Shallow Grave (The Lazarus Codex Book 3)

by E. A. Copen

  The old granite palace stood at the end of a row of smaller flat slabs where most of the monuments had been either toppled or badly damaged. It was longer than it was wide, though it was still wide enough to take up the same amount of space as two normal plots. The domed top and two smaller spires stood high enough that a curious person could see them from beyond the fence. Columns carved into the fading likeness of two women, kneeling and praying, their heads holding up a short overhang.

  I saw no sentry posted outside the missing door, and nothing inside, but I already knew it wasn’t empty. A slight scraping sound from the darkness announced the presence of at least two ghouls pacing back and forth inside.

  I planted my staff. “Knock-knock. Is the lady of the house in?”

  The ghoul that poked his head out of the darkness was no lady. He had a protruding lower jaw, flappy, bat-like ears, and oversized eyes. His bony arms hung lower than a human’s and ended in calloused fingers and sharpened fingernails. He shuffled to the edge of the darkness and blinked as his eyes adjusted to the light.

  When he saw me, he scowled. “No lady. Go away, Dead One. No fun today.” He started to shuffle away.

  “Hold on, pal. You won’t get rid of me that easy. I’m here to see King Serkan.”

  He stopped, his saggy ass and boney, hunched-over spine in full view. That’s the worst part about ghouls. They don’t wear clothes. Invoking the name of his king got his attention, though. He slowly turned around and another ghoul, this one much thinner with smaller eyes and a shriveled nose, joined him in the doorway.

  “King no see Dead One,” said the newcomer.

  “King busy,” added the first. “No visitors, he say.”

  I lowered the top of my staff and wiggled it in his direction. “He’ll see me. Unless you want me to call the neighborhood watch and tell them I saw some creepy guys desecrating tombs in the area.”

  The ghoul with the shriveled nose made a hissing sound, the move exposing a mostly toothless jaw. The few teeth that remained were serrated and yellow. Hard to believe the ghoul in front of me had once been a human being. Almost as hard to tell how long ago that was.

  The bat-eared ghoul turned to study Khaleda, his nostrils flaring. After a few moments of sniffing the air, he dropped to his knuckles and repeated the hissing sound his pal had made. “No want trouble with the spawn of Morningstar.”

  I looked to Khaleda who stood next to me with her arms crossed. “You know these guys?”

  “Smell,” said the shoveled nose ghoul, waving his hand. “We keep peace.”

  “I don’t give a damn about my father’s peace,” Khaleda answered. “I’m not him. However, if you don’t show us to your king right now, you won’t have to worry about it much longer.” She uncrossed her arms, and her hand strayed to the explosive formula on her belt.

  “Yield,” screeched the bat-eared ghoul. “Take you, but not happy will he be.” He turned and did a sort of skipping, loping movement, like an injured rabbit trying to hop, before waving for us to follow.

  “You’re useful,” I said to Khaleda. “I’m not sure I like it.”

  She smirked. “Don’t like it when your male dominance is threatened?”

  “I don’t like it when I get associated with an Archon.”

  She flipped her hair behind her shoulder and stepped forward. No way in hell was I letting her take the lead, so I ran to get ahead of her and ducked into the tomb.

  I’d been in the Court of Bone before, but it’d been a few months. Generally, I tried to avoid talking to ghouls. For one, there’s the smell. Everything they touched reeked of death, rot, and decay. I lifted my shirt over my mouth and nose and still couldn’t filter it out.

  Second, ghouls didn’t think like humans, even though they used to be human. That means they don’t build their strongholds with humans in mind. See, ghouls like to dig. They do it almost compulsively, which means their strongholds are basically just a network of underground tunnels. In New Orleans, underground tunnels flood, and we’d just recently weathered our first hurricane of the year.

  Once we’d cleared the initial downhill slope of dirt floor inside the mausoleum, I found myself ankle deep in putrid mud. The passageway branched off into three narrower tunnels, and our ghoul guide splashed down the one on the right, bounding through the fetid water on knuckles and toes as if he were playing in the ocean. He paid no mind to his taller, slower guests, at least not until he reached the end of that tunnel. Then he stopped, looked back and bounced around in a circle like an excited terrier.

  We took a right, then a left, then walked down another, longer corridor that seemed to zig and zag without reason. The corridor spilled into a large cavern with a ceiling made of tree roots. They reached down like grasping fingers, clutching human skulls turned upside down and filled with water. Dozens of ghouls squatted in the room, their glowing red eyes darting around in silence. Scattered among them were bits of skeletons, the white bones practically glowing in the dark. To my right, two ghouls broke into a hissing fight over a detached arm with the flesh still attached that ended with one biting the other and making a meal of him. I shivered and resolved to keep my gaze fixed forward.

  The ghoul throne was made of bone, but that’s not the creepy part. It sat on a platform of rotting bodies, arranged in such a way to form stairs. Ghouls gathered around the platform, ripping bits off to chew on or being chased away by the others when they tried to take too much.

  Serkan, king of New Orleans’ ghouls, sat on his throne, a figure of shadow against the chair of bones. Unlike the rest of the ghouls, his eyes glowed an icy, inhuman blue. When he blinked, the entire chamber darkened, and when he grinned every ghoul in the room mimicked the movement.

  “Kneel,” a booming voice commanded.

  Khaleda and I stopped several paces from the platform of bodies. I planted my staff in the mud and guts slurry I’d had to walk through. “Sorry, your highness, but kneeling doesn’t agree with me. Wouldn’t want to ruin my last decent pair of jeans.”

  “I kneel to no man,” Khaleda said.

  Damn. Why’d she get all the cool lines?

  Serkan leaned forward so I could make out the outlines of pale cheekbones and a nose. “I am no man. Nor will you mistake me for one of these—” He gestured to the ghouls around him. “—imperfections. I do not bear the patience and humor of my retainers. Kneel.”

  At his command, an unseen force crashed into the back of my knees and pressed on my shoulders, forcing me to my knees in the disgusting water. Half a second later there was a splash next to me as Khaleda went down too. I turned to swing my staff at whatever prankster ghoul thought it’d be a clever idea to force the issue and found the space behind me empty.

  “Now,” said Serkan, rising. He snapped his fingers, and the host of ghouls surged toward us, forming a tight ring of hissing, spitting, flesh-eating monsters. Serkan grinned. “Any last words, Horseman?”

  Chapter Ten

  “Hold it,” I shouted as the ghouls closed. “Don’t I have the right to know why I’m about to get eaten?”

  “You mean aside from your blatant lack of courtesy and respect?” Serkan said. His fingers moved as if to stroke a beard, though I couldn’t make one out in the darkness. “Because I can? Because I don’t like you. Choose one.”

  “You can’t just kill me because you don’t like me.”

  I attempted to stand and quickly found myself face down in the water, struggling against whatever power was holding me down. There was a flash of heat against my back and the power let up. I pushed myself out of the filthy water, gagging on vomit and spitting. Once I blinked away whatever I’d gotten in my eyes, I took in the scene.

  Khaleda stood next to me, a glowing vial in her hand. It cast a painfully bright, white light over the immediate area, one the ghouls had scampered desperately away from. Serkan’s gaunt features were visible in the shadows, his face a grimace. “You forget your place,” Khaleda spat. “You won’t lay a hand on him. He’s un
der my protection.”

  I stared at her, slack-jawed and unsure of how to respond. What would’ve happened if I’d come down there alone? While I didn’t like the idea of being under the protection of someone connected to an Archon, I had to acknowledge she’d saved me from a miserable death. Maybe I could’ve taken two or three, maybe even four ghouls, but not dozens.

  Serkan lowered his arm from shielding his face. “The Horseman is not welcome here. Not after how he treated my retainers the last time we offered him help.”

  Khaleda shot me a questioning glare.

  I shook my head. “I’ve got no idea…” Then it dawned on me. The ghoul at the gate a month ago. The one who had told me about the body in Jackson Park. I hadn’t treated him gently, and because the ghouls shared a sort of hive mind, perhaps banging his head against an iron bar hadn’t been the wisest move.

  Raising my hands in surrender, I got back to my feet. “Your Highness, I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”

  He rushed down from the platform of bodies faster than any human could’ve moved, his body moving as if it were a liquid rather than a solid. Strong fingers gripped my shirt and pulled me forward until I was staring into inhuman, icy blue eyes. Serkan’s head was much larger than mine, and his body was proportional to his head. Black horns I hadn’t seen before curled back from his head, wrapping in a tight coil.

  “No misunderstanding, Horseman,” Serkan snarled, his voice rough. “Humankind has looked down on mine for thousands of years. We have been reduced to cartoons, jokes. Comedic acts. You have forgotten that we are monsters, we who made the ghoul. We who came before.”

  “A little hard to forget when you’re in my face. Personal space, buddy. Even a monster can be polite.”

  He howled in frustration and cast me to the ground. Lucky for me, the gross water broke my fall. “You protect this?” he asked of Khaleda.

  She shrugged. “Morningstar’s orders.”

  Serkan snorted like a bull and walked back up to sit on his throne. He leaned on a fist, slouching as if he were pouting. “I will not kill you, not if Morningstar wants you. Even I know that’s a fool’s gamble. There will be no fresh meat today.” He said the last sentence in a booming voice that carried through the chamber.

  A collective groan of disappointment worked its way through the ghouls’ ranks, and they stalked off, licking their lips and hissing at each other. I watched them carefully, making sure none of them tried to dart after me against Serkan’s orders. He’d probably punish anyone who tried, but not until after they’d eaten their fill.

  “What is it you want, Horseman?”

  I focused on Serkan. “Last month, one of your ghouls stopped me to tell me a story. Said those who made the dead sing wrong had left some foul meat here, meat that he buried in Jackson Park. Now the police have a lot more bones. Bones with teeth marks. Child bones.”

  “And you want to know if any of my people are guilty?” His eyes blinked, but otherwise, Serkan didn’t move.

  “Actually, I was thinking feral ghoul. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  He blinked twice. “None of my ghouls have dined on these bones.”

  I didn’t miss the careful wording. He hadn’t outright lied to me, but I sensed he knew more than he’d let on so far. His people might not have eaten those kids, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know who did. “But you have an idea about who or what’s responsible, don’t you?”

  He lifted his hand from the throne to gesture dismissively. “A king hears things if he keeps many ears listening, sees much if he has many eyes watching. I have not seen any other ghouls in my city. But I have heard whispers. The Old Ones have returned.”

  Old Ones. I’d heard a ghoul mention them before and assumed he meant gods, but with everything I’d been through over the last month, it could’ve been anything. “What do you mean Old Ones? Gods? Archons? Fae?”

  “Names are a human problem. Call it what you like. You are no match for what’s awakened. It’s best to just let the Old Ones eat their fill and go back to sleep. Interfere, and who knows what will happen?”

  “I do.” My staff splashed as I stepped forward and struck the water. “People die. Innocent people.”

  Serkan lifted a hand in front of his face and picked at his fingernails. “Innocent people die every day. Yesterday, you did not care. Why care today? Why care tomorrow? Life is fleeting, Horseman. It is best spent enjoying oneself. A life of misery spoils the meat.”

  I took another step forward and drew more hisses from the ghouls all around me. “Tell me what you know.”

  “If I sing my song for you, what do I get in return?”

  Dammit, of course he wanted something. And here I’d shown up without anything to trade. The only thing I knew ghouls wanted was to eat, and I wasn’t going to provide them with any meat, living or dead. Even I had to draw the line somewhere.

  Of course, Serkan wasn’t a ghoul. He claimed to be the one who created the ghouls, which meant he considered himself to be something else. Question was, what?

  I blinked and activated my Vision. Not much changed in the room since ghoul souls were just dim, barely lit balls of dying coal. The only notable change was Serkan, whose soul shone a dancing, smokeless blue flame. I’d never seen a blue flame soul before, which made me wonder just how many different kinds of souls there were in the world.

  Knowing the color of his soul didn’t help me figure out what to offer him in return, which meant negotiating from a disadvantage. I hated doing that. “Why don’t we just cut to the chase and you tell me what you want, highness?”

  Serkan tilted his head toward the root-filled ceiling and gestured upward. “The sun. I wish for my children to look upon daylight without pain.”

  Khaleda shook her head. “How—”

  I cut her off. “Done. You’ll have what you want within two days, provided I walk out of here with information that eventually leads me to something useful.”

  Serkan’s eyes lit up a shade brighter. “Then I will sing for you, Horseman. I have been told the tale of an aged sorcerer in ancient days, in the time before men, who found a way to break the laws of magic. This sorcerer could turn lead to gold, breathe life into those long dead, and merge animals in strange ways to create something new. There seemed no limit to what his strange magic could do, and it came without any cost to the man. He rose up as a great hero and did battle with gods and demons and Archons alike. No one, not even Death, could stop him, for his magic defied death.

  “But there was a dark secret to his magic, one that none knew of until it was too late. You see, the sorcerer had found a way to distill human souls into fuel for his magic under the blood moon. The more innocent and lively the souls were, the better. But what happens to a living being without a soul? You should know, Horseman. This concerns your trade.”

  “They die,” I answered, feeling a little sick at the memory of all the souls I’d ripped out. They’d been the souls of gods who deserved it, but that didn’t make it feel any cleaner.

  “No.” Serkan shook his head. “Not humans. They become the Undying. Creatures for whom there is no pleasure. Food turns to ash on their tongue. Drink does not satisfy. Even the pleasures of flesh fail to bring happiness. The Undying wander, lost, in search of something they can never have, never dying.”

  I shivered at the realization I could do that to someone. With only the slightest effort, I could pull a soul away from anyone. Gods would die, yes, but if Serkan was right, humans wouldn’t. They’d become like Jean and his half-brother’s bodies, wandering off on their own. What would such a body do after living through two hundred years of torture?

  “This sorcerer had one in his employ such as you,” Serkan continued. “One who pushes out the souls of the living for him to collect.”

  “Another Horseman?” I asked.

  “Perhaps he was at one time, but he is no longer. Now, he devours the dead, as my children do.” Serkan narrowed his eyes. “This o
ne’s touch leaves behind a hunger that cannot be satisfied.”

  Famine. If this was a Horseman, it had to be that one. The Baron had said there were four of us, and not all were upstanding guys like me. If I had power over death, then it made sense that the other Horsemen had powers that correlated to their titles. Maybe we could all interact with souls, just the effects of doing so would be different for each of us. If I pulled one out, the body would die, which lined up with my experience. Someone like Famine would leave behind an empty shell whose hunger could never be sated.

  “Are you telling me I’m hunting another Horseman?”

  “A Horseman and his master,” Serkan said. “A dangerous master who, like this sorcerer of old, has perhaps found a way to make his dead sing very wrong to my children.”

  I suddenly understood what the ghoul had meant when he said the dead sang wrong. He meant that it was dead, but not dead. A body without a soul still walking around seeking death. The body could be killed just the same as killing anyone else, but without a soul, perhaps the meat was foul enough even a ghoul wouldn’t touch it.

  I looked to Khaleda, though I couldn’t see more than the shadow of her profile in the darkness. No wonder Morningstar had offered me help. There was no way I’d be able to stop something like that, not on my own. Not even with the help of Emma and Moses.

  “Doesn’t explain the chewed-up bones,” Khaleda said.

  I turned to face her. “The kids went missing. Police reports and everything. If they suddenly turned back up, even without their souls, they might be able to lead the police back to him. Their bodies were loose ends. Loose ends that he used his pet Horseman turned ghoul to clean up.”