by Angela Henry
“I’ve worked for the EA for five years, and I’ve never dealt with any Nephilim,” said West.
“There aren’t a lot of them. They tend to lay low and stick to their own kind, unless, of course, they’re plotting to destroy mankind.”
“I thought they were kind of, like, you know, angels,” said Granger.
“Trust me,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Nephilim are nothing like angels.” Though after my brief visit back home, I had to wonder if angels weren’t just as bad on some levels.
“According to Grace, there are shipments of NeCro going out tonight. We need to find and stop those shipments.”
“Ah, so it’s we now, is it?” I looked at her and she blushed again. “Last I heard, Granger here is still a fugitive, and I was told to butt the hell out ’cause you work alone, remember?”
“Look, the EA is low on manpower because we’ve got agents on the scene at Necropolis. It’s a mess down there. Grace employed a bunch of nonhumans, and it’s been hell trying to keep a lid on the press and keep them from getting pictures and get the bodies out before the whole building falls down on their heads. So, are you guys going to help me or not?”
“I’ll help you, Agent West,” said Granger.
West smiled and turned to me.
“The prospect of being zombie food isn’t real appealing. So, yeah, I guess you can count me in, too.” I couldn’t have told her no if I’d wanted to.
“Good.” She looked relieved. “And I know where we should start looking first.”
****
After a quick check of Grace’s penthouse showed it had been cleared out, the three of us were now sitting in the Range Rover in front of LeBrun Funeral Home, owned by both Zander Ptolemy and his younger brother, Vic Buchard. The house was a white two-story affair with black shutters, a wraparound porch, and a portico. A long narrow driveway ran alongside the house and led to a large detached garage, where they probably kept the hearse. A simple whitewashed wooden sign in the yard said LeBrun Funeral Home est. 1955.
“You honestly think Ptolemy would still be here?” I asked her.
“Even if he’s not here, something in there might tell us where that NeCro shipment is being stored and where it’s going, and besides,” she said, nodding toward the house, “the lights are on in the basement.”
“I can’t believe Grace used Vic as a test subject without his knowledge and his brother knew,” said Granger. “If you can’t trust family, then who can you trust?”
The kid looked more disgusted over Buchard getting stabbed in the back by his own flesh and blood than he did when I got gnawed by a legless NeCro addict.
“Let’s do this.” I got out and headed across the street.
“So, what’s the plan?” asked Granger, sounding just like he did when we were on our way to Necropolis.
“The plan is to not get dead.”
“That’s not much of a plan,” said West.
“Why don’t I knock on the door and pretend to be a customer?” suggested the kid, hot on my heels.
“Or we could just kick the door in.”
“What is with this need of yours to kick down doors? That’s what got us in trouble the last time,” said the kid.
“And your idea would be . . . ?”
The kid pushed me aside, stood in front of the door, and looked up and down the street to make sure no one was watching, then he rubbed his hands together, making a thin strand of electricity snake out between his palms. He rolled the glowing crackling strand into the size of a pea and shoved it into the keyhole of the front door. The lock clicked, and he turned the knob and opened the door.
“And you couldn’t have done that the last time?”
“You never gave me the chance.”
“Jesus. You two argue like an old married couple,” whispered West as she pushed her way between us with her Glock at the ready.
The funeral home was dark inside until Granger found the switch and flooded the foyer with light. Straight ahead was a staircase, and to the left a parlor with a couch, two armchairs, and a coffee table situated in front of a brick fireplace. To the right was a large room with white folding chairs, with LeBrun Funeral Home in black letters on the back, lined up in four rows of six chairs across, with an aisle down the middle and an empty casket stand in front of the room.
“Mr. Ptolemy!” West called out loudly. Her voice echoed through the house. No one answered. “I’m going to check upstairs. You guys wait here.” She took the steps two at a time.
I checked the kitchen, a bathroom, and a dusty disused den and found them all to be empty and was back in the foyer by the time West came back downstairs.
“No one upstairs,” she declared.
“Hey, guys, look at this.” The kid bent down to pick up a lead crystal candy dish lying on the floor near the stairs. It had a large crack down the center, and the back was smeared with dried blood.
“We’ve got blood on the floor.” West knelt next to a smear of dried blood that led across the foyer to a closed door. With the floor being dark wood, it had been hard to tell when we’d walked in, but there was a distinct drag mark from the middle of the foyer leading to the door. We all stared at the door.
“That’s not good,” I said.
“Neither is this.” West held up a pearl drop earring she’d found on the floor in front of the door.
“It’s the basement, isn’t it?” asked Granger with a groan. “Why’s all the bad stuff happen in basements?” His shoulders slumped, and I couldn’t blame him given that our last trip to a basement just a few hours ago almost got us both killed.
“You can always wait up here, David,” said West.
“And miss out on all the fun? No way.”
“Then quit whining,” I told him.
West put one hand on the doorknob, her ear against the door, and her finger on the trigger of her gun. She tried the door but it was locked. Granger stepped forward, rubbing his hands together to do his thing again. I could tell he was trying to show how useful he could be so the Equinox Agency would let him stay in the mage training program. But West was too impatient for magic.
“Get back,” she commanded, and once we were out of the way, she aimed and fired at the lock, splintering the wood and blowing the glass knob off.
The door swung open slowly, and the odor that wafted out confirmed all of our worst fears. It smelled strongly of chemicals, but underneath was the smell of death. And I’m not talking about the bodies that were supposed to be here because it was a funeral home. I’m talking about a putrid, decaying-flesh smell. The blood trail continued down the wooden basement steps, briefly pooling on the concrete floor at the bottom, before continuing around a corner. Since West was the one with the big gun, Granger and I fell in step behind her as we descended the basement steps. West paused with her gun held up next to her ear. She peeked around the corner, then nodded, indicating that it was clear, and motioned for us to follow her. The blood trail ended at a padlocked door in a darkened corner next to a bathroom with a sink and a toilet.
“You think someone killed Ptolemy and put him in here?” asked the kid.
“Not unless he wears earrings, and his ears weren’t pierced in his DMV photo,” said West. She pulled out a black leather flip case that held her EA badge and held it against the door. The badge glowed blue.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A body temperature sensor. Blue means there’s nothing alive on the other side of this door. So let’s see if we can find any useful info down here first before we worry about what’s in there.”
From the smell, I thought we would be walking into a slaughterhouse, but the large room was surprisingly clean. The concrete gave way to a tiled floor with a drain in the center. An open black casket sat in the center of the room, occupied by an elderly woman in a green dress. She’d been heavily made up, but the makeup couldn’t hide the fact that the tip of her nose was missing and her bottom lip was gone. A large stainless steel dou
ble sink occupied the back wall, with one side filled with bloody tubing coiled like snakes at the bottom. Cabinets lined the walls on either side of the room, and the countertops held glass jars of chemicals. A large medical-waste dumpster sat in the corner, and I wondered if that’s where the smell came from. I lifted the lid, but there was nothing inside. A dorm-size fridge under the counter had cans of Coke inside and a couple of take-out containers. A large walk-in freezer, so cold the door had frost on the outside, held five bodies waiting to be worked on.
“I think I found something,” Desi said.
West had been flipping through a file cart on wheels filled with green folders and now had one of the files open on a counter. I noticed the white tab read “Necropolis.” Inside was a spreadsheet, with the word Deliveries at the top and a list of dates and times.
“Looks like a log of deliveries made to Necropolis, but it doesn’t say of what,” I said.
“Probably reanimated brain matter. According to Grace, Ptolemy’s skills are limited. He can only reanimate body parts, not an entire corpse.”
“I guess that’s something to be thankful for,” I said.
“But why would he need to make deliveries to Necropolis in person?” asked Granger. “Didn’t his brother, Vic, work there? He could have just given them to him to take to work with him.”
“He couldn’t because Vic didn’t know what was going on, remember?” pointed out West.
“Do you guys hear something?” I asked. For the last few minutes, I could have sworn I’d heard scratching sounds. But once West and the kid shut up, it had stopped.
“I don’t hear anything,” said West.
“Me neither,” said the kid.
“Never mind.” We all got busy looking through the rest of the files.
The rest of the files turned out to be related to the business: receipts, contracts, and order forms for supplies, as well as catalogs for caskets and urns. There were also invoices for an off-site crematorium. Ptolemy was sending bodies elsewhere to be cremated. I wondered why he kept this business stuff down here and not in the den upstairs. But the fridge full of Coke and takeout indicated he must spend most of his time in this basement, though I had to wonder how he could stand the smell.
We were all rummaging through drawers when the scratching started up again. Only this time both of my companions heard it, too. They both stopped what they were doing and looked at each other.
“What is that?” West had her hand on her holstered gun. We all looked around.
“Shh,” said Granger, walking over to stand in front of the sink. “I think it’s coming from up here.”
A distinct scratching noise seemed to be coming from inside one of the upper cabinets above the sink. Without thinking, which was apparently the kid’s modus operandi, he reached up to open the cabinet.
“Don’t!” West and I called out at the same time. Too late.
The cabinet opened, and a metal tray of arms in various stages of decomposition, some severed at the shoulder, others from the elbow down, and all of them very much alive, spilled out and rained down on Granger. There must have been at least a dozen of them. The fingers pulled at his hair and tore at his clothes. The kid shrieked and managed to pull a few of them off before West and I got to him. The arms clawed and dragged their way across the tiled floor like grotesque inchworms using thick and blackened overgrown fingernails. I drop-kicked one into a corner, where it landed palm-side up. The fingers writhed and clicked in the air, resembling an overturned spider. But it soon righted itself and came scuttling back at me, and then launched itself into the air by the fingertips right at my face. West managed to shoot it through the palm before it reached me. It hit the wall and landed on the floor, but it was still moving.
“How the hell do we kill these fucking things?” I shouted.
“These must be Ptolemy’s practice body parts, and since they aren’t attached to a body, we can’t put a bullet in the brain! We have to burn them!” West dodged an arm that came flying at her with its fingers balled into a fist.
“And just how do we do that?” I asked. “There’s no crematorium here!”
“A little help, please!” shouted the kid. He ran around the room in a panic, shaking his head, trying to dislodge the arms dangling from his hair. He even had one hanging on for dear life to the seat of his pants.
“Can’t you cast a spell or use your electricity?” I yanked an arm from his head, and he yelped in pain as it took a clump of his hair with it.
“They’re attached to me! I’ll just electrocute myself, too!” he shouted, still moving.
The arm I’d just pulled from Granger grabbed the front of my shirt and yanked me down, almost causing me to crack my head on the edge of the sink as I went down. From my vantage point on the floor, I noticed Granger bump against the freezer door. The fingers of the arm hanging from his ass stiffened and let go. So, they didn’t like the cold. Good to know. I rushed over, scooped up the arm, and tossed it into the freezer, where it spasmed and twitched before going still.
“Over here!” I shouted. “They don’t like the cold!”
We grabbed up all the arms, making sure to hold them with the fingers pointed away from us. It wasn’t easy. They writhed and flailed trying to break free, but we held on fast. Once the last of them were inside, we closed the door, and Granger sagged to the floor in relief. He was a mess. His hair stuck up crazily, his shirt was torn, and there were bleeding scratches all over his face and neck.
“Are they dead?” he asked, panting, then sat bolt upright. “Oh, God! I’m not going to turn into a zombie, am I?”
“Only a bite from a zombie can transmit the zombie virus. You’re safe.” West held out a hand and helped the kid to his feet. “Just make sure you don’t open any more cabinets!” snapped West.
“Yeah.” I glared at Granger. “You hear another sound coming from anywhere, you ignore it.” Almost as if on cue, a loud thunk sounded from just outside the room, making us all jump. Something heavy had hit the concrete floor.
“Um . . . how about that sound?” Granger looked from me to Desi in alarm.
The sound was followed by a loud bang and then swiftly approaching shuffling footsteps. Something was coming. West rushed toward the door but barely had time to aim before the gun was knocked out of her hands and across the room by the skeletal figure of a man in the door. He could have been corpse bride’s groom. He was nearly naked and covered in bloody gore. Slimy black phlegm dripped from his mouth. Grayish skin hung in strips from his face and torso. His eyes were sunken but disturbingly alert. He was missing a finger and had filled the room with the stench of death and decay. Beyond him the door to the padlocked room near the stairs was open wide, revealing blood-streaked walls and what I assumed to be the remains of the owner of the pearl earring West had found. The padlock lay on the ground next to the door, with the key still in the lock.
“I thought you said there wasn’t anything alive in there! How the hell did he get out if he’s dead?” Granger’s voice was a high-pitched squeal.
“His vitals must be so low he’s not registering,” said West.
“I’m going to teach you all a lesson for breaking into my home and invading my space!” came a voice from the top of the steps.
“The police are on their way, Ptolemy!” shouted Desi, nursing her wrist. “You’re already looking at least life; don’t make things worse for yourself!”
Ptolemy laughed. And seriously, why the hell wouldn’t he with us trapped in a room about to be dinner for his brother.
“Well, provided you’re telling the truth, which I seriously doubt, you can talk to Vic about it! How’s that sound?”
“Grace is just using you, Ptolemy!” said Desi. “He’ll get rid of you as soon as he’s finished with you! You mean nothing to him.”
“I’m more useful to him than you know! And you know what they say? It’s better to be by the devil’s side than in his path! You don’t know what I’m talking about, bu
t you will soon enough—everyone will!”
He slammed the basement door shut, and Vic lurched into the room. With three of us to choose from, he hardly knew which end of the buffet to start at.
“You guys go! I’ll take care of him!” said Granger. Was he serious? He couldn’t handle a bunch of severed arms.
“Don’t be insane!” West looked around wildly for her gun, which just happened to be on the floor a few feet away from me.
I reached down to get it, but one of the zombie arms that we somehow missed rolled out from its hiding place under the counter and grabbed the gun before I could.
“Duck!” screamed the kid as the gnarled hand started squeezing off shots in every direction, shattering chemical jars and taking out a florescent light fixture above, plunging the room into semidarkness.
A bullet hit Vic in the shoulder, knocking him backward.
“Go!” screamed Granger. “I can take care of him! You guys need to follow Ptolemy! He’s probably on his way to meet Grace!”
West and I looked at each other. The kid was right. If we left now we might be able to catch him. Granger picked up the arm with the gun, and it fired again, this time hitting Vic in the leg, knocking him sideways and enabling West and I to run safely past him.
“Try not to get yourself killed, kid.”
“Xavier, catch!” The kid pulled something from his pocket and threw it at me. It was the vial of angel blood. “You might need this!”
With West in front of me, I downed the remainder of the blood in one gulp and felt like I’d just downed a triple shot of espresso. I had to lean against the railing of the basement steps for support. I was dizzy as my senses were flooded, and it took a moment for my vision to clear. West had already headed out the front door. But I paused, relieved to hear the crackling of Granger’s electricity by the time I got to the top of the basement steps.