by Crymsyn Hart
“Omar started shouting for me a few hours ago when he couldn’t find you. I would’ve been here sooner, but I was helping some other reapers catch up on their lists. Flitting between dimensions makes it tricky to hear sometimes. Rory came into the graveyard, and I came right over when I heard him.”
“Thank you for finding me, Rory. I must’ve been sleepwalking and hit my head. How did you know to get Mr.—” She glanced at Oliver and struggled to recall the name the boy called him. “Letum?”
The gaggle of neighbors went back to their houses when nothing else happened. Rory remained looking on with a mixture of awe and terror. His cheeks turned a dark scarlet when he realized that Darria caught him looking at them. He immediately studied the untied laces of his blue sneakers. He muttered something.
“Sorry. I didn’t hear you,” Darria said to him. She figured he was somewhere around seventeen or eighteen. He was wearing a ragged T-shirt sporting a logo of some comic book hero she vaguely recognized. His jeans were ratty, and his sneakers had more holes in them than she could count.
He met her eyes. “I know what you and Mr. Letum are. I know what goes on around here.”
No one in town knew much about her or her job save that she lived in a private funeral home. If anyone questioned her about doing funerals for the public, she declined. Oliver never interacted with the community. Humans could walk through his graveyard during the day, but at night, no one could enter.
“I’m not sure what you mean. I run an exclusive funeral home with a few select clients.” Darria had her undertaker’s license even though she had no formal training. If it came down to it, she could embalm a human corpse. The knowledge came with the memories of the undertakers who came before her. It was part of the cover that came with her position.
“Your aura is a mixture of death and life. You have a dismembered left hand that runs around the property and some animal. It’s kind of like a giant lion creature with wings. It sits on the roof at night, protecting the house. Sometimes, she bays at the moon.”
Darria had gotten used to Gabbie howling at night. It troubled her that Rory identified her.
“Rory’s psychic. He sees through the veils obscuring this house, you, and me,” Oliver informed her.
She nodded, accepting the explanation. “Okay. Thank you for fetching Oliver, but please don’t tell anyone. Most people don’t know what goes on here.”
“Don’t worry. I think it’s cool. Mr. Letum said you’d show me around some time.” Rory glanced at her with a hopeful glint in his eyes.
“Yeah. I can do that. Not today, though.” Darria felt the world spin and grabbed onto Oliver.
“Cool! Well, I have to go. My mom wants me back.” Rory glanced back toward his house. Darria looked over. His mother stood on the porch. She raised her hand and waited, but the mother did not return the gesture. Rory bounced across the street and slipped into the house. His mother followed him inside, and the door slammed shut.
“Great. Now I have to deal with the neighbor’s kid watching me all the time.” Darria ran her fingers through her hair. She winced when she hit the lump from where she had hit her head.
“You don’t have to worry about Rory. I caught him snooping around the graveyard while the undead carnival was setting up. He could see past the death’s head. I explained to him what I was and warned him against the traveling sideshow. He asked me about you because he mentioned he noticed the weird visitors you had at all hours. I told him if ever thought you were in trouble to come to the cemetery.” Oliver trailed his finger down her cheek, which made her insides quiver. “Are you okay?”
She pulled her mind away from his touch. “I’ll be fine.”
“What happened? Omar said you were sleepwalking. He was quite worried about you.”
Darria stepped away from Oliver to calm her swirling emotions. The scent of jasmine and cloves with the earthy aroma of lilies overtook her senses. She needed to be clearheaded to focus on what she remembered of her dream. The details hadn’t retreated. A light breeze wound over her arms. When she rubbed them, she realized the safety pin was no longer embedded in her skin. Oh shit! She scoured the front yard and found it a few inches from where she had fallen. She held it out to Oliver.
“The other undertakers came back with their assistants trapped in their rotting flesh. The leader told me that the conclave assigned me. They want me to put them to rest. Do you know anything about that?” Darria placed the pin back along her left arm. It took a moment before it sunk into her skin.
“Sorry. It must be an undertaker thing. Even I have a few secrets I can’t tell you, although I want to show you a few things.” He touched her arm. A crackle of purple passed between her skin and his hand. Oliver closed his eyes. His nostrils flared, and a small smile curled up the corners of his lips. He opened his eyes and gazed into hers. “I miss you, Darria.”
“You see me a few days a week.” She poked his bicep before turning to walk back into the house. Oliver grabbed her wrist and spun her around.
“You know what I mean,” he whispered.
“We agreed to give me time to figure out things between us.”
“I know. I don’t mind giving you space, but I can’t help how I feel.” The dark angel placed a hand on her cheek. The coolness of his power interacted with hers on all levels. The tension building between them for the past three months since he revealed his feelings for her seemed about ready to explode.
“I know. But ... I–I can’t deal with them right now. All the hunters are slamming me with work; they must have changed their minds and decided they need undertakers after all. I process two or three bodies a day. It doesn’t sound like much, but when you do it for three months without much of a break, it puts our relationship on the back burner. Besides, I thought you had reservations about me being a necromancer.”
“I do. Being around you drives me crazy. I can’t heal you if you get hurt. It goes against the pact I have with your undertaker line. Yes. It’s true about you being a necromancer after the power that you showed over me. But ... fuck it.” Oliver pressed his lips to hers.
The kiss murdered her, slaying her until she wished she could die in his arms. Her insides melted. She wrapped her arms around him. His frigid power penetrated her insides until she felt like she was in the center of a cold fire. Solid ground liquefied underneath her feet. Ink-stained wings wrapped around them, shimmering with cobalt blue and violet rainbows. Oliver’s lips felt like silk running against hers. Her heart ceased to beat for a fraction of a second. The landscape lost all color and bled into gray. For an infinite moment, even that winked out of existence. The steady beat of wings filled her ears, and their feathery ends caressed her until the world came back into view. He brought her into the kitchen. Oliver released Darria, leaving her with an echo of his presence.
“I can wait for you to make your decision, but I know you care about me.”
“Oh, thank God! Darria, Mistress of My Heart and Left Hand, I didn’t know what happened to you.” Omar skittered across the linoleum floor, took one of his notorious flying leaps, and landed on her shoulder. His mummified fingers had a strong grip as he clutched the side of her neck. His thumb dug into her windpipe. It was his version of hugging her, but she could barely breathe.
Darria grabbed the protruding wrist bone and pulled him off of her. She drew in huge gulps of air to think clearly. His fingers wiggled as he tried to get back to her. The strength behind his determination nearly made it impossible to hold him. “Omar, thank you for your concern. I’m fine.”
Gabbie charged in. Her talons clicked on the tile floor. Her four-foot, spade-tipped tail hit the walls as she ran. Her short, gray fur glistened in the light. She jumped up and landed on Darria’s shoulders. The gargoyle’s purple tongue left a wet trail along her face. She hugged the creature and scratched behind her ears. Gabbie’s wings fluttered as she petted her. The gargoyle resembled a cross between a lion, a large bat, and a demon with twisted horns on the top of
her head that curled backward to a sharp point.
“It’s good to see you, too. I’m okay,” Darria reassured Gabbie.
The gargoyle yipped and locked her gaze with Omar.
“She wants to know what happened. She was on the roof when the fog rolled in. Even she couldn’t see through it,” Omar translated.
Darria recounted what had happened the night before. She glanced at Oliver, but he didn’t add anything. “Omar, can you get me the list of undertakers you wrote out a few months ago?” she asked her familiar.
Gabbie rested against her leg until Darria had to lean against the counter so she wouldn’t topple over. Omar yanked the list from underneath the yellow magnet on the fridge that sported the saying, “You kill ‘em; we chill ‘em.” She had the same sticker on her laptop. Omar handed her the record. She ran her finger over the paper and stopped at the third one down.
“This one,” she pointed out. “Augustus Hooker. He came to me last night.”
“How do you know?” Oliver asked.
She shrugged. “A feeling. I don’t know. The rest don’t seem to be the one. Where do I start looking for the one who gets the pin?”
“I’m sure it will all come together.” Oliver pulled the hood over his face. His scythe appeared in his right hand. Cold power radiated off him and stirred hers.
She pushed the idea of penetrating his mind away. It was a tempting thought, but having that much power over a harvester could lead to trouble. Darria folded the paper and slipped it into her pocket. Charging off to the address could be worse. She needed to assess the situation first. “Yeah, it does. Okay, so now that the whole neighborhood is looking at me, I’m going to take a shower.”
Oliver bowed his head and disappeared in a rush of frigid air. Omar started to go after her, but Gabbie scooped up the hand in her mouth and held him.
“Thanks, Gabbie. You mind holding him down until I get out?”
The gargoyle nodded.
“Darria, come on. I promise I won’t touch anything.”
“Not a chance. I don’t need to be ogled by a perverted left hand.”
Chapter 3
Darria sat in her office and stared at the shelves. Rows of books, ancient texts, diaries, and scrolls from civilizations long forgotten filled the bookcases. Some contained spells. Others were the recollections of undertakers who had come before her. A journal on her desk held all her accounts, including the dream from the night before. Next to it was the mysterious note she had received a few months ago after her ordeal with the banshees. The sender had signed it with an M, with a red poppy drawn at the bottom of the letter.
The house was quiet. Omar and Gabbie watched more movies out of the stack they had started the night before. Darria didn’t want to listen to his hand jokes or find him walking up her leg, trying to grope her breasts. She rubbed her temples and studied the names once more on the list. Her gaze kept getting drawn back to Augustus Hooker. His message ran rampant through her mind about how the conclave had chosen her to find the next owner of the safety pin. How could she do that? Someone had to know something? One of the other undertakers in her line had to have had a similar situation to find another undertaker. The only way to find out was to reach back in her memories.
She closed her eyes and reclined in the chair. The springs groaned against the weight, but it was comfortable enough considering it was older than dirt. It was one of the throwbacks from Abner’s tenure, the same with the massive, mahogany desk, which she loved. The memory of Abner trailing his fingers over the wood sprang forward into her mind. He had been looking at several others, but this one caught his eye. The recollection made her grin. Darria shoved the remembrance aside and pushed further back. She took in a deep breath and envisioned the safety pin. Darria posed the mental question about finding the relic’s owner to her memories. Something tickled her insides, but she tried to ignore it. Darria moved further back into the hall of her mind, hoping to find an answer to her quandary.
“Darria!” Omar’s shouting brought her out of it.
“What now?” Frustration ripped through her.
She got up, forcing the chair back into the wall. She yanked open the door and passed through the barrier between rooms into the bathroom. A cool breeze covered her flesh. Darria followed the thread connecting her to Omar into the kitchen. Gabbie growled. A woman in a green, velvet dress snarled at Gabbie.
The gargoyle snapped at the stranger.
“What the hell’s going on here?”
The woman shouldn’t be in the kitchen. A barricade enchantment kept out any unwanted visitors unless she invited them in, including the hunters who hadn’t been to the house before. After all the events Darria had been involved with, she wasn’t taking any chances. Gabbie lunged at the woman. Darria gasped, getting the attention of the stranger in her kitchen. When she turned, her nose and jaw had elongated into a snout—a mixture of canine and human. Too many sharp teeth filled the smaller jaw. Black eyes narrowed as she slashed at Darria with curved claws. She jumped out of the way of those dangerous talons. Blonde fur covered the woman’s face, but gray skin remained in patches. Darria retched from the noxious smell that emanated from her.
Omar grabbed the creature’s leg. The werewolf swiped at Omar. The distraction allowed Darria to pull the needle from her tattoo. She brandished the silver needle against the werewolf. The woman lunged at Darria. Claws grazed her throat. Darria stabbed the werewolf in the neck with the silver needle. The wolf howled and scraped at the weapon embedded in her flesh. Wisps of black smoke curled from the wound where the needle touched the corpse’s neck. It screamed, spinning in circles and frothing at the mouth. Gabbie pounced and pinned the creature to the ground.
Darria rubbed the slashes on her neck and came away with blood. The werewolf struggled underneath the gargoyle. Omar remained on her ankle. Darria hopped over one of the werewolf’s arms, taking the towel from the handle of the fridge. She pressed it along the scratches. She leaned against the counter, studying the thrashing creature. It seemed familiar.
“That’s impossible,” she whispered.
“What is?” Omar asked.
“Nothing. Omar, go into the basement and get me one of the silver stakes on the work tray, will you?”
“On it, boss.” The hand scurried toward the entrance to the cellar.
Darria ran her hand over Gabbie’s head and relaxed her hold on her necromantic power. Something sparked within the werewolf. A faint glimmer of a soul, a carbon copy, animated the body. Darria tried to grab on to it, but it possessed a darker stain that rendered her power useless. Meanwhile, the werewolf snapped at Gabbie, but its jaws were too short to do any damage. Omar bounded into the kitchen, holding a silver stake that was left over from one of the bounty hunters.
“Here you go.” Every time he bounced, his wrist bone clacked against the floor.
She took the stake from his leathery fingers. Darria threw the towel in the sink. The slices ached, but she would live. The bullet hole that had originally brought down the werewolf had turned into a gaping hole. Oliver’s kiss had turned the corpse to ash. She watched it burn on the worktable in her cellar. Its soul had been sucked out by a soul eater. No way in hell it was resurrected. She used its ashes in the ritual that cemented herself as an undertaker.
“What are you doing here?” Darria demanded, excerpting her necromantic power on the body. For one minute, she thought she had pinned it down, but it wiggled out of her grasp.
The werewolf didn’t answer her. Darria raised the stake and aimed for the heart. Once the silver touched the werewolf, it would be dead again. First, she pulled her needle out of the corpse’s neck and slipped it into her pocket.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” A woman’s voice sounded from outside her kitchen door.
Darria leaned back to check out her new guest. The light hid her features, but Darria caught a southern accent. “Why do you say that? Who are you?”
“If you want those answers, you�
��re going to have to let me in. The stake won’t kill it again. Sure, the silver will slow it down, but the corpse will remain animated.”
Darria glanced at Omar, who flexed his fingers— his form of a shrug. Gabbie didn’t react, so Darria didn’t think she was a threat. She slipped the stake into a back pocket of her jeans and pushed open the screen. “Come in.”
The woman’s white skirt billowed around her as she walked. Her crimson top flowed over the top of her skirt. Her sandal-clad feet showed off painted toes that matched her blouse. Her skin was golden brown like coffee with too much cream. “Please tell your pet to move. I don’t want her to get hurt.”
Gabbie growled at the woman.
“My apologies, beautiful one. Will you please move off the wolf so I can take care of her?”
The gargoyle grumbled and glanced at Darria, but she lifted off the reanimated corpse. The werewolf leaped at the woman. The stranger put up her hand, palm outward, five fingers splayed. The beast stopped in its tracks. Power emanated from the woman in cold waves. Her eyes narrowed while she stared straight at the creature. It struggled to move. Darria stepped backward when the energy hit her. The weight of the woman’s power pushed against Darria. Hers pushed back, but it was like butting up against a cement truck.
“Do you feel the force within the corpse keeping it held together?” the stranger asked with no strain in her voice from holding the animal.
“Yes.” Once she asked, Darria could feel the other presence inside of the stiff despite the woman’s influence: cold and slippery like an eel trying to escape.
“Good. Take control of it.”
Darria stood behind the woman. “How? It wriggles out of my grasp.”
“That’s because you’re letting it master you.”
“How do I know you’re not the one who resurrected this thing and sent it after me?”
“If all of this were a setup, your gargoyle would’ve pounced on me. I could easily dissolve the link to your severed hand. I could render you powerless in an instant, but I’m not here to do that, Darria. I assume you got my note.”