The Dead (The Thaumaturge Series Book 1)

by Cal Matthews

  Snowflakes whirled in my headlights as I carefully edged down the unplowed road. A dozen trailers stacked along each side, and mine was the last on the right, wedged between an ill-placed fir tree and the chain-link fence surrounding the trailer court. Mine was a singlewide, older but not in bad shape. The siding peeled here and there, sure, but the roof didn’t leak and I even had a yard for my dog.

  I parked the truck under the carport and stomped through the whirling snow to the front steps. Unlocking the door, I stepped in, and was immediately assaulted by fifty pounds of enthusiastic canine.

  “Down, Johnny, down!” I pushed at him, and he dropped, spun in a circle, and then leapt up again, swiping his tongue across my mouth.

  A low laugh startled me, and I looked across the dark room towards the couch. The shirtless vampire who sat there held my laptop across his knees. The faint glow from the computer illuminated his pale skin, bathing him in blue.

  “Hey,” I said in surprise. “What are you doing here?” I shoved Johnny down again so I could take off my jacket.

  “Doing laundry and watching Netflix,” he replied. “I’m four episodes into Breaking Bad.”

  I snorted, stomping snow off my boots and letting the heated air take the chill from my skin. “Turn a light on, at least. It’s creepy, you sitting here in the dark.”

  I tossed my jacket over the arm of a chair, and crossed the room into the kitchen. Johnny stayed glued to my side, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. I scratched him behind his ears and dropped heavily into a chair at the kitchen table. My head still pounded and my eyeballs throbbed. My tongue felt weirdly itchy in my dry mouth.

  I started to untie my boots, worrying at the laces with my shaking hands, but gave up as Johnny thrust his head into my lap and slobbered all over me. I sighed, leaning over him and pressing my forehead to his as he tried to lick my neck.

  Leo appeared in the doorway, leaning one hip against the refrigerator and crossing his arms across his bare chest.

  “I fed your dog,” he said. “And I let him out earlier.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Sure,” he sniffed in my direction, his dark eyebrows rising. “Had an interesting day?”

  “I had a....lucrative day.”

  “Hmm,” he looked doubtful, his nostrils flaring.

  “Stop fucking smelling me,” I said, irritably. “Manners, Leo.”

  “You smell fucking terrible,” he replied with equal shortness.

  “I’m going to take a shower.”

  “Good,” he wiggled his eyebrows at me. “Want me to scrub your back?”

  “No, thank you,” I said, but it got me to smile nonetheless. Leo usually could. I started down the hall towards my bedroom, but stopped and turned back to him.

  “Did you eat yet?” I asked.

  “No,” His eyes were dark, fixed on mine. “I was waiting for you.”

  “Oh,” I gave a tiny shrug of my shoulders. “Okay. See ya in a sec.”

  I made the shower as hot as I could stand it, and tossed my bloodied clothes into a hamper. There was blood on my hands, too, crusted up under my fingernails and filling the fine lines in my palms. I stepped into the shower, adjusted the spray until it blasted onto my chest and reached for the washcloth. I scrubbed at myself with a cake of soap, trying to get the dried flakes out from under my fingernails.

  There were only so many professions where scrubbing out blood was required. Doctors, nurses, EMTs. Veterinarians. Soldiers. Serial killers. Me.

  Whatever the hell I was.

  At my feet, coppery-brown water swirled and went down the drain. I kept scrubbing until my skin was pink. I couldn’t stop seeing the coiled tubes of her intestines, curling over my hands. Images came back into my head, the sight of her guts rolling out of her open stomach, the serrated skin with the layer of fat beneath it clearly visible. How rubbery her skin had felt. How slick her blood had been.

  I dry-heaved, doubling over in the shower and clutching my stomach. The pressure behind my eyes intensified and despite the heat, I shook all over. I had to brace myself against the slick shower wall until the nausea passed. I groped for the washcloth again and redoubled my efforts on my skin, tearing open the cuticles on both hands as I scoured.

  When I could stand to stop, I bowed my head under the showerhead, letting my shoulders slump. The hot water cascaded down my back. Over the steam and spray, I figured even Leo wouldn’t hear me if I cried. No tears came, though, not this time. This time I just felt numb.

  I stepped out of the shower, wrapped a towel around my waist and wiped my hand over the surface of the steamed up mirror. Clean and warm, I felt a little better, the pain in both my head and my chest numbed back to a tolerable level. Resurrections always took a toll, and some took longer to recover from than others. I was surprised at how good I felt, considering the severity of Aubrey’s wounds. She had been so fresh; that was why I was even up and walking around.

  I wondered where she was right now, if she was sitting on a couch somewhere, if she was eating or brushing her hair. Normal things.

  Right after she came back to life, I had put my hands on her shoulders and looked into her wide brown eyes.

  “What did you see?” I had asked. “Where were you? What do you remember?”

  “Nothing,” she had replied, dazed, a tremble in her voice. “There was nothing.”

  They all say that.

  I reached for my razor, but decided that I really didn’t care, even though I hadn’t shaved in a week and my stubble had evolved into a full-on beard. My own reflection shocked me a little. The scruff on my cheeks, the redness of my eyes. I hadn’t noticed how long my hair had gotten. No wonder people seemed shocked when they came into my store – I looked more like a hobo than someone who owned an herb and tea shop. Normally, with Leo sitting out there, I would have tried to at least primp a little, make myself a bit more presentable, but I couldn't muster the effort to do anything more than brush my teeth and roll on some deodorant. Not like he hadn't seen me at my worst before.

  Leo was waiting in the living room, fully clothed now, wearing a heavy black coat I didn't recognize, with Johnny half in his lap, getting a tummy rub.

  “You okay?” he asked when I appeared.

  “I’m all right.”

  “If you aren’t feeling up to it tonight...” he trailed off. His eyes fixed on me, sharp and appraising.

  “No,” I said. “I’m fine. Just try to minimize the damage.”

  He nodded, but his eyes didn’t leave my face. “We’ll just walk down to JJ’s?”

  “You sure?” I asked, pulling on clean socks and reaching for my boots. “We had no luck there last time.”

  “It’s too cold out to go anywhere else.”

  “We could drive, Leo.”

  “It's five blocks away, Ebron. Try to cut down on your carbon emissions.”

  “I'm trying to cut back on frostbite.”

  His eyes continued to roam over me. “We can drive,” he said softly. “If you aren’t up for walking.”

  I considered it, but my legs weren’t shaking any more and fresh air sounded good to my rolling stomach.

  “I’ll be fine, Leo,” I said, and he nodded with a little shrug.

  I locked up the trailer behind us and we started down the lane to the adjacent street. Thick flakes of snow, illuminated by the glow of the street lights, came down in heavy sheets. Noises were muffled, our footsteps soft crunches in the fresh power. I pulled the collar of my coat up against my neck, feeling snow melting into my hair and dripping down my back. Leo, as usual, seemed oblivious to the biting temperatures.

  “When did you get back into town?” I asked.

  “Just tonight,” he said. “I should have called you.”

  “No big deal.”

  He shrugged. “Still.”

  “It's good to see you.”

  He looked at me sidelong. “You too. Work keeping you busy? You look tired.”

  “It’s been steady.”r />
  “Hmm. Is that a good thing?”

  “You know, I don’t know,” I replied, and he gave me a rueful smile.

  I clenched my hands and shoved them deeper into my pockets. The sudden urge to touch him was annoyingly predictable.

  We walked past a boarded-up bookstore and a sketchy looking pawn shop, then turned the corner towards JJ’s. Pick-up trucks lined the street in front of the bar. Tinny music floated across the air. I'd always suspected in the event of a zombie apocalypse, JJ's would be the place to be, at least to restock ammunition. At least half of the vehicles displayed guns in the back window, and several trucks had elk or deer carcasses lying in the back. Hunting season was in full swing. Leo sniffed at one of these carcasses experimentally.

  “You should resurrect one of these,” he told me, giving me a sly grin. “Or all of them. Wouldn’t that be a sight?”

  I stepped over to him and peered into the truck bed. The deer he was sniffing lay stiffly, legs straight and its head awkwardly bent. I shook my head.

  “They’re all field dressed. I don’t think I can regrow organs.”

  He shrugged. “Too bad. Do you want to go in?”

  “I could use a beer,” I said. Or two or three.

  We headed towards the entrance, and I held the door open for two women as they exited. I had gone to high school with one of them. She avoided my eyes as she ducked under my arm.

  I stomped my feet in the doorway, trying to get circulation back into my lower extremities. The familiar smell of stale cigarettes, liquor, and damp wood seemed exaggerated due to the furnace blasting at full power. For a second, Leo and I stood together, scanning the room.

  Almost a week past Halloween and still strings of fake spider webs hung in matted knots across the bar back. Grinning jack o’ lanterns fell in on themselves as they started to rot. For a Wednesday, it was crowded, half full of the young, windblown ski bums who invaded our town in winter and the rest neighborhood old timers who resented the kids but didn’t mind ogling the nubile young ladies.

  “You want anything?” I asked Leo as we approached the bar. He shook his head, his dark hair damp with snow and curling around his ears. Depending on the day, Leo either looked like a murderous mafia hit man or a lovable pirate. Tonight, with his black coat bringing out his pallor and his eyes almost glowing, he looked like a wolf. He was already attracting his fair share of curious looks from the snow bunny crowd.

  The bartender approached after a few moments, breaking away from her conversation after enough time had passed to let me know that I was an inconvenience. She smiled at Leo, though.

  “Hey, Kelsey,” I said to her to remind her we had known each other since preschool.

  “Hey,” she said, stone-faced, and then waited, clearly uninterested in pleasantries.

  I ordered a nice, locally brewed beer and sat on a stool to drink it. Leo leaned beside me with every muscle in his body tight and poised, his head cocked and his eyes shooting around the room. Occasionally, he scented the air like a bloodhound.

  “Jesus Christ, Leo, you have to relax,” I mumbled to him, feeling unfriendly gazes on us. “You look crazy.”

  “Sorry,” he exhaled with effort, and let his posture slump a bit.

  Leo had become a vampire in the mid-eighties and being as young as he was, hunting humans remained a challenge for him. “I can't feed from humans without ripping them apart,” he’d admitted to me when we first became friends. Learning to feed without killing was apparently a big deal to vampires - leaving a trail of corpses wasn't an option, not in the age of camera phones and forensics. My ability came as big help when he went too far, when he couldn’t stop in time. It became routine for me to accompany him on his nightly hunting trips. For a lonely, small-town kid like me, meeting Leo had been like winning the lottery. Hunting with him had made me feel important, dangerous, sexy. Back then, ignoring the moral implications had been easier. His answers turned vague when it came to how he fed when he wasn't with me, and I didn't really ask him questions like that anymore. My morality remained flexible, but lately I found my mental health was heavily reliant on my own ignorance.

  “Let me ask you something,” I said, taking a pull from my beer.

  “Hmm,” he murmured noncommittally, his attention elsewhere.

  “How hard is it to disembowel someone?”

  “What?” he looked back at me, leaning in a little further. “What did you say?”

  “Is it hard to disembowel someone?”

  He regarded me for a moment, dark eyes searching mine. “Your dead guy tonight?”

  “Girl. Teenage girl. Stomach slit open, her guts hanging out.”

  “Ugh.” he raised an eyebrow and considered me, then looked back at the dance floor, populated by half a dozen women gyrating to country rock.

  “Christ, the music you kids listen to these days. Back in my day...” he trailed off, not looking at me, but the set of his mouth told me he was thinking hard.

  “Disco’s dead, man,” I said softly and the corners of his mouth twitched up.

  “Disemboweling is not pleasant,” he said finally, looking back at me. “It’s messy. Not my go-to method. Did you ask how it happened?”

  “No.”

  “But you’re worried.”

  “No,” I said firmly. “Just curious.”

  He shrugged. “Not something you usually see, though, not around here. You didn't even ask?”

  “No. It's safer for me not to know.”

  “Is it? If you're involved, you're involved, aren't you?” he tilted his head and I finally had to look away from the weight of his gaze.

  “So you're asking because you're curious, but you don't want to know,” he said.

  “I just meant . . . I don't know. I can't stop thinking about her.”

  “Hmm.” he shifted a bit, moving fractionally closer to me, close enough that I noticed that he wore one of my tshirts under his coat. The shirt stretched across his chest. Mindful of the eyes on us, I kept my gaze fixed above his neck.

  “Was it clean?” he asked. His arm brushed mine as he leaned in.

  “Yeah. It wasn't an animal. It was a knife. How long would it have, you know, taken?”

  He shrugged. “If it was deep enough to slice through the abdominal aorta, it wouldn't have taken any time at all. She would have passed out pretty quick, and bled out in - I don't know, maybe a few minutes?”

  “I wondered – “ I cut myself off, shaking my head. There was no point in asking questions. She had been dead and now she wasn't and I had done that. I didn't need to know any more.

  Leo waited, but when I didn't say anything else, he turned his attention back to dance floor. We lapsed into silence, and I watched the denizens of the bar swirl around me, a living mass of humanity from which I had always felt hopelessly disconnected. It was getting loud, laughter and happy shouts drowning each other out. People streamed by us, women alone or in pairs, men sizing us up as they walked by. I saw people I recognized and no one that I wanted to talk to.

  I drained my beer and nudged Leo with my elbow. “Did you pick someone yet, or can I get another beer?”

  “I’ve got someone,” he said, and this time he growled.

  I paced the sidewalk near the back door, lingering awkwardly behind Leo as he walked the woman to her car. They were laughing, he held onto her elbow as she slipped on the slushy pavement. Then she leaned into the driver’s side of her battered, bumper-sticker-covered Subaru, turning on the car to warm it up. Leo whispered something to her, and she laughed again, turning to rest a hip against the rear door. Her arms lifted, snaking around his waist.

  I saw him press into her, his hands on her face. He tilted her head in as though to kiss her, and when I heard her gasp, I rushed over to them.

  To any casual observer, his face buried against her neck would have looked like foreplay. Her arms went tight around him, her face slack with pleasure. As I watched, her tongue darted out and licked her lips, and she gave a soft moan
, her fingers bunching into the collar of his coat.

  “Leo,” I said warningly, keeping my eyes on her face. I barely got his attention; a tiny jerk of his head was the only indication that he was aware of my presence. She didn’t notice me at all, completely caught up in whatever sensations he was causing. I wanted to look away, hating the intimacy of this witnessed moment. I hated him for making me watch it, and hated myself for the unwelcome flare of sympathetic arousal I felt as her mouth form a soundless moan. His hips thrust into the dark hollow between them.

  My eyes wandered from her onto him, seeing his throat working as he swallowed, the way his hand held her jaw to the side. I couldn't see his face, pressed against her neck, but I imagined that his eyes were closed. Her hand twinned around his neck and fisted into the collar of his shirt. My shirt. He must have come into my bedroom while I was in the shower to get it. Had he thought about me, naked ten feet away? Who was he thinking about now?

  Breath left her lips in a staccato gasp, and I looked back at her. Her face lost color, fading to white under her light make-up, her lips paling with alarming speed. Her arms loosened from around him and I watched as they went limp to her sides. He hoisted her up, completely supporting her now. His throat bobbed steadily.

  I grabbed his shoulders and wrenched at him hard. With a snarl, he released her and turned on me, fangs bared and bloodied, and his eyes glowing gold. The woman slumped over, sliding down the car to rest on the snow ground, her legs splaying akimbo before her. Ignoring him, I crouched beside her, pressing my hand to the twin wounds on her neck. Blood dribbled in a weak stream down into the hollow of her clavicle. She mumbled something, her head rolling a bit and her eyes trying to open.

  “Shh, it’s okay,” I said softly.

  It took nothing at all to heal her. Not even a pinch or a twinge. Her neck repaired itself almost faster than I could see, a smear of blood on her shirt all that remained. I kneeled there for a moment beside her, my jeans getting wetter by the second, watching the glowing lights float down into the snow. It was beautiful, the way they shone like glittering diamonds just before they melted. Sometimes I wanted to stay up there forever.