Home Improvement: Undead Edition

by Harris, Charlaine

  He parked on Esplanade and walked down Decatur until he reached his favorite little pub, a place called Your Favorite Pub on Frenchmen. Before he had even taken his seat on a stool at the bar, Joe, the owner, had a drink in front of him. “It’s a DeFeo special,” Joe told him, but he wasn’t jocular, he was grim.

  “Thanks, Joe. Anyone singing tonight?”

  Joe seemed surprised and perplexed by his question, but he answered.

  “A lady named Regina Hansen; she’s got one of the best blues voices I’ve heard in my day.”

  Joe could croon out a tune himself, like no other. He was a slim African American with a voice like silk. Joe always welcomed DeFeo with his “special” drink, and it was always on the house. Once, DeFeo had managed to take care of a serious problem for Joe—an off-the-books job, so to speak—and though DeFeo assured Joe that it had been nothing, the old man was still grateful.

  “I’ll stick around a bit then,” DeFeo said. He was still pondering a way to pin something on Cramer and his band of whacked-out believers.

  “You got time to stick around?” Joe asked. He sounded edgy. “I thought you just dropped in on your way to work.”

  DeFeo frowned. “Sure. I’m here for the drinks and the music. Same as last week.”

  “Yeah, but last week, we didn’t have this happening in the city.” Joe said, pulling out his phone and hitting the touch screen to bring up a recent news report.

  Before he even read the report, DeFeo leaned back, stunned that such a picture had gotten to the media and that the media was showing it.

  He was seeing the body of a woman, so mutilated that he couldn’t be sure what parts the remnants of her clothing were covering. He didn’t need to ask Joe where she had been found; he recognized the Masonic tomb in a nearby cemetery.

  It made the blood on the Montville tomb seem like child’s play.

  He stood, gulping down the drink Joe had given him, and said hoarsely, “I guess I’m not staying.”

  As he spoke, his phone began to vibrate in his shirt pocket. He glanced down. Yes, he was being called in. His usual connection, a lieutenant from homicide, was the caller.

  “I’m on my way,” he said, before Lieutenant Anderson could speak.

  “Quickly,” Anderson ordered, knowing from DeFeo’s tone that he had heard the news.

  DeFeo hung up, nodded at Joe, and hurried out.

  “DRINK THE BLOOD, and you will be whole, and the strength of the true essence of life will fill your body and your being, and you will be one with the Brotherhood,” Austin said, lifting the fake-jewel-encrusted chalice high above Adriana Morgan’s head.

  It was such rot. And, of course, he knew it.

  But Austin had spent his junior high and high school years in pure misery. He was the skinny kid who had acne. He had spent his afternoons playing computer games while the jocks were out on the football field—cornering all the girls. The jocks were cruel. Several times, they’d tossed his tray of food on him at the cafeteria. They’d thrown him in the Dumpster at school, along with all the refuse from the bathrooms.

  Then, Austin had found the way. Well, his way. And it had all happened by accident. They’d been about to throw him into Mr. Johnston’s water sprinklers one day when he had actually found the nerve to fight back—verbally, at least. He’d cursed them, telling them that all the demon dogs from hell would come after them. By happenstance, Mr. Johnston’s giant Rottweiler, Juju, had come running out of the house at that moment. Austin had played with Juju since he’d been a puppy, and Juju took offense at Austin’s mistreatment. Billy Trent, quarterback, missed the next three games because Juju took a nice piece of flesh right off Billy Trent’s big muscled butt. And the story spread—and suddenly, Austin knew how to bring up all the powers of Satan himself.

  It worked. He liked it. So he used his computer game time to study cults, world religions, and superstitions. He came up with the Brotherhood. Cool. That, too, worked. Who would have ever figured that he, geeky Austin Cramer, would have women throwing themselves at him? It helped that he grew another five inches and put on a little bit of muscle. At heart, however, he was still geeky Austin Cramer.

  Adriana Morgan was his newest recruit, and she was beyond beautiful.

  He had seen her once before, right here, in this cemetery, mourning a loved one; he was sure of that, since she’d had flowers with her.

  It had been instant love for him. Or lust. No, he was in lust and in love.

  She had mile-long hair, and it tumbled down her back in sleek blond tresses that shone in the sunlight, and in the moonlight. She had huge, dark blue eyes and a figure that should have graced a Victoria’s Secret catalog.

  She looked up at him adoringly, took the chalice, and drank. Pig’s blood. It was always his choice. His Uncle Stu managed a slaughterhouse, and the blood was easy to come by. Adriana sipped the blood, and he drew her to her feet. “Now, my dear, you cast the remains in the cup on the side of the tomb, and you ask the power within to be your strength so that you may live your life seeking pleasure where you will, as is your human, carnal, and animalistic right. Tonight you will fast and cleanse, and tomorrow begin your life in the Brotherhood, living as you will!”

  He’d taken a chance coming here again tonight at midnight—he’d just indoctrinated a girl last night, Angie Sewell, and he might have returned to find that the blood from the previous night was still on the tomb. But he had gambled well. A Montville was a PI who worked in and around the Vieux Carré. He seemed to like working a graveyard shift, so he wasn’t around to catch anyone in the action, and frankly, the cops thought his obsession with the old family tomb was a bit much. They had tried now and then to catch Austin in the act, but they’d never thought to just stake out the cemetery. Of course, they thought he had to crawl over the ten-foot wall to get into the place—dumb bastards never realized that he’d come in the daylight and found time to make a putty impression of the lock on the gate, and therefore had a key.

  Adriana was worth the risk. It felt as if he had coveted her forever. And now . . . now he had to force himself to remember that everything had an agenda, and he couldn’t freak out and beg her just to let him kiss her lush lips, entangle himself in the scent of hair, lie with her naked.

  Get a grip, he warned himself.

  Adriana splashed the blood on the tomb and repeated the words as he had told her. Just as she did so, the clouds that had been covering the moon drifted past, and the full orb made the cemetery glow with an eerie light.

  Austin looked up. Hell, somebody loved him, he thought, laughing inwardly. Not. The law of physics had simply sent a breeze, and the clouds had moved.

  Adriana turned to him, and his knees almost turned to jelly. “I’m one with you! I’m one with the Brotherhood!”

  He drew her against him and felt the fantastic warmth of her body and the richness of her full breasts. He drew away quickly, damning himself for the ritual cleansing he had given to this rite. Tomorrow night, she’d be his.

  He heard a sound: a cell phone buzzing. She stepped back, looking at him apologetically. “I’d put it on silent. I’m so sorry. I haven’t ruined anything, have I?” She fumbled with the black cape she was wearing, found her phone in the pocket of her form-fitting jeans, glanced at it, and quickly shoved it back.

  “No. Though I thought I told you not to have it on you?” He was irritated. She had arrived late to her night of confirmation into his flock, and now—she had the damned cell phone on her!

  “I’m sorry—I’m on call. At the hospital.” She was an RN. “I have to go to work.”

  “Of course.” He never encouraged any of his “followers” to quit their day jobs; keeping up the mansion was a costly task, and he’d also acquired some expensive tastes since he turned his experience with Juju into his life’s work. He loved hundred-year-old tequila and aged Cognac, and a Havana cigar now and then, as well.

  Austin set his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t forget; this is your one night of
abstinence. No men, no food. The blood you drank will cleanse your body of the past; it will cleanse your soul of what you believed to have been the sins of your past, and it will allow you to enter your new world where life is what you crave it to be, filled with earthly, sensual, and erotic pleasures.”

  “There will be no other men for me!” she said, staring up at him. Her voice was breathy, so sensual. He cursed himself again. Oh, well, they needed money, and she was going to work. He couldn’t have taken advantage of this moment no matter what. That was the bad part of being the Father. He had made the rules—he had to remember that his whole religion could come crashing down if he changed them because he couldn’t control his own libido.

  “Go, my child. Tomorrow night, you and I will seek to understand the truth to be found on Earth; and we will give one another strength, and share all that is our essence!” He kissed her on the forehead. What rot! But, damn, it worked so well. He stepped back quickly; she made him tremble, and he couldn’t have her knowing that he was just another average guy so hot for her body he could just about melt on the spot.

  “Go now. We’ll have tomorrow.”

  “Yes!” she whispered. “Tomorrow.”

  He nodded; he let her turn and leave the cemetery first, watching her and swallowing down the urge to run after her. She’d given him the worst boner in history. Had to get that down a bit, too.

  He followed a minute later, locking the gate, and headed for the mansion, still in discomfort. Ah, well, he had just indoctrinated Angie Sewell last night, meaning she was now available. She wasn’t as drop-dead gorgeous as Adriana, but she’d do.

  When he got there, he was surprised to see members of his flock on the floor in front of the television, so enrapt in what they were watching that they hadn’t even heard him enter.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. He looked around. He saw Lena, Sue, Sara, Jeanine, and Lila, his first girls—who were actually beginning to bore him—and Tom, Brian, and Joe. Joe, ironically, had once shoved him into his locker at school. Joe was now his most ardent follower.

  He didn’t see Angie. “Where is Angie?” he asked.

  They didn’t hear him.

  “Hey!” He had learned how to just about roar the word with total authority.

  They all turned to him, en masse, all those eyes, dazed and staring up at him. There was real fear in the looks they all gave him.

  “She’s—she’s—” Sue stuttered out, pointing at the television.

  “Dead!” Lila croaked.

  Austin frowned and stared at the screen. A young anchorwoman was standing in front of the gates to one of the old town cemeteries. He could see the rise of an I-10 ramp behind her. “Police have arrived on the scene of this brutal and gruesome murder, discovered by high school students who had broken into the cemetery on a dare. They found the mutilated, decapitated, and dismembered body parts of a young woman in the center of one of the paths through the famous ‘city of the dead’ just thirty minutes ago, and it appears that the most seasoned of our detectives has been stunned and dismayed by the ferocity and violence of the crime. I can’t get a statement from anyone close to the crime; no one has left the cemetery yet. Oh! I see the private investigator—DeFeo Montville! Montville specializes in occult cases. They’ve called him in on this, obviously. DeFeo Montville seems to have an ear to the ground and hears the beat of this city in the night. He is just now exiting the gates. I’m going to try to have a word with him.”

  She turned, and the display on the television seemed to jostle as her cameraman tried to follow her.

  “Mr. Montville! Can you give us any information?”

  Montville was probably just what a private dick should be—and not the used-up-over-the-hill-pudgy-old-bastard image set in the minds of many. Montville was tall and well muscled. There didn’t seem to be an ounce of fat on his body. He had yellow-gold eyes that seemed to home in on the woman, and his expression was one of irritation and disbelief.

  He spoke curtly. “A young woman was murdered. And it’s appalling that someone in the media took a picture and let it out to the newspapers so that it can be viewed by anyone with Internet access. The victim surely has family, and to let that picture be shown is an outrage.”

  “But, Detective Montville, we need information for our viewers—”

  “Here’s the information. Stay home, or stay in a crowd. There’s a murderer on the loose.”

  “Do you suspect that this might be the work of a cult—such as the Brotherhood?”

  Austin couldn’t stop himself in time. He gasped out loud. It didn’t matter. Everyone in the room gasped. Any remaining spasm of desire that might have lingered in him disappeared as his penis went as limp as overcooked pasta.

  “We’ll be looking into all possibilities; the killer will be found. Now excuse me.” He pushed past the woman and headed out down to the street, presumably to his car.

  The anchorwoman started talking again, but Austin didn’t hear her. The others—his flock, his adoring flock—turned to stare at him with horror in their eyes.

  Sue and Lena inched closer together. Brian and Joe took a step back from him. They all stared at him with wide eyes and blank expressions. It was one thing to drink pig’s blood and have orgies, it was quite another to be accused of murder.

  Austin desperately tried to pull his wits about him. They were all ready to bolt.

  “I’ll prove that we were not responsible for this.” He lifted his hand. “We are all about pleasure, not pain. There is no need to worry.” He turned to exit with a grand determination, but he could hear them whispering behind his back.

  “Oh, my God! He is Satan!” Sue said, her words barely audible.

  “Then—then we need to run, get the hell out!” Joe said.

  “He’ll kill us if we run,” Brian gulped out.

  “He’ll kill us if we stay!” Lila whimpered.

  Shaking his head in disgust, Austin walked on out. DeFeo Montville would be coming for him. Montville might tell the police to check up on anyone else themselves, but Montville would be coming for him personally. Austin knew that he’d be questioned for the murder. DeFeo might not know that the dead girl had been with him, but the man was quick to put two and two together, and he’d suspect Austin no matter what.

  Officers would be going to the house; they would probably round up his group. He didn’t want to be taken by just any officers. He had to talk to Montville first, convince him that he was innocent.

  A lethal injection was not part of his life plan.

  Montville would not look for him at the mansion because he’d know that Austin was too smart to just sit there and wait to be picked up.

  No, there was one place Montville would wait for him. At the tomb.

  DEFEO, IN ALL his days, had never seen anything as savagely carried out as the murder of the poor girl discovered in the cemetery. Of course, the medical pathologist from the coroner’s office had barely had time to give them a preliminary report, but it appeared—because of the amount of blood—that she had been chopped up while alive, and maybe . . . half consumed. Perhaps—it did seem that large chunks of blood, flesh, and bone might be missing in the jigsaw of the body parts. She hadn’t been dead more than an hour or so before the students had stumbled upon her.

  Maybe they had a sick modern-day Jack the Ripper on their hands, this time a killer who kept fleshy body parts and bone and later mailed them to the head of a vigilance committee.

  He had a feeling kids wouldn’t be playing around in cemeteries after dark anymore.

  The girl’s trunk, head, and body parts had been laid out on one of the main central paths between the tombs, almost as if they were part of a guide map to different gravel trails and interments.

  Her head had lain in the center of a path. Eyes still open. She had been decapitated, and then her arms and legs had been severed from the body. The whole of the body had been loosely brought back together so that the pieces were there—minus chunks, DeFeo was
certain!—gathered back together again so that just a foot or so lay between her torso, her head, and each limb. The crime scene unit was still busy, but he and others had searched, and there had been no sign of a murder implement—or the tools that would have been necessary for hacking up a human body. The killer had taken them with him. Along with pieces of the body.

  “What caused the jagged look on the flesh, Petey?” DeFeo asked the medical pathologist from the coroner’s office.

  “I don’t know. Looks like she was ripped apart—blood slurped up and flesh eaten. This is bad, really bad,” Dr. Pete Long said.

  “DeFeo!”

  He stopped and looked back. Lieutenant Anderson, who had left his desk to come out for the gruesome murder sure to bring the city to the point of screeching hysteria, was coming after him. Anderson called his officers and coworkers by their surnames; he had never seemed to realize that DeFeo was his given name, and Montville was his last.

  “They’ve already tried that Satanist’s mansion in the Garden District. They pulled in some of his followers, though they believe some had already hiked it out. Cramer wasn’t there.”

  “I’ll find him,” DeFeo said.

  Lieutenant Anderson, a good guy who was gruff at times, shook his head.

  “You need help on this one, DeFeo,” he said. “This killer is an animal—you shouldn’t be out there alone.”

  “I work best alone. That’s why I’m a PI. You know that, Lieutenant.”

  Before Anderson could argue, DeFeo shut his car door, turned on the ignition, and put the pedal to the metal after he eased out into the traffic.

  DeFeo knew where he was going.

  He left his car two blocks from the cemetery. He didn’t use the gate, but bounded the wall and walked straight to the Montville tomb.