Dance of the Dead (The DeathSpeaker Codex)

by Sonya Bateman

  Dance of the Dead

  Sonya Bateman

  Thank you for picking up Dance of the Dead. Please join my mailing list to find out about the latest new releases, book sales, and special subscriber-only offers.

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  Copyright © 2016 by Sonya Bateman

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

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  Books in The DeathSpeaker Codex series

  Available now from Amazon and Kindle Unlimited

  WRONG SIDE OF HELL

  FIELDS OF BLOOD

  REALM OF MIRRORS

  RETURN OF THE HUNTERS

  CITY OF SECRETS

  PRISON OF HORRORS

  COMING SOON: THE SCROLLS OF GIDEON

  Contents

  Dance Of The Dead

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  More books by Sonya Bateman

  About the Author

  Preview: The Cursing Stones

  Dance Of The Dead

  Halloween in Manhattan gets weirder than usual for the newly minted DeathSpeaker, as Gideon Black finds himself up against a powerful necromancer who’s looking to raise a lot more than the dead.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE: Dance of the Dead takes place between Wrong Side of Hell and Fields of Blood, books 1 and 2 of the DeathSpeaker Codex series.

  This story first appeared in the anthology FULL METAL MAGIC.

  Chapter 1

  A few weeks ago, I’d found out humans weren’t the only dominant species on two legs. All it took was saving one werewolf in Central Park, and I’d gotten a violent crash course on the Others. Which apparently I was one of. Well, half, anyway.

  It was something I’d gone the majority of my life without knowing. As if being part Unseelie Fae wasn’t enough, turned out I could also talk to dead people. And they couldn’t lie to me. This was an ability shared by no one else, anywhere. Lucky me.

  And just like that, Gideon Black, van-dwelling body mover and general all-around nobody, had become the DeathSpeaker — potential instrument of genocide and Milus Dei’s Most Wanted.

  I’d managed to escape the deadly cult that wanted to wipe out every Other on the planet, and then taken a few days off work to recover. Tonight it should have been business as usual, except I’d driven through a Manhattan teeming with Others to get here. Werewolves, vampires, ghosts and ghouls, fairies and demons, fantastic creatures and shambling nightmares … they thronged the sidewalks and lurked in just about every corner of the city. Most of them seemed to be having a grand old time, too.

  But that probably had something to do with it being Halloween night.

  Of course, no Halloween would be complete without a couple of real corpses that needed a ride to the morgue. When I’d arrived at the crime scene on the west bank of the East River, there was only one body. They’d pulled the second one from the river just as I was loading the first into my van. That was a little over an hour ago. Forensics was almost finished processing him, and then they’d turn him over to me.

  We’d all been hoping the body count would stay at one. No such luck tonight, though.

  I leaned against the side of the van, where I’d parked on the road just outside the sawhorse-and-yellow-tape barrier, and watched the activity. There was a guardrail past the barrier, then a grassy down-slope to a flat area beside the river where the cops had congregated. Three floodlights triangulated on the scene. Techs snapped photos of the half-bagged corpse, and officers on the shore directed police boats returning from the called-off search. A cluster of suits — three detectives, one lieutenant — conferred next to one of the floodlights, their words transformed into frosty clouds as they passed from lips to air.

  One of the suits broke away and headed for me. I straightened and gave a slight wave as Detective Abraham Strauss plodded grimly up the incline, mopping his face with his handkerchief. If the rumors were true, he wouldn’t be a detective for long. They were bumping him clear up to captain after his work in the Milus Dei fiasco — much to his chagrin. He wasn’t looking forward to being chained to a desk.

  Abe knew the truth about the Others, or at least as much as I could bring myself to tell him. He deserved that and more. The man had been the closest thing resembling a father to me since I was sixteen and running from a past that had tried its best to kill me.

  Someday, I was going to tell him everything. I just couldn’t talk about it yet.

  “You still here, kid?” Abe slowed and stepped over the guardrail, shaking his head. “Hell of a way to go,” he said. “Poor guy.”

  “So it was the rescuer?”

  Abe nodded. “Had a wallet on him. The license matched the registration of the car on the bridge.”

  “Damn.” The body currently in my van was an apparent suicide, a woman who’d jumped off the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge a few hours ago. According to witnesses, the second victim was a man who’d been driving on the lower level of the bridge when she jumped. He’d slammed his car to a stop, got out with the engine still running and ran after her. Dove right into the river, no hesitation. And from the descriptions, it seemed like he didn’t even know the woman.

  Some people had made the jump from that bridge and survived, so the guy must’ve thought he could make it. But generally, the people who jumped without the intention of killing themselves did so during the summer. Not at the end of October, when the current was strong and the water temperature was a few hairs above freezing.

  The man died trying to save a stranger’s life.

  “Guess they’re about done with him.” Abe glanced back at the brightly lit riverbank. “There. One of the techs is bringing him up now,” he said, gesturing at a woman in disposable crime scene scrubs who was shoving a wheeled stretcher through the grass toward the incline. “I take it, since you waited around, this isn’t keeping you from any wild Halloween parties.”

  “Nah.” Now that I had a bunch of friends who weren’t exactly human, my life was a Halloween party every day. But I wouldn’t bring that up. It was still too new for either of us to wrap our heads around. Crime and death sucked, but at least it was familiar. “What about you?” I said. “Costume contest at the office, or are you all just gonna dress up as cops again this year?”

  Abe laughed. “I’ve got a mountain of paper to push,” he said. “Need to go over those witness statements again and possibly check out a suspicious character.”

  “Suspicious?” I said. “I thought this was pretty cut and dry.”

  “Yeah, me too. But I guess some of the witnesses noticed a guy hanging around the bridge, wearing a robe and carrying a big book that may or may not have been glowing. Most of them said he had an eye painted on his forehead, and at least one claims he was ‘doing something’ to the jumper. Like, reading her a bedtime story or some shit, I don’t know.” He let out a sigh. “Probably just a random nut in a Halloween costume. But I gotta tie up all the threads, you know?”

  “I hear you.” The stretcher-pushing tech had almost reached the guardrail, and I nudged one of the sawhorses aside. “Hold on,” I called. “I’ll help you with that.”

  “And I’ll grab your paperwork, Gideon. Be right back,” Abe said as he headed for the
unmarked a few feet down the road.

  I stepped over the guardrail and grabbed the end of the stretcher. The tech nodded, and we lifted it over and got it onto the road. “I’ll take it from here,” I said.

  “Thanks. Just leave the stretcher at the morgue, if you don’t mind.” She frowned at the body bag. “Somebody ought to give that guy a posthumous medal or something.”

  I smirked. “Sure. Bet the mayor’ll get right on that.”

  “Yeah, just about the time pigs get wings.” She waved and headed back down the hill.

  By then Abe had returned with a clipboard. The paper on it was a standard release form, listing the time and location I took possession of the corpses, so the NYPD didn’t get sued if anything happened to me or the bodies on the way to the morgue. And so I could get paid. “Make your scribble, kid,” he said as he handed it to me.

  I signed something that vaguely resembled my name. “All right, we’re out of here,” I said. “Good luck with your nut in the Halloween costume.”

  “Yeah. Guy can’t be too hard to find tonight, right?” Abe leveled a sardonic smile at me. “Take care, kid. Check in when you’re all set.”

  “Will do. ’Night, Abe.”

  He nodded and walked off to help dismantle the crime scene, and I turned my attention to the dead man on the stretcher. Abe was right — it was a hell of a way to go. The whole thing seemed crazy. So sudden and dramatic. Man driving on a bridge sees random woman jumping to her death and instantly decides to jump after her. For a few seconds, I wondered if the guy in the robe really did have something to do with it. I’d seen a hell of a lot that defied rational explanation lately. More than I ever wanted to know.

  But I shrugged it off and loaded my second charge into the van. If there was one thing I knew, it was that death rarely had a good explanation. Death happened, even when it shouldn’t.

  This death definitely fell into the ‘shouldn’t’ category.

  Chapter 2

  The fastest way to the morgue was through the mostly abandoned dry docks along the river. I must’ve driven this route a hundred times, and I barely paid attention to the silent, rundown buildings and graffiti-strewn wreckage that lined both sides of the road.

  Until a figure darted out from between two buildings and stopped in the middle of the street, directly into the path of my van.

  I slammed on the brakes. Tires screamed on asphalt, and the back end juddered and slid out. The van came to rest at a slightly drunken angle across the narrow street. My heart hammered as I shifted into park, took my foot slowly off the brake, and tried to catch my breath.

  The guy I’d almost hit wore a long black robe. There was an eye painted on his forehead, and a big leather-bound book hanging from thick, padlocked chains around his waist.

  In his outstretched hand, he held a gun.

  “Get out, please.” His voice was muffled but audible through the closed windows. “I don’t want to shoot you.”

  I didn’t want to be shot. But I also didn’t want to get out, because everything in me insisted this was all kinds of wrong — and not in an everyday, I’m-being-mugged-in-New-York way. The book wasn’t glowing, but this had to be the suspicious character the witnesses had seen around the jumper and her would-be savior.

  It couldn’t be a coincidence.

  The robed man, who looked to be in his fifties or so, gave a deep frown. When his forehead crinkled, I noticed the eye on his forehead wasn’t painted on. It was a tattoo. That was not only creepy as hell, it also suggested he wasn’t just dressed up for Halloween. This was a normal look for him.

  He lowered the gun slightly and fired.

  The bang of my front left tire exploding was almost as loud as the report. I hadn’t recovered from the shock of the sound when he pulled the trigger again, taking out the other front tire.

  And now I was pissed.

  “Get out, please,” he repeated calmly, raising the weapon to my level again.

  Okay, fine. If the Third Eye Freak wanted to play, I was game. I hadn’t learned a whole lot of Fae spells yet, and the ones I did know weren’t all that useful. Stop, glow, unlock, shut down. And maybe sleep, even though I’d only heard that one and not used it. I could use the sleep one, knock him out, and call Abe to pick up the nutcase for questioning and attempted murder of my van.

  I just had to remember the words.

  As I opened the door and climbed out slowly, the sound of a revving engine filled the air. A dark vehicle shot out from a side street about a block behind the van, turning in the opposite direction. Then it lurched to a stop and reversed toward us. The vehicle was a hearse, with heavily tinted windows and a dark pleated curtain drawn across the back.

  Great. Mister Wizard had friends.

  I stepped away from the van and faced the robed man with raised hands. Even if I could remember the sleep spell, I doubted it would work on more than one person at a time. I really had to learn how to magic better — if I lived long enough.

  Behind me, I heard car doors open. One, two, three. I already didn’t like the odds.

  My anger simmered down to a slow boil as I tried to shift my focus to survival. “What the hell are you doing?” I said.

  “You have something that belongs to me.” Three-Eyes nodded at the van.

  “No. That’s mine. You want to see my registration, asshole?”

  The robed man smiled. There was absolutely nothing friendly in that expression. “You can keep your vehicle,” he said. “I only want the bodies.”

  Ice flooded my veins. Whoever, or whatever this guy was, there couldn’t possibly be a good reason for him to steal dead people. Especially if he had something to do with their deaths — and now I had a strong suspicion he did, though I still couldn’t imagine how. “Well, you can’t have them,” I said. “I signed for them, so they’re my…”

  Responsibility. The last word dropped off as my brain registered the sounds behind me. Horrible sounds. Dragging, crackling, moaning, squelching sounds. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but I turned my head to look.

  Three corpses had gotten out of the hearse and were shambling for the back doors of my van.

  Those people were dead. Long dead. Two men, one woman … at least, I thought that’s what they were. It was hard to tell, since their flesh was rotting from their bones. Covered with filth and rags, their eyes unblinking white marbles, they moved like wooden puppets fast-marching at the ends of unseen strings.

  Great. A bunch of zombies were stealing my corpses.

  Gun-toting madman or not, I had to do something. I gestured at the nearest walking dead and spoke the first spell I could remember that had a marginal chance of doing something. The one for stop. “Staad.”

  The zombie froze like a kid playing Statue.

  I registered the roar of outrage from the robed man seconds before the flat crack of the gun. A bullet tore through my shoulder, knifing hot pain down the left side of my body. I staggered back with a grimacing gasp and tried to focus on the bastard. What the hell were the words for sleep?

  “Beith—”

  The blast of a gunshot cut me off. This one grazed my ribs and spun me half-around. Four more shots fired in rapid succession. At least three of them hit me. I was able to think that at least I probably wouldn’t die, since I was half immortal, as I dropped hard to my knees and blackness swirled over my vision.

  “Bring his body.” The robed man’s words sounded hollow and distant through the roaring pain. “We have to avoid discovery. Just a few more hours, and then it won’t matter.”

  It was the last thing I heard before oblivion came.

  Chapter 3

  I had no idea where I was when I woke up. Sadly, that was the least of my concerns.

  Sensation came back first. Which was the last thing I wanted to return, since I’d just been shot four or five times. To say everything hurt was an understatement. At least I wasn’t dead, but for the moment, I was about as useful as a corpse. I could barely move.


  I also couldn’t see shit. My surroundings were pitch black, cold and somehow smothering. I was sprawled face-down on an uneven heap of hard angles and sharp bits tangled together with other things, firm and spongy and damp. Some of it was ground. I could smell dirt and decaying vegetation, along with something far less appealing. Something that smelled like death.

  I knew why I’d survived. Being half-Fae helped, especially since they healed much faster than humans. But mostly, it was because of the glamour. The Fae used a basic, instinctive spell to change their appearance, make them look more human — a spell they apparently used even if they had no idea they were Fae. And because of the way I’d grown up, my natural glamour had evolved into something a little more effective than camouflage. What I projected was slightly off center, so I was never exactly where I seemed to be. Bad guys generally missed my vital organs when they tried to kill me. In fact, if he hadn’t been so close, he probably would’ve missed me completely.

  It was a defense mechanism against being frequently shot at by the people who were supposed to be my family.

  Of course, the glamour didn’t make being shot any easier or less painful. But I did have one potential advantage — the robed man thought I was dead. So if I could get out of wherever I was, maybe I’d live to draw breath another day.

  Fae magic was tied to the moon, so moonlight would help speed up the healing process. I couldn’t see the moon. But I had brought moonlight with me.

  I shifted carefully, hearing various things groan, shift, and crackle beneath me as I drew the moonstone pendant from my shirt. The clear shard of stone was a gem found only in the Fae realm, a place I’d never been and didn’t even know existed until a few weeks ago. It acted like a battery, drawing and storing moonlight for when I needed it.