by Angela Henry
Leticia Moody stared at me long and hard before getting to her feet.
“Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
I just wanted to leave. I needed to be alone to think. When she came back less than a minute later, she held out a gnarled fist to me.
“I can’t force you to look into this. But I know you’ll do the right thing, and this will help you.” She dropped a small glass bottle with a cork stopper in my hand. It was filled with a thick, silvery liquid.
“Is this what I think it is?” It looked like angel blood. How had she gotten hold of it? Once you’ve been clipped and cast out, you become mortal as soon as you land on earth, and you lose everything that made you an angel.
“It’s exactly what you think it is. Ingest it and you’ll temporarily get your angel powers back. You could use it to track down another guardian who might be willing to help you.”
“Whose blood is this?”
“Why, it was mine, of course.” She looked a little offended. “I smuggled it out with me when I gave up my wings. It’s old and may have lost some of its potency. But you should still be able to use it.”
“How in the world did you get it out? They strip us before we leave.” When an angel is cast out, they’re stripped naked. It symbolizes our rebirth as a mortal. “Where in the world did you hide it?”
“Never you mind where I hid it,” she replied primly.
After I left, I sat in my car for a while in front of Leticia Moody’s house, staring at the bottle of blood, turning it this way and that and watching the viscous, silvery liquid as it coated the inside of the bottle. It looked a little like Minx’s favorite nail polish. What was I going to do? I didn’t have such a bad life. It could certainly be a lot worse. Did I need to get involved in some angel conspiracy when they’d kicked me out? And even if I could figure out who’d framed me and prove my innocence, would they give me my wings back? Did I even still want my wings back? I didn’t have time to figure out what to do because my cell phone beeped. It was a text message from Gisele. Crystal Sneed wanted to meet me at Jackson Square after the sun had gone down.
****
Had she wanted me to meet her anyplace other than a tourist spot, I’d have been suspicious I was going to get jumped. But with so many tourists walking around listening to the street musicians and having their palms read by the fortunetellers who used the square as their shops, I figured I’d be safe. By now the sun had gone down, but the humidity hung on. Sweat trickled down my neck and my shirt stuck to my back. I waited for Crystal Sneed at the spot she’d requested, on a bench facing the Cabildo, the historic building where the Louisiana Purchase had been signed. And after waiting for about ten minutes, I felt someone sit down next to me.
“Mr. Knight?” came a woman’s voice to my right.
“Are you Crystal Sneed?” I started to turn.
“Please, don’t look at me,” she pleaded.
I didn’t turn but looked out of the corner of my eye. All I could see was a side view of someone whose head and lower face were covered by a long white headscarf. Skeletal fingers with blackened nails and open sores plucked nervously at the scarf’s fringe. They looked like the hands of a leper. Christ, what the hell could she be on that could have done that to her?
“You really need to let me help you, Crystal. Even with your face hidden, I can see that you’re sick.”
“No one can help me.” Her voice sounded as dead as her fingers looked.
“Then why did you want me to meet you?”
“I want you to stop him from doing to other people what he’s done to me.”
“You mean how he lured you here from Jersey and got you hooked on drugs?”
“How did you know that?”
“From your waitress friend in the Marigny. She’s worried about you.”
“I should have never called her. I could have gotten her killed. Everything I touch turns to shit. Everyone who tries to help me gets hurt.” She started to sob.
“Are you talking about Anton DePreist?”
“He meant well, but he was stupid. He confronted Duquesne and threatened to tell the police he was supplying me with illegal drugs. He thought Duquesne would be so scared of scandal and losing his precious social standing that he’d leave me alone. If it were that easy, I’d have done it a long time ago.”
“But Duquesne sent that zombie after him instead?”
“Zombie?” She laughed. It was a dry raspy noise that sounded like it hurt. “There’s no such thing as zombies, Mr. Knight. A living human being killed Anton.”
“That’s not possible. I saw what that monster did to Anton DePreist. I even found a finger he ripped from his attacker. It looked like a corpse’s finger.”
“That’s what that shit does to a person. At first, it makes you feel amazing. It’s the best fucking high in the world. Makes you feel superhuman. You can run faster, jump higher, party all night long. But what you don’t know is that it’s rotting you slowly from the inside out. And by the time you realize what’s going on, it’s too late. You can’t shake it. I’ve tried everything. Nothing works. And in the end, I’ll end up just like that thing that got Anton, a walking, talking, breathing dead person.”
So that’s what Madame LuLu had been talking about when she’d said the people she saw were aware. Inside those rotting bodies, they were still alive. They weren’t zombies because they hadn’t died and been resurrected or bitten by another zombie.
“What the hell is this stuff called?”
“NeCro.” She sounded beyond tired. “Duquesne told me it would make me feel good, and who doesn’t want to feel good? I didn’t ask any questions, and by the time I’d taken it once, I was hooked. And he knew what would happen if I took it.”
“Where’s he getting it? Who’s supplying it to him?”
“All I know is whoever he’s getting it from is someone he’s really scared of.”
“And why’s he really after you?”
“At first I thought it was because he thought he owned me and he couldn’t stand that I ran away from him.”
“And now?”
“His partner has big plans for this drug, and I’m a liability. They know I’m going to blow the whistle on them, and they want me gone. He doesn’t dare cross them.”
“Then that’s all the more reason to let me help you.”
“I’m dead either way.” She stood up. “Here.” She tossed a plastic pill bottle on my lap, and I picked it up. A lone pill rattled around inside. “I stole this from his private stash. There were a lot more, but I took them.” She eyed the remaining pill greedily, then started to go.
I grabbed her arm.
“Don’t go. Please let me help you.”
She jerked out of my grasp and turned to face me, then pulled off her scarf. What I saw stopped me in my tracks. Her hair was all but gone, save for a few patches where it was still long. But instead of being brown, it had turned white. Her entire face looked sunken, with mottled, grayish skin stretched so tightly across her bones that she resembled a skull. Her lips were dry and cracked, with open, oozing sores in the corners.
“Do you understand now?”
“My God.” I sat back down.
“If what’s in that bottle gets out, it’ll be a million times worse than crack, meth, and heroin combined. Please stop them.” She quickly wrapped the scarf back around her head and face and disappeared into the crowd.
I stared into the darkness after her for a long time before finally shaking the pill out into my hand. A gel cap filled with red colored liquid glowed in my palm. It looked like a cold tablet. I was about to put it back into the bottle when I swore I saw something moving inside. I held the pill up to a nearby streetlight. I was right. There was something pulsating inside, something that looked alive.
SEVEN
Alastair Duquesne had always prided himself on being a true southern gentleman. He had impeccable manners; an easy, affable charm that made him a sought-after dinner guest; and a sh
rewd business sense that had allowed him to turn his modest trust fund into a fortune on the stock market. Though he’d dated a bevy of southern beauties, including a Miss Louisiana and a well-known senator’s daughter, he’d never married. While many of his friends considered him a playboy for life, some secretly wondered if he was gay. He wasn’t. In fact, Alastair loved women. It was their level of animation that was the problem.
He liked them pretty but vacant, willing but passive, and pliant but inert. Alastair’s sexual inclinations were born one night during his college fraternity days at Tulane, when he’d taken a dare and broken into a local funeral home to take a nude picture of Missy Boudreau, a pretty sorority girl who’d been killed after a drunken tumble from the fourth-floor window of her sorority house while trying to sneak in after a night of partying. Alastair had had a secret crush on Missy but found her vivacious personality and unending chatter a bit too overwhelming for him. But when he saw her lying on the mortician’s table looking perfectly pretty and pale and most importantly still, he was surprised to find himself with an erection. And not being one to miss an opportunity once it had presented itself, Alastair made love to Missy’s corpse, and a perversion was born.
From then on, all Alastair required of his bed partners was that they be present, silent, and still. He preferred to do all the work. Most of his lovers, who by all accounts were very passionate and demonstrative women, were happy to accommodate him on occasion; but it simply wasn’t the same as that magical night so long ago with Missy at Bucey’s Funeral Home. Not until Alastair was in his late twenties and on a business trip to Prague did he get a chance to reenact his night with Missy. He met a man named Maxim, who for a fee could procure him anything his heart desired. Nothing was off-limits. And for a small fortune he got Alastair the kind of woman he truly wanted. Her name was Helena, a beautiful twenty-year-old who’d died of a sudden aneurysm. Alastair spent three whole days and nights with Helena before she had to be buried, and he’d been in heaven. After that, although he was willing to play the dating game for the sake of appearances, no living woman could arouse him the way a beautiful dead one could, and he made many trips abroad to feed his depravity.
But as with all men with insatiable habits, they tend to get careless. Alastair had made a big mistake in getting involved with Maxim, because Maxim’s intent wasn’t just to snag wealthy clients with sick and kinky proclivities but to ensnare them in a trap of their own making, and when the time was right, threaten to pull the rug out from under them unless they did as they were told. For most it wasn’t the fear of exposure that drove them to comply but the fear that their sick desires would go unfulfilled. So when a mysterious associate of Maxim’s paid a surprise visit to Alastair insisting that he help him with a business endeavor, Alastair had no choice but to agree. Little did he know that the business was of the pharmaceutical kind, producing a new antidepressant that would make Prozac look like Flintstones chewables.
And when test subjects were needed to test this new drug, Alastair had complied, luring the homeless, runaways, and drug addicts with the promise of a new way to get high. He’d even traveled out of state to procure subjects, not caring what happened to them as long as he still got what he wanted. He’d done what had been asked of him and more. But it was never enough, and poor Alastair soon became depressed and committed the biggest mistake of all: he started dabbling in his business associates’ product. Who would miss a few pills here and there? They made him feel so good—at first. Now when he stood nude in front of the mirror and saw the dark bruiselike marks that had started appearing all over his body and the graying and thinning of his once-thick head of hair, he became more than a little alarmed. Though terrified of what the drug was doing to him, he couldn’t stop taking it anymore than he could hide the effects of his usage from his new partner.
“Alastair, I’m so disappointed in you.” Dr. Langdon Grace fixed him with an icy stare.
At six feet five inches, Dr. Grace cut quite an imposing figure as he stood at the window of Alastair’s office and looked out onto the moonlit street below. He wore his usual attire of head-to-toe black, a startling contrast to his pale skin and piercing blue eyes. His white-blond buzz cut emphasized his keen features and made him look a predatory bird, a hawk, or if Alastair felt generous, an eagle.
“I can’t imagine why when I’ve done everything you’ve asked.” Alastair felt much less confident than his words had conveyed.
Langdon Grace scared the hell out of him, and he wished the man would sit down. He always made him very nervous. Alastair had no idea just where Grace had come from or even what kind of medicine he practiced. All he knew was that he was to cooperate and comply with any request Grace sent his way lest his habit be revealed, or worse yet, stopped. And that would be unthinkable.
“And the girl?” Grace closed the office curtains and came to stand in front of Alastair’s desk.
“A minor inconvenience. I have a man looking for her as we speak. And in her condition, there aren’t many places she can hide.”
“That’s the problem. In her current state it’s only a matter of time before she starts attracting attention. If she’s taken to the hospital by another misguided Good Samaritan like that drug counselor, threatening to call the FDA, where does that leave me? Our clinical trials will be suspended before we’re able to counteract the effects of the drug.”
“You?” Alastair started laughing, which quickly gave way to a coughing fit. He wiped his mouth and pretended not to notice the bloody, blackish phlegm that stained his handkerchief. “I’m the one who’s screwed if Crystal is found. I’m the one who brought her here and gave her the NeCro. I’m the one who paid DePreist to get out of town. No one even knows your goddamned name!” He started coughing again and looked up to see Grace pouring a measure of whiskey into two glasses.
“True,” Grace replied, handing him a glass and looking amused when his associate eyed it suspiciously. “But you forget that I am connected to you, Alastair. You are the top investor in Necropolis Pharmaceuticals. So what happens when your own condition is noticed? What happens when doctors start poking around in you?”
“I can quit anytime. It’s not a problem. And you told me if I stopped taking it, the symptoms would go away.” Alastair’s hand shook as he took the glass and drained it.
“Spoken like a true addict,” Grace replied dryly.
“I’ve signed off on those new expenditures you asked for.” Alastair slid the sheaf of papers that he’d hastily signed across his desk, hoping to hurry his unwelcome guest along. “I can’t keep justifying these purchases to my accountant. He’s starting to ask a lot of questions.”
“This will be the last time. I promise.”
“Glad to hear it.” Alastair was relieved to see Grace heading for the door.
“Oh, I almost forgot. I’ve brought you a gift from Maxim. I hope she’s to your liking. Just try not to get too carried away. The funeral is the day after tomorrow.”
The front door had barely closed before Alastair popped another pill and made his way downstairs to partake of his gift. Maxim knew what he liked, and thus far he’d never been disappointed. He’d even had a secret room created that not even his maid knew about, which looked like a mortician’s workroom, complete with a stainless steel table, a formaldehyde pump, purely for show, and a fake drain in the concrete floor.
When he arrived in the room, he was annoyed to see a large bronze casket on the stand next to the stainless steel table. Whoever had delivered the casket had neglected to put his date on the table, which meant he’d have to do it himself. Still, the casket looked very expensive, which was an indication that its content would be well worth any extra hassle on his part. He donned a pair of linen gloves he always kept on hand. He’d never worried about getting caught but didn’t want to leave his fingerprints behind on the buttons and zippers of the deceased’s clothing when he undressed them. He lifted the lid on the casket, expecting to feast his eyes on something lovely, and
was instead immediately greeted by the foul stench of decay.
“What in holy hell?” he exclaimed.
Inside the casket lay a female body that looked like it had been dead for weeks and decomposed almost beyond recognition, with blackened skin and a partially skeletal face. A blonde wig had been placed on her head, and she wore what looked like a white silk cocktail dress. Even in his anger, Alastair could tell that the clothes and wig were new, meaning someone had dug up and dressed this abomination before sending it to him. Alastair was all set to slam the lid shut and get on the phone to give Landon Grace a piece of his mind, but as it turned out, he didn’t need to.
Something cold and slimy grasped him. The corpse’s hand was around his wrist. He looked back down into the casket and saw her eyes were open and alert. Gurgling sounds came from deep inside her throat, and when she opened her mouth, a putrid stream of thick, black phlegm poured out. Alastair realized with horror that not only was she alive, but the phlegm meant she was a NeCro addict. How could she still be alive in this state? He screamed and tried to pull away but found her to be surprisingly strong. So strong in fact that she seized him by the throat with her other hand and pulled him into the casket on top of her. His frantic efforts to get free caused the lid of the casket to slam shut, trapping him inside and muffling the sounds of his crazed shrieking as he was devoured alive.
****
Dr. Langdon Grace sat in his luxury penthouse suite overlooking Lake Pontchartrain and flipped through the stack of papers his former business partner had signed, reveling in just how weak and stupid humans truly were. One of the forms he’d unknowingly signed had been a letter to his lawyer signing all of his assets over to Necropolis Pharmaceuticals. Grace’s plan, set in motion the year before, was moving along nicely. Now with Duquesne and DePreist out of the way, all he needed was to get rid of Crystal Sneed.
Grace stood, arched his back uncomfortably, and quickly stripped off his suit jacket and shirt. His wings, which had been folded neatly between his shoulder blades, unfurled to their full thirty-foot span. Jet-black and tipped with silver, they were the envy of his fellow Nephilim. He had an almost obsessive pride in them and hated having to keep them hidden. After he poured himself a glass of bourbon, he gazed out his window and envisioned the time when the Nephilim could come out of hiding and the world would belong to them. And the humans that survived the coming apocalypse would be their slaves, as they should have been all along. Only one thing could stop them. But Grace wasn’t worried. If heaven hadn’t discovered it had a traitor in its midst by now, chances are they never would.