by Cheree Alsop
“Well, uh, I thought someone had broken in,” I said, embarrassed.
“So you were going to fight him or her?” The warlock asked skeptically. He glanced at me feet. “Barefoot?”
I rolled my eyes. “For the record, shoes are very noisy, awkward, and make no sense, and I’ve practiced my whole life fighting without them. And yes, on that note, I was going to fight whoever broke in.”
Virgo sighed and folded his arms. “Zev, that’s not how we do things. You’re supposed to call the cops if someone breaks in, not break them.”
“You didn’t call the cops when your book was stolen.” My eyes traveled to the open tome on the table. “That book, actually.” I gave him a searching look. “What are you looking for in that book?”
Virgo dropped into the chair he had been using with another sigh. “Searching for any way I can help my mom defeat my dad.”
The word ‘dad’ tore from him as if it hurt. I lowered into another chair, careful to keep my back to the wall and my front facing the store in case anyone else saw Virgo’s light and tried to investigate. I didn’t agree with Virgo. If someone broke into my store, I would definitely break him or her. It seemed poetic.
“I’m sorry about your dad,” I said.
Virgo turned his attention back to the book and didn’t look at me when he replied, “Yeah. It sucks. But that wasn’t my dad.”
I frowned at him. “What do you mean? You just called him your dad.”
Virgo shot me an exasperated look. “My dad was kind and caring and took his warlock powers very seriously.” He made a vague gesture toward the street. “That was not my dad. Whatever he’s become, he’s not the guy I’ll remember when I think of throwing a baseball in the front yard or learning how to charm grasshoppers for the first time.”
I didn’t know a thing about charming grasshoppers, but made a mental note to ask Virgo about that later. Grasshoppers actually made a fine snack for a wolf in a pinch.
I sat back in the chair and watched him flip through the pages of the book. “So what are you looking for? A way to stop the blood moon?”
“The problem I’m having is that the only way to stop the type of raising of the dead the dark coven is trying to do is with a completely pure sacrifice. The raising of an impure form of life needs a pure life to make amends and settle the disturbed spirits.” He flipped a few more pages. “I just don’t see where—” He paused and looked at me, really looked at me. “Wait. What did you say?”
I glanced around, wondering if he was listening to someone else.
“The moon,” Virgo repeated. “You said to stop the full moon!”
“Stop the blood moon,” I said. “It was a joke.”
He shook his head as he flipped toward the front of the book. “No. It’s not a joke. You’re right. You’re a genius!” He closed the book. “It’s not in here, but it’s got to work!”
He pressed a button on his cellphone. Instead of opening the menu, the light went out and the screen turned dark.
“Dang it,” he muttered. “I should have just turned on the lights instead of using my phone.”
“I might not have tried to break you if you did that,” I pointed out.
He stood up. “We don’t have much time. Let’s go.”
Still not sure where we were going, I followed him to the front of the store. He opened the door, then glared at me.
“Did you pick the lock?”
“It was better than breaking another window,” I replied.
Virgo paused, then acceded. “True. Thank you.”
I didn’t point out that I could have just removed the cardboard. He was too in his head to have listened to logic anyway.
He looked up and down the street. “Where’s your car?”
“What car?” I asked.
He threw me another exasperated look. “The car you used to get here! My sister needed my truck, so she dropped me off. We need your car.”
His tone and the tension that surrounded him was putting me on edge. My hands were already closed into fists. I shoved them into my pockets.
“Virgo, I can’t drive. No license and no training, remember?”
“Then how did you get here?” he asked.
I was losing my patience. “I walked,” I replied, spacing my words out carefully so that he wouldn’t miss them.
Virgo’s eyes widened. “With bare feet?”
I pointed at the shoes leaning against his store. They were the pair Isley had given me from her brother. They appeared brand new and fit passably. They were the best shoes I had ever worn in my life.
I picked them up, tied the laces together, and slung them over my shoulder. There was no use in wearing them out. I started walking.
“Where are you going?” Virgo called out.
“To the Willards’,” I replied without looking back.
“By walking?” I could hear him running to catch up.
“Or we could call someone,” I said sarcastically with a glance at the phone he still held along with the book.
Virgo grimaced and shoved the cellphone in his pocket. “This is ridiculous,” he muttered. He fell into place beside me. “Who walks anymore?”
I glanced at him. “We could run.”
He shook his head so hard his blond ponytail slapped back and forth. “No way. You’ve already got me walking. This is my quota of cardio for the month. There’s no way I’m upping that. You’re going to give me a heart attack.”
“I thought cardio was supposed to prevent heart attacks.”
“Shut up.”
I fought back a smile at his impatient muttering.
“Walking through this town is ridiculous,” Virgo was still saying by the time we left the main part of Brickwell and walked the road toward the outskirts where the Willards’ house lay. “I need to brush up on flying. Maybe I can figure out how to turn into a bird or something. That would be worth my time. None of this meandering through the forest crap that’s going to take an hour of my life I’ll never get back. I think—”
“Virgo, quiet,” I whispered.
“Don’t think you can just—”
“Virgo, shut up!” I commanded in the tone the other werewolves never failed to obey.
The warlock’s mouth closed with an audible snap. I turned toward the forest to our right. The sound had been faint, but odd. A stick snapped. I wished that I could turn into a wolf. The pain that speared through my chest from the white handprint said that wasn’t going to happen.
“Get behind me,” I told the warlock.
Virgo obeyed with a promptness that told me he had heard the noises, too.
A moan sounded, the same one that had caught my attention. A second one called out. Something appeared from the forest. Chills ran down my arms.
“What is that?” Virgo asked, his voice tight.
“A man?” I replied.
But it wasn’t like any man I had ever seen. This one was covered in gray, slimy dirt. His eyes were white and the skin was falling off of his bones. The second one who shambled from the trees appeared the same way, except that she was female and wore a long blue dress that was probably beautiful once, but was now torn and falling to pieces.
“He did it,” Virgo said in a stilted voice. “He raised the dead. It’s starting, and it’s going to get worse tonight.”
“What do we do with them?” I asked.
He lifted his book and began flipping through it.
I looked from him to the figures stumbling toward us. “Uh, Virgo. We don’t have a lot of time for reading.”
“Hold on,” Virgo said.
I pulled the shoes from my shoulder. The dead had reached the road. Their shoes scraped across the asphalt as they ambled faster.
“Virgo,” I said in a warning tone.
“Here it is,” the warlock said excitedly. He read, “The dead who are risen will be driven to fulfilling their most basic need, sustenance. They will devour any type of flesh, but their preference will be for
the highly dense, protein-packed human brain. Those who are killed by the dead will turn into the risen dead themselves.”
Tremors ran down my spine. I looked from Virgo to the two figures who were almost to us. “So if they’re dead, how do I kill them?”
Virgo’s finger ran down the page. “Only the dead with a spinal column intact will be able to complete their search for sustenance. Severe this column and you severe their second life.”
“I can do that,” I said.
I twirled the tennis shoes over my head like a bola.
“Come get me,” I taunted.
I wasn’t sure if the risen dead could hear, but they certainly rushed forward. Virgo let out a scream and scrambled to distance himself from us. I kept my attention on the man and woman, studying them the way I would any normal attacker.
Their eyesight didn’t appear to be the greatest. Both of the dead swung their heads from side to side as if to keep me in view. Their arms and legs appeared somewhat joint locked, making their movements jerky and clumsy. Both opened and closed their mouth so hard their teeth gave unsettling clicks. I was amazed the bones didn’t break. By the sound of it, a bite would definitely tear through the skin.
“Zev, be careful,” Virgo called out.
I didn’t reply. By my estimation, the male would be the deadliest. His reach was longer than mine and by the sound of the bones of his fingers grinding together when he opened and closed his rotting hands, I didn’t want to know what it felt like to be grabbed by them.
I threw the knotted shoes. They wrapped around the man’s ankles just like the bolas I had trained with and he fell to the ground. The woman lunged toward me with her hands out. Virgo gave a yelp of fear somewhere behind me. I ducked beneath the woman’s arms and spun. I kicked at the back of her legs, sending her to the ground on her knees. The moment her knees touched the asphalt, I smashed a hammer fist down onto the place where her skull met her neck. A loud crack sounded and she slumped motionless to the paving.
“Zev, he’s getting up!” Virgo said.
A glance at the man showed him struggling to rise. I threw myself into a flip kick and slammed the back of my right heel against the back of his neck. The force propelled him to the ground with his neck at an unnatural angle. When I was certain he wasn’t going to get back up, I bent down and unwrapped the shoes from the now dead again man’s ankles.
“Geesh,” Virgo said, coming to join me. “Those are good shoes.”
I studied the fallen forms. “What do we do with them?”
“What do you mean?” Virgo asked.
“We can’t just leave them here,” I replied. “If someone comes across them, it’s going to be chaos.”
“Can’t we just throw them in the woods?” the warlock offered.
I shook my head. “We’re not far from the Willards’. We need to find out what your mother and the other witches can do about this. If there are more risen dead, we’re going to need to come up with an elimination strategy.”
I grabbed the man’s bony arm and one leg. Bending, I hefted him onto my back fireman style.
“I hate it when you sound like a soldier,” Virgo complained. He grimaced as he lifted the woman’s body into his arms. “It makes you sound so much older than me. Like you’re forty or something and I some little kid.”
I grinned at him.
He shook his head. “I’m not a little kid. You’re what, nineteen?”
I nodded. “Good guess.”
“I’m twenty,” the warlock replied in exasperation. “And you sound like some general giving out marching orders. ‘We’re going to need to come up with an elimination strategy’,” he said in a deep, mocking voice. He shook his head. “You need to chill.”
I nodded toward the body in his arms. “You want me to chill now?”
“Not now,” the warlock replied. “After we get rid of these.”
His frustrated tone said that he was close to losing his own chill. Given the dead body in his arms, I couldn’t blame him. My efforts at keeping his mind distracted, though, were definitely working. I didn’t need a freaked out warlock.
So I kept it up. “So when you say chill, what are you implying? The beach, sunglasses, lemonade?”
“Now you’re talking,” Virgo said. He hefted the decaying body, adjusting her weight without looking down. “We need a vacation away from the end of the world and vampire Masters and dark covens. Promise me you’ll come with me after all this.”
“I promise,” I replied. A thought struck me. “What about surfing?”
Virgo glanced at me. “What about it?”
“I can’t surf. You should teach me.”
His eyebrows rose. “Just because I look like some beach bum doesn’t mean I can surf. That’s stereotyping.”
“Can you?” I pressed.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “I’ll teach you.”
I pressed a hand to my side. I had a feeling a doctor wouldn’t recommend carrying a dead body after having a bullet wound cauterized.
“You alright?” Virgo asked.
I glanced up to find him watching me. “Fine,” I said, resuming our walk.
“Did you get any rest?”
I could feel the warlock studying my face. I averted it further to deny his scrutiny.
“No,” I replied. “And thanks for telling Mitch. I really don’t need a mother.”
Virgo snorted beside me. “I knew you would just keep on going instead of sleeping.” He gestured. “Now look at you. Carrying a dead body with a bullet through your stomach.”
“Want to carry them both?” I offered.
He sidestepped when I tried to shove the other body toward him.
“Keep it to yourself, werewolf,” the warlock said.
“I will, if the next time I get hurt, you don’t go spouting off to Mitch,” I replied a bit more testily than I intended.
Virgo glanced at me. “You plan on getting hurt again?”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s what you took from what I said?” At the warlock’s straight look, I told him what should have been obvious. “Werewolves don’t show weakness. It’s survival. I don’t need him or any of them knowing anything about me. Got it?”
Virgo was silent for a moment before he said, “Got it.” He took a few more steps, then turned to walk backwards so he could face me. “But that’s a very lonely way to live.”
I couldn’t see a hole to jump into or a cliff to dive from, so I gave in and said, “Why?”
He huffed as if it should have been obvious. “You don’t want anyone knowing anything about you. If you’re hurt, you hide it. If you’re tired, you ignore it. If you’re angry or,” he lowered his voice as if afraid of how I would react, “Jealous, you don’t tell anyone about it.” He cleared his throat. “This whole keeping everything to yourself also means you’re the only one who knows anything about you. Do you like it that way?”
I didn’t know how to respond. I thought about Isley and her final words to me. Can you protect me from yourself?
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I like it that way.”
The lights from the Willards’ residence came into sight. I was just about to heave a sigh of relief at the break from our conversation when a sound caught my ear.
“Quick, hide!” I said.
“Why?” Virgo asked.
I shoved him with my shoulder toward a thick stand of bushes. He stumbled over a clump of tall grass and landed on top of the body he had been carrying. I ducked beside him and waited. The car I had heard rushed past, leaving us in silence once more.
“Really,” the warlock said, his tone dry. “Couldn’t you have just said, “There’s a car, Virgo. Hide.”
I shook my head and helped him back to his feet. “Nope. This was more fun.”
Virgo stared at me. “Did you just say fun?” He gestured toward the bodies at our feet. “This was not fun.”
“Pushing you was,” I replied.
He stalked toward the road.
“What about the bodies?” I called after him.
“Leave them,” he growled without looking at me. “I’ll tell the witches where to look.” His voice lowered and he said, “And I’ll tell you where to go.”
“I heard that,” I said. I jogged to catch up. The shoes hit my back.
We were nearly to the house when Virgo spun back around so quickly I stopped with my hands up in case he attacked.
“Look, Zev,” he said in an angry voice I barely recognized. “You can go on living however you want. Be an animal, be a monster, whatever. Just know this. If you truly want to feel what it’s like to be human, try letting someone else in. You don’t have to be so tough all the time.” He looked back at the road. “This life isn’t easy, but we live it to the fullest by sharing it with others. Keeping whatever it is that makes you tick inside is going to kill it eventually. Trust me. I know.”
I watched him closely. “What are you talking about?”
Virgo glanced at me, then away. “When my girlfriend Safira was killed in that car accident, it nearly killed me.” He unconsciously brushed at the dirt that marred his shirt. “I holed up in my room and didn’t want to do anything but listen to depressing music and chant demon spells. It was a dark time.”
I watched him without speaking, uncertain what he was getting at.
“Then do you know what happened?” Virgo asked.
I shook my head.
“My mom came into my room one morning, turned off my music, opened the windows, handed me the keys to my truck, and kicked me out of the house saying, ‘Don’t you come back home until you find a purpose for yourself. No son of mine is going to rot away feeling sorry for himself.’” He rubbed his throat. “She told me later that she cried in my room when I left because she was afraid I’d never come back. But I needed that. I needed to know that I was wasting my life. Safira wouldn’t have been happy about it. She would’ve hated seeing me do that.”
He looked up at the brightening sky. “I drove until I found the Inking Post. Mr. Shumway used to run the store until he got too old, then he put it up for sale, but nobody bought it. The books were just sitting in there, covered in dust. I’ve always loved books, and I hated to see them just wasting away like I’d been. When I went home and told my mom about it, she helped me set up the loan to buy it. I’ve been there ever since.”
