Grave Matters

by Lauren M. Roy

  “What’s it?” Don’t say it, stop even thinking it.

  “We make her into a vampire. You saved me that way, you can save Elly. Or I can, if you’ll tell me how.” He looked around the room for support, the eagerness leaking from his face as it wasn’t forthcoming. “What?”

  “It’s not what she’d want.” Cavale traced the bumps of her knuckles, back and forth. “So it’s off the table.”

  “But she’d be alive.” Justin stepped over to Chaz. “What’s the saying? Easier to seek forgiveness than permission?”

  Chaz wouldn’t meet his eyes. “That’s . . . that’s when I overrule Val on a book order, Justin. You can send books back to the publisher. You change Elly, the only way out of it for her if she doesn’t want it is to kill her all over again. You up for that?”

  “Yeah, well, at least she’d get to yay or nay. If she . . . if she dies now, we can’t take that back, either.” He shifted so those yellow eyes were on her now, begging. “Val, please. Order them to stay out of it and we’ll sort it out later.”

  I could do it. Part of her wanted to: she was strong enough, especially after last night’s deer blood feast. She could Command Chaz and Cavale to sit on their hands. The challenge would be Sunny and Lia, who were both watching her with grim expressions.

  It had never occurred to her before, that she had power over death. Turning Justin had been a fuck you to the Jackals, a necessity to save his humanity, maybe, but not his life. When she’d turned him, she’d known she was killing him, no matter how you looked at it, but he’d consented. Shit, he’d demanded she do it. This, though . . .

  She’s dying. Better I be the one to pull her back from that threshold than let her cross over it. The necromancer was still out there. What if he was waiting to snatch Elly’s spirit up? To make her fight for him when they came kicking down his door? Wouldn’t that hurt Cavale more?

  I could save her. I could turn her right here or pick her up and be gone before anyone could react, do it somewhere quieter. Away from the machines that’ll go batshit if I unhook her, and the doctors who’ll come rushing in.

  Another voice piped up in her mind, her more reasonable self. It was hard to hear beneath the rushing of her blood and her glorious thoughts. It’s not what she’d want. Who are you to steal this last choice from her?

  Right now, I’m death’s master.

  “No, you aren’t,” said a voice from the doorway. “That would be me.”

  * * *

  UDRAI.

  Cavale scrambled up to get himself between Sunny and Lia and the death god at the door. Val and Chaz were in his path as well, but the more obstacles, the better. How the hell did he find us?

  “Oh, relax,” said the short man. He stepped the rest of the way into the room and closed the door behind him. He shrugged off his coat and, seeing the chairs all occupied, hung it over the container for disposing of needles and biohazards. “First off.” He leaned to the side to peer past Chaz, at Lia. “You lied to me, young lady. It puts us off on the wrong foot. I know who you are now. I remembered. You can change your face, but not the flavor of what you do. What you are.” He bent farther, listing until Cavale thought he might fall, to get a look at Sunny. “Which means I know who you are, too. There aren’t a lot of succubi who run off to play house together.” He considered this, dark eyes taking in how tightly they held each other, how Lia had positioned herself half a step in front of Sunny. “You’re not just playing house, are you? Oh, wouldn’t that little twist fetch me some coin in the right places.”

  Cavale wished he hadn’t left the knife in Chaz’ car. It wasn’t the sort of thing you carried when you brought your sliced-up sister into the ER, and if they’d found it on him, they’d likely have had him arrested, but it would be awfully handy now. He scanned the room for weapons: cords everywhere that could make good garrotes, plenty of heavy equipment he could heave if he needed to. He hadn’t searched the drawers, didn’t know if anything good and sharp was nestled inside.

  The threat toward the succubi had helped Chaz put it together. He waded right in. “You’re not selling shit to anyone, asshole. Get the fuck out of here. Visiting hours are for family. Which you’re not.”

  “Which none of you are,” said Udrai. “Glamours are easily broken, you know. I don’t think the staff would be too pleased to find you having a party in their patient’s room. Speaking of.” He shuffled to the side to better see Elly.

  “No. No!” Cavale grabbed for the privacy curtain and yanked it along its track, cutting her off from Udrai’s line of sight. Justin helped, then turned to stand sentry. He reminded Cavale of a cat puffing itself up to seem bigger to its opponents, but Justin was about the least intimidating person Cavale knew. Still, the kid had a month of training with Elly under his belt. Cavale wouldn’t count him out.

  Udrai clasped his hands in front of him and tsked. “How funny that the lot of you were discussing her death before I walked in, that all but the presently dead were ready to let her go, and now you’re keeping me from even laying eyes on her? Shouldn’t you be welcoming me about now?”

  Cavale shook his head. “This is none of your concern.”

  “Oh, you’re adorable.”

  Several deliciously violent ideas came to Cavale’s mind, but he refrained from acting on them. Barely. “What. Do you. Want?”

  “I’d like to offer a trade.”

  In the corner, Sunny groaned.

  “Hear me out. May I?” He gestured at Justin’s vacated chair. Pulled it closer and sat without waiting for permission. “There’s a man wandering your neighborhood with powers that don’t belong to him. He might not have been the one to get your friend behind the curtain hurt, but he was involved in some form. I can see the ripples even now. I want him dead.”

  “So kill him,” said Chaz. “Word has it you’re a death god.” Val shushed him and got an acid glare for it, but Udrai merely shrugged.

  “Slight problem with that. The deal we made . . . it wasn’t a very solid one.”

  “You’re the king of shady deals.” Lia had found her voice. She came to stand beside Cavale, Sunny only an inch or two behind. “It almost sounds like you’re saying your follower got the best of you.”

  “I was the king of shady deals. Spending millennia in a cage of bone and shadow tends to dull one’s edges.” He stroked his beard. “Maybe the cage broke down. Maybe the Lady Ereshkigal grew bored, or merciful, or someone simply fucked up. I didn’t stick around to find out. But a prayer got through, for the first time in, literally, ages. And I answered it.” Udrai looked at the people gathered around him and grinned sheepishly. “I made an offer and he took it. Hold my power for me, just for a little while. And when I come to take it back, you’ll be rewarded.”

  “He’s human?” Sunny’s voice trembled, but she looked him in the eye. “The necromancer?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Humans can’t hold a god’s power. It’d . . . it’d eat them from the inside out.”

  Cavale thought of the necromancer’s cough, the blood he’d spat into his palm. “That’s exactly what it is doing.”

  “It was a good plan,” said Udrai. “He holds my power, and anyone looking for me finds him. If Ereshkigal killed him, thinking she’d tracked me down, my power would come flooding back. If she didn’t, he’d die of the overload eventually and, again, back come my powers.”

  “But he found a way to delay it.”

  “Yup. Fucker. Clever fucker, really, which I should have realized since he learned my name and sought me out in the first place. But like I said. Millennia with no other social contact than listening to the demons who were my jailers trading gossip. I didn’t think the contract through. Forgot to put an expiration date on it.” His mouth twisted. “On him.”

  “How’s he doing it?” asked Justin.

  “He figured out how to foist his death onto
other people. He’s been doing it almost a year now. Your dying girl there, she helped put down a ghost the other day?”

  Cavale nodded. It felt like weeks ago that Elly had told him the story of the ghost in Cinda’s basement. “His gunshot wound kept manifesting.”

  “That was his first victim. Didn’t do the shooting, but he turned it into a lethal one. The ghosts he had in that house this morning, lined up for touching family reunions? They’re dead because he didn’t want to be.”

  James. “And what’s the point of bringing them back, then? And putting them in touch with their loved ones?”

  “And working with the vampires,” said Chaz. “Where do they come in?”

  Udrai rubbed his thumb across his fingertips. “All the same: money.”

  “What’s he saving up for?”

  “Nothing complicated. He’s had to lay low since he set me free. Now he’s in this shitty neighborhood, and it’s getting cold, and he knows sooner or later either I’ll find him or the power will kill him, trading deaths or not. Wouldn’t you want to live out your last days somewhere tropical if that were the case? If you gotta go, at least kick the bucket where the sunsets are pretty.”

  In nearly any other situation, Cavale would have been asking Udrai every question that crossed his mind. He’d have dug out a notebook and quizzed him, because how often did you get to meet a god? But Elly was dying behind that curtain, and every second the god yattered on was a second Cavale didn’t get to say good-bye. “You said you wanted to offer a trade.”

  “I do.” He pointed at the curtain. “She’s at death’s door. He’s, well, not at it, maybe, but coming up the front walk, let’s say. I have enough juice left to make that switch. It’s a little one, since they’re both so close to my old domain anyway. I can even get her up and walking around for a few hours. Her death for his, and when I have my power back I can fix her up the rest of the way. Easy peasy.”

  “Where’s the catch?” asked Sunny.

  “No catch, not this time. I’m tired of waiting for him to kick over.” He eyed her, and pointed at her and Lia. “I’ll even throw this in for free: You do this, and I won’t tell them where you are. Or that I even saw you. If you don’t . . .” He shrugged. “I’ll put bugs in the right ears. They’ll come for you before the day’s over.”

  They all looked to Cavale. How is it even a question? He could see the same on all their faces. Elly was his sister; of course he wanted her alive. Udrai’s solution meant she need never spend any time dead at all, let alone become a vampire like Justin had been advocating for. Like Val was half considering, before we were interrupted.

  But Elly’d been a pawn all her life: for Father Value, for Ivanov. Making this deal added Udrai to the list. He wanted her to be free. He wanted her to be able to make that choice herself. She can’t make any more choices if she’s dead. “What if we fail?” he asked. “What if we don’t get him?”

  “Don’t fail.”

  Cavale nodded. He pulled the curtain open and stared down into her too-pale face. I can’t let this be the end, El. You can yell at me when this is over if you want. “Do it.”

  22

  ELLY DREAMS OF heartbeats.

  Her own, traitorous, pumping out her lifeblood through the jagged hole in her throat, her side, setting her nerves afire in her broken hand.

  The woman’s. The Sister. Her mother, crooning to her, holding her close. Elly opens her mouth to say How dare you and Don’t touch me, but what comes out is static.

  Cavale’s, fast and frightened as he cradles her in Chaz’ backseat. The bass thump of whatever radio station Chaz has playing mixes with it, as does the churn of the Mustang’s engine and the ba-bump of the tires as they pass over breaks in the asphalt, or those wires they put out to survey traffic and speeds. Chaz curses any time she’s jostled, apologizes again and again. She opens her mouth to say, That’s 95 South for you, and I’m so sorry, Cavale, but the radio goes to static, and Chaz switches it off, and her voice is gone.

  Her own heartbeat isn’t so steady anymore when the ER doctors hook her up to their machines. It’s thin and thready, she knows from the monitor and their discussion. She doesn’t try talking in here; she’s afraid the static will come again, and short out the equipment, and then she’ll die.

  In her room, before they let Cavale in, she hears the nurses’ footfalls outside her door. Not blood-pumping heartbeats, but the pulse of the hospital all the same.

  Cavale comes. Then Lia-Sunny-Chaz, and none of them say much of anything.

  There are people in here with her sometimes, other patients, she thinks, out for a wander. No one else sees them. They don’t always see her. It’s not like she’s sitting up. Some of them get pulled backward, sharply, like they’re on a tether, and they’re gone. Waking up, maybe.

  Others sit awhile, and wait, looking at her like she’s some sort of beacon. Or maybe the others are. They wait, and more people come, people they seem to know. The newcomers sometimes take the patients by the hand and lead them out the door. That’s when Elly hears alarms chiming at the nurses’ station, or soft sobbing in other rooms.

  She thinks she’s in the trauma unit, or ICU, or whatever it’s called here. It’s why there are so many.

  Every now and then, the wandering patients don’t leave with the visitors. They are yanked back, or led back, right through the walls. She follows one such pair, though her body stays firmly on the bed. Lia twitches as Elly goes past but doesn’t seem to see her.

  A family waits, gathered around a bed. The patient stands back, awkwardly, watching them talk in hushed voices around his body, which still breathes. The elderly woman with him hugs him, pats his hand, kisses his cheek . . . and pushes him gently back to his prone form. He touches his own forehead, collapses back into himself. The body on the bed stirs. Elly turns to look at the old woman, but she’s gone.

  She goes back to her own room, stands in the corner, and watches them begin mourning her. She’s not angry about it; she’s pretty sure her death’s coming, and soon. She’s sad she and Cavale fought, angry at herself for not calling Chaz back. But those feelings are muffled, unimportant.

  Elly waits, and watches the door. She knows better than to be hopeful, but she is anyway. If all these others can do it, surely he can, too. So she waits, and listens to the heartbeats, and hopes.

  But Father Value never comes.

  * * *

  IT HURT, WHEN your bones reset themselves. Elly awoke to pain, and the odd, stomach-churning sensation of flesh and internal bits knitting themselves back together. Her first action, on regaining consciousness, was to lean over the side of the bed and empty her stomach onto someone’s shoes.

  Justin’s.

  Shit.

  But rather than flinch away, he pulled her hair off her face and rubbed her back while she heaved again. College kid and all, maybe he had practice with this sort of thing. It was soothing, until she realized her johnny was open and he was touching bare skin and could probably see—

  “Welcome back, kiddo.”

  She didn’t know the man lounging in one of the hospital chairs, but she added the way Sunny leaned way back from him to the fact she was suddenly keenly aware of her body—her uninjured body—and narrowed it down to two. “Are you Udrai, or his puppet?”

  “I’m Udrai. But speaking of my puppet, your friends here made a bargain. I gave you back to them, and they’re going to go cut his strings.” He paused and tapped his lips. “And his throat. Or, y’know. Whatever gets the job done.”

  Cavale was there, too, helping her shrug out of the sling she no longer needed. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, soft enough only she could hear. “We’ll get him. Or I’ll find another way. I had to buy you the time.”

  He looked terrified, like she might turn aside and refuse to have anything else to do with him. Had she dreamed of them arguing about it? She thought
she might have; the last few hours were a haze. Maybe she’d heard their conversation in her sleep. It didn’t matter. He was here. Everyone she cared about was in this room. “It’s all right,” she said. “I’m not exactly ready to go. Nothing waiting for me on the other side.”

  No one waiting, she meant.

  Cavale helped her up out of the bed. Sunny held the johnny shut in the back while they peeled off adhesive tape, detached her from the IV drip, and removed the various contacts stuck to her for monitoring purposes. Elly was glad her healing body had pushed the most invasive items out while she was still unconscious; she shuddered to think how it would’ve gone if she’d woken up with tubes protruding from her skin. Lia went out to stand sentry and make sure the staff didn’t come in. On her way out the door, she’d put on someone else’s face, probably one of the doctors’. Her voice drifted in, Lia’s but not, sending people off on other duties.

  Her clothes had been taken as evidence, so Justin slipped out and, moments later, returned with a set of scrubs and a pair of paper slippers for her. She missed her work boots already. While they waited for him to get back, Chaz and Val came and claimed hugs. Chaz tried to speak and failed, tried and failed, until Elly thought his voice might have been replaced by static. He eventually choked out, “Don’t do that again, okay?” and made room for Val.

  “When this is done,” Val said, “Ivanov and I need to have a talk.”

  Those last few minutes came flooding back to her now: Katya’s allies turning to enemies, Ivanov ordering Elly down to help, the Stregoi woman upright but only barely, as Oisín and possessed Stregoi alike moved to bring her down. “I don’t know if they made it out of there.”

  Chaz found his voice. “We saw the Renfields doing cleanup. They’d have scattered well before dawn if Ivanov were dead.” He winced. “Elly . . . I’m pretty sure he’s still alive and kicking. I think . . . I think Ivanov orchestrated this whole fucking thing.” He told her about his visit from Marian, how she hadn’t specified which vampires the necromancer was working for. How she’d still been in the warehouse when he and Cavale arrived, surrounded by Ivanov’s Renfields, who ought to have been her enemies.