softer scent of birch, the sweet pungent wood of poplar, and over it all, the dry richness of fallen leaves all around us. Sounds, then. The last crickets of the year chirping their plaintive song. Other insects from the woods, singing their last songs before the cold came. The wind raised, and the trees creaked and groaned around the house. The big oak by the driveway threw its branches against the stars, and Richard raised his head to watch that wild wind. There was barely a breeze on the ground, but up high in the highest trees, the wind ran fast and pulled at the bare limbs at the very top of the trees. Most people don't look up, animals look up, because they know that there is no true safety. They don't worry about it the way we do, but they're aware of it in a way that we aren't.
Richard walked into the edge of trees that began the woods that bordered the western edge of the family land. He touched a trunk, laid his hands on it, and it was rough and hard, with deep grooves in the bark like tiny tunnels. He laid his face against that roughness, and it was spicy and pungent, and I knew it was sweet gum. He gazed up into the bare branches where the tiny rough balls still hung on to the edges of the tree. He hugged the tree, hugged it so tight that the bark dug into his skin, he rubbed his cheek against the roughness of it, like he was scent marking, then he was off. He was running at an easy lope through the trees, into the woods. He wasn't hunting. He was running for the joy of it.
He twisted through the underbrush like it wasn't there. And as I'd felt only once before, it was as if the trees and bushes welcomed him, or turned aside for him, or as if green growth could be water, and he dived through it, running, dodging, twisting, giving himself to the brush of twigs and branches and the feel of the living ground underfoot. There was life that didn't run or hide, it was all alive, alive in a way that most humans never understand.
Richard ran, and he took me with him, as he had one night long ago. Then he'd held my hand, and I'd struggled to keep up, to understand. Now it was effortless, because I was inside his head, inside him. The night was alive for him in a way that it wasn't for Jean-Claude, or for me. I was too human, and Jean-Claude's interest in life was too shallow. Neither of us could feel what Richard's beast could give him.
Something touched my hand, and I was jerked back to the grave. Requiem was still at my back, dead still, but Graham was on the grave. He looked uncertain, but he was sniffing the air near my skin. "You smell like trees and pack," he said softly.
Richard looked up at us. "Why is Graham there?"
"Bodyguard. Jean-Claude was afraid of what would happen if I didn't have someone with me."
"Tell him he's supposed to guard you, and he can't do that on the grave."
"You're supposed to guard me, Graham, you can't do that from here." The sharp scent of wolf thickened around me as I said it.
Graham reacted to it like he'd been struck. He cringed to the ground, doing the wolf grovel. "I'm sorry, you just smelled so good. I forgot myself."
"Stop groveling and get back to work." Richard said it first, and I echoed it for him.
Graham did what he was told. He went back to very serious bodyguard mode, looking out into the dark for whatever might come.
Richard took in a deep breath, and I smelled that thick, sweet scent of deep woods. He'd run miles, effortlessly, not for the same reason that a human will run well, but because the land itself helped him run, gave him strength, welcomed him.
He stood there in the middle of the woods, his feet anchored into the ground. I realized that Richard was my ground, my center, his joy, his heart pumping in his chest from that joyous run. I kept my tie to him open and full of scents and sounds and things faraway from here. I put my hands on the grave, and even with Requiem at my back, touching me, it wasn't as real as the pounding of Richard's heart miles away.
"Edwin Alonzo Herman, with will, word, and flesh, I call you from your grave. Come, come now!" It was all wrong, all different from usual, but it was right just the same.
I felt the corpse shift, solidify, piece itself together like a puzzle, and begin to rise up through the earth as if it were water. I'd watched this happen countless times, but I'd never been kneeling on the ground when it happened. The earth buckled and rolled like an earthquake that was trapped in a few feet of ground. The ground flowed under my hands like it was something else, not water, not mud, but something both less and more solid. I don't know what Requiem thought was happening, but he didn't try to pull away, he stayed solid at my back. He rode it with me and never made a noise. Brave vampire.
Hands met mine through the shifting earth, cool fingers wrapped around my warmth. Edwin Alonzo Herman's hands wrapped around mine like a swimmer who's given up hope and finally touches a rope. The grave threw him upward like a flower springing free of the earth, but the push of it forced me to pull him upward, to find my feet with Requiem steadying me. If the vampire hadn't been there to hold me standing on the writhing, twisting ground, I would have fallen. But Requiem kept me standing, and I pulled the dead man from his grave, pulled him perfect and whole, until he stood taller than me, with the grave dirt falling away from a perfect black suit that looked as if it had been freshly pressed. His hair was balding with a thick fringe just above the ears and down the collar, and thick sideburns that curved to a walrus thick mustache. He was portly, nearly fat, which had been in style among the rich. When Edwin Alonzo died, only the poor were skinny, only the poor looked starved.
I felt Richard still standing by the edge of that small stream. The air was cooler by that musical run, and his pulse was beginning to slow from the run, the light sweat starting to cool on his skin. He wasn't afraid, or horrified. He simply stood rooted to the ground, steadying me with the pulse and beat of his body, the thick musk of wolf faint in the autumn air.
I stared up at the zombie, and even to me, it looked like damn good work. With a big enough blood sacrifice I could raise a zombie that looked alive, close at least, but this, this was perfect. His skin looked full and healthy in the starlight. He had a faint smile on his face, and his clothes looked as if he'd just put them on. Even his shoes were near spotless and gleaming with polish. Polish so shiny I noticed by moonlight. The hands that were pressed to mine were cool, but they didn't feel dead. He wasn't breathing, but he looked, felt, more alive than dead. It was unnerving. I'd known there was a lot of power tonight, and I'd had to force all of it into this one grave, so I guess it was alright that he looked this good, but for a moment when I looked into that plump, smiling face, I was afraid. Afraid that I'd done more than I'd been paid for, but when I reached his eyes, I let out a sigh of relief. The eyes were thick and full and looked, again, perfect, grayish in the starlight, probably would be blue in the brighter light, but there was no one home in those eyes. They were empty and waiting. I knew what they were waiting for, those empty eyes.
I lifted my left hand away from the zombie's, and he didn't cling to me, his fingers just opened as I moved. I held my hand at shoulder level, toward the vampire at my back. "Undo my bandage."
Requiem kept one hand on my shoulder, but used the other hand to peel back the tape on my wrist.
"Take it off," I said.
He finally ripped the bandage away. I couldn't stop a small jerk of pain.
Richard called inside my head, "What are you going to do?"
"He needs blood, so he can speak. I didn't kill an animal. This is all the blood I've got."
He didn't say anything, but I felt his pulse begin to pick up speed.
I offered my wrist upward to the slightly taller body in front of me. Something slid through those pale eyes, something I'd seen before in the better preserved zombies. It was as if something went through them, something that paused in their eyes, as if there were darker things waiting, waiting for a chance for a body to inhabit. Something, not so much evil, as just very, very not good. But that whiskered face turned toward my wrist, sniffed the air, and the moment it scented the blood, that otherness in its eyes vanished. Driven out by the promise of something that all the dead value, a bit of the living.
The zombie grabbed my arm with both of its hands and smacked its mouth against my wrist like you'd grab a kiss from your dearest lover. Just the impact hurt the wound, made me gasp. But I knew what was coming, because I'd fed zombies off my own blood before. Not often, but often enough. The mouth locked around the wound, and his mouth was wide enough to take it all in, to set his teeth against the torn edges, and grind. I made a small sound, because I couldn't make no sound. Usually the zombie's mouth felt less real than this one. Except for how cool the flesh was, I couldn't tell the difference between the zombie and a person. It was a very good job, solid all the way through, even in places that only I would feel.
Richard bounded across the stream, hitting the edge of it with one foot, as if he wasn't quite steady. He began to run up the other bank, began to run with the night and the trees and the smells.
Edwin Alonzo Herman's mouth locked around my wrist and began to suck. The wound had begun to heal more than I'd realized, because to get to the blood, he had to pull hard and tight on my wrist. It hurt, really hurt. Yeah, I liked teeth in the right situation, but this wasn't it, and what might feel good during sex just fucking hurts during violence.
Richard was running full out now. I'd thought he was fast before, but he'd just been playing. Now, he ran. He ran so fast that branches slashed at him, that the earth didn't give to him, and part like water. He was running, running... running from himself. I had a bright glimpse inside his head. The sensation of teeth in my wrist, of that forceful mouth on my wound excited him. Excited him as both man and beast. He could have accepted if it was just about food, but it wasn't. The mixture of human and animal blurred the differences between food and sex. Blurred so many lines. Lines that Richard had never known existed, let alone wanted to cross.
He ran, and slipped in the leaves, and fell and was on his feet and running before his body had time to realize it was down. It was only in that moment that I remembered his injured shoulder, and the thought got me the memory, he'd shapeshifted, briefly, and healed himself. So much more powerful than he wanted to be.
The zombie had fallen to his knees, as if sucking at my wrist was the most exquisite thing it had ever tasted. It cradled my wrist against its mouth, and its tongue explored the wound.
My breath came out in a harsh word, "Shit!"
"Are you hurt?" Requiem asked softly.
I shook my head. It hurt, but I wasn't hurt. There was a difference, but usually a zombie starts to slow down about now. This one was still sucking hard and fast, as if he were a baby that had been starved. Of course, I'd never raised anyone this long dead without an animal sacrifice. Maybe that was the difference? I hoped so, because anything else would mean that something had gone wrong, really wrong.
He shook his mouth like a dog with a bone, and I swallowed a scream. It wasn't just that it hurt. That was way too much enthusiasm for a zombie. "Edwin, stop feeding." My voice was clear, and he ignored me. Shit. I licked suddenly dry lips. "He's had enough. Help me pry him loose," I said, voice low. Mustn't scare the clients. Mustn't let them know that everything had gone wrong tonight.
Richard fell again, slid in the damp autumn leaves, slid until a tree stopped him, sudden, and abrupt and bruising. He looked up, and I saw those wide brown eyes, saw what he was running from. He wanted to be there on his knees, he wanted to lick my wound, taste my blood, maybe widen that wound with sharp teeth. The thought didn't just excite him. The thought did it for him, just flat did it for him. What he wanted to do in the deepest, darkest, places in his soul gave a whole new meaning to oral sex.
He waited for me to be horrified, but I wasn't. If there was anyone who could resist doing the great bad thing, it was Richard. I trusted his control, not always his temper, but his control--that I trusted without doubt or reservation. I whispered, "Just because you want to do something, doesn't mean you will do it, or even that you have to do it. You're human, Richard, you have a mind and willpower. You aren't just your beast."
"You don't understand," he said, and the moment he said it, I knew what he'd done, by accident.
"You can feel what the zombie is doing?" I said.
He hid his face from me and scrambled to his feet, and ran. He ran out of the trees, and hit a paved road, and was across it before the headlights could be sure what they'd seen. Fast, faster, run, run. Run, but what he was running from, he couldn't outrun, because no matter how fast, or how far, he would still be there. How do you outrun the monster, when you are the monster?
"Richard, make the zombie stop feeding on me."
"I don't know how," and he was gone, crashing through the trees, but it wasn't friendly now, or joyous.
The zombie bit me, hard, and damn it, it hurt. "Requiem, get him off of me."
The vampire moved around so he could touch the zombie's face and hands, but nothing holds on like a zombie. I'd had to help clean up other people's zombies that had gone wrong, and sometimes you had to cut them apart a finger at a time to get them to let go of someone. Human teeth could still bite deep enough to sever a vein or artery. I wanted him off of me.
Requiem tried to pry him off, but he finally looked up at me. "I can pull him apart in pieces, but I cannot pull him off of you."
I looked at the very bodyguarding werewolf and called him over. He came, face serious, hands behind his back, as if he didn't exactly trust himself not to touch me again. Did I smell of wolf and forest, or was it the fresh blood? Don't ask unless you want to know. I didn't want to know.
The zombie plunged his tongue into the wound, as if he were trying to get the blood to flow faster. It hurt, and it surprised me, and I screamed, a little scream, but enough that one of the lawyers called, "Are you alright, Ms. Blake?"
"Fine," I called back, "fine." Mustn't let the clients know that the zombie you raised for them is beginning to eat you. Fuck!
Using every ounce of strength he had, Graham was able to pry one finger off of my wrist, but he had to hold on to that finger, or it curled right back into place. "He shouldn't be this strong."
"You've never tried to fight zombies, have you?" I said.
He gave me wide eyes. "If they're this strong, I don't want to."
"They're not just strong, they don't feel pain."
"Anita, I can tear his fingers off," Requiem said, "or break his jaw, but other than those extremities, I have no other suggestions."
The bad part was, neither did I. The zombie bit me harder, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he hit something major. He was digging his teeth in deeper by the tiniest of increments, but eventually it was going to get bad, and I was no longer sure what would happen if a gush of fresh blood hit its mouth. I'd seen what flesh-eating zombies could do to people. I wasn't exactly human, but I wouldn't grow back a hand if you ripped it off.
We could burn him up, but he wouldn't let go, and I'd burn with him. Shit.
Richard was sitting in a clearing under a tangle of naked limbs. "I have to shut the link between us, Anita. I have to. I can't separate myself from the zombie. I keep feeling what he's doing. Keep wanting him to find more blood." He cradled his face in his hands, and he'd lost his shirt somewhere, so that his back was bowed and naked as the trees overhead. "I'm sorry, Anita, I tried, I really tried."
"It's okay, Richard, we'll do what we can from here. Go take care of yourself."
He looked up, and there were tears shining in the starlight. "I'm supposed to take care of you."
"It's a partnership, Richard, we're supposed to take turns helping each other."
He shook his head. "I fucked this up, Anita, I'm sorry." I wasn't sure I'd ever heard him say fuck when he wasn't referring to sex.
"Go, Richard, go back to your folks' house. They'll be worried."
The zombie bit hard enough that I screamed, and Richard was suddenly gone. He cut the tie so abruptly that it staggered me, and only Requiem's and Graham's hands kept me from falling.
"Anita!" Graham said, and he lost his grip on the zombie, trying to keep me standing. But the hands on my wrists eased.
I looked down at the kneeling zombie, and the eyes were filling up. There was personality there, someone home. I'd been stupid. Richard had accidentally tied the zombie to him, and when he broke the link to me, the zombie was mine again. Good news, but I felt stupid that I hadn't thought of it sooner. The dead are supposed to be my specialty. I wasn't feeling very special tonight.
The zombie blinked up at me, drawing its mouth back from my wrist. His big mustache was stained with my blood. He frowned up at me. "I'm sorry, I don't know what I'm doing here." He let me go and stumbled to his feet, staring at his hands and my bloody wrist, horror showing on his face. "I beg your pardon, miss, I don't know what I was doing to you. I do apologize most sincerely, it's monstrous, monstrous." He was staring at the blood on his hands and wiping at his mouth.
Shit, he didn't know he was dead. I hated when they didn't know they were dead. And as if on cue he backed up enough to bump into his own monument. He gazed up at that uncompromising stone angel, and then he had the Ebenezer Scrooge moment. He saw his own name on the tomb, complete with a date. Even by starlight, all the color drained from his face.
"Hear me, Edwin, by right of the blood you have tasted, hear me."
He turned huge, stricken eyes to me. "Where am I? What's happened to me?"
"Don't be afraid, Edwin, be calm."
The panic began to slide away from his face, his eyes began to fill with that artificial calm, because I willed it, and because I'd been the one to call him from the grave, and it was my blood on his lips. I'd earned the right to order him around.
I told him to be calm. I told him to be clear and concise and answer the questions from the nice lawyers. He informed me that he was always clear and concise thank you very much, and I knew he'd do what the lawyers and his descendants wanted him to do. This group of lawyers and clients had decided ahead of time that they didn't want me asking the questions. Something about not trusting that I couldn't control the zombie enough to get the answers that certain people wanted. The implication had been that some of the clients feared that other clients would bribe me. At the time they'd set the guidelines down, I'd been a little offended, tonight I was glad. It meant that I could go back to the Jeep while they questioned the zombie. I had a first aid kit in the Jeep, and I needed it.
The zombie hadn't exactly reopened the wound, he'd made the old wound bloodier, and put new teeth marks into my wrist. So it was like a new wound around the old one. Some nights it feels like I have a target on my left arm. If I take a major hit, that's usually where it lands.
"You've lost more blood," Requiem said.
"No shit," I said.
He gave a small frown. "What I am saying is, could you not allow them to take the zombie home for the night and put him back tomorrow?"
I shook my head and winced as Graham raised the gauze to see if the bleeding had stopped. "He bit me, he actually injured me, zombies aren't supposed to do that. They take blood from an open wound or animal that's already dead, but they don't make a wound. They don't feed that actively."
"This one sure as hell did," Graham said, frowning at my wrist and putting pressure and a fresh gauze pad back on it.
"Exactly, so much is going wrong tonight, or not working exactly like it's supposed to, that I can't risk letting it have that much time. I have to put it back tonight, as soon as possible."
"Why?" Requiem asked.
"Just in case," I said.
"In case what?" Graham asked, this time.
"In case it becomes a flesh eater."
They both looked at me, like you've got to be kidding. "I thought that was like legend," Graham said.
"I have seen such things," Requiem said. "Long, long ago. I thought that the power to do such," he seemed to think what word to use and settled for, "things, was lost."
"Evil, you were going to say, power to do such evil, was lost."
He gave me a faint smile. "My apologies," he said.
"That's alright, nobody likes necromancers. Christian, Wiccan, vampires, whatever, nobody likes us."
"It is not that we do not like you," Requiem said.
"No," I said, "it's that everybody's afraid of us."
"Yes," the vampire said, softly.
I sighed. "Tonight for the first time I felt that I could have raised this entire cemetery without a sacrifice of any kind. I could have raised them, and they would have been mine, totally mine. I contacted Richard, because I was fighting the urge to raise my own personal army of the dead."
"Contacting your Ulfric went very wrong, from what I understood from your side of the conversation," Requiem said.
Graham said, "He tried to help."
"Yeah, he did, but just as Jean-Claude and I are gaining powers, so is Richard. Neither of us expected him to be able to link up with the zombie."
"I have never heard of such a thing," Requiem said.
"We're a u-fucking-nique bunch here in St. Louis," I said.
"Unique," Requiem said, as he and Graham began to bandage my arm. "Well, that is one way of putting it."
"How about scary?" I said.
He looked at me with those blue, blue eyes with their hint of green from the shirt near his face. "Oh, yes," he said, "oh, yes, scary will do."
Yeah, scary would do.
Sunset Cemetery was a nice combination of old and new. Big monuments of angels and weeping virgins combined with flat, modern stones--so much less interesting. It was still a place for the rich and famous to be interred, like our local famous brewery family, the Busches.
In his day, Edwin Alonzo Herman had been a very important man, and his monument showed that he thought so, too. It loomed up into the darkness like some winged giant. There was enough light to see that the huge angel had a sword and shield, and it gave you sense that it was waiting to pass judgment, and you wouldn't like what it decided. Of course, maybe that was just the way I was feeling tonight.
There were more than a dozen people waiting at the paved road, most of them lawyers, though with enough family members to have nearly caused a fistfight when I introduced myself and briefly explained what I'd be doing. I'd started telling people up front that I'd be using a machete and beheading chickens, for two different reasons. I'd had an overzealous bodyguard of a very wealthy man nearly shoot me when I drew the big blade. At a different graveside for a historical society, the secretary of said society had jumped me and tried to save the chicken. She'd turned out to be a vegan. That's like a rabid fundamentalist vegetarian. I'd been glad later that it hadn't been cold enough to wear a coat, because leather is the only kind of coat I own.
Tonight was cold enough for coats. October isn't usually that chilly in St. Louis, but tonight had decided to be cold. Or maybe it just felt colder because I was wearing a thong. I'd been surprised by two things about the skimpy underwear: One, once I got over the sensation of having something in the crack of my butt, the thong wasn't uncomfortable; two, a thong under a short skirt on a cold night was damn cold. I'd never fully appreciated how much warmth a little extra bit of satin or silk could hold in against my ass. I certainly appreciated it as I walked over the grass in my little boots and skirt. I huddled in the borrowed leather jacket, but kept my face away from the collar. I did not want a repeat of what had happened in the car. I willed the warmth in my upper body to travel downward. I was suddenly wishing I'd taken one of the taller men's jackets. It wouldn't have looked as good, but it would have covered my ass.
I stood in front of the grave, though, since it had been nearly two hundred years in a cemetery that was as well-maintained as Sunset, there was no way for me to truly be sure of where the grave had been, not really. A lot of the graves had been moved here from smaller cemeteries over the years, as increased population had needed the land. But I had dropped just enough of my shields to know exactly where Edwin Alonzo Herman's grave lay. His bones were under there, I could feel them.
To the watchers from the road who had paid for this show, it must have looked like I was standing a little far away from the impressive angel. But it had been my experience that once the zombie crawls out of the grave, the crowd always thinks they've had a good show. They'll forgive almost any lack of showmanship on my part, once they've seen me raise the dead. Funny, that.
The crate with softly clucking chickens was near my feet. Graham had carried it and put it where I said to put it. No arguments. Once we left the Jeep, he went back into serious security guard mode. He was the unsmiling, business only person he'd been when I first saw him at the club. He was wearing a plain white T-shirt with his black jeans, jogging shoes, and his own short, leather jacket. He'd changed out of the Guilty Pleasures shirt without being asked. The joking, half-flirting man of a few minutes ago had vanished behind a very serious face and a pair of dark eyes that kept searching the cemetery, the people near us, and farther away, so he was very obviously aware of the perimeter. He seemed to vibrate bodyguard. I'd let the lawyers think he was and showed them the many bandages on my face, wrist, and fingers, to prove the necessity. No one had argued that this was private business and they didn't like anyone but me here with them, once Graham put his dark gaze on their faces. He had a really good stare, a hardness to his face and eyes that did not match what he'd been like in the car. Interesting.
Requiem had carried my gym bag with all the rest of the zombie-raising equipment, except the chickens. I could have carried the bag, but it would have taken me two trips to get the chickens. They tended to squawk if you didn't carry them upright and carefully. Since I was planning on killing them tonight, I tried not to scare them. I had to kill them to raise the dead, but I could make it as painless as possible. And fear definitely goes under the heading of pain in the wrong situation. Being a blood sacrifice probably qualifies as a wrong situation, even if you're a chicken.
I'd persuaded Requiem to leave his long, black cloak in the Jeep, because in it, he looked like a cute version of the Grim Reaper. Out of it, he looked like he should have been going clubbing. Maybe it was the leather pants? Or the boots? Or the long-sleeved silk shirt in a deep green jewel tone that made his white skin almost shine in contrast. The shirt had made his eyes turquoise in the light, as if there was green in that bright blue somewhere. He'd been harder to explain than Graham, because even without the cloak, he didn't really look like a bodyguard. He looked like what he was, and that was nothing that any of Herman's descendants thought should be here tonight. The only walking dead they wanted to see tonight was Herman himself. I'd told them the vampire stayed, they could like it, or lump it. I also reminded them that I was not obligated to return their down payment if they changed their minds about raising Edwin Herman from the grave. I was here, ready to fulfill my part of the bargain.
When you start needing more than a hundred years worth of zombie raised, it's sort of a seller's market, and I was the seller. There were two other animators in the United States that could do it. One in California, and one in New Orleans, but they weren't here, and I was. Besides, they were nearly as expensive as I was, and they also came with the cost of plane fare and hotels. More money.
So the lawyers got them to shut up. Though there was an elderly woman on the side of the family that had inherited the money that wanted to leave if the "demon" stayed. Demon? If she thought Requiem was a demon, she'd never seen one for real. I had, and I knew the difference.
But the lawyers had settled them down, and one of the granddaughters had settled the grandmother down, and now they were waiting in the dark for me to do my job.
I had the chickens in their crate, and my gym bag with the machete and other paraphernalia. But before anything else, I had to drop my shields enough to do this. I'd learned how to shield, really shield, so that I could fight off the urge to use my gift. I'd learned long ago to control it enough so I didn't raise the dead by accident. There'd been a professor in college that committed suicide. He'd come to my dorm room one night. He wanted to tell his wife he was sorry. That was back when I wasn't raising anything, just shut it down, ignored it. I'm too damn gifted to ignore it. Psychic ability will come out one way or another, if the power is big enough, it'll find a way. And you probably won't like what it will find.
I dropped my shields, not all of them, but enough. Enough so I could open that part of me that raised the dead. It was like a fist that stayed clenched and tight, and only when I relaxed, spread wide those metaphysical fingers, could I be free. I knew people that had studied with animators or voodoo practitioners to acquire the skills needed to raise the dead. I'd studied to learn how not to raise the dead. But it took a little effort, all the time, to keep that fist closed, that power shut down. It was like a piece of me never completely relaxed, not even when I slept, unless I was here, with the true dead. Here to call one of them from the grave. It was the only moment that all of me could be free.
I stood there for a minute with my power spilling, cool and seeking, like a wind, except that this wind didn't move your hair, it only crept along your skin. It was like I'd been holding my breath, tight, so tight, and finally I could let it out, let it all out, and relax. Once I'd stopped being afraid of it, it felt so good to be with the dead. Peaceful, so peaceful, because whatever was left in the grave had nothing to do with souls or pain. Quiet as the grave wasn't just a saying. But I'd forgotten that there were dead near at hand that weren't underground.
My power touched Requiem. It should have ignored him, but it didn't. That cool not-wind curled around him like the arms of some long-lost lover. I'd never felt anything quite like it. For the first time I truly understood that my power was over the dead, all the dead, and that undead is still dead. I'd always thought, and been told, that vampires killed necromancers for fear that they would be controlled by them, but in that second, I knew that wasn't the whole truth. It was as if a door opened inside me, to a room that I hadn't known existed. Inside that metaphysical room stood something. It had no shape that my eye could see, no weight, nothing to touch, nothing to hold, but it was there, and it was real, and it was me, mine, sort of. A "power plateau" Byron and Requiem had called it, but that wasn't it. Plateau is static, not growing, not changing. This wasn't static.
It blew out toward me, and if it had been a real room in a real house, the house would have exploded outward with the force of its coming. It would have roared outward in a blizzard of wood and glass and metal, and there would have been nothing standing in that metaphysical yard, except ground zero of some mysterious blast.
It was inside me, so it couldn't slam into me, that was silly, but that's still what it did. It slammed into me, and for a second I was blind, deaf, weightless, nothingness. There was nothing but the rawness of that power.
I came to, with Graham's voice. "Anita, Anita, can you hear me? Anita!" I felt him holding me, knew we were on top of the grave. I could feel the grave, could feel Edwin Alonzo Herman lying underneath me. All I had to do was call his name.
"Something's wrong, Requiem."
"No," he said, and that one word was enough. I opened my eyes and saw the vampire standing over me.
"She's awake," Graham said, and he tried to cradle me into a sitting position, but I lifted my hand up toward Requiem.
The vampire reached down for me, and I reached for him. Graham helped, by pushing me upright, but he wasn't there for me in that moment. My business was with the dead, and Graham was too warm for me. The blood I wanted was slow and thick, and holding its hand out to me.
Requiem's fingers brushed mine, and the power inside me steadied, as if the world had been trembling, and now it was still. I touched his hand in that sudden stillness, and there was no pulse in his palm. No beat of blood to distract the senses. He blinked at me, his lips moved, but he did not breathe. He was still. He was dead. He was mine.
He pulled me to my feet, and we stood on the foot of the grave, hand in hand. I looked up into that face, met the turquoise flame of his eyes, but it wasn't me that was pulled into his gaze. It was he that fell into mine, and I knew, because I had a glimpse from his mind to mine, that my eyes were solid pools of black with stars glittering in them. It was the way my eyes had looked when Obsidian Butterfly, a vampire that thought she was an Aztec goddess, had shown me some of her power. She was powerful enough that no one argued with her about whether or not she was deity. Some things aren't worth the fight. I'd used the power I'd learned from her only twice, and both times my eyes had filled with stars.
The night was suddenly less dark. I could see details, colors, things that my own eyes could never have seen. Requiem's shirt was so green it seemed to burn like his eyes. It was a kind of hyperfocus, and it wasn't just sight. His hand in mine felt heavier than it should have, more important than it should have, as if I could feel each whorl of his fingertip like tiny silken lines against my hand. To make love like this would either be the most wondrous experience of your life, or drive you mad.
I remembered this power, but it wasn't what I needed. I had another flash from Requiem's mind, a tiny flash of fear, quieted almost immediately, because I was touching him and I didn't want him to be afraid. The stars in my eyes drowned in a rush of flame, black flame with a center of brown, as if wood were the flame, and fire what it ate.
My eyes were, for a moment, what they'd be if I'd been a vampire. They filled with dark, dark brown light, so dark it was almost black. I turned those glowing eyes toward the grave, and Graham saw them.
"Oh, God," he whispered.
"Get off the grave, Graham," I said, and my voice was mine, almost.
He just knelt on the ground and stared up at me.
"Move, Graham," I said, "you won't want to be there when I'm finished."
He scrambled to his feet and moved, until I told him, "Good enough." He stayed close, eyes wide, fear like a scent off of his skin, but he didn't run, and he didn't try to distance himself. Brave boy.
I knelt on the hard ground and drew Requiem down with me, so that he knelt behind me with his hands on my shoulders. He was like some huge solid wall of quiet strength behind me. I'd known that I amplified Jean-Claude's powers when I was near him, but I'd never felt anything like what was happening now. It wasn't a triumvirate of power between Requiem and me, it was that he was one of Jean-Claude's vampires, and that made him mine in a way. Mine to call on, mine to use, mine to reward.
I bent until my hands touched the ground, until I could feel the dead just below me. It was as if the ground were water, and I knew there was someone drowning just below me, and all I had to do was reach down and save them.
I whispered, "Edwin Alonzo Herman, hear me." I felt him stir, like a sleeper disturbed by a dream. "Edwin Alonzo Herman, I call you from your grave." I felt his bones grow long and straight, felt his flesh coalesce around him. It was like restuffing a broken doll. He remade himself, and it was so easy, too easy. The power began to spread outward, began to seek another grave, but some small part of me that was still me, knew better. It wouldn't be just one more grave. I knew in that instant that I could raise this cemetery. That I could raise them all. No blood sacrifice. No chickens. No goats. Nothing, but the power blowing through me, and the vampire at my back. Because the power wanted to be used. It wanted to help me, help me caress them all from their graves, pull them to the light of stars, and fill them with... life. It would feel so good to lift them all up, so good.
I shook my head and fought that helpful power. Fought not to spread like a sweet sickness through the graves. Fought to hold on to what was left of who I'd thought I was. I needed help. I thought about Jean-Claude, but that wasn't it. I needed to remember that I wasn't just the dead. I was alive.
I reached out to the other third of our triumvirate. I reached out to Richard. He looked up at me as if I hovered in the air above his family's dining room table. I saw his father like an older clone of Richard himself, and most of his brothers, sitting at the table, passing a blue bowl. Charlotte, his mother, came in from the kitchen's swinging door just behind that chair. She was still about my size, with honey-blond hair and a figure that was both petite and full-figured. Except for the hair color and skin tone, Charlotte even reminded me of me. There was a reason that most of the Zeeman brothers had chosen small, tough women. I watched her bring in a big platter, smiling, chatting with her family. I couldn't hear what she was saying, or any noise from the crowded, smiling family scene. They all seemed so happy, so perfect. I didn't want to bring this here.
I started to pull away, and Richard's voice was in my head. "Wait, wait, Anita, please." He excused himself from the table and walked through the big living room, out onto the sweep of porch, and down the handful of steps until he could gaze up into the same sky that rode above me. By the time he gazed up into the air, gazed at me, he seemed to have sensed some of what was happening, because he said, "Dear God, Anita, what's happened? I've felt your power before, but not like this."
I didn't have enough control to talk in my head, so Requiem was going to get the out loud version, but I was past caring. "The vampires keep saying that we've hit a new power level."
He hugged his bare arms in the T-shirt. He hadn't stopped for a jacket. "It's like the night is breathing your power. What can I do?"
"Remind me that I'm not dead. Remind me that my ties are with things that have a heartbeat."
"How will that help?"
I wanted to scream my frustration at him. "God, Richard, just help me, please help. If you don't, I'm afraid of what I'll raise in this cemetery tonight."
He nodded. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry for so much, Anita." He looked down, and I knew the gesture, he was thinking, or gathering his will for something. Usually something he didn't want to do. But I didn't have time to worry about Richard's hangups tonight. I was too scared of the power that pulsed in the ground underneath me. A cold pulsing, but it promised to spread to all the graves. I knew that tonight I could raise one of those shambling zombie armies that the movies are so fond of portraying, and usually has nothing to do with real necromancy.
He looked back at the house and said, "I'm fine, Mom. I just need a little privacy. Keep everybody close to the house, okay." He shook his head. "No, Mom, it's not that close to the full moon."
He walked out into the openness of the yard away from the lights of the house and he let down his shields--the metaphysical walls that kept his beast caged and helped him pass for human. The night was suddenly alive in a way that it hadn't been. The still air held a thousand scents: the ripeness of apples from the orchard behind the house; grass like a thick green blanket against our face; trees, the spicy tang of sweet gum, the softer scent of birch, the sweet pungent wood of poplar, and over it all, the dry richness of fallen leaves all around us. Sounds, then. The last crickets of the year chirping their plaintive song. Other insects from the woods, singing their last songs before the cold came. The wind raised, and the trees creaked and groaned around the house. The big oak by the driveway threw its branches against the stars, and Richard raised his head to watch that wild wind. There was barely a breeze on the ground, but up high in the highest trees, the wind ran fast and pulled at the bare limbs at the very top of the trees. Most people don't look up, animals look up, because they know that there is no true safety. They don't worry about it the way we do, but they're aware of it in a way that we aren't.
Richard walked into the edge of trees that began the woods that bordered the western edge of the family land. He touched a trunk, laid his hands on it, and it was rough and hard, with deep grooves in the bark like tiny tunnels. He laid his face against that roughness, and it was spicy and pungent, and I knew it was sweet gum. He gazed up into the bare branches where the tiny rough balls still hung on to the edges of the tree. He hugged the tree, hugged it so tight that the bark dug into his skin, he rubbed his cheek against the roughness of it, like he was scent marking, then he was off. He was running at an easy lope through the trees, into the woods. He wasn't hunting. He was running for the joy of it.
He twisted through the underbrush like it wasn't there. And as I'd felt only once before, it was as if the trees and bushes welcomed him, or turned aside for him, or as if green growth could be water, and he dived through it, running, dodging, twisting, giving himself to the brush of twigs and branches and the feel of the living ground underfoot. There was life that didn't run or hide, it was all alive, alive in a way that most humans never understand.
Richard ran, and he took me with him, as he had one night long ago. Then he'd held my hand, and I'd struggled to keep up, to understand. Now it was effortless, because I was inside his head, inside him. The night was alive for him in a way that it wasn't for Jean-Claude, or for me. I was too human, and Jean-Claude's interest in life was too shallow. Neither of us could feel what Richard's beast could give him.
Something touched my hand, and I was jerked back to the grave. Requiem was still at my back, dead still, but Graham was on the grave. He looked uncertain, but he was sniffing the air near my skin. "You smell like trees and pack," he said softly.
Richard looked up at us. "Why is Graham there?"
"Bodyguard. Jean-Claude was afraid of what would happen if I didn't have someone with me."
"Tell him he's supposed to guard you, and he can't do that on the grave."
"You're supposed to guard me, Graham, you can't do that from here." The sharp scent of wolf thickened around me as I said it.
Graham reacted to it like he'd been struck. He cringed to the ground, doing the wolf grovel. "I'm sorry, you just smelled so good. I forgot myself."
"Stop groveling and get back to work." Richard said it first, and I echoed it for him.
Graham did what he was told. He went back to very serious bodyguard mode, looking out into the dark for whatever might come.
Richard took in a deep breath, and I smelled that thick, sweet scent of deep woods. He'd run miles, effortlessly, not for the same reason that a human will run well, but because the land itself helped him run, gave him strength, welcomed him.
He stood there in the middle of the woods, his feet anchored into the ground. I realized that Richard was my ground, my center, his joy, his heart pumping in his chest from that joyous run. I kept my tie to him open and full of scents and sounds and things faraway from here. I put my hands on the grave, and even with Requiem at my back, touching me, it wasn't as real as the pounding of Richard's heart miles away.
"Edwin Alonzo Herman, with will, word, and flesh, I call you from your grave. Come, come now!" It was all wrong, all different from usual, but it was right just the same.
I felt the corpse shift, solidify, piece itself together like a puzzle, and begin to rise up through the earth as if it were water. I'd watched this happen countless times, but I'd never been kneeling on the ground when it happened. The earth buckled and rolled like an earthquake that was trapped in a few feet of ground. The ground flowed under my hands like it was something else, not water, not mud, but something both less and more solid. I don't know what Requiem thought was happening, but he didn't try to pull away, he stayed solid at my back. He rode it with me and never made a noise. Brave vampire.
Hands met mine through the shifting earth, cool fingers wrapped around my warmth. Edwin Alonzo Herman's hands wrapped around mine like a swimmer who's given up hope and finally touches a rope. The grave threw him upward like a flower springing free of the earth, but the push of it forced me to pull him upward, to find my feet with Requiem steadying me. If the vampire hadn't been there to hold me standing on the writhing, twisting ground, I would have fallen. But Requiem kept me standing, and I pulled the dead man from his grave, pulled him perfect and whole, until he stood taller than me, with the grave dirt falling away from a perfect black suit that looked as if it had been freshly pressed. His hair was balding with a thick fringe just above the ears and down the collar, and thick sideburns that curved to a walrus thick mustache. He was portly, nearly fat, which had been in style among the rich. When Edwin Alonzo died, only the poor were skinny, only the poor looked starved.
I felt Richard still standing by the edge of that small stream. The air was cooler by that musical run, and his pulse was beginning to slow from the run, the light sweat starting to cool on his skin. He wasn't afraid, or horrified. He simply stood rooted to the ground, steadying me with the pulse and beat of his body, the thick musk of wolf faint in the autumn air.
I stared up at the zombie, and even to me, it looked like damn good work. With a big enough blood sacrifice I could raise a zombie that looked alive, close at least, but this, this was perfect. His skin looked full and healthy in the starlight. He had a faint smile on his face, and his clothes looked as if he'd just put them on. Even his shoes were near spotless and gleaming with polish. Polish so shiny I noticed by moonlight. The hands that were pressed to mine were cool, but they didn't feel dead. He wasn't breathing, but he looked, felt, more alive than dead. It was unnerving. I'd known there was a lot of power tonight, and I'd had to force all of it into this one grave, so I guess it was alright that he looked this good, but for a moment when I looked into that plump, smiling face, I was afraid. Afraid that I'd done more than I'd been paid for, but when I reached his eyes, I let out a sigh of relief. The eyes were thick and full and looked, again, perfect, grayish in the starlight, probably would be blue in the brighter light, but there was no one home in those eyes. They were empty and waiting. I knew what they were waiting for, those empty eyes.
I lifted my left hand away from the zombie's, and he didn't cling to me, his fingers just opened as I moved. I held my hand at shoulder level, toward the vampire at my back. "Undo my bandage."
Requiem kept one hand on my shoulder, but used the other hand to peel back the tape on my wrist.
"Take it off," I said.
He finally ripped the bandage away. I couldn't stop a small jerk of pain.
Richard called inside my head, "What are you going to do?"
"He needs blood, so he can speak. I didn't kill an animal. This is all the blood I've got."
He didn't say anything, but I felt his pulse begin to pick up speed.
I offered my wrist upward to the slightly taller body in front of me. Something slid through those pale eyes, something I'd seen before in the better preserved zombies. It was as if something went through them, something that paused in their eyes, as if there were darker things waiting, waiting for a chance for a body to inhabit. Something, not so much evil, as just very, very not good. But that whiskered face turned toward my wrist, sniffed the air, and the moment it scented the blood, that otherness in its eyes vanished. Driven out by the promise of something that all the dead value, a bit of the living.
The zombie grabbed my arm with both of its hands and smacked its mouth against my wrist like you'd grab a kiss from your dearest lover. Just the impact hurt the wound, made me gasp. But I knew what was coming, because I'd fed zombies off my own blood before. Not often, but often enough. The mouth locked around the wound, and his mouth was wide enough to take it all in, to set his teeth against the torn edges, and grind. I made a small sound, because I couldn't make no sound. Usually the zombie's mouth felt less real than this one. Except for how cool the flesh was, I couldn't tell the difference between the zombie and a person. It was a very good job, solid all the way through, even in places that only I would feel.
Richard bounded across the stream, hitting the edge of it with one foot, as if he wasn't quite steady. He began to run up the other bank, began to run with the night and the trees and the smells.
Edwin Alonzo Herman's mouth locked around my wrist and began to suck. The wound had begun to heal more than I'd realized, because to get to the blood, he had to pull hard and tight on my wrist. It hurt, really hurt. Yeah, I liked teeth in the right situation, but this wasn't it, and what might feel good during sex just fucking hurts during violence.
Richard was running full out now. I'd thought he was fast before, but he'd just been playing. Now, he ran. He ran so fast that branches slashed at him, that the earth didn't give to him, and part like water. He was running, running... running from himself. I had a bright glimpse inside his head. The sensation of teeth in my wrist, of that forceful mouth on my wound excited him. Excited him as both man and beast. He could have accepted if it was just about food, but it wasn't. The mixture of human and animal blurred the differences between food and sex. Blurred so many lines. Lines that Richard had never known existed, let alone wanted to cross.
He ran, and slipped in the leaves, and fell and was on his feet and running before his body had time to realize it was down. It was only in that moment that I remembered his injured shoulder, and the thought got me the memory, he'd shapeshifted, briefly, and healed himself. So much more powerful than he wanted to be.
The zombie had fallen to his knees, as if sucking at my wrist was the most exquisite thing it had ever tasted. It cradled my wrist against its mouth, and its tongue explored the wound.
My breath came out in a harsh word, "Shit!"
"Are you hurt?" Requiem asked softly.
I shook my head. It hurt, but I wasn't hurt. There was a difference, but usually a zombie starts to slow down about now. This one was still sucking hard and fast, as if he were a baby that had been starved. Of course, I'd never raised anyone this long dead without an animal sacrifice. Maybe that was the difference? I hoped so, because anything else would mean that something had gone wrong, really wrong.
He shook his mouth like a dog with a bone, and I swallowed a scream. It wasn't just that it hurt. That was way too much enthusiasm for a zombie. "Edwin, stop feeding." My voice was clear, and he ignored me. Shit. I licked suddenly dry lips. "He's had enough. Help me pry him loose," I said, voice low. Mustn't scare the clients. Mustn't let them know that everything had gone wrong tonight.
Richard fell again, slid in the damp autumn leaves, slid until a tree stopped him, sudden, and abrupt and bruising. He looked up, and I saw those wide brown eyes, saw what he was running from. He wanted to be there on his knees, he wanted to lick my wound, taste my blood, maybe widen that wound with sharp teeth. The thought didn't just excite him. The thought did it for him, just flat did it for him. What he wanted to do in the deepest, darkest, places in his soul gave a whole new meaning to oral sex.
He waited for me to be horrified, but I wasn't. If there was anyone who could resist doing the great bad thing, it was Richard. I trusted his control, not always his temper, but his control--that I trusted without doubt or reservation. I whispered, "Just because you want to do something, doesn't mean you will do it, or even that you have to do it. You're human, Richard, you have a mind and willpower. You aren't just your beast."
"You don't understand," he said, and the moment he said it, I knew what he'd done, by accident.
"You can feel what the zombie is doing?" I said.
He hid his face from me and scrambled to his feet, and ran. He ran out of the trees, and hit a paved road, and was across it before the headlights could be sure what they'd seen. Fast, faster, run, run. Run, but what he was running from, he couldn't outrun, because no matter how fast, or how far, he would still be there. How do you outrun the monster, when you are the monster?
"Richard, make the zombie stop feeding on me."
"I don't know how," and he was gone, crashing through the trees, but it wasn't friendly now, or joyous.
The zombie bit me, hard, and damn it, it hurt. "Requiem, get him off of me."
The vampire moved around so he could touch the zombie's face and hands, but nothing holds on like a zombie. I'd had to help clean up other people's zombies that had gone wrong, and sometimes you had to cut them apart a finger at a time to get them to let go of someone. Human teeth could still bite deep enough to sever a vein or artery. I wanted him off of me.
Requiem tried to pry him off, but he finally looked up at me. "I can pull him apart in pieces, but I cannot pull him off of you."
I looked at the very bodyguarding werewolf and called him over. He came, face serious, hands behind his back, as if he didn't exactly trust himself not to touch me again. Did I smell of wolf and forest, or was it the fresh blood? Don't ask unless you want to know. I didn't want to know.
The zombie plunged his tongue into the wound, as if he were trying to get the blood to flow faster. It hurt, and it surprised me, and I screamed, a little scream, but enough that one of the lawyers called, "Are you alright, Ms. Blake?"
"Fine," I called back, "fine." Mustn't let the clients know that the zombie you raised for them is beginning to eat you. Fuck!
Using every ounce of strength he had, Graham was able to pry one finger off of my wrist, but he had to hold on to that finger, or it curled right back into place. "He shouldn't be this strong."
"You've never tried to fight zombies, have you?" I said.
He gave me wide eyes. "If they're this strong, I don't want to."
"They're not just strong, they don't feel pain."
"Anita, I can tear his fingers off," Requiem said, "or break his jaw, but other than those extremities, I have no other suggestions."
The bad part was, neither did I. The zombie bit me harder, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he hit something major. He was digging his teeth in deeper by the tiniest of increments, but eventually it was going to get bad, and I was no longer sure what would happen if a gush of fresh blood hit its mouth. I'd seen what flesh-eating zombies could do to people. I wasn't exactly human, but I wouldn't grow back a hand if you ripped it off.
We could burn him up, but he wouldn't let go, and I'd burn with him. Shit.
Richard was sitting in a clearing under a tangle of naked limbs. "I have to shut the link between us, Anita. I have to. I can't separate myself from the zombie. I keep feeling what he's doing. Keep wanting him to find more blood." He cradled his face in his hands, and he'd lost his shirt somewhere, so that his back was bowed and naked as the trees overhead. "I'm sorry, Anita, I tried, I really tried."
"It's okay, Richard, we'll do what we can from here. Go take care of yourself."
He looked up, and there were tears shining in the starlight. "I'm supposed to take care of you."
"It's a partnership, Richard, we're supposed to take turns helping each other."
He shook his head. "I fucked this up, Anita, I'm sorry." I wasn't sure I'd ever heard him say fuck when he wasn't referring to sex.
"Go, Richard, go back to your folks' house. They'll be worried."
The zombie bit hard enough that I screamed, and Richard was suddenly gone. He cut the tie so abruptly that it staggered me, and only Requiem's and Graham's hands kept me from falling.
"Anita!" Graham said, and he lost his grip on the zombie, trying to keep me standing. But the hands on my wrists eased.
I looked down at the kneeling zombie, and the eyes were filling up. There was personality there, someone home. I'd been stupid. Richard had accidentally tied the zombie to him, and when he broke the link to me, the zombie was mine again. Good news, but I felt stupid that I hadn't thought of it sooner. The dead are supposed to be my specialty. I wasn't feeling very special tonight.
The zombie blinked up at me, drawing its mouth back from my wrist. His big mustache was stained with my blood. He frowned up at me. "I'm sorry, I don't know what I'm doing here." He let me go and stumbled to his feet, staring at his hands and my bloody wrist, horror showing on his face. "I beg your pardon, miss, I don't know what I was doing to you. I do apologize most sincerely, it's monstrous, monstrous." He was staring at the blood on his hands and wiping at his mouth.
Shit, he didn't know he was dead. I hated when they didn't know they were dead. And as if on cue he backed up enough to bump into his own monument. He gazed up at that uncompromising stone angel, and then he had the Ebenezer Scrooge moment. He saw his own name on the tomb, complete with a date. Even by starlight, all the color drained from his face.
"Hear me, Edwin, by right of the blood you have tasted, hear me."
He turned huge, stricken eyes to me. "Where am I? What's happened to me?"
"Don't be afraid, Edwin, be calm."
The panic began to slide away from his face, his eyes began to fill with that artificial calm, because I willed it, and because I'd been the one to call him from the grave, and it was my blood on his lips. I'd earned the right to order him around.
I told him to be calm. I told him to be clear and concise and answer the questions from the nice lawyers. He informed me that he was always clear and concise thank you very much, and I knew he'd do what the lawyers and his descendants wanted him to do. This group of lawyers and clients had decided ahead of time that they didn't want me asking the questions. Something about not trusting that I couldn't control the zombie enough to get the answers that certain people wanted. The implication had been that some of the clients feared that other clients would bribe me. At the time they'd set the guidelines down, I'd been a little offended, tonight I was glad. It meant that I could go back to the Jeep while they questioned the zombie. I had a first aid kit in the Jeep, and I needed it.
The zombie hadn't exactly reopened the wound, he'd made the old wound bloodier, and put new teeth marks into my wrist. So it was like a new wound around the old one. Some nights it feels like I have a target on my left arm. If I take a major hit, that's usually where it lands.
"You've lost more blood," Requiem said.
"No shit," I said.
He gave a small frown. "What I am saying is, could you not allow them to take the zombie home for the night and put him back tomorrow?"
I shook my head and winced as Graham raised the gauze to see if the bleeding had stopped. "He bit me, he actually injured me, zombies aren't supposed to do that. They take blood from an open wound or animal that's already dead, but they don't make a wound. They don't feed that actively."
"This one sure as hell did," Graham said, frowning at my wrist and putting pressure and a fresh gauze pad back on it.
"Exactly, so much is going wrong tonight, or not working exactly like it's supposed to, that I can't risk letting it have that much time. I have to put it back tonight, as soon as possible."
"Why?" Requiem asked.
"Just in case," I said.
"In case what?" Graham asked, this time.
"In case it becomes a flesh eater."
They both looked at me, like you've got to be kidding. "I thought that was like legend," Graham said.
"I have seen such things," Requiem said. "Long, long ago. I thought that the power to do such," he seemed to think what word to use and settled for, "things, was lost."
"Evil, you were going to say, power to do such evil, was lost."
He gave me a faint smile. "My apologies," he said.
"That's alright, nobody likes necromancers. Christian, Wiccan, vampires, whatever, nobody likes us."
"It is not that we do not like you," Requiem said.
"No," I said, "it's that everybody's afraid of us."
"Yes," the vampire said, softly.
I sighed. "Tonight for the first time I felt that I could have raised this entire cemetery without a sacrifice of any kind. I could have raised them, and they would have been mine, totally mine. I contacted Richard, because I was fighting the urge to raise my own personal army of the dead."
"Contacting your Ulfric went very wrong, from what I understood from your side of the conversation," Requiem said.
Graham said, "He tried to help."
"Yeah, he did, but just as Jean-Claude and I are gaining powers, so is Richard. Neither of us expected him to be able to link up with the zombie."
"I have never heard of such a thing," Requiem said.
"We're a u-fucking-nique bunch here in St. Louis," I said.
"Unique," Requiem said, as he and Graham began to bandage my arm. "Well, that is one way of putting it."
"How about scary?" I said.
He looked at me with those blue, blue eyes with their hint of green from the shirt near his face. "Oh, yes," he said, "oh, yes, scary will do."
Yeah, scary would do.
