Edge of Darkness: The Complete First Season (Paranormal Investigations Unlimited)

by Paige Tyler

  He reached out to palm the necklace Mr. Borella had given her, studying it curiously. “You’ve had someone make you a little charm. What’s it for, I wonder?”

  Martin jerked violently on the necklace, snapping the leather cord and yanking it off her neck to toss it across the room. His eyes widened as he gazed at her. “That’s what it was for. You were trying to hide from us. Look at you glow. Haven't seen a glow like that this side of the Edge.” He glanced at the charm where it lay on the floor, then turned back to her. “That was some quality work. I’ll have to look up the person who made that and have a chat, see if he can make some for me since I collect quality charms.”

  He reached in his shirt and pulled out a tangled mess of trinkets. He lifted one up and showed it to her as if he was a first-grader at show-and-tell.

  “This one lets me know how long an injured person has to live. Comes in handy as a paramedic.” He dropped it and picked up another. It looked like a cheap plastic spider with a toothpick shoved through it. “This one helps me communicate with the dead.” He lifted another and gave her a smirk. “This one is my personal favorite. It lets me control a whole host of reanimated corpses at one time, which is a real life saver in my line of work. You don’t know how difficult it is to control even one walking carcass, much less a dozen or so like I’m doing right now. Pretty cool, don’t you think?”

  Only if she was as evil and demented as he was. She would have told him so if she didn’t have that damn gag in her mouth.

  He regarded her thoughtfully. “I wonder if you’ll glow once I’ve finished with you.”

  The casual way he said the words chilled Presley to the very depths of her soul and she had to fight to get a grip on the panic. She had no idea what Martin had planned for her, but she knew it wasn’t going to be anything pleasant. She had to hold on until Logan got there. If he got there. The last thing she remembered before everything went black was seeing Logan lying on his back trying to fight off Del Vecchio. What if that a-hole killed him?

  Tears stung her eyes and she blinked them back. There was no way Logan was dead. No half-rotting corpse was going to get the best of her man.

  Her man.

  Presley’s heart squeezed in her chest. It was true. Logan was her man, even if he didn’t know it yet. As soon as they got out of this, she was going to tell him how she felt.

  But first, she had to get through the next few minutes in one piece.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  WHILE SHE LISTENED to the necromancer ramble on conversationally, Presley looked around the room, hoping she might see something that would help her. To her left was a strange-looking white, porcelain table mounted on an adjustable base. On the counter behind it was a variety of unpleasant looking stainless-steel instruments, as well as an odd assortment of tubes and cylinders. Crap. She was in the funeral home’s embalming room. Considering the horrible chemical odor in the air, she should have realized it before.

  She glanced over at Martin again and saw him toying with an identical set of stainless-steel instruments on this side of the room. It didn’t take a genius to figure out they were used on dead bodies and prepare them for their final resting place. There was just one problem—she wasn’t dead.

  Yet.

  Presley strained at the bindings on her wrists again, this time even more urgently. Unlike before, her bonds seemed to give a little this time, like they were stretching. She craned her head around and saw that he’d tied her up with strips of cloth. If she could stretch them enough, she might be able to slip her hands out. She yanked on the strips of cloth, tugging so furiously she thought the skin on her wrists might tear.

  Martin abruptly turned back around to face her and she froze. If he noticed the bindings were coming loose, he would almost certainly retie them. But the necromancer gave no indication he knew what she’d been up to. Instead, he held up a wicked looking curved blade with saw teeth along the back edge. Presley’s eyes went wide at the sight of it and she made a whimpering sound behind the gag. She flinched and tried to pull away, but there was nowhere to go. All she could do was lie there trembling and wait for him to do whatever he was going to do with the knife. But he only slowly sliced open the front of her T-shirt from neckline to hem.

  “That’s right,” he said softly. “Hold still. I don’t want to cut you. Yet.”

  The scream that rose in her throat was muffled by the gag, making it sound pitiful and weak.

  “You know, I’m furious at you for killing Carson. He was my best friend.” Martin tossed the knife on the counter. “He still is, I suppose. Which is why I stole his body and brought him back.”

  The necromancer picked up a jar filled with something dark and glistening. Taking off the lid, he dipped his forefinger in the gooey liquid and carefully scrawled a series of symbols on her stomach. She was alarmed when he came to her bra, fearing he’d rip it open, but he didn’t so much as glance at her breasts as he smeared the liquid on the skin above the material.

  Martin shrugged as he dipped his finger in the jar again. “He doesn’t look so good now, but I can fix him up. It’s not like what I do is an exact science, you know. I’ve never worked on anyone I was close to before, either. Getting his spirit back from the dead was hard enough. For some reason, I couldn’t get it to join back up with his body. I’m not sure what happened there.” He grinned. “You have to admit, it is sort of cool the way he can morph through a wall one second, then slice and dice like the good old days the next.”

  Presley didn’t think it was so cool. Neither did the women he’d murdered, she was sure.

  “Carson didn’t like it too much, though,” the necromancer continued. “He was impatient for me to bring him all the way back. Under normal circumstances, that wouldn’t have been so tough, but I was working on my best friend. It put a lot of stress on me.”

  Presley wondered why he was telling her all this. She supposed she shouldn’t complain. The more he talked, the more time she had to work on freeing her wrists.

  “But I finally got it. Just took a little while to come up with the spell to reanimate his corpse.” Martin frowned. “Of course, his body was a little messy by then. But as I said, I’ll fix that. After I figure out why he’s still sort of…split…like he is. Even if the results are less than perfect right now, he’s still damn spectacular.”

  The necromancer put the jar on the counter and wiped his finger off on a towel. “Carson has always been such an amazing person. I saw a brilliant darkness in him the day I met him back in middle school. He walked around like he wore a coat made of death. I can see that in people, you know, just as I can see the glow around you.” Martin glanced at her as he tossed the towel on the counter. “I think other people could see it, too. Not literally, of course, but figuratively speaking. They could sense there was something different about him. Something dangerous. It was why he didn’t have a lot of friends. I didn’t, either. Which is why we kind of gravitated toward each other, I suppose.”

  Because they were two weirdos.

  “I helped him kill his first girl when we were both thirteen. Then he helped me open her up and find her soul.” Martin’s mouth curved. “I still remember it like it was yesterday.”

  Presley wished she could tell him how sick and depraved he and Del Vecchio were, and that she was glad she’d killed the bastard, but the rag in her mouth wouldn’t let her.

  “Did you know Carson lets me pick out the women he kills? It’s a little game we play. I pick someone at random, then we follow her around for a while to get a feel for her routine so Carson can pick the right moment. He has a knack for that. Back when he was alive, he’d always call me to make sure I would be in the right area to respond to the scene. Now that he’s a ghost, all he has to do is pop over to wherever I am, give me the address, then go back to the girl’s place and do his thing. I’m telling you, there’s nothing quite like walking into the scene of a fresh kill. The smells, the vividness of the blood before it starts to turn that ugly brown
color. It’s incredible.” He gave her a smile. “No one ever realizes it, but I snap a few pictures with my cell phone when I get to the scene so Carson can relive the moment. He appreciates that.”

  Martin paused and held his hands out over the symbols he had made, then chanted something under his breath. Even though Presley couldn’t understand what he was saying, she could feel the menace in the words and she wondered what he was doing to her. She found out a moment later when her skin began to tingle in those places where the necromancer had marked her with the goo.

  When he was done, Martin picked up the one-sided conversation where he’d left off. “But Carson was stupid to start having a relationship with your friend. What was her name? Darla, right? But that mother of his was badgering him all the time. Why don’t you have a girlfriend? A boy your age should have a girlfriend, blah, blah, blah.” He shook his head. “I tried to warn him that Darcy might stumble onto our secret, but he insisted he could control her. Turns out, she was the one who had control over him. When she said she didn’t want to see him anymore, I was thrilled, but Carson lost his mind. I tried to stop him, but he had to go see her. He said he had to teach her a lesson. We both know how that turned out, don’t we?”

  Martin picked up another jar that looked exactly like the first. He took off the lid and stirred the contents with his finger. When he was finished, he reached down to take the rag out of her mouth. Presley immediately drew in a breath to scream, but he slashed his fingers across her lips, leaving a trail of goo and numbness. The liquid had a bitter, metallic taste, like blood, and she would have gagged if it hadn’t numbed her throat as it went down. She swallowed hard, then sucked in a breath to scream again. Nothing came out but a hoarse croak.

  “You can try to scream, but all that will come out are those hoarse, little sounds,” the necromancer told her. “I’ve numbed your vocal cords. You can talk, but you can’t scream. I can’t stand it when women scream.”

  Presley glared up at him. “What the hell are you going to do to me?”

  Martin set the jar down on the counter, then picked up the curved blade he’d used to slice open her T-shirt. He regarded it lovingly, then smiled at her. “What am I going to do to you? Well, first I’m going to kill you. After that, I’m going to cut out all your organs, throw out the unnecessary ones and put the others back in just so. Then I’m going to bring you back to life like I brought Carson back.”

  She stared up at him in horror. She’d expected him to kill her, but not bring her back. “Wh-why would you do that?”

  “So that you’ll live forever, of course. Don’t worry, you’ll look better than Carson because your body won’t have a chance to decompose.” He gave her a wink. “My father always told me to work with only the freshest ingredients and he was right.”

  Presley didn’t know if she was more terrified by what he was about to do to her or the fact that he took such perverse pleasure in it. “You’re insane.”

  He laughed. “That’s the same thing they said about Galileo. No one ever recognizes genius until after the fact, do they?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t understand. Why would you want to bring me back when you obviously hate me so much?”

  “Because you’re going to be my gift to Carson.”

  “What do you mean, your gift?”

  “I mean that I’m going to make you immortal. That way, Carson can spend hour after hour torturing you. He gets to relive the pleasure of carving you up over and over for all eternity, while you get to relive the horror. It’s perfect.”

  Presley’s blood went cold. Martin was even more demented than she’d thought, and while she wasn’t sure if he had the skill to do what he said—especially since he clearly had issues resurrecting Del Vecchio—the thought of suffering at the serial killer’s hands over and over terrified her so much she could barely breathe. She didn’t even realize she’d been lying there listening to the necromancer like a mouse hypnotized by a snake until he moved the blade toward her chest. She yanked on the bindings again, not caring if he saw.

  “Now, now,” Martin admonished. “Don’t move around so much. You’re going to live for a very long time and you don’t want the scars to be any worse than necessary, do you? A woman has to think about her beauty, after all.”

  She continued to jerk on the strips of cloth around her wrists. Was the one around her right wrist slipping loose? She wiggled on the table some more, rolling first one way, then next as much to free herself as to avoid the knife in Martin’s hand. Anything to keep from giving this madman a free shot at her heart.

  “You’ll never get away with this,” she told him.

  Crap. She sounded like something out of a low-budget horror movie. She was surprised Martin didn’t laugh in her face.

  “Of course I’ll get away with it,” he said. “Who do you think is going to save you, that Neanderthal ghost hunter of yours? What a joke. He’s a little busy fighting both Carson’s ghostly form and his immortal physical body. He doesn’t stand a chance against them. There’s no way for him to win. It’s only a matter of how painfully he dies.”

  Presley’s heart sank. She wanted to scream at Martin, to tell him he was wrong and that Del Vecchio was going to be the one who ended up dead. Logan was too tough and too smart. He was going to come crashing through that door any second…

  A roaring howl tore through the building, cutting off her thought in midstream. There was so much pain and agony in the sound it made every hair on the back of Presley’s neck stand up. Above her, the fluorescent lights flickered madly, then brightened.

  “Right on time, too.” Martin smirked. “If I’m not mistaken, I believe that was Carson ripping your boyfriend’s heart out of his chest.”

  No!

  Presley tried to scream, but nothing would come out. Tears welled in her eyes, making them burn. It felt as if she’d suddenly died inside. Logan couldn’t be dead. She would know it—feel it—she was sure.

  She struggled against her bonds with renewed determination. She had to get to Logan.

  Martin put his free hand on her shoulder, leaning over so that some of his weight was on top of her. “Hold still, you bitch, or I’ll slit your throat and be done with it. You won’t look as pretty, but I’m getting tired of dealing with you.”

  Presley was too focused on untying herself to pay any attention to him. Just a little bit more wiggling and one hand would be free.

  “That’s it,” Martin ground out.

  The necromancer circled around behind her, apparently planning to go through with his threat, when her right hand slipped loose from the strips of cloth holding her captive. She balled her fist and punched straight up at Martin’s face, landing a blow squarely on his nose. There was satisfying crunch and he fell against the counter with a cry of pain. The move may have only delayed her death, but it sure as hell felt good anyway.

  He was right back on his feet, his nose bloody and his eyes full of fury. “You’re going to pay for that. As soon as I reanimate you, I’m going to spend a week tearing little strips of skin off your body so I can hear you scream. You know how much I hate to hear women scream, so you must know how badly I want to hurt you.”

  Presley tried to grab the knife, but he swatted her hand away. She cried out as he grabbed her by the hair and jerked her head to the side, exposing her throat. After all she’d survived, something told her she wasn’t going to make it through this.

  Martin was about to bring the knife down when the door on the far side of the room suddenly burst open to slam back against the wall. Presley darted a look in that direction, expecting to see Del Vecchio standing there. But it wasn’t the serial killer. It was Logan, shotgun in hand and a pissed-off expression on his face. Presley breathed a sigh of relief. He looked beat-up and there was blood all over his face and shirt, but he was alive.

  Thank God.

  “Get the hell away from her right now,” Logan growled.

  Martin rested the edge of the blade against her ne
ck. “Like hell I will. I don’t know how you got past Carson but take one more step and I’ll slit her throat while you watch.”

  Logan’s jaw tightened, but he stayed where he was. He didn’t lower his weapon, though. “Your boy Del Vecchio is roasting in one of the ovens.”

  That must have thrown the necromancer for a loop because the hand holding the knife to her throat didn’t seem quite as steady as it had been a moment ago. “You’re lying.”

  “Am I?” Logan lifted a brow. “Then where is he?”

  Martin didn’t answer, but Presley saw him go pale.

  “That’s right,” Logan said. “Del Vecchio is dead, for good this time. And if you harm her, you’ll be joining him.”

  Martin’s grip on her hair tightened and Presley winced. “You talk tough, ghost hunter, but you’re forgetting one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  Presley knew Logan was stalling for time while he waited for Martin to give him an opening. The shotgun shells loaded with salt and hematite weren’t very accurate or deadly, but she had no doubt that with Logan doing the shooting, they’d be enough.

  “That I’m a necromancer and we’re in a funeral home full of dead people,” Martin said.

  No sooner had the words left his mouth than a dozen zombies stumbled through the door behind Logan. Presley had no idea whether they were the same ones she and Logan had been fighting in the outer room earlier or fresh ones that Martin raised. Either way, there were more of them than Logan could handle by himself. He kicked and punched the first few that reached him, then knocked out another with a shotgun blast, but there were too many of them and within seconds, he went down with a pile of walking corpses on top of him.

  Presley’s heart lurched. “Logan!”

  Martin bent over to put his face close to hers. “So much for your big hero coming to save the day.”

  At his smug tone, something snapped inside Presley. She didn’t care that he held a knife to her throat anymore. She wasn’t going to lie there passively while Logan got killed by a horde of zombies. She had one hand free and she was going to use it, dammit.