by J. R. Rain
Parker looked at me, picking up on my plan. “No.”
“He’s just a man,” I said. “I think.”
“He’s got guards—”
“It’s going to take more than guards to stop me. Wait here.”
“I’m coming with you.”
I laughed. “Like hell you are.”
“You can’t leave me alone in here.”
“Like hell I can.”
“You’re a jerk.”
“Maybe,” I said, smiling before heading back the way I’d come. “But at least I know I’ll find you alive when I come back for you.”
I twisted the door handle so that it was a mangled mash of metal that couldn’t be pried apart without a crowbar. I heard her pounding on the door, and the thoughts coming from her were in language that would have made a sailor blush.
“Back soon, I promise,” I thought-spoke. With that, I dashed off to find Demande.
And to find answers.
Chapter Fifteen
I can keep to the shadows with the best of them.
There was no reason to believe that anyone was looking for me or Parker, but I had to assume they were. Then again, keeping Parker locked up in the cabin would at least keep her safe while I figured out this mess. She had an infuriating way of popping up when I least expected it.
I can still hear you, came her faint thought.
Mind your own business, I thought back. Literally.
And with that, I finally felt her presence leave my thoughts, as I must have finally reached the limit of our telepathic connection. Such connections were rare for me. In fact, I could count on one hand the number of people who had such connections with me. And all of them were women—and all of them had been great loves.
Uh oh. A good thing, perhaps, that Parker didn’t catch that last bit.
I kept my head down and moved quickly; few people saw me, let alone saw me for long. I have a way of not being seen when I don’t want to be. I’m sure this gift has its origins in the supernatural, but it was always something I could do, even as a kid decades ago.
Decades and decades ago.
Soon, I was back at the central bar where I had first had the displeasure of meeting Stevie Scumbag. Groups of people were huddled together around tables, family and friends, whispering urgently among themselves. Word of the killing spread nearly as fast as the zombism would have. Little did they know just how close they’d been to becoming real-life extras on The Walking Dead.
Or Ship of the Damned.
Nice title, I thought, as I scanned the upper decks again up to the luxury suites—and spotting the one we’d seen Jamarcus Demande and his crew leaning over. I counted seven decks up. There would be security checkpoints along the way. Unless the security guards had been pulled from their stations by the chaos, which I suspected they had been.
The luxury suites were accessed by luxury elevators, which were probably set up to keep the riffraff out and let the ultra-rich enjoy the high life in peace.
I considered my options, then slipped away again, before I started drawing attention to myself on a ship that was already buzzing with nervous energy.
Hell, had I not been immortal, I might have been nervous, too.
At a bank of elevators, I found the one that was set off to the side, one that was framed in gilded bronze with a sign above it that read: Restricted.
Bingo.
The elevator required a key card to summon it. Sadly, Parker and I had gone the economical route for this trip, for no reason other than I hadn’t put much thought behind the reservation. Over the decades, I’d certainly acquired my share of money. In fact, anyone’s share. Some of this money had been gained by ill-gotten means. One of the reasons that I had a soft spot for Stevie. Although I pray I was never as sniveling and conniving as he. No, I’d been more of a cat burglar back in the day, fully utilizing all of my supernatural prowess to prey on the rich in more ways than one.
I’m not proud of what I was, but I could at least live with who I was becoming.
And so I milled around the elevator banks until a nervous couple dressed to the nines emerged from the bar and headed toward the restricted elevators. As the man swiped his key card and the doors silently parted, I moved quickly over to them. Both of their eyes narrowed with some suspicions, and as I stepped into the car, I projected to both of them a sense of peace, like I was some sort of eccentric rock star or actor who was slumming it. I was sure dressed for the occasion. Both of them audibly breathed, their shoulders relaxing.
“Where to?” asked the man.
“Seven,” I said and smiled pleasantly at them. They smiled back. At the seventh floor, I relied on my imagination, hunch and a small amount of psychic sensitivity to arrive at what I felt was the correct suite.
I scanned the hallway and noted I was alone. I raised my foot over the door handle, and then kicked hard. As metal and wood exploded and the door cracked free from its upper hinge, I dashed quickly into the room as a hail of bullets erupted around me.
* * *
I was hit at least twice.
Hurt like hell, but only briefly. I was through the firestorm and running fast toward the first gunman. I dove under his next shot, sliding across a polished floor and sweeping his legs out from under him. As he fell, I was already standing and delivering another punch to his closest buddy, a blow that sent the lanky, dark-skinned goon flying off to the side, his machine gun fire puncturing the pressed copper ceiling.
Something was coming down on me from behind, a pool cue, I think. Hard to know since I saw it only in my mind’s eye. My heightened sixth sense was on full alert and it was going to take a lot more than some thug wielding a stick to catch me off guard.
I reached up and caught the stick as it descended, then spun around and lifted hard, catching the big guy under the jaw and undoubtedly chipping a tooth or two.
The click of a hammer being drawn back from across the room caught my attention.
“Silver bullets, mon,” said Demande in his heavy Jamaican accent. He’d been sitting on a plush white couch and drinking a beer. The beer was still in his other hand. He held it perfectly still. Same with the gun that was pointed at my heart.
Yes, silver bullets aren’t just reserved for werewolves—silver piercing my heart was, I knew, instant death for me. A second and final death.
“I came here to talk,” I said.
“Then talk, kemosabe.” The gun, if anything, grew even steadier.
Did it really have silver bullets? I didn’t know. I reached out to him telepathically but encountered a wall of resistance. I wasn’t as good at that as Parker. Maybe I should have brought her along, but then she might already be dead.
“So where did you get the nzambi finger?” I asked.
“From my father.”
I blinked, not following.
Demande grinned. “The finger in the box, my friend, is my father’s finger.”
“You mean he owned it—”
“No, it’s my father’s middle finger.”
I finally understood, and felt sickened.
Demande nodded as he glanced at the movement around me. His men were slowly picking themselves up from the floor. He motioned for me to sit and I did so, on the opposite curved end of the big couch. I probably could have lunged at him and dodged the silver bullet, except I couldn’t take that chance. Not to mention, Demande was a lot more than he seemed. He wasn’t immortal, no, but he was getting there—through dark magic.
“My father crossed me, my friend. No one crosses Demande.”
“And so you turned him into a nzambi?”
“Before I burned him alive. The finger remains, as you can see.”
Despite myself, I shuddered. Takes a helluva lot to make me shudder, but this bastard managed to pull it off. “And why do you keep the finger?”
“The finger,” he said, “is the key.”
“To what?”
“Everything.”
Chapter Sixteen
Demande carefully sipped his beer, then set it down, his gun never wavering. He extended his open palm.
“No more games,” he said. “The box.”
“I threw it overboard.” I braced myself for a silver invasion of the heart.
But Demande smiled again, flashing a wicked row of uneven yellow teeth that looked like so many tombstones. “No, you are far too curious for that. We are alike in many ways.” He leaned forward, so that his beer breath wafted over me. “In many ways. We both crave power over life and death.”
“Not me,” I said. “I’m just here for the seafood buffet.”
“You think I don’t know what you are, Spider? I make it my business to know. One thing I learned from my bastard of a father is to keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
“Yeah, and the family that slays together stays together, right? At least until they kill each other.”
I was pushing his buttons to test the limits of his patience, but instead of getting angry, he gave his rich, island-inflected laugh. He was growing overconfident. He might have known I was a creature of the night, but apparently he was used to getting his way on both sides of the grave.
And having a hell of a lot of fun doing it.
“Please, Spider. The finger.” His smile vanished and his eyes looked as cold as a midnight swamp.
“Sorry, I must have left it in my other pants,” I said.
Demande’s goons had fully recovered and now stood over me, the one with the pool cue rubbing his jaw. Demande nodded to him and before I could react, the goon jabbed me in the neck. A stake through the heart is one thing, but a stick in the throat just pisses me off. I rose to give him another piece of my mind, by way of my knuckles, when the room exploded with thunder and my foot erupted in brilliant lightning bolts of pain. I sat back down and fast, dark red-black blood oozing from a hole in my shoe.
“These Bass Weejuns cost me an arm and a leg,” I joked through the agony.
“No, they only cost you a finger,” Demande said, blowing smoke from his revolver barrel. “Five silver bullets to go.”
I had been pierced by silver before, and although it was incredibly painful, it was only fatal if the precious metal reached my heart. Demande was just firing a shot across the bow. And I couldn’t cross the room before he would be able to pull the trigger again.
I made a big deal out of pulling the wooden box from my pocket. “How many people have you killed over this shriveled little hunk of meat, Demande?”
His dark brow furrowed in thought. “Hmm. More than a hundred? But ‘killed’ is maybe not the right word. After all, mon, if they come back to life after you kill them, have you really done anything wrong?”
I could tell he was at peace with his twisted logic. Someone who would kill his own father—and carry around a magical bit of the old man’s corpse—had probably performed all kinds of mind games over the years. Or decades.
Or maybe even centuries.
I held the box out, observing the way he licked his lips. That finger sure meant a lot to him. And I began to wonder if it was the main source of his dark power.
If he’s such a badass, why is he using a gun? Why can’t he just mumble some spells and sprinkle some lizard dust and turn me into a slave?
I flipped him the wooden box and Demande caught it with his free hand. He leaned forward with an eager gleam in his bloodshot eyes. At least until he flipped open the box and saw that it was empty.
His jaw trembled in rage and he raised the gun as if to knock my brains out. It was pure instinct, because he was aware you couldn’t hurt a vampire that way.
But I didn’t wait around for him to be reminded. Instead, I rolled into the goon just behind me, hearing something snap in his leg as I ripped the pool cue from his grip.
I came up swinging, knocking Demande’s gun from his hand and across the room. I grew confident because Demande didn’t have the finger and that made him vulnerable.
But, as it turned out, I was a little too confident.
“Where’s my finger?” Demande roared. He tossed a punch at me but I ducked underneath it and drove a fist into his stomach. My knuckles ached as if they had smacked into a sack of wet sand. Except my hand kept going right into his gut, and I couldn’t yank it out.
I could have sworn teeth were nipping at my wrist, and Demande gave his rich laugh as I struggled to free myself.
“Give me my finger or I’ll take five of yours in trade,” he said, although his voice sounded strangely muffled now.
Then I realized his ribs were moving around in there under his vest, the bones tightening around my hand.
“I’d give it to you...” I panted “...if I...still had it.”
Vampires don’t really have much use for religion. After all, we don’t really have souls to worry about. But I prayed anyway.
I prayed that Parker would find the finger I’d slipped into her pocket and figure out how to summon its power.
Or, even better, how to destroy it.
Chapter Seventeen
As I struggled to pull my hand free from Demande’s midsection—a hand that was presently being crushed by the man’s ribs—I realized I might have—might have—underestimated the creepy crime lord.
Slash witch doctor.
Slash douchebag.
“Attack me at your own risk, vampire.”
I pulled with all my strength...and finally went tumbling backwards, head over ass. I was fairly certain that I hadn’t so much as pulled my hand free as it had been released.
Creepy as hell.
I picked myself up. Demande’s devil chest gave no indication that my hand had just been embedded within it.
“Neat trick, asshole,” I said.
He threw his head back and laughed. “I assure you, my pale friend, it’s much, much more than a trick.”
I was about to charge him again—this time with the intention of driving my fist through his skull—when a shot rang out and something burning tore through my side. I spun and saw one of the goons holding the pistol with the silver bullets. The bastard.
Being shot sucked. Being shot by a silver bullet really screwed with my day. I could feel the damn thing in there, searing a hole through my guts, eating away at me from the inside.
Demande stepped in front of me. Somehow, he seemed bigger than he did before. Then again, I was hunched over and holding my side. If that bullet had been another six inches up...that would have been the end of the Great Spider Experiment.
“I will ask you again,” said Demande. “Where is the—”
He paused and cocked his head, as if listening to something. What that something could have been was anyone’s guess: dead mama, devil, or dog whistle. He smiled and looked at me. “Ah, the girl has it, of course.”
“Leave...her...out of it,” I gasped.
“But, why, mon? When you brought her into it.” He snapped his fingers and two of his goons stepped closer for their orders. “Find me the girl from earlier. She shall be the first.”
The guy nodded and moved off, grabbing another guy as he went. I heard them exit behind me.
“The first...what?” I panted. As I spoke, I dug my fingers into my side, searching for a silver bullet that might as well have been dipped in acid. It was weird, digging in my own body when I’d just recently been digging in Demande’s. I hoped the guy didn’t have cooties.
“The first of my foot soldiers, you could say.”
I stopped digging; I was pretty sure the bullet wasn’t under the shattered rib I was currently probing. “What do you mean?”
“Oh? I see we struck a chord? Does the bloodsucker have a problem with me using the girl?”
“For what, dammit?”
“She will be the first of my small army of nzambis. A special brigade. She has some...talents...besides the obvious ones.”
I nearly laughed. Nearly. Hard to laugh when silver was currently searing me from the inside—and equally hard to laugh when a maniac is thr
eatening to turn your kind-of girlfriend into the walking dead. “She is one of them. A normal girl.”
“You’d make a terrible poker player, Spider. If she didn’t have paranormal abilities, I wouldn’t have picked up her telepathic signals so easily.”
I was a little jealous. Maybe he could read her mind better than I could.
“Why the hell would you want an army of zombies, anyway?”
“Don’t think of them as the mindless walking dead you see on TV, my friend. Think of them as loyal servants. Livestock.”
I decided not to mention that I had seen his zombies in action—I had seen that they were as far from loyal servants as you could get. Closer to homicidal maniacs. They were probably up and walking around at the moment, since the finger was out of the box. Talk about your poolside buffets
Demande’s rheumy eyes seemed to read my thoughts, which was a frightening thought in and of itself. “I see you are still confused. Let me enlighten you before I decide what to do with you. You see, people like me have uses for creatures like you. Especially your blood. Oh, yes. Vampire blood has many, many uses.”
I went back to digging for the bullet as he spilled his guts like every villain does in every James Bond movie. And I wasn’t worried about his threats. I’d been threatened by bigger and badder than him.
At least, that’s what I kept telling myself as I dug for the bullet.
“You see, Mr. Spider. Once I direct the first of the nzambis to do as I wish...all infected nzambi from the first will also do my bidding.”
“Not...following,” I grunted as I finally gripped the silver tip. I knew I had gripped it because a new burning now seared my fingertips.
“Then let me explain further...once I begin my nzambi army with your powerful little friend, everyone on this ship will be under my control.”
“What’s...the point?” I had the bullet now. Just had to suck up the pain and yank.
“The point, mon, is that I will have twelve hundred people aboard this ship to control completely. Twelve hundred people who will kill for me, destroy for me, run drugs for me, and empty their bank account for me.”