Something Grave: The Resurrectionists Series book two

by Leah Clifford

  Something Grave

  The Resurrectionists Series book two

  Leah Clifford

  Copyright © 2021 by Leah Clifford

  Published by Inked Entertainment Ltd in 2021

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  This book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is fictionalized or coincidental.

  E-Book - ISBN 978-1-913600-23-5

  Paperback - ISBN 978-1-913600-24-2

  Hardback - ISBN 978-1-913600-25-9

  Also by Leah Clifford

  The Siders Series

  A Touch Mortal (Book 1)

  A Touch Morbid (Book 2)

  A Touch Menacing (Book 3)

  * * *

  The Resurrectionists Series

  Vial Things (Book 1)

  Something Grave (Book 2)

  Another Vein (Book 3, coming soon)

  Contents

  1. Allie

  2. Ploy

  3. Allie

  4. Ploy

  5. Allie

  6. Ploy

  7. Allie

  8. Ploy

  9. Allie

  10. Allie

  11. Ploy

  12. Allie

  13. Ploy

  14. Allie

  15. Ploy

  16. Allie

  17. Ploy

  18. Allie

  19. Ploy

  20. Allie

  21. Ploy

  22. Allie

  23. Ploy

  24. Allie

  25. Ploy

  26. Allie

  27. Ploy

  28. Allie

  29. Ploy

  30. Allie

  The Siders Series

  Never Miss a Release

  Thank You

  About the Author

  Allie

  Someone’s in the apartment.

  In the bedroom. Close. I only have time to tense before a hand clamps my neck in the darkness and shakes me hard enough to hurt. My splayed fingers claw the nightstand for anything I can use to protect myself. The only sound is my gasping until a sharp screech of pain blots it out.

  Ploy.

  My brain skips over the name. Ploy who sleeps on my couch, a human tripwire for anyone after my blood. Ploy who knew Jamison. Together they kidnapped me, kidnapped my friend Talia. Ploy, who betrayed me.

  Who realized he was wrong.

  Who saved us.

  In my head he is two people, a before and an after. Ploy, who died near the barn of that old farmhouse, a bullet from Jamison’s gun to his chest. And Christopher, my sort-of boyfriend, whose blood I infected days before. Who resurrected in that open grave because of my genetic gifts. Who helped Talia and I kill Jamison and escape.

  Christopher, who grates my name, one strained word before he yells in pain again.

  “Where are you?” I mumble, my speech slurred. Whoever grabbed my throat is gone. It’s impossibly dark in my bedroom. I’m disoriented, growing desperate as I fumble my way across the floor. Where’s the wall? Shouldn’t I have hit the wall by now?

  “Christopher?”

  I still catch glimpses of Ploy in him. The way he eats with his arm curled around the top of the plate, as if he’s not sure where the next meal will come from; the backpack still sitting in the hall in case I kick him out; the way he hesitates before each kiss as if convincing himself it’s not wrong. Untrusting. Uncertain. As scared as I am.

  “What did I tell you?”

  The tone forces me vaguely conscious.

  A throbbing in my wrist registers, an ache in my elbow joint where Christopher has it pinned against the headboard. Which can’t be right. He would never hurt me. Not after everything we’ve been through together. I shake off the last of the nightmare, hoping this scene will break apart, too.

  “Ouch,” I whimper when it doesn’t.

  “Tell me you’re awake,” he says in a voice that’s not quite a yell, but close.

  “I’m awake?” It leaves me as a question.

  The hurt sharpens my mind until I pull the pieces together. He’s in the boxers he sleeps in on the couch, eyes squinted as if he, too, isn’t fully alert. I stare in confusion at the deep slice on the sunburned skin of his collarbone, blood a darker red and dripping. There’s a staccato plop as the droplets strike the sheet tangled around me. He presses my knuckles against the worn wood of the headboard. My fingers are fisted so tight my bones ache.

  “I’m awake!” I promise.

  Exhaustion washes over him as he releases me and slumps, his hand moving to cup his injury. “Then drop the damned knife, Allie.”

  “What?” I manage to sound indignant.

  His eyes flick angrily to my fist.

  It’s clamped on a penknife. I toss it away like it’s some sort of rabid animal with ready teeth. No. Not again.

  “Oh, God,” I whisper, tears already welling. “It was the dream again. I didn’t know what I was doing and—”

  He blows a breath skyward, his head lolling in exaggerated annoyance. “And when you’re dreaming, you’ll stab anything close, which is why I told you I was uncomfortable with you sleeping with a knife under your pillow last time this happened!”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, already knowing it’s not enough. I hurt him. Bad.

  Again.

  He doesn’t answer, wincing as he climbs to the side of the bed. Droplets of blood splash against the hardwood floor.

  “You were sorry the first time,” he says, his back already to me.

  “I’m—” I start to apologize again and bite my lip instead. I know how it played out. Christopher woke up to the sound of my screaming. He burst into my room, semi-coherent, ready to save me from some unknown hunter who made it past him on the couch. Instead, he found me caught in a nightmare and tried to wake me. They happen every night now. Sometimes I jolt awake, grateful the sob in my throat is silent. Other times…

  You destroy anyone who gets close to you, my head whispers. The truth of my waking trauma creeps in. Dead parents. Dead aunt. A whole heap of hunters after what runs through my veins.

  I stare at Christopher where he’s settled at the end of my bed. For the second time, he came to comfort me and wound up hurt. Not to mention the times he’s shaken me conscious before I went for the knife.

  Blood squeezes between his fingers.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  Sitting on the edge of the bare mattress where my thrashing tore loose the fitted sheet, Christopher waits a long minute, then another before he sighs, frustrated. “At this rate, I’m going to bleed to death before it scabs over.”

  My blood resurrected him two weeks ago, but the bonus of healing that comes with each resurrection has obviously begun to run its course. Cuts and scrapes are about all it can quickly fix. The wound I gouged into him is much worse. It’ll take time to heal.

  Just as I reach for him, he stands.

  “I’ve got to get this bleeding stopped.” He makes it to his feet and stumbles toward the door. “Christ,” he mumbles as he crosses the threshold into the hall, heading for the medicine cabine
t in the bathroom. “I’m safer on the damn couch.”

  His voice is low enough that I’m sure he didn’t mean for me to hear it. Still, I sit on the bed, silent and gutted.

  He didn’t even need a knife to cut me back.

  Ploy

  I lean against the kitchen counter, brewing coffee for the both of us. In the last two weeks, Allie and I settled into a routine. She starts coffee, I pop four pieces of bread into the toaster, leaning in so she can slide past me to grab the butter from the refrigerator. It’s a dance we never needed to choreograph. Now, she bumps my hip for the second time with a quiet, “Sorry”, as if she’s reluctant to speak at all.

  Earlier, as I cleaned and taped closed my stab wound, Allie stripped her bedroom of weapons. We pretend nothing happened.

  From the dark circles under our eyes, it’s like we’re in some sort of competition to see who can get the least sleep. Allie’s afraid. Then again, so am I. Jamison had been talking to another group of hunters stalking the resurrectionists of Fissure’s Whipp. Even if he’s dead, they’re still out there. I want to ask her if she needs to do something about them, if she should, if she wants my help, but it’s resurrection business which makes it her business, not mine.

  I take the cup of coffee Allie hands me and lean forward to kiss her cheek. I refuse to notice that she tenses when I move too quickly and she refuses to acknowledge my backpack is still full, though she cleared me a drawer days ago. I can’t shake the feeling she’ll change her mind about everything.

  I screwed up. I trusted Jamison. I infiltrated Allie’s apartment, her life, her secrets. When Talia leveled a gun on me, Allie blocked her shot and protected me. The only reason I emerged from that cellar instead of joining Jamison’s dead body on the dirt floor was Allie.

  The toast pops and she butters each slice. As she sits catty-corner from me at the little table, she slides a paper towel with two pieces my way.

  “Thanks,” I say, and then force myself to brighten. “Hey, let’s do something today.”

  She glances up, confused, before the lines in her brow soften with curiosity. A smile curls her lips, fleeting, there then gone. “What, like a date?” she asks, a teasing edge to her voice.

  We’ve never been on a proper date. We’re not together, together.

  But we’re something.

  “Yeah,” I say. I blow across my coffee and sip. “A date.”

  “Okay,” Allie says quietly.

  She grins against the rim of her mug. We’ve spent so much of our time together pretending, I don’t know which of her smiles to trust. This one is real. I have to believe it’s real.

  There’s a place I want to show her down near the Boxcar Camp, a wider slice of the creek not even the townies seem to find and a bit of beach littered with driftwood.

  You don’t think you actually have a chance at this working for you? The cut down is some awful combination of Jamison and my father in stereo.

  The morning she and Talia confronted me to uncover how I knew Jamison, before he himself burst through the door of Talia’s place, I’d hinted the truth to Allie about how I felt, but I hadn’t dared come clean. I couldn’t have the first time I admitted to myself—to her—that I loved her be with her best friend’s knife at my spine, Allie’s aunt’s death on my conscience if not my hands, and the lies of the past months crumbling around me.

  Since we escaped the cellar, I promised myself that the ugly part of me, the coward, died with Jamison.

  That horrible little whisper starts in again. Then why can’t you tell her you love her?

  Playing with the barbell piercing in my eyebrow, I fight against the thoughts in my head. She wants me here. She’s told me a dozen times.

  Except I’m still on that couch. She’s got me at arm’s length. If she brings me closer, I’ll protect her from whatever monsters play havoc with her brain between dusk and dawn, and from the real ones if they ever come. Until then, I’m still serving my original purpose to her—a sacrifice to any hunter that breaks into the apartment to steal her.

  You’ll never be more than a guard dog to her. A burden, mooching scraps when you can. She’ll wise up and you’ll be on your ass.

  Allie’s blue eyes meet mine across the table, a hint of anticipation playing in them, and I don’t feel like I’m only being put up with. I’m pretty sure some part of her might be falling for me, too.

  You know, don’t you? I think desperately, watching her bite her toast, chew. That I love you?

  Her smile widens a fraction and my pulse skyrockets.

  Tell me you’re in love with me, too. Tell me we’re going to make it together. Tell me you don’t want this to end.

  She says nothing.

  I’m drinking morning coffee that tastes a million times better at this battered table with her than brew heated over a fire at the Boxcar Camp, strained through a cloth to catch the stale grounds. It’s the company though, not the coffee.

  Why can’t I just ask how she feels about me? Coward, Jamison’s voice whispers.

  The toast in my mouth is a dry ball I struggle to swallow. What if she’s letting me stay with her out of pity? There’s only one way to know for sure.

  I stand too fast, the chair skidding across the floor. Allie jumps.

  “Let’s go,” I tell her. “Out. You and me.”

  “What? Now?” she manages, the toast caught in her hand, halfway between her mouth and the napkin.

  “It’s gotta be now.”

  We rush, Allie dressing in her room, me in the bathroom. I finish first, waiting anxiously until she emerges. She straps a variety of knives onto parts of her body. The girl is a walking arsenal. My wounded collarbone throbs in reminder.

  Allie watches everyone on our way to the river. We pass a man in overalls despite the heat, who draws a long stare from her where he leans against a black railing. The air is heavy with humidity, dragging along the scent of warm creek water. I scan the crowd—a woman struggling over the cobblestoned street with two sobbing toddlers in a stroller, unfamiliar gutter punks lounging in front of a sandwich shop, one picking at a scabbed knee. No one pays us any mind. I remember how Jamison blended into a crowd, the way I did, disappearing in plain sight. If someone is following us, following Allie, I can’t be sure I’ll spot them.

  My stomach knots. I can clear a day, I think. Not even that long…ten minutes without being paranoid. That’s all I need. Ten minutes of us being a normal guy and a normal girl.

  We’re not, though.

  Allie was born with a genetic mutation to bring back the dead. Inside me, her rogue cells are a virus gradually being defeated by my immune system, any abilities they brought fading as the last two weeks have passed. If something bad happens, it will take more than a mere syringe of blood to resurrect me a second time. According to Allie, it’ll take at least a couple pints to override the white blood cells my body now has primed against her. There most likely won’t be a third time.

  I tug her closer, sling an arm over her shoulder and kiss her cheek, near her ear. “You okay?”

  She fakes a smile as I pull away.

  “Fine!” she lies. “I didn’t realize how cooped up we’ve been!” How safe, she doesn’t say. How unexposed.

  The sun warms my skin. Around us, cheerful chatter fills the streets. Sugar sweetens the air, drifting from the bakery. I snatch Allie’s free hand, walking backward in front of her.

  “Hey,” I say when her gaze stays pinned over my shoulder as we come to a stop. This could be the moment. The words are there. “No hunter will move on you here,” I say instead. “You’re safe, okay?”

  I don’t wait for a reply as I wind us through the crowd. In a few yards, the riverwalk branches toward the tchotchke shops while the water itself flows in the opposite direction. The sliver of woods dividing them beckons. Instead of following the raised concrete sidewalk that runs parallel to the cobblestoned street, I climb over the railing into the oaks. Allie follows. I catch her by the waist and survey the crow
d behind her quickly to be sure no cops are watching. Moss coats ancient stones thrown here in the time of horse-drawn carriages. The underbrush thickens, growing taller with every step as I help her descend the sharp embankment.

  “Where are we going?” she asks, excited. “Is it far?”

  I nudge a twig to the side and hold the leaves so it doesn’t whip her. “A little ways down this path.”

  “Path?”

  It’s easy to miss. The way is overgrown, more game trail than anything.

  “Don’t you trust me?” I ask and instantly regret it. Though she gives me a sharp nod, her lips press into a line. I take the lead again, navigating our way through the undergrowth.

  As we break through onto the twenty square feet of sandy riverfront, she jerks hard on my hand. “Christopher?” she says. “Are you sure about this?”

  Confused, I round on her, see the fear I missed while I was leading us here. She’s not noticing the sun glimmering on the water, or how the moss and even the algae near the creek’s edge give everything a fairytale vibrancy of green. Her head swivels, her focus darting to the path before returning, warily, to me.

  How many lies have you told this girl? How many times have you broken her trust, the voice starts in again, Jamison’s voice. You lured her to a secluded spot. She’s figuring out she’s in danger.

  This is the start of countless true crime documentaries.

  “It’s okay that I brought you here, right?” I ask.

  “Of course.” She raises a hand and presses it against my chest as she moves closer to me. She’s concentrating on the ribbon of overgrown trail. “What’re you talking about?” she asks, her attention locked on the dense foliage.