Death Dealers

by M. G. Gallows

  It wouldn’t stop another necromancer from doing anything, but maybe it would discourage them if they thought the graves were being ‘claimed’. I had never met another necromancer in my life. To my knowledge, we’re rare, but I knew our reputation.

  Dietrich found me as I was loading the last of the equipment into the yard truck. “Any word from Max?”

  “I sent him home. Sounds like he was hungover.”

  “We can’t have employees hungover for a funeral, Alex. It’s hard enough dealing with the hungover mourners.”

  “I know.” I shrugged. “College kids.”

  Frankie mumbled something, but Jeb shushed him.

  Dietrich sighed. “I can cover for Donnie if he took Max home, but Max isn’t getting a full paycheck for this. If he wants to keep this job, he’s gotta respect it.”

  “I’ll talk with him.”

  He nodded, the matter settled. “Can I give you guys a ride home?”

  Dietrich dropped us off on Dowry Street, close to the Gallows where Donnie had parked my van. Before he departed, Dietrich leaned out the window. “Don’t be too hard on Max. They won’t be young forever.”

  When he had left, I turned to Jeb and Frankie. “I’ll be around tomorrow, don’t know when.”

  “Right,” Jeb said.

  Frankie looked at me, then Jeb, and shrugged. “Sorry, Alex.”

  I was still plenty angry at Max, and at Donnie, who I suspected was the mastermind behind their escapes. But I didn’t feel like lecturing them anymore. I got in my van, found the keys on the seat, and headed for home.

  I was halfway there when I remembered Piotr’s call. Food and sleep called to me, but I couldn’t leave him hanging forever. I dug out my phone, and saw that he’d tried to reach me another half-dozen times. Piotr had never spammed my phone before. I dialed his number and put the phone to my ear.

  “Finally,” he said when he answered. “Where in hell have you been?”

  “Day job. That thing most people have?”

  “Nevermind. I have an urgent one.” I was about to protest, but he fed me the address. “Did you get that?”

  “Yeah, but-”

  “Hurry! I have been waiting for hours!”

  His panic had me on edge, but I had never said no to Piotr before. So I hurried home, changed into my street clothes, and took the pickup back to Lincoln Street.

  THREE

  I hadn’t gotten a clear look the previous night, but Lincoln Street was a neighborhood one could only affectionately call a slum. I passed plenty of run-down homes and apartment complexes, places that looked older and less impressive than Sutcliffe Street. No college had adopted Lincoln. The city had moved on, leaving the locals to eke out a living with bottom-rung jobs in the nearby factories.

  I didn’t see anyone on the streets that wasn’t on full-alert. There’s a stereotypical idea of what a street gang looks and acts like; the colors, the swagger, a piece stuffed carelessly into a low-hanging waistbands. During the party, the Mambas had fit the look. But as I passed through Lincoln Street, the bravado had vanished.

  Men moved in groups of two or three, overlapping patrols of backup and cover. They dressed in combat-ready body armor and dark military fatigues. Their firepower was modern American combat rifles, not old Soviet surplus. A few groups had big dogs, who barked at the end of their chains to chase me as I drove by. Philip had instilled some military discipline in the Mambas, and it showed.

  It hit me why my cleanup job the night before was so important. The Mambas weren’t competing with a rival or dealing with an intruder. They were fighting a war, and it had them spooked enough to drop the attitude. They occupied their own neighborhood like contested territory.

  There were plenty of reasons for them to hire a guy like me, to dispose of a body. He might have been a spy, or a co-conspirator. Maybe Josh killed him in a fit of rage and Philip was trying to keep said mole from learning about it. Maybe he was a messenger sent to deliver ultimatums, and Josh had broken the oft-spoken rule about shooting them.

  Getting shot myself had become a real possibility, and I debated turning around. The Mambas did nothing to suggest I was an intruder or threat, just an annoyance. One or two reported my progress over their phones to whoever coordinated them.

  Screw it, I thought. When I find Piotr, he’s going to get a piece of my mind.

  The address he’d given me belonged to a quaint little bungalow that stood out like a sore thumb in the otherwise bleak part of town. It was bright yellow and had a healthy green lawn. A single man stood guard, obscured in the shadows, holding an AR-19 with practiced discipline.

  “Philip,” I said, recognizing his broad shoulders and crewcut.

  His expression killed any hope I had for friendly conversation. Not a day had passed since I’d met him, but his calm strength was a thin mask over red-eyed grief.

  “This way,” he said.

  He opened the front door, and Piotr was inside. Sweat stained the chest and armpits of his tracksuit. “Hurry, hurry!”

  The interior of the home was downright pleasant. It was clean, decorated, and smelled like baked bread and hand lotion. An old lady’s home, I realized. I’d carved up my share of bodies for Piotr, but I didn’t relish the prospect of disappearing someone’s grandma. I followed him through the living room and into the basement. The victim lay on his side in front of a TV set, a plate of cookies and a spilled glass of milk at his side.

  “Hurry,” Piotr said.

  “What’s the deal, Piotr?”

  He wiped his brow. “I don’t normally get involved, but he was a client. You know him.”

  I knelt and rolled the body over to face me. Josh Wilkes’ eyes had rolled up into his head. In death, he didn’t look like a wannabe gangster, full of angry bluster.

  He just looked like a kid.

  I met Piotr’s gaze. “What’s going on?”

  “His cousin, the man upstairs, found him this way. They want him removed before his grandmother returns from a trip out of town. He also does not want the gang to know anything is wrong.”

  I ground my teeth. “They’re fighting a war, aren’t they?”

  Piotr muttered something in Ukrainian. “Yes. But there is more.” He gestured at the body.

  I inspected the kid without touching him. No gunshot, no signs of blood or violence. It was like he’d just dropped dead. I glanced at the cookies and milk. His grandmother wouldn’t skip town and leave him a batch of poisoned cookies. Would she?

  I mean, I’d seen worse. It was part of the job description. But death by cookies didn’t add up.

  “The arms,” Piotr said.

  Both arms bore a distinct puncture mark past the wrists. One had a blue substance smeared into it. The other looked swollen and red.

  “Drugs?”

  “Provided by their enemy,” Piotr said. “Something I do not deal in, myself. They call it Stig, er, Stigmata, from the delivery method.”

  “Two chemicals, pumped into either arm?”

  “Coming together in the heart. Boom.” He made a fist over his heart and spread his fingers. “I am told it is like living death. Oy. Whatever happened to Mary Jane and Magic Mushrooms?”

  I shook my head. “Maybe they want to get high on Jesus.”

  “I am no fool, Alex. I know you have some tricks. The other clients, sometimes they talk, say you have body one moment, gone the next. Cleaned like new. Think you can disappear him without the men outside knowing?”

  I rubbed my face. “It’s not that easy, Piotr. I don’t make things vanish. I’m just good at covering my tracks.”

  “Can you get rid of the body? With chemicals? Tools?”

  “Not here,” I said. My magic could have done it, but the whole situation didn’t sit right with me. I’d take any excuse I could to get out of Mamba’s territory, body or not.

  Piotr cursed in his native tongue and wiped a layer of sweat from his face. “Then we need to get it out of here. The big one has made many not-so-subt
le threats on my life if I can’t deal with the problem. I won’t get far in this business by making enemies of my clients.”

  “So you made yourself a pawn, and you’re pulling me in with it.”

  “Yes, may my mother forgive me. If they learn this drug poisoned him, there would be a frenzy. This boy’s grandmother is important to them. They would burn down half the city to ease her pain and not care who they hurt.”

  “Alright,” I growled. “Go upstairs, get Philip to tell his people that Josh has to get out of town for a few weeks, I don’t care what the excuse is, as long as it doesn’t involve me. Then go get my truck and bring it into the alley behind the house.”

  Piotr nodded. “Good idea.” He went upstairs, spoke to Philip, and they departed out the front door. Their footsteps made audible thumps down the wooden porch steps.

  When the coast was clear, I charged my magic and cast it into the body, preparing to reanimate it for the walk into the backyard.

  The energy seeped into him, twisted, and recoiled back at me like I had stuck a fork in a power socket. I jumped to my feet with a yelp. Josh’s body convulsed, then went still again. My fingers took on a gray, deathly pallor and stung like I’d pinched a nerve, but after a few moments of shaking my hands, the effect proved temporary.

  Drugs alone hadn’t caused that. My magic had clashed against someone else’s. Another necromancer’s. And they were strong too, if my spell could get feedback like that. Anyone who poured that much juice into a corpse had some kind of long-term investment in mind, because it hadn’t faded yet.

  A million scenarios played out in my head, including the possibility that they had cursed the body. Grave traps were as old as grave robbing. But I hadn’t burst into flames or contracted the plague, so I decided it was just nothing but two power sources meeting and causing a bit of feedback. Yeah. That’s all.

  But that meant I couldn’t animate the corpse. So I knelt, lifted the body over my shoulder, and carried him upstairs. Magic was an easy fix, but I’d spent a few years on a farm, and I worked as a mortician. Lifting a few hundred pounds of dead weight isn’t easy. You put on muscle, and you learn the right areas to balance and leverage a body.

  The back door was in the kitchen upstairs. The yard beyond was spacious, decorated with garden troughs on metal tables to spare grandma’s knees. I turned off the kitchen lights and kept an eye out for Piotr.

  Headlights rounded the corner, and I heard the crunch of gravel as he parked. I ducked out the door, rushed across the yard, and Piotr opened the gate. I put the body in the truck and slammed the tailgate shut.

  “Okay, get out of here,” Piotr said. “Make sure that body doesn’t turn up in the river!”

  “You owe me big this time, Pete.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Just go!”

  I jumped into the driver’s seat and drove out of the alley. I wanted to hammer the gas pedal, but I kept a law-abiding speed, and my face neutral. Philip was talking to a few of his men as I passed. He nodded once. His stoic face looked set to crack. The rest of the group watched me, confused that some nobody could get an acknowledgement from their boss. Nothing I could say would appease them, so I drove on.

  When Lincoln Street was behind me, my body unclenched, but my mind still raced with uncomfortable possibilities. Whoever the Mambas were fighting had a mage, and he was making their lives a living hell. No wonder they were up in arms.

  I was so distracted I didn’t notice the flash of lights in my rearview until I passed the West-Side Noodles shop. A police car tailed me, close enough to kiss my bumper. Before I could react, another appeared to block my path.

  I hit the brakes on instinct. The part of my brain accustomed to a life of crime screamed for me to escape. To run, put the city behind me, and never look back.

  The cops stepped out of their cars with weapons drawn and shouted orders. I forced my fingers to release the wheel, turned the engine off and tossed the keys out the window. They yanked me from the truck, planted a knee on my spine, and slapped cuffs around my wrist before I could speak.

  While kissing asphalt, I asked, “What seems to be the problem, officer?”

  They stuffed me into the backseat of a patrol car. When they found Josh’s body, an officer radioed it in. Minutes later, more units arrived, along with an ambulance. The EMT’s checked Josh for a pulse and then carted him away.

  There goes my payday, I thought.

  They tore my truck apart looking for more evidence, which of course they didn’t find. Score one for me. I told myself to relax, to think out my next step. It wouldn’t be easy, since they already had the body. So what would I tell them?

  I saw the kid stumbling around, looking sick, I mused. He asked for help. I got him in my truck and headed for the hospital. I didn’t know he was dead ‘til the cops pulled me over.

  I’d play dumb as long as I could, and then? A nickel at Seagate, with good behavior.

  But the cops had been ready for me. It hadn’t been a random stop, someone tipped off someone. I dismissed Piotr and Philip as potential squealers. Piotr didn’t sell people out, and Philip had looked beside himself over losing his cousin. Maybe the Mambas’ enemy had caught wind of it.

  The magic in Josh’s body was a trap, and my clumsy spells had alerted whoever cast it. Letting me take the fall for murder was an efficient way to get rid of me.

  A beat cop with a quarterback’s physique climbed into the driver’s seat of the squad car. “You’re a sick bastard,” he grunted.

  I kept my mouth shut and stared out the window as he drove.

  “Nothing to say?” He asked. “No emotion for killing some kid?”

  I closed my eyes. I was running on coffee, cheap catering, and surrounded by bad juju. Exhaustion was creeping on me, but I could ignore a bully, even one with a badge.

  Then he stamped the brakes. I lurched forward and smacked my head into the metal grating that separated us.

  “Whoops,” he said.

  I shook my head and glared at him. He wasn’t filming us, or he wouldn’t have been so blase about provoking a suspect.

  “Got something to say?” The challenge in his tone was obvious.

  I inhaled and charged my magic. Necromancy works better on dead bodies, but if you give a living brain a gentle jab to its fear center, it can have a noticeable effect without risking permanent damage.

  I leaned forward and spoke. “Shut up and drive.” The words turned to fog on my breath.

  The cop jumped like I’d screamed it at him. “Wh-what?”

  I turned back to my window and said nothing. His hands shook on the wheel, but after a few minutes, he got the car rolling again. His eyes were wide and white in the rearview.

  Whoops. I’d meant to give him a shiver, not a shock. Instead of seeing me as a petty thug he could handle, I was like a potential psycho who could bite his throat out.

  That would sound great at my trial. ‘I don’t know why, your honor, but I suddenly believed this man was the devil himself.’

  At least he’d shut up.

  FOUR

  Our destination was the 8th Precinct on Sunset Row, just south of Downtown. The squat brick building had a fortress-like atmosphere, a bastion of law in a part of the city known for its dangerous neighborhoods and gang turf.

  My driver decided I wasn’t safe enough to move alone, so he got two of his buddies to come help. They more or less carried me to an interrogation room, cuffed me to the table, and left. I could hear the one I’d stung with my spell muttering to them through the door.

  I kept my face blank and surveyed my surroundings. They had bolted down the table and chairs. A mirror dominated the wall before me, likely a two-way. A caged lightbulb hung overhead, a little too bright and buzzing to be comfortable under.

  Two officers entered, dressed in plainclothes. One of them was young and athletic, an African-American with short black hair and brown eyes. He had a natural charm to him, a million-dollar smile that could disarm a tense situation, or make
a woman blush if he aimed in her direction. He wore an honest to goodness tanned leather duster, like a gumshoe from a noir film. It was a little silly, but it didn’t appear to faze him.

  Behind him came an ice queen. Tall, pale as snow, and built like a mixed martial artist. She wore a gray sharkskin suit that looked too expensive for everyday police work. She kept her blond hair pinned behind her head. Vivid blue eyes glared at me behind a pair of tinted glasses. Everything about her told me she was in charge, and ready to tear my head off.

  Needless to say, she was kind of sexy.

  “Mr. Fossor, would you like to make a confession now? It’ll make things easier for you.” Her voice was frozen honey.

  I shrugged and stayed mute. She glanced at her partner and he tagged in.

  “Alex Fossor, I’m Detective James Runner, this is Detective Lorensdottr. We have questions, you have answers. I’m not gonna lie, you’re on shaky ground. Play this smart, and it means a chance for parole in a few years. Play it dumb, and you get life.”

  I licked my lips, nodded, and asked, “Can I get a cup of coffee?”

  Lorensdottr whirled back to the table, hands on her hips. “Look smartass, you want us to spell it out? We found you with a body in your truck. As soon as we get your prints, we’ll have everything we need to charge you. So cough it up.”

  Funny, she didn’t say what she could charge me with. No sign of violence, no probable cause, no motive, no murder weapon. My fingerprints could confirm I touched the body, but a decent lawyer could argue that I had tried to help him get to a hospital.

  I played obtuse, to see if they’d let anything else slip. “So, no coffee?”

  Detective Lorensdottr—what was that name, Icelandic?—looked like she wanted to explode and kill me with the shrapnel. Then someone knocked at the door, and her wrath turned on the interruption. Another plainclothes detective, tall, dark, and handsome, stood outside with a manila folder. The moment he saw Lorensdottr, the color drained from his face.