Shallow Grave (The Lazarus Codex Book 3)

by E. A. Copen

  Emma put a hand on his chest and pushed him back. “Sit down, shut up, and let us work. The sooner you cooperate, the more likely we are to find her alive.”

  “Katie’s diabetic,” Mrs. Michaels offered. “I think I forgot to throw away the test strip from last night when we took her blood sugar. It might still be in the reader.”

  I nodded. “That’ll work.”

  Her eyes went to the back of her husband’s head, wide like a scared rabbit. After a moment, her resolve hardened and she got up, crossing the room to grab a small black bag. A moment later, she stopped on the other side of Emma, holding a small white strip with a spot of red on it out to me. There wasn’t much blood on the strip, but I didn’t need much, not with blood that recent. It’d work perfectly.

  I held out my hand and let her deposit in my palm. “Thank you. Now, if you’ve got a metal bowl, a picture and a lighter…”

  She looked to her husband again, but not as long this time. “I have all that in the kitchen.”

  I offered her a smile. “Perfect. Then let’s go find your daughter.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Emma loaned me the use of her silver cross necklace for the spell. I could’ve used any dangling bit of jewelry, but she offered hers first. It didn’t hurt that the chain was pure silver. Silver channels magic better than any other metal, making it ideal for what I was about to attempt.

  I made a circle on the floor out of some pink sidewalk chalk the Michaels had lying around and made sure everyone but me was outside of it before activating it. Something simple like a tracking spell didn’t normally require a circle, but as I was no expert, I wasn’t willing to use any magic in a room full of normals without some level of protection for them.

  Once I was all set up, I held Kaitlynn Michaels’ fifth-grade photo at arm’s length in my left hand and Emma’s pendant in my right. I studied the photo, burning her face into my memory. The front teeth just a hint too big for her mouth. The wispy blonde hair. Her father’s dimpled chin. I focused on the picture until it was all I could see and then struck the lighter.

  Mr. Michaels rushed forward when I held the flame to the photo, but Emma held him back, stopping him just short of violating my circle.

  Green flame licked up the side of the glossy photo, curling the edges. I held the picture until I was sure the fire had taken and then dropped it into the metal bowl. While it was still burning, I picked up the test strip and dropped it in on top of the fire, muttering the girl’s name as I did. With eyes closed, I lifted the pendant over the flames, outstretched my left hand over the bowl and fed my will to the flame.

  Someone in the room gasped when the fire surged higher, the flames licking at my outstretched palm and the dangling bit of silver. The chain grew red hot in my palm. I gritted my teeth and tightened my grip. Every nerve ending in my hand and in my brain was screaming for me to pull away from the fire. Drop the pendant. Save my skin. But I knew my hand wasn’t burning. The light show was just the fire interacting with magic, and though it looked like the metal was glowing red hot and my hand was inside flames, it really wasn’t.

  Then, without warning, the pendant lifted itself out of the flame, the chain growing taut and pointing southwest.

  I closed my left hand into a fist, and the fire went out in a puff of smoke. “Got her.” Breaking the circle with a sweep of my foot, I rushed through the house for the front door. The pendant whirled around and nearly smacked me in the face. “Behind the house,” I said to the police who’d joined me outside.

  We rushed in a line around the side and back of the house. Like most houses on the block, the Michaels’ home had a fenced in backyard. The pendant didn’t indicate anything in the yard, so I hurried on by, breaking into a full run for the empty field behind the house. On the other side of the field stood a lush, green wildlife preserve named for none other than Jean Lafitte. I didn’t have time to appreciate the irony because all my attention was on keeping the spell going, keeping Kaitlynn’s face in my mind’s eye, and not tripping on the uneven ground.

  At the tree line, the pendant shifted, indicating a slightly more eastern direction. I followed it.

  “How far?” Emma said as she caught up next to me.

  I shook my head. “Don’t know.”

  She ducked under a low hanging branch. “This preserve is over twenty thousand acres of swampland. We’re going to need more people.”

  “Do what you’ve gotta do,” I ground out and charged forward, lifting my leg over a fallen tree trunk.

  The ground on the other side was silty mud, and I sank to my shins. So much for keeping my last set of clothes clean. I waded forward until the water was chest high on me.

  Emma shouted for me to get out of the water. “There’s gators and snakes in there! Won’t do us any good if we’ve got to fish you out too!”

  She had a point, but the entire area was going to be flooded after the recent hurricane. Whole paths were probably washed out or under water, making half the preserve inaccessible. If I stuck to dry land, I might never find her. If I got eaten by the bayou, I definitely wouldn’t. The pendant pointed forward, but I went right and stopped when I was ankle deep, following the pendant as best I could.

  Vines, bushes, and flooded areas blocked our progress. An hour later, we were still pushing through the undergrowth, the ten or so of us spread out in an uneven line. Emma was close enough I could see her on my right, and Mr. Michaels wandered in and out of view on my left. We took turns calling Kaitlynn’s name but never got any answers.

  With every step holding the spell became harder. The humidity, the slog through swamp water, and the fallen trees and vegetation didn’t help. Hope waned, and with it, my will to keep the spell together. The silver chain had begun to sag.

  Then it started to rain. Fat, heavy drops filtered through the trees and slammed into me. They hit the surface of the water, creating the illusion of a crackling sound. My foot hit something in the water I was wading through, sending a flare of pain up my leg. The chain sagged further.

  “Katie!” Mr. Michaels cupped his hands around his mouth, his voice strained. “Katie!”

  We came on a small clearing of high ground where we found Mrs. Michaels doubled over. Her husband ran to her and gripped her by the shoulders.

  She shook her head. “She’s gone, Evan. I’m never going to see my baby alive again.”

  He tightened his grip around her shoulders. “We’ll find her.” He looked my way, eyes pleading. Gone was the belligerent man I’d met in the living room. In his place stood a broken man, a father whose only wish was to find his little girl and get her home safe and sound. “Mr. Kerrigan’s right there, see? See the chain, honey? She can’t be far now. Just a little further.”

  Something in the way he said it filled me with new determination. If he could believe she was still out there, over the next rise, just a little further, I could too. I redoubled my efforts on holding the spell. The chain lifted to pull straight again, and I went forward, moving faster than before.

  The Michaels followed.

  Less than fifteen minutes later, I scanned the waterline, following the direction of the pendant. A river wound through the trees in front of me, rushing enough that I stopped to think twice about crossing it. There, on the other side, directly in front of where the pendant was pointing, stood a rotten old shack. I moved left and right up and down the riverbank, but the pendant remained pointing at the shack, no matter where I went.

  “Over here,” I called, but I must’ve been too far away from the others, or else the falling rain masked my voice. No one answered.

  I wasn’t going to wait around. I waded into the rushing water, calling Kaitlynn’s name. Near the middle, the water was up to my chin. The force of it pushed against me, pounding into my side hard enough I couldn’t breathe. I gritted my teeth and pushed forward.

  The little wooden shack sat up on stilts from the bayou beneath, attesting to the fact that this place often flooded. A short pier jutt
ed out from the door of the shack. I grabbed it with both hands, making sure to keep a good grip on the necklace, and hauled myself up. My muscles screamed for me to stop. My lungs burned with the need for me to catch my breath, but there was no time.

  A little girl’s shrill scream cut through the air.

  Kaitlynn.

  I hauled myself to my feet and staggered up the pier. The front door slammed open, and a sinewy creature of stringy muscle and knobby bones rushed out, using its knuckles to run like a gorilla. The creature paused mid-stride, eyes growing wild and wide. Torn, bat-like ears twitched on the side of its head. Something in my brain set off the alarm bells. Ghoul. And I was in no shape to fight it.

  The ghoul hissed at me and charged. Before I could formulate a response, it had tackled me. Claws ripped at my chest, slicing me open in three straight lines. I kicked, threw forward a hand and unleashed a spell against the ghoul’s chin.

  Outside of raising the dead, my spell arsenal was limited. I could rend the earth as I’d done in the bayou when the bobcat and the bear were chasing me, but I didn’t know what doing that to a living creature would do. As it turns out, it doesn’t do much to a ghoul. At least, not to that ghoul.

  The blast knocked the ghoul’s head back, the whiplash forcing him to let me go. With another kick, I got him off of me and pushed him off the pier. He fell in the water with a loud thunk and then scrambled away into the underbrush.

  I thought about chasing him, but a small sound in the shack stopped me. I had to save Kaitlynn first.

  Panting, my chest burning, I pushed open the door to the shed. Darkness filled the inside. It stunk of rotted wood, swamp, and blood. The whole floor was coated with dark stains and congealed blood. I covered my mouth and nose to keep from vomiting. “Kaitlynn, where are you?”

  Something at the back of the shack moved.

  I stepped forward, the wood creaking under me. “Kaitlynn?”

  My eyes finally adjusted, and I realized the movement I’d seen was a trap door. I yanked it open to find a large, semi-flooded room beneath with a floor of mud. Kaitlynn sat with her hands on her knees, a string in her hand that attached to the trap door. Except she didn’t look like the little girl in the picture. Her skin clung to her bones, her eyes looking hollow. She stared at me blankly.

  My heart sank as I realized I’d come in time to save her body, but that she’d already lost her soul.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I sat in a hospital waiting room caked in mud, angrier than I’d ever been. The police had called me a hero, but I didn’t feel like one. I felt like a monster. A little girl had lost her soul because I hadn’t been fast enough, smart enough, or strong enough to stop it.

  It wasn’t just the guilt eating me alive. It was what Serkan had suggested, that there was another Horseman involved. If he was right, the ghoul I’d run into outside the cabin was probably him, and he wasn’t going to stop. Neither was the sorcerer I was chasing. All I’d managed to do was slow them down.

  If I was lucky, if we kept an eye on the missing persons reports and the bad guys didn’t change tactics, we might be able to stall them out until after the blood moon. That would stop them from being able to complete their ritual, whatever it was for. It wouldn’t do a damn thing to give Kaitlynn Michaels back her soul. That was on me.

  I crushed the paper cup in my hand into a ball and gritted my teeth. A Horseman. The Baron had said not all of them were decent people, but he hadn’t said they’d be monsters. What if all the rest of them were twisted killers like this one? What if that was what I’d eventually become? Ripping out souls and using them once or twice to heal me so I could keep on kicking had to have its drawbacks. I was early enough in my stint as the Pale Horseman that maybe I wasn’t feeling them.

  “You’re going to break your teeth if you keep grinding them like that,” Khaleda said.

  She sat next to me on one of the uncomfortable waiting room seats. While she hadn’t joined us on the search, she had insisted on coming to the hospital with me. Not out of any concern for either the girl or me, but because Morningstar had told her to keep me alive. That’d be hard for her to do if she was somewhere else. I could’ve used her help in the swamp. The ghoul had gotten away because it caught me by surprise and I didn’t have any backup. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.

  I muttered an apology and forced my jaw to relax.

  “It’s not your fault, you know.”

  “Yes, it is.” I pushed myself up to pace. “Maybe not everything, but I could’ve done something more. And I could be out there right now doing something more.”

  Khaleda crossed her arms. “So why are you here doing nothing?”

  “Because I don’t know what else to do. I let that ghoul get away. He was my best lead. My best chance of tracking this asshole down and kill him. And I let him go.”

  “To save the child.”

  My pacing became more furious. The girl would’ve been fine a few more minutes while I killed the thing that had hurt her, but the thought hadn’t occurred to me in the moment. I made a decision, and it felt like the wrong one. I was the Pale Horseman. Death. I was supposed to bring death and balance where it was needed, not hold empty little girls and weep over their shells until the police arrived. Balance demanded retaliation, yet here I was doing nothing just as I’d done in the swamp.

  Khaleda sighed and stood, blocking off my path. I snarled at her, an animalistic sound that was born in my chest. Her only response was a raised eyebrow. “Do you know what your problem is, Lazarus?”

  Since I couldn’t pace anymore, I sat back down and put my head in my hands. “I’ve got a laundry list of problems, but I’m sure you’re about to highlight a specific one.”

  The seat creaked as she sat down next to me, the gentle pressure of her hand on my hunched lower back. “You’re a good man. Life is hard for good men, especially when the world demands difficult things like killing.”

  “I’ve got no problem killing the people who deserve it,” I said.

  “Yes, you do. You might be able to justify it, explain it, or dismiss it, but it bothers you. You want to know why. All good men do. But the world doesn’t always have an explanation for tragedy.” She took her hand away.

  I turned my head but didn’t sit up.

  Khaleda had folded her hands and fixed her gaze on the floor. A sad smile touched her lips as if she remembered another, simpler time. “Some people turn to religion to fill in those gaps. Terrible things happen because some god somewhere wills it to be so. Others choose to turn a blind eye to suffering altogether. They grow cold and hard. Distant. But not you. You heap the burden of explanation on yourself, demanding that the senselessness that is life make sense. As if your very desire to know the truth in all its forms should be enough to reshape the world.”

  “What’s the point in having magic if you can’t change things?” I sighed. “I’ve always told myself that you can change the world by changing a single life. Save one person, and you’ve made a difference. But for every person I help, two more slip through. Being one of the good guys sucks.”

  “But what are you going to do about it?” She sat up straight again, crossed her arms, and looked to me. “Give up? Go your own way and screw the world and all the people in it that need your help? Maybe prayer and song will make you feel better.”

  I snorted at the thought. “I’m pretty sure most churches around here frown on necromancy.”

  “Jesus was a necromancer.” She shrugged. “At least according to their book. You’re named for one of several people brought back to life in the New Testament. Such things were regarded as miracles once. Of course, wherever there’s magic, there’s the potential to abuse it. That’s part of the balance too. You can’t heal what isn’t hurt, you can’t save what isn’t in danger, and you can’t find what isn’t lost.”

  “Maybe the world would be better off without magic then.”

  Khaleda frowned. “Now you’re starting to sound like
my father.”

  The double doors opened, and a very tired looking pair of detectives stepped through. Emma looked like she’d aged five years since meeting with the Michaels in their living room. Moses walked with a pronounced limp. He shouldn’t have been in the swamp looking for Kaitlynn, but when I said ‘all hands on deck’, he jumped right in without a second thought. Guess he was a good man too.

  Moses eased into a chair and stretched out his leg. “Well, she’s talking but she ain’t making no sense.”

  “The doctors say she’s in shock,” Emma said coming to stand in front of me. “But I think it’s more than that. She’s just got this empty stare. And no emotion in her voice. Not even when she talked about what happened. It’s as if she’s just…gone.”

  “I told you not to expect her to react normally.” I lowered my head to stare at my hands. “Apparently, people don’t do well without their souls. Is she at least okay physically?”

  “Aside from suddenly being dangerously thin?” Emma sighed and sat down on the other side of me. “Well, she’s asking for food, so I take that as a good sign.”

  “Not necessarily,” Khaleda chimed in.

  Emma narrowed her eyes at the other woman. “And you are?”

  “Khaleda Morningstar.” She offered Emma her hand, and the two shook. I didn’t miss the way Emma squeezed Khaleda’s fingers in a death grip. I also didn’t miss the smile that put in Khaleda’s face.

  “Well, Ms. Morningstar—”

  “Khaleda, please.”

  Emma wrinkled her nose. “Khaleda. That little girl is sixty-five pounds. According to her chart, she was one ten a week ago at her last checkup. If she wants to eat, I fail to see how it could possibly be a bad thing.”

  “She will find no pleasure in food,” Khaleda said, shaking her head. “No satisfaction in drink. No happiness in the company of others. Her body will know it is supposed to feel and will crave connection and reaction but find none. Eventually, she may turn to more painful methods to get what she wants.”