Debriefing the Dead (The Dead Series Book 1)

by Kerry Blaisdell

  “I don’t know,” I said, then put my hands up, palms out. “I’m not dodging the question. I really don’t know. Just walk through the crowds, see if anyone looks weird, or suspicious, or is doing something…odd.”

  “Odd like an old guy wearing socks with sandals? Or something more sinister?”

  “Sinister,” I said, then wished I’d hedged a bit more. Jason’s jaw twitched, and I could see him weighing the satisfaction of chewing me out again for leading us all into danger, against the likelihood that, during the day, in such a crowd, we wouldn’t find anything anyway.

  “Fine. At least it shouldn’t take long.” Before I could ask what he meant—the place was crawling with tourists—he turned to Geordi. “Dude, want to hang with me? Or Hyacinth?”

  Geordi squinted up at Jason, then me, his choice obvious. I tried not to feel hurt. After all, it’d been a while since he’d had a positive male influence in his life, if ever. Nick started abusing Lily soon after Geordi was born, and barely treated his son and heir any better.

  By contrast, Jason played with Geordi, talked with him, treated him like a person. And he had the same body parts. For a boy who’d only had his mother and auntie around most of his life, Geordi must be in hog heaven.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” I said, “you can go with Jason.”

  His face lit up, then he glanced apprehensively at his hero, clearly wondering if this was the correct manly response. Jason grinned and raised his hand for a high-five. “Awesome!”

  Geordi jumped up and thwacked Jason’s hand—that had to hurt—then they turned and headed toward the right half of the hill. Jason jumped down to the next terrace, reaching up to swing Geordi over, and in five seconds, I lost sight of them.

  “I’ll do this half, then,” I said, but no one paid any attention.

  This terrace alone had a dozen tourists on it, dressed in a variety of styles. I saw typical Americans—shorts and T-shirts—next to Muslims in long robes, and even folks who looked like they came from Africa or India, dressed in wrapped cloths and turbans. Multiply that by dozens, if not hundreds, of other terraces, similarly crowded, and how the hell we were supposed to spot anything “unusual” was beyond me.

  Part of the problem was I didn’t know what I thought I’d find. I only knew Geordi’d drawn a picture of this place, after spending time with two of Satan’s baddest minions.

  I tried to be systematic about it, but the terraces weren’t regularly spaced, being clustered in some places, isolated in others. The differences in height made climbing difficult, and though I had a water bottle, it didn’t take long for me to feel overheated, over-tired, and out of sorts.

  After an hour, I’d seen no sign of the Rousseaux, their minions, or anything that might interest them. Who knows? Maybe demons liked being baked alive in the murderous sun, smelling the stench of sweaty bodies, while going deaf from the incessantly roaring waters.

  I paused to catch my breath. Maybe the map was a fluke. Maybe it didn’t mean anything, and I was on a wild goose chase. I should probably sit tight until the fifth, then wait for the Rousseaux to show up at sunset. I knew they’d be at Colossae, and I knew when. Why not?

  Except I didn’t like leaving things to the last minute. I’d much prefer sneaking into the Rousseaux’s lair, stealing the rock, then getting the hell out of Turkey before they missed it.

  For lack of a better idea, I took out the camera. I ought to do some shots from the bottom, to get the big picture, but in the meantime, I snapped photos of this ledge, and the ones nearby. Maybe when I downloaded them, something would stand out.

  “Bon,” said a hoarse voice behind me. “C’est vraiment tu.”

  I jumped and whirled to find Eric inches away, watching me. “Jeez—why does everyone keep doing that? Where have you been? How did you get here?”

  He looked exhausted, but his mouth quirked up. “Miss me?”

  “Yes. No. What are you doing here?”

  “The locals. Said the water might help.”

  He sounded more tired than he looked, and I frowned. “Did it?”

  “You tell me. Am I better?”

  I examined him critically, then admitted, “No. I’m sorry.”

  In fact, he looked worse. He’d been in bad shape before, his wound raw and red in parts, putrid and black in others. Too much activity had tired him, and the color of his skin fluctuated from gray to green to yellow. But despite all that, he’d seemed upbeat. Or at least, as upbeat as a dead cop with a heavily ironic personality could be. Now, he faded more and more. Not literally—he still looked solid. But he swayed on his feet, and I could tell he had trouble focusing on my face.

  I touched his forehead, then yanked my hand away. “You’re burning up!”

  I glanced around, looking for a way to cool him off, but the sun burned the white limestone, and the water in the springs was warm. He didn’t have real flesh anyway. How was I supposed to bring down the body temperature of someone who didn’t have a body?

  “How did you even get here?” I asked.

  “Car. Hitched a ride.” He gave a weak smile. “Dematerialized, I think you called it.”

  I remembered what he’d said about doing that to get in his car. He must have been desperate, to try it again. Was that what weakened him so much? Did it require a big expenditure of ghostly energy? Was dematerialize even the right term, given he wasn’t made of “matter” in the normal sense of the word?

  Maybe the heat was his energy. If so, then it was draining, fast. I had to do something, but what? There was nothing here but the hot springs and the tourists.

  The tourists.

  Though the crowded terrace was small, a few meters long by another couple deep, and I’d been conversing with Eric in a normal-to-loud voice, nobody paid us any attention, as though the crazy lady talking to no one was…normal.

  An older man wearing what amounted to a loin cloth and a turban came toward us, and as an experiment, right when he was at Eric’s elbow, I said, “Hey! Watch where you’re going!”

  The man’s gaze jerked up and flicked to Eric, and he said something apologetic in a language I didn’t recognize.

  “De rien,” Eric replied, and I tried to pick my jaw up as the man went on his way.

  “He can see you? He’s…dead?”

  “Of course. I told you the locals directed me here.”

  So he had. I glanced at the crowds. Holy crap—they all looked the same to me. Except for their dress. I realized now that those wearing loin cloths were probably the Dead, from times before khaki and cotton-spandex blends. No wonder Jason thought our search would be fast, as only a third of the visitors wore modern clothes. And it didn’t follow that all of them were alive, either—look at Eric.

  But if the Dead looked like the Living to me, how would I ever tell them apart? Would I spend the rest of my time here wondering if Geordi could see the people I met? There had to be a way. At least with Eric, his wound made it obvious. Which brought me back to, why didn’t the rest of the Dead show evidence of whatever killed them?

  I turned to Eric just as a truly ancient woman sidled up. Her dark eyes and thin-lipped mouth almost vanished in the crags of her face, and from its center, her bulbous nose stood out like a sunburnt beacon. She couldn’t have been above five feet tall and almost as wide, with a bosom that took up the entire space between her neck and her waist. A dirty scarf covered her head, giving off an Eastern European peasant vibe, and when her skirts moved, knobby, dirty feet peeped out. They seemed strangely petite, given her bulk, as did her calloused hands.

  Ignoring me, she touched Eric’s arm, speaking to him in heavily accented French, supporting my theory that she’d lived in Russia or one of its former states. “Allons y! I haf made a place vhere you vill rest until is time.”

  “Time for what?” I asked. “Eric, what’s going on?”

  The woman glanced at me sharply, her grip tightening on Eric’s arm. “Who she is? Vhy she speak viz you?”

  “It
’s okay…Nadezhda,” Eric wheezed. “This is…the one…who helped me.”

  Her eyes narrowed, nearly vanishing above her jowly cheeks, and her gaze traveled over my face. All at once, she jerked back. “Is you—I haf heard of you!”

  Then she cackled. I’d never heard anyone cackle before, and it was about as witch-like as you’d expect. Not exactly evil—not like the Rousseaux, or the Dioguardis. Just unpleasant or disquieting or…something. Plus, I didn’t like the possessive way she clutched Eric’s arm.

  “Eric,” I said, “who is this, and where does she want you to go?”

  Eric tried to speak, but he was now almost too weak even for that. He sagged, and I reached for his free arm, supporting the side Nadezhda wasn’t already holding.

  “You come now,” she said urgently, pulling at him. “Now, or you no make it.”

  I planted my feet, pitting my legs against her bulk. “Make it ’til what?”

  The heat rolled off Eric in waves, worse even than Claude’s had been. “S’okay,” he said, barely audible over the constant roar of the pools. “Want…to go…with her. ’Til tonight.”

  “You can’t go—you don’t even know her!”

  One corner of his mouth quirked up. “Didn’t…know…you. Worked out.”

  His eyes were sad before he looked away, and I thought, I’m losing him—he’s giving up.

  Nadezhda urged him toward the edge of the terrace, but I held on tighter. “Wait! What are you going to do to him? What’s happening tonight?”

  She shot me the evil-eye. “I safe him. You no safe him.” She spat on the ground. “You Destroyer. You no velcome here.”

  What the hell? I looked at Eric, but he no longer seemed aware of me. The others on the terrace, however, suddenly were. All around us, the Dead gathered, as though Nadezhda had summoned them. They advanced, crowding us, herding us forward, the strength of their numbers sweeping us along the narrow terrace like dust before a hot wind.

  “Get back!” I cried pushing at them with one arm while trying to keep a grip on Eric with the other. “Leave us alone!”

  Eric’s eyes rolled back, his head lolled, his lungs made a sound like a death rattle. He was literally a deadweight under my straining muscles. I tried to heft him up, to get a better grip, but he was heavy and unresponsive, and desperately I tried to keep him from slipping further away.

  Nadezhda cackled again, and the Dead murmured, most in tongues I didn’t understand. But I caught a few words here and there—thief, and her, and Destroyer again. Dead fingers clawed at me—I clung harder to Eric, the grossness of his wound, its fierce smell of decay, nothing compared to the lifeless vortex surrounding us, suffocating in its emptiness.

  Hands tore Eric’s arm from my shoulder, yanked him away. Other hands dug into my arms, legs, shoulders, dragging me backward.

  “Stop!” I shrieked, searching the faces around me for Eric. Bright eyes regarded me curiously, like they didn’t know what to make of me. Old, dried fingers with dirty nails and the toughness of worn leather clawed at me, like a thousand spiders crawling over my skin. They were in my hair, pulling at my clothes—I shoved them away, but they only came right back.

  I saw a flash of blue and tan to my left. “Eric!”

  It was useless. The Dead outnumbered me, and he couldn’t fight them, or didn’t want to, or both. Hot fingers slid around my throat, tightening, crushing my windpipe. I clawed at them, digging, frantic, but even in death, they were stronger—I couldn’t breathe—my heart thudded, trying to force oxygen up to my brain. My vision silvered, my skull pounded, my legs buckled.

  Then Nadezhda said, “Nyet,” and the hands were gone.

  They were all gone. The whole mass of inhumanity slipped away, crowding down the slope. I fell to my knees on the terrace, choking, gasping for air, with one thought playing over and over in my mind: I can’t let them take Eric! I crawled forward, but someone kicked me in the chest and I fell back, over the far side of the terrace. The drop was only a few feet, but I landed hard, what breath I had left knocked out of me.

  I forced myself to stand, coughing in the dust raised by my fall, then scrambled in the direction I’d seen them go, down and to the right. I searched frantically in all directions, screaming to be heard over the roar of the waters, “Eric!”

  Nothing. They’d been swallowed by the crowds—by the Living and the Dead that swarmed over the springs. I sagged against the cliff, chilled to the bone despite the hot limestone. Tears burned my eyes; my heart was cracking. I hadn’t known Eric long, but I liked him—needed him—needed that bridge to the afterlife, that one connection I still had to Lily. More, selfishly, I needed him for me. There were things he might know that Jason didn’t, and I couldn’t lose that.

  “Eric,” I moaned. “Don’t leave me. Please—I need you to come back!”

  “Hyacinth?”

  My head snapped up. Jason stood on the terrace across from me, hand on Geordi’s shoulder. Geordi, who looked at me with frightened blue eyes. The expression in Jason’s own eyes indicated I’d finally crossed any reasonable boundary of sanity. The corded muscles of his neck stood out, and his jaw was so tense, I could see the blood pulsing through his veins. He kept his voice down, but the effort for control only emphasized his fury.

  “Who the hell is Eric? And why do you keep talking to people who aren’t there?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful.

  It’s the transition that’s troublesome.”

  ~Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)

  The drive back to the hotel was silent and uncomfortable. Jason was even madder than when he’d caught me with his gun. Was that only this morning? My days were so packed, I’d lost all sense of time. It was late—almost dinner. I had a mere two days until sunset on the fifth, and I was no closer to finding the Rousseaux. It would help if I had any idea where to look, not based on a child’s crayon drawing.

  In the backseat, Geordi was quiet as ever. If the Rousseaux had said or done anything to traumatize him—beyond killing his mother and father—he didn’t show it. By now, I probably worried him more than they had. Jason was right to be pissed. Whatever else he’d done, his concern for Geordi was indisputable. Plus, he’d pretty much dropped everything to help me, and here I was, paying him back by acting crazy at every turn.

  More and more, I felt crazy. Not just out of my depth—seriously wondering if Michael and Eric, and giant force field bubbles, were all figments of my imagination, and I lived in an alternate reality from everyone else.

  Which technically, I did.

  I forced myself to take a breath. I wasn’t insane. I just knew things about Death and Life that most people didn’t. It would be okay—I would make it okay.

  Jason pulled into a parking space near the hotel and killed the engine, then didn’t move, just sat there, holding the steering wheel, staring out the windshield. I glanced back at Geordi, who’d fallen asleep, his head lolling at an angle that made my neck hurt just watching him. I looked away to find Jason’s steady gaze boring into me.

  I tried to remember the old Jason, the one I’d thought of as unflappable. Though actually, he still didn’t seem agitated. The anger he directed at me was sure and strong, and I shrugged helplessly. “What do you want me to say?”

  “How about telling me what the hell is going on?”

  “You first.” Ha. Let him weasel out of that one.

  Jason gave a short fast shake of his head. “No. My secrets are in the past. Over. Done with. Yours are here, right now, affecting us every day. You brought Geordi to Turkey, right to the bastards who killed his mother—who I thought killed you.” He paused, eyes dark. “Ever since that night, you’ve been acting strange, jumping at shadows, talking to people who aren’t there. I’ve seen you—heard you. You asked me to trust you, and I’ve done everything I can to help. But trust goes both ways. Tell me—what the hell is going on?”

  Part of me wanted to tell him so badly—to share my bur
dens and have him comfort me—someone alive—who’d tell me I wasn’t insane and that I could do this. But therein lay the problem. He would think I was insane. Until a few days ago, I would have thought so.

  “I can’t,” I said at last.

  “Bullshit. Who’s Eric?”

  I shook my head. “No one. Just someone I thought I recognized.”

  Being reborn must have impaired my ability to lie, because clearly Jason didn’t buy it. His jaw twitched, and he ground out, “At least tell me what’s wrong. You’re tired and pale all the time—except when you eat meat. What is it? What happened to you? And don’t give me that crap about stress over your sister. This is physical, and it’s eating you up. Tell me what the fuck it is, so I can fix it.”

  Apparently, he was even more observant—or I was worse off—than I’d thought. Maybe both. I’d been chugging along, but the truth was, I didn’t feel as well as I had after eating massive quantities of bacon. But telling Jason I was the Walking Undead, who needed to devour animal carcasses to keep going, was even lower on my list than the Demons from Hell scenario.

  “I—I can’t,” I said again, and watched him shut me out. It was truly remarkable—I could see his face close off, pushing me away, leaving me utterly alone. I didn’t even have Eric now. Death was a huge scary unknown. But I wasn’t really a part of Life anymore, either.

  “I’m sorry.” I looked down to hide my tears. “I appreciate everything you’ve done, for me and for Geordi. I hope—” A lump rose in my throat and I swallowed hard. “I hope you’ll stick around a little longer. You’re good for Geordi. I know he means something to you—for his sake, please don’t go yet, even if you don’t care what happens to me.”

  Jason was silent so long, I thought he might be planning to leave then and there. Finally, he blew out a breath. “Jesus, Hyacinth. I didn’t think I was that good an actor.”

  My head jerked up. His gaze flicked over the tears running down my cheeks and he said, “Shit,” and reached for me, hauling me across the parking brake and settling me on his lap, curled against his chest. I knew I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help it—I let him hold me, let him cradle me in his arms while I cried harder.