by Mia Archer
Or maybe it was the death of a reaper? The undeath? I’d never really stopped to think about where we fell on the sliding scale of supernatural creatures.
Sure enough there was a dead girl in the middle of the cafeteria. She was resting on one of the lunch tables like someone had held her down there and made a meal out of her.
I got the feeling someone was trying to send a message with the way they positioned the girl. Like she was a meal for them, and they wanted to let the world know the humans were just meals by doing this in the cafeteria.
Maybe that was meant to be a message for the humans who would no doubt find her in the morning, but then again maybe it was supposed to be a message for me. There were vampires here in the school and I’d better get used to it.
Well I wasn’t going to get used to it. I was going to track down those bloodsucking sons of bitches and make them pay for what they’d done to the girl.
I floated a little closer and my breath caught. For a moment I’d been terrified the girl was Stacy, but no. The girl looked an awful lot like Stacy. I was pretty sure she was a sophomore I’d seen around the halls a few times. Basically the girl who would become Stacy in a couple of years when she was a senior ruling the school.
At least she would’ve been the girl who ruled the school as a senior if she ever got to her senior year. Given that she was lying dead on a lunch room table with no chance of being revived and no chance of becoming a vampire I was willing to bet that her chances weren’t all that great at this point.
Which was a damn shame. All the more so because I was pretty sure those fucking vampires were deliberately sending me a message by killing a girl who looked so much like Stacy. Like I could totally see that Veronica bitch going after someone else who would rule the school someday in the far future if she thought it would send me a message.
“You bloodsucking bastards,” I growled. I clenched my fist around my scythe and wished I had one of them standing in front of me right now so I could cut them to pieces.
Again I wasn’t sure if that would even do any good against a bloodsucking bastard, but it would’ve been therapeutic for me!
“Oh my gawd. Are you, like, supposed to be the girl from that video or something? Wait until I get a video of you!”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Of all the things I didn’t need right now, this was probably at the top of that list of things I really didn’t need. Of all the bullshit to deal with while I was supposed to be hunting vampires, business was the last thing on my mind.
Except there was business right behind me. At least I was pretty sure it was a healthy dose of business from the way she was talking in that traditional valley girl accent that all popular girls seemed to use at some point even though we were about as far from California as you could get.
I wheeled around and sure enough there was the girl floating there in her spectral form. No one had come along to retrieve her, because why would they? I was here and I was available to work, so why would someone like dad come along?
I was surprised this girl hadn’t been pinging my sense that there was an untethered recently departed spirit hanging out nearby. Usually I could sense them better than this. Of course I’d been distracted by the whole vampire hunt thing, but still.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Oh my gawd. Are you, like, talking to me?” she asked, sounding like me talking to her was the equivalent of a mortal sin. Which it probably was in her popular girl view of the world.
I sighed. I tried to put my hand to my head to rub at the bridge of my nose where I felt the beginnings of a headache forming, but I couldn’t do it because my scythe was there getting in the way.
It wasn’t a good idea to go rubbing at the bridge of my nose if I didn’t want to put that blade through my face. Though considering the evening I was having right about now a blade to the face might’ve been a nice change of pace to telling a young girl who was just on the verge of fun stuff like getting her driver’s license that nothing like that was going to happen.
“Yes I’m, like, talking to you,” I said, then decided to tone it down just a little. This girl had just died, after all, and in my experience that was usually the sort of traumatic experience spirits didn’t want to acknowledge.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have talked to you like that. I know you’re probably going through a difficult time here, and I’m here to help you even if…”
“Why would I be going through a difficult time?” the girl asked. “I just met a cute guy and…”
I realized I’d been blocking the girl’s view of her body. Which might also be blocking her coming to terms with what was happening. I sighed and floated to the side so she could see the damage.
The girl stared for a long uncomprehending moment at the pile of clothes, flesh, and bone that had been her body until just a short while ago. The body probably wasn’t even cold yet.
Though I doubted there’d be any blood pooling in the bottom like you usually got with a body that’d been lying like that after being deceased. No, it was difficult for blood to pool in a body when something had come along and removed all of that pooled blood to make the body dead in the first place.
“What is that?” the girl asked. “Is this supposed to be some sort of Halloween joke or something? Because that is not cool.”
She floated over to get a closer look at her body. Though she didn’t seem to register that she was floating rather than walking. She hovered over the body staring.
I’d seen this all before, of course. Before I realized I was going into the family business of reaping I’d had an odd habit of being around people when they passed on.
It turns out that being a reaper makes someone predisposed to be around people when they’re about to expire. Which was something I was used to now, but it’d been really freaky for a little girl who didn’t know why all these people kept dying in front of her.
Not to mention my own habit of frequently dying due to inattention.
“That’s you,” I said, trying to sound comforting and not knowing if I was doing a good job of it. It was always difficult to tell someone that they’d moved on to their eternal reward. “I’m afraid you were attacked by a vampire, and it looks like they did what vampires do.”
“No,” the girl said, shaking her head. She turned to me, and spectral tears streamed down her face. “No! I don’t believe it!”
8
Dead Girl
“Afraid it’s true,” a voice said from behind me.
Normally I would’ve been irritated at Jake, Arnold, and Luke getting involved with something like this, but this was one case where I was more than happy to have help. Maybe seeing other ghosts would make it easier for the girl to accept that something terrible had, in fact, happened to her.
“Who are you?” the girl asked. “And why are you guys dressed like rejects from an ‘80s movie?”
“Because they are from the ‘80s,” I said. “Or I guess they’re from the late ‘70s really, but they died in the early ‘80s which might as well be the late ‘70s so whatever.”
“Very beginning of the decade, but still,” Arnold said, floating up and giving her a little wave accompanied by a goofy grin.
I rolled my eyes. The last thing I needed was these chuckleheads acting all weird because there was a girl who’d just been turned to a ghost and she happened to be a hottie. I mean she was a hottie, but still.
“Easy boys,” I said.
A touch of irritation came to my voice as I said it. I knew on the one hand I needed to break this girl’s new situation to her easy, but on the other hand there was a part of me that wanted to take her to the other side and be done with it so I could get on with my vampire search, damn it.
“You guys are ghosts,” she said.
“Look down,” Jake said, crossing his arms and winking at me.
The girl looked down. Gasped as she realized, seemingly for the first time, that she was just as ghostly as the guys hovering in
front of her. Though really the fact that she could suddenly see a bunch of ghosts hovering in front of her should’ve been her first tip off that something was seriously wrong here.
Her eyes went wide and she bolted. At least she tried to bolt. It was something I’d seen plenty when my dad was dealing with someone who’d been recently deceased.
The point was she was going to run for it, and that would mean a pain in the ass trying to track her down and stop her from running. Time I didn’t have since there were bloodsuckers out there somewhere in the school, and those bloodsuckers had already made it quite obvious they were willing and able to take students out.
The only thing that was probably saving other students from getting taken out along with this girl was most students had cleared out of here, and the ones who hadn’t cleared out were in the middle of practices like with Stacy and the cheerleaders.
Though those practices would be letting out soon, and I didn’t want some straggler who had a parent picking them up late to suddenly find themselves relieved of their blood because they were sticking around a school that’d become a vampire den.
“I don’t have time for this,” I growled. I lashed out with a bit of death magic. A tendril of darkness shot out and wrapped around her leg before she could get very far, and I yanked her back like an angler reeling in a big fish.
The girl flew back so fast that she went right past me. Her eyes were wide the whole time, like she was having trouble believing this was actually happening on top of the whole dying young thing.
I could sympathize, but I was in a hurry.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said when she bounced back. “But you’re dead, and there’s not much we can do about that.”
“Wait,” the girl cried out. “What the hell are you doing to me? You can’t do this!”
“Can you tell me anything about what happened to you?” I asked. “Like a description of the person who did this to you?”
“Why the hell would I want to do anything like that?” she said. “You’re just going to do that creepy thing you’re…”
Her eyes went wide as she trailed off. She seemed to really be taking me in, really taking me in, for the first time since all this nonsense started.
“You’re her, aren’t you?” she breathed. “The one who did the flying thing over the crowd at homecoming? You’re the dead girl!”
It was an odd change. Usually when the recently deceased learn they’re among the recently deceased they get upset to discover that there’s someone waiting to take them to the other side, but this girl was reacting like it was some amazing thing and…
“You’ve heard of me?” I asked.
“Well duh,” she said. “I mean everyone’s heard about you, but I must’ve watched that video like a thousand times. The way you leapt over that crowd and you had your scythe going and everything? Fucking awesome!”
Then she went quiet as she seemed to realize what was going on here, and why I was waiting for her.
“I suppose that means you’re here to pull me to the other side, doesn’t it?”
“Something like that,” I said. “Unfortunately you were bit by a vampire, and when they drain you of your blood and don’t turn you into a bloodsucker yourself it means…”
I trailed off. She really wasn’t taking this as seriously as I’d hoped she would. I mean usually when someone had died they went through all the phases of grief, and usually in my experience there was a heavy emphasis on the whole bargaining part of things.
This girl was acting different though. She was weaving back and forth and seemed to be having trouble with this. Which I could understand given the whole sheer overwhelming emotional weight of finding out she was dead and about to move on, but it still would’ve been nice if she could pay attention for like thirty seconds and tell me something about the bloodsuckers that killed her.
“Are you even paying attention to this?” I asked. “I mean I know you’re dead and all, and that’s very sad, but maybe you could actually try to…”
“I don’t feel so good,” she said.
“What do you mean you don’t feel so good?” I asked, now well and truly exasperated. I threw my hands up in frustration. “You’re dead! You’re pining for the fjords! How could you possibly feel anything?”
She looked at me and she was still weaving back and forth. Almost like she was drunk. Almost, but again there was something off. Darkness moved in around her, and I had to look around to make sure there wasn’t something weird going on here. Had I used my death magic and I hadn’t even realized it because I was that frustrated?
Only no. That wasn’t it. There was a darkness all around her, but I wasn’t the one doing it. Which was damned peculiar.
Then I saw it.
It was difficult to describe the thing. Like a twisted amalgamation of Gollum and a werewolf, at least when it came to the claws. I shook my head and blinked a couple of times to make sure I was actually seeing what I thought I saw, and sure enough the thing was still there crawling across the floor towards the girl.
That darkness seemed to be coming from it. Which didn’t strike me as the greatest thing in the world. I was pretty fucking sure there weren’t supposed to be creatures like that slinking through the cafeteria after school was over, and the fact that there was one hanging around where a girl had just been killed by a bunch of fucking vampires didn’t strike me as a coincidence.
“What the hell is that thing?” Arnold asked, floating in such a way that I was between him and whatever the hell that thing was.
“I have no clue,” I said. “Doesn’t look like anything pleasant, but…”
I was cut off mid sentence by the thing letting out an unearthly wail, more of a screech than anything, and launching itself through the air with a speed that astonished me and had me stumbling back to get away from the damn thing before it hit me.
Only the thing didn’t attack me. No, it latched onto this sophomore girl who let out a screech of her own as she fell forward with this monster on top of her.
I stared. It was seriously like something out of a monster movie, only as far as I knew there wasn’t anything out there that preyed on the spirits of the dead like that. Like seriously. The closest thing ghosts had to stories about things that went bump in the night were ghosts who’d died after 1984 and made jokes about Bill Murray or Dan Aykroyd coming for them.
“Do something!” Jake said.
“What the hell am I supposed to do?” I asked.
“Something to stop that thing that’s attacking ghosts!” Luke said. “Come on! You’re the one who’s supposed to protect us!”
“I’m supposed to take you to the other side when you’ve died, and I’m doing a piss poor job of that with you three. I have no idea what the hell this thing is!”
The creature bit into the girl’s neck. She shrieked, again the sort of sound that didn’t seem like it should be coming from a girl who was already dead, and then she went limp and stopped struggling.
I took a couple of steps back. I wasn’t proud of taking a couple of steps back, but that was some seriously freaky shit that I was not prepared to handle.
“What the ever loving fuck is going on?” Arnold said, fear touching his voice.
“We need to get the fuck out of here, is what’s going on!” Jake said.
I looked over my shoulder just in time to see the three of them beating a retreat from the cafeteria as fast as they could float away. Not that I could blame them for wanting to get the hell out of there.
After all, they’d been dead for awhile now. In that time they’d no doubt grown accustomed to the idea that there wasn’t much out there that could realistically threaten them. It was hard to threaten something that was already dead, after all.
This thing was different though. And as I watched it rose. Seemed to drag the girl’s spirit back towards her body. It was sort of like what it’d looked like when spirits were going back into their bodies after they’d been freed from
Graham’s necromancer staff, but it was all off.
The spirits getting away from Graham had been eager to go back to their bodies. This was more like the girl had been knocked unconscious and now she was being dragged back to her body whether or not she wanted it.
Then it was done. The creature and the girl’s spirit were back in her body, which rose and seemed to jerk and shake a couple of times. Like there was something in there that was getting used to controlling a human body.
Then that body turned on me, its eyes glowing a dark and dull red. The girl smiled, and there was a change about her. She was sporting a new set of fangs that descended as she stared at me, and then she leapt at me.
Motherfucker. I guess she had been turned into a vampire after all!
9
Living Dead Girl
The girl reached at me with her claws. She actually had fucking claws that came out as she swiped at me. Now there was something you didn’t see every day.
“Listen,” I said. “Maybe we can talk about this? I know you just recently occupied this girl, but if you let her go now then I promise I’ll go easy on you.”
The girl hissed. Okay then. I guess the spirit that’d taken up residence in her body wasn’t interested in getting kicked out.
“Seriously!” I shouted as I floated back to avoid another set of claws coming at me. “If you keep this up then I will be forced to thrash you!”
She leapt through the air and I brought up my scythe. I didn’t slash at her, I wasn’t sure whether or not that would hurt the girl who was now back in her body or not, and I didn’t want to damage her body too much on the off chance there might be a way to save her now that she’d been revived by this evil vampire spirit thingy.
I did send her flying across the room though. She landed against the conveyer belt they used to bring used food trays back into the cafeteria to be washed off. The thing buckled under the force of her hit, and then the whole thing collapsed under her.
