Still Not Dead Enough , Book 2 of The Dead Among Us

by Doty, J. L.

  She lifted a hand casually, placed a fingertip on his chest and pushed him back a step. It was clear he would have resisted had the two of them been alone, but he dare not in the presence of them all. “And as always,” she said scornfully, glancing at Karpov and his thugs, “you’ve found some friends that share your principles.”

  Paul didn’t say anything, but it gave him a little satisfaction to see her open dislike of the fellow.

  Reichart smiled, and managed to dismiss her completely with nothing more than that. “My colleagues offer certain advantages.”

  “Like money,” Katherine said. “You were always in need of that.”

  His eyes narrowed angrily. “I never lived beyond my means.”

  She smiled at him unpleasantly. “Wrong, you never lived beyond my means, but always well beyond your own.” She looked again at Karpov. “I suppose that’s what’s driving your ethical standards now.”

  He ignored her, gave Paul a nasty look, then turned away from them and walked over to join Boris and Joe.

  Karpov and McGowan had argued the whole time, clearly hadn’t noticed the little confrontation between Katherine and Reichart. Karpov’s voice was strained, elevated and angry. “Ve have to have rules, Valter.”

  McGowan stood a head taller than Karpov, and grinning, looking down on the Russian, he responded calmly. “We have enough rules, Vasily.”

  McGowan’s calm, almost humorous, response irritated Karpov even further. “Ve make a committee. Ve plan a schedule for his training. Ve monitor it carefully.”

  “And who would be on this committee?”

  Karpov rubbed his chin, pretended to think on the matter carefully, when all there knew he’d thought this through long ago. “Why . . . I suppose three or four senior practitioners. Ve should have no trouble finding willing tutors.”

  McGowan nodded, and slowly turned his head to look at Salisteen, drawing everyone’s eyes with him, including Karpov’s. Then he pointedly shifted his gaze to Colleen, paused for a moment, then moved to Stowicz. He kept his eyes on Stowicz as he said, “I guess we already have such a committee. A de-facto one, but nevertheless one comprised of four of the most senior practitioners alive today.”

  Karpov started and stepped back a pace, glancing angrily about the room, only then realizing the corner into which he’d boxed himself.

  McGowan glanced over Karpov’s shoulder, and for the first time spotted Reichart. “What’s he doing here?” Clearly, the old man didn’t like Katherine’s ex.

  Reichart stiffened, stood erect like a military cadet standing at attention and looked at McGowan warily. Karpov retreated from his earlier argument, crossed the room and put a kindly hand on Reichart’s shoulder. “Eric is my friend. He’s kindly offered to assist me in certain matters.”

  He spun back to McGowan. “Ve need to know what you are planning next.”

  Apparently, raising the dead was serious enough, and dangerous enough, that McGowan couldn’t refuse to provide at least some explanation, though he did a masterful job of keeping it to a minimum. He briefed them on the demon kills and what they’d discovered so far and what they hoped to do.

  When he finished Karpov looked at Paul, his eyes narrow and pinched. “You sure he’s not responsible for this demon?”

  “Ya,” Joe Stalin growled. “Fucker’s half demon anyway.”

  Salisteen stood angrily and pointed a finger at Joe. “You don’t use that kind of language in my house.”

  Karpov swung out with a wide, roundhouse swing and slapped Joe in the face. “Apologize, you idiot.”

  Joe, his eyes downcast, mumbled a few polite words.

  Stowicz said, “To answer your question, Vasily, yes, we’re sure. All four of us.”

  Colleen and McGowan all nodded their agreement. Salisteen stood and said pointedly, “Exactly. Now, if you’ll excuse us, my chief of security can probably recommend a good hotel where you and your colleagues can find accommodations.”

  Chapter 9: The Alice Connection

  Paul climbed out of the car: another cemetery, another gravesite, another suspected demon kill. At least it was daylight, no spilling his own blood, no beheading a chicken, no midnight ritual. He didn’t even know the name of the cemetery or its location; just somewhere in the greater Dallas/Fort Worth area. At least he didn’t have to put up with the Russians breathing down his neck at all hours of the day.

  Somewhere overhead a hawk cried, and the sound of its scream sent a shiver up Paul’s spine. Just a hawk, he thought. He’d grown jumpy after recent events, now saw spooks and ghosties behind every bush. “Just a hawk,” he said aloud, inwardly scolding himself for being so jumpy.

  As he helped Katherine out of the car, she asked, “What did you say?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just jumpy.”

  “Me too,” she said as she straightened her skirt. She’d gone back to wearing an expensive business suit, skirt cut just above the knees, and high heels. The suit was dark gray, with pin stripes, and the skirt just a bit tight, which Paul rather liked. She added, “I’m getting downright paranoid.”

  “Paranoid?” Paul asked, pulling his eyes away from her. “What did you say?”

  McGowan growled, “He didn’t hear a word you said. He was too busy staring at your ass again.”

  Colleen snapped, “Shut up, old man.”

  Katherine leaned in close to Paul and whispered just loud enough for her father to hear, “You have my permission to stare all you want.”

  It was just the four of them, plus one of Salisteen’s chauffeurs. Ramirez had a list of suspected demon kills, and they all agreed having Paul raise all of them, only to find that some had died of more mundane causes, would be an exhausting and time consuming waste of his arcane energies. It was Colleen who came up with an alternative, a spell far less complicated and much easier to perform, and one unlikely to resurrect some shadowy monster if the child had been killed by a demon. McGowan and Stowicz added a variation on Colleen’s idea that allowed any one of them to perform the ritual, though with a little practice Paul could perform it rather easily, while the rest of them needed to put some effort into it. And that clearly fueled Stowicz’s suspicious attitude toward Paul.

  They’d split up into three groups and were canvassing Ramirez’s possible demon kills one-by-one. So far the four of them had confirmed that two were victims of this demon, and three not. As yet, they hadn’t heard anything from Salisteen, Stowicz, Ramirez and the Russians about their results. Paul would have to go back to the real kills later and purge the demon from the children’s souls. Oddly enough, when he thought of Cloe and how it could have been her soul haunted by such a monster, he rather enjoyed the idea of kicking some demon ass, as long as the demon didn’t do any kicking of Paul’s ass.

  After traipsing through a field of gravestones they found their suspected victim. It was McGowan and Colleen’s turn to cast the spell while Katherine and Paul looked on. McGowan, with Colleen standing over him, crouched down beside the young girl’s grave and began tracing a complex rune. Paul was only just beginning to understand the difference between rune-based spells, ley line power, earth power, elementals, and his unique physical magic—he had a lot to learn. The spell McGowan cast would tell him if the young girl’s soul had departed cleanly, or if it remained behind in some sort of torment, and if so, he’d get a strong sense of the demon’s presence if that was the cause.

  The hawk screeched again, and again it sent a shiver up Paul’s spine. It sounded sorrowful, as if it mourned something. Paul shook his head to clear it, knew he was letting his imagination get away from him.

  McGowan straightened and shook his head. “This one’s clean. That’s the last on our list. Let’s head back to Salisteen’s.”

  McGowan and Colleen led the way, ambling between gravestones toward the car, with Katherine following and Paul last in line. The hawk cried again and he looked up, spotted it circling high overhead, descending slowly toward them. Perhaps it had spotted some prey amo
ng the gravestones. Paul watched it descend with growing curiosity, for it did seem to be descending toward them, and he would have thought a wild animal should be more fearful of humans.

  It cried out again, an eerie sound, then pulled in its wings and plummeted toward him in a dive. He hesitated while the others continued on; they were apparently oblivious to the animal plunging toward him. He tensed, ready to dive to one side to avoid the hawk’s talons. But at the last instant the hawk flared its wings, pulled up a few feet off the ground, killed its speed, and transformed into a tall humanoid shape obscured by shadows that fluttered about her maddeningly. Clearly female, she faced Paul squarely about ten paces away with a strung bow in her left hand and a shadowy broadsword in her right. Then slowly the darkness that enveloped her dissipated, and one-by-one her features cleared.

  Before him stood a woman easily seven feet tall, with pale golden hair twisted into dreadlocks that fluttered slightly as if touched by a light breeze, though the air remained still. She walked toward Paul, one cautious, careful step at a time, stopped close enough that he saw the color of her eyes shifting continuously. Those eyes seemed to devour him, to hold him helplessly chained to the spot, and he could not have moved to defend himself if she chose to behead him then and there with that sword.

  She opened her mouth, clearly found it difficult to speak, and when her lips moved, her voice was no more than a haunted whisper on the wind. “They want your death, mortal.”

  Deep inside her eyes he saw pain and torment. But it was divided and isolated into several hot sparks dancing within her soul, as if she were haunted by several souls.

  “There are many of you,” Paul said, “aren’t there? Many souls in one body.”

  She flinched, and the shadows dancing about her suddenly stilled “Ah, mortal, your vision is a fearful thing. Beware, lest it betray you.”

  Paul recalled her first words and asked, “Who wants my death?”

  She smiled and cocked her head slightly to one side, and as a wind that didn’t exist fluttered her dreadlocks he noticed she had pointed ears. “Those who rightly fear you . . . but wrongly fear your destiny, your purpose. They think they have bargained for your death. And a bargain is a bargain, though they know not the true nature of their contracts.”

  She turned away from him, turned her back on him with insulting indifference, as if to say she had nothing to fear from him. She took two steps then paused and looked back. “Remember this, mortal. No one who is truly mortal can survive les flèche du coeur—no one truly mortal.”

  Then she turned away from him again, took two more steps, broke into a run, leapt into the air and spread her arms, transformed into the hawk, and rose into the sky on the beat of powerful wings.

  Somehow Paul now walked only a few feet behind Katherine, walking toward the car as if he’d never stopped, as if the strange hawk had not come out of the sky and transformed into an even stranger woman.

  ~~~

  As the limo rolled out of the cemetery Paul kept replaying in his mind the strange scene with the strange dreadlocked woman.

  “You seem preoccupied,” Katherine said.

  Paul looked at her and asked, “Did that hawk’s cry sound strange to you?”

  There must have been something in the tone of Paul’s voice, for McGowan and Colleen, who’d been engaged in a conversation of their own, suddenly went silent and looked at Paul carefully. Katherine frowned and said, “I don’t recall hearing a hawk cry out.”

  Colleen said, “Nor I,” and McGowan shook his head silently.

  There was no question in Paul’s mind that he should tell them what had happened. “I think I just hallucinated something really bizarre.” He told them about the hawk-woman, carefully tried to describe the incident in detail. When he began Katherine, Colleen and McGowan had looked at him with open curiosity, but by the time he’d finished all three frowned deeply.

  Colleen looked at McGowan and asked, “Black fey?”

  He shrugged uncertainly. “Could be, but I can’t really say for sure. I’ve never met one.”

  Paul asked, “What’s black fey?”

  Colleen shook her head and her frown deepened as she spoke. “We don’t know much about them. They’re part of the non-aligned fey, but they’re quite elusive.” She looked pointedly at Paul. “And you say you sensed several souls in this one?”

  Colleen and McGowan seemed almost frightened by his story. “I really don’t know what I sensed.”

  “Fey don’t have souls,” Colleen said. “But then again, we know so little about the black, anything is possible.”

  McGowan’s cell phone interrupted them, chiming softly. He looked at the phone’s display and said, “It’s Salisteen.”

  He flipped the phone open, put it to his ear and said, “Yes.”

  He listened intently for several seconds, then said, “Good. We’ll see you there.”

  He closed the phone and put it in his pocket. “There’s been another demon attack. But this time a little boy—and he survived. Apparently his grandmother’s a witch, and she had him warded with some decent protective spells, though he’s in pretty bad shape. Salisteen’s already told our driver to head for the hospital. We’ll meet her there.”

  ~~~

  Children’s Medical Center was a sprawling affair, part of a large complex of hospitals that occupied several city blocks on the northwest side of Dallas. Ramirez met them in the lobby at the main entrance and escorted them into an elevator. As the lift started up Ramirez said, “He’s in the ICU, in a coma. No question it was a demon attack. I just don’t understand why a boy this time. I hope to God we’re not dealing with two demons.”

  As the elevator doors opened in the ICU they spotted Salisteen and Stowicz huddled with a tall fellow in a white lab coat with a stethoscope around his neck. Salisteen saw them and waved them over. She introduced the fellow in the lab coat as Dr. Sanders, then she led them down the hall away from the nurse’s station, and in a soft voice said, “Dr. Sanders is a practitioner so you can speak openly with him.”

  She introduced each of them, and when she introduced Paul, Sander’s eyes narrowed, and with a strong Texas accent he said, “You’re the necromancer. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  Paul didn’t like the challenge in his voice. “As a matter of fact, I don’t.”

  Salisteen grimaced and said to Sanders, “He’s got a point, Frank. None of us can really tell him how to be a proper necromancer. Why don’t you bring everyone up to speed?”

  Sanders said, “The boy’s mother died some years ago so his father and grandmother are raising him. The father’s not a practitioner, though he’s aware we exist. And he’s really skittish about this.”

  Salisteen said, “From what I can tell the wards are still protecting the boy. But there’s some primitive piece of the demon that’s trying to break them down, while the grandmother keeps reinforcing them. She’s a local curandera, a healer and shaman. And she’s apparently pretty good, but she’s out of her depth here, and she knows it.”

  With the father so jumpy, Sanders wanted everyone but Paul, Salisteen and Ramirez to wait out in the hall, but Katherine insisted, “I’m in on this too.”

  Sanders started to object, but Salisteen put a hand on his arm and said softly, “Frank, for some reason none of us understand, Katherine and Paul are a team in these matters. It’s one of those things where they’re stronger together than the sum of the parts.”

  Sanders led them down the hall to a large room filled with a lot of computers and other equipment. At one end of the room a nurse sat behind some sort of central monitoring station. Had it not been for all the equipment, the room was large enough to hold a dozen beds. As it was there were two occupied beds present, with empty spaces for only another four.

  The nurse at the monitoring station was an attractive, middle-aged woman with light-brown hair cut in a short bob. Sanders stopped to speak with her. “Slow day, eh Pam?”

  She shrugged and rolle
d her eyes. “Just wait till rush hour.”

  “Ya. How’s the Garza boy?”

  “Unchanged. Stable, no need for life support. Weird, though.”

  “How so?”

  She sat up a little straighter to look over the top of the computer monitors. “No reason for that coma. None at all.”

  “Ya, that’s a stumper.” Sanders nodded to Paul and Katherine. “I brought a couple of colleagues of mine in to consult. They’re from out of state, just lucky they happened to be here.”

  Pam looked at Paul and Katherine, clearly appraising them. Paul felt self-consciously that he didn’t look much like a doctor, whatever a doctor was supposed to look like in her eyes. She nodded and looked back at Sanders. “If he remains stable, Admin will want him moved out of the ICU pretty soon.”

  Sanders shook his head. “I can’t really argue with them on that. Say hi to the husband for me.”

  “Sure nuf.”

  As Sanders led them away from Pam he lowered his voice and said, “She’s not a practitioner, so we have to be careful here.”

  He led them to one of the beds in the far corner, beside which stood a tall, distinguished fellow in an expensive business suit. Sanders introduced him. “This is Mr. Garza.” Sanders turned to Paul and Katherine. “These are some colleagues of mine.”

  Garza asked, “More doctors?” He had a slight Latino accent.

  Sanders simply said, “No.”

  Garza’s eyes narrowed, he looked at Paul angrily and growled a question. “Brujo?”

  A tiny, little, old woman stepped around Garza; his bulk had concealed her. She stood only a little over four feet tall, was thin as a rail, dressed in slacks and a sports coat that, like Garza’s suit, appeared expensive. “Raphael,” she said calmly, putting a hand on his arm. She said something in Spanish Paul couldn’t follow.

  Garza turned to her respectfully, but angrily, and they argued in Spanish, him cold and angry, her calm and reassuring. Paul heard the word brujo again, but always accompanied by another word: brujo blanca or brujo negra.