When the second hand had swept around the clock to the appointed hour, the warden nodded to him. “Igor, throw the switch!”
I won’t dwell on the gruesome smoking and jittering blast that surged through Harvey Jekyll’s body. It wasn’t any more horrific than what he had done to his victims. The little bastard smoked, but at least he didn’t dissolve.
When it was over, Jekyll sagged into a lifeless mass in the chair. His eyes were screwed shut, his lips pulled back to expose his teeth in a death grimace. After the physician pronounced him dead, guards unstrapped him from Sparky, Jr., lifted him onto a gurney, and covered his body with a sheet.
Igor came out, grinning with delight and full of manic energy. He pulled out a phone camera and asked to have his picture taken with each of us. We obliged, and Sheyenne requested a copy of the photo so we could hang it on the wall of Chambeaux & Deyer Investigations.
The warden shook our hands. “A job well done. Justice isn’t always easy. Well worth the added cost in this month’s electric bill.”
McGoo clapped me on the shoulder, my damaged one, then apologized, thinking he’d hurt me. I let him believe that. I stood with Robin and Sheyenne, relieved, feeling the tension drain away. We had about five minutes of peace, in which we imagined a silly, happily-ever-after future.
Until Harvey Jekyll’s body rose from the gurney. He sat up from beneath the sheet and pulled it away from his burned head. His eyes were bright and focused. “Well, that was unpleasant.”
We all gaped at him. Statistics can really bite you in the ass. One in seventy-five return as zombies, with the odds favoring suicide or murder victims. Harvey Jekyll had been lucky. We hadn’t.
The warden let out an annoyed sigh.
Robin looked frightened. “We’re arguing the precedents, but the law currently states that even the most heinous criminal can be executed only once.”
“That law needs to be updated,” I growled.
The warden stood in front of Harvey Jekyll, extended his finger in a stern warning. “You’re free to go, Mr. Jekyll. But I never want to see you in here again. I hope you’ve learned your lesson.”
The prison guards went back to the lockers and retrieved a clean set of clothes for Jekyll and handed them to the small, newly undead man. Jekyll scowled down at his hands, flexed his fingers. “You’ve made me an unnatural? This qualifies as cruel and unusual. You’ll be hearing from my attorneys, I assure you.”
Trying to gather his dignity, Harvey Jekyll dressed, glaring at us all the while. His expression held more unspoken words than all of Robin’s legal tomes combined. He left the prison, a free unnatural man.
Jekyll didn’t need to threaten us. We got the message.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This manuscript went through the usual round of test readers and advisors, and I would very much like to thank Deb Ray, Diane Jones, T. Duren Jones, Louis Moesta, and Rebecca Moesta, as well as fans and legal experts Nancy Greene and Melinda Brown for their insights and added humor. My editor, Michaela Hamilton, at Kensington showed enthusiasm above and beyond the call, as did my agent, John Silbersack, of Trident Media Group.
Dan Shamble would like to thank the author for creating him, but let’s not get into that.
Turn the page and read an irresistible teaser chapter
from Kevin J. Anderson’s next novel
starring Dan Shamble, Zombie PI
UNNATURAL ACTS
Coming from Kensington in January 2013
CHAPTER 1
I never thought a golem could make me cry, but hearing the big clay guy’s sad story brought a tear to my normally bloodshot eyes. My business partner Robin, a lawyer (but don’t hold it against her), was weeping openly.
“It’s so tragic!” she sniffled.
“I thought so,” the golem said, lowering his sculpted head. “But I guess I’m biased.”
He had lurched into the offices of Chambeaux & Deyer Investigations with the ponderous and inexorable gait that all golems have. “Please—you’ve got to help me!”
Most clients introduce themselves like that, rather than with a “Hello, pleased to meet you.” Then again, nobody engages the services of a private investigator or lawyer unless there’s some kind of trouble brewing.
Then the golem added, “And you’ve got to help my people.”
Now, that was something new.
Golems are man-sized creatures fashioned out of clay, tailor-made for menial labor, brought to life by an animation spell. They serve their masters and don’t complain about minimum wage. Traditionally, the creatures are statuesque and bulky, their features dependent on the skill of the sculptor-magician that created them. I’ve seen do-it-yourself kits on the market, complete with facial molds and detailed instructions.
This golem was in bad shape: dried and flaking, his gray skin fissured with cracks. His features were rounded, generic, and less distinctive than a store mannequin’s. His brow was furrowed, his chapped gray lips pressed down in a frown.
“Please, come in, sir,” Robin said, hurrying out of her office into our lobby area. “We can see you right away.”
Robin Deyer is a young African American woman with anime-worthy brown eyes, a big heart, and a feisty disposition. She and I had formed a loose partnership in the Unnatural Quarter, sharing office space and helping each other on cases. Zombies, vampires, werewolves, witches, ghouls, and the gamut of monsters were underrepresented in the legal system, and unnaturals had problems just like anyone else. For a lawyer and a private investigator, there’s job security, if you can handle the clientele.
Since I was a zombie myself, I fit right in.
I’d been human, albeit jaded, when I first hung out my shingle as a PI, not quite down-and-out, but unsuccessful enough to settle for a nontraditional client base. Robin and I worked together for years in the Quarter before I got shot in the back of the head during a case gone wrong. Fortunately, being killed didn’t end my career. Since the Big Uneasy, staying dead isn’t as common as it used to be. I returned from the grave, cleaned myself up, and got back to work.
Thanks to high-quality embalming and meticulous personal care, I’m well preserved, not one of those rotting shamblers that give the undead such a bad name. My skin’s pallid, but the shadows under my eyes aren’t too bad, and mortician’s putty covers up the bullet’s exit hole in my skull, for the most part.
I stepped toward the golem and extended my hand. When the clay man took my grip, his hand was firm but powdery. “My partner and I would be happy to listen to your case, Mr. . . . ?”
“Sorry, I don’t know my name,” he said. “I’ve always wondered about that, though, and I’d be much obliged if you’d tell me.” He slowly turned around. In standard magical manufacturing, a golem’s name is etched in the soft clay on the back of his neck, where he can never see it for himself. “My fellow golems try to help one another, but none of us can read. We’re budget models.”
There it was, in block letters. “It says your name is Bill.”
“Oh. I like that name.” His frown softened, although the clay face was too stiff to be overly expressive. He stepped forward, disoriented. “Could I have some water, please?”
Sheyenne, the beautiful blond ghost who served as our receptionist, office manager, paralegal, business advisor, and whatever other titles she wanted to come up with, flitted away to the kitchenette and returned with one of the bottles of sparkling water that Robin kept in the office refrigerator. The golem took the bottle from Sheyenne’s translucent hands and unceremoniously poured it all over his skin. “Oh, bubbly! That tingles.”
It wasn’t what I’d expected him to do, but by then we were used to unusual clients.
Bill massaged the moistened clay, smoothing over the cracks and fissures of his skin, and let out a contented sigh. “Ah, that’s better! Little things can improve life in large ways.” As he wiped his face with the last drops of sparkling water, Bill’s expression cleared, became more animated. “Is that so mu
ch to ask? Civil treatment? Human decency? It wouldn’t even cost much—and yet my people have to endure the most appalling conditions. It’s a crime, plain and simple.” He swiveled around to include Robin, Sheyenne, and me. “That’s why I’ve come to you. I escaped, but my people remain enslaved. Please help us! This could be the biggest case in the history of the Unnatural Quarter.”
Plenty of clients make promises like that as well.
“Was there anyone in particular who gave us a referral?” Sheyenne asked. “We always like to thank our loyal clients.”
Now that the bottle of sparkling water was empty, she returned with a glass of tap water, which the golem accepted. Sheyenne saw no reason to give him the expensive stuff if he was just going to pour it all over his body.
“I saw your name on a tourist map. Everyone in town knows that Chambeaux and Deyer gives unnaturals a fair shake if there’s trouble.” He held out a rumpled, folded giveaway map carried by many businesses in the Quarter.
Sheyenne grinned at me. “See, Beaux? I told you our ad on the chamber-of-commerce map would be worth the investment.”
Since joining us, Sheyenne had worked tirelessly—not that ghosts got tired—to manage our business and keep Chambeaux & Deyer in the black. I had always been involved in too many cases to pay attention to paperwork, and Robin was inclined to embrace any client in trouble, whether or not he, she, or it could pay. I don’t know what I’d do without Sheyenne, professionally or personally.
Before her death, Sheyenne had been a med student, working her way through school as a cocktail waitress and occasional nightclub singer at one of the Unnatural Quarter’s high-end establishments. She and I had a thing in life, a relationship with real potential . . . that was snuffed out when Sheyenne was murdered, and then me too. Thus, our relationship was an uphill struggle. Live and learn.
While it’s corny to talk about “undying love,” fate gave us a second chance, then thumbed its nose at us and blew a big loud raspberry. Sheyenne and I each came back from the dead, in our respective ways—me as a zombie, and Sheyenne as a ghost—but ghosts can never touch any living, or formerly living, person. So much for the physical side of our relationship, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like having her around. In fact, I like it a lot. . . .
Now that he was moisturized, Bill the golem seemed refreshed, a new person, much more intense. He no longer flaked off clods of mud as he followed Robin into our conference room. She carried a yellow legal pad, ready to take notes for the new client intake meeting. Since it wasn’t yet clear whether Bill needed a detective, an attorney, or both, I joined them. Sheyenne brought more water, a whole pitcher this time. We let Bill have it all.
Golems aren’t the smartest action figures in the toy box—they don’t need to be—but even though Bill was uneducated and lacking in everyday life experience, he wasn’t unintelligent, and he had a very strong sense of right and wrong. When he started talking, his passion and sense of injustice were apparent. I realized he would make a powerful witness. Robin fell for him instantly. He was just her type of client.
“There are a hundred other illegal golems just like me,” Bill said. “Living in miserable conditions, slaves in a sweatshop, animated and put to work.”
“Who created you?” I asked. “Where is this sweatshop, and what work did you do?”
Bill’s clay brain could not hold three questions at a time, so he answered only two of them. “We manufacture Unnatural Quarter souvenirs—vampire ashtrays made with real vampire ash, T-shirts, place mats, paperweights, holders for toothpicks marketed as ‘stakes for itsy-bitsy vampires.’ ”
Recently I had noticed several new gift shops opening up in the Quarter, a chain called Kreepsakes. All those inane souvenirs had to come from somewhere.
More than a decade after the Big Uneasy brought back all the legendary monsters, normal humans were beginning to recover from their shock and horror, and a few brave tourists even ventured into the Quarter. This had never been the best part of town, but now businesses welcomed the increased tourism as an unexpected form of urban renewal.
“Our master is a necromancer who calls himself Maximus Max,” Bill continued. “The golems are mass produced, slapped together from uneven clay, then awakened by using a bootleg animation spell that he runs off on an old smelly mimeograph. Shoddy work, but he doesn’t care. He’s a slave driver.”
Robin grew more incensed every second. “This is outrageous! How can he get away with this right out in the open?”
“We labor hidden in an underground chamber, badly lit, no ventilation, not even an employee break room. We dry out and crumble.” He held up his big blunt fingers, bending them, then straightening them. He dipped his hand into the pitcher of water, leaving a murky residue in it. “We suffer constant aches and pains. As the mimeographed animation spell starts to fade, we can’t move very well, and when the aches get too bad, we fall apart. I’ve seen many of my coworkers, my friends, just crumble on the job, and then other golems have to sweep up the mess, dump it into a bin, while Maximus Max whips up a new batch of clay so he can create more golems. No one lasts very long.”
Robin wrote down detailed notes. She looked up, said in a soft compassionate voice, “And how did you escape, Bill?”
The golem shuddered. “There was an accident on the bottling line. When a batch of our Fires of Hell hot sauce melted the glass bottles and corroded the labeling machine, three of my golem friends had to clean up the mess. But the hot sauce ruined them, too, and they fell apart.
“I was in the second-wave cleanup crew, shoveling the mess into a wheelbarrow. Max commanded me to empty it into a Dumpster in the alley above, but he forgot to command me to come back. So when I was done, I just walked away.” Bill hung his head. “But my people are still there, still enslaved. Can you help me free them? Stop the suffering?”
I turned to the golem. “Why didn’t you go to the police when you escaped?”
The golem blinked his big artificial eyes, now that he was more moisturized. “Would they have listened to me? Legally speaking, I’m the necromancer’s property.”
Robin dabbed her eyes with a tissue and pushed her legal pad aside. “It sounds like a class-action lawsuit in the making, Bill. We can investigate the sweatshop for conformance to workplace safety codes. Armed with that information, I’ll find a sympathetic judge and file an injunction to stop the work line temporarily.”
I could see that Bill was disappointed. “I think he was hoping for something more immediate, Robin. I’ll talk to Officer McGoohan, see if he’ll raid the place, but it might take a day or two.”
The golem’s face showed increasing alarm. “But I can’t stay here—I’m not safe! Max will know where to find me.”
“How?” Robin asked.
“I’m an escaped golem looking for action and legal representation—where else would I go but Chambeaux and Deyer? That’s what the tourist map says.”
“I’ve got an idea,” I said and called for Sheyenne. The ghost appeared immediately. “See if Tiffany will stop by. Promise her I’ll come to her comedy improv in a couple of weeks if she does me a quick favor.”
Sheyenne responded with an impish grin. “Good idea, Beaux.”
As I said, most of the clients who darkened our door were people in trouble, but not Tiffany, the buffest—and butchest—vampire I’d ever met. She had a gruff demeanor and treated her life with the utmost seriousness the second time around.
It turned out the buff vamp had more of a sense of humor than I originally thought. Earlier that afternoon, Tiffany had dropped in wearing a grin that showed her white fangs; she waved a pack of tickets and asked if we’d come see her for open-mic night at the Laughing Skull, a comedy club down in Little Transylvania. I had been noncommittal at the time; maybe now we could trade favors....
“Who is that, Mr. Chambeaux?” Bill asked.
“An acquaintance. You’ll like her.”
I knew Tiffany from the All-Day/All-Nite Fitness Center,
where I tried to keep myself in shape. Zombies didn’t have to worry about cholesterol levels or love handles, but it was important to maintain muscle tone and flexibility. The aftereffects of death can substantially impact one’s quality of life. While I worked out regularly, Tiffany was downright obsessive about it. She said she could bench-press a coffin filled with lead bricks (though why she would want to, I couldn’t say).
Like many vampires, Tiffany had invested well and didn’t need a regular job unless she wanted one. Due to her intimidating physique, I kept her in mind in case I ever needed extra muscle.
Sheyenne can be very persuasive, and Tiffany arrived within half an hour. She walked through the door wearing a denim work shirt and jeans. She had narrow hips, square shoulders, no waist, all muscle. She looked as if she were built out of solid concrete blocks; if any foolish vampire slayer had tried to pound a stake through her heart, it would have splintered into toothpicks on the first blow.
Tiffany gave a gruff nod of greeting to Robin and Sheyenne, but focused on me. “So, tell me what you’ve got, Chambeaux.” When Bill emerged from the conference room, Tiffany eyed him up and down. “You’re a big boy.”
“I was made that way. Mr. Chambeaux said you can keep me safe.”
“I’ll give you a place to stay, but you look like you can take care of yourself. Hang out at my house for a few days until this blows over.” Tiffany glanced at me, raised her eyebrows. “A few days—right, Chambeaux?”
Robin answered for me. “That should be all we need to start the legal proceedings.”
Bill’s clay lips rolled upward in a genuine smile now. “My people and I are indebted to you, Miss Tiffany.”
“No debt involved. I’m doing some work at home, installing shelves and a work bench in the garage, a dark-paneled den and wet bar in the basement. I need help putting in a heavy circular saw and a drill press. You could be useful.”
“Thanks for the favor, Tiffany,” I said.
The vampire gave me a brusque nod. “Don’t worry, he’ll be putty in my hands.”
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