The Laughing Corpse

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "When?"

  "Tomorrow night."

  "Tonight." It was not a suggestion.

  "I can't."

  "Yes, ma petite, you can." His voice was like a warm wind in my head.

  "You are so damn demanding," I said.

  He laughed then. Pleasant and resonating like expensive perfume that lingers in the room after the wearer has gone. His laughter was like that, lingering in the ears like distant music. He had the best voice of any master vampire I'd ever met. Everyone has their talents.

  "You are so exasperating," he said, the edge of laughter still in his voice. "What am I to do with you?"

  "Leave me alone," I said. I was utterly serious. It was one of my biggest wishes.

  His face sobered completely, like someone had flipped a switch. On, happy, off, unreadable. "Too many of my followers know you are my human servant, ma petite. Bringing you under control is part of consolidating my power." He sounded almost regretful. A lot of help that did me.

  "What do you mean, bringing me under control?" My stomach was tight with the beginnings of fear. If Jean-Claude didn't scare me to death, he was going to give me an ulcer.

  "You are my human servant. You must start acting like one."

  "I am not your servant."

  "Yes, ma petite, you are."

  "Dammit, Jean-Claude, leave me alone."

  He was suddenly standing next to me. I hadn't seen him move. He had clouded my mind without me even blinking. I could taste my pulse at the back of my throat. I tried to step back, but one pale slender hand grabbed my right arm, just above the elbow. I shouldn't have stepped back. I should have gone for my gun. I hoped I would live through the mistake.

  My voice came out flat, normal. At least I'd die brave. "I thought having two of your vampire marks meant you couldn't control my mind."

  "I cannot bewitch you with my eyes, and it is harder to cloud your mind, but it can be done." His fingers encircled my arm. Not hurting. I didn't try to pull away. I knew better. He could crush my arm without breaking a sweat, or tear it from its socket, or bench press a Toyota. If I couldn't arm wrestle Tommy, I sure as hell couldn't match Jean-Claude.

  "He's the new Master of the City, isn't he?" It was Irving. I think we had forgotten about him. It would have been better for Irving if we had.

  Jean-Claude's grip tightened slightly on my right arm. He turned to look at Irving. "You are the reporter that has been asking to interview me."

  "Yes, I am." Irving sounded just the tiniest bit nervous, not much, just the hint of tightness in his voice. He looked brave and resolute. Good for Irving.

  "Perhaps after I have spoken with this lovely young woman, I will grant you your interview."

  "Really?" Astonishment was plain in his voice. He grinned widely at me. "That would be great. I'll do it any way you want. It . . ."

  "Silence." The word hissed and floated. Irving fell quiet as if it were a spell.

  "Irving, are you alright?" Funny me asking. I was the one cheek to jowl with a vampire, but I asked anyway.

  "Yeah," Irving said. That one word was squeezed small with fear. "I've just never felt anything like him."

  I glanced up at Jean-Claude. "He is sort of one of a kind."

  Jean-Claude turned his attention back to me. Oh, goody. "Still making jokes, ma petite."

  I stared up into his beautiful eyes, but they were just eyes. He had given me the power to resist them. "It's a way to pass the time. What do you want, Jean-Claude?"

  "So brave, even now."

  "You aren't going to do me on the street, in front of witnesses. You may be the new Master, but you're also a businessman. You're mainstream vampire. It limits what you can do."

  "Only in public," he said, so soft that only I heard him.

  "Fine, but we both agree you aren't going to do violence here and now." I stared up at him. "So cut the theatrics and tell me what the bloody hell you want."

  He smiled then, a bare movement of lips, but he released my arm and stepped back. "Just as you will not shoot me down in the street without provocation."

  I thought I had provocation, but nothing I could explain to the police. "I don't want to be up on murder charges, that's true."

  His smile widened, still not fangs. He did that better than any living vampire I knew. Was living vampire an oxymoron? I wasn't sure anymore.

  "So, we will not harm each other in public," he said.

  "Probably not," I said. "What do you want? I'm late for an appointment."

  "Are you raising zombies or slaying vampires tonight?"

  "Neither," I said.

  He looked at me, waiting for me to say more. I didn't. He shrugged and it was graceful. "You are my human servant, Anita."

  He'd used my real name, I knew I was in trouble now. "Am not," I said.

  He gave a long sigh. "You bear two of my marks."

  "Not by choice," I said.

  "You would have died if I had not shared my strength with you."

  "Don't give me crap about how you saved my life. You forced two marks on me. You didn't ask or explain. The first mark may have saved my life, great. The second mark saved yours. I didn't have a choice either time."

  "Two more marks and you will have immortality. You will not age because I do not age. You will remain human, alive, able to wear your crucifix. Able to enter a church. It does not compromise your soul. Why do you fight me?"

  "How do you know what compromises my soul? You don't have one anymore. You traded your immortal soul for earthly eternity. But I know that vampires can die, Jean-Claude. What happens when you die? Where do you go? Do you just go poof? No, you go to hell where you belong."

  "And you think by being my human servant you will go with me?"

  "I don't know, and I don't want to find out."

  "By fighting me, you make me appear weak. I cannot afford that, ma petite. One way or another, we must resolve this."

  "Just leave me alone."

  "I cannot. You are my human servant, and you must begin to act like one."

  "Don't press me on this, Jean-Claude."

  "Or what, will you kill me? Could you kill me?"

  I stared at his beautiful face and said, "Yes."

  "I feel your desire for me, ma petite, as I desire you."

  I shrugged. What could I say? "It's just a little lust, Jean-Claude, nothing special." That was a lie. I knew it even as I said it.

  "No, ma petite, I mean more to you than that."

  We were attracting a crowd, at a safe distance. "Do you really want to discuss this in the street?"

  He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. "Very true. You make me forget myself, ma petite."

  Great. "I really am late, Jean-Claude. The police are waiting for me."

  "We must finish this discussion, ma petite," he said.

  I nodded. He was right. I'd been trying to ignore it, and him. Master vampires are not easy to ignore. "Tomorrow night."

  "Where?" he asked.

  Polite of him not to order me to his lair. I thought about where best to do it. I wanted Charles to go down to the Tenderloin with me. Charles was going to be checking the zombie working conditions at a new comedy club. Good a place as any. "Do you know The Laughing Corpse?"

  He smiled, a glimpse of fang touching his lips. A woman in the small crowd gasped. "Yes."

  "Meet me there at, say, eleven o'clock."

  "My pleasure." The words caressed my skin like a promise. Shit.

  "I will await you in my office, tomorrow night."

  "Wait a minute. What do you mean, your office?" I had a bad feeling about this.

  His smile widened into a grin, fangs glistening in the streetlights. "Why, I own The Laughing Corpse. I thought you knew."

  "The hell you did."

  "I will await you."

  I'd picked the place. I'd stand by it. Dammit. "Come on, Irving."

  "No, let the reporter stay. He has not had his interview."

  "Leave him alone, Jean-Claude, p
lease."

  "I will give him what he desires, nothing more."

  I didn't like the way he said desires. "What are you up to?"

  "Me, ma petite, up to something?" He smiled.

  "Anita, I want to stay," Irving said.

  I turned to him. "You don't know what you're saying."

  "I'm a reporter. I'm doing my job."

  "Swear to me, swear to me you won't harm him."

  "You have my word," Jean-Claude said.

  "That you will not harm him in any way."

  "That I will not harm him in any way." His face was expressionless, as if all the smiles had been illusions. His face had that immobility of the long dead. Lovely to look at, but empty of life as a painting.

  I looked into his blank eyes and shivered. Shit. "Are you sure you want to stay here?"

  Irving nodded. "I want the interview."

  I shook my head. "You're a fool."

  "I'm a good reporter," he said.

  "You're still a fool."

  "I can take care of myself, Anita."

  We looked at each other for a space of heartbeats. "Fine, have fun. May I have the file?"

  He looked down at his arms as if he had forgotten he was holding it. "Drop it by tomorrow morning or Madeline is going to have a fit."

  "Sure. No problem." I tucked the bulky file under my left arm as loosely as I could manage it. It hampered my being able to draw my gun, but life's imperfect.

  I had information on Gaynor. I had the name of a recent ex-girlfriend. A woman scorned. Maybe she'd talk to me. Maybe she'd help me find clues. Maybe she'd tell me to go to hell. Wouldn't be the first time.

  Jean-Claude was watching me with his still eyes. I took a deep breath through my nose and let it out through my mouth. Enough for one night. "See you both tomorrow." I turned and walked away. There was a group of tourists with cameras. One was sort of tentatively raised in my direction.

  "If you snap my picture, I will take the camera away from you and break it." I smiled while I said it.

  The man lowered his camera uncertainly. "Geez, just a little picture."

  "You've seen enough," I said. "Move on, the show's over." The tourists drifted away like smoke when the wind blows through it. I walked down the street towards the parking garage. I glanced back and found the tourists had drifted back to surround Jean-Claude and Irving. The tourists were right. The show wasn't over yet.

  Irving was a big boy. He wanted the interview. Who was I to play nursemaid on a grown werewolf? Would Jean-Claude find out Irving's secret? If he did, would it make a difference? Not my problem. My problem was Harold Gaynor, Dominga Salvador, and a monster that was eating the good citizens of St. Louis, Missouri. Let Irving take care of his own problems. I had enough of my own.

  14

  THE NIGHT SKY was a curving bowl of liquid black. Stars like pinprick diamonds gave a cold, hard light. The moon was a glowing patchwork of greys and goldish-silver. The city makes you forget how dark the night, how bright the moon, how very many stars.

  Burrell Cemetery didn't have any streetlights. There was nothing but the distant yellow gleam of a house's windows. I stood at the top of the hill in my coveralls and Nikes, sweating.

  The boy's body was gone. It was in the morgue waiting for the coroner's attentions. I was finished with it. Never had to look at it again. Except in my dreams.

  Dolph stood beside me. He didn't say a word, just looked out over the grass and broken tombstones, waiting. Waiting for me to do my magic. To pull the rabbit out of the hat. The best that could happen was the rabbit to be in and to destroy it. Next best thing was finding the hole it had come from. That could tell us something. And something was better than what we had right now.

  The exterminators followed a few paces behind. The man was short, beefy, grey hair cut in a butch. He looked like a retired football coach, but he handled the flamethrower strapped to his back like it was something alive. Thick hands caressing it.

  The woman was young, no more than twenty. Thin blond hair tied back in a ponytail. She was a little taller than me, small. Wisps of hair trailed across her face. Her eyes were wide and searched the tall grass, side to side. Like a gunner on point.

  I hoped she didn't have an itchy trigger finger. I didn't want to be eaten by a killer zombie, but I didn't want to be plastered with napalm either. Burned alive or eaten alive? Is there anything else on the menu?

  The grass rustled and whispered like dry autumn leaves. If we did use the flamethrowers in here, it'd be a grass fire. We'd be lucky to outrun it. But fire was the only thing that could stop a zombie. If it was a zombie and not something else altogether.

  I shook my head and started walking. Doubts would get us nowhere. Act like you know what you're doing; it was a rule I lived by.

  I am sure that Senora Salvador would have had a specific rite or sacrifice to find a zombie's grave. Her way of doing all this had more rules than my way. Of course her way enabled her to trap souls in rotting corpses. I had never hated anyone enough to do that to them. Kill them, yes, but entrap their soul and make it sit and wait and feel its body rotting. No, that was worse than wicked. It was evil. She needed to be stopped, and only death would do that. I sighed. Another problem for another night.

  It bothered me to hear Dolph's footsteps echoing mine. I glanced back at the two exterminators. They killed everything from termites to ghouls, but ghouls are cowards, scavengers mostly. Whatever we were after wasn't a scavenger.

  I could feel the three of them at my back. Their footsteps seemed louder than mine. I tried to clear my mind and start the search, but all I could hear was their footsteps. All I could sense was the woman's fear. They were messing up my concentration.

  I stopped. "Dolph, I need more room."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Hang back a little. You're ruining my concentration."

  "We might be too far away to help."

  "If the zombie rises out of the ground and leeches on me . . ." I shrugged. "What are you going to do, shoot it with napalm and crispy-critter me, too?"

  "You said fire was the only weapon," he said.

  "It is, but if the zombie actually grapples with anyone, tell the exterminators not to fry the victim."

  "If the zombie grabs one of us, we can't use the napalm?" he said.

  "Bingo."

  "You could have said this sooner."

  "I just thought of it."

  "Great," he said.

  I shrugged. "I'll take point. My oversight. Just hang back and let me do my job." I stepped in close to him to whisper, "And watch the woman. She looks scared enough to start shooting shadows."

  "They're exterminators, Anita, not police or vampire slayers."

  "For tonight, our lives could depend on them, so keep an eye on her, okay?"

  He nodded and glanced back at the two exterminators. The man smiled and nodded. The girl just stared. I could almost smell her fear.

  She was entitled to it. Why did it bother me so much? Because she and I were the only women here, and we had to be better than the men. Braver, quicker, whatever. It was a rule for playing with the big boys.

  I walked out into the grass alone. I waited until the only thing I could hear was the grass; soft, dry, whispering. Like it was trying to tell me something in a scratchy, frantic voice. Frantic, fearful. The grass sounded afraid. That was stupid. Grass didn't feel shit. But I did, and there was sweat on every inch of my body. Was it here? Was the thing that had reduced a man to so much raw meat, here in the grass, hiding, waiting?

  No. Zombies weren't smart enough for that, but of course, it had been smart enough to hide from the police. That was smart for a corpse. Too smart. Maybe it wasn't a zombie at all. I had finally found something that scared me more than vampires. Death didn't bother me much. Strong Christian and all that. Method of death did. Being eaten alive. One of my top three ways not to go out.

  Who would ever have thought I'd be afraid of a zombie, any kind of zombie? Nicely ironic that. I'
d laugh later when my mouth wasn't so damn dry.

  There was that quiet waiting that all cemeteries have. As if the dead held their collective breath, waiting, but for what? The resurrection? Maybe. But I've dealt with the dead too long to believe in just one answer. The dead are like the living. They do different things.

  Most people die and go to heaven or hell, and that's that. But a few, for whatever reason, don't work that way. Ghosts, restless spirits, violence, evil, or simple confusion; all of these can trap a spirit on earth. I'm not saying that it traps the soul. I don't believe that, but some memory of the soul, the essence, lingers.

  Was I expecting some specter to rise from the grass and rush screaming towards me? No. I had never seen a ghost yet that could cause actual physical harm. If it causes physical damage, it isn't a ghost; demon maybe, or the spirit of some sorcerer, black magic, but ghosts don't hurt.

  That was almost a comforting thought.

  The ground sloped out from under my feet. I stumbled and caught myself on one of the leaning headstones. Sunken earth, a grave without a marker. A tingling shock ran up my leg, a whisper of ghostly electricity. I jerked back and sat down hard on the ground.

  "Anita, you all right?" Dolph yelled.

  I glanced back at him and found the grass completely hid me from view. "I'm fine," I yelled. I got to my feet careful to avoid stepping on the old grave. Whatever person lay under the earth, he, or she, was not a happy camper. It was a hot spot, not a ghost, or even a haunt, but something. It had probably been a full-blown ghost once, but time had worn it away. Ghosts wear out like old clothes and go on to wherever old ghosts go.

  The sunken grave would fade away, probably in my lifetime. If I could avoid killer zombies for a few years. And vampires. And gun-toting humans. Oh, hell, the hot spot would probably outlast me.

  I looked back to find Dolph and the exterminators maybe twenty yards back. Twenty yards, wasn't that awfully far? I had told them to hang back, but I hadn't meant for them to leave me hanging in the wind. I was just never satisfied.

  If I called them to come closer, you think they'd get mad? Probably. I started walking again, trying not to step on any more graves. But it was hard with most of the stones hidden in the long grass. So many unmarked graves, so much neglect.

  I could wander aimlessly all bloody night. Had I really thought that I could just accidentally walk over the right grave? Yes. Hope springs eternal, especially when the alternative isn't very human.