Ghost Hunter

by Paige Tyler

  “That’s right,” he said softly. “Hold still. I don’t want to cut you. Yet.”

  The scream that rose in her throat was muffled by the gag, making it sound pitiful and weak.

  “You know, I’m furious at you for killing Carson. He was my best friend.” Martin tossed the knife on the counter. “He still is, I suppose. Which is why I stole his body and brought him back.”

  The necromancer picked up a jar filled with something dark and glistening. Taking off the lid, he dipped his forefinger in the gooey liquid and carefully scrawled a series of symbols on her stomach. She was alarmed when he came to her bra, fearing he would rip it open, but he didn’t so much as glance at her breasts as he smeared the liquid on the skin above the material.

  Martin shrugged as he dipped his finger in the jar again. “He doesn’t look so good now, but I can fix him up. It’s not as if what I do is an exact science, you know. I’ve never worked on anyone I was close to before, either. Getting his spirit back from the dead was hard enough. For some reason, though, I couldn’t get it to join back up with his body. I’m not sure what happened there.” He grinned. “You have to admit, it is sort of cool the way he can morph through a wall one second, then slice and dice just like the good old days the next.”

  Cassidy didn’t think it was so cool. Neither did the women he’d murdered, she was sure.

  “Carson didn’t like it too much, though,” the necromancer continued. “He was impatient for me to bring him all the way back. Under normal circumstances, that wouldn’t have been so tough, but I was working on my best friend. It put a lot of stress on me.”

  Cassidy wondered why he was telling her all this. She supposed she shouldn’t complain. The more he talked, the more time she had to work on freeing her wrists.

  “I got it, though. It took a little while to come up with the spell to reanimate his corpse.” Martin frowned. “Of course, his body was a little messy by then. But as I said, I’ll fix that. It might take me a while, but I’ll fix it. After I figure out why he’s still sort of…split…like he is. Even if the results are less than perfect right now, though, he’s still damn spectacular.”

  The necromancer put the jar on the counter and wiped his finger off on a towel. “Carson has always been such an amazing person. I saw a brilliant darkness in him the day I met him back in middle school. He walked around as if he wore a coat made of death. I can see that in people, you know, just as I can see the glow around you.” Martin glanced at her as he tossed the towel on the counter. “I think other people could see it, too. Not literally, of course, but figuratively speaking. They could sense there was something different about him, something dangerous. It was why he didn’t have a lot of friends. I didn’t, either. Which is why we kind of gravitated toward each other, I suppose.”

  Because they were two weirdos.

  “I helped him kill his first girl when we were both thirteen. Then he helped me open her up and find her soul.” Martin’s mouth curved. “I still remember it as if it was yesterday.”

  Cassidy wished she could tell him how sick and depraved he and Del Vecchio were, and that she was glad she’d killed the bastard, but the rag in her mouth wouldn’t let her.

  “Did you know that Carson lets me pick out the women he kills? It’s a little game we play. I pick someone at random, then we follow her around for a while to get a feel for her routine so Carson can pick the right moment. He has a knack for that. Back when he was alive, he’d always call me to make sure I would be in the right area to respond to the scene. Now that he’s a ghost, all he has to do is pop over to wherever I am, give me the address, then go back to the girl’s place and do his thing. I’m telling you, there’s nothing quite like walking into the scene of a fresh kill. The smells, the vividness of the blood before it starts to turn that ugly brown color. It’s incredible.” He gave her a smile. “No one ever realizes it, but I snap a few pictures with my cell phone camera when I get to the scene so Carson can relive the moment. He appreciates that.”

  Martin paused and held his hands out over the symbols he had made, then chanted something under his breath. Even though Cassidy couldn’t understand what he was saying, she could feel the menace in the words and she wondered what he was doing to her. She found out a moment later when her skin began to tingle in those places where the necromancer had marked her with the goo.

  When he was done, Martin picked up the one-sided conversation where he’d left off. “Carson was stupid to start having a relationship with your friend, though. What was her name? Darcy, right? But that mother of his was badgering him all the time. Why don’t you have a girlfriend? A boy your age should have a girlfriend, blah, blah, blah.” He shook his head. “I tried to warn him that Darcy might stumble onto our secret, but he insisted he could control her. Turns out, she was the one who had control over him. When she said she didn’t want to see him anymore, I was thrilled, but Carson lost his mind. I tried to stop him, but he had to go see her. He said he had to teach her a lesson. We know how that all turned out, don’t we?”

  Martin picked up another jar that looked exactly like the first. He took off the lid and stirred the contents with his finger. When he was finished, he reached down to take the rag out of her mouth. Cassidy immediately drew in a breath to scream, but he slashed his fingers across her lips, leaving a trail of goo and numbness that made it hard to even work her mouth. The liquid had a bitter, metallic taste, like blood, and she would have gagged if it hadn’t numbed her throat as it went down. She swallowed hard, then sucked in a breath to scream again. Nothing came out but a hoarse croak.

  “You can try to scream, but all that will come out are those hoarse, little sounds,” the necromancer told her. “I’ve numbed your vocal chords. You can talk, but you can’t scream. I can’t stand it when women scream.”

  Cassidy glared up at him. “What the hell are you going to do to me?”

  Martin set the jar down on the counter, then picked up the curved blade he’d used to slice open her T-shirt. He regarded it lovingly, then smiled at her. “What am I going to do to you? Well, first I’m going to kill you. After that, I’m going to cut out all your organs, throw out the unnecessary ones and put the others back in just so. Then I’m going to bring you back to life, just as I brought Carson back.”

  She looked up at him in horror. She had expected him to kill her, but not bring her back. “Wh-why would you do that?”

  “So that you’ll live forever, of course. Don’t worry, you’ll look better than Carson because your body won’t have a chance to decompose.” He gave her a wink. “My father always told me to work with only the freshest ingredients and he was right.”

  Cassidy didn’t know if she was more terrified by what he was about to do to her or the fact that he took such perverse pleasure in it. “You’re insane.”

  He laughed. “That’s the same thing they said about Galileo. No one ever recognizes genius until after the fact, though, do they?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t understand. Why would you want to bring me back when you obviously hate me so much?”

  “Because you’re going to be my gift to Carson.”

  “What do you mean, your gift?”

  “I mean that I’m going to make you immortal. That way, Carson can spend hour after hour torturing you. He gets to relive the pleasure of carving you up over and over for all eternity, while you get to relive the horror. It’s perfect.”

  Cassidy’s blood went cold. Martin was even more demented than she’d thought, and while she wasn’t sure if he had the skill to do what he said, especially since he clearly had issues resurrecting Del Vecchio, the thought of suffering at the serial killer’s hands over and over terrified her so much she could barely breathe. She didn’t even realize she’d been lying there listening to the necromancer like a mouse hypnotized by a snake until he moved the blade toward her chest. She yanked on the bindings again, not caring if he saw.

  “Now, now,” Martin admonished. “Don’t move around so
much. You’re going to live for a very long time and you don’t want the scars to be any worse than necessary, do you? A woman has to think about her beauty, after all.”

  She continued to jerk on the strips of cloth around her wrists. Was the one around her right wrist slipping loose? She wiggled on the table some more, rolling first one way, then next as much to free herself as to avoid the knife in Martin’s hand. Anything to keep from giving this madman a free shot at her heart.

  “You’ll never get away with this,” she told him.

  She sounded like something out of a low-budget horror movie. She was surprised Martin didn’t laugh in her face.

  “Of course I’ll get away with it,” he said. “Who do you think is going to save you, that Neanderthal ghost hunter of yours? What a joke. He’s a little busy fighting both Carson’s ghostly form and his immortal physical body. He doesn’t stand a chance against them. There’s no way for him to win. It’s just a matter of how painfully he dies.”

  Cassidy’s heart sank. She wanted to scream at Martin, to tell him he was wrong and that Del Vecchio was going to be the one who ended up dead. Trace was too tough and too smart. He was going to come crashing through that door any second…

  A roaring howl tore through the building, cutting off her thought in midstream. There was so much pain and agony in the sound that it made every hair on the back of Cassidy’s neck stand up. Above her, the fluorescent lights flickered madly, then brightened.

  “Right on time, too.” Martin smirked. “If I’m not mistaken, I believe that was Carson ripping your boyfriend’s heart out of his chest.”

  No!

  Cassidy tried to scream, but nothing would come out. Tears welled in her eyes, making them burn. It felt as if she’d suddenly died inside. Trace couldn’t be dead. She would know it, feel it, she was sure.

  She struggled against her bonds with renewed determination. She had to get to Trace.

  Martin put his free hand on her shoulder, leaning over so that some of his weight was on top of her. “Hold still, you fucking bitch, or I’ll slit your throat and be done with it. You won’t look as pretty, but I’m getting tired of dealing with you.”

  Cassidy was too focused on untying herself to pay any attention to him. Just a little bit more wiggling and one hand would be free.

  “That’s it,” Martin ground out.

  The necromancer circled around behind her, apparently planning to go through with his threat, when her right hand slipped loose from the strips of cloth holding her captive. She balled her fist and punched straight up at Martin’s face, landing a blow squarely on his nose. There was satisfying crunch and he fell backward against the counter with a cry of pain. The move may have only delayed her death, but it sure as hell felt good anyway.

  He was right back on his feet, his nose bloody and his eyes full of fury. “You’re going to pay for that, bitch. As soon as I reanimate you, I’m going to spend a week tearing little strips of skin off your body so I can hear you scream. You know how much I hate to hear women scream, so you must know how badly I want to hurt you.”

  Cassidy tried to grab the knife, but he swatted her hand away. She cried out as he grabbed her by the hair and jerked her head to the side, exposing her throat. After all she had survived, she didn’t think she was going to make it through this.

  Martin was about to bring the knife down when the door on the far side of the room suddenly burst open to slam back against the wall. Cassidy darted a look in that direction, expecting to see Del Vecchio standing there. But it wasn’t the serial killer. It was Trace, shotgun in hand and a pissed-off expression on his face. At the sight of him, Cassidy breathed a sigh of relief. He looked beat-up and there was blood all over his face and shirt, but he was alive. Thank God.

  “Get the fuck away from her right now,” Trace growled.

  Martin rested the edge of the blade against her neck. “Like hell I will. I don’t know how you got past Carson, but take one more step and I’ll slit her throat while you watch.”

  Cassidy saw Trace’s jaw tighten, but he stayed where he was. He didn’t lower his weapon, though. “Your boy Del Vecchio is roasting in one of the ovens.”

  That must have thrown the necromancer for a loop because the hand holding the knife to her throat didn’t seem quite as steady as it had been a moment ago. “You’re lying.”

  “Am I?” Trace lifted a brow. “Then where is he?”

  Martin didn’t answer, but Cassidy saw him go pale.

  “That’s right,” Trace said. “Del Vecchio is dead, for good this time. And if you harm her, you’ll be joining him.”

  Martin’s grip on her hair tightened and Cassidy winced. “You talk tough, ghost hunter, but you’re forgetting one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  Cassidy knew Trace was stalling for time while he waited for Martin to give him an opening. The shotgun shells loaded with salt and hematite weren’t very accurate or deadly, but she had no doubt that with Trace doing the shooting, they would be enough.

  “That I’m a necromancer and we’re in a funeral home full of dead people,” Martin said.

  No sooner had the words left his mouth than a dozen zombies stumbled through the door behind Trace. Cassidy had no idea whether they were the same ones she and Trace had been fighting in the outer room earlier or fresh ones that Martin just raised. Either way, there were more of them than Trace could handle by himself. He kicked and punched the first few that reached him, then knocked out another with a shotgun blast, but there were too many of them and within seconds, he went down with a pile of walking corpses on top of him.

  Cassidy’s heart lurched. “Trace!”

  Martin bent over to put his face close to hers. “So much for your big hero coming to save the day.”

  At his smug tone, something snapped inside Cassidy. She didn’t care that he held a knife to her throat anymore. She wasn’t going to lie there passively while Trace got killed by a horde of zombies. She had one hand free and she was going to use it, dammit. She reached up, intending to gouge out Martin’s eyes, but he must have anticipated the move because he jerked out of her reach. Frustrated, she grabbed at the only thing she could get to—the necklaces he wore. Wrapping her fingers tightly in the leather cords, she yanked as hard as she could, sending charms everywhere.

  Martin’s eyes went wide as they rolled across the floor. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, bitch? Those are more valuable than you’ll ever be in your life.”

  For a moment, she thought he might forget about her and go after them instead, but to her horror, he turned his cold, hard gaze back to her. “As Carson would say, time for you to die, bitch.”

  Martin drew back the knife to slit her throat and all Cassidy could do was helplessly watch as it came toward her.

  The next thing she knew, a shotgun blast echoed in the room and Martin was stumbling backward, shock in his eyes. Tiny drops of blood bloomed on his face, neck and upper chest, but he didn’t go down. He slowly wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Is that the best you got, ghost hunter?” he asked as he lifted his head. “I’ve been hit harder by those damn Catholic nuns at the orphanage. If you want to stop me, you’re going to have to do a lot better than that.”

  Cassidy looked over at Trace, expecting to see him fighting off the zombies in an attempt to reload. The salt and hematite wouldn’t hurt Martin very much, but if Trace was able to keep shooting the necromancer, she could untie herself. She was already reaching for her other wrist when she realized the zombies weren’t on top of Trace anymore. In fact, they weren’t even paying any attention to him. The ones Trace had managed to injure were still on the floor, but the others stood there looking around the room in what could only be called confusion.

  However, instead of reloading, Trace jumped to his feet and charged across the room, throwing himself at Martin. Lowering his shoulder, he slammed into the slightly built necromancer, knocking him to the floor. Cassidy desp
erately tried to untie her other wrist while at the same time craning her neck to see what was happening behind her.

  Although Trace was clearly the stronger of the two men, Martin was fast as a wet snake. The necromancer was back on his feet before Trace even slid to a halt. Cassidy was afraid to breathe, terrified Martin was going to knife Trace. She opened her mouth to warn Trace, but the words died on her lips as a zombie suddenly wrapped his arms around Martin from behind and slammed him to the floor. Before she could understand what was happening, another zombie threw itself on top of the necromancer and sank its teeth into his leg. The shout of pain Martin let out would have been horrifying if it wasn’t so damn gratifying. It was no more than the bastard deserved.

  Cassidy didn’t know why the zombies were going after their creator, but as one creature after another ripped into Martin, she decided she didn’t care. She feared they would go after Trace, too, but for some unexplainable reason, the zombies ignored him, even after he got to his feet and edged around them to get to her.

  Without a word, Trace swung his shotgun over his shoulder, then grabbed a scalpel off the counter and sliced through the strip of cloth around her wrist. As he moved down to do the same to the bindings round her ankles, he saw the red goo Martin had smeared on her chest and stomach, and stopped, his eyes going wide.

  “The bastard cut you,” he said.

  Cassidy shook her head. “No, he didn’t. It’s not my blood.” Behind her, Martin was alternately demanding the zombies obey him and begging for their mercy, and she threw a worried glance over her shoulder, then looked back at Trace. “I’ll explain later. Untie me so we can get out of here.”

  Trace shook his head as if to clear it, then quickly cut through the ties around each ankle. Once she was free, Cassidy immediately swung her legs over the side of the table, but he scooped her up in his arms before she could get to her feet and headed for the door. She clung to him, a part of her still unable to believe he was as safe and sound as he looked. They might actually make it out of this after all.