J.L. Doty - Dead Among Us 01 - When Dead Ain’t Dead Enough

by J. L. Doty

  As he approached the fire station the midget stepped into his path and stood blocking his way with his hands on his hips. “I’ll have to leave you now, young fellow. Just remember your mundane friends can’t be helping you in this. Oh, they can heal your wounds but they can’t heal your soul.”

  Paul stepped around the little fellow, saying, “The last thing I need is riddles from some midget in a clown suit.”

  “Midget!” the little fellow shouted. Somehow he’d gotten in front of Paul, though Paul hadn’t seen him move. He was just there, again with his hands on his hips. “Sure, I ain’t no midget, you daft fool. And I’ll have you know I prides meself on the cut of me attire, better than most. Few of the little people cuts a finer figure than Jim’Jiminie.”

  Paul shook his head, decided the little fellow was another hallucination, stepped around him again and walked up to the front door of the fire station.

  Katherine McGowan sat up groggily in bed, thinking it was still too early for the alarm, realized it was her phone ringing insistently. She had a full roster of patients due in the morning, and that was on her mind as she lifted the phone, put it to her ear and grumbled, “McGowan here.”

  “Katherine,” her father said. She didn’t need him to say, “It’s your father.”

  The clock showed a little past midnight, so she realized it must be something important. “Is something wrong? Are you hurt?”

  “No! No! Well ya, something is wrong. But no, I’m not hurt. No one’s hurt. Well, there’s a young man I know, and I think he’s hurt, but Colleen and I are just fine.”

  “Colleen’s in town?”

  “Ya, she came to help me with something. And I need your help.”

  If Colleen had come to town to help her father with something, it would be something arcane and very important. “What can I do to help?”

  Her father spoke in a breathless rush. “A young friend of mine, name of Paul Conklin, we think he’s been hurt, probably assaulted. He’s probably going to wind up in an ER somewhere, either stagger into it on his own or riding in an ambulance. I’d like to know as soon as he shows up.”

  “I don’t know that much about the city’s ERs.”

  “But you’re a shrink. You know people.”

  She’d tried for years to get him not to use the word shrink. But yes, as a psychiatrist, she did know people. She asked, “Where did this happen?”

  “Far north end of Pacific Heights.”

  She wracked her brains to dredge up what little she knew about ER locations. “Up at that end of town I think California Pacific and Saint Francis Memorial are the only facilities with twenty-four hour ERs, but I’ll have to confirm that. Let me make some calls. I can probably arrange to get a call if he checks into one of those facilities.”

  “If you hear anything, call me right away.”

  “I will, father.”

  Katherine was well known at both hospitals. But it still took several phone calls to locate a neurology resident she knew at California Pacific, and a surgery resident she knew at Saint Francis, both of whom had pulled a night shift. They promised to spread the word to their ER staffs, so she went back to bed.

  The windows on the second floor of the fire station were lit so someone must be up. Next to the giant garage doors for the big trucks was a normal sized house door. Paul leaned against it and pounded on it for a good two or three minutes, was still leaning against it when a large fellow opened it. Paul stumbled into his arms and collapsed.

  “Carlyle, Baksh,” the fellow shouted, “get down here. This guy’s hurt.”

  The fellow laid Paul gently down on a concrete floor as two of his station mates rushed up carrying large kits. They pulled on surgical gloves as they knelt down over him. “What happened, buddy?” the big guy asked.

  As one of the paramedics started cutting away his shirt with scissors he grunted out, “Big guys, with guns . . . and accents . . . in my apartment.”

  The other paramedic, who was busy attaching some sort of monitoring devices to Paul’s chest, looked up at the big guy and said, “Fucking home invasion.”

  “Are you shot?”

  Paul shook his head. “Not shot. Least I don’t think so. Blew the door off its hinges. Splinters . . . in my leg . . . my side.”

  “Some in your face too. An inch higher and you’d’ a lost the eye.”

  The big guy said, “Can’t believe it, fucking home invaders using explosives to blow doors now.”

  “Not home invaders,” Paul said. “Russians . . . wizards . . . giant bat things . . . a hippie with lightening.”

  A crowd of their station mates had gathered, and Paul caught several of them sharing sidelong looks and raised eyebrows. One of the paramedics grumbled, “Probably concussion,” and Paul realized he’d better shut up.

  They wouldn’t listen to him after that, clearly figured he wasn’t lucid due to a head injury. They trussed him up rather thoroughly, and with his head and neck in some sort of brace one of them said, “Ok, let’s roll him, check for exit wounds.”

  They rolled him onto his side, prodded him a bit, and there was general agreement he hadn’t been shot. They bundled him into an ambulance and Paul lay back as the lights of the city rushed past, the horn blaring, the ambulance jerking and swerving about.

  At the ER someone asked, “Call said GSW?”

  “Looks like maybe not,” one of the paramedics said, “but you should check him anyway. And he’s not lucid. Probably head trauma.”

  The ER staff poked and prodded at him, asked him to count fingers and other tests for lucidity. By the time the cops arrived they’d given him a sedative and the pain began to ebb.

  “Ya,” one of the cops said. “We got the call earlier. You should see his place. Looks like a navy seal team took it apart.”

  “He said something about Russians.”

  “Fucking Russian Mafia,” the cop said. “Ass holes must be going into home invasions now.”

  The cop leaned into Paul’s field of view. “Sorry, buddy, but we’ll probably never find the bastards. But you are one lucky stiff. Those fuckers are stone-cold killers.”

  He was too stoned to really feel anything as they plucked all the splinters and stitched him up. A doctor told him he didn’t have a concussion, but they still wanted to keep him overnight for observation. They finished bandaging him up, wheeled him through a maze of halls and up an elevator, then parked his bed in a large ward. He drifted off into a hazy, drug-induced slumber.

  Baalthelmass had learned much this night. As expected Its two minions had failed to devour this Lord. But It had learned this Lord was weak, even weaker than It had believed. He hadn’t demonstrated any defensive powers, even against such weak underlings, had instead fled into the night while his mortal companions disposed of the emergents. And, in fact, they’d only annihilated one with the usual methods, while something unknown had sent the other back to the Netherworld. It was that unknown that gave It pause.

  Another test was called for. Another minion, but this time not the wasted, half-living, ravenous creatures with no experience on the Mortal Plane. No, this time It would send Its protégé, one much stronger than the others, one capable of casting a powerful glamour, of using caution and finesse, one perhaps even capable of devouring this Lord-of-the-Unliving, if it was resourceful. It would be a shame if Baalthelmass missed out on such a sumptuous feast, but if this Lord proved more resourceful than anticipated, better to let something else suffer annihilation, if it came to that.

  Katherine got the call around 4:00 AM. Paul Conklin had apparently been the victim of a home invasion, had suffered some nasty injuries but nothing life threatening. He’d been brought in by paramedics and was resting comfortably.

  She called her father, but only got his voice mail so she left a message with the details. This young man was apparently quite important to her father, and she couldn’t confirm that he’d gotten her message, so she decided to start the day early and check on the fellow herself. Sh
e took a quick shower, put on her makeup and a not-too-conservative Donna Karan business suit with the skirt cut just above the knees. She finished it off with some Prada four-inch heels; she knew she looked good in heels. She could check in on this Conklin fellow, probably run into her father at the hospital, get a bite to eat somewhere and be in her office long before her first appointment.

  She loved driving the Jaguar. It was an extravagance, but she didn’t care, and after she parked it in the reserved parking at the hospital, she patted it on the hood like a pet and said, “Don’t miss me too much, darling.”

  The night receptionist greeted her with a friendly smile. “Dr. McGowan, you’re up rather early. Or is it late for you?”

  “Early,” Katherine said. She didn’t recognize the woman, couldn’t remember her name. To locate Conklin she needed a teensy lie. “One of my patients was brought into the ER a little earlier, was checked in for the night, name of Paul Conklin.”

  The receptionist consulted her computer and said, “He’s on the fourth floor. You’ll have to ask the floor supervisor exactly where.”

  One of the nurses on the fourth floor recognized Katherine and she repeated the lie that he was one of her patients. Without asking, the nurse handed her his chart and led her to a ward with twelve beds. It was a long, rectangular room, with six beds lined up along the left wall and six along the right. Ten of the beds were unoccupied, while privacy curtains hid the remaining two, “He’s in the last bed on the right,” the nurse said, then marched back to her station.

  The night receptionist looked up from her book as the three men stepped into the lobby, an older fellow flanked by two younger, larger men, all wearing cheap, dark suits. The older fellow wore an outdated hat that would’ve been stylish in the fifties. The younger fellow on his left was an ugly blond with pock-marked cheeks, while the big fellow on his right had a bushy mustache that almost hid his square face. The younger men radiated a badass attitude like the thugs that hung out with her junkie nephew, and she took an immediate dislike to them.

  The older fellow in the middle spoke in a thick accent of some kind. “We’re looking for Paul Conklin. I believe he was brought into emergency earlier this evening.”

  She wasn’t going to give these fellows anything. “Sorry. We don’t release information to anyone but relatives. And you’ll have to wait for visiting hours.”

  “But I am a relative,” the old fellow said. “Here, my card.”

  He held out a business card. She reached out and took it, and as it touched her fingers they tingled slightly. She didn’t really need to look at it, because of course he was a relative. Since she’d looked up Conklin’s records for Dr. McGowan only ten minutes earlier, she didn’t need to do so again. “Mr. Conklin’s on the fourth floor. But you’ll have to wait for visiting hours. Only medical staff allowed this time of night.”

  “But I am medical staff,” the fellow said in his thick accent. “Look again at my card.”

  She didn’t need to look at his card, which still tingled in her fingers. Of course he was medical staff. She pointed down the hall. “The elevator’s that way, doctor.”

  “Thank you,” he said kindly, reaching out and retrieving his card.

  As they walked away he said to the two younger men, “See what you can do with a little finesse.”

  Some minutes later she wondered why she was just sitting there staring at her hands as if she was holding something. She must’ve zoned out, one of those senior moments they told her would happen as she got older.

  Chapter 4: In It Together

  Katherine found Paul resting in a light, uneasy sleep. She’d assumed he was younger, but realized now that, like her, he was in his thirties. His light brown hair was a tousled mess at the moment, and beneath the bandages on his left cheek she thought he might be quite attractive. And there was something familiar about him, some memory that pulled at her so strongly she couldn’t brush it off as some vague recollection. She stared at him for quite a while, trying to resurrect the memory, and then it hit her: the shoe store! The Pradas! The ghost! A ghost that had clearly meant something to him and led him to her. And now she suspected it had done so quite purposefully.

  Out of curiosity she decided to check out his aura. Like most practitioners of the arcane she normally suppressed such vision, much like selective hearing at a loud cocktail party: the background voices might be louder than the person you were listening to, but it took almost no effort to tune them out. The same was true of the sight; it was always there but controlled and suppressed. Otherwise it would interfere with simple mundane tasks like driving a car.

  She focused on it now and saw the fellow’s aura blossom about him like the petals of a flower opening to the sun, filled with the indigo and violet of a strong practitioner of the arcane. But intertwined with his primary colors were streaks of black that moved and swirled within the other colors, and that frightened her a bit. The aura of a demon was wholly black, frequently with a halo of gray ash, and this was nothing like that. Nor did the black overlay his entire aura like that of someone truly evil; if that were the case the black would darken the other colors, and obscure them in some places. Instead, the dark streaks were tangled within the colors of his arcane abilities, woven throughout them like the intertwined strands of a thick rope, ever changing but always focused within them. No, he was no demon, and not evil, but she’d never before seen such black streaks, and that bothered her.

  “You my doctor?”

  His voice interrupted her thoughts. He’d spoken in a groggy, muddled croak, and she had to concentrate to close off the sight. Dim light from the hallway spilled through the open door at the far end of the ward, lighting the floor between the two rows of beds but leaving the beds in shadows. She’d pulled back the privacy curtain part way so she could see something of the fellow, and when she saw a faint glint she knew he’d opened his eyes. “No, I’m just checking on you for my father. He asked me to help find you. He’s worried about you.”

  “Your father?” he asked, clearly unable to shake off the lethargy of the painkillers.

  “Yes, I’m Katherine McGowan. I believe my father’s a friend of yours.”

  That statement had the most startling effect on the fellow. His eyes shot open as if she’d just confessed to being a serial killer and at the same time given him a shot of adrenaline, and on the bed he scrambled away from her on his elbows as if her mere presence poisoned the air around him. That sometimes happened when a person returned to full consciousness from the haze induced by painkillers, especially if they were the victims of a violent attack.

  Her cell phone started vibrating. She dug into her purse for a moment to find it. “Just a minute,” she said to Paul. “I’ll take this out in the hall.”

  As she walked the length of the ward she looked over her shoulder, and he still sat watching her with wide, terrified eyes. The display on the cell phone told her it was her father calling. Out in the hall she flipped it open. “Hi father, it’s Katherine.”

  “Wanted to thank you for finding young Conklin. Colleen and I are just pulling into the parking lot now.”

  Katherine hadn’t seen Colleen in quite some time, and was looking forward to a little reunion. “I’ll come down and get you past the front desk.”

  “You’re there?” he demanded fearfully, suddenly upset about something. “At the hospital?”

  “Well . . . yes. I thought—”

  “Get away from him, now. Get out of there. He’s dangerous.”

  “What do you mean dangerous. He looks anything but dangerous. He’s just—”

  “He’s a rogue. Move, now.”

  The young man didn’t seem like a rogue, though Katherine had to admit she didn’t know what a rogue looked like. “I’ll meet you in reception,” she hissed into her phone, then flipped it closed and started toward the elevators. She was half way there when the elevator doors opened and Vasily Karpov stepped out, flanked by two young men that made her think, thug. Sh
e and Karpov had never met so she thought he wouldn’t recognize her. But she knew him by reputation—not a nice reputation—so she raised Paul’s chart to hide her face, turned and pretended to study it as she walked away from the Russians. A few doors past the ward she ducked into a private room. Luckily it was unoccupied.

  Trogmoressh’s master, Baalthelmass, was being kind. To give It such a boon was a gift beyond imagining: a Lord-of-the-Unliving, weak, injured, ready for the kill. Trogmoressh was young compared to Baalthelmass, had been summoned to the Mortal Plane by one of Its master’s thralls less than a hundred years ago, and Its master had immediately taken It on as a protégé. Without Baalthelmass’ guidance during the first days of Its emergence, It might’ve succumbed to the early need, the initial hunger that dominated every thought of a new, Tertius emergent. But Its master had fed It carefully, and now It was ready for bigger things.

  It looked at Itself in the mirror. Well, not at Its true self, but rather the glamour It projected for the mortal cattle: a beautiful, young women. After a hundred years of feeding It had gained enough strength that It no longer needed to hide in some squalid ghetto. It could now conceal Its true nature while living in the middle of the feeding ground. Its wealth and power were growing, and It could even maintain the glamour with sufficient strength to fool some sorcerers, though only the weakest and only for a few moments. Another hundred years of feeding and building Its strength and It would walk among the mortal mages freely, as Baalthelmass did now.

  Finding the Lord-of-the-Unliving was a fairly simple matter: take to the air, go to his apartment building, pick up the scent of his power and follow it, first to a fire station, then from there along a direct path to a hospital emergency room. Once there It stepped into the shadows across the street from the ER, adjusted Its glamour to that of an old woman, and It waited. Within minutes an ambulance pulled up and two paramedics, one male and one female, wheeled a patient into the ER. It needed to hear one of them speak, so It crossed the street and blended into a shadow near the ER entrance. Twenty minutes later the paramedics emerged from the ER, and as they replaced the equipment in the back of the ambulance they talked of getting a pizza for dinner. Then they climbed into the ambulance and drove away.