Authors: A.J. Aalto
“Yo,” Wes warned from within his coffin, “I may be injured, but I'm not deaf. No fooling around out there, you two. Nobody needs to hear that. Especially not the psychic guy whose sister you're banging.”
It cheered me to hear Wesley's voice, playful as ever, with a modicum of strength; he may be wounded, but with Harry's coddling and Viktor's licking, he seemed to be making strides toward recovery. At least his mood was on the mend.
“After your little Loyalty Game in the lake,” I told Harry, “I have to wonder.”
He chuckled, flashing the first hint of fang. “I have apologized for that, my love, but will repeatedly do so, if I must. You dounderst and, I had to be sure that Agent Chapel is still thinking clearly. He seems unwell of late, and I have reason to be concerned.”
“I liked that apology.” I thought of the brownies, and the forest chase, and the hot sex. “But maybe you should apologize again. And again.”
Wes thumped the lid of his coffin and made a disgusted, throaty noise. I admit, making him suffer was kind of cruel of us, but I felt like he deserved it for eating all my cookies and making me worry.
Harry gave Wes a break. “Mister Spicer did not mention where he was staying?”
“You know he didn't, you overheard the whole thing,” I said knowingly.
“Most of it, as did our large new friend. Stay, Viktor.” He pointed and Viktor stopped like he'd been flash-frozen.
I let my eyes wander the great expanse of the ogre's body again, and wondered if people living near active volcanoes did the same every morning, in awe of its size, wondering when it was going to blow. Spicer claimed to want the abomination, saying that it put everyone in danger. I doubted his definition of “everyone” was the same as mine.
“If Spicer wants Viktor, he'll come here. There's already been too much…” I drifted off, avoiding Wesley's casket as I moved to sit on Harry's bed, blankets pre-warmed under my tush. “Viktor can't stay, I'm sorry, Harry. To protect you and Wes, I have to uninvite him.”
“To protect us, Viktor should be made to stay. Pray excuse me, darling, but who else shall watch us whilst you are busy?”
I sighed. “I'll get un-busy.”
“A more ludicrous proposal you have never made, my angel. You are sorely needed. Agent Chapel needs you.” He faked an idea-forming look, pale forefinger touching his cleft chin. “Of course, you realize there is another choice, someone who has, in fact, protected me in your stead once before.”
“You snake,” I gasped. “You invited Viktor back here so I'd say no, and you could suggest someone else instead. I'd have said no to Chapel without the comparison. Unless you want Batten to put his feet up on your casket and play video games all day again. Remember those rings from his beer bottle when he didn't use the coasters?”
Harry scowled theatrically, then lit a cigarette, the flickering glow nearly disguised the brief luminous spark in his eyes. “Would I be so transparently devious?”
“Of course you would. You're always dying to get Chapel alone.” I rolled my eyes and knocked on Wesley's casket. “Besides, Chapel is even busier than I am, so that's a
no.
Did you talk to Wes about going away? He'd be safer, and could heal up nicely at that fat camp for revenants.”
“It's not a fat camp.” Wesley's voice was a muffled protest from within the casket. “And I'm not going!”
“Didn't you point out that he was getting a bad case of manboobs?” I asked.
“Jingle-brains vetoed the clinic, and I find myself mulcible to his wounded pleas.” Harry's one-shouldered shrug was a soft surrender.
“What's that place called, anyway? Attack of the Corpulent Corpse? Revenant Fluffernutters Anonymous?”
Harry interrupted, “Your brother and I have discussed an alternative.”
“Wait! I've got one more.” I grinned up at my Cold Company. “Law and Order: Special Pork Rind Unit.”
“Ugh,” Wes piped up, “pork rinds are nasty.”
“Glad you still have some semblance of taste, Wes,” I said, “but shut up in there.”
Harry leveled his battleship gaze at me for a long beat. “Are you quite finished?”
I looked at my now-empty cup of espresso. “I doubt it.”
“Wesley must at least hide; it is unsafe for our lad to be here since the discovery of Deputy Dunnachie's body.”
“It's all good,” I brushed-off, “I blew him up.”
“And for that, I suppose Wesley would express his gratitude. Wouldn't you, Wesley?” The casket mumbled something that might, just barely, have been a petulant five-year-old's reluctant, desultory, pouty-lipped, “Thank you.” You'd think I'd given him an ugly sweater, not blown up shambling evidence of a stake-and-bake murder. My brother, the formerly-beautiful ingrate.
“We're still working on his manners,” Harry excused.
“Ask Viktor if he's got a special tongue move for that. On second thought,
ew
.” I grimaced, and Harry pulled something out of his coat pocket. “Is that what you didn't want Declan to catch outside?”
Harry sorted through a handful of pinecones, then dropped a silver hunk of metal into my hands, little more than a tangle of wires with a bit of melted black plastic smeared across one side.
“You revenants,” I gushed. “You always know just what to get a lady. First Malas gives me a human tooth, now you give me this, um, whatever the hell it is.” I turned the metal shard over in my gloved palm.
“I can only speculate, but it appears to be the melted remains of a Bluetooth headset.”
“What the—” I squinted at it. “It's got fleshy gunk stuck in its circuits.”
“Indeed it has.”
Blerg.
“This was on, or in, Dunnachie?”
“I would say it appears new, apart from the effects of the blast, as opposed to something that had been, shall we say, in his possession previously.”
“Why would a zombie put on a Bluetooth headset?”
“A zombie would not. A zombie does not have free will, and does not act autonomously, excluding actions prompted by hunger.”
Despite the haze of exhaustion that was drawing down over my brain like an ugly pair of drapes, a flicker of understanding still
kindled. “A bokor could control a zombie with directions from afar. If Dunnachie had been outfitted with a cell phone on auto-answer—hmm, it would have had to be in an Otter case to keep it clean and dry—and add waterproof Bluetooth…. Holy shit. Technozombie.” I went to bound off the bed, but it was more of a lean-and-lurch. “I've got to tell the team.”
Harry stopped with me a soft
tut-tut
. “Not so fast, my fluttering pipistrelle.”
“You want me to hide evidence that could be relevant to the case?”
“I am only suggesting that you disclose that evidence, with discretion, to the one person who needs it.”
I looked down at his pale hand cupping my elbow. “What are you not telling me, Harry?”
His teeth flashed white in the dim room. “Oh, there are
so
many things. Where to begin?”
“I mean, about this. But I'll remember you said that, head trauma or not.”
“I am not an investigator, unless you mean to finally allow me to intervene—”
“No!” I said, louder than I'd planned. “No, no, no. Stay out of it.”
“Since you continue to deny me the occasion to step into your little adventures, I am not required to share my thoughts with the lawmen.”
“But I'm not a lawman, you could share your thoughts with me.”
“However, you, darling,
are
required to share your thoughts with them. I merely suggest that you do so judiciously.”
“Harry, you re-hired a necrophiliac! Is that ‘judicious’?”
“Don't be absurd, I am always judicious.”
“You gave Batten your Bugatti!”
At that, he had the good grace to look pained.
I narrowed my eyes. “Okay, Harry. Is there a particular team member you think I should be careful around?”
“I would advise you to reconsider this disconcerting offer of getting bosky with your so-called assistant to the point where one may hear the liquor swilking in your belly.”
“Swilking?” I made a face. “Bosky?”
“Be careful with whom you allow yourself to become vulnerable, my pet. And perhaps you should not share with Dr. Edgar
every
brief light or shadow that flits through that cluttered belfry of yours.” He tempered this with a rare kiss on my forehead. My headache ratcheted down by half from that alone, and I wished he'd take me in his arms and make the rest of my day evaporate, Wes’ objections be damned. “I'm serving you dinner in bed tonight. Please do see that your little friends are off and away before eight o'clock, yes?”
My little friends. My little adventures
. I gave a tired chuckle. “What's for dinner?”
“So, not only would you deny me my right to defend my Companion and lavish care upon her, but I am now to be denied the simple pleasure of serving surprising victuals? How terribly wearing you are,” he said, patting my head, ignoring the rolling of my eyes. “Off with you, poppet.”
I went to the stairs and paused to crane up at Viktor. The giant didn't move, or blink, or breathe, but his gaze did slink down to mine. I avoided eye contact by checking out his leather duds. “Viktor, is John Spicer chasing you?”
Harry said, “You may respond, Viktor.”
I shot Harry a scowl, then Viktor said, “I do not know.” It didn't sound like he cared, either.
“Are you the abomination? Are you going to get abominable? Don't abominate right now. If that's a thing, I don't think I could take it.”
Those black eyes stared at my face then slipped a bit lower, to where my jugular pumped. His gaze made it pump a bit faster. And I felt myself wondering exactly what else a giant slab of muscle with an overactive tongue would do to my pulse.
Harry quirked an eyebrow at me, a singularly arch smile on his lips, and I felt a teasing tremor flow through our Bond. A nauseated groan emanated from Wes’ casket. I smirked, and headed upstairs to finally take a nap.
C
HAPTER
34
BY SEVEN O'CLOCK THAT EVENING,
I was as refreshed as one could expect to be after a post-zombie nap and a long bubble bath. My office desk was a sea of coffee cups and tired faces.
“Marnie, so we're all on the same page?” Chapel began.
Batten grumbled, “She's running the show? You know she hit her head this morning, right?”
“You worry about the Goon Squad, Kill-Notch.” I pointed at him. “Right now, what you need more than anything is some serious geek.”
We had a war of stares across his half-lowered mug for a moment, and I expected more fight; he let it go with a shrug, leaning back far enough to make the chair beneath him creak a complaint. “If you say so. You're the doctor.”
I narrowed my eyes, in no way mollified by his easy surrender. “Yes, I am. I'm a bitchin’ doctor, now can we get to it? I have a lot to cover.”
Batten spread his palms and said nothing. I slapped the first photo up to the clip on Chapel's white board: Cosmo Winkle's guts, or lack thereof, up close and personal.
“We were originally told that Cosmo Winkle's autopsy showed early signs of a plague, in this case
yersinia sarcophaginae
, flesh-eater plague. This is a clear indication that the creature that chewed out his organs was absolutely a Type R zombie, one raised on purpose.”
De Cabrera asked, “Raised how, exactly?”
“The dark side of Haitian Vodou, necromancy,” I said. “It would have been performed by a
bokor
, a priest who works magic to serve their spirits, the
loa
, with both hands. Black magic and white.”
Declan added, “Or he could be a
sevityi
, a devotee of the Vodou, initiated or not, possibly an amateur.”
Batten fidgeted but surprised me. “Don't suppose we can narrow down when the
bokor
raised the zombie? How long Dunnachie has been…” He fought with words for a moment and settled on, “Up? Around?”
“Actually, we can,” I said, grabbing a black marker and scribbling on the white board. “The updated reports on Winkle show early signs of the secondary plague at the bite sites,
Yersinia repens
, or creeping plague. Usually it takes twenty-four hours for creeping plague to pop in a bitten human being; because of something we call the Revenant Factor, it takes a whole week for creeping plague to develop and become contagious in a Type R zombie, a shambler. So the zombie that bit and infected Winkle had to have been up and shambling for at least a week.”
“Where do the plagues come from?” de Cabrera asked.
“No one knows for sure,” Declan said, “but we have a theory. All magic has a cost. The cost of doing black magic as opposed to white is much higher. We think these bacteria came into being as the cost of necromancy, ages ago. Nowhere in nature do these unnatural plagues exist, outside of the undead. And where they enter nature, they cause nothing but illness or sublimation into the undead.”
“Marnie, would it be helpful for us to know the difference between the kinds of plague?” Chapel asked.
“It'll help you know how fucked we are, sure.”
De Cabrera swore under his breath. “
Tarada
…”
“Hey, I Googled that one, Cuban,” I warned him. He grinned in response, and I was reminded of his positive thinking stuff. I gave it a shot. “Okay, the good news: we know the zombie who killed Cosmo is gone. Let's call him X.”
Batten said stiffly, “Why not call him Dunnachie?”
My eyebrows puckered. “Because I don't wanna?”
“Marnie—”
“Fine. Dunnachie left traces of flesh-eater plague in Cosmo's belly
—
that's how we know Dunnachie was raised — and creeping plague, which indicates that Dunnachie was raised at least a week ago.”
“How was this accomplished, exactly?” Chapel asked.
“To raise Dunnachie, the
bokor
would have had to call the corpse with magic.” I couldn't help but wonder how the hell the bokor could have known Dunnachie was in a duffel bag at the bottom of Shaw's Fist. That was a mystery to solve privately, if I could. “Once the corpse heard the summons of the magic and made the initial approach, the bokor would then inject Dunnachie's dead body with a combination of stuff, like tetrodotoxin from pufferfish, datura, toxins from marine toads, dust from human bones, and a bunch of other arcane poisonous shit.” I waved this away. “You don't need the list. For simplicity's sake, let's just call it zombie juice. Once the juice was inside Dunnachie's dead body, the
bokor
would perform a ritual to call Dunnachie's
ti bon ange
, which is kind of but not really like a soul. Then they'd seal it into a soul jar, or a talisman known as an
ounga
, or another vessel, sometimes a doll or a skull, to contain the spirit.
Then
, after all that shit, Dunnachie would obey the
bokor
’s commands. These commands must be given verbally, and control can only be maintained on a Type R zombie verbally.”