by J. Thorn
“And so you sent her to the folks who tried to completely wipe out every ghoul in existence,” I growled, stepping way inside Morgan’s personal space. It was a statement, not a question. And after speaking with Betty, I had a few other tricks up my sleeve, but I could save them for later.
“That was half a millennium ago!” Morgan’s voice had gotten just a touch louder.
Considering the fact that she had shown almost zero emotion in all of our dealings, this was the equivalent of a nuclear event. So far, she had sputtered twice, stammered once, raised her voice, and the cherry on the sundae—a scowl.
“I am supposed to be extinct,” I said. I could feel sharkmouth coming. Now it was time to see if I had actually learned anything last night. I looked at Morgan and tried to let my mind wander.
“History is full of mistakes made by groups who thought that they were operating in the best interests of society. What would it be like if everybody still equated this country with its use of slaves?”
I remembered sitting on my living room floor when I was little. Everybody was all excited about this mini-series called Roots. I tried so hard to watch it, but I was only in third or fourth grade. I never stayed awake for a whole episode…
“We are talking about genocide.” I was really proud that I had remembered the word Betty used. The problem now was that I couldn’t tell if the look on Morgan’s face was from my use of that word or from something else. I very casually went to tuck my hair behind my ear. I felt this odd leathery stuff where my cheek was supposed to be, and then I brushed one of the jagged teeth. Yay!
“W-w-what are you doing?” Morgan actually looked to turn just a touch paler. That was a stretch considering how she was already the color of bleached ivory.
“I am asking you a question,” I said, trying my best not to smile. I’ve seen my smile with sharkmouth going, and it is not something that puts me in my most flattering light.
“Don’t play games with me, Ava Birch.” Morgan stood straight and seemed to draw all of the emotion that she’d just been displaying back into her body and erase any evidence of its prior existence.
“You have been keeping me in the dark, Morgan. I have been learning all sorts of interesting things the past day or two. So, the way I see it, you need me. In fact, having me in your district is quite a little victory for a psychic. From what I hear, I am worth more to you than you have been letting on. And since I now know a few things like what happened to Solomon’s treasure and the vast wealth once kept in vaults under the Vatican, I also know that you can afford to pay me better and supply me with things when I go on these little clean-up missions for you.”
Morgan didn’t say a word; she just stood there glaring at me. Funny thing is that just about forty-eight hours ago something like that would have mattered. Unfortunately for her, I had discovered a few things. It is not unlike being the lone brain surgeon in a hospital…I have a special skill that very few possess—as well as some that I don’t think that I have discovered yet. After all, until last night I didn’t think that I could talk with the sharkmouth in effect.
Also, according to Betty, I have the ability to compartmentalize my mind. She said I am like a computer in that I can actually do multiple things in my head at once. That is what makes a ghoul so dangerous. Apparently we can overcome just about any type of magic.
A ghoul has a few things that happen automatically—kind of like a store-bought computer with a bunch of software. That is why vampires have no effect on me with their gaze or mind control. Our fingers and toes becoming weapons, and the sharkmouth. However, there is apparently a great deal to learn.
I also discovered that Morgan actually can read minds to a certain extent. However, a ghoul is like white noise. Part of what makes us so valuable is that we can operate independently and actually put the regional psychic in check should the need arise. Apparently there is a council of psychics, and Morgan having me in her region makes her a bit more powerful, because I can actually enter another district undetected. It was a group of psychics that apparently hired the Templars to wipe us out.
That brought to mind a few questions. Was she keeping tabs on me through Lisa? Also, what better way to keep tabs on the Templars than to have somebody close, and then later she could poke around in her brain? That Morgan is a slippery one. I will have to keep on my toes. And who knew that the supernatural community had so much drama attached to it? It is all about power plays and one-upsmanship.
So, a few words about Betty. It seems that she is related through blood to Adrianna. She does not delve in zombies, though. She is a little hazy on her actual background, but I think she is pretty damn powerful. The way that she shut Adrianna down in the graveyard, plus the things that she did actually tell me—more than Morgan has in all the time I’ve known her—leads me to believe that she would be a good person to have as an ally. For now I am keeping her my own little secret.
But, Ava, you might be asking yourself, if Morgan can read Lisa’s mind, what is to keep her from finding things out that way? For one, that little memory wipe ability that The Queen of the Zombies used on me…apparently it is a family secret. Lisa doesn’t remember a thing about Betty. Even better, I could tell her all about Betty right now and it would be like pouring water through a sieve. It would just fall right back out. Pretty cool, huh?
“Enjoy this moment for now, Ava,” Morgan was standing in the doorway. Obviously she was leaving. That made me wonder what I had just missed because Lisa looked just a little pale…like something had her spooked.
“Don’t threaten me anymore, Morgan,” I said as I stepped to the door and prepared to shut it. “I know more about my worth now…you better come with a new tactic when you are dealing with me.”
And then I shut the door. I was not going to let her have the last word. I turned to say something to Lisa about how freaking awesome it was to have the last word for a change, but she was gone. I homed in on her and discovered that she had gone to her room.
Oh well…I don’t need an audience. I feel pretty damn good about things. I just wish that Betty had given me a few more words of advice and instruction. I wasn’t terribly fond of having Adrianna confined in my basement.
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Kin
Kealan Patrick Burke
Kindle Edition
Copyright 2011 by Kealan Patrick Burke
Kindle Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Visit the author at www.kealanpatrickburke.com
Kin copyright © 2011 by Kealan Patrick Burke
Praise for KIN
"If you're a fan of Jack Ketchum, Richard Laymon, or movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Deliverance, don't miss Kin. Burke's novel not only re-imagines the classic slasher tropes, but it invents new ones. Kin is sure to garner Burke a wider readership, awards, and to inspire a slew of new slasher novels and films. This is a modern classic, and I cannot recommend it highly enough." - FEARNET
"It's odd that an Irish transplant to the Northern US has written one of the best Southern Gothic novels in recent memory. I'll look forward to Burke's next work just as much as I hated to see this one end. I would highly recommend Kin to lovers of old fashioned horror fiction with a twist." DARK DISCOVERIES
"...with this novel, Burke has fully arrived as a novelist…his talent running full throttle... Kin ends a long period of silence from Burke, and has me quite excited to see what's coming next. It gets my highest possible recommendation." OCTOBER COUNTRY
"THIS is serious horror fiction that has set a high standard for future stories in this subgenre. Don't miss it." THE CROW'S CAW
"The blurb will tell you that this is in the vein of the ‘Texas Chain Saw Massacre' and ‘Deliverance' and, while I can see what they mean, it doesn't do the book justice. This is not a ‘slasher' book or a book that reads like a movie. This is far more. This is a novel that begins where the other stories ended and explores the impact such horror has on the survivors, their family and, though we may not like them, the perpetrators of the horror." THE BIG THRILL
"Kin is not only the best novel I’ve read all year, it is one of the most horrifying ones I’ve ever read." – HORROR WORLD
"If you took the moral quandaries about revenge, justice and violence against evil from Dennis Lehane’s Patrick Kenzie novels, spread it over the sprawling cast of a Stephen King thriller, and mixed it with the Southern Gothic grotesques of Eudora Welty, you might end up with something like Kealan Patrick Burke’s new novel, Kin." LITSTACK
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Writing is a solitary pursuit, and yet one that so frequently depends on the generosity of others to make it work. With this in mind, my heartfelt thanks must go to Jennifer & Tyler Burke, Elaine Lamkin, Kathy Jewell, Tod Clark, my friends and family, and of course, you the reader.
For Doogie, and the staff at The Delaware County 911 Center
PART ONE
-1-
Elkwood, Alabama
July 15th, 2004
Everything is dead.
Naked, bloodied and stunned, the sun high in the cloudless sky and scalding her sweat-slicked skin, Claire Lambert nevertheless managed to note that the stunted, bone-white tree in the field to her right was the same one she'd commented on a few days, months, or years earlier, though what she might have said about it was a mystery now. She stopped walking—if indeed she'd been walking at all, for the sensation thus far was one of being still, spine bent, the road moving like a granite-studded conveyor belt beneath her torn and filthy feet—and squinted at the gnarled trunk, which looked like an emaciated mother with an elaborate wind-wracked headdress, twisted limbs curled protectively around its womb, knees bent, feet splayed and poking out from beneath the hem of a skirt that had been washed and worn a few times too often.
It fascinated Claire, and though she swayed as if she might fall on legs that had many miles ago ceased registering as anything but independent creatures burdened with her weight, she couldn't look away. Fire licked with cold tongues at her groin; the blood in her hair hardened, and whatever vile substance now lay in a gelid, solidifying lump in the hole which had once contained her right eye, ticked as if someone had replaced it with a watch to measure the time she had left. But still she looked, still she stared, as the merciless sun turned her scalp pink and cooked the flesh on her back. Sweat, cooler in the scant shade beneath her breasts, fell like tears. At length, she twitched, and her legs shuffled her toward the barbed wire fence that separated the field from the road. Cotton whispered in the breeze as her stomach met the wire, the barbs pressing deep into the skin; she felt nothing but an involuntary shiver. A startled bird exploded from the cotton with a cry that dragged her attention to its whickering form as it soared high, then lost itself in the blinding blanket of the sun. Claire lowered her head, licked dry, cracked lips with a sandpaper tongue and pushed again against the fence, unable to understand why her progress was being halted. Surely no one would begrudge her a conference with that tree, a taste of the maternal comfort she felt it might offer. Again she pushed, and again she was withheld. This time the barbs pierced her skin. Troubled, she took a half-step back, the black wire thrumming like a guitar string strummed by the breeze. A single drop of her blood welled from the iron tip of a barb and hung, suspended in time, refusing the sun, before it plummeted and colored crimson a finger of grass. Frowning, she looked slowly from the wire to the tree, as if the blame might lay with that withered woman, and tried to speak, to beg. A thin whistle was all that emerged from her parched throat—Help me—and she swallowed what felt like a handful of hot stones.
A sound.
She turned, reluctant to look away from the tree, but drawn by the only other noise she had heard thus far not immediately attributable to nature, or that soft voice inside her chanting incessantly and with tireless determination that everything was dead. A strand of her hair snagged on her lower lip, and stayed there, held in a fissure where the skin had split.
Raging white light thundered toward her. Of this she was only dimly aware, for between that light and where she stood swaying, was a man with no face or hands. No, that wasn't quite right. Daniel still had his hands, but they no longer had skin and looked impossibly dark and raw. This didn't concern her, for rarely had he held her anyway—a lapse in affection of which she had once upon a time hoped to disabuse him.
Why won't you hold my hand?
Because we're not kids anymore, babe.
But at the sight of that flayed skull, a tear, like the blood on the wire, defied the sun and spilled from her one good eye.
"We can hitch a ride," he told her, though his lips never moved. The raw ragged open wound of his fa
ce, topped by a nest of unruly brown hair, turned to nod at the glaring light behind him, which had grown closer still. The mirrored sun floated above shimmering metal, the wheels grinding up thick mustard-colored clouds.
She opened her mouth to respond, to tell her boyfriend that they really should wait for the others, but even had she possessed the voice to convey the words, a sudden bolt of dazzling pain tried to scissor her in half, forcing her to double over as she vomited into the dirt at her feet.
Everything is dead.
Her head swelled as she watched a dark red river flow from her mouth, turning dust to rust and spattering her ankles. The veins in her neck stuck out in thick cords, her ruined eye began to burn and throb, making it feel as if her brain was trying to force its way out of her, to distance itself farther from this confusing reality than she had thus far managed on her own.
Weakened, she dropped to her knees, felt the ground abrade the skin there. But there was no pain. Her flesh had become a thick heavy coat, and the many tears in the lining affected her not at all. Her palms slid into the dirt.
The sound of squealing might have been of old hinges in the doors of the earth opening to accept her; it might have been her own struggle to breathe against a torrent of vile regurgitated panic and grief, or it might have been the brakes on the car she'd seen coming because now a new voice, a strange voice, drifted down to her sunburned ears as a figure eclipsed the sun and a cool shadow was thrown like a blanket over her bare back.