Dead Man Running (Raised Book 1)

by Stevenson, Sharon

  I poured Mickey tequila. He downed the shot and motioned for me to pour him another.

  “So what can we do?” He looked lost. “I mean, is there anything? And I didn’t think… there are Users in the US?”

  “There are Users everywhere,” I informed him. “Just because some things are illegal doesn’t mean they don’t happen.”

  Most US states had laws that didn’t allow Users to raise the dead. There were a few that didn’t and Nevada was one of them. Even at that, anyone raising the dead over there knew how to keep their mouths shut about it. It wouldn’t be easy to find the User who’d taken Pete. William was probably our best shot. The thought made me sigh. I put Mickey’s passport down on the bar. He glanced at it as he picked up his shot glass.

  He drank some more and then looked at me, hope sparking in his deep brown eyes. “Fancy a holiday?”

  It might have sounded good if I didn’t know what he was thinking. I’d have to shut the pub. The thought of going back there made me weary. Poor William had been through enough. But if it was what Mickey needed…

  He took his phone out of his pocket and dialled. “I need to try and call him.”

  “That’s probably been…”

  He put the phone down. “Disconnected.”

  “We’ll find him.” I had the feeling it was a promise I was going to regret.

  Twenty - Pete

  The hallway wasn’t that dissimilar to the motel. I knew she’d teleported us here, but I didn’t know why and I wasn’t going to get to ask. For some reason anytime I tried to do something of my own accord, pain rushed through my body and it was like being killed all over again. I hadn’t known what it meant to have a User. Not until now when it was too late to say no.

  She smiled at me. How I’d ever thought she was beautiful and delicate, I’d never know. Hers was the face of a monster.

  “This is your new home, Pete. You have my permission to be yourself here.” It wasn’t just words, none of it was. Everything she said was part of a spell. She was so soaked in magic it ran off her skin in deep glowing red rivulets.

  I scratched at my arms. It didn’t make me feel like I was dying. The sigh of relief didn’t either. I had myself to myself again. When I turned she was gone. I went into the room she’d left me outside. Two beds told me I had a room-mate. The bathroom door opened. A tall Animate with long brown hair looked out at me. The guy smiled broadly.

  “All right, I’ve got a buddy. Finally. I’m Cal.” He was American, and unlike the only other Animates I’d ever seen in the flesh he didn’t scare the puke out of me. I began to wonder if I’d been overly skittish as a child.

  “I’m Pete,” I said, closing the door behind me. “I came here to escape being drafted into the Royal Guard.”

  It was funny, when I thought about it. I’d run from one almighty User straight into the arms of another. My escape plan had failed, and I’d fallen for another psycho bitch’s charms. My taste in women was really screwing me up.

  “You might regret that one, a little bit,” he told me with a wry smile. He walked over to the TV and turned it on. It was a typical hotel room. It even looked like there was a mini bar. “I heard the King lets his Guards live off site.”

  “Aye,” I said, knowing that one for definite. “I just thought…”

  “That being drafted might change you? It does. The second you sign a contract you belong to someone else. It’s not a very liberating feeling,” he said, sitting down on one of the beds and flipping channels. “But it can come with perks. What else can you really hope for when you’re dead?”

  I supposed he had a point. “I never wanted to be dead.”

  “Who does?” He snorted. He looked like he’d died in his mid-twenties and he was wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and ripped jeans. His skin was like mine but his eyes were black.

  “So what do we do?” I wasn’t sure what Britt’s plans were for me, but they wouldn’t likely be pleasant.

  He shrugged. “Whatever she wants, basically. Body guard duty is the easiest gig. Sometimes she needs someone iced and that can get nasty but whatever, it’s a job. We get to come back here after. The clones take care of us if you know what I mean.”

  Iced? I wasn’t overly familiar with the term but I was fairly sure it was some sort of reference to murder. I sat down. “So we’re dogsbodies?”

  “I don’t know that word but we get given gigs at random, whatever Britt needs she gets. There’s one gig you don’t want, but I don’t think you’ll get it anyway,” he said, scrutinising me quickly and shaking his head. “The best looking guys get Necro jobs. Some of her friends have a major fetish for dead guys.”

  “But we can’t…”

  He held a hand up and leaned over to open the mini bar.

  “Instant Viagra,” he said, tossing me a bottle of something magically glowing. “If someone requests you, you can’t say no. I doubt you’ll have to worry.”

  I turned the little bottle over. Then I shot him a glare. “Hey, I can get any woman I want!”

  He snorted. “Maybe in Edinbur-ow.”

  I ignored the weird way he pronounced the name of my hometown and concentrated on the personal slight he’d just made. “The hell are you trying to say, like?”

  “You haven’t seen Britt’s friends. They don’t go near anything that doesn’t resemble carved stone. You don’t work out, do you?”

  “That’s for try-hards.”

  “Right. Like I said, you won’t need to worry.”

  I passed him the bottle back. It was nice to know there were spells for things I couldn’t automatically do on my own anymore.

  “Hey, what else is in there?”

  He grinned at me. “Miss food?”

  “Hell, yeah!”

  “What’s your poison? Sunday Roast, pizza, apple pie and ice cream?”

  “Pizza,” I said, instantly, though the desert sounded awesome as well.

  “Here,” he said, tossing me another vial.

  “Are you serious?” I didn’t get it.

  He looked at me earnestly. It occurred to me he could have just tossed me the Viagra again for shits and giggles. What the hell, I supposed I didn’t have anything to lose but my dignity. I opened it and poured the glowing red contents into my mouth. Whatever the bottle had contained, the taste of hot pizza filled my mouth. It was amazing, almost as good as eating one. I swallowed. The taste remained.

  “Pretty good, huh? Apparently, if we’re good boys there’s a spell that’ll let us actually digest stuff but its high level and only the Necro guys ever get it.”

  “So, why don’t we want to be them again?” The more I thought about it, the more I didn’t get his disgust. Sure, it was basically prostitution but what guy doesn’t want to have sex with smoking hot women?

  “It’s just… it’s not like when you’re alive. It’s not fun.” He shuddered.

  Okay then, I wasn’t touching the instant Viagra. Not that I’d been thinking about it anyway. Much.

  Twenty-One - Pete

  Cal got called out to body guard duty a few hours later. The action flick had been starting to bore me, but he was really into them and I didn’t want to alienate my new roomie on the first night. He took something out of the fridge and downed it. He looked alive again instantly. My jaw practically hit the floor.

  He grinned. “I know, right? It’s awesome but we’re only allowed it for work. Can’t have anyone knowing Britt uses dead guys.”

  He changed in the bathroom and the grungy surfer dude was replaced by a serious body guard in a sharp suit. All I could think was ‘Crap, am I going to have to go out dressed like that?’ Not that it was any worse than wearing shirts to my old work. It just looked a bit poncy.

  “Right. I’ll be back!” He left.

  I lay back and changed the channel. A soft knock on the door made me sit straight back up. A shiver ran over my skin. I was being given a job already?

  Getting up, I went to the door and I stood there like a petrifie
d little girl, hand frozen on the handle. The knock came again. I could imagine all kinds of things on the other side of the door and not one of them was pleasant.

  “Pete?” The girly voice was Britt’s. I really didn’t want to open the door now. But I had to, didn’t I? Weirdly, I didn’t feel compelled. Shouldn’t I? She was my User. I should need to obey. The pain didn’t come. I thought back to what she’d said when she’d left me there. I was free to be myself here. I wasn’t restricted by her demands. I wondered if I could get away with killing her…

  I opened the door. The girl in the jeans and halter top wasn’t the real Britt. She smiled at me and skipped into the room. The neck tattoo was there. She was clone number nine. I relaxed but only slightly. She was still one of my User’s minions and could have been sent to me for a million different reasons, not one of them likely to be pleasant.

  “What do you want?” I hadn’t bothered to shut the door yet.

  She took her top off and cocked her head at me. “You like?”

  Weirdly, I didn’t. The girl was anorexically thin with an artificially inflated chest. It just looked stupid. She started undoing her jeans.

  “Eh, no. Not tonight. Headache.” If my brain hadn’t been so shocked by her brazen proposal I might have come up with something a little more witty. As it was, I couldn’t think straight and it had nothing to do with her naked skin.

  She came towards me with a pout. Her lips fell on mine before I could back away. I backed up a second later and hit the wall. There was nothing for it but to push her off me. She stumbled back, confusion on her delicate features.

  “Did you make a mistake?” She couldn’t understand. I got the feeling this might turn nasty.

  “I have a girlfriend.” It was the only defence I could come up with that might stop her from getting pissed off.

  “You?”

  “I’m not that fucking ugly,” I spat out, having had it up to my dead eyeballs with the insinuations about my looks. What the hell was up with these people? Ugly fuckers can’t pull whoever they want!

  “Girlfriends aren’t allowed,” she clarified, putting her top back on. “No visitors.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I won’t cheat on her.”

  She seemed to consider it. I folded my arms. Her pity bone was being put away at least.

  “Honour is rare,” she told me. “You’re special. I knew it.”

  “Aye, sure, whatever.”

  She smiled at me. “I’ll make sure Britt knows.”

  Ah, shit. She left and wondered how I could make my situation even more messed up. I seemed to be doing a bang-up job without even trying.

  Twenty-Two - Kit

  The plan wasn’t going all that smoothly. Mickey had paced the motel room before cramming all of Pete’s stuff in a bag and telling me we should go. We needed William to identify the woman who took him and that meant tracking down the magic he’d smelt before. It could take forever. Vegas isn’t exactly a small town.

  He was to sit in my bag and signal by pressing a button on my phone that would make it vibrate. So far we’d wandered around the strip for three hours without a signal. It was coming up for 3am our time when we’d gotten past passport control. I was shattered by the time we stopped outside the Circus, Circus.

  “We should get something to eat.” Not that I even remotely felt like eating. I just wanted to sit down for a few minutes.

  “Is he still powered up? Maybe he’s fallen asleep.”

  “He knows this is important. I think we should get a hotel room. This might take more than a day.” I didn’t mention that it was already 10 p.m. Vegas time, and I was unbelievably tired.

  The worry etched on his face stopped me from being overly emphatic about it.

  “We need to find him.”

  “I know, and we will.” Why I was making foolish promises, I had no idea. He seemed to need the assurance, and I wanted to give him it. The thing was, even if we stuck around for weeks we still might not find him. There was always the chance the User who’d taken him had gone someplace else. We didn’t know for sure the woman William had described was still here to be found.

  “What if we don’t?” He walked on, past the opening to the hotel.

  All I could do was follow. The streets were busy but the chances were if the girl was still around they’d be in a hotel somewhere, not out wandering around the strip. Pete was illegal in this country. If he got caught by police he’d be sent back through the portal, or worse. I wasn’t sure if they’d see taking away the magic that animated him as murder since he was already dead. The thought gave me the shivers. The guy was an idiot. It didn’t mean he deserved to be gone.

  “Mickey, I’ve had an idea. We need to find someplace quiet to talk.”

  He stopped walking. Finally, he was ready to listen. I motioned back to the hotel. He nodded and followed.

  We got a room and ordered up some food. An hour or so later, we were sitting on a bed picking at a pizza and trying to formulate a better plan.

  “We’ve got to stop him from signing a contract,” Mickey said, taking another bit of pepperoni off the pizza. His systematic stripping of every last slice of the meat told me he wished he’d gone with the meat platter instead.

  “It’s been too long to assume he hasn’t done that yet,” I told him. “She’d have gotten him to do it straight away. I think we need to operate under the assumption he’s been claimed.”

  And that only made things harder for us. Mickey sighed and lay back. I could appreciate the irony of the situation. I’d been waiting forever to get a hotel room with this guy and here we were, worrying about his mean big cousin.

  “So what do we do about that?”

  “We… we need to find him another User.” I should have thought of it before we came over. It was the only way to get Pete out of a contract. His rightful owner had first claim to him. We might not know who his rightful owner was, but maybe we could find someone who could make that claim. The threat of an ownership dispute might be enough to get her to tear up the contract. If it wasn’t we could threaten to shop her for the crime she was committing by just having an Animate. Not that we could make good on that threat unless we wanted Pete to be taking a permanent dirt nap but I’d hold on to the idea as a last resort.

  “Another User? We don’t know any Users.”

  “Didn’t you say that guy in Pete’s apartment building was one?”

  He made a face. “The guy’s a weirdo. He’d probably have Pete cleaning his house in gimp gear or something. No chance.”

  “Pete doesn’t mind him though, and it’s better than the Guard is it not?” It was all we had. We’d be taking a chance, but at least we could bring Pete home again. “He knows Pete, so he should be able to find him here. We could be walking around for days if we use William to track this girl down.”

  He sighed and sat up, turning on the TV. “I need to think about it.”

  I let William out of my bag. He flew out and onto my hand.

  “Nothing, Miss Chase. I couldn’t smell the magic.”

  “That’s all right, William. We’re figuring something out.”

  The TV was set to some kind of tourism channel, showing adverts featuring the latest Vegas acts and where to find them. Mickey idly watched, clearly distracted. I reached for the remote when William flew up and over to the screen.

  “That’s her! That’s her!” he shouted, flying around excitedly.

  “What?” Mickey looked at me, not getting it.

  William had just named our User; the nineteen-year-old singing sensation Britton Rocks or ‘Great Britt’ if her advertisement was to be believed. She was doing a stint at the MGM Grand for the next six months. “I think we’ve found our starting point.”

  Twenty-Three - Kit

  Nick, the weirdo neighbour, showed up in a slightly flashier fashion than I’d have imagined. Mickey’s estimate of a level 2 User was clearly off; he teleported into our room directly in front of us. He had a long leather jacke
t on over a t-shirt depicting internal organs and a pair of jeans with chains hanging down the sides. His face had more metal than his jeans, and he had this intense stare that would be pretty easy to take the wrong way. This guy didn’t look harmless. He looked like an over-confident nut-case; Typical User.

  “No-one’s been around, before you even ask,” he said, looking casually around the room.

  “That’s good,” Mickey said.

  I thought it was strange. Whoever Pete’s User was, they didn’t seem to want him.

  “So you think that blonde bitch has him?” He nodded to the TV. The advert was back to her show.

  “We do,” I said. I never would have guessed the girl was a User but it could be pretty hard for a lowly Non-User to tell them apart from other humans, even one who was a Healer. You either had that affinity for magic or you didn’t. If you did, you could train until you reached high level. Most of them wanted that. “What level are you?”

  He gave me a suspicious look. “Who wants to know?”

  “I’m Kit. A friend of Mickey’s. We need to know what we’re dealing with.”

  “I’m level 5, all right?” He sounded touchy about it. The teleporting was new to him if he was level 5. It was the highest-powered thing he could do.

  Mickey looked surprised. “Wow, really?”

  “Of course, really. Let’s go get blondie.” He made for the door.

  I looked at Mickey. He jumped up and took off after our newly acquired helper.

  “Wait!” I burst their overeager bubbles. “We need to come to an arrangement first.”

  Mickey turned. Nick sighed at the door.

  “What do you want from this?” I had to ask. He’d come to our rescue without any questions. I didn’t know him, and I didn’t know what motivated him. Mickey wouldn’t be happy if we only caught Pete out of the frying pan and threw him into a fire.

  “Kharma points,” Nick said with a smug smile.

  “We don’t do this until we know what everyone’s getting out of it,” I went on. “If we don’t like your offer, we don’t take it.”