“What the fuck?” Mitchell whispers.
“Yeah...”
“Are they—did he?”
Mitchell actually walks away from me.
“Wait, Mitchell!” I run after him, nearly tripping over my own feet.
Tara's eyes round as her brother stomps over there.
“Table's turned, numb nuts,” Pax says helpfully.
Oh shit.
I leap, jamming myself in between them.
Mitchell mows into me before he can check his momentum.
I stumble and fall, hitting my belly hard on the edge of one of those long interrogation tables.
Pain spikes, flaring from deep inside me, and I gasp. Like a fire poker has stabbed me, I give a hoarse shouting scream and sink to my knees.
A moment later, Mitchell lifts me.
His eyes search my face. “My fault.”
I whip my face back and forth. “No,” I croak out, “I was too dumb to think about getting in front of a zombie on locomotive mode.” I wince, my hand going to my stomach.
Worried deep blue eyes catch mine. “What is it?”
Cramping begins, and a hot tear eases out of the corner of my eye. “The baby.”
“No,” Mitchell's face crumples, and he spins with me in his arms. “Is there some kind of sci-fi med facilities here?”
Sci-Fi what?
Mom runs over. “What is it, honey?” Her worried eyes caress my face then move down to where I cover my belly with my hands.
“I think I hurt myself in the fall.” My voice drops. “Hurt the baby.”
Hugh Easter, the largest prick of pricks (and that doesn't mean size), walks over. “We have a med station on Sanction.” He can't hide his glee that I might be hurt.
Tate shakes his head, smoothly intervening. “No. Whatever Deegan Hart needs, we can provide at RfH.”
“Okay, I'm blinking,” Pax says, grabbing Tate by the shirt, and rotates him so they face each other.
“I want Mom.” My eyes sweep everyone and come back to Mom. “And Dad and Gramps.”
Gramps moves quickly to my side. “What's going on, pumpkin?” His eyes flick to Mitchell. “Saw the big lug charge into ya.”
My lip quivers as another cramp seizes me. “I think I'm—the baby,” I whimper, feeling my heart bleed inside my chest.
It must be nothing compared to how Mitchell feels.
Responsible.
Which is not right, clearly.
But what happened, happened. And we can't take it back.
Gramps, Dad, and Mom hang on to Pax. I hold out my hand, and my brother grips it. He hauls Tara against him at the last minute, and she clutches his denim's belt loop.
Tate shuts his eyes.
Pax blinks, and the world tilts, sending us into the arms of what might be my future employer.
I don't care. I want them to save my baby.
*
“I'm not sure there's anything that can be done,” Dr. Roberts says. His pulse badge blares his name, along with details about whether he has malpractice lawsuits against him, how many babies he's delivered, and a bunch of other cringeworthy junk.
“I do know your...” Roberts looks at a stoic Mitchell. “The father of the child,” he finally says, “is not responsible for this. But as you must know, there are only two other documented cases of humanoid and undead producing offspring.”
Uncle Clyde and Bobbi Gale.
“Then why can't I?” I ask, searching his face.
He wears a kind expression. His hand covers mine, which rests on a sterile hospital sheet. Germ destroyers, which are still pulse-driven, crawl the surfaces of my room about waist height and below, endlessly moving and eating the nasties that would cause or worsen illness.
He squeezes my cool fingers, shifting in his stool with rollers. It displaces the germ destroyers, and they flow around the wheels and his feet seamlessly. “There simply isn't enough information. If we had stem cells from a relative, sometimes that can be used. Technology has advanced enough, and there's so much funding for pregnancy at this stage that we can stabilize the most unstable of pregnancies by safely extracting stem cells from like DNA. Usually first-degree relatives are ideal, but we've used as distant as fourth cousins.”
Dad, Gramps, and Mom step forward. “We'll do it.”
Mom touches my stomach through the sheet, and my tears begin to flow again.
She swallows hard. “That's my grandchild in there.”
Her watery smile matches my own, and I hitch back a sob with a supreme effort.
Dr. Roberts gives a shake of his head and a tiny sad laugh. “If only we had an undead relative; that might work. The unique DNA of this pregnancy—though you're AftD—warrants some out-of-the-box maneuvering.”
Gramps had been sitting in one of those uncomfortable, scooped-out seats in a shade of screaming red and stands so suddenly I jump a little.
“Clyde!” he hollers, startling the doctor.
Dr. Roberts’s brows tighten. “Who, sir?”
“Clyde is a relation,” Grampsʼs eyes are hopping around from person to person like darkly lit jumping beans.
Dad shrugs. “Clyde has mentioned it, so we know he is—but we've never bothered finding out how. Not a lot of free time in the Hart household.”
“Get him in here, and we'll test him. If he's close enough, and—a DNA match—we can use him, and the pregnancy, in theory, would continue.”
Hope is buoyant, rising to the surface of my churning emotions like a brilliant white SOS donut.
But just as soon as it does, doubt creeps in.
Sanction took Mitchell, beat him, tried to get him flamed.
Where is Uncle Clyde? And is he a close enough blood relative to save my unborn child?
*
Hugh Easter
“You'll be in hot damn water, Hugh.” The other Sanction agent meets my eyes.
I park my ass on a long table, shoved up against the wall for the moment, so I have room to maneuver.
Lighting a smoke, I have a pang of pure joy over my access to contraband tobacco infused with enough nicotine to kill a horse. I inhale the smoke deeply, letting it fill my lungs. And though I don't use weed, I hold the smoke inside myself in a loose nod to four twenty.
Shooting the noxious stream skyward, I send my partner a withering look. He's always being the devil's advocate.
While I'm just fine being the devil.
I glance over at Clyde Thomas. What's left of him.
The man can sure take a beating, I muse, taking in another drag and let it out slowly as I peer through my own cloud of smoke at one of the few grandfathered zombies.
His wife sits down the hall with their two, part-dead spawn. Don't like the way either looks.
Not happy they led their butch mother to Sanction headquarters, swearing that they could “feel” their father in this building.
Hate zombies. They're sole worth lies in how far they can be used for my purposes.
The purpose of Sanction.
I'm the highest-ranking member for a reason.
Only Brad Thompson and his holier-than-thou father, Clem, were above me.
But they're not here anymore, are they?
Suits me just fine.
Head honcho by proxy.
I walk slowly over to Clyde, the grandfathered mofo, and kick one of his highly tailored shoes.
One of his swollen eyes glares at me. A glittering angry slit of hazel sizes me up. “Yes, coward?”
My free hand fists.
“Hit me if you will, since I remain bound.” His chuckle is low, softly hoarse. “It should make you feel even more of a man.”
He smiles then spits out a tooth.
It plops on the top of my retro Chuck Taylors, leaving a spot of zombie blood on the sea of white.
Fuck.
I ball up my fist and hit him in the nose. It's a glancing blow—men in this day and age simply don't know the mechanics of hand-to-hand fighting, and I'm no exception—but
a chunk of scalp gets picked up with the swing and flies into the wall. The murk that held it to the scalp is long-rotted.
Clyde and I watch it slide down the wall, leaving a brownish red trail of slime in its wake.
Disgusted, I rub my hand off on a hand towel I keep just for these sessions.
I've had to work too hard on this zombie, and the skin of my knuckles is so badly abraded, it'll take days to heal, especially because I can't be regenerated. Of all the mother-fucking luck.
“Hugh, he's grandfathered. There will be hell to pay.”
I don't turn to Toby. “If they find out.”
He tries again, pointing out the obvious, “The wife and kids are sitting in the waiting room.”
“Shut. Up. I can handle them too.”
Clyde spits a long snot-and-blood-streaked loogie onto my other shoe with impressive precision.
I breathe through my mouth, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I can have you flamed, and damn the consequences.”
Clyde rolls his slit of an eyeball toward me. “You could, worthless scourge, but what is the fun in that?” He chuckles again. “When you can take out all of your insecurities on a bound man?”
He's got a point.
I decide I'll beat on him more then find a Sanction law to allow me to haul those Hart kids in.
Drextel Tate can go fuck himself.
I’ll get at them before RfH can slap full protection on the Harts.
Maybe snag Deegan Hart as she struggles to keep her zombie spawn. My mouth waters, thinking about what I could do to her—and that brutish zombie she's so lovesick over.
I shudder. AftDs are necessary, but they're a disgusting representation of human flesh.
As I lift my fist, Toby grabs my wrist, yanking his chin toward the door just before it bursts open and Drextel Tate walks in.
“What in the fu—”
A Hart relative jams his fist into my face, and I'm spinning.
Darkness bites my consciousness off with uncompromising steel jaws. And no matter how hard I try to surface, I drown in the waters of unconsciousness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Gramps
“Got some teeth in that one,” I say, swinging my fingers out to check out the most recent abuse. Crescent-shaped teeth marks mar the flesh of my knuckles.
Then Pax's hand covers mine.
When he lifts it a moment later, the flesh is clean, without teeth indentions.
I'll never get used to the Organic thing.
I grin at the kid, and he grins back.
“Toby Meyer,” Drextel Tate says.
“Shit,” the guy mutters. “I told Easter we were breaking laws.”
“Get me...” Clyde says out of a mush-mouth, “Bobbi.”
“Already here, darlin',” she screams through the doorway threshold, upsetting a few standing in her way. She lays eyes on Clyde. “Oh my God, baby—what did they do to you?”
“I've been through worse,” Clyde manages.
And not for the first time. I think of how hard a man he is, that Clyde was alive years before my birth. And I'm an old man now. No amount of regeneration will cure the wisdom of years lived on earth.
Bobbi Gale rushes to her husband and kneels before him. “Keep the kids out,” she says in a low voice over her shoulder, carefully looking at Clyde's condition.
Before I shut the door, I meet my granddaughter-in-law’s eyes, and her finger sweeps my hand.
A second drums between us, and Jade nods. Our empathic communication is that fast.
Clyde's kids don't need to see him in this state. And we need to get him fixed up, pronto.
“It's too much,” Bobbi cranes her neck, looking at the assembled group, eyes frantic. I can't remember how many points she is, but three rings a bell.
Clyde's injuries lay naked everywhere the eye can travel. Bobbi's managed to keep the rot from progressing, but there's no actual improvement.
A rap at the door sounds, and I open it a crack, eyeballing the knocker.
Caleb.
Swinging the door wide, I move aside so he can pass through.
He walks directly to Clyde, assessing the mess. “Need Tiff,” he says, moving to Clyde's other side, opposite Bobbi. They look at each other for a swollen moment, then Caleb says, not unkindly, “He's mine. I can fix this.”
Clyde grips Caleb's hand. “Master.”
Unshed tears gather in my grandson's eyes. Tears of grief, rage, and determination.
The powerful salt of pure emotion.
Tiff barges through, gets a load of the scene, and says, “Holy fuck on a duck.” She jams a fresh square of gum in her craw then gives a determined teeth mash.
Damn. I shut the door and lean against it.
Tiff moves toward Caleb, and without turning, he raises his free hand in the air.
“Let's get him juiced,” Tiff says, smacking her hand into Caleb's, and even I can feel the power they raise as my scalp tingles in response.
Bobbi sucks in an agonized breath.
Instantly, Clyde's face rearranges itself as though melting candle wax has been reversed. His forehead lifts; every sagging bit of flesh from temple to jawline to mouth becomes smooth and firm.
What was rotting falls to the ground. What is new fills in the cracks, holes, and crevices of an imperfect face.
When the rot has shed, and his countenance has righted itself into a covering of living flesh, the bruises and lacerations of a fine beating begin to mend.
Gaping slits and withered and marred fist marks fill then bloom with healing color and life before smoothing away.
A bald spot on his scalp grows light-brown hair.
His big-knuckled hands come to life, and he flexes them.
Clyde stands, Tiff’s and Caleb's hands still on his body.
“More,” Caleb whispers, his face a mask of concentration, and Tiff squeezes her eyes shut tightly.
Clyde tips his head back and opens his mouth as if he's hunting for snowflakes with his tongue. It brightens from dark to a rich, deep pink before my eyes.
Clyde's been remade.
And now he can save my great-grandbaby. Or great-grand zombie baby.
I shake my head. Might be too complicated to flesh out at the moment. I smirk at my clever internal repartee.
Clyde's head dips down, and he opens his arms, drawing Tiff, Caleb, and Bobbi into his embrace.
“I am grateful beyond measure,” Clyde says.
I hold tears back that I will never shed, but they burden my throat with a fine burn.
Their knotted hug is a sight I'll never forget.
*
Clyde frowns. “I do not see how our relation status is relevant if Deegan is in such need?”
I scrub a hand over my face.
“Baby, you're going to have to drop this thing with Maggie.”
Clyde folds his hands. “I left her when she was with child, and she was forced to be an unwed mother.”
Bobbi closes her hands around his. “You didn't abandon her, Clyde. Destiny stole you. That's a different thing.”
He nods, but not as though he's completely convinced. Poor sap.
“Listen, Clyde.”
Everyone looks my way. “Deedie is going to lose her child. We need to ascertain how close of a relation you are, then take a DNA test—see if you're a match. If ya are, then we're in business.”
“I should not ask why Deegan is with child?” His eyebrow lift is delicate, telling.
I shake my head. “Maybe later.”
“It is a complicated matter?” His clear hazel eyes search mine.
My exhale is rough. The whole matter is every bit of awkward as I can imagine and even more. “Yes.”
“Then I will do what I can.”
John Terran pops his head in the door. “Dr. Roberts is here, Deegan's attending physician.”
Thank all that is holy.
Clyde walks to the door, and immediately, his two rascals barrel into him. He greets them, ru
ffling their hair. “You boys stay with your mama, Daddy has to do something very important.”
They look like twins—Irish twins—folks use that expression when children are born so close together they could almost be twins. Both boys, young enough to be unconcerned with how much they want their papa. They look up at him expectantly and he puts his big hands on each one's head, kissing the top then obediently go to Bobbi.
“Is this the relation?” Dr. Roberts asks, his beak of a nose wrinkling.
Clyde nods.
He scratches his head. “Well, I must say, you don't look like a zombie.”
We exchange glances, no doubt thinking about the twenty minutes it took to get Clyde back together again.
“And you don't look like a physician,” Clyde comments.
The doc huffs.
Clyde smiles.
Roberts turns on his heel, pushing through the swinging doors into the lab. Clyde palms the door before it fully closes then follows the doctor.
“I'll need to pulse your DNA and see if you're a match, get your history after we know that you are. After all”—he turns in profile to Clyde—“you'll be no good to us if your DNA doesn't match, relative or not.”
“I don't have a disc.”
Roberts nods as we crowd the door, some of us squeezing in. “Of course not. Dead flesh won't circuit. So I was able to locate an old-fashioned pulse monitor. Hard to get.” He holds up a slim rectangle.
“Hold out your arm.”
Clyde does.
“This will sting.”
A ghost of a smile hovers over Clyde's lips then disappears. “Do your worst.”
One of Roberts’s eyebrows rises. “Uh-huh.”
He passes the rectangle-sized pulse device over Clyde's arm from elbow to wrist.
Clyde hisses through his teeth.
I guess zombies do feel some pain, after all.
“Deepest DNA sample I can procure.” He turns, sliding the device into a slot inside a small metallic box sitting on the surface of one of the scattered lab tables sitting around.
Clyde gives Roberts’s back a nasty look and rubs his arm at the crook of the elbow.
“Already have Deegan Hart's profile because she has a disc,” he harrumphs.
We wait for a full minute, then the machine ejects the pulse device from the slot.
Roberts pulls it the rest of the way out and studies the result. “Match, estimated fourth degree relative.”
Death Incarnate Page 22