Alexander Death (The Paranormals, Book 3)

by JL Bryan

  He didn't trust the doctor, but she had showed him pictures of her daughter Tricia, including a couple of cell phone pictures of the tiny girl wasting away in the hospital. Heather did seem desperate. If this was a trap, they'd put it together very well.

  He'd already asked if Heather knew where to find Jenny, but Heather claimed nobody knew.

  Seth watched the mile markers and cow pastures whip by—Heather was really pressing the gas pedal. She didn't speak much, just stared at the road. Her radio was tuned to NPR, which had a very long report about a struggling sweater factory in New Hampshire.

  “What's it like?” Heather asked, after a long period of silence.

  “What's what like?” Seth opened his eyes.

  “Healing people.”

  “It's draining,” Seth said. “I get hungry and tired.”

  “But how does it feel, knowing you can do that?”

  “It feels like I'm a freak.”

  “That's all?”

  “No, it's not all!” he snapped. “I have to worry about people finding out.”

  “Would that be so bad? You could heal lots of people—”

  “—until someone like you comes along and wants to lock me up somewhere so you can study me. Then I couldn't help anyone.”

  Heather was quiet for a minute. “And what about Jenny killing those people in your town? How do you feel about that? You think that's okay?”

  “You weren't there,” Seth said. “It was a lynch mob. They were trying to kill her. They killed me.”

  Heather looked at him.

  “I got better,” Seth said. That was Jenny's usual comment, when she talked about how she and Seth had died and come back the night of Easter. “They didn't kill me enough. I was able to heal. Then I had to heal her, because she was dead by then.”

  “You brought her back from the dead? Like your friend at the hospital, with the zombies?”

  “Not exactly. And he's not a friend. I have no idea who he is.” Seth was only lying a little bit. He suspected the zombie master was the reincarnation of his own great-grandfather, a scary and evil man. “There are others like us, you know. And you may think we're evil, but they're truly evil.”

  “What others?”

  “There's a guy whose touch makes you feel fear,” Seth said. “I think he might have started the riot in Charleston. And there's a girl who can make people feel love. She's the one who sent the mob against Jenny—she had the town in the palm of her hand since she was a kid. The preacher's daughter.”

  “One who can make you feel love?” Heather's eyes grew distant, as if she were thinking of something. “Do you mean love, or lust?”

  “That depends on how high she turns it up.”

  “What's her name?”

  “It doesn't matter. She's not using it anymore.”

  “What does she look like?”

  “She's...” Seth thought of Ashleigh, but Ashleigh's old body was dead, destroyed by the Jenny pox. Somehow, her spirit had possessed Darcy Metcalf, but now Ashleigh had left Darcy to pick up the wreckage of her life. Ashleigh might still be out there, in another body, but Seth wouldn't know what that one looked like. “I don't know,” he said.

  “Are you trying to protect her, too?”

  “Hell, no,” Seth said. “You can put her in a lab cage if you find her. I don't care.”

  “What are you, exactly?” Heather asked.

  “I'm a freshman at Charleston, a pledge at Sigma Alpha Theta, an endless source of disappointment to my parents—”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I only got a glimpse of that when I was dead,” he said. “And it's hard to remember the pieces I saw. Your mind kind of works differently when it's not attached to a brain.”

  Heather just stared at him.

  “I can't answer the question,” Seth said. “We're born with these abilities. We reincarnate.”

  Heather shook her head. Seth closed his eyes, leaned back, and listened to the NPR reporters interview the children of laid-off sweater makers.

  ***

  Heather's daughter was at a children's hospital in Atlanta, called Egleston. She didn't say a word as they walked down the hall of the cancer ward. Seth looked into some of the rooms they passed, seeing pale, sick children slowly wasting in their beds. He felt terribly sad at the sight of them.

  “Here,” Heather whispered.

  He followed her into a hospital room shared by two little girls, their beds separated by a curtain. Heather's daughter Tricia looked tiny and pale in her bed, dwarfed by the monitoring machines around her. Her little head was shaved bare. Her eyes were closed.

  Seth reached out a hand. His first instinct was to touch the girl and heal her right away, but he stopped himself, folded his arms, and stepped back from the hospital bed.

  “I'm not doing this for free, you know,” Seth said. “I don't owe you any favors.”

  “You want money?” Heather asked.

  “I want you people to leave us alone. Me and Jenny both.”

  “I don't have that kind of power,” Heather said. “Homeland Security is involved. The White House is involved. If you've ever seen an alien-invasion movie, you know that the guys with guns don't usually listen to the guys with microscopes.”

  “I expect you to help us,” Seth said.

  “I would. I will. I just don't know what I can do.”

  “I don't have to help you, either,” Seth said.

  “Just tell me what you want me to do,” Heather said.

  “Use whatever influence you do have to make it seem like Jenny isn't a threat,” Seth said.

  “I'll try, but I've already filed reports—”

  “Tell them your reports were wrong.”

  “They'll think I'm crazy.”

  “That's fine with me.”

  “Will you help her now?” Heather asked. She looked like she was on the verge of tears.

  “If I do this, you work for me from now on,” Seth said. “If I need you to steal information from your job, you'll do it. If I need you to falsify reports, you'll do it.”

  Heather looked at her daughter. “Of course I will,” she whispered.

  “If I need you to commit a crime, kill somebody, or soak yourself in gasoline and light a match, you'll do that, too.”

  Heather gaped at him.

  “I'm not joking,” Seth said. “If I save her, you owe me everything.”

  Heather frowned, but she nodded her head. “I'll do anything for her.”

  Seth stared at her for a minute longer, then he took a breath and turned toward the little girl in the bed. He took one of Tricia's hands, and Tricia winced at the pain of being touched. Her eyes opened.

  “Are you a doctor?” Tricia whispered.

  “Not exactly,” Seth said.

  “It's okay, honey,” Heather said.

  Seth could feel the healing energy flow out of him and into the girl. He pushed it harder—the girl would need a lot of help.

  Tricia gasped and squeezed her fingers tight around his. Seth took her other hand and concentrated.

  Her little green eyes grew wide as the color returned to her skin. Her heart monitor accelerated its beeping. Seth could feel the energy draining from him, filling up the girl, dissolving the disease inside her.

  After a few minutes, he staggered back and dropped into one of the room's chairs, exhausted. Tricia sat up in bed, smiling, looking radiant.

  “Tricia?” Heather asked. “How do you feel, honey?”

  “I want to go to Six Flags,” Tricia said.

  Heather laughed and hugged her daughter.“You look so good, sweetie.”

  “That should do it,” Seth said. “Have them test her as soon as you can, so she can get off the chemo.”

  “Oh, thank you.” Heather turned to Seth, her face covered in tears now. She leaned down and hugged him tight, inadvertently burying Seth's face in her breasts. “Thank you so much.”

  “Just remember our agreement.” Seth's voice was muf
fled against her shirt.

  “I won't forget. Anything you want.” Heather beamed at him for a minute, then turned back to her daughter, who was wide awake and cheerful, talking about a dream she'd just had involving a Panda bear and a roller coaster.

  When Seth felt a little better, he stood up and stretched. He walked around the curtain, to where the other little girl lay sleeping. She looked like she was wasting away.

  Seth touched the girl whose name he didn't know, and again felt the healing energy drain out of him, repairing and healing her body.

  He glanced back at Heather, who was talking happily with her daughter. Then Seth wandered out of the room.

  He moved into the next room, and then the next, healing every cancer-stricken child in the ward. By the time he finished the last one, his body felt hollowed out, his eyes sunken, his muscles like scraps of rags.

  As he stumbled out of the last room, two nurses confronted him.

  “Can we help you?” one asked.

  “Oh, no,” Seth said. “I'm fine.”

  “I've just seen you go in and out of three different rooms,” the nurse said. “What are you doing?”

  “Just visiting the kids,” Seth said. He was so exhausted that he was about to pass out. He wondered how he looked to them—like some crazed drug addict, probably. He leaned against the wall, working to keep his balance.

  “We're going to need you to leave this hospital,” the nurse said. “Immediately.”

  “No, wait,” Seth said. “Heather, tell them I'm okay. Heather?”

  Tricia's room was at the other end of the hall, though, and Seth was too tired to speak very loudly. It looked like he was speaking to an imaginary person, which didn't help increase his credibility with the nurses.

  “I'm paging security,” the nurse said.

  “No, I'll go,” Seth said. “Just tell Heather I'm outside.”

  The nurses stayed close behind him until he stepped onto the elevator. Seth made it to a bench outside the hospital's sliding front doors, and then he sat and waited.

  Heather emerged about twenty minutes later. “Getting some air?” she asked.

  “I got kicked out.”

  “Why?”

  “I went into every kid's room on the cancer floor.”

  Heather smiled at him and shook her head. “You're so sweet. I owe you everything.”

  “Don't forget it.”

  “You look drained. What can I do for you?”

  “Take me to Checkers,” Seth said. “I need about eight hamburgers. And a shake. And lots of fries.”

  “I'll buy you everything on the menu,” Heather said. “Tricia's hungry, too, thank God. I can't remember the last time she said that.”

  Heather took Seth's hand, and he leaned heavily on her, walking like an old man while she helped him to her car.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The intelligence agent Felix Arellano Francisco wanted Alexander to meet him at a tin-roof cinderblock cantina outside Mexico City. The sign out front forbade women and government officials in uniform from entering.

  Alexander took a table in the back of the smoke-filled bar and ordered a beer. While he waited, he watched the topless dancers come and go on the central stage. Occasionally, one of the dancers would lead a customer through a curtain to some kind of back room. He watched one proposition a couple of elderly men playing dominoes, who waved her away.

  Alexander bought a cigar from a waitress and puffed on it. Francisco was taking his time.

  So far, he thought everything was going well. The plague-bringer was his again, letting her power flow freely into him. She remembered the many lives they'd spent together, remembered that she belonged with Alexander.

  The zombie workers were productive, and money was pouring in thick and fast. Alexander couldn't ask for much more, beyond a few minor details that still needed attending.

  A man in a suit entered the cantina, spotted Alexander, and took the chair across from him.

  “You are El Brujo,” he said.

  “How could you guess?”

  “The only gringo in the bar.” Francisco ordered whiskey from a passing waitress and patted her ass when she delivered it. “Nice place, no? Good for discrete conversation, since no man wants to admit publicly he was here. See that girl onstage now, Carmen? She gives the best head in three states. Should I call her over?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “More for me.” Francisco sipped his drink. “Though I am suspicious of men who do not indulge in pleasures.”

  “I indulge plenty,” Alexander said. “But I have a busy schedule today.”

  “We should not be prisoners of our work.”

  Alexander just nodded and puffed his cigar.

  “All business, then,” Francisco said. “I have a few good friends up north who have asked for my help.”

  “With what?”

  “They need to open a line of communication with the man who is said to make the dead walk.”

  “I don't know any such man,” Alexander said.

  Francisco laughed, revealing several gold-capped teeth. “Then Ernesto must be punished for making a fool of me. It is said that Papa Calderon has a man who captured four of Pablo Toscano's men, killed three, and brought their corpses to life to bite and terrify the fourth Toscano man. They say that his message to Toscano was that any interference with Calderon business would be punished with terrifying black magic. They say he is a gringo who goes by the name El Brujo. Ernesto assured me he would send this man to meet me today. And here I am, with a gringo who pretends I do not know what I am talking about.”

  “In that case, I guess you have the right person.”

  “Is it true?”

  “Is what true?”

  “You can made the dead walk? Is it a trick?”

  “Of course it's a trick,” Alexander said. “But many people are superstitious and will believe such illusions.”

  Francisco laughed again and started his second whiskey. “Psychological warfare.”

  Alexander gave a small nod. “So who are these people? Not DEA, I hope?”

  “Of course not. I am to keep such people away from Papa Calderon's business, not bring them into it. These are former associates of mine who now work in private industry.”

  “Can you be slightly more specific?”

  “Corporate intelligence. High net-worth individuals.”

  “I suppose that's better.”

  “They simply need a few minor questions answered. They say they are concerned about some American girl.”

  “And you're certain they aren't working under government contract? Homeland Security, maybe?”

  “These men have moved on from working for the state,” Francisco said. “From what they told me, I believe they are working for the girl's family.”

  “What girl?”

  “Her name is...Julia? No. Jennifer.” Francisco unfolded a sheet of paper. Jenny's high school yearbook picture was printed on it. “Jennifer Morton. Does she look familiar to you?”

  Alexander studied the picture. “You say they're working for her family?”

  “If the U. S. government were involved, I would not bring this to you. I would say I could not help them. It is her family looking for her.”

  Alexander knew Jenny's father couldn't afford any such investigation. Jenny's boyfriend, though—the healer. The Barrett family had plenty of money, most of it from investments Alexander had made himself, when he wore a different body. He was curious how it had compounded over time. He wished to see the house he'd built, the family graveyard he'd ordered constructed when he was already half-senile.

  That previous incarnation had lacked the clarity of this one, probably because Jonathan Barrett the First hadn't died under anesthesia as a child, and then gotten revived. Alexander Scipioni, son of a Beverly Hills entertainment lawyer and drunken plastic surgery addict, sure the hell had. Alexander had nearly gone insane, but he'd come back with his mind wide open, fully understanding the p
ast-life glimpses and dreams he'd been having since he was born. With further research, he'd decided to use a more natural alternative for Jenny, and that had worked out just the way he wanted it to.

  “Do you know where to find the girl?” Francisco asked.

  “I have her,” Alexander said.

  “Really?” Francisco waited for more, but Alexander volunteered nothing. “You have her?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see. In that case, my friends want me to ask about a ransom. A great deal of money is available to pay for her return.”

  “There is no ransom,” Alexander told him. “The girl will not be returned.”

  “I see.” Francisco downed his whiskey. “Can you give some evidence that she is with you of her own free will? Have her send us a note?”

  “No.”

  Francisco studied Alexander. A minute passed, while Alexander listened to the brassy horn music playing over the cantina's scratchy speakers.

  “I do not know if this will satisfy my friends.” Francisco finally said. “They suspect kidnapping. They want assurance that she is willing to be where she currently is, and that she is not a prisoner.”

  “I can offer no such assurance,” Alexander said. “And there will be no ransom.”

  “You might make them angry with you. Should I deny the girl is with you? I don't want this to lead to trouble for Papa Calderon.”

  “Do not deny it,” Alexander said. “Tell them you found me. Tell them I have the girl, and I do not desire a ransom, and I will not provide proof of her well-being.”

  Francisco scratched his head and sat back in his chair. “I will tell them what you say. Anything else you want passed along?”

  Alexander shook his head.

  “Then our business is concluded.” Francisco whistled to the dancer he'd admired earlier, who was now over at the bar. “Carmen! Come and see us.”

  Alexander stood up and left pesos on the table for the waitress.

  “You don't want to miss this.” Francisco gave another gold-toothed grin while the girl approached the table.

  “I'll pass,” Alexander said. “Busy schedule.” He stepped away from the table.