Dark Revel

by E. A. Copen

  DARK REVEL

  Book 8 of The Lazarus Codex

  By

  E.A. Copen

  This is a work of fiction. Names, persons, places, and incidents are all used fictitiously and are the imagination of the author. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, events or locales, is coincidental and non-intentional, unless otherwise specifically noted.

  No portion of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  E.A. Copen

  DARK REVEL

  Book 8 of The Lazarus Codex

  © E.A. Copen 2019

  All rights reserved.

  Please contact the author with typos, questions, or unicorns. I like unicorns especially. eacopen@eacopen.com

  ***

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  A Word from E.A. Copen

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  Chapter One

  Grandpa’s Louisville slugger cracked against another zombie skull as it dipped low on the Ferris wheel. Brain matter splattered the seat and the plastic housing of the gondola. His body slumped over, fingers twitching.

  “Home run! Out of the park!” I mimicked the sound of a cheering crowd. “And the crowd goes wild!”

  A single gunshot barked in the distance, over by the abandoned burger café.

  I shouldered the bloodstained bat and turned to call over my shoulder, “Everything okay, baby?”

  “Don’t talk to me when I’m aiming,” Emma shouted back. Her gun barked again, the shot creating a flash of light just long enough to give me a glimpse of her blood-splattered face.

  A zombie, which had just shambled out the door, jerked and went down.

  “Headshot! That makes six in row.” Emma flashed a grin. “Loser buys dinner.”

  “I’m at seven. Try to keep up, babe.” I winked and turned back to the Ferris wheel. Nothing like killing supernatural nasties with your super-hot girlfriend after dark.

  The next gondola held a live one; he growled, spat, and struggled against the seatbelt that held him in place, reaching for me. Well, live was a relative term with zombies. Technically, none of them were undead. That was the one thing the movies never quite got right about zombies. Oh, they were dead where it counted. No pulse, no breathing, but the brain didn’t quit thanks to the spell that held them in its power. A spell only a necromancer could use. Seeing as how I was the only necromancer in New Orleans I knew of and I hadn’t made these guys, that meant... I wasn’t sure what it meant just yet. Only that it wasn’t good. I’d deal with it once the zombies themselves were taken care of.

  I wiggled the bat on my shoulder, took aim, and swung it as hard as I could. It hit off center with a loud crack and his head slumped to the side, but he didn’t stop trying to get to me. Damn. Broke his neck. Not enough to put one of them down. I took another swing and caved in the face. That worked, but my bat got stuck. The gondola kept moving, pulling me along with it.

  “Um, hey, Em? A little help here?”

  “Let go of the bat, Lazarus.” Her voice was closer. She must’ve finished with the zombies in the burger joint and come to poach mine. The nerve.

  I gave the bat a tug, but it was in there good. “Are you kidding? Hank Aaron signed this thing! I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some zombie freak—” I grunted, still trying to pull it free. The edge of the platform loomed. A few more feet.

  Emma’s soft body pressed against my back. Her hands shot out and gripped the bat below mine. With a well-timed yank from both of us, it popped free, leaving gooey red strings of gore dripping onto the metal loading platform. “You almost fell and broke your neck over an autographed bat? Are you crazy?”

  “Certifiable.” I dropped the bat and turned to kiss her. “Call me crazy again.”

  “Later.” Emma knelt to pick up the bat and thrust it at me. “There are still two more zombies.”

  I glanced back at the Ferris wheel on its slow spin. Bloodstains and bodies decorated most of the cars. The rest were empty. No more easy kills here.

  Emma’s boots tapped against the metal stairs as she made her way down from the platform, moving her gun in both directions. There were moments I forgot she was a cop. Homicide detective who’d almost run me in when she thought I’d killed a girl. Funny how times change.

  “Next time, bring something other than a bat, Laz,” she said, lowering her gun. “That thing’s probably worth money. Or was before you coated it in zombie blood.”

  I put my hand on the railing and stepped down from the platform. “Like what exactly? Gun? Ex-con, Emma. Remember? That means no guns without a governor’s pardon, even in Louisiana.”

  “Whatever happened to your staff?”

  I’d broken it in Hell when I went to rescue her. Well, the Egyptian version of Hell. Too bad. I liked that staff. A dryad in the Summer Court had given it to me and the thing was practically alive. It’d been months and I still hadn’t found a suitable replacement, despite looking all over. I’d picked up all kinds of them, but nothing felt right in my hands.

  I shrugged. “I still need to replace it.”

  “Isn’t that like your badge of office? Not a very proper Death without a big stick.”

  I grinned and picked a tooth out of the end of my bat. “Hey, you didn’t have any complaints about the stick last night.”

  Emma raised an eyebrow. “Really? You’re going to turn this into a dick joke?”

  “You walked into it. Besides, I’m really three twelve-year-old boys in a trench coat. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

  She lifted her gun and fired it into the dark. A zombie stopped mid-shamble and fell over sans a head. “Eight. We’re all tied up.”

  Shit, one zombie left somewhere in a giant, abandoned theme park and if I didn’t find it, I’d have to buy her dinner, probably at that sushi place she liked again. If I had to eat another ball of rice-covered seaweed with raw fish, I’d throw myself into the Mississippi. I was getting a hamburger and that was that.

  But first, I had to find the last zombie.

  An old, wooden roller coaster creaked as we walked by it. I paused, glancing up into the beams in search of my last kill. No zombies in sight, but the old Zydeco Scream was the tallest ride here. If I climbed to the top, I’d be able to spot him for sure.

  Unfortunately, those old beams weren’t in good condition. Katrina had swept in and wrecked most of the old Six Flags. W
ith high flood waters and years of neglect, chances were good that the support beams were rotten. They might not hold my weight.

  “You’re not thinking of climbing up that thing,” Emma said. “It’s a death trap.”

  I shrugged. “You got any better ideas about how to find the missing zombie?”

  “What about your magic? Can’t you... You know?” She waved her hands.

  I shook my head. “Not my zombies. They don’t register as dead. All I’d get is a general sense of direction. And he’d be able to sense me back.” He being whoever created the zombies. I was trying not to think too hard about that until after we’d dealt with the immediate threat.

  So far, I was counting on him not knowing who he was screwing with. I could hunt him down and take him by surprise. If I were just another necromancer, it’d be a tough fight, pitting magic against magic. I didn’t want to wade through hordes of zombies and ghosts just to get to the guy. But as the Pale Horseman, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, I had the edge. I could rip out his soul and he’d never see me coming.

  Emma frowned and clicked on her flashlight, flashing it up into the beams. “I think I see a viable way up, but I don’t know. Don’t break your neck, Laz.”

  I gave her a quick peck on the lips. “Be right back.”

  Planks of old, stained wood lined the side of the roller coaster, just far enough that they could serve as a ladder. I gripped the highest rung I could reach and tried it. Solid. Next, I tried the highest one I could get my foot on. It gave under my weight with a loud crack, but the next one down held. Just to be sure, I stayed there a minute, making sure it would hold me. When I was certain, I climbed up.

  At its highest point, the Zydeco Scream was over a hundred feet tall. My aim wasn’t to reach that point, but the bottom of a loop. From there, I could look out over the theme park and try to spot movement. We had to get the last zombie before it left the theme park and got into the population or there’d be mass panic and paperwork. Emma didn’t want to deal with paperwork, and I’d do anything to keep her happy. Anything except eat one more tuna roll.

  Once I got halfway up, wind pulled at me. I started to regret the climb. As a kid, I’d climbed my fair share of trees and rooftops. I wasn’t afraid of heights, not in the least. Still, a two-story house was a far cry from a hundred-foot hurricane-damaged roller coaster.

  Keep it together, Laz. You’ve been to Hell and back. You’ve survived the Walk of Punishment in Naraka, killed the Devil and a handful of gods. You rode a bloodthirsty unicorn into battle against a Titan and came out okay. You can climb a giant wooden ladder.

  I threw my hand up to grip the next beam and it crumbled in my hand. The sudden lack of something to hold onto sent me scrambling and I momentarily lost my balance, tipping backward. Flailing, I tried to grab onto a beam but tipped back too far. My foot hooked on the beam as I fell and the world turned upside down.

  So, there I was, dangling upside down from the frame of a rotten roller coaster sixty feet in the air with wind in my ears and my coat flapping in my face. That was when the last zombie shambled onto the main thoroughfare below. He was a big guy, too. Easily four hundred pounds of pissed-off mindless hunger dressed in a white tank top two sizes too small and baggy sweats. He stumbled toward Emma. She had her back to him, staring wide-eyed up at me.

  “Behind you!” I tried to call but the board holding my foot cracked. It didn’t give completely, but I was on borrowed time. If I didn’t want to be a smear on the ground below, I’d have to get upright.

  I’m not a gym rat. I do one sit-up a day, half when I get up in the morning and the other half when I lie down. Ninety percent of my cardio came from outrunning things trying to kill me, but I wasn’t much of a runner either. I was just a skinny necromancer with a slight beer gut and a butt that didn’t look half bad in dad jeans. Great for Netflix and chill, not so great for upside down sit-ups sixty feet in the air.

  I grunted and tried to pull myself up enough to grab one of the wooden rails, but the beam cracked, and I fell through. My foot hit the next one, which also broke, as did the next. Somehow, that got me turned around and my face hit the wooden railing, cracking it with my chin. I slid down the side of the roller coaster face first, watching the ground quickly get closer.

  Meanwhile, the ginormous zombie grabbed Emma’s shoulder and crushed it under his oversized hand. She tried to turn and raise her gun, but he flung her to the ground where she’d be zombie chow.

  In a panic, I flung out a tendril of unfocused necromantic magic, aiming for the zombie. It hit him, and he staggered back. The magic pulled at me, drawing me further away from the roller coaster while I wrestled for control. Please work.

  My skin prickled as another presence awoke in the mind I was grappling with, this one belonging to the zombie’s creator. I expected it to fight me, to try and keep control of the creature, but instead I got the distinct feeling the other necromancer was smirking at me. His mind withdrew from the zombie and let mine slide into place.

  The zombie threw himself forward, arms outstretched to catch me. I landed in his arms with a loud thump. The sudden stop hurt like hell, but at least I wasn’t dead.

  Emma’s gun barked, and the zombie’s head exploded all over me. I fell the last few feet to the ground while the zombie toppled over, but hitting the ground was the least of my worries.

  Agony exploded inside my head like a lightning strike. I swore I felt flesh rip and bone shatter. My brain seemed to bounce and turn itself inside out. My body jerked and my lungs froze. Sudden nausea made my stomach surge. I gagged on something bubbling out of my mouth. When I tried to swallow, I found I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even blink.

  “Laz!” Emma knelt beside me, putting the gun on the ground. She tore open my coat and pushed up my shirt. Her ear went to my chest and stayed there for a moment of tense silence.

  With a snap of magic power, my soul was forced out my body and I found myself standing over my body while Emma started CPR. I glanced around, looking for my reaper. In the past, when I died, they usually appeared and whisked me away to somewhere private. We’d chat and I’d somehow convince them to send me back. My heart sank as I realized no one was there. Dammit, I’d been meaning to meet my new reaper. Maybe the gods hadn’t gotten around to assigning me one yet. That thought was terrifying. Without a reaper, I might be trapped on Earth forever, doomed to become a restless spirit. Worse, I might not get to go back into my body.

  “Come on, Emma,” I whispered. “It’s up to you now.”

  She tilted back my head, cleared my airway and gave my body a few rescue breaths. Shit, this was bad. Really bad. Not at all how I planned to go. What the hell had even happened? It felt like a psychic attack. But that couldn’t be. I had my mental shields up. No one should’ve been able to get past them.

  A shadow shifted at the edge of my vision. I spun around in time to see it turn away and dart into the night. Whatever power had been holding onto my body went with him and my soul snapped back into my body.

  With a pained gasp, I drew air into my lungs and blinked before pushing myself onto my side to throw up.

  “God, Laz, I thought I’d lost you.” Emma pushed some of my hair aside while I spat. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” I wheezed and turned my head to look at the spot where I’d seen the shadowy figure. Whoever he was, he was long gone.

  Chapter Two

  Emma helped me back to her black Escalade. I could stand on my own, but the CPR had done a number on my chest. I’d be sporting a bruise come morning. A normal person would go to the emergency room after dying, but I didn’t have insurance, nor did I have a way to explain what happened yet. I had my theories, but they’d have to wait.

  Baron Samedi, my boss, was waiting by Emma’s SUV, leaning on his skull-head cane. He was a tall, thin black man with bony features and bright eyes. Normally, he dressed in purple suits and matching slacks, but that evening he’d chosen a rust-colored outfit. He rem
oved his top hat. “Did you get them?”

  I nodded. “All seventeen zombies are dead.”

  “Good.” Samedi replaced his hat and tucked his cane into his elbow. “I’ll see to the remains.”

  Emma pulled open the passenger door and stuffed me inside. “Make sure missing persons can find and identify the remains with DNA. Those families deserve some closure.”

  “Speaking of closure.” I rubbed my chest. “Any idea who rose them in the first place?”

  The Baron shook his head.

  Whoever had done it was likely the same person behind the psychic attack that nearly did me in. He’d been working on zombifying those seventeen people for at least a month, since that was the oldest matching missing persons report. The victims had seemed random, unconnected by anything that either Emma or I could identify.

  The one thing I knew about the man behind the magic was that he was a necromancer, which should’ve made him easier to find. Not many necromancers in New Orleans. The witch community thought that kind of black magic was bad business. I’d been shunned ever since I came into my powers. At least this guy wouldn’t have any allies here either.

  “Whoever he is, he’s still out there.” Emma checked the ammo in her gun and tucked it back into her holster. “And there are more missing people. Reports spiked six months ago and haven’t let up since.”

  In a tourist city the size of New Orleans, missing people weren’t unheard of. People got drunk and fell into the river or wandered into the bayou to get eaten by gators. Some people just disappeared for natural reasons. It was usually impossible to tell them apart from those who disappeared for supernatural reasons until it was too late. I could use a finding spell to help the cops if they’d have let me, but I was lying low since I was dating a cop. I didn’t want to put Emma’s career at risk. A couple of detectives were being hardasses about her dating a felon.

  The only reason we’d found the zombies was because we got a tip. Someone texted Emma directly with where to find them and how many there were. We didn’t know who that lead was either. It felt like someone was messing with us, but we couldn’t just ignore zombies on the loose.