by Julie Kenner
“Exactly.”
“And the, um, parts? You had to hack it up because . . . ?”
“You saw the way it was wiggling in Timmy’s hand. The parts don’t have to be attached to the body to move around.”
“When the hand grabbed my leg, Mom had to cut its fingers off with the pruning shears.”
“And you thought you’d never get any use out of those gardening tools.”
“I love it when my tools multitask,” I admitted, grimacing a little when my stomach growled. My handful of M&Ms for breakfast hadn’t really hit the spot, and although I knew I should have something more substantial, at the moment all I really wanted was the sugar rush so easily supplied by my freezer.
I gave in, getting up and grabbing a bag of sugary goodness from the freezer. What can I say? I’m a weak woman.
“Okay, so back up,” Laura said, reaching out her hand for a helping of candy. “Why is that zombie real? I mean, other than the fact that squirming body parts is about as real as reality gets?”
“They’re the definition of zombie,” I explained. “The folklore. The movies about the creepy brain-eating creatures that roam through the night with their arms outstretched.”
“Ewww,” Allie said. “I forgot about the brain-eating part.”
“They don’t really do that,” I said. “They’re nothing but moving flesh. They don’t have to eat. All they do is exist, and even then only to serve their master.”
“But back to the real thing,” Laura urged. “What exactly is an unreal zombie?”
I had to put that answer on hold for a moment, because my son—apparently smelling chocolate—came charging into the kitchen. “Candy, Mommy! I want candy!”
“It’s only fair,” Allie said.
“Thanks for the advice, Mom,” I retorted. “But he just had breakfast.”
“Um, that was two hours ago, remember? And I’m pretty sure he ingested a grand total of ten flakes, then smashed the rest on the table and wiped them onto the floor.”
“I’m still thinking that’s not the best argument for chocolate. Scrambled eggs or a peanut butter sandwich, maybe. But chocolate?”
She cocked her head. “What did you have for lunch?”
“I’m not a little kid,” I said, then watched her face as she tried to decide whether I was in a good enough mood to parry if she lobbed back with a fancy retort.
Apparently, I didn’t look that chipper, because she backed off, becoming suddenly interested in tying her shoe.
Good call.
“Mine!” Timmy hollered, his hand reaching up and wriggling blindly on the tabletop as he searched for candy. “Party candy, Mommy! Want. My. Party. Candy!”
“It is absolutely your party candy,” I said, sweeping the candy back a good six inches even as I decided not to bother correcting him about the “my” party thing. Why not let him think Mom threw him a party and invited the entire neighborhood? “That’s why you have to wait for the party. It wouldn’t be any fun if party day came and there was no candy, would it?”
He climbed up in a chair, eyeing the candy now on the far side of the table and very much out of reach. “Want candy,” he said, in the tiniest voice.
“Timmy . . .”
That did it. His face fell, overwhelmed by this ultimate betrayal by the mother who loved him. His lower lip started to quiver, and I was done for.
I told myself I gave in so that I could finish my zombie spiel before Mindy arrived. In reality, I was suckered by the pouty lips and long lashes of a tousled-haired little boy.
After a bit of toddler negotiation, which consisted of me telling him he could have two M&Ms and him insisting he wanted ten, we finally settled on five counted out slowly into his greedy little palm.
“Anyway,” I said, as soon as Timmy was settled again,
“the other kind of zombie isn’t just animated flesh. It’s really a demon. Instead of moving into a newly dead body, he sets up shop in a body that’s been down for the count for a while.”
“I thought they had to do it right after you died,” Allie said, the area above her nose pulling into a little V as she mentally skimmed all the Hunter texts I’d assigned her over the last few months. “The soul slips out, and they slip in.”
“Right,” I said. “That’s the entry portal. Miss that, and they’re out of luck.” They’re out of luck, too, if the body belonged to a person with faith. Those souls go out kicking and screaming, protecting their earthly host from the indignity of becoming a shell for a demon. “But if they wait until the body starts to decay . . .” I trailed off with a shrug. “To be honest, I don’t really understand it. I only know that about the time the ick factor sets in, so can the demon.”
“To any body?” Allie asked.
“Pretty much,” I said.
“But they don’t do it very much,” Allie said. “How come?”
I shrugged. “Demons want to be human. They covet our form. They covet our ability to touch, to feel. The carnal aspects of being human. Plus, they want to blend in.”
“And Danny Demon walking down the street decomposing isn’t going to get to experience all the perks that go with being human?” Laura asked.
“Exactly. Not to mention that demons rarely only want to be human. They’ve got bigger end-of-the-world type plans. And it’s hard to be subtle when there are maggots poking out of your eye sockets.”
Allie grimaced, an M&M pausing on the way to her mouth.
I fought a smile. “Squeamish?”
“I so am not,” she said, then shoved three candies into her mouth and chewed vigorously.
Another light rap on the door, followed by, “Allie? Aunt Kate? Can I come in?”
“We’re in the kitchen, sweetie,” Laura called.
Allie stood up as Mindy walked in. “We’re going upstairs, okay?” She aimed a pointed look at me. “Anything interesting happens and you totally have to tell me.”
“What’s going to happen?” Mindy asked.
“Oh.” For a moment, Allie looked completely befuddled. “Mom’s arguing with Stuart.”
“Lucky you,” Mindy said, rolling her eyes and pointedly not looking at Laura.
“Not that kind of fight,” Allie said as they left the breakfast area. “Mom wants to put a swimming pool in the backyard, and Stuart thinks—”
I couldn’t hear what Stuart thought, but I had to admit that a pool didn’t sound like a half-bad idea. “I could infuse the thing with holy water and have my own backyard demon trap,” I said to Laura.
“You’re thinking about getting a pool?”
“I am now. Wasn’t ten minutes ago. The kid does think on her feet well. Any chance Mindy bought it?”
“This time, maybe. Whether she’ll keep on buying it . . .” Laura shrugged. “One of these days, I’ll either decide it’s okay to tell her, or we’ll find out that she’s known all along, and she and Allie are better at keeping secrets than we thought.”
She had a point. I grabbed the coffeepot and refilled both our mugs.
“Speaking of secrets,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell her that the missing demon can’t be a zombie?”
I looked at her, impressed. “Aren’t you the good little pupil? ”
“Perfect attendance for all of first grade,” she confirmed.
“After that?”
She shook her head. “Bad. Very bad. Never got the attendance award again.”
“I can tell it’s scarred you.”
“For life,” she said. “Seriously, why didn’t you tell her?”
“She’ll figure it out on her own if she thinks about it,” I said. “But in the meantime, I don’t really want her wondering what kind of creatures were creeping around our backyard in the wee hours of the morning.” Because Laura was right, of course. The demon had originally entered Sammy’s body when the “portal” was open, and by the time I stabbed it in the eye and sent the demon rushing toward hell or the ether or its local demon hangout, the portal had closed
and no new demon could move in.
But the body was still fresh and new. Not the least bit decayed. All nice and tidy. Which meant it wasn’t yet ripe for a zombie takeover.
And that, of course, meant that our demon hadn’t gotten up and walked away. Someone had moved the body.
My fourteen-year-old may have definitely clued in to the whole “a Hunter’s life is a dangerous life” thing, but that didn’t mean I felt the need to exaggerate the lesson.
“There’s more I didn’t tell her,” I confessed.
“Oh?”
“Revenge, vengeance, and the Sword of Caelum,” I said.
“Gesundheit.”
“Very funny. You know that’s supposed to keep a demon from flying up your nose, right?”
She lifted an eyebrow.
“No, seriously. It means ‘bless you’ or ‘good health’ or something. And people used to think that when you sneezed it gave a demon the opportunity to shoot up your nose.”
“So they said ‘bless you’ to keep the demon out.”
“Exactly.”
She pondered that for a moment. “But can demons fly up your nose?”
“Not that I know of,” I said, then paused, considering the question more thoroughly. “But I do remember reading about an exorcist during the Roman conquest of Judea. In front of the emperor, he pulled a demon through a man’s nostril.”
“Not only is that absolutely disgusting,” Laura said, “but I’m completely impressed that you remembered it. I thought you said you were more interested in fighting than in reading.”
“I was,” I admitted. “But that didn’t mean I was exempt from the schoolwork part. And even in the realm of demon lore, that one’s just ooky enough to stick in your memory.”
She grimaced, then rubbed a hand under her nose. I laughed, catching my own hand rising to do the same thing.
“Okay, but we got totally sidetracked. What’s the Sword of Caelum?”
“The Sword of Heaven, if you translate from the Latin. Other than that, I have absolutely no idea,” I admitted. “But apparently the demons aren’t about to let me wield it.”
“Oh, one of those,” Laura said.
“One of what?”
“A cryptic comment. Demons make a lot of them.”
I couldn’t argue with that. “This time, I actually have a little more information,” I admitted. I relayed what Father Corletti had told me, filling her in on the salient points about my past encounter with Abaddon so that the full story would make sense.
“Well, hell,” she said.
“That pretty much sums it up,” I agreed. “I was perfectly content taking out the stray demon here and there. I absolutely don’t need another demon out there who thinks that I need to be eradicated from the face of the earth. I mean, I’ve got a party to plan.”
“That too,” Laura said loyally. “But what I meant was that it doesn’t sound like there’s much for me to do. Your peeps in Rome have already done all the research for you.”
“My peeps?” I repeated, amused. “And no, believe me. There’s a ton for you to do. Nobody in Rome can find anything about this supposed prophecy. But it must be out there. I mean, the demons must have some reason for thinking I’m their girl, right?”
“In other words,” she said, “I still have tons of research to do. Can’t anything in this business be simple?”
“Apparently not,” I said, fighting a grin. In truth, I wasn’t overly confident that Laura would find the answer hidden deep within the bowels of the Internet, especially considering that a whole gaggle of Forza researchers hadn’t managed as much. But stranger things had happened. Besides, Laura is the only woman I know who can find anything—anything—on sale somewhere in cyberspace. How many Vatican priests could locate a pair of vintage Chanel sunglasses half a continent away, haggle down to seventy percent off, and get the seller to kick in free shipping? I’m thinking none.
And if I could put that talent to work for me, so much the better.
Besides, I knew she wanted to help. And, frankly, I craved the solidarity.
She cocked her head, looking at me. “What are you grinning about?”
“I was trying to remember what you and I talked about before I got back in the game.”
“The PTA,” she began, counting on her fingers. “Bake sales, how to find fast and easy recipes, our husbands’ careers, our children’s grades, whether we needed to trade in for a bigger car, whether we were going to let our daughters get their driver’s licenses at sixteen, whether we were going to let our daughters date at sixteen. Or wear makeup at sixteen. Or—”
“Fair enough,” I said. “I remember. And you seem to remember in detail.” I paused, not sure I wanted to ask the next question. “Do you miss it? Not having, well, that as the focal point of our morning?” I pointed to the blue tub, once again with a full cadre of zombie parts.
“Are you kidding?” she said. “Life is so much more interesting now.”
“And dangerous,” I pointed out.
“There is that,” she admitted. “But Kate, you already know my answer. It’s the same for me as it is for you.”
“It is?” I’d been trained from childhood to be a Hunter. It was in my blood, in my life. And though I’d lived a few years as a normal mom in a normal family in a normal town, that didn’t mean the real me hadn’t been hiding under the surface. Clearly it had, because now that I was out of retirement, this wasn’t a life I wanted to give up. The job was too important. And, yes, I enjoyed the thrill.
“Paul and I got married right out of high school,” she began. “And I stayed at home and eventually we had a little girl, and life was good. I worked hard on the house. I did all the right things with Mindy’s schools. I was an active mom, a supportive wife. I did absolutely everything I could to build up this marriage for us. You know?”
I nodded, not at all sure where she was going with this. “And then one day I find out the bastard’s been having an affair. I’ve put my heart and soul into a marriage that’s been an illusion all along. It wasn’t real because it was one-sided.”
“I’m not—”
She held up a hand. “What you do—what I do when I help you—it’s important. As important as it gets. And that’s not something I can have an illusion about, you know? I was fooling myself with Paul—or he was fooling me—but not this. Not now. We’re fighting evil. The Big Bad. And when you get right down to it, I think that’s pretty damn amazing. ” She shot me a smile, her cheeks slightly flushed. “So, no. I don’t miss it. Besides,” she added with a nod to my Easter-paraphernalia-covered table, “if you think that the PTA and the kids and volunteer bake sales aren’t on our radar anymore, then you need to crawl out of your hole. Because I’ll research for you until the wee hours of the morning. But I am not stuffing Easter eggs all by myself.”
“Fair enough,” I said, a little humbled that she did get it. For better or for worse, we were in this together, and for all the right reasons. “Let’s decorate ten of these baskets and then I’ll turn you loose to figure out this sword thing.”
“It’s a plan,” she said, reaching for a spool of silver ribbon. “What are you going to do about that guy?” she asked, pointing to our dismembered friend.
“The cathedral. Where else? In fact, I should probably go now, just in case Stuart decides to come home for lunch or something.” I gave her the lowdown on my husband’s recent burst of togetherness—our romantic interlude this morning, his invitation to a movie, and our quick trip to scope out the mansion.
“Not very Stuart-like,” she said. “At least not since the campaign started.”
“I know,” I said. “Nerves? Election jitters?”
“I’m voting for guilt or worry,” Laura announced.
“About what?”
“About spending so much time away from you,” she said. “That’s the guilt part.”
“And the worry?”
She shrugged and reached for a blue M&M. “Maybe he’s
picking up on the fact that you’re keeping secrets.”
“It’s probably nothing,” I said, more to convince myself than her. “Why does it have to be one or the other? I mean, he is my husband, and he does love me.”
“And he so often invites you to movies in the middle of the day, right?”
“Oh, hell,” I said. “It’s gotta be the guilt thing, right? I mean, I’m careful. He can’t have a clue. Can he?”
“You need to tell him,” Laura said, and not for the first time.
“I know,” I said. “And I plan to. I just don’t know when.”
“Figure it out,” she said. “Or else it’s gonna come back to bite you on the butt.”
I nodded. I’d figured out on my own that my butt was in danger. But that didn’t mean I’d figured out the best way to handle it.
I pointed to the zombie. “Right now, I’m going to worry about him. You’ll stay and watch the kids?”
“Of course.”
I grabbed the tub and hefted it. “Catch the door for me?”
“I can’t believe I picked up a tub filled with an entire body. I actually went to the gym twice last week,” she added wryly. “I guess those damn workouts are paying off.”
“That’s just the nature of zombies,” I said. “Extremely light. Extremely strong.”
“Nature or not, it’s still pretty funky.”
“The situation is funky,” I corrected. “And I might be a bit skewed in my opinion by the fact that I’ve had to haul several dead demons to the cathedral over the past few months. But to me, the fact that the zombie is light and easily portable isn’t funky, it’s a perk.”
“Can’t argue with that,” she said, propping the front door open with her foot, then grabbing my keys off the entryway table.
She followed me down the sidewalk to the driveway, then opened the rear of the Odyssey. The tub slid easily in, and I closed the back door. If only I’d known back when we bought this thing how useful it was going to be for hauling around monsters and demons.
As I turned back around, Eddie strolled up the driveway. “Hold up a minute there, girlie.”
“I thought you were at the library.”