Bloody Banquet - Corpse-Eater Saga 2

by Leod D. Fitz

  Something was wrong. The neckbiters always arrived in black vans with the name of one of their businesses painted on the side. This was a red pickup truck. The neckbiters must've sold my services to a third party. I tried to remember if our contract had wording that would specifically prohibit that, but I've never been good with legal language. I'd have to have somebody who understood that shit better take a look at it sometime.

  In the meantime, I'd best adjust to the fact that this wasn't my usual truck. And the woman who climbed out of the cab wasn't the usual woman. In fact, she wasn't a usual woman in any way.

  She was Caucasian, I could tell that at a sniff. But her style was distinctly Amerind. The sides of her head were shaved, while the hair in the middle was short and spiked. She had several visible tattoos which were not simply tribal in appearance but had a degree of authenticity to them usually lacking in the tattoos I saw around town. Probably because hers hadn't been applied with a modern needle. I suspected somebody had used a sharpened quill and tapped the ink into her skin.

  Then there was her jewelry. Most of it had been made recently, but none of it was mass produced. It was all done by hand, and using the traditional stones, feathers, bones and sinews. And it wasn't just that it was done in an Amerind style, everything she wore smelled of Amerind magic. This was the kind of thing that I'd only smelled a few times before, when I happened to be traveling through reservations at just the right time of year and the wind was just right, and once when Simon dragged me to an exhibit on campus.

  But while all of her jewelry had the scent of tribal magic to it, the bracelet on her left wrist simply reeked of the stuff. And it was the only thing she wore that had real age to it. Everything else on her had been made recently, but that bracelet… that was the real deal.

  The woman caught me staring at it and paused mid stride.

  We looked each other over for a few seconds.

  “You're an eater of the dead,” she said at last.

  I nodded.

  “The true people have always had a good relationship with your kind.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “The true people? Not sure I've ever heard of them before.”

  The woman flushed slightly, her hand moving to the bracelet which she rubbed absently. “Sorry. Of course you don't. They've been gone for...” she shook her head. “Anyhow, I was told that you could help me get rid of something?”

  I heard a second voice coming from the cab of the truck. The woman glanced over her shoulder, frowned, and slammed the door shut before turning back to me. “Can you?”

  I grimaced and took another sniff, this time focusing on the corpse she had hidden under the cover. “I don't know,” I said after a moment. “Whatever that is, it's a first for me. Let's get it out and take a look at it.”

  The woman opened up the gate and I pulled the body out and headed inside with it.

  She tried to help, but the thing had to weigh at least four hundred pounds, and she was less than a hundred and fifty.

  I closed the bay door and took a look at what I'd brought in.

  Despite his monstrous weight, the corpse in question wasn't as large as you'd expect. He would have been about six foot two, if he'd had a head. His skin was olive, and he had the musculature of someone who worked out regularly, but not religiously.

  And I had never smelled anything quite like him before.

  “So,” I said after a moment, “what happened to his head?”

  The woman nodded back towards the bay door. “In my truck.”

  “Oh, that was what was talking to you?”

  She nodded.

  I'd dealt with a few creatures who could survive having their head removed, at least for a time, but I couldn't think of anything that would be up for a conversation. “What is he?”

  “Does it really matter?”

  I snorted. “Of course it matters. The best way to get rid of a body depends on whose body it is. Neckbiters burn well without much work, where Dryads need to be given some time to dry out first. Werewolves need to have their blood drained before you can work with the bodies. Then there are Ogres. The best thing is to stick them in a kiddy pool filled with water for a couple of days while they dissolve.” I didn’t mention that all of that could be gotten around by simply eating the bodies. Frankly, the way things were going I felt I had to guard my appetite like a resource. I never knew when it would suddenly become vital for me to get rid of a body in a rush. “Whatever this thing is,” I continued, “I've never dealt with one before, so I'm going to have to start by researching it. Having a place to start that research would be helpful.”

  The woman sighed. “Centzonmimixcoa.”

  I blinked. “Do what now?”

  “One of the four hundred gods of the northern stars. Part of the Aztec tradition.”

  I looked her over. “Um, I'm no expert in the field, but from what I have seen of it, your look isn't, strictly speaking, Aztec.”

  “Of course not.” She flushed in anger, her jaw tightening.

  I raised an eyebrow.

  The woman grimaced and sighed, the tension draining out of her. “Sorry. The true people were wiped out by the Aztecs hundreds of years before the first white man arrived. We...” she shook her head. “... They never forgave the Aztecs or their gods for that.”

  “Oh. So now you're hunting down Aztec gods?”

  The woman grimaced and nodded. “Seems that way. Of course, I'm starting out with the smallest ones. The four hundred gods of the northern stars and the four hundred gods of the southern stars are my targets, at least, the ones who are still out there. They were sort of killed once already, by the bigger badder Aztec gods. Only they didn't exactly... completely die. They were... I don't know if there's an English word for it... basically, their godhood was sacrificed.”

  She was babbling at this point, but I let her. She had the sound and scent of someone who was struggling to keep up with a world gone mad. One morning, she’d probably woken up as a dull, normal girl who liked to gossip and buy shoes, and who thought that fairy tales were just stories that people told to children; then before the day was through had found herself immersed in the bizarre and unbelievable.

  “This was my first one,” the woman murmured. “Not just my first god, my very first kill. Or, it will be. I can do it, I know I can do it, but….” She rubbed the bracelet on her left wrist again. The look on her face as she did, reminded me of the look on my mother's face when she rubbed her temples and told me I was giving her a headache.

  I had a flash of insight. “They're in the bracelet, aren't they? The true people, I mean.”

  The woman nodded. “Anyone who dies while wearing the bracelet becomes a part of it. Their knowledge, their skills, their essence passes into it.”

  “And they're all whispering into your ear now?”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, her expression flickering through a barrage of emotions. “I have warriors, farmers, hunters and medicine men at my disposal. It's amazing. It's intoxicating. And it's painful. So painful.”

  I grimaced. I felt for her, but it was her burden to bear, and from the way she spoke, I got the impression that she wasn't looking for any help getting rid of the bracelet, which was really the only help I could have offered anyway.

  I turned my attention back to the corpse. “Well, I'll tell you this much right off the bat: the body isn't dead yet. Pretty much as soon as they die, things start to break down, and I can smell it when that happens. Right now, nothing is breaking down on this guy.”

  She nodded. “I know. I had to do a special spell to prevent his head from controlling the body even while detached. I have to take the head somewhere special to kill it. Hopefully once that's done the body will die too.”

  I sighed. “Well, I'll tuck it away for now. Somewhere safe, give you a few days to do whatever you're going to do. If it isn't dead by then, I'll see if I can find a way to kill it myself. Do I need to worry about anybody coming looking for him? Mortal authorities?
Worshippers? The other 399 gods of the northern stars?”

  The woman shook her head. “You should be fine. I made arrangements that should keep people from discovering his disappearance for a while. And as best as I can tell, he didn't have any worshippers or contact with the rest of his pantheon.”

  “Good. If you find out otherwise, please let me know.”

  The woman nodded. “You need help moving it?”

  I snorted derisively. “This is what I do.”

  She gave me another polite nod and headed out the door next to the bay door. I listened as the truck started up and she pulled away.

  The first thing I did once she was gone was wrap the body in plastic. It hadn't moved since I'd seen it, but I wasn't about to trust a body like that. The plastic would serve to restrain the body if it tried to move, and if it died and started some kind of accelerated decomposition, the plastic would hopefully contain most of the smell.

  I loaded my headless corpse onto a gurney and moved it to the prep room, storing it in the refrigerator, the door of which I jammed shut with another gurney.

  This was not the first time I'd had to pull that trick, and it occurred to me that if things continued as they had been, I might need to install a lock on the outside of the refrigerator door.

  I made a mental note to look into Aztec gods, particularly gods of northern and southern stars.

  My week was getting surprisingly busy. Usually all I have to do in the course of a weekend is prep a couple of bodies, oversee a few viewings, scream at Percy for an hour or two and run a couple of errands for my mother. Now, all of the sudden, I had chimeras who wanted me dead, mobsters who thought I worked for them, a baby hunter who needed a role model, and a headless body that apparently didn’t feel like dying.

  Plus all the usual shit. Speaking of which, I still had a few finishing touches I needed to make to Mrs. Coppers... Cooper... Mrs. C.

  I sunk down into a comfortable crouch, hopped up onto the edge of the table, and got to work.

  It felt like I'd only been at it a few seconds when a sound interrupted me.

  Someone was coming through the front door. I'd been making a point of keeping an ear open for that. I wasn't about to let someone else surprise me in my own place.

  I checked that the door to the freezer was properly jammed, then I pulled on my coat, made sure I was standing up straight, and headed upstairs to the lobby.

  The girl was there, waiting for me.

  I blinked at her. “Didn't I just drop you off at school?”

  She snorted. “Yeah, like, forever ago. What, are you going senile or something?”

  I rolled my eyes. “And you'd rather come back here than go home?”

  “Uh, yeah, were you not listening when I told you how much my life sucks right now? I'd rather be pretty much anywhere than that place. I have a bed that my feet hang off of, a room that I share with three other girls, and a bathroom that I share with everybody. It's awful.”

  “And does anybody there know that you're going to be late today?'

  “Sure.”

  I gave the girl a look.

  “Oh, come on. Nobody cares. Half of them don't even remember my name.”

  My look intensified.

  “Fine, I'll make a call. Give me a sec.”

  Chapter 8

  “Percy, eyes on me.”

  My assistant blinked and turned his attention away from the girl bending over to clean under one of the pews.

  “I just can't believe you actually sprung for more help, boss. And such pleasant help, at that.”

  “Yeah, we need to talk about that.”

  “And don't worry, I'll keep her up top, and out of your way. You don't have to worry about her tripping in on you when you're all, you know, ghouled out.”

  “I'm not actually worried about that.”

  “Man, I'm looking forward to training her. Good choice, boss, sex sells, even when you're in the business of death.”

  “Percy, she's off limits.”

  My assistant hesitated. “Uh, sorry, boss?”

  “She's off limits. Don't even think about it.”

  “Think about what? You didn't think I was going to make a move on her or anything, did you? I wouldn't dip my pen in the company ink.”

  He would. He'd already slept with or hit on pretty much everyone associated with my place of business. Well, all the ones with breasts, anyway.

  “I'm serious, Percy. I sort of... I owe her, okay? She's in a strange place and you don't get to take advantage of that.”

  Percy's mouth gaped in astonishment and offense. Immediate clues that he was about to spew some bullshit. “I would never!”

  I shook my head; Percy still wasn't hearing me.

  “Look, I don't have time for this game. Tell me, what's the worst threat I ever leveled at you?”

  Percy raised an eyebrow.

  I waved my hand in a, you-know-what-I'm-talking-about gesture. “The meanest thing I ever threatened, something that's stuck with you.”

  “Uh.” Percy blinked and stared into nowhere for a moment. “There was one, I can't remember exactly how you put it, but the idea was that you'd cut me open, detach my small intestines from my anus and sew it into my mouth, so that I swallowed my own waste and re-digested it over and over again until the day I starved to death, while choking on my own shit.”

  “Oh yeah.” I felt a lip curl up as I enjoyed the memory. That had been the last time Percy called me a shiteater. At least, to my face.

  “Well, for the sake of brevity, if you lay a hand on her, so help me, I'll do that to you. After I feed you a spicy burrito.”

  “Oh.” Percy deflated for a moment, then something occurred to him. “What if--”

  “If you touch her, if she touches you, if you slip down the stairs and bump into her, if the world ends and you're the last two humans left, if an archangel descends from the heavens and tells you that the two of you must conceive a child of destiny, lest the antichrist arise and bring about the end of days. I don't give a shit. Stay away.”

  Percy sighed, but nodded his assent.

  “Good. Why don't you head in there and give her a hand--” I glanced into the viewing room, where my new employee was on her knees with her face next to the ground and her ass in the air. “Or maybe you could give me a hand downstairs for a bit.”

  “Aww.”

  I kept Percy busy until it got to be time for that evening's viewing. Then I moved him back upstairs to deal with the incoming mourners and offered to give the girl a ride home.

  I waited until we were in the car and out of the lot to start talking. “So, what's with all the hardware?”

  “Huh?”

  “The bag, from your house. You were just supposed to get me the sword, you brought a half dozen weapons.”

  “Oh, yeah. I was hoping maybe we could do some sparring sometime?”

  I blinked. “You want to fight me?”

  “I want to spar.” She pursed her lips in annoyance. “Mom and I used to spar every day. It really helped me unwind. It was one of the few things we did together where she didn't get pissed off at me. Now I can't fight with anyone without the police getting called.”

  “I don't really do that.”

  “Please?” She wrung her hands and stared at me piteously. “I've been so stressed out; I need something to look forward to, something I can actually enjoy. Please?”

  “Uh, look, the truth is, I don't know how to use those things, okay? Ghouls don't really spar. When we fight, we're usually looking to kill the other person.”

  “Come on, Mr. Walter. Just, like, try it one time?”

  I sighed. “I don't think it's such a good idea.”

  Patricia's shoulder's slumped and she lowered her gaze to the floorboards.

  I grimaced. “I suppose I'd be willing to consider it. If I can get far enough ahead on my work. We'll start by figuring out what kind of work you'll be doing around the place. After that, maybe we can talk about sparring. O
ccasionally.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “What's tomorrow?”

  She gave me a look. “My second day of work. I assumed.”

  “Um, no. Come back on Monday. I need a few days to figure out how the whole 'extra employee' thing is going to work.”

  She sighed. “Fine.”

  I followed her directions for about three miles, and ended up dropping her off in front of a large, but poorly maintained house, where a handful of young teens lounged outside.

  Grins broke out as Patricia climbed out of the vehicle. Kids started nudging each other, and a few impolite comments floated in the breeze.

  “Come by Monday after school. I'll have a basic schedule worked out by then. Probably.”

  She glanced at the boys on the step, a look of deep annoyance on her face, before replying, “Looking forward to it, Mr. Walter.”

  I stayed where I'd pulled over until I saw her actually enter the building. Not that she couldn't take care of herself, but I thought the boys might give her a little less grief if I was still in sight.

  That done, I headed towards my brother's place. I was going to go looking for a fight soon, and the most important weapon in a fight was good intel.

  “Don't kiss me.”

  I stared at my brother in bewilderment. “What?”

  His eyes were bloodshot and he hadn't taken a shower in a day. Simon had pulled another all-nighter. He could go days without sleeping, but he got a little weird after the first twenty-four hours.

  “Don't kiss me,” he repeated. “I'm warning you now, because you're going to want to in a minute.”

  I shook my head. “No. No I won't.”

  “I went over and above, today, brother. Seriously, over and above.” Simon went on, completely ignoring me. “I mean, first of all, I wasn't expecting to be nearly as far along in the journal as I got, I know he’s only about fifteen, twenty page in, but it should have taken me so much longer to get as far in as I have, but even that progress would be meaningless for most people, see this isn't a diary, this is the latest diary. The guy that wrote this has been recording his thoughts for hundreds of years, and this is just the latest volume, which means that I don't get an introduction or anything, I'm just thrown into the middle of his life. It's like I'm reading gibberish. Well, not exactly gibberish so much as writing that's incomprehensible to anyone who isn't the author. I mean, he's writing this for himself, so he's basically writing it in shorthand— “