At the Behest of the Dead

by Long, Timothy W.

  “Long writes with graphic glee.” —Barbara McMichael, The Tacoma News Tribune

  “Sign me up!” —Jonathan Maberry, New York Times Best Selling Author of Rot and Ruin series and Patient Zero

  "Timothy W. Long brings his undead wit and wiseassery to the urban fantasy genre to fearsome effect. Necromancers, demons, and mayhem...what more could you want?" —Tim Marquitz, author of the Demon Squad series

  "Definitely a writer to watch…"—HorrorNews.net

  "Clever, engaging and above all terrifying…"—David Dunwoody, author of EMPIRE and EMPIRE'S END

  http://timothywlong.com

  http://facebook.com/TimothyWLong

  http://twitter.com/TimWLong

  Also by Timothy W. Long

  Beyond the Barriers (Permuted Press)

  Among the Living (Permuted Press)

  Among the Dead (Permuted Press)

  Among the Ashes (Forthcoming, Permuted Press)

  The Zombie Wilson Diaries

  The Apocalypse and Satan’s Glory Hole

  Z-Risen: Outbreak http://z-risen.com

  For Erikson, Donaldson, Jordan, Cook, and Abercrombie

  “AT THE BEHEST OF THE DEAD”

  By TIMOTHY W. LONG

  http://timothywlong.com

  Copyright 2013. All Rights Reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of “Timothy W. Long,” except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead or undead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

  Cover art and design: J.M. Martin | NineWorldsMedia.com

  Add'l stock: wolverine041269 and indigodeep via deviantART

  All quotes credited to The Bard – Shakespeare

  “You wanna be a badass warlock? Start by looking like one.”

  —Phineas Cavanaugh

  Chapter One

  It was a Wednesday when everyone started trying to kill me.

  Carlisle called the night before with a job.

  Carlisle’s my agent. He calls about once a month with an employment offer and for the most part, I take them. If I’m up against my house payment then there’s a good chance I’ll be tracking down a lost soul or trying to get a trace on a murder. When he read me the details of this case I almost laughed.

  “An old lady lost her husband while he was walking their dogs in a park. That’s all you’re giving me?”

  “What do you want, Phineas? They come to me with a sob story. Cops can’t help. I need a pro. They all want the same thing. Was it painless? Did he have any last words for me? You know the drill.”

  “Yeah, his last words were ‘why in the hells did you send me out to walk a Pomeranian?’”

  “Very funny. You want the job or what? If you’re busy I can shuffle the work off to Conover. He’s dying for something.”

  “Stu? He’s dying because he’s ninety years old. I’ll do it, but I wanna to go on record as not being thrilled.”

  “Yeah, great. I’ll add that to your file. I keep one filled with all your bitching and moaning.”

  “You’re all heart.”

  “Yeah. I am.”

  I jotted down a few notes and then clicked off.

  **

  Mrs. Whitfield was a handsome woman with white curls and a pair of glasses complete with gold chain to keep them around her neck. When I opened the door to her knock I was surprised that she didn’t scare away every bug in the neighborhood. She wore Eau de Mothball perfume with a will. Her hair was done up in a bun and she sported a dress that was probably made, by her, in the sixties.

  She was the spitting image of a schoolteacher from the same decade. I kept my smartass comments to myself and my knuckles buried in the sleeves of my robe.

  I’d learned that none of my prospective clients took me seriously if I answered the door in jeans and a t-shirt. So I kept a black robe that had shapes of moons, planets, and a magic wand sewed on the front and back near. As much as I would like to say the robe had some magical benefits, it was just a gimmick that was about as dangerous as a wet paper towel. In fact I had tripped more than once on the stupid hemline. Don’t get me wrong, warlocks do wear robes, but they’re normally imbued with some kind of properties or laced with otherworldly powers. That’s right; I said it, ‘otherworldly.’

  “Mrs. Whitfield. I appreciate you stopping by, but do you know what I do for a living?”

  “Certainly.” She pushed her schoolteacher glasses up her nose with one finger as she gazed up at me. “You’re a witch that can communicate with the dead. I didn’t think a witch would be so tall and normal.”

  I covered my reaction with a cough.

  My lanky frame towered over her at six feet five. She had a comfortable rotundness that made me think of the stereotypical grandmother cooking pies and reading stories to children.

  “Warlock. I’m a warlock, not a witch.” I corrected her, but didn’t add that I was necromancer for two reasons.

  One, because I didn’t feel like spending the next half hour explaining the difference.

  Two, because I tried not to say the ‘Necro’ word whenever possible. People just didn’t have respect for those that played patty cake with corpses.

  “Right, a warlock.” She nodded like she met my kind every day.

  “I get impressions and sometimes they point me in the correct direction during an investigation.”

  “So the ghosts don’t talk to you?”

  “No ma’am. They just guide me. Now tell me what happened.”

  “The police said that my Clarence was killed by a roving band of homeless men.”

  I hadn’t seen anything in the newspaper or on TV and wondered if the cops had spun the story to protect her. Maybe she was in denial and had constructed the story to explain away a gambling debt. Maybe her husband’s secret gay lover got angry.

  One thing was for sure. If Carlisle was sending me on a wild goose chase I wanted money up front.

  But Carlisle didn’t work that way. When I finished I’d get my cut. He was sort of like a pimp. A warlock pimp.

  Go ahead. Laugh it up.

  “Tell me more about your husband.”

  “He was an ex-marine and a sweetheart. He took the dog to play at the park. He didn’t come home.”

  “May I ask how he was killed?”

  She sobbed, dabbed at her nose, and then looked up at me with red-rimmed eyes.

  “He was killed very violently, Mr. Cavanaugh. He had over a hundred stab wounds to his body. Can you do the job?” Her face was very sad, especially her eyes. She had lost a loved one and I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to have a little heart for a change.

  “Carlisle told you our fee? You also cover expenses for potions, formulas, blood work, and materials used in rites.”

  “They went over the rates and I can pay. He’s dead and in the morgue. I don’t imagine you need any more blood work.”

  “Wrong kind of blood work, ma’am.” I smiled. I didn’t tell her that I might have to find a remnant, bring it home, cleanse out any blood, and then consume it. A hundred years ago this was mystical. Warlocks thought they got life force or the thoughts of the dead from their blood. Now we knew about DNA and the tree of life it contained, but it was still cool to play it off as mysticism.

  “Harold had some money in his life insurance, but he was already
sick so he took some of it out to get ready for the end.”

  “Took some out?”

  “Cancer, in the pancreas. It was terminal so the insurance company let him withdraw half of his policy. Do you know what that pancreatic cancer means, Mr. Cavanaugh?”

  I nodded but didn’t speak.

  I did indeed. Depending on how far along he had been, his life expectancy might have been months or it might have been a year. Either way he had dug into his policy and taken out money to pay for medicine and possibly chemo. Maybe he had planned to take the rest and run for Tijuana. Couldn’t blame a guy for wanting to die with a smile on his face.

  When she looked down at her old and cracked plastic purse, I took pity on her and said I would take a look and work out a discount rate with Carlisle if I felt like the case was worth pursuing. I was essentially giving away my services for free but I felt a hint of pity.

  I don't really believe in karma, but come on. Sometimes it pays not to be a dick to little old ladies.

  This mission was strictly exploratory. I wasn’t even planning to pack heavy. Just the basics. Check for a whiff and then high tail it to the house. I was already half convinced that Mrs. Whitfield was a flake anyway and her husband wandered away, probably to escape the cloying smell of mothballs that followed her. I’ve never in my life seen Bilbo, my two-pound tarantula, hide so fast as when she walked in the door.

  Next time I’ll take notice of that little fact and set off the alarm bells myself.

  **

  I was up to my ball sack in muck, rain puddles, overgrown grass, and more than a few discarded beer cars before I realized that my prospects for the night weren’t looking so hot.

  I should just get the words “expect the unexpected” tattooed on my palm. That way I could smack the hell out of myself every morning.

  It should have been an easy job, but there were a couple of things I’d learned in my short existence. No job is ever what it seems and the client always fudges some facts.

  It was dark, without even a proper mist. If I was going to be traipsing through the woods at oh-dark-thirty, the least the ground could do was offer up a little bit of creep factor. Of course it was raining. You can’t go anywhere in this damn city without the clouds rolling in and pissing on you. Then there was the moon--also a no-show. Probably hiding out behind all the clouds. Not that I could see either one since looking up just got me a face full of water.

  In my mind I was creating the warlock version of a golf umbrella. Big puff of black that would expand when tossed into the air. I had the whole thing worked out. A couple of glyphs to control it, kick some elemental ass for the propulsion mechanism, and make them get along with some words of binding.

  That’s when I spotted him.

  The demon was a little guy. Like someone had taken your garden-variety salamander, made it the size of a fat pug, then tossed it into a lake of slime and hate. There were at least eight eyes angled around its head, and when he snuffled the ground they shifted in every single direction of the compass. I got dizzy just trying to track all his ocular movements. His mouth was a horror that gave him the appearance of a freaky pie with teeth. Skin mottled grey, slimy, and in some places slack. It hung over his back legs, and when he shuffled forward all that mass shifted around his body. It sounded like he was covered in half filled water balloons. If I’d had a dart gun, I could’ve dumped a gallon of demon ooze on the ground.

  He lowered his head and sniffed. Looked up and stared at the clouds as if distracted. I held my breath because I wasn’t sure if the little bastard had nostrils. Rain pelted the bizarre mouth, letting water run out of a pair of gills along its neck.

  I held my breath until I got dizzy. If I made a noise, moved a millimeter, it might well become aware of me, and then I would either be in for a fight or a test of its loyalties. Of course it could always ignore me and continue to hunt whatever it was here for. As long as it wasn’t me, I was happy to let Mr. Shifty Eyes snort bugs and mud for the rest of the night.

  I thought relief had arrived when I heard barking in the distance. Mr. Demon on the hunt? Meet your victim. But the evil pug didn’t even need to move its head.

  Shit! I decided that breathing was an important part of staying alive and spent a few seconds sucking in air as quietly as possible.

  He took a ponderous step away from me, and then one more.

  Earlier, I had pulled down my eyelids and rubbed a thick ointment onto them. It burned like fire and made me want to reach for a gallon of saline solution. But after a few minutes the burning gave way to a dull itch that felt like summer allergies. It sucked, but it was also a small price to pay for night vision. It wasn’t perfect. I didn’t get a crystal clear version of the world like a changer might, but it was at least as good as the goggles the military employ. I knew this because I had tried to sell the army the formula. That didn’t sit too well with the league. There was talk of stringing me up.

  Others just wanted to kick my ass. Arcanist’s have no sense of humor.

  The demon didn’t give up. He just stared in eight directions while his nose sucked at the ground. I could take my chances with a blast of lighting, or maybe freeze him in place until the morning then try to have a unit pick him up. That would be a funny conversation.

  “This is Phineas Cavanaugh. I need a demon picked up at Alear Park in Auburn Washington. How long until you guys can get here?”

  “How long until you can piss off?” would be the likely answer.

  The safest thing to do would be to leave the damn thing alone and get back to my house. Then I could come back in the morning and try to pick up a remnant of Clarence Whitfield, the dead guy I was hired to track down.

  Yep. That would have been the smart thing to do.

  The problem was I loved a challenge, and it sometimes got in the way of the common sense side of my brain.

  I slashed my hand through the air and mouthed words. This would keep my scent hidden. My pinky finger was covered in a potion of dubious design. Something I had developed all by myself. The league didn’t like that too much either. If warlocks were going to be coming up with new formulas, they wanted to profit from it. That’s why they got pissed about the night vision goop, too. It wasn’t that I stepped out of line and spoke out of school; it was because they weren’t getting a cut.

  This park was an unlikely place to find a warlock, and even more unlikely to find someone of my calling, a necromancer. We preferred to keep a low profile since no one wanted our filth around. Genus Warlockus Necromanus were the whipping boys of the warlocks. We got no respect because we liked to dig in the dirt and talk to the dead. But were demonologist any better? I’d certainly never met one that I liked. Who wanted to consort with denizens of the six wards? All demons did was lie and stink up a room. Plus, if you lost your cool or spoke the wrong words they were just as likely to haul your screaming ass back to their fiery pit as look at you.

  But you mention warlock to someone and they get an uncomfortable look. Say necromancer and they suddenly have business in another state.

  Even the league didn’t like necros, though we got officially sanctioned not long after everything went public in the nineties. That was a fine time to live through. The nightly news centered on witches, warlocks, and all manner of ‘Fae’ creature that had kept their asses well and truly hidden for the last few centuries.

  Then someone opened their big fat mouth. At first he was a laughing stock, but after making a skeleton not only walk around on live television but also attempt to speak, it became clear that there was more involved than a charlatan’s tricks. He was ostracized, kicked out of the league indefinitely. Warlocks cursed his name and changers crapped on his lawn.

  It took me a long time to get back in everyone’s good graces.

  But that’s another story.

  There was no chance of me finding a trace of blood in this park. I had an idea where the murder had gone down, but any bloodstain evaporated the second the rain arrived. Even if I
had some high tech police spray to squirt all over the ground, I’d need a biplane and a couple of thousand gallons.

  The park was a one off. Converted from a cow pasture and farm house back in the 70s, now it was mainly used as a dog park. During the day you could bring your golden retriever and work off its energy, if you had a strong enough arm. At night, it was closed and silent.

  I’d spotted a small rise to the east that was surrounded by tall maples. It had made a perfect location to land behind and hide my pitchfork. Then it was just a quick half-mile jaunt that saw me cursing my ridiculous robes. They dragged across the ground and created a soggy mess that soon soaked into my boots, socks, and jeans. I probably looked like a refugee from a renaissance fair.

  The walk wasn’t bad and went a long ways toward waking me up. I should have been in bed, but the widow had been very specific about the place where her Chucky had passed while walking their Pomeranian. It made me suspicious of his death. Pomeranians? Really? A man can only take so much – maybe he jumped in the river.

  I slid from behind a tree and motioned again to nullify my scent. The potion worked but only in five minute spurts. And I wondered why it’d been a financial failure.

  I slid a potion out and worked at the cork top with my fingertips. The bottle itself was a hundred years old and had seen more action than a roman statue. It was thick and the cork was in there deep and tight. I seasoned my corks over several months to remove any traces of water before they spent time in a humidor. The last thing I wanted was some of the crazy concoction spilling while I’m was a thousand feet in the air.

  Frogs were making an unholy racket somewhere to the south. I thought there might be a small pond in that direction. This time of year, it, and the area around the water, were probably a swamp.