by E. A. Copen
I almost didn’t believe my eyes. Beth? In a few short months, the bookish beauty I’d once loved had been transformed into a bulimic monster.
“Is it done?” Beth rasped, her voice rough.
My chest ached looking at her. “Christ, Beth. What’s he done to you?”
She gritted her teeth. “This was your doing, Lazarus. I took up the mantle because you dragged me into your mess. You’ve ruined my life, just like you do to everyone who gets close to you. Now, is it done?”
I hung my head and nodded limply. “It’s done.”
“Prove it? Show me the soul.”
I didn’t move.
Beth gripped my shirt and yanked me close enough I felt her breath on my face. “Where is it, Lazarus?”
I lifted my head and met her cold gaze with an icy one of my own. “Information first.”
Beth’s eyes narrowed. She let me go and took a step back. “The deal was two names for your daughter’s location, and another for a means to save her.”
“Those other two names can wait until after. I’ve made a pretty significant down payment.” I tightened my fist on the pipe. “Or, you can choose not to tell me, and I can kill you where you stand. Save myself the trouble of taking you out later.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“The old Lazarus might not have, but I will. You pushed me too far.” I stepped forward, forcing her back a step. “I just killed a friend, someone who trusted me. Now you’re going to give me that information so I can save Remy, or I swear to you that I will kill you, Beth. What’s left of you, anyway. The Beth I knew died the day she accepted Loki’s offer.”
Beth glanced up and down my body, calculating, deciding if I would do it. I didn’t know if I could. There was a part of me that still cared about Beth. I felt responsible for what happened to her and would’ve made it right if I could. But she’d made the decision. There was nothing I could do but end it when the time came. I knew I would have to be the one to kill her. Beth wouldn’t want it any other way.
She raised her chin. “She’s in Faerie.”
“Nice try. I figured that out already. What I want to know is where. Who has her? How do I get to her?” I circled Beth, forcing her to turn to keep up with me.
“You know who had her taken.”
I nodded. “Titania is my guess, but she didn’t do it herself, and she wouldn’t be stupid enough to keep Remy in the palace with her. Too many other fae objected to Remy’s existence. There’d be assassins trying to get to her. Plus, keeping Remy nearby would make her mortal. Titania isn’t stupid enough to make herself mortal out of sentimentality.”
“The fetch she created. The thing that’s walking around pretending to be you? It took your daughter.” Beth turned so she could follow me with more than just her eyes. “Titania has spent the last few months building a castle at the edge of her territory for her granddaughter. A gilded prison, some might call it. That’s where she would’ve taken her.”
So, Emma was right. It was a fetch.
A prison. That meant guards, probably hundreds of them. To get to Remy, I’d have to cut through the full force of Summer. It wouldn’t be easy, but I’d do it to get my little girl back. I’d take care of Titania while I was there too if the opportunity presented itself. She would not stop coming for Remy, no matter how many of her people I killed.
I stopped circling and planted the pipe. The sound made Beth flinch. “Tell me how to get to her.”
Beth smirked. It was an effort to hide how terrified she was of me, one I saw right through. “I don’t have to give you that information until you kill another god. I’ve given you more than enough already.”
“No, but you’re going to anyway.”
Beth crossed her arms and canted her hip, raising an eyebrow. “You think you can take me?”
I took two giant steps toward her. This time, Beth didn’t retreat but held her ground, letting me tower over her. “You and I both know I can.”
She licked her lips. “The faeries hold a masquerade Tuesday night. Invite only. Very exclusive. Titania is planning on revealing Remy then, parading her in front of everyone as a show of power.”
“See now? That wasn’t so hard.” I walked past Beth, headed for the exit from the playground.
“You’ll want to get to her before then, Lazarus,” Beth called after me.
I stopped mid-stride and turned back around to find her grinning at me.
“They serve Faerie wine at the ball. One sip and she will belong to Faerie forever.”
I shivered. That was the time limit Loki meant. I had to get to Remy before Titania made her eat or drink anything at that party. That meant getting to her while she was still in that tower in Faerie, and I still didn’t know how to get there.
“Thanks.” I nodded and turned my back on her again.
“Hey, what about that soul?”
The metal gate to the playground screeched and groaned as I pushed it open. “I’d love to show it to you, but I don’t have it anymore. I gave it to a friend for safekeeping. You want to see it that bad, you’ll have to have your boss clear it with Manus Dei since that’s who my friend works for now.”
I could practically feel Beth fuming behind me. No way was Manus Dei going to let Loki have that soul. I doubted he’d even ask after it. Loki wouldn’t want to risk any ill will with one of his more tenuous allies. By giving the soul to Josiah, I’d moved it beyond his reach, and beyond mine too. I just hoped I’d made the right decision.
I didn’t go back to Darius’ place. Going back there would mean facing Emma, and I didn’t want to see her after what I’d done. It would get back to her somehow, and I couldn’t bear looking her in the eye just yet.
Instead, I stopped at a corner store and bought a bottle of Jack Daniels. It’d been a while since I crawled into a bottle to drink away guilt and misery, but I figured this was a special occasion. It was Mardi Gras, so why the hell not? Everyone else was drinking, and I’d nearly died. I made up every excuse I could think of and embraced them all. Anything was better than remembering the disappointed look on Hades’ face when I went through with it, or Persephone’s voice in my head over and over, telling him to trust me.
I didn’t even pull the bottle out of the bag to chug a quarter of it outside the shop. I’d found my way onto the streetcar again before it hit me. Once you start drinking, it’s hard to stop, especially when you’re a recovering alcoholic in a funk. I had half that bottle drained before I got off on the wrong stop and staggered up the street.
With every step closer to the house, I dreaded more what I’d have to do once I got there. It would almost be easier if she knew what I had done. Chances were good that she didn’t yet, though. Wasn’t like they’d put it on the news. This just in: Broke Moron with Magic Murders the One Decent God in the Multiverse. What the hell did she see in me anyway? Beth was right. All I ever did was hurt people, Emma included. It was my fault she’d quit the force. I’d ruined her life, and she deserved better.
I stumbled through the gate on wobbly legs. The house was dark, but that was probably because Darius and all his guys were out partying. Emma wouldn’t have gone out. She was trying to lay low, pretend like I’d kidnapped her, so she didn’t have to deal with her family. Guess we were both dodging the consequences of our decisions. I was just doing a piss poor job of it.
At the stairs going up to the porch, I misjudged the distance and fell. Rather than go through the trouble of getting up and going through the door, I decided I was better off just sitting in the yard getting shitfaced.
A roving group of drunks shambled down the sidewalk outside the mansion. I raised my bottle and called out a slurred toast to them that they didn’t return. One of them put their hands on the iron gate and pushed it open. Dammit, I hadn’t meant to call them over. Me and my big mouth. Now I was going to have to tell them to piss off. I was having a solo pity party.
Then a wave of nauseating magic hit me, followed by the stink of rot an
d decay. The closest person staggered into the moonlight, revealing a gray face with drawn features. She peeled dry lips back from yellowing teeth. Her bloodshot eyes twitched wildly as she reached for me, foaming at the mouth.
Even in my drunken state, I recognized something wasn’t right about her and shot to my feet. Or tried to. I wasn’t coordinated enough to do that and hold onto my bottle at the same time. It was either let go of the bottle and run, or sit and finish my drinking, and I took entirely too long to decide I should run. The bottle dropped into the grass with a dull thud and I found my legs, though the world tilted. When had I gotten onto a boat in choppy water?
“Afraid I’m gonna have to ask you to leave, ma’am,” I slurred out. “This is private property.”
Her answer was a barely audible gurgle in the back of her throat. Tourists.
The door behind me crashed open. “Move!” Emma shouted.
I spun around in time to see the end of her gun flash. The frothy-mouthed woman who’d been reaching for me jerked when the shot hit her in the shoulder but didn’t stop coming for me. Huh. High pain tolerance, I guess.
Emma stormed down the stairs, grabbed me by the collar, and dragged me back to the door. “Get your drunk ass inside before they eat you, Laz!”
I stumbled through the door and hit the floor, suddenly nauseated. Emma fired off a few shots and slammed the door before barring it. I stared at her. There was something I was supposed to tell her, but I was too drunk to remember.
She popped the magazine out of her gun and slapped another full one from her pocket into it before dropping the gun back into her holster. I was still trying to get up when she grabbed me by the back of my collar and dragged me through the house. I remember being surprised by how soft the runner in the hall was as she dragged my cheek across it, then how cold the bathroom floor was. That was nothing compared to the icy water she splashed on my face from the faucet. It was cold enough that my lungs seized. Good thing, too, because the next thing she did was plug the sink and push my face down into the frigid water, holding me there until I flailed.
I came up coughing, teeth chattering, desperate to suck in a full breath. “What the hell?”
She pointed out the door. “Those zombies out there? They’re not here to party, Laz. We need to take care of them before they wander off and start terrorizing crowds of tourists.”
Zombies? Something snapped in my brain like a rubber band. I grabbed my aching head, groaned, and staggered back to sit on the side of the tub. Shit, she was right. Those weren’t just weird Mardi Gras drunks out on the front lawn. Those were full-on zombies, and they were loose in New Orleans.
I had to do something. Unlike when we’d cornered them in the amusement park, we couldn’t just go around busting heads on the front lawn. If we were going to take these guys out, it had to be somewhere out of view where people on the street wouldn’t call the cops.
Someone pounded on the door then groaned. Well, at least they hadn’t wandered off yet.
“We might not have to kill them.” Speaking in complete sentences was still difficult.
“Explain,” Emma demanded.
I rubbed my throbbing temples. “Well, I am a necromancer. I made those zombies, right? Or evil me probably did. In theory, I should be able to take control away from him with the right spell.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to just shoot them?”
I shook my head and instantly regretted it. The movement sent my head spiraling and my stomach lurching. I fell on my knees and vomited a good portion of the bottle I’d just chugged into the toilet. Normally, throwing up when you’re drunk makes you feel a little better. Not the case that time. I was still reeling.
Emma offered me a towel. I took it and mopped up the mess on my face. “We can use them.”
“Use them? For what?”
I rubbed my forehead. “Give me a minute. I’m trying to remember how to talk.”
The pounding at the door got more desperate. Somewhere in the house, glass shattered.
Emma rushed to shut the bathroom door. “I don’t think we have a minute, Laz.” She pulled out her gun and aimed it at the door, backing toward me. “Whatever you’re going to do, you’d better do it before they break through that door because I’m going to shoot these assholes right between the eyes.”
I reached for my magic, then promptly bent over the toilet and threw up again.
Chapter Fifteen
Most people would be surprised by how easy it is to turn a human into a zombie. You can get most of the ingredients required for the spell at your local Asian grocery. Mash the ingredients, lay them out to dry into a fine powder, and then stab your victim. Once he’s good and dead, all it takes is an infusion of will, a little exposure to the powder, and you’ve got a reanimated human.
The magical cocktail only reanimated the brain, creating creatures of mindless obedience. Slaves to their creator. I didn’t care for them because I felt making zombies was disrespectful to the dead. I mean, I wouldn’t want my body up and walking around without me inside it once I was dead. I just assumed no one else would either. The dead can’t consent, and that means it’s abuse to force them to act.
Once the zombies were given a command, they couldn’t disobey, but they also couldn’t move very well on their own. That’s the thing about dead bodies. They get stiff. It takes constant supervision from a necromancer to keep them mobile. Since they were also incapable of basic decision making—such as whether to turn into the gate or keep walking—the creating necromancer also had to use a spell to stay connected to the mind of every zombie he made just to get them to go wherever he wanted. It was a royal pain in the ass.
It also meant that with a lot of magic and under the right circumstances, a more powerful necromancer could wrestle control of a zombie away from a weaker one. In short, I might be able to take away Bizarro Laz’s favorite toy and force it to give up his hiding place. It wouldn’t be easy, though. I’d need total concentration, which was hard to do with a throbbing headache and nausea spinning in my gut, not to mention zombies pounding on the bathroom door.
I closed my eyes and tried to push all of that away, focusing on the power inside me. Slowly, I let the walls around my psyche crumble so that I could reach for their dead minds. The mind of a dead person wasn’t comfortable to be in. For starters, it was cold and dead, incapable of rational thought. Empty but for the presence guiding it. I felt him, lurking there, tugging on the strings of magic that kept the creature upright and moving. I would have to push him out to take control, and that meant a battle of raw will.
I pushed against the familiar presence. He pushed back. My head throbbed, brain reeling with the effort of staying focused. If I lost it, I could very well wind up exactly like I’d been at Six Flags a couple of nights before. Losing the battle of wills would not only push me out but give Bizarro Laz unrestricted access to my mind because my shields were down. He could launch a psychic attack, and there’d be nothing I could do about it. Of course, I could do the same to him if I won, except I wouldn’t. Attacking him directly would mean letting go of the zombie.
Wood splintered. They were coming through the door.
“Lazarus, do something!”
I kept my eyes closed and focused on the pain. If I couldn’t work through it, I’d use it as fuel. Pain meant I was alive, and I could use that fact to draw a line between the undead mind and my own. “Trying.”
Magic slithered around in my head, probing for a weakness, pushing while I shoved it back. Water and sweat dripped down my neck to pool between my shoulder blades. The mental and magical tug of war was exhausting, but I had to win, or we’d be dead.
He made one hard push. Gotcha. I focused all my will into moving him backward, kicking him out, taking over, and little by little, his power slid away. With a snap of black magic, Bizarro Laz ceded control of one of the six zombies at the door to me. “Got it.”
“Do something!” Emma’s gun shifted left to right in her hand.
The zombies had torn a hole in the door and were reaching through with bloody hands. I could hear them groaning on the other side of the door, fighting to tear the hole wider, but Emma couldn’t get a clean headshot.
I pushed myself up from the edge of the tub, flexing my fingers. “Stop!”
One set of hands reaching through the hole in the door went rigid. At least I knew which one I had control of now. Through the magic, I could tell it was male, middle-aged, and undead, but that was about it. Once, he’d had a full life, family, a job. Bizarro Laz had taken all that away and turned him into a slave. I hated him for it, almost as much as I hated myself for using the creature in the same way.
Slowly, I unfurled a fist. “I command you to protect us.”
The hands retreated through the hole. With an inhuman growl, the zombie attacked one of the other five trying to get in. More hands disappeared from the hole in the door as my zombie pulled his away. The growls on the other side of the door got louder, punctuated by the sound of chomping teeth and disgusting, wet sounds.
I couldn’t see what he was doing, but then I didn’t need to. I supposed I could’ve looked through the zombie’s eyes using the magic that now bound it to me, but the connection was making my stomach uneasy and I didn’t want to push it. The command would be enough.
With my hand outstretched, I pushed past Emma, placing myself between her and the zombies, just in case the one I’d taken control of couldn’t do the job. The hands had all disappeared, but I could still hear them fighting outside.
“What’s happening?” Emma’s voice was barely a whisper.
I quieted her with a gesture. “Wait.”
We stood in silence, just listening to my zombie tear the others apart. It was one of the tensest moments of my life. Images of ripping flesh and maimed bodies flashed through my mind. Bones snapped and throats gurgled. Unlike in the movies, real zombies don’t hunger for brains, and they weren’t super-fast or super strong. They just did as they were told. Humans are a lot stronger than most people realize. We could rip each other limb from limb if we wanted to. We just don’t because our humanity keeps us in check. Zombies don’t have that. They were monsters, perhaps the most monstrous monsters of all because once they’d been us.