Soul Fire

by D. N. Erikson

  It was almost like he was hiding something.

  “You know, it’s a shame, because Aldric just paid me.” I dug into my back pocket and pulled out five grand, all in hundreds. “There’s another five back at my place.”

  Edgar’s beady eyes barely acknowledged the thick stack of bills. “Actual work must be done, Reaper.”

  Oh, yeah.

  Definitely hiding something.

  I leaned against the opposite slab, sizing him up. Same cheap, baggy department-store dress shirt and even cheaper slacks. Same bad spray tan that made him look like an overripe tangerine. Same formless jowls dappled in an ill-advised attempt at facial hair.

  Same stupid digital watch worth over six figures—memorabilia from a film.

  All in all, the same slimy vampire I’d known for four years.

  Except he was suddenly allergic to money.

  Which was like a dog turning its nose up at filet mignon.

  The funeral director kept working, his movements overly precise and mechanical thanks to my scrutiny. He raised his arm to wipe a bead of sweat from his cheek.

  “See, I don’t think you are busy,” I said. “At all.”

  “Some of us work for a living, Eden.”

  “Bullshit.” I was up in his plastic-shielded face in a flash. Yes, he was a vampire, but with a silver bullet lodged in his leg—too close to an artery to operate on—Edgar didn’t frighten me.

  “I’m warning—”

  “Maybe it has something to do with this guy,” I said, glancing down at the corpse. He had fine red dust in his hair. I’d thought about it, waiting out on the steppes, but I’d dismissed it.

  But now, with Edgar acting all squirrely?

  There had to be a connection between Anya’s death and this guy’s.

  “Step back,” Edgar said, breathing heavily.

  “This guy was on the steppes, wasn’t he? Something went wrong—”

  The vampire’s surprisingly strong, thick fingers shot out.

  I was pressed against the cold lockers, ten feet away from the corpse, before I could even scream. His beady eyes stared angrily at me from behind the plastic shield.

  “Whose body is on the table?” I said, the words raspy. My feet kicked weakly.

  His stubby fangs clicked out, and he growled. “Drop this matter, Eden.”

  “Make me.” I’d hit a nerve. No need to let up now, even with death lurking around the corner.

  Edgar’s bloody, gloved fingers tightened around my windpipe. I dug for the Reaper’s Switch, but the vampire quickly pinned my other hand to the stainless steel.

  I snapped my right leg out, hitting him in his bad leg.

  He howled, immediately releasing his grip. We both dropped to the concrete.

  The vampire devolved into a phlegmatic coughing fit that spackled the plastic shield with blood. He ripped it off and flung it into the corner, his body convulsing.

  I kicked him in the head. His skull collided against the cold lockers with a ringing thud.

  I had the Reaper’s Switch pressed to his orange cheek before he could recover.

  The vampire slumped in defeat against the concrete.

  “And here I thought we were friends.” I leaned on friends mockingly. “Or at least parties with mutual interests.”

  “Let the matter go,” Edgar said, fumbling for the handkerchief in his shirt pocket. “Please.”

  “What do you think Aldric would say if I told him you tried to kill me?”

  Fear flashed across his formless jowls. Invoking a warlord’s name will do that. But he was clearly caught between who scared him more—Aldric, or whoever had brought the silver-haired body here—because the funeral director said, “I didn’t try to kill you.”

  I rubbed my sore neck. “Right—that must’ve been the other guy in here.”

  “I can’t, Eden.”

  “Not even for ten grand, huh?”

  Edgar mopped his sweaty face with the handkerchief, leaving behind bloody streaks. He put a hand out and gestured for me to help him up.

  “Don’t try anything,” I said.

  “I’ve exercised enough for one day.” He gripped my hand tightly and stumbled to his feet. After catching his breath, the pudgy vampire limped to a row of filing cabinets by the security monitor. He shuffled papers for a couple minutes before returning with a folder.

  “I’m not screwing around, Eden.” He clutched the folder like it was a life preserver. “This didn’t come from me.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  With a look of great trepidation, he tossed it on the empty slab.

  “The Phoenix Protocol.” The front cover was stamped by the Department of Supernatural Affairs. “What the hell is this?”

  “It was given to me years ago,” the vampire replied, still rasping from the physical exertion, “and I was told never to share it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, Eden.” His beady eyes were filled with terror as they flitted about the room. “When a phoenix leaves the island, all hell breaks loose.”

  Before he could elaborate, a snarl erupted behind him.

  And the dead man snapped upright on the metal slab, his eyes glowing.

  9

  Edgar screamed so loudly that I was almost embarrassed for him. But I couldn’t really blame him, since the dead man was off the table, grunting like a deranged beast. From the tenor of his growls, I suspected he was a werewolf. His eyes glowed a feral red as he staggered forward.

  I flicked out the Reaper’s Switch. “Stay back.”

  The dead man’s eyes registered sudden alarm. He paused ten feet away. His soul was dead, so dead that I could barely sense it.

  And yet, from where I stood, one thing was clear.

  Right now, he was very much alive.

  Through his open chest, I could see his heart beating, blood dripping from his exposed organs. Sensing something amiss, the man touched his open chest.

  Then he casually closed the flaps of skin.

  “Holy shit,” I said—because, really, what else do you say in a situation like this?

  “It’s happened,” he said in an unsteady voice. “Their plan was a success.”

  “Slow down, buddy.” Anxiety sluiced through my frayed nerves like water down a flooded river. “Just relax.”

  His neck snapped sharply in my direction. “Is that the file I have heard so much about?”

  The Phoenix Protocol was tucked beneath my arm. “Nope.”

  “Give it to me.”

  “Hell no.”

  Blood dripped from the man’s naked chest as he took another step.

  “You don’t understand the situation.” The growling intensified, and I could tell he was losing the battle against self-restraint. Primordial beasts were driven by instinct. Their violent urges were hard to override. Wolves made great soldiers, but they also had hair-trigger tempers that came with a mean right hook.

  This guy was more controlled than most, even after rising from the dead.

  Which, let me tell you, is pretty disconcerting.

  His muscles flexed in the harsh, clinical light. If he wanted to get the file, I didn’t like my chances of stopping him—half-dead or not.

  “Why don’t you explain the situation to me, then?”

  “There’s no time.” The wolf snarled and darted forward.

  I slashed with the knife.

  He deftly dodged the blow, hitting me with his shoulder dead in the chest. I crumpled to the cold concrete, the switchblade and the file tumbling from my hands. The once-dead wolf grabbed the Phoenix Protocol and said, “Perhaps you will be useful to me, Reaper.”

  “What’s a Reaper?” I asked.

  “See you soon.” Then the salt-and-pepper-haired bastard put me in a headlock, and everything went dark.

  10

  When I came to, my head hurt and the wolf had vanished.

  After rubbing some feeling back into my sore neck, I checked my phone. It was past nine.


  They didn’t call it a sleeper hold for nothing.

  The dead, chemical aroma of formaldehyde hung in the stale air. A thin light trickled down the stairs, knifing through the darkness like an arctic freighter slicing through an ice shelf. Blood spattered the concrete floor—from the wolf’s gaping chest, no doubt—but the area was otherwise clean.

  The hard concrete scratched beneath my low-tops as I rose unsteadily to my feet. No sign of Edgar. The Reaper’s Switch was right where I’d dropped it. I still had all my cash, too.

  But the Phoenix Protocol was gone.

  No trace remained.

  A rattle came from inside one of the cold lockers.

  “Edgar?” I hurried over and undid the latch.

  Edgar’s fangs chattered in the frigid darkness. “Is-is-is he g-g-gone?”

  The pudgy vampire crawled off the sub-zero slab and crashed to the floor. It was difficult to tell whether he was stuttering because he was cold or terrified.

  Maybe a little bit of both.

  “What the hell was that?” I asked, getting up in the vampire’s face.

  “This island is a v-v-very strange place, indeed, Reaper,” the funeral director replied, trying to rub feeling back into his joints. Even vampires got cold, apparently. “But there’s one thing strangest of all.”

  “What’s that?”

  “To be saved by a Reaper.”

  “You’re going to tell me everything you know.” I grabbed his frosted oversized shirt. “And if you lie, you’re going back on ice.”

  “It’s good for things to be normal again,” he said with a smile.

  “Not quite normal,” I said. “Because you’re going to tell me for free.”

  He recoiled, the very word offensive to his sensibilities. Seeing that I was serious, though, he sighed and said, “Help me up.”

  “Help yourself this time,” I said, dialing Kai as I headed up the stairs. Spearheading this investigation alone was no longer an option.

  A guardian had died.

  A phoenix had left the island behind.

  And a dead man had just risen from the dead.

  I didn’t have a damn clue what was going on—except for one certainty.

  Things weren’t going to be normal around here for a while.

  11

  Edgar clutched the cup of warm coffee in his pudgy, spray-tanned fingers, his beady gaze bouncing nervously between me and Kai. Even though he couldn’t drink it—human foods weren’t agreeable to a vampire’s constitution—it warmed his half-frozen body. I scoured the funeral director’s cramped office, exploring the stacks of water-warped cardboard boxes containing client files and receipts.

  Mick Anderson’s wake had ended hours before, mercifully sparing me another run-in with James. But I had bigger problems on my hands than a potentially vengeful jailbird son.

  A wolf had come back to life right before my eyes. No godly interventions, no magic, no nothing.

  Just dead one second, alive the next, with his heart beating in plain sight.

  Kai, for his part, had been a man of fewer words than usual since arriving. His calm gaze rested on my face, waiting for me to elaborate.

  He’d have to wait. The funeral director still had more secrets to spill.

  I leaned against the peeling wall and said, “So, has anyone else come back to life on your watch?”

  “You’re not going to write me up, right?” Edgar had made a remarkable recovery in the past ten minutes. After almost getting frostbite—or whatever the vampire equivalent was—he was already in sleazy ass-covering mode.

  “And why would we need to do that?”

  “No reason,” the vampire said with almost comical haste.

  I tapped one of the knockoff bobble heads sitting on a sagging shelf. Hadn’t taken Edgar for a sports fan, but the Jordan figurine was a dead giveaway. Dad had been obsessed with the Bulls and Cubs. Would’ve gone nuts seeing them win the Series. He’d taken me to a ton of games as a kid, which hadn’t helped me be less weird.

  A girl who knows how many homers Sosa has is viewed with suspicion by her peers.

  The silence percolated until Edgar couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Fine, goddamnit.” The funeral director unleashed a racking, phlegmy cough. Cold therapy hadn’t done his chronic condition much good. “The DSA dropped off that damn body. Told me it was classified. That’s all I know.”

  He held up his hands like he was done with the matter.

  I grinned, as if to say, Not by a long shot.

  That at least explained the combat training and pain resistance. I’d whiffed with the Reaper’s Switch like an uncoordinated kid trying to play t-ball. But if our resurrected werewolf worked for the Department of Supernatural Affairs, that salved my embarrassment.

  “Pull up his file.” I jerked my thumb toward the glowing monitor.

  “It wasn’t exactly on the books.” Edgar’s formless cheeks contorted into a nervous grimace. “If you know what I’m saying.”

  “How’d he come back to life?” Kai’s deep baritone entered the conversation. His deep baritone filled the small space, making me jump. Guess Edgar wasn’t the only one feeling the aftershock of a dead man coming back to life. “Does it have to do with this Phoenix Protocol?”

  “I must confess,” Edgar said. “I have not read the Phoenix Protocol particularly.”

  “Seriously?” I asked, throwing up my hands.

  “My business is death,” Edgar said. “There is no money in saving women and children from emergencies.”

  I had to applaud his honesty, even if it made me want to vomit.

  Kai steered the conversation back to how this guy had risen from death. “Could it have been special training?”

  The funeral director shook his head. “I cut the man open for an autopsy. Even the best trained soldier could not survive my scalpel.”

  I had to agree. Dude had been dead when I’d cut into him back at the Golden Rabbit.

  “Then a spell, maybe?” Kai asked.

  “Dead is dead, my handsome friend. And unless you strike a deal with the gods in the afterlife, so you shall remain.” Edgar flashed a salesman’s smile.

  “Is that what you think happened here? Divine intervention?”

  “I very much doubt it.”

  “You must keep some records,” Kai said, somehow not irritated by the brick walls he kept slamming into.

  “It’s not that kind of business.” Steam drifted off the coffee cup as Edgar set it on the paper-strewn desk. He nudged a mouse with a shaky finger, suddenly bathing the shadowy space with a computer screen’s fluorescent glow. “But there could be one thing.”

  “Just one?” I winked at him with an acidic smile.

  The vampire shivered. He was on the hot seat, and he damn well knew it.

  “The DSA had me do an autopsy. Then wanted me to burn him.”

  “Why bother with an autopsy?” I asked.

  “Guy had gone rogue or something.” Edgar shrugged. “They wanted to know how he’d finally died. Maybe they figured it would explain who had killed him. Or what he’d been doing while he was off the reservation.”

  “And did it?” I watched as the vampire glanced shiftily at his computer screen. “You sneaky bastard. You did keep a record.”

  The funeral director grinned. “A boy has to make a living.”

  “Let’s see it.”

  “You know, ah, all this information is really supposed to be confidential.” Meaning he wanted me to pay. The people I kept as allies. But when you became a Reaper, there wasn’t a tree-hugging, save-the-whales version. It was a dirty business—and some of that dirt was just gonna rub off on your hands.

  “Confidential my ass,” I said. “Show us.”

  Edgar scratched his formless cheeks in that way liars do when they’re cornered. Then he lunged forward to unplug the computer.

  Kai stopped the funeral director by grabbing his wrist.

  The vampire tried to get free with a quick
, strong jerk, but the agent held steady. The spear sigil hidden on his tattooed right arm glowed a light blue. I’d seen Kai battle a thousand-year-old warlock and emerge victorious.

  An out-of-shape funeral director wasn’t going to get loose, vampire or no.

  “Well, fine.” Edgar gave up his feeble struggle and slumped back in his creaky office chair. “See for yourself.”

  The pudgy vampire turned the monitor to direct the blueish glow of the LEDs our way. The description read six-one, one-eighty. Forty-five seemed a little young, but he must’ve gone gray early. The cause of death was listed as blunt force trauma.

  My eyes flicked up to the name. Xavier Deadwood. Had a Wild West ring to it, like an old sheriff keeping the outlaws at bay. If he’d worked for the DSA, he probably hewed more toward being an outlaw himself.

  “So someone beat him to death?” I asked. “How?”

  “With a rock, if I had to guess.”

  I recalled Pebbles explaining how Anya had tied a rock around her own foot.

  I was beginning to think it’d been the same one she’d used to beat this Deadwood guy to death with.

  “And you were going to cremate Xavier Deadwood,” Kai said. “Dispose of this critical evidence?”

  “There wasn’t going to be a big funeral, if that’s what you’re asking,” Edgar said, snorting at his own joke.

  The agent did not look amused.

  “Obstruction of justice is a serious offense.” Kai’s black hair brushed over his broad shoulders as reached for his cuffs. “Stand up and hold out your hands.”

  For a moment, I thought he was putting the screws to Edgar for more information.

  Then I remembered Kai didn’t really do that.

  I stifled a groan and thought fast.

  With a fake smile, I turned to Kai and said, “Can I speak to you for a moment?” Then I grabbed the agent’s arm, feeling the muscles tense beneath his naturally tan skin. He briefly resisted, then followed me into the narrow hallway.

  When we were out of the vampire’s earshot, I said, “Bigger fish, man, bigger fish.”