Undead to the World

by DD Barant

  My ears are ringing and my stomach is in free fall. I don’t know if Cassiar is going to shoot me next, or execute Charlie. I’m afraid to even open my mouth.

  But I do, anyway.

  “You’re right about one thing,” I say. “Your memories have been tampered with, even more than you know. You’re not a field agent.”

  His face is the careful blank of an assassin. He doesn’t remember being the director of the NSA, he doesn’t remember being my lover. Most likely he doesn’t remember the centuries of his undead existence before we met, or any of the human women he fell in love with and watched die.

  I’m going to do my damndest to reach out to him, to touch that part of him that loves me.

  I’m going to fail.

  And then I’m going to kill him.

  That’s the script that Ahaseurus wrote: Cassius dies at my hand, without remembering me. Heartbreaking and tragic, no?

  No.

  “Have it your way,” I say. “This is an intel-ops scenario. What’s the objective?”

  “Survival, containment, and recruitment. Disseminate the pire virus as widely as possible while eliminating all thrope vectors.”

  It’s a plausible enough explanation; intelligence agencies are always running worst-case simulations, and a thrope/pire conflict over the colonization of an alternate Earth is unfortunately all too possible. In fact, since the huge power requirements necessary for dimensional transfer make a large invading force impractical, the best way to do it would be exactly what Cassiar is describing: send a lone agent and get him to turn as many of the locals as possible. Of course, then you have the problem of controlling them … but the last time I raised a logical objection, Cassiar shot one of my allies. I need to choose my words carefully. “How are you planning to disseminate anything when we’re trapped inside the town’s borders?”

  “With these.” He points to the two books. “Obviously, this is more than a simple infiltration scenario. The storm, the Gallowsman, and his soldiers represent this reality’s mystic opposition, their attempt to keep the situation contained. Those aspects weren’t in the initial briefing, but obviously we were meant to figure that out for ourselves.”

  “Soldiers?” I ask.

  “The road crew. In order to successfully carry out the mission, we need to overcome them and use the exit. Once free of the town’s confines, I should have no problem triggering a rapidly spreading pandemic.”

  I can’t let that happen. But he’s the one with the gun, the vampiric reflexes, and the two powerful mystic artifacts. I’ve got a bartender with a broken leg. That, and …

  I notice something then. It doesn’t make sense for a second, and then it does. No, I think to myself. No, you can’t do that.

  But I have to. It’s my only chance, even if it breaks my heart. I make a vow to track down Ahaseurus in whatever hell he’s currently burning in, and make sure that no matter how much he’s suffering, it gets worse. “You’ve missed one important factor.”

  “Which would be?”

  “The spell book. It’s the right weapon to use against the Gallowsman, but only if you know how. You just killed the guy I was going to use. How’s your shamanistic training?”

  I hold my breath. The Cassius I know would be able to use that spell book, but I’m pretty sure this version can’t. Ahaseurus suppressed Jimmy Zhang’s sorcerous expertise, and would have done the same to any other shaman.

  “I’m not a shaman,” Cassiar says. “But your friend Azura is.”

  I let a glance flicker toward the bedroom door, ever so briefly. “True. But the only way to contact her is through a certain DVD—one that’s safely hidden away.”

  He smiles. I can almost see the hook go through his lip. “I’m sure it is. But I have my suspicions about where it might be … let’s go into the bedroom, shall we? I’ll take the weaponry and books with us so Charlie won’t be tempted to get up to any mischief—not that he can move very fast with that broken leg.”

  I keep my face resolutely neutral while Cassiar unloads the shotgun and pockets the shells, then sticks my scythes—closed—in his waistband. He keeps the books in one hand and my gun in the other, and motions me toward the door. About as good as I can hope for.

  I pause with my hand on the doorknob. God, I hope this works.

  I open the door, walk through quickly, take two steps and turn. Cassiar is keeping a certain professional distance—you never get too close to someone while holding a gun or similiar ranged weapon on them—but he can’t let me get too far away in case I’m planning on doing something stupid.

  But I’m not the one he should be worried about.

  Cassiar steps into the room. That’s when my brave, loyal, incredibly smart dog—who hasn’t made a single sound since Cassiar showed up—lunges from where he’s been waiting and locks his jaws around Cassiar’s wrist. Pires are strong but Saint Bernards are heavy, and Galahad has the advantage of both surprise and leverage; he hauls Cassiar’s gun hand down so it’s no longer aimed at me.

  I lunge forward, grab a scythe from Cassiar’s wastband and yank it free.

  Cassiar recovers. Rather than try to shake his attacker off, he uses his other hand to bring a fist down on top of Galahad’s head. I’m going to have nightmares about the sound it makes for the rest of my life.

  There’s no time for anything fancy. There’s a small silver cone at the top of each scythe, actually the short end of the swiveling blade; when the scythe is open and the blade locked into position, the cone juts out the opposite side at a forty-five degree angle. But when the scythe is closed, like it is now, the cone turns the handle into an eighteen-inch ironwood stake with a silver tip.

  I drive it through Cassiar’s heart.

  His eyes go wide in disbelief. There’s an instant that lasts forever while I wait for him to explode into very, very fine dust.

  He bursts into flames instead.

  I yank the stake out, ignore the burning body, and kneel over my dog. “Galahad? Gally?” I say.

  He raises his head groggily from where he’s lying, and a surge of relief goes through me. He’s okay. He’s going to be okay.

  But then I see the blood running through his fur, and I realize how wrong I am.

  Charlie’s already managed to stump his way over, and the first thing he does is use a blanket to douse the fire. “Oh, hell,” he says. He’s not talking about Cassiar. “Oh, fucking hell.”

  Galahad looks up at me with those big, red-rimmed brown eyes, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth. He tries his best to lick my hand.

  And then he dies.

  * * *

  People who have never lost a dog don’t know what’s it like.

  I’m not going to be crass and compare it to losing a child. As an FBI profiler, I dealt with people who had lost children, often in horrible ways,and that’s a very particular kind of torment I don’t want to get into here. No, losing a dog is simpler and more selfish than parental grief, because it doesn’t have all the what-ifs attached: what they could have done, where they could have gone, who they could have married. When you grieve for a human being, you’re mourning the loss of many things, both for them and for you.

  But a dog doesn’t have that kind of unused potential waiting for him. He’s just a dog, and he’s perfectly happy being exactly what he is. A dog has few, if any, regrets. What he mainly has is love—love for life, for food, for playing. And most of all, for you.

  That’s what you’re mourning, more than anything. That pure, unselfish love. That trust. That loyalty. When your dog dies you feel like a failure, because he trusted you and you let him down.

  And even though you did, he still loves you.

  I know this wasn’t really Galahad. He was just some big Saint Bernard that Ahaseurus found and implanted with stolen memories, like most everyone in town. I don’t care. Wherever he came from, he was just as brave—and nearly as smart—as my own Gally, and I won’t ever forget his sacrifice.

  He w
as a good dog.

  * * *

  When I’m done crying, I stand up and stick the scythe in my belt. Charlie hands me the other one, having rescued it from the corpse before it could burn. “So,” he says. “Not Cassius, huh? How’d you know?”

  “Couple things,” I say, wiping my eyes. “First, I couldn’t believe Cassius could ever be brainwashed into believing a cover story like that; too many holes in the logic. He would have unraveled it in no time, especially with the spells degrading. This guy believed it wholeheartedly.

  “Second, Cassius wouldn’t throw away a possible asset like Stoker in a situation like this, not unless he was an immediate threat. And third, he wouldn’t have fallen for an obvious ruse like my glance toward the bedroom, not even if he was blind drunk and brain-damaged. When I put all that together, I could see that it was just another Ahaseurus mind game.”

  “So Cassius—”

  “Oh, Cassius is here, and he is the master vampire. Cassiar was just a proxy, a pire created by Cassius’s blood, his vampiric essence amped up through Wizard of Ozry—that’s how he could ignore the improvised cross I shoved in his face. He was a stand-in, a stunt double; the fact that he burned instead of dusting proves it. Kill the real Cassius and there’d be nothing left but free-floating pire molecules.”

  Charlie’s rearmed himself—he even grabbed the shotgun shells from Cassiar’s jacket pocket before they cooked off—and now he hands me the spell book and the graphic novel. “So where’s the real thing?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  We go outside and get in the car, me in the driver’s seat. The storm overhead is finally making noise, but not thunder—it’s more like the pop and hiss of static, a bad connection threatening to turn worse. As we drive through the deserted streets, I’ve got the uneasy feeling we’re being watched, but not from any of the buildings.

  From overhead.

  When we pull up in front of the house, I expect Charlie to say something like “Oh. Really? Guess that makes sense.” But I don’t get any reaction at all, because of course it’s Charlie Allen that would recognize where we are, not Charlie Aleph.

  We get out, walk up the sidewalk. I knock on the front door. There’s no immediate answer, but I didn’t expect one. We wait.

  He gets to the door a few minutes later, blinking in mild surprise and confusion. He doesn’t get many visitors, and this is the second time I’ve been here in the last few days. “Jace? Hi! I was wondering when you’d come by with your laptop—”

  “Hi, Damon,” I say. “Can we come in?”

  He invites us inside, clearly happy I’m there and utterly oblivious to what’s been happening in the town. He spends most of his time on the Web, I’m sure; the outside world isn’t nearly as important—or demanding of his attention—as the electronic one. It keeps him busy, distracts him, focuses his intellect on solving puzzles in games or code. I’ll bet that in some of those games he’s an ancient vampire, and in others he’s the head of a vast spy network. Because that’s how you manipulate the mind of someone as old, as smart, as experienced as Cassius: you don’t suppress it, you redirect it. Bombard it with familiar stimuli that you control. It’s far easier to install mystic filters on a Web server than a living mind, because a computer won’t fight back. Cassius hasn’t had his memories blocked so much as repurposed.

  As a geek, he avoids human contact. As an albino, he avoids sunlight. That leaves one piece of the puzzle unsolved.

  “Can I get you guys something? A cola, maybe?”

  “I’m a little dry,” I say. “Not sure what I want, though. Mind if I see what you have?”

  “No, no, help yourself.”

  I go into the kitchen, open the fridge. Not much on the top shelf—some half-empty jars of condiments, a six-pack of generic cola in cans. But the lower two shelves are crammed with flats of protein shakes in rectangular waxed cartons, the kind with a little screw-cap on the top. I take one out and look at it. Strawberry. I open it and take a sniff. Smells authentic, in a chemically kind of way. I get a little dab of it from the underside of the cap and taste it.

  That’s not strawberry.

  Looks like the illusion spell masking the flavor has degraded enough to let the taste of blood through—either that, or Ahaseurus never bothered to conceal it from anyone but the pathetic geek who lives here all by himself. Or maybe the sorcerer just convinced him that this is what strawberries taste like; it’s been a few centuries since Cassius ate one, after all.

  I put the carton back and close the fridge. “Guess I’m not as thirsty as I thought,” I say.

  I return to the living room, where Damon and Charlie are sitting across from each other. Charlie’s studying him with a thoughtful look on his face, and Damon’s blithely ignoring him.

  “Huh,” says Charlie. “Really?”

  “There’s a little video I’d like to show you,” I tell Damon, pulling out my phone. “I tried to send it to you earlier, but it didn’t go through. Went to someone else entirely, actually—they had a very similar address.”

  “Oh. Okay, sure.” His eager smile almost breaks my heart. I could tell him I was here to burn down his house, and he’d probably hand me a book of matches.

  I call up the video—not so different from placing a call to Azura herself, now—and I’m relieved when she pops up and says, “Jace! What’s going on? Tair just woke up, only it’s not Tair; he claims he’s Doctor Pete. I don’t know how much longer I can stay hidden from the prison guards, either—my masking spells are good, but they do random mystic sweeps every few hours.”

  “I’ll make this quick. I need you to do the memory thing one more time.”

  She sighs. “I’m in a prison cell, remember? About the only person I can link you up to is Doctor Pete or myself—”

  “We’re doing Cassius remotely again. It didn’t work last time because I had the wrong guy. This is the real thing.”

  She frowns, then nods. “That would explain the link going down—we didn’t have it plugged into the right socket. Okay, just say when.”

  “Now would be good.” I hold the phone up for Damon to see. He’s been following our conversation with a puzzled but intrigued smile.

  There’s a flash of white light.

  TWENTY-THREE

  This time is different from the others. It’s a much newer memory, and for the first time I’m playing myself.

  I’m sitting in a chair, but I can’t move anything below my neck. Magic restraints. Cassius sits next to me in a similar chair, and I can tell by his posture that he’s in the same situation. We’re in some sort of cave, with torches flickering on the walls.

  Standing in front of us is Ahaseurus.

  He studies me coolly, with that undertaker’s face of his: long, bony, hawk nosed. “One of the fascinating things about an extended lifespan—as I’m sure you’ll agree, Mr. Cassius—is watching certain patterns arise and take root. Clichés, for example. When a particular phrase, persona, or event becomes popular to the point of overuse, it’s not, as some people claim, due to creative laziness, or even a cultural tendency to conform. No, such patterns repeat themselves for the same reason a particular configuration of DNA does: because it’s successful. A catchphrase is no different from a stubborn species of fungus that grows upon a boulder and refuses to die.”

  “Not sure if you’re comparing yourself to a fungus or a cliché,” I growl, “but either one works for me.”

  He continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “For instance, the antagonist of a drama explaining his master plan to the protagonist when he has her captive. A tiresome device, no? Always leading to this information being used against him at the climax, after her inevitable escape. Why does he do it? Hasn’t he ever seen a spy movie?”

  He smiles and shakes his head. “I know why, because I have been doing this very same thing for a very long time—long before it ever became a cliché. In fact, I may have been the one who started this particular phenomenon … except that none of my captives h
ave ever escaped to use this knowledge against me. Not ever.”

  “Chassinda did,” I say.

  Chassinda was the first woman Ahaseurus ever killed. He enjoyed the experience so much that he brought her back to life as a zombie, then kept her around as an undead trophy for hundreds of years. But even though he’d sewn her lips shut, Chassinda found a way to give me vital information—information I used to defeat her owner.

  Ahaseurus is still smiling, but his eyes are cold. “You mean the escape of the grave? I stand corrected. If that is your definition, then all of my captives have found freedom. All … except you.”

  “Yeah, I’m not much of a follower.”

  “Ah, but you followed me, did you not? Seeking to rescue your lover, you came all the way to the Dark Continent … where, despite the assistance of the African Queen, all three of you wound up my prisoners.”

  He sees the look on my face and chuckles. “Yes, I captured her as well. No last-minute rescues for you. Now, where was I … oh, yes, clichés. The reason the antagonist reveals his machinations to the protagonist is simple: because it provides him with a great deal of enjoyment. It allows him to demonstrate how clever he is. To preen and strut before his possession. To see the hope die in her eyes as she realizes—as she truly knows, for the first time—that these are the last moments of her life. It’s this moment that those who take life live for, not the act itself. I could no more deny myself this pleasure than I could deny myself breath.”

  “Good,” I say “That’s my job.”

  “Not for much longer. You’re about to enter a new profession—one that you won’t enjoy very much, I’m afraid I, however, will get a great deal of satisfaction out of it.”

  “You know, I just made a decision,” I say. “I’m going to end you. Up until now I thought I’d just have to capture you, because you’re the only one who can send me home without me turning into an old homeless woman—but fuck that. I’m just going to kill you, the first chance I get.” I let out what’s supposed to be a melodramatic sigh of relief, but it feels more real than I expected. “Whew. That’s going to make things so much simpler.”