Realm Book Two - Shadow Slave

by K. A. M'Lady

  “What the fuck kind of Zombie are you?” I yelled.

  His dark eyes squinted. He pulled my arm away from my body, put a knee in my gut and bent forward as though going in for the kill.

  “Fuck this!” I arched my back, rocked towards my left arm and stretched my right arm as far behind me as I could get it without dislocating my damn shoulder, finally clutching onto my blade. I pulled it free of the scabbard as I rocked backwards and started my downward swing, aiming for Fred’s nearest arm.

  The sickle ax tore through him like a hellhound with a cherub, severing the limb clean off. Fred actually looked up from where he was munching on me to his severed arm flopping on the ground, then back where I lay beneath him, his shock an instant flash, then gone. When he growled at me, life filling his eyes with hatred, I knew that he was pissed. That’s when he swung his good arm at me.

  It’s just too bad for him that I was more pissed off than he was. I swung the blade again, severing that limb too. Fucking Zombie!

  He opened his mouth and screamed, the sound vibrating my eardrums. But without any arms he wasn’t able to keep his balance and he toppled over, allowing me to shimmy my way from underneath him in an undignified crab-like crawl—but hey, at least he wasn’t chomping on my flesh anymore.

  Fucking freaky-ass Zombie! I was screaming over and over in my head as I got to my feet. As soon as I stood up, I realized that I was in some kind of magic bubble of blackness.

  What the hell is going on? My mind was blazing with unanswered questions. I hadn’t even noticed the damn bubble as I lay on the ground being the second course for the newly risen and vertically challenged. But now that I was upright I could see it; a gray, haze-like smoke filled bubble swarming all around me. As soon as I recognized it, I could feel it along my skin like a film of oil, glazing me with its sludge. I even smelled the faintest hint of sulfur clinging to my sinuses.

  “What the fuck….” I whispered, running my fingers along its edges. When my fingers touched it, the magic broke and the spell faded away.

  “Jesus H. Christ, Rihker! What the hell is going on?” Cage was standing directly in front of me, his wounded arm held against his body with his good arm, and his gun drawn down on me with the other.

  “Don’t you dare fucking shoot me!” I yelled, my nose even with his gun.

  “What the hell!”

  “I have no fucking idea,” I said, the shock heavy in my voice as I looked back behind me at Fred. “But whatever it is, it definitely isn’t good.” Fred was slithering on his belly towards me like an inchworm, his eyes filled with hatred, half his face bashed in from Cage’s previous run-in with him, his arms flopping on the ground behind him. Each of them crawling towards me at their own leisurely pace.

  Cage sighed, and the tired look in his eyes said he just wasn’t in the mood for whatever horror was next on the menu for us. I couldn’t blame him, really—he’d had a pretty rough summer too. He’d learned far more about the Other World in a few short days than most did their entire lives. Apparently he just wasn’t up for any more of it.

  “Whatever it is, Rihker, fix it. I don’t care how. I don’t even want to know how, so don’t tell me. Just fix it.” He turned to walk away.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do with Fred?” I looked at the Zombie squirming at my feet like a leech schlepping towards its blood source.

  “Don’t care. Chop him up and burn him for all I give a shit, or lock him up in the halls of the Silent Court. Do whatever it is you people usually do with this shit. This is your problem, not mine. I’m out of here.”

  I stood in the darkness of the cemetery with my mouth hanging open, watching Cage’s retreating backside as he stumbled to his squad car, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do now. My Necromancer had fled, the fear of certain death following in her wake, my police backup just bailed on me and I had an armless, partially decrepit flesh-eating Zombie wallowing at my feet, the glimmer of life, death and a whole lot of hatred lingering in his coal-black eyes.

  Of course I did what any normal Hunter would do—I stuffed Fred in the trunk of my rental car, floppy arms and all.

  Chapter Three

  Then – in my childhood, in the dawn

  Of a most stormy life – was drawn

  From every depth of good and ill

  The mystery which binds me still:

  Alone ~ Edgar Allen Poe

  Four-thirty is such a useless time of night. That is, unless you’re a Vampire.

  I drove straight from the cemetery back to my house out off of one seventy-three by the State Park. My house is out off a lonely patch of road that most people don’t even know exists and if you blink, you’ll totally miss the turn-off.

  I decided to take Fred home with me and see if Kieran could help me figure out what the hell was wrong with him. The fact that this Zombie had more going on upstairs than most Zombies was really bugging me. Add to that fact that even my Necromancer didn’t know what the hell was wrong with him and it just seemed too freaking weird for words.

  I mean, shouldn’t she know what kind of dead man walking he was? She was the one with the affinity to the dead, not me. So why did I pick up on it before she did? And why was it that this particular Zombie was somewhat listening to me–well, at least until it got hungry again.

  Speaking of which, I looked down at my arm as I turned onto my rut-filled gravel road and it had already stopped bleeding. The bite marks seeming to close right before my eyes. Every time I looked away and looked back at the wound, it appeared to be a little bit better. A girl in my line of work could really get used to this healing thing.

  One small perk from a Vampire mark. Just don’t tell Kieran I said so.

  As I drove down the shadowed, pothole-ridden gravel patch I called my driveway, my mind began to wander back over the incidents that had taken place over the summer and why I had freaked out so badly when Fred was crawling all over me.

  What the hell could be nasty enough to give this flesheater his zing of life and that dread feeling of Darkness that had crept up on me? There was something in Fred’s eyes that the part of me that holds my own Darkness recognized.

  Since the summer, I’d been too freaked out to deal with my Darkness. In fact, I’d avoided the whole damn thing like the plague of dung beetles that it was. I mean, going up against my father had been a real kick in the teeth.

  Not to mention my lovely run-ins with my freaky-ass new friend, The Wanderling. That wicked eyeless witch, I swear was stalking me. In fact, she would turn up in the damndest places with her hou-ha bullshit advice and specialty chants—‘Find the book, Rihker.’ ‘Seek the Way.’ Bitch was seriously wack.

  For one thing, I had no idea where to even begin looking for the Tablet of the Way. Supposedly, as the story goes, The Tablet was the ancient text of my people, said to possess all of our Tells. Once found, we would be given all of our powers at once. But until that time, we were left to gain them as the Prophets saw fit.

  Let me tell you, one never knew when they were going to decide to grant you with a gift. Can you say super-charged bump and grind? Hadn’t happened to me personally, but I have heard stories.

  Currently I’m the recipient of just five Tells of power. But Gimlit—he’s my Ogre and my Watcher-Guardian—he found me in the forest as a baby when my super-bitch for a mother left me there to die, and since he decided not to eat me, he kept me for himself and raised me as his own. Well, he seems to think that I’ve been granted more. I just refuse to believe him.

  So far, my gifts are that I can glow like small beacon of light, which comes in pretty handy in dark places. But I only tend to glow if I’m channeling my other Tells, I’m uber pissed, or I’m aroused—which my current boyfriends seem to love. They like to see how bright they can make me. Go figure.

  I also have an inborn tracking ability for just about everything. You lose it, need to find it, I’m your girl. Only it comes with a dark, jacked-up twist, one that I could personally live without.
I get rewind with scent. Seems the Prophets thought it would be a hysterical fluke to allow me to find everything that the dumb-asses of the universe lose, but I get visual with a plethora of aromas. Let me tell you, when you’re helping the police track down some whack-job that’s just murdered its nearest and dearest, the carnage lingers like the memory of vomit you didn’t quite get to throw up. It just sort of sits there and burns just that little bit. Just enough to be painful and horrible and you almost wish you’d have just been sick.

  I can also call the tides, like the moon calling the ocean back into its depths. It seems to work on any liquid or bodily fluid. I just learned the latter during my ‘most memorable summer’. At first it was just water that I could control and when that one came about, I managed to flood all twelve floors of my first apartment building. Trouble didn’t even begin to describe the mess I ended up in. My super ended up throwing me out. That’s why I currently live deep in the middle of Nowheresville.

  This summer while I was wandering around Hell, hopped up on some liquid sin that the Eyeless Wandering Wanderling decided to poison me with as it thrust me into the nether reaches of voodoo death land, I found, as I was trying to save the Death Stalker’s Dark Father—our little pet name for the Vamps and their Daddy—that I could control the flow of blood as well. Somehow I’d managed to send all of his back into his tomb with him before I was thrust out of the Tomb of the Damned.

  I’d been trying to practice this little tidbit of power ever since. Personally, I like this power. I think it could come in rather handy in a pinch, a claw, knife wound or a battle-ax across the midsection. The verdict is still out on whether it’s a gift of the Light or the Darkness, since it’s both that fill up the two halves that make me whole.

  I’m thinking it’s a gift of the Darkness, with all the visions of mayhem the thought of using it on someone produces in me. There’s something about blood and flesh that just seems like an issue of the Darkness.

  Let’s see, what other hapless powers have the Prophets decided to bestow upon me… Ah, yes, a true power of the Darkness—my burning ball of Light. Now, one would think that this would be a power that the Light bestowed upon me. But believe me when I tell you that the small wicked part of me that is the Darkness actually relishes the use of this one. Probably because of its destructive force.

  No power of the Light would ever be so harmful. Well, not intentionally, at any rate. The Light generally only uses its force for defending itself against the Darkness and protecting others from the Darkness. So, technically only then will you find the Light kicking ass and taking names.

  My most progressive, forward-thinking Tell that provides me with the most useful information is that I can talk to the Trees. Don’t laugh—the trees know all kinds of useful shit. In fact, I met the most interesting of spirits this past summer—Ashlan—as it turns out, is one of their Elders, and he showed me the most delightful things that the forest has to offer. Things I never knew existed before—but could be persuaded to consider again.

  Gimlit seems to think that I also possess the gift of Knowing. Just more Pixie hou-ha bullshit if you ask me, but nobody ever does—ask me, that is—so it seems that I’m able to tell what my Other World cronies are before they show me. I’m not sure when this started to happen but it sort of freaks the hell out of me.

  I mean, it’s like crawling in bed with someone and their skin is the blanket. I can feel all that they are stirring beneath the currents of the air, pulsing along my own skin like a second layer of flesh.

  I first noticed this when I met Mercy. She’s Kieran’s enforcer and a lovely little crumpet of a Goblin-Vamp on crack with a bad case of withdrawals—and I mean that in the nicest way. Mercy and I had a bit of a tiff when we first met, but we seem to have found some even ground. She stays the hell away from me, and I don’t ram a stake through her. It seems to work for us.

  Then of course I was able to figure out what Dragon was without ever seeing him change. Come to think of it, I still haven’t seen him go all kitty-cat on me. Oh, he’s treated me like a tasty morsel a time or two—with Kieran’s permission and help, of course. But I haven’t actually watched him change into the pretty Wereleopard that I know he is. He was pretty wigged out that I was able to figure out what he was without him telling me. I’m still not sure why.

  So many secrets that I’ve yet to learn the answers to.

  So, I have all these new awakening powers, a crapload of drama with plots and sub-plots—freaky-ass witches, bitches with teeth that want to kill me that I definitely want to ram a boatload of stakes through…that would be Jirvel, Kieran’s maker. She’s tried to kill us, and I owe her a big time payback. A houseful of Other World creatures that are now, thanks to my damn bosses at the Silent Court, still under house arrest—at my fucking house, no less. And now for the dust on your Pixie, an armless damn Zombie with bits of a soul gleaming from his endless black eyes as he’s flopping around in the trunk of my rental car begging for flesh.

  Could my life get any more jacked? Don’t answer that! I mean it. Do not fucking answer that.

  I really should learn to keep my damn mouth shut.

  Rolling up on my house, pondering the suffering of my so-called life, a long, sleek, black limo glistening in the halo of porch light, lay nestled beneath the overhang of an old oak along my driveway, sticking out like an eyesore. Or a portent of impending doom.

  Just seeing it sitting there like a luxury vehicle of gloom, I knew the remainder of my darkness was going to go to shit. I mean really, anything with a license plate that reads Death is never a good sign.

  Chapter Four

  For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,

  And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;

  And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,

  And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still!

  The Destruction of Sennacherib ~ Lord Byron

  I already knew that death walking upright was a beautiful lover, but the Angel of Death would bestow no mercy on the faculties of human women, let alone the constitution of this mere Fey. The demon in question, Lucien DeNote, was the epitome of angelic beauty wrapped in the body of a killing machine. As I entered my living room and stood in the wake of his power, I realized I was beginning to really hate Death Stalkers.

  For one thing, I never knew a Vamp could be so old and so powerful that he made my teeth hurt. Add to that his incredibly delicious striking good looks—the man was mayhem waiting to happen.

  “And the Hunter returns,” he said from his place of relaxed comfort in the corner of my sectional. The roll of his r’s and the way that he pronounced his s’s as z’s reminded me of a Frenchman trying to speak without an accent. Or one assuming he’d been here long enough that he didn’t have one at all.

  I glanced at Kieran. He was sprawled on the chaise, his white shirt open to his waistline, his wolves—Jade, Ien and Garric—at his feet like good little lap dogs. Dragon sat perched on the arm of the chaise, toying with Kieran’s hair. The scene was a bit too regal, too showy—something was seriously up.

  “Rihker, I would like you to meet Lucien DeNote.” Kieran started with his introductions but his guest, Mr. Pale, Powerful and Exceptionally Lovely didn’t give him the opportunity to finish, as he was just suddenly standing beside me.

  “So this is the lovely Lady Justice we have all heard so much about,” he whispered as he began to circle me, his fingers traipsing along my collar, down the length of my arm. His scent, so much like a field of lupine at dusk in a soft breeze, feathering the air around me.

  Say nothing, Rihker, he will not harm you. He only wishes to see how far he can push this game of words with you. He will not harm you in your home, or in my presence, Kieran tried to reassure me as his guest circled me like a vulture skimming the carrion for a hunk of meat.

  Strangely, I wasn’t buying the game.

  Lucien towered above me as he ever so carefully played some game of V
ampire bullshit politics with Kieran. One I was in no mood to play. Nice fucking friends you have! I swore, the rage bubbling in my gut despite my best inclination to just chill. It seemed my calming agent, Gimlit, was nowhere to be found when I needed him. Which prompted me to ask, Where in the hell is Gimlit?

  “Your Ogre is a bit busy at the moment, my dear,” Lucien advised, then leaned in and breathed my scent deep into his lungs. His plucking my thoughts out of my head without any connection to me brought my panic level up ten degrees. What the hell is going on here? I asked, looking at Kieran worriedly.

  “Do not worry, my dear,” Lucien said, his voice sinful and smug. “He shall return. In time.”

  I looked up at the stark beauty of his bright blue eyes, his words dancing through my mind like a seductive whisper and wondered if his beautiful eyes were what God gave all the angels; they were that lovely to gaze upon.

  Lucien had pale blonde hair, golden and silvery and sunlit all at the same time. I wanted to pour my hands into it as I wound it around my fingers; as I climbed on top of him and rode him to oblivion.

  Realizing the perverse pattern of my thoughts, I shook my head and wondered if he was able to pick up the images that were flashing through my mind or if he was planting them there. The drop-dead-sexy grin displayed by his perfectly straight teeth was the only response I needed.

  “Are you done?” I asked, glaring at him as I crossed my arms beneath my breasts, my fingertips just inches away from my blades. I’d gotten new sheaths after this summer, ones that tore open from the center, so no matter how I grabbed them I could pull them free without hindrance.

  Believe me, as I stood there toe to toe with Tall, Powerful and Fuckably Luscious, whatever he was up to was probably going to hurt. I didn’t know what the hell kind of voodoo Vampire wack this guy was into, but the longer Kieran sat submissively on the couch while this one pressed my buttons, I was seriously considering killing him.