by J. C. Diem
The older cop pointed at me without looking directly at me. “I highly doubt that this young lady is a federal agent. In fact, I doubt she’s even old enough to legally be away from her parents.”
“I’m eighteen,” I said in self-defense.
That brought a smile to the younger cop’s face. “Are you now?” he asked. His eyes dropped from my face down to my chest and lingered. My breasts weren’t exactly impressive, but they captured his attention anyway.
Reece started growling again, which made my temper flare. I was within an inch of snapping at him to calm down when Mark spoke. “In the spirit of co-operation, is there anything you can tell us about the desecrations?”
The younger cop’s eyes left me reluctantly as his partner answered. “A man has been spotted lurking around the cemeteries at night. He’s in his early twenties, has dark skin and is most likely in a cult.” Digging in his jacket, he pulled out a plastic evidence bag with the bokor’s calling card inside. “We have video footage of him and some accomplices messing around in the cemeteries and breaking into a jewelry store. His accomplices were strong enough to pull the back door completely off its hinges. The footage is grainy, but we’re pretty sure they were high on something. The perp is apparently calling himself the Zombie King,” he said with a wry smile.
“He’s probably breaking into graves and setting the bodies on fire as some kind of initiation ritual,” the younger cop said. “This sort of thing happens all the time in New Orleans. There’s really no need for the feds to be here. We can handle this ourselves.” Neither man had offered their identification and Mark didn’t ask for it. We weren’t interested in working with the local cops. They’d just be a hindrance to our investigation. Especially since neither of them questioned why such ancient bodies contained flesh rather than just being bones. The fire had burned up the corpses pretty well, but it hadn’t melted the flesh entirely. Surely whoever examined the bodies would figure that out and would inform the police.
“You’re probably right,” Mark said after examining the card and handing it back. “But we’re going to hang around for a couple more days, just in case.”
Not happy with that reply, the cops didn’t linger. The blond sent a smirk at me over his shoulder before he stepped outside.
Reece’s hands were clenched on the table and his body was almost vibrating with anger.
“You’re not going to unzip your pants and mark your territory are you?” Kala asked then sniggered.
“Keep yourselves under control,” Agent Steel said in a calm tone. “The last thing we need is to make the local cops suspicious of us.”
Reece had done it for me a few times, so I tried sending him soothing thoughts. His gaze snapped to me in astonishment, but his fists unclenched and his shoulders relaxed. I was as surprised as him that it worked and that his tension eased.
With the crisis over, Mark gestured to the tablets that were sitting face down on the table. “We need to stay sharp and remain focused. The priestess warned us that the bokor can raise a lot more zombies now that he has a pet necromancer on hand.”
“How many more?” I asked uneasily.
“Possibly an entire cemetery with one single ritual,” was his bland, yet highly disturbing reply.
₪₪₪
Chapter Twenty-Five
With visions of a zombie apocalypse running through my mind, I did my best to focus on the cemeteries on my monitor. The images were small, but not so tiny that we wouldn’t be able to see anyone entering the premises.
As darkness began to close in, we piled into the SUV. We drove through the streets slowly, cruising past the cemeteries closely enough for me to be able to sense any undead activity if it were to arise. Mark monitored both his and Reece’s tablets.
Shortly after true night fell, I felt the unseen eyes of the mystery woman watching me. No matter where we went, she always seemed to be there. Reece sent frequent glances at me in the rearview mirror. He could sense my fear, but probably thought it was to do with the bokor and his undead slaves.
I felt the swell of power when we were about to make our third trip past one of the larger graveyards. “Stop!” I said and the SUV lurched to a halt. One look at my white face told everyone that we’d hit the jackpot.
“I want you to try to take the bokor down from a distance,” Mark said to me as we parked on a quiet side street.
My mind was chaotic, but my hands knew what to do. They assembled my sniper rifle as they had done thousands of times before. I could move a lot faster now and I had the rifle ready in less than thirty seconds. I slung it over my shoulder as I climbed out of the SUV. My team mates moved in to surround me. They shielded me from the few pedestrians who were still out and about. Seeing someone openly carrying a sniper rifle would result in an instant panic.
Mark didn’t switch off the cameras this time now that the cops were on to that trick. Instead, we entered the cemetery through a small, all but forgotten side gate that didn’t have a camera watching it.
The green fog had spread more rapidly and far more widely than usual. It licked at the very edges of the grounds and spilled over onto the sidewalk. The murk was going to make scoping out the target a lot harder. Armed with flamethrowers, the team remained with me as we closed in on the center of the boneyard.
I heard chanting and my heart started hammering faster. The ritual was well underway. If I didn’t stop the Zombie King, he was going to raise a far larger army of walking corpses this time.
Using a crypt to brace my rifle on, I peered through my scope. At first, the green fog obscured my vision. All I saw was the shadowy outlines of more crypts and mausoleums. Then a figure stepped into view.
My target’s expression was close to ecstasy as he walked in a circle. He held a bowl in one hand and the other dipped inside to wet his fingers then splatter the red liquid on the ground. His reanimated right hand man followed him. Shuffling a few steps behind, the zombie stared at his master avidly.
The bokor’s voice rose and I had the feeling his ritual was almost done. I sighted on his chest, but before I could pull the trigger, the zombie struck. He punched his fist through his master’s back, cutting off his words. Pulling his hand free, he studied the blood that coated his rotting flesh and licked it off.
Staggering sideways, the Zombie King tried to run. His feet tangled and he fell, but his minion caught him before he hit the ground. Shoving his hand into the hole he’d already made in the human’s back, he fished around until he found the object he wanted and ripped it loose. He held the heart of his former master up and studied it as if it were a glass of fine wine. Then he stuffed the bloody morsel into his mouth.
Chewing and then swallowing the heart, he wasn’t finished desecrating the now deceased Zombie King’s body. He wrenched his former master’s head from side to side then pulled it clean off his shoulders. Standing, the necromancer brought the head down on the corner of a crypt. Blood and brains oozed out as the head split open.
I made an involuntary sound of revulsion and the necromancer looked straight at me. Now that he was aware of me, he could sense my thoughts and instantly knew that I was dangerous. I picked up his unease that he’d never encountered anything like me before.
Instead of eating the brains that were sluggishly sliding down his arms, he flicked them at the ground and walked in a rapid circle. I couldn’t understand the words that he was chanting, but I knew what he was doing. He was trying to complete the ritual. If he did, we would shortly be surrounded by his undead kin.
He opened his mouth to shout a final command and jerked back when my bullet slammed into his chest. Hissing in rage, his malignant gaze pierced the fog and latched onto me again. He wished me dead with a rage that made me blanch.
“Aim for its head,” Kala reminded me.
I readjusted my aim, but I was too late. The necromancer finished walking the circle and splashed the fluids of his dead master onto the ground. I could smell blood all around us and guessed that
most of the graves had been marked. The necromancer shouted something, but my second bullet disintegrated his jaw so the words came out mangled.
With a malevolent glare over his shoulder, he turned and shambled into the shadows. He was now missing his lower jaw as well as his cheek and nose. With luck, he wouldn’t be able to perform another ritual now that he couldn’t speak.
While I’d hindered his spell, it hadn’t been enough to halt it completely. Creaking and groaning, crypts and mausoleums began to spill open. My early intervention meant that only the graves at the center of the cemetery were affected. Instead of hundreds of foes to face, there were merely dozens.
Sensing us, the newly risen turned to attack. Far more power had been used to raise these corpses and they were almost fresh. Their flesh was only semi rotted and only the slight smell of rancid meat gave them away. All were naked, their clothing having long since disintegrated. The necromancer was good, but not even he could conjure up clothing out of thin air.
Moaning and gibbering with unholy hunger, they lurched towards us. I shouldered my rifle and took the flamethrower that Flynn handed to me. Orange flames flared and we formed a circle against our opponents.
Shrieks of pain and rage rang out as we lit up the night. The undead were slow to catch on, but they eventually realized that trying to eat us was very bad for their health. Twenty or so broke off from the main attack and went in search of less deadly food.
“Spread out and go after them,” Mark ordered.
Fear held me in its sweaty grip, but I forced my feet into motion and followed a trio of shambling creatures. The instinct to run was strong, but I had a job to do and I wasn’t going to let the team down again. If I’d been faster to pull the trigger, I could have stopped this from happening.
Unlike me, Reece felt no fear at all. He was finding joy in the hunt, as were Kala and Flynn. If I hadn’t been so creeped out by the zombies, I’d be feeling a lot happier about going after our prey.
With the final zombie in ashes, I lowered my flamethrower and realized that I was all alone. The others were spread throughout the cemetery, still chasing their targets. Feeling the strange female’s eyes on me, I tried to flee. She caught me in her spell before I could take more than two steps.
“Alexis,” the musical, accented voice said, stopping me in my tracks. “Come to me.”
Unwillingly, I turned around and saw her through the fog. She was just an indistinct outline. All I could make out was long, dark hair and skin that was so pale that it almost seemed to glow in the dark. I struggled against the grip that she had on me, but I lurched towards her anyway. In the back of my mind, I felt Reece’s alarm.
“Come to me,” she crooned and I was helpless to disobey her.
I was only thirty feet away from her when a hand came down on my shoulder. Reece spun me around. Concern poured off him in waves. Seeing my dazed expression, his brow furrowed. “What’s wrong?”
Sending a look back over my shoulder, the area was empty and I could no longer sense the strange female. “Nothing,” I lied. How could I possibly explain the shadowy figure to him when he hadn’t even seen her?
“Didn’t you hear me calling you?”
“No.” I hadn’t heard anything but the dark figure commanding me to go to her.
Mark reached us before he could question me further. “Did we get them all?” he asked me.
Snapping out of my daze, I turned in a full circle and didn’t feel any more undead creatures. “I think so. Did you get the necromancer?”
Agent Steel shook his head reluctantly. “I didn’t see any sign of it. I think he fled while we were taking care of his minions.”
I didn’t find it amusing at all that the minion had become the master and now had servants of his own. I was too horrified at seeing him tear his master’s head off then crack it open like an egg. The image almost made my stomach heave and Reece put his hand on my back, sensing my queasiness. He was frustrated that he didn’t know what was going on with me. I was already weird by their standards and I didn’t want to ostracize myself even further by admitting that a strange female was stalking me.
No sirens wailed in the distance, so Mark called the Cleanup Crew while the rest of us went about setting lids back on crypts. We tossed the bodies randomly inside the graves so the Crew wouldn’t have to dispose of quite as many corpses. They’d clean up the rest of the mess and no one would know what had happened this night.
Unfortunately, the undead necromancer was still out there and this wasn’t over yet. Our initial target was now dead, but only part of our mission had been accomplished. He’d unleashed another, greater danger that we’d now have to put down before our job would be done.
Headless and abandoned, the body of the bokor lay face down on the ground. His cracked open skull lay a few feet away. The Zombie King had proven to be no match for the servant that he’d raised. Did that make the necromancer the Zombie Emperor? Our new foe would be far more of a challenge for us. He could cause untold destruction before we finally took him down. I felt weary just thinking about chasing after him and attempting to stop him before he could raise an army.
We were subdued as we drove back to the compound. Kala and Flynn sat closer to me than usual so our knees and shoulders were touching. It was comforting to know I wasn’t the only one who was uneasy.
It had been difficult enough to try to predict what the Zombie King would do. Now we had to anticipate the moves of a necromancer that had died over a hundred and fifty years ago. Flynn was good at anticipating what human monsters might do, but even he might not be up to the task of figuring out what our undead foe had planned.
₪₪₪
Chapter Twenty-Six
We had a late dinner and I ate only half of my meal before pushing my plate away. I took a long shower, but I couldn’t banish the thoughts and images that kept swirling around inside my head. I saw the Zombie King’s skull crack open again and again and knew I’d never get to sleep with that image in my mind.
Three doors down from me, Reece was just as restless. He was picking up on my emotions and I wondered just how much of what I was thinking was getting through to him. Lying down, I forced my mind to be calm and did my best to mask my emotions from him. He did the same and I finally managed to fall asleep.
I’d forgotten to switch the alarm on and slept for longer than usual. When I woke, everyone had already started their daily routine. Too tired and cranky to train, I ate breakfast then climbed back up the stairs. Mark stood at the computer table, reading a report on one of the screens. Seeing me out of the corner of his eye, he pressed a button on the table and the screen went blank. Whatever he’d been reading was probably above my clearance level.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“I’m okay. It was a shock to see the necromancer kill his master.” I’d been the only one to witness the sudden betrayal. The others had seen the beheaded corpse, but they’d been spared seeing his head being cracked open and his brains being scooped out. “I’m sorry I couldn’t stop the ritual in time,” I said in a small voice.
Mark touched my arm. “This isn’t your fault, Lexi. It’s thanks to your quick action and skill that we only had a few zombies to kill rather than an entire cemetery full of them.”
Looking into his eyes, I saw no hint of fear or revulsion towards me. He was totally comfortable being around us, except for when I’d saved him from the zombies while I was a werewolf. “I read the file about what happened to your family,” I blurted, but kept my voice quiet enough so that the others didn’t overhear me.
He lowered his voice as well. “I wondered how long it would take you to find it.”
He wasn’t angry that I’d pried into his life. In fact, he gave me the impression that he’d expected me to. “How can you stand to be around us?” I asked. I was anguished for him, unable to imagine how horrible it would have been to lose his wife and child so violently.
“Shape shifters aren’t inherently evil
,” he said. “Most of you avoid killing humans.”
“Was the attack on your family just random bad luck then?”
He stared past me, eyes unfocused. “No. It was very deliberate. The file doesn’t mention what I used to do for a living,” he said softly. “I worked for the CIA and I was close to cracking a major case regarding the disappearance of dozens of people over a ten year period.”
“A shape shifter was behind the disappearances?” I hazarded a guess.
“He was a local firefighter and even helped to search for the victims. He had us all fooled,” Mark said with a hint of derisiveness that was aimed at himself. “Then I found a clue that led me straight to him. He knew I was closing in and he tried to distract me by killing my wife and daughter.” His grief was still there after twenty years and I saw the pain in his eyes. “It looked like an animal had torn them apart, but I knew he had something to do with it.”
“What did you do?”
“I hunted him down and confronted him. He admitted that he’d killed the missing people and described what he’d done to my wife and daughter in detail.” He grimaced and his gaze went distant. “Looking back now, I could see that he was trying to goad me into attacking him mindlessly. The full moon was still days away and he couldn’t change into a werewolf. He was more vulnerable in human form.” His gaze returned to the here and now. “I kept my calm and he came at me. I put a bullet in his shoulder. I guessed that he wasn’t human when the bullet was expelled and his flesh healed.” His smile was wry. “My next bullet went into his brain.”
“Did that kill him?”
“No, but half a dozen more did the trick.”
“That’s good to know.” We might be strong, but we were far from indestructible.
“You want to know how I could bring myself to be around shifters after one murdered my family.” It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway. “I was approached by the PIA after they discovered that I knew about supernatural creatures. I learned everything I could about your kind after I joined the agency. Shifters are only evil in their animal forms if they’re evil as humans,” he explained. “The werewolf that killed my family was a sadist. He was also an alpha, which gave him more power than normal shifters. I now believe that he was able to retain his human intelligence when he shifted. That’s how he was able to target my family.”