by A. J. Aalto
After what seemed like an infinity of squishy, slapping struggle, he reared back to show me the dark purple head of his bobbing cock, giving it a squeeze. My eyes widened though I wanted to cram them shut. What glistened at the tip was not semen; bright ruby red, a droplet of blood balanced there before running down the length of his shaft to the edge of his gripping hand. He stroked it once, displaying it for me, and the skin rolled off in his hand. Horror dragged a guttural choking noise from me.
His voice rasped, grated out in a foul gust: “Isn't this what you want, you filthy cunt?”
I broke from the nightmare with a windless gasp that turned into a half-sob. Flinging out a hand, I shoved my cool sheets off in a jumble. I scrambled upright, coated in sweat, dry-mouthed with revulsion, shoving strands of damp hair off my forehead. I tried to call out for Harry; my petrified voice box was hoarse and words didn't so much belt out as leak thinly. I tried again and failed. Worse yet was the sudden realization, the hole of vacant loneliness, the absolute blankness in the cabin: Harry was gone, everyone was gone, I was completely abandoned to my own resources. Except…
I didn't want to crane over the edge and look, but now I could hear it, closer, and holding my breath I could hear it even louder: talon-like fingers reaching, skittering on the hardwood, scritching, snagging the rag rug with jagged yellow nails. I felt my mouth form a perfect O. The wood blackened with foul magic, creaking under the ghoul's touch, as though his flesh was super-cooled gas of a poisonous class and the planks were a living organism, infected. Smoky crystals formed in the wood like frost on a window.
“What do you want?” I tried to shout; my voice was barely a whisper. “Where did you come from?”
Wearing icy slivers on ruined flesh, the ghoul tumbled on his back on my floor to show me his face: above a bare strip of lip hanging atop exposed gums and teeth were Gary Chapel's hazel eyes, clouded by death. A wet snarl purled on the back of his tongue. “You brought us here. You did this. You did it.”
Goblets of fatty tissue and red flesh dribbled off the ghoul's body onto my rag rug. As I watched, his sockets sagged like melting wax running down the side of a candle, painfully wet-red with unseeing gore, gaping at me, and his eyeballs burst out to spill their contents in a runny ooze. (“You did this.”) His arms were hairless and skinless, shaking with the effort to roll back to his knees. He looked too weak, or too crippled by cold, to move quickly or unfurl his clenched arms. I could see every tendon pulling, every ligament and muscle and vein. It seemed each of its movements tore silent torment from its gaping maw. (“You did it.”)
I backed away, pulling my sheets to me, when it hit me: no smell. Still dreaming. Its hand landed on the side of my bed and hauled up, bringing its eyes level with the mattress. Shitfuckwakeup!
Bolting upright, I bit down on my tongue, hard. My mouth watered, and my eyes stung; awake for real this time. More evidence my brain hates me. Nobody needs to experience a dream like that. Ever.
Without a second thought to things lurking under the bed or anywhere else, I thrust out of bed and ran full-tilt to the living room, where Harry's reassuring cool familiarity was a bobbing buoy in the night sea.
Harry still lounged in his wingback chair, frowning unhappily down through his pince nez at a copy of Procession, erotic poetry by Ruby Valli. He did not look up, merely lifted a corner of the blanket from his lap in invitation. When I crawled there eagerly and put my head on his chest, he folded it back, tucking it up around my shoulders.
“That surely must have been an adventuresome dream,” he noted quietly. “Your sweet heart is knocking like a Jackson Model C.”
My throat still gluey with residual fear, I ground out, “I don't know what that is, Harry.”
“I know.” He paused in his page turning to stroke a soothing hand across my forehead. “No more dreaming. Sleep tight. Don't let the grave bugs bite.”
And I slept.
THIRTY-NINE
Morning had slithered into the living room starting with the slightest lift of darkness, easing the nervous press of night. Even before the clock displayed a reasonable hour, the heavy attendance of that black cellophane glaze lurking at the windows traded places with a softer, greyer version. Dawn was made at last official by Harry's silent movement across the room to shut the blinds.
I'd spent the rest of the night where Harry had put me: curled up on the couch wrapped in a tight circle with a hot water bottle tucked against my belly.
I had to cling to the hope it was only Danika Sherlock behind the ghoul. Better the devil you know. If it wasn't, then I had somehow managed to drive more than one person to homicidal rage. Goody. I know I'm not exactly charming, but I had no idea I could inspire such malevolence.
A bottle full of butane sat on the coffee table. Harry's engraved lighter sat beside it. I hadn't seen Harry fetch them, but they were, combined, an excellent idea. Ghoul plus fire equals no more ghoul problem. Too bad fire didn't banish nightmares, too.
Harry still sat where he had for the last three hours, in the wingback chair. He had traded Ruby Valli's poetry for another copy of Bed and Breakfast Ownership, with his rimless pince nez perched low on the bridge of his nose, delicately licking a fingertip with each page turn. I didn't see how he could be so nonchalant after everything that had happened. I was still vibrating at overload on the angst meter. The memory of standing at the funeral home sink rinsing rotted, slimy matter off my hands flashed back and stars prickled and swam in my vision. I pressed my face into a throw cushion and willed it away.
To change the subject rattling in my head, I groaned, “When's the last time you checked on Botticelli's fallen angel?”
Harry's attention flicked through the floor and he shrugged. “Dead asleep, if you'll pardon the pun.”
Since it was my brother he was talking about, the humor fell sour in my throat. “How long is he gonna be out?”
His hand see-sawed. “Days. Perhaps as long as a week. I gave him my supply from Shield to fill him up, now that you are well enough to resume… oh, forgive my dreadful manners, I should not assume. You are still well enough for me, are you not?”
“Whenever you're ready, but I'm warning you, I might fall asleep while you feed.”
Harry asked. “Please don't. I would be quite bothered to have you wilted and insensible during a feed.” His nose wrinkled and it moved his reading glasses. “Objectionable thought.”
“You know what's a more objectionable thought?” I asked, pointing at his book. “You, using tourists as your own personal international buffet. We're not opening a bed and breakfast.”
He put the book aside without comment and picked up a nursing handbook.
“Way to sidestep one landmine and plunk directly on another,” I said tiredly. “That's another no.”
“I could use some, how do you say, uncritical affection,” he told me, echoing my own complaint.
“You've been content to be the idle rich for more than four centuries, why are you looking for a career all of the sudden? Or are you just trying to drive me bonkers?” His caught-out grin behind his fist was all the answer I needed. I growled at him, and he wiggled his eyebrows playfully.
I picked up Procession, read a few lines, got bored, and put it aside. On the coffee table was an older book in green cloth binding, with gilt title: A Suite Burlesque. A glance inside this one had me reading aloud, perplexed, “What does ‘with straining yard’ mean, Harry?”
“With turgid member,” he translated, to my blank look. “Erect penis.”
With a blink, I dropped the book. “Holy crap! Who writes that in a friggin’ poem?”
Unhappily, Harry said, “At least one poet and one plagiarist.” But he did not elaborate.
When Chapel came downstairs, his long-jawed Great Dane face displayed worry with all the subtlety of a neon beer sign. Considering he was a master of self-control, it was with dread that I ventured:
“Problem?”
“Oh no.” He straightened his tie an
d helped himself to coffee from the thermos in front of me. He took it black, and filled my cup without being asked. “Good news, actually. My unit chief approved a request to transfer the PCU headquarters out of our bunker in Quantico and into the new addition to the Boulder field office. We're also adding two branches on the west coast and one in Michigan.” His calf-brown eyes scrutinized me from behind his glasses. “Are you all right?”
“I'm fine, just a little tired.” And a little ghoul-sexy. I played with Harry's lighter. “So a new budget must have come down the line for you?”
Chapel nodded. “Based on the rise in revenant-on-human violence, we've got the go-ahead to hire licensed hunters to augment each team. I've recommended Batten for promotion to handle the Michigan unit.”
This was the source of the ripple of stress that again creased Chapel's forehead, I thought. Batten hadn't said yes. Maybe he hadn't said an outright no, either. If there was a reason for his hesitation that had anything to do with me, it was probably best I didn't know.
Harry did not look up from his nursing manual. “I am quite sure Agent Batten is a sound choice, and he shall do an adequate job of it.”
“Can't be much worse than this, anyway,” I said with a shrug, trying not to think about it. Chapel considered me quietly while I blew on the coffee in my Kermit the Frog mug and sipped carefully. “When I pry my tired ass off this couch, I'm going to drive into Boulder and see if Ruby Valli has any books on flesh magic I can borrow.” And see if she'll let me play Truth or Dare with her fourteen hundred-year-old immortal companion.
Chapel was still considering me. Dark circles bloomed in the corners of his eyes. “Maybe I should come with you.”
“To Ruby's?” I yawned behind my hand. “What for?”
Chapel looked like he was thinking about insisting. His eyes snuck sideways to my silent revenant as though Harry might back him up.
“Look, I know what questions to ask better than you would,” I assured him. “And if there's anything I need to know that I forget to ask, Ruby Valli will tell me. She's a rare resource.”
Chapel nodded, finished his coffee. “You think my presence might inhibit.”
“It always inhibits me,” I joked. Chapel surprised me with a half-smile of acknowledgement.
“I'll guard Harry until you return.”
I bet you will, I thought, the green-eyed monster tugging in my chest. He excused himself, fingers pressed to his jaw hinge, exploring some pain there that made his forehead wrinkle.
Harry stretched his legs out in front of him and stared at me, calculating, measuring, probably marking off possible signs of temporary insanity on a mental checklist. I gave him my version of the inscrutable revenant gaze, refusing to squirm, cool and unflappable; it lasted a whole three seconds before I cracked.
“Okay, okay,” I hissed, slapping my pillow. “I heard it! Michigan! So what?”
“Shall we discuss this, so that you might maintain a scrap of dignity, decency and common sense through this development?” A cello tube of English chocolate-covered digestive cookies appeared as if by magic in his hand and his fingers made quick business of unwrapping one end.
“Oh no. You're not twisting me into a corner with your word play.”
Harry's eyebrow rings twitched. “A conversation with your closest companion is not generally considered a trap.”
“Which is why it's such a brilliant trap.”
“Agent Batten must go to Michigan, MJ.” His voice left no room for argument. “The kindest thing you could do now is make it easy for him.”
“Well, his momma was paying me to be nice to him, but I suppose I could give her a refund and go full-speed-ahead on the bitch train.” I rolled my eyes to him. “Your casket misses you. T-minus…?”
“Oh, my doe.” He smiled tolerantly. “Do not pretend with me.”
“Sounds like an impossible task, doesn't it? But I'm up for it.”
“You must be more firm. Push him away. Be as stern and unforgiving as the Tyburn tree; it is for his own good, and yours, after all.”
“What tree?” My brows puckered, then shook my head so he wouldn't bother explaining. “It's not like I've been warm and fuzzy.”
“I am confident that, given this new opportunity, Agent Batten will weigh his options and see that there is really nothing here for him. It would be unfair of you to confuse the situation.”
“By pouring on the infamous Marnie Baranuik charm? You know, the charm that has all the fellas clambering into my bed?” I played through memories of me attempting various seduction techniques on highly unimpressed men, most of which ended with me flipping off a couch with arms flailing, or clonking my head on a bedpost. I layered on the sarcasm. “Well, it's true: I'm a sex goddess. That's my cross to bear. But I'll try to keep it under wraps for a bit longer until he's safely away.”
Harry lowered his voice discretely. “It is no secret that you and Agent Batten have an unfortunate chemistry. It is an ill wind that can blow no one any good.”
He was right, but I didn't have to like it, and there was no point in faking nonchalance. “I vow to be my cheap, wretched, vulgar self, Harry.”
He drew himself up straight. “Shruff and cinders, we'll never be free of him!”
“I didn't mean that.” I exhaled hard, blowing a spiky strand of hair away from my temple where it tickled. “Harry, you're frowning at me again. Everyone's always frowning at me, as if they can change what I'm doing just by pulling their eyebrows into some magic alignment. Stop it.”
“You are plotting something. I do wish you would tell me what it is, so I can brace myself for the inevitable cock-up. The last time you ran off without warning, you got yourself mutilated by a knife-wielding lunatic.”
I got myself mutilated. “How dare I?” I marveled. “Tell me how you really feel, Harry.”
“It is not in a revenant's nature to prevaricate. Would you prefer that I do?”
Yes. No. Sometimes. I sighed. “I like knowing where you stand. And yes I'm plotting. I thought I'd swing by the Ten Springs Motor Inn, slip under the yellow tape and go full-tilt on the Blue Sense, see where it takes me.”
He appeared to relax. “Gloves off?” When I nodded, he tested the air for lies, and, finding truth, ironed the creases out of his forehead. “Well, don't you take the biscuit.”
That sounded like a compliment. “I'm going to have to finish this, Harry. Me. I didn't notice the last time I worked with them how green the PCU is.”
“Perhaps the cure to your blindness might have been lifting your head out of Agent Batten's lap?”
It was the other way around, I thought but most definitely did not say. “They're undertrained, underfunded, undereducated. I don't see that they're going to be much help until it's time to make an arrest, and that's never going to happen unless I step it up.”
“I'm not sure I'd undervalue these gents quite to that degree, but they do seem to be floundering. To be sure, you are not considering going to the Motor Inn alone?” He contemplated the area of my belly wound. Then his eyes dropped to my hips. “On second thought…heaven forbid you find your cheap, wretched and vulgar self in a motel room with Agent Batten.”
“Oh, I think it'd be pretty safe, what with my blood being the new accent feature of Room 4's decor.”
“Please, ducky. Agent Batten misses nothing, but he also seems perfectly capable of overlooking the obvious, dodging reason and common sense when it suits him, including fraternization rules and buckets of blood. He's practically gagging for it.”
“My blood?”
“No, goose, that would be me.” He reached over and picked up his bookmark, putting the dream of nursing vulnerable humans aside for the day.
“I won't take Batten,” I said, since it seemed like a wise suggestion. Taking Batten to Ruby Valli's to question such an old revenant would be like taking a diabetic kid into an ice cream factory and letting him see how the mint chocolate chip is made. Also, a room with a bed and Beefcake Batten�
� well, that would make me the poor kid being shown what she can't or shouldn't have.
“I'll go alone.”
“And if the inimitable Ms. Sherlock is lying in wait?”
“Why would she know where I…” Maybe she lied about no longer being clairvoyant, dummy. “I'll take the Beretta.” At his doubtful look, I promised, “I'll even load it.”
“You are not telling me everything.”
His pupils were soft, human ash grey but that infernal intelligence swam behind them, threatening to surface. I waited him out in silence, a contest of wills with a creature who had all the time in the world to stare unblinkingly back at me. I cocked my head, smiled, and told him:
“Sometimes I just wanna grab your face and give you a big smooch. You're so adorable when you pout, Harry.”
Finally, he clipped, “An immortal never pouts.” Then: “Perhaps you should take that charming Sheriff Hood with you.”
“Interesting. Not Deputy Dunnachie?”
Harry did not pause. “Sheriff Hood makes himself available to you.”
“His Doubty McDoubterson vibe would squelch my psi.”
“Give him a good bollocking.”
I felt my eyebrows pucker. “Yowza. I don't know what that means, but it sounds real dirty.”
“You and Agent Batten are both getting on my wick of late.”
“Harry, I don't know what that means either!”
“Well, clearly I am to be no help here!” He stood, sniffing with disdain. “But you listen here: this time, no quarter given. Is that perfectly understood?”
I had no idea what the hell that meant, but he was getting worked up, so I nodded solemnly. He placed a rare kiss on my forehead. “I still think you should consider bringing Sheriff Hood with you. He's a safe pair of hands, and fit as a butcher's dog.”
I thought that sounded about right, though I'd never seen a butcher's dog per se. I doubted Hood would enjoy tagging along with me to see Ruby Valli: retired Gold-Drake & Cross employee, present-day curiosity shop owner, ninety-three-year-old paintball enthusiast and rumored ex-dabbler in the black arts. If she didn't have books on flesh magic to lend me, I was pretty much out of luck. And if she didn't mind me chatting up her revenant, that'd be great. But then again, if he was powerful enough to be awake all the live-long day, I might be placing myself in a bad way; Gregori Nazaire had a rather lusty reputation. Worse: I heard he digs blondes.