He was right about being a dead leaf, damn him. My life lacked purpose. In my defense, it was difficult to see the purpose of anything after thousands of years. No momentum lasts forever. Noble causes die away, or they succeed; either way you have nothing to fight for anymore. Skills you dedicate yourself to mastering fall out of use. When one driving force in my life waned, I would grasp desperately to the next like a drowning man, anything to give my eternity a glimmer of meaning. Eventually, I became fatalistic. This purpose would end, and so would the next, and the next.
I used to be religious. When Christianity took hold in Europe, I devoted myself wholeheartedly. Surely, the fires I felt upon death were the flames of Hell burning at several thousand years’ worth of sin and heresy. I thought if only I could be a better person, a perfect person, I would be forgiven. I would finally be allowed access to Heaven. I lived many good lives. I am three Catholic saints, though I do not like to say which. I would rather not cause those lucky few who can still have faith to doubt themselves. I will say, though, that the holy bones of one of them are fakes. But despite my piety and virtue, no redemption came, no sweet release or eternal reward.
Then they discovered I was immortal, and they killed me over and over and over again, burning me for witchcraft and consorting with devils everywhere I went. So, I fled to the Far East. I learned of reincarnation, and I accepted it entirely, though by then I was not so much reborn as reformed upon death. But though I obeyed my dharma, I never progressed on the karmic wheel.
The Renaissance brought me back to Europe, and I hoped science, reason, and philosophy would have answers for me, but even now, it fails me. I used to be passionate about travel and exploration. I journeyed down the Silk Road, and I was among the first to colonize the New World. I have been to every continent on the planet, and when man landed on the moon, I trembled with excitement at the prospect of visiting space. Then Apollo 13 happened, and I realized if something went wrong in space, I could be adrift in the void forever. When a boat sank, it was no small aggravation to float about on the ocean until the tides finally carried me ashore thousands of miles away, or in the worst of circumstances, when I had sunk so low, the water pressure held me down, I could at least crawl along the ocean floor inch by inch and eventually find land. Space afforded no such comforts. With that ill-fated mission, my desire to explore and discover, my last remaining passion died away, finally giving up the ghost after its long coma between Manifest Destiny and the Space Race.
For centuries, I sat idle like a stagnant, lifeless pond. I only happened to be in France for the revolution out of curiosity, and it was the Marquis’s charismatic speeches on passionate self-interest that gave me even the slightest bit of purpose: pleasing myself. But even hedonism can become boring.
These past two centuries, he had maintained his zeal for self-worship, but that sort of passion is for young men, and I had lost my youth and vigor long ago. I had nothing left to believe in, nothing to strive for. No principles, no goals.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” I said. “During the second World War, what side were you on?”
“My side,” he said with a smile.
“And which side did that happen to favor?”
“All sides. Everyone needed weapons, and I needed money and an opportunity to help redraw old borders. Everyone got what they wanted. What about you? The way you’ve been moping about, I wonder if you were on any side at all.”
“I was on the losing side,” I said.
“The Germans or the Japanese? Either way I’m shocked. They were so organized. So principled. You were neither of those things.” He eyed me up and down once. “But I could see the Italians. They seem laid back and laissez faire enough for you.”
“No,” I said. “Not the Axis powers. The Jews.”
“That figures,” he said. “You had been a dead thing for decades. Small wonder you should fall in with others.”
His words brought on a sudden clarity. He was right that I was a dead thing adrift on the centuries, but it was my nature to return to life. And now this parasite wished to have me thank him for his efforts to make me more like him, who survived only because I had been too afraid to face eternity alone?
He wanted me to believe I was dead until he found me and saved me, that I owed my life to him. He was wrong about one thing. One important detail. I owed him nothing. I did not owe him, not for his fifty thousand dollars or his efforts to improve me. I did not owe him for all the fine dinners and expensive wines. No, he owed me. It was I who kept him alive, who gave him a new body and made him young again every half century or so. Who was he to make me feel weak and powerless? Who was he to make me beg to be part of his games and then be grateful for the abuse he gave?
“You’re right,” I said, as power and purpose swelled within my chest for the first time in ages.
The Marquis had saved my life, though not the way he had intended. I grabbed him by the neck and kissed him passionately, then flung him down on the couch, climbing atop him and taking what he withheld from me for years on end to keep me on his leash. I could see the satisfaction in his eyes. It wasn’t the sex that pleased him. I knew him better than to think that. He got off thinking that I had succumbed to his will, that I would agree to be his protégée and puppet. Let him think his silly thoughts.
This violent primal lust was not hello. It was goodbye.
Epilogue
JAMIE
AND START MY LIFE ANEW
With my bills secured for the year, I spent the next few months establishing the Jamie Wilshire identity and volunteering at the local women’s shelter. There were too many men like the Marquis in the world and someone had to put them in their place. Word had gotten around that for a couple hundred bucks and a pint of blood, I could fix those problems. The popular theory whispered behind my back was that I was either a vampire or a witch. The vampire theory I laughed off, mostly because I volunteered during the day, but also because I hadn’t heard tale of vampires in decades. The witch story I laughed off as well, though it was technically at least somewhat true. I did do magic. What I told them, though, was that I also helped a lot with the Red Cross in memory of my poor, departed hemophiliac father, and to support that fact, I always made a point to collect at blood drives.
When a woman wanted a problem fixed, I would take her to the soonest blood drive, collect her sample, and charge a fee on a sliding scale based on income. Then I would put her up in my apartment, let her take a week to get herself together and make a list of all the great things about herself. While she took time to celebrate herself and find her inner whatever, I would assume her identity, track down the no-good sons of bitches and scare them into the next state. Those few who didn’t take kindly to being intimidated usually tried to kill me, and I let them. Then, when I would call them at midnight or appear outside their window, they usually ended up committed or they were scared onto the opposite coast. No more problems.
It didn’t pay as well as being a professional target, but it kept the bank account from depleting quite so rapidly until somehow word got out regarding my unique services. Hopefully Bill Thompson, or as he was now known, James Monroe, had many wealthy associates with people out to kill them. I doubted it. That career seemed dead on arrival, and unlike me, it wouldn’t be coming back to life any time soon. I wasn’t surprised. How does one even advertise without attracting unwanted attention, and even if one got noticed, who would take a person seriously if they claimed to be immortal or hypermortal or whatever I was?
It came as some surprise then when a small white package arrived with no return address, or even mailing address. Only the name Lazarus scrawled in respectable penmanship gave me any indication that it was for me.
I opened the box and found inside a stack of business cards, a mobile phone, and a letter. Perhaps it was my experience with Nick Presario and his philosophy of visualizing the career you want, but I checked the business cards first.
They were fine card
s, the color of bone with a linen texture and raised black ink. Embossed in the center in a simple, somber script, the text read:
Lazarus, Inc
443.648.DEAD
No picture, no description of services. Just a business name and a phone number, which I assumed matched the phone. Intrigued, I unfolded the letter.
Dear Jamie Wilshire,
I doubt that’s your real name, but it is the one you chose for now, so it is the one I will use. I was having a crisis of faith when I met you. I was convinced that with you knowing what I do professionally and what you do, you would be disappointed to learn that you helped me reconcile my job with my morals, and because of you, I can continue doing what I do. Then, in the very difficult process of tracking you down, I’ve seen the work you’ve been doing, and I learned that perhaps we see eye-to-eye after all.
You showed me that there are good people in the world that need protecting and bad people in the world that don’t. I think we know how that division of labor falls. These business cards should help you uphold your end. I’ve kept a few to share the good word as well. Any work that comes my way that seems like it belongs in your pile, I’ll pass on to you. You live in Baltimore, so I assume you’ve seen The Wire. Well, this isn’t a burner like the phones they used on the show. I went to a lot of trouble to make sure it’s clean. Hold onto it. You keep saving people and I’ll keep paying the phone bill.
Thank you for helping me realize my purpose, as I hope I can help you fully realize yours.
Your biggest fan and coffee girl,
Olivia
With one package, my assassin had brought my career back from the dead. Something inside me stirred to life as well.
I read the letter over again. And again. Was that my purpose, to protect people? To help them escape those who would do them harm? I held a single business card in my hand and felt virtually no weight at all, and yet the gravity of the thing pulled everything toward it. Not just my gaze, my attention, but also my destiny. I had been looking at my circumstances as dying over and over again, but it’s the opposite. It’s about returning to life, being rebuilt and being reborn. I was about new beginnings. Life begets life, they say, and my rebirth should beget others.
Bill Thompson had a new life because of me, a new opportunity to learn from all his mistakes, to have the children with Valerie he never could with Caroline. All those women from the shelter could go home without the fear that their oppressors might one day return to drag them back down. They could start over.
I had no way to get in contact with Olivia, but I knew our paths would cross again, and even if they didn’t, I could rest more peacefully knowing she was out there, holding my opposite orbit to keep the world in balance.
I don’t know why, but something about that notion of balance, purpose, and destiny sent my spirit back to Japan, a time in my life I hadn’t thought of in decades. Pulling a pen from my pocket, I scrawled a little haiku on the bottom of her letter.
A lone grape rolls free.
Two together on one stem,
Those grapes reach the king.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book would not have been possible without my family, especially my wife, who supported me and helped me flesh out the idea back in 2011-2012 and allowed me the time to write the first draft in 2013. Thanks also go to my kids, who inspire me to write and publish, but also make it hard because they want to spend every waking moment playing with Daddy. Very little thanks at all go to the cats, who sit on the keyboard or my arms or stands in front of the monitor making it virtually impossible to do anything.
Thank you to my alpha readers: my wife, Josh Dailey, and Houston. My wife’s pretty much the first to read anything I write, and she always provides me good feedback about the characters or pacing. Not being married to me, Josh is usually the second person to read my stuff. He’s also excellent with feedback, and a good guy in general. Lastly, Houston, who’s not only a good guy and a great friend, but also the basis for the character of the same name. He’s not an assassin. He won a contest in which I asked, “If you could be anyone, if you couldn’t stay dead, what would you do?” He replied, “I would commit, like, so many crimes.” It was my favorite response, so I named the character after him and gave him a few of his traits.
Thanks also to my beta readers: Dick Cox, Kenneth Cox II, and Nate. I sent it out to over a dozen people. You’re the only ones who gave me notes. Thanks.
LV Book Design, the cover is amazing! Better than everything I came up with. 10/10! Would recommend!
Thanks to Dead Gentlemen/Zombie Orpheus Entertainment. You had nothing to do with this book, but you convinced me there could be an audience for New Tricks and I forgot to thank you then.
Thanks to my gaming buddies (Chris, Jessica, Brad, Andrew, Maloy, Same Nate, Stephen, Rachel, Brendan, Abby, Different Chris, Different Different Chris, Chantelle, David, Brandon, Jimmie, Leslie, Robert, and Jere), my improv buddies (Different Andrew, Katie, Different Katie, Different Robert, Matt, Ginger, Different Stephen, Same Houston, and Michael), and especially those friends who exist at the intersection (Different Different Different Chris, Different Matt, Different Different Robert, and Different David) for keeping me creative and telling stories in those times when I wasn’t writing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sean Arthur Cox is the author of New Tricks, which is a self-published tongue-in-cheek fantasy novel that is rated better than any novel without an editor has a right to be. He has also already written drafts for the next two books in the Corpse series, which he hopes to clean up and push out in the next few years. Self-publishing aside, he has made some choices in his life that have led him down roads he would never have expected. He’s worked jobs he didn’t even realize existed. He’s worked jobs he never in ten thousand years would have thought he’d do. He spends what little free time he has not working at home with his family and friends playing board games, card games, and games where his kid stands in the middle of the kitchen and claims she’s hiding and he’ll never find her. When he’s not doing any of the above, he’s probably making props or world-building for RPGs and future novels. When he’s not doing that, he’s waking up before five a.m. in hopes of getting half an hour’s writing in before the work day starts. In his perfect world, his work day would start when he sat down to write.
The Daredevil Corpse
Coming 2018.
(…or… you know… whenever I can find the time to edit it…)
The Professional Corpse (The Departed Book 1) Page 17