Undead to the World

by DD Barant

  Neil vaults over the pulpit. He’s going for Charlie, who lets off a blast from the shotgun but misses; guns aren’t his strong suit. Neil clocks him with an uppercut that lifts Charlie off his feet, and he comes down in a boneless heap.

  “Charlie!” I yell, and bolt toward him. He’s not far away, only the width of the aisle, but Neil manages to get between us before I reach him.

  “Sorry,” he says, picks me up like a doll and tosses me down the aisle.

  I slam into Terrance going backward. My skull hits his and the world explodes in an instant fireworks display of pain—then everything gets very dark before I have a chance to applaud. Good night, brain.…

  * * *

  I hate the disconnect that happens when you get knocked out. The first thing you say—the first thing everyone says—when you wake up is “How long was I out?” It’s as if everyone has the same secret fear, that they’ve slipped into a coma and missed the last fifty years.

  Not me, though. First, there are things that scare me way more than that; and B, I hate being predictable. So—considering how often I seem to get my lights turned out—I decided a while back I wasn’t going to utter that particular phrase ever again.

  “How long,” I mutter groggily, “is a football player.”

  “Excuse me?” Neil says.

  “Howie Long. Football player. Did a bunch of commercials for Radio Shack with Wonder Woman.”

  “I think you mean Lois Lane, not Wonder Woman. The Terri Hatcher version, as opposed to Margot Kidder.”

  I sit up, still woozy. Neil’s crouched beside me. The cross is no longer on fire; the light in the room is coming from candles. I’m still in the center aisle of the church. Charlie and Terrance both lie a few feet away, trussed up side by side with rope.

  “Are they all right?” I ask.

  “So far. Both unconscious, but breathing. I’m still working out what to do with them—and you.”

  “You have anything you’re leaning toward, or are you just spitballing? ’Cause I’d love to jump in with a few ideas I think you’d find really exciting—”

  He holds up a hand and I stop. “Well, on the face of it things seem quite straightforward. I drain one of you—I’m parched—turn the other two, then use this church as a base to take over the rest of the town. Exponential infection rates mean it’s all over in a night. But something’s stopping me. A spell—or, more accurately, a series of them.”

  “They were cast by Old Man Longinus,” I say. “He’s dead now. They’re degrading.”

  He nods. “Yes, I can feel that. But only some of them; the deeper ones are long-lasting. And the one that’s causing me to hesitate is definitely one of those. Unfortunately for you.”

  I nod, then wish I hadn’t. Ouch. “Let me guess. You really don’t like me, do you?”

  He smiles and shakes his head. “If only it were that simple. You see, at the very core of my being, there’s a motivating force. Regardless of what trappings might be layered over this force, it’s really what defines me. And that force is concerned with only one thing: making you very, very unhappy.”

  “What a surprise. Know what I really hate? When the bad guys do something totally unexpected, like letting me and my friends go instead of throwing us into a deep—well, you get the idea.”

  He studies me. I wish he’d take those damn sunglasses off. “I do indeed,” he says softly. And then he drags me to my feet by one arm and pulls me toward the back of the church.

  “Hey!” I say. “Where are we going?”

  “This is a very old church, Jace. I like old things. They’ve always got such interesting things hidden away in their depths.”

  He takes me through a door and down a hall. “I have memories of this place from when I was a teenager. Of sneaking in through unlocked doors late at night to indulge in a cigarette, of creeping around exploring. I’d like to show you one of the things I found.”

  And now I start to fight back in earnest. Kicking, flailing, biting. Neil ignores all of it, of course.

  We come to a door that looks ancient, made of thick wooden planks held together with strips of hammered iron. He yanks it open, and I see a flight of stone steps leading downward. I redouble my efforts to get away, but he’s got a grip on my right wrist that’s unbreakable. He goes down the steps and I’m forced to go with him. The door slams shut behind us.

  It’s very dark down there. The air smells musty and dank.

  “Everyone has things they’re afraid of.” Neil’s voice is quiet, almost a whisper. “Oneiromancers are very attuned to that. It’s because we deal with nightmares so often, of course.… “

  He’s right. Dark, earthen cellars held a special terror for me, for many years. I used to have bad dreams about them all the time, and Neil can sense that.

  “This must be especially terrible for you. Standing here in the pitch black, not knowing what’s around you.”

  “I know where you are just fine—”

  He releases my wrist. Hurray, except I’m still trapped underground in complete darkness, with a vampire sorcerer who’s been marinated in hatred for me. Nice going, Jace.

  “I’m quite enjoying this,” Neil says. His voice is somewhere to my right. “Not that I have any choice, of course. But one takes pleasures where one can.…”

  There’s an old trick I know. If you’re going into a place where there’s very little light, close your eyes as tightly as you can. Keep them that way. Your pupils will expand in response to the darkness behind your eyelids, so when you open your eyes they’ll already be adjusted for low light.

  I’ve had my eyes squeezed shut since the top of the stairs.

  Pires can see in the dark, so Neil can see me just fine. I’ve tried to keep my face turned away from the sound of his voice—the flailing helped cover that up—and now I open my eyes and turn toward him. I stretch my arms out like a blind woman, but in fact there’s a tiny bit of light in the cellar, coming through the crack beneath the door at the top of the stairs. It’s just enough to let me see Neil’s outline, and a few vague features of the room around me: stacks of boxes, some shelves, an ancient furnace turned off for the summer and not fired up yet for the fall.

  And there, in the northwest corner, is a rounded, waist-high structure made of stone.

  “You—you don’t have to do this,” I say. There’s a little tremble in my voice, which is mostly faked. Mostly.

  “Yes, I really do,” he replies. “I understand your strategy: this is the part where you try to convince me that I’m the one in control, not the spell, that I can overcome my implanted urges. It’s what the heroine always does in situations like this, isn’t it? But you shouldn’t bother, Jace; it won’t work, and I’ll tell you why. First and foremost, I’m not the person you think you know. I’m a hybrid, a former human being who grew up on this world and had his own life and dreams, combined with the selected memories and persona of a vampire from another reality altogether. These two elements are being held together by the same spell that makes me want to hurt you; should I manage to undo or nullify that spell, I’ll come apart like a rag doll ripped in two. I’ll cease to exist. Now, I may be a fairly new entity—and not an entirely original one, I’ll grant you—but I do know that existing is very much something I would like to continue doing.

  “And second—as I said earlier—I’m quite enjoying this…”

  He backhands me casually. He’s not moving at superfast pire speed, so I’ve got plenty of time to get out of the way—but that would let him know I’m not as sightless as I seem. I take the hit instead, letting the impact send me staggering in the direction I want to go. I fall against the stone lip and scrabble around until I find a handle, then yank upward and whirl around. I’ve got a shield now, a wooden disk about three feet in diameter.

  “Oh, well done,” Neil says. He’s constantly moving as he talks, circling, darting back and forth, trying to keep my sense of where he is confused. “You’ve armed yourself. What is that, a serving tray
? My doom is sealed.”

  He plucks it out of my hands like a parent taking a frisbee away from a toddler, and tosses it aside.

  I back up. I stop when my butt hits the lip of the stone structure behind me. “Got it all figured out, huh? Funny, Father Stone thought the same thing, and look how he ended up.”

  “Oh, I don’t think the Gallowsman will come after me. You can’t hang a pire, after all.”

  “No, but there are other ways to deal with them. Stone knew that. That’s why he prepped this church. See, Stone belonged to the same cult a bunch of the people in this town do, a cult that’s supposedly all about using the Gallowsman to inflict despair and bad luck on others. But it turns out the cult was just a cover for Old Man Longinus to transform this town into the Let’s Torment Jace theme park—and when Stone found out that part of the plan was to fill the town with werewolves and vampires, he wasn’t happy about it. That led to him getting killed, but not before he’d made a few preparations of his own.”

  Neil takes a step closer to me. “What sort of preparations are you talking about?”

  “Here’s something you might appreciate. Isn’t it funny how people can compartmentalize their lives? As a profiler, I run into that all the time. Guy’s a devoted dad and proud member of the community five days a week, and a serial killer on the weekends. Father Stone belonged to an evil cult, sure … but every Sunday he still gave a sermon praising the Lord and all his saints. I’m talking about the Catholic kind, not the sports team.”

  “Your point being?”

  “What makes you think I have one? I’m just tired of hearing you monopolize the conversation. Blah, blah, blah … if you’re going to bite me, do it already. You were an irritating wannabe poser musician when you were following Terrance around, and now you’re an annoying supervillain wannabe with a pretentious accent. Also, I got over the whole I’m-scared-of-root-cellars thing a long time ago, so this lame attempt to terrorize me is more pathetic than anything else—”

  And then his hand is around my throat, cutting off my air. That particular move seems to be genetically ingrained into every new vampire’s brain, and my windpipe’s still sore from last time. “Urk,” is about the only sound I can manage in response.

  He leans in close. “I think I know what I’m going to do to you. I’m going to turn you, then chain you up down here forever. You won’t die, but there are all sorts of things I can think of doing to make your existence extremely unpleasant. Garlic stuffed down your throat. Wooden stakes driven through your limbs. Something clever and intricate involving tiny little mirrors and sunlight.”

  “You … forgot … one,” I manage to choke out.

  “Really? Do tell.”

  Showing is always better than telling. I bring my legs up, clamp them around his waist, and throw my weight backward as hard as I can. We both topple over.

  And into the well.

  Ever seen what happens when you throw a chunk of raw sodium into water? It catches on fire. That’s apparently the same thing that occurs when you dunk a vampire into a well full of holy water.

  Neil screams when we hit, and bubbles explode from every submerged inch of his body. He shoots up to the surface like a rocket, with me still wrapped around him. I can feel the heat through my clothes, but the water is having an insulating effect, leaching away some of the thermal energy at the same time it’s causing it. Supernatural chemistry 101.

  I grab his tousled hair, take a deep breath, and yank both of us underwater again. It’s like holding on to a giant Alka-Seltzer tablet. He fizzes and flails, but he’s in too much agony to fight back coherently, and after a few seconds he stops. I surface, treading water, and see that the only thing left of him is some glowing, sudsy-looking bubbles.

  I’ve done some rock climbing, and the shaft is narrow enough to wall-walk up. I put my feet flat against one side and my back against the other, and start the process of inching my way to the top.

  I’ve been cursing my memory since this whole affair began, but I’m ready to forgive it now. I remembered the well from looking at the blueprints Gretch showed me, which were quite detailed about underground structures.

  But it was the water font near the door that made me realize this was a Catholic church, and the covered windows that convinced me Father Stone was preparing a trap of his own for the impending invasion of pires. Lure them in, then hit them with sunlight; and if that doesn’t work, you’ve got a well full of holy water stashed in the basement.

  I make it to the lip of the well and tumble over it to the basement floor. I lie there for a moment, gettting my breath back and thinking about what I’m going to do next.

  Then I get to my feet and head back upstairs.

  I know who the real monster is. Time to go prove it.

  SEVENTEEN

  When Athena Shaker answers her door, her green eyes go wide and her pale skin flushes. It’s a natural enough reaction; we’ve got the unconscious body of her boyfriend’s brother propped up between us, his limp arms draped over our shoulders.

  “Oh! What—what happened?”

  “Can we come in?” I say. “It’s not safe out here.”

  “Yes, of course!”

  She stands aside and we haul our comatose cargo in. We put him on the couch in a sitting position, his head leaning back like he fell asleep studying the ceiling.

  “Here’s the deal,” I say to Athena. “First off, this isn’t who you think. It’s Peter, not Terrance. I know, his hair’s too long and those tattoos don’t belong, but that’s illusion magic for you; it can fool you right down to the level of bad teenage judgment.”

  She frowns, clearly confused. “I don’t know what you—”

  “Stop. We don’t have time for the wide-eyed innocent act. You and Doctor Pete are a couple. You’ve been keeping it a secret, but that’s not the only one.”

  Now she looks less confused and more angry. “That’s hardly any of your business—”

  “We don’t have TIME for this!” I shout. I take a fast step forward, getting right in her face. “We were jumped by a pack of vampires on the way here! I know this looks like Terrance, but it’s not. It’s his brother—your lover—and he knows where the master vampire’s lair is. He was kidnapped and dragged away before he could tell me, then brainwashed with sorcery and swapped with his brother; they thought the last place I’d look for him would be in a jail cell.”

  She meets my eyes coolly. The pretense of ignorance is gone. “What do you want?” she asks me flatly.

  “We need help. I know a magic ritual that’ll unlock Doctor Pete’s mind, but I need somewhere to do it, and I’ll be helpless while it happens. We can’t use my place or Charlie’s—they’ve both been compromised.”

  “Vampires. You know how crazy that sounds?”

  “About as crazy as werewolves, but less hairy?” Her only reaction to that is a single blink, but that and the second of hesitation are enough to tell me I’m on the right track. “I know you know,” I say. “About Doctor Pete, and what he’s going to become the first time the full moon rises. He’s being forced to do something he doesn’t want to do, and I know you want to help. Don’t you?”

  And now her lips quiver. Tears rise to her eyes, and she turns her head to look at the still body on her couch. She sinks down beside him, and takes one hand in hers. “Is it—is this really him?”

  “Yeah,” I say quietly. “It really is.”

  “I’m so confused,” she whispers. “I couldn’t believe it when he told me. He said there was going to be a war, and we had to choose sides if we wanted to survive.”

  “So you chose the one you love. But this is about more than a battle for turf in a small town, Athena; it’s going to spread. If we don’t stop it here, right now, the mystical fence that’s keeping the situation contained is going to break down. You know what you’ve got then? Two viruses competing to outbreed each other. And both of them will spread faster than the black death in the middle ages, because thropes and pires
can travel a lot farther and faster than rats.”

  She shakes her head, now crying openly. “What can we do?”

  “We need to find the identity of the master vampire. Take him out and we eliminate one side entirely.”

  “And what about the other side?”

  “We’ll worry about that later. One thing at a time.”

  She sniffles, then nods. “Okay. Whatever you’re going to do, just … just do it. Do you need anything?”

  “Just your TV and DVD player,” I say.

  It doesn’t take long to get set up. I position myself next to our subject on the couch and call up Azura with the remote. “It’s time,” I tell her.

  She nods. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “Me, too.”

  There’s a flash of white light.

  * * *

  The memory is from before Tair and Doctor Pete diverged into separate personae. I thought it might be the actual moment itself, but I’m wrong.

  I’m tied to a chair. A youngish Peter Adams—not yet a doctor, not yet a monster—is staring at me in consternation. I can feel a trickle of something wet down my face, but it’s not a tear; it’s blood.

  He’s dressed in a white lab coat over a T-shirt and jeans, but there’s no name tag. We’re in a small, dingy room with newspaper covering the windows, trash in the corners, and a desk missing two of its drawers. Pete’s leaning against the desk, his arms crossed.

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  “I’m—” He catches himself and shakes his head. “No. The question is, who are you?”

  “Someone who could use a painkiller or seven.” I wince. “Clocked me pretty good, didn’t you? That’s a helluva bedside manner you’ve got.”

  “You’re the one who broke in.”

  “Did I? Well, you can’t blame a girl for trying to make a buck, can you? Not exactly easy for someone like me to get by in this world anymore.”

  “A human being, you mean?”