Alexander Death (The Paranormals, Book 3)

by JL Bryan

  “That was only a game,” Jenny said. “The charmer wanted you to get close to me. That's why you think you love me. That was a plot etched deep in your soul. But our kind don't truly love, Seth. We don't have human souls. We are older than love itself.”

  “That's not true!” Seth said. “We love each other. We're learning to be human.”

  “We cannot learn to be what we are not. You are a serpent, trying to play monkey.”

  “That's not true, either,” Seth said. “I don't know what you think you remember—”

  “My memories are very clear,” Jenny said.

  “And they tell you...what? That you belong with this guy?” Seth nodded to Alexander. “He's my great-grandfather. Did you know that? Jonathan Seth Barrett I. He made his first fortune with plantations worked by zombies. What are you doing with them this lifetime, Gramps?”

  Alexander smirked.

  “Is that true?” Jenny asked Alexander.

  “Fallen Oak was my sandbox first,” Alexander said. “I left my mark.”

  Jenny thought of the picture of the first Jonathan Seth Barrett shaking hands with Woodrow Wilson, his eyes like dark steel. The man who'd built the family graveyard and so obsessively laid out instructions for how he was to be remembered by succeeding generations, and how they were to act. It was a pathetic echo of how an Egyptian pharaoh created his own glorious funerary complex and priestly cult, all to maintain his memory and encourage people to worship him after death. All to avoid being forgotten.

  “Cheap zombie labor,” Seth said to Alexander. “I'm guessing you have zombies growing drugs for this cartel you've joined. Cheap zombie labor. That's how you keep margins up on a plantation, am I right, Gramps? That's what you told my dad.”

  Alexander answered with a short, cold laugh, and his dark eyes did not look amused.

  “When you look at the big picture, you're just stuck doing the same thing, over and over again, one lifetime to the next, aren't you?” Seth asked. “Caught in the same loop. Can't do anything new.”

  “You don't know what you're talking about, healer,” Alexander said.

  “I think I do, zombie guy,” Seth said. “I was dead for a while. Maybe I don't remember everything, but I saw enough to realize the past isn't worth remembering. I don't want to go back and be who I was before. I'm alive now, I make my choices now. And leaving the past behind makes us better than what we were.”

  “You can't leave it behind. Your past is what you are,” Jenny said.

  “No, it isn't,” Seth said. “What you do right now, that's what you really are.”

  “Just kill him, Jenny,” Alexander said. “I've had enough of this conversation.”

  “You take orders from him now?” Seth asked.

  “No one gives me orders,” Jenny said. “And I'm in no hurry to kill you. I want to watch you suffer first. Your punishment for tricking me into loving you.”

  “It wasn't a trick!” Seth snapped. Jenny punched him in the mouth.

  “Stop,” she hissed. “Stop lying. You've always served the love-charmer.”

  “Even if that's true, I don't serve her anymore,” Seth said. “I'm not a prisoner of my past. Unlike zombie boy over there. And now you let him trick you into being his slave—”

  “Quiet!” Jenny plunged the knife into his stomach.

  “Ow, stop, Jenny!” Seth said. “That's going to take a minute to heal.”

  “I know.”

  Seth glanced at Alexander, then back at Jenny. “So that's it. You're going to kill me and run off with him.”

  “Alexander and I have always been together,” Jenny said. “You belong with Ashleigh. That is how it has always been.”

  “Always?” Seth asked. “I may not remember much, but I did see our last few lives together. You weren't with him then. You were with me.”

  “I don't think so...” Jenny began, but the intense look in Seth's eyes triggered something inside her. She remembered when Alexander had opened up her past-life memories, there were a couple that he steered her right past without looking. Her most recent lives.

  “Jenny, we need to hurry up and kill him,” Alexander said. “We have to dispose of all these bodies.”

  “One second. I'm just trying to decide how I want to do it.” Jenny remembered herself in early industrial London, hurrying up a narrow, crowded street with an armload of books whose subjects ranged from scientific medical treatises to kabbalistic magic. She was going to meet Seth in the small, dusty loft where he lived. They were working together, trying to figure out the meaning of their powers. The anticipation of seeing him made her face flush.

  Then another life, decades later. Jenny was part of a traveling circus in America in the early twentieth century. She was part of the freak show—people would pay pennies to see “The Most Diseased Woman in the World.” One week, the circus pitched its tents in a field alongside a tent revival, where she met a boy who, according to the preacher that he traveled with, could heal any ailment for a quarter. Once they met, they never parted again.

  Now, the last piece of herself fell into place. Her relationship with the healer was no trick. She had chosen to pull away from the dead-raiser...just as the healer had chosen to pull away from the charmer.

  “Jenny,” Alexander said.

  “This is no good,” Jenny said. “I can cut him up all night, but he heals too fast. If you're really in a hurry, I need to burn him.”

  “Jenny!” Seth said. “What's wrong with you?”

  “Shut up, healer,” Jenny said. She turned to Manuel and the two gunmen, who were off to her right, near the door. “Someone bring me a pan of hot coals. And tongs.”

  Manuel looked to Alexander, who was on Jenny's left. Alexander gave a quick nod, and Manuel gestured for his two gunmen to go. They both hurried out of the room.

  “Seth, Seth, Seth...” Jenny traced her scalpel down along his rib cage, drawing a thin line of blood. “You really had me fooled for a while. I thought you loved me.”

  “I did love you.”

  Jenny snarled. “You're pathetic. I want you to beg me for mercy.”

  “Mercy?” Seth asked. “I don't want it. If you really want me dead, Jenny, go ahead and do it. My life isn't worth living if you don't love me.”

  She smiled. “Then you've made your choice. And here's what I'm going to do.” Jenny slashed a deep cut along the top of each of his arms, which were extended out to his sides. “First, we make our incisions. Then we fill them with fire to keep the wounds open.”

  “I can't believe this is what you are now,” Seth whispered.

  “Here they are,” Jenny said. The gunmen returned, one of them carrying, with oven mitts, a cast-iron skillet full of burning charcoal. “Could you guys have taken a little longer? What did you do, stop for a drink on the way?”

  “We hurried, la bruja,” one of the men said.

  “Quiet.” Jenny took the tongs from the other gunman, the one who wasn't holding the black skillet. She pinched out a few red-hot pieces of charcoal. She scattered these along one of Seth's arms. He screamed, rocking back from her as far as the ropes would allow.

  “You fucking bitch!” Seth screamed.

  “Hold still,” Jenny whispered. She dropped most of the charcoal onto the coil of rope binding his wrist. Louder, she said: “Can you feel that burning, Seth? That's what my hate for you feels like.”

  She sprinkled more hot coals along his other arm, again saving most of them to drop on the rope at his wrist. He thrashed and screamed, trying to get back and away from her. “Now, this next part is going to get messy,” Jenny said.

  Jenny took a deep breath, and summoned up the pox inside her until she felt it swirling in her guts, in her lungs. Then she turned her head and breathed out a thick cloud of black spores, which flowed over the two gunmen.

  Their skin ruptured open into lesions and dripping boils. The men screamed and staggered back. The pan of coals dropped to the floor, and half the burning coals scattered across the cl
ay tiles. They spattered onto Seth's bare feet, and he cried out and stumbled back. His hands tore free of the burning ropes, and he collapsed to the floor and rolled, trying to put himself out.

  Manuel let out a long, wet cough. He lurched toward the door, leaning on the wall and leaving a long smear of a bloody handprint behind him. Open sores festered all over his face.

  He raised his other hand, which held his pistol. His eyes were burning directly at Jenny.

  “Vaya con dios...puta del Diablo,” he managed to say through his wheezing, and he pulled the trigger.

  Jenny screamed and ducked. She felt a hot slash across the right side of her head and smelled her hair burning. Another bullet plowed through her right shoulder, shattering bone, and she cried out again.

  She fell to the floor and quickly looked up at Manuel. Fortunately, the man had made his way to the door and was on his way upstairs. Unfortunately, he had a lot of friends with guns up there. Jenny could already hear their footsteps and voices rallying in response to the gunshot below.

  “You traitor,” Alexander sneered. He grabbed one of the long scalpels from the table and approached her. “You choose him? The love-charmer's weak little pet? You're choosing him over me?”

  Jenny looked to Seth, who lay on the floor a few feet away. “Help me, Seth. The pox doesn't hurt him.”

  Seth gaped at her, then at Alexander raising the blade. His eyes darted around the floor, and then he rose up on his knees and picked up the iron pan, still half-filled with hot coals. The skin of his palms sizzled on the iron handle, and Seth gritted his teeth.

  He flung the coals into Alexander's face, raining bits of fire all over his face, hair and shirt. Alexander howled and stumbled away. Seth flung the hot pan after him, and it cracked against Alexander's head. Alexander dropped to the floor.

  Seth leaned his forearms on his thighs and pushed himself to his feet, wincing in pain. His fingers were curled up, his hands blackened from the scorching they'd taken, both from Jenny and from the pan.

  “Seth, we have to get out of here.” Jenny leaned on her good arm and managed to get to her feet.

  “So...what the hell just happened?” Seth asked.

  The voices grew louder upstairs.

  “Manuel's coming back with a bunch of people who will want to put bullets in us,” Jenny said.

  “Wait.” Seth looked at Alexander on the floor, then at the blades on the table. “I should finish him off.”

  “Trust me, Seth, you don't want to be a killer like me,” Jenny said.

  Seth tried to pick up a boxcutter, but his blackened fingers appeared frozen, the nerves still dead.

  “Come on!” Jenny grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the door.

  They hurried up the narrow staircase. Jenny let the pox break out on her face until she was a mask of disease.

  “Are you going to infect them all?” Seth asked.

  “I'm hoping to avoid that.”

  The door at the top of the stairs opened on the back hall of the house, where seven gunmen stood with their pistols out. They were staring at Manuel's convulsing, dying body on the floor. Jenny and Seth would have to get past them to escape the house.

  All of them looked up at Jenny.

  Jenny held her hands in front of her, palms out. She let oozing sores break open as the men watched.

  “You know I am a witch,” Jenny said in Spanish. “Tonight you see my deadliest curse, the...Devil's plague. I have already killed three of you. With one breath, I can kill all of you that remain. You may choose to leave this house now, or you may choose to stay here and die.”

  The men looked at each other, then hurried away. After a minute, she heard the sounds of truck engines.

  “What did you say to them?” Seth asked, as he and Jenny limped toward the back door.

  “I just asked them nicely to leave.”

  “Right.” Seth stepped out to the back terrace with her. He brushed her hair back with one burnt, curled hand. “You're bleeding pretty badly.”

  “It's just a bullet to the head.”

  “Let me heal you.”

  “Heal yourself first, Seth.” They crossed the back lawn, toward the barn, where the door stood wide open. Most of the trucks were gone. “And I'm sorry for setting you on fire. It was the only way to free you without alerting them. I figured they wouldn't see pouring burning coals on your wrists as an attempt to help you.”

  “Yeah,” Seth said. “Most people wouldn't see it that way.”

  Jenny stopped him at the door of the barn. She reached her arms around his neck and kissed him.

  “Thanks for coming to rescue me,” Jenny said. “That was really sweet.”

  “Anytime.”

  Jenny approached an Army-green Jeep. “This is what I arrived in,” Jenny said. “It might be poetic to leave in it, too.”

  “Sort of looks like Ashleigh's Jeep,” Seth said.

  “Actually, let's take that big Dodge truck over there,” Jenny said. “Reminds of my dad's Ram.”

  She found the keyring on a row of hooks on the wall. Jenny drove, since Seth's hands weren't healed yet. Seth looked out the window as they drove past the main house.

  “Jenny, what have you been doing down here?”

  “Terrible things. What about you? Since when do you have helicopters and ninjas?”

  Seth laughed. “They're a private security company. A bunch of ex-CIA guys.”

  “Wow. How'd you pull that off?” Jenny drove out through the front gate, which the others had left wide open.

  “I stole a bunch of money from my dad.”

  Jenny laughed. “Your mom was right. I am a bad influence on you.”

  “That's not possible.” He looked at her. “I missed you a lot, Jenny.”

  “You know I'm not the same person,” she said. “Jenny is just a small part of who I am.”

  “My favorite part, so far,” Seth said.

  “Mine, too, I think,” Jenny said with a smile. “Especially since I met you. Alexander managed my past-life recall thing, and he tried to keep me from seeing the last few lives. In a thousand lifetimes, in all of eternity, I've never been happier than the time you and I have spent together as these simple human beings.”

  “Some of us are more simple than others.”

  “Ha. And that's what Alexander didn't want me to know. What he and I have is an ancient alliance stretching back forever. Our powers complement each other—the Jenny pox enhances his power. And I have to admit, it was nice seeing the pox could be used for something that isn't totally destructive.”

  “Like what?”

  “They fueled his zombies so they could work hard in the fields, growing coke. And use complex tools like machine guns. Okay, maybe not the best example of things that aren't totally destructive. But you get what I mean.”

  “Why did you run off with him in the first place?”

  “I recognized him from my dreams of past lives. And he remembers his past incarnations. I thought I could learn a lot from him, and I did.”

  “Were you close with him?” Seth looked at her carefully.

  “He brought up a lot of old feelings. I had this very intense, kind of uncontrollable attraction to him—”

  “That's just what I wanted to hear.”

  “—but love is something different from that. What you and I have is new, Seth. It's something that's grown between us and helped us become more human. It's something...precious and rare and alien to what we are. Spending all this time as humans has taught us so much. And I nearly lost that because of how Alexander handled my memories.”

  Seth looked at the dirt road ahead. “I assume you know where you're going now.”

  “I don't really, Seth. But I know I'm going with you.”

  “I meant, more specifically, this road we're driving on.”

  “Oh. Sure, eventually we get to the highway, and just take that north. Back to America.”

  “You have a passport?” Seth asked.

  “Um...
”

  “We could have a little trouble slipping back in. Especially with Homeland Security looking for you. We're not out of the woods on that.”

  “We're not going to be free from Alexander, either. He'll come back for me.”

  “You should have let me kill him.”

  “Your hands weren't working,” Jenny said. “How are they now?”

  Seth held them up. The burns had shrunk to smaller patches as new skin grew into place. “Coming along.” He reached a hand to touch her bleeding head and shattered shoulder, but Jenny pulled away, wincing.

  “Not until you're healed,” Jenny said.

  “Here's what we need to do. Find a flat area, like a farm, a little bit out of the way where we can spend a little time.” Seth unbuttoned his black fatigues.

  “Seth, I think we have more urgent things to think about...”

  “I know.” He pushed his pants down to his knees. “I want to show you something.”

  “I've seen it before.”

  “Ha ha.” Seth tugged back the leg of his boxer shorts to reveal a black band around one thigh with a circular device mounted on it. It reminded Jenny of a wristwatch.

  “What's that?” she asked.

  Seth lifted a cap on the black circle, revealing a small red button. “It's GPS. Hale Security can track me by satellite. When I push this button, that signals I'm ready to be picked up. We need to find a place a helicopter can land, though.”

  “You thought of everything.”

  “It's a standard Executive Personal Emergency device, apparently.”

  “Won't I still need a passport?” Jenny asked.

  “Not with these guys. They're experts on how the American government works. They'll know how to slip us between the cracks. I've got it all taken care of.”

  Jenny smiled. “I'm so glad you came.”

  “I could tell by the way you were torturing me.”

  “I'm sorry! That's what he wanted me to do. I did save your life a little.”

  “A little.”

  “As soon as I saw it was you, when they pulled you out of the helicopter...I could start to feel something was wrong. You upset me, bringing up all these feelings of love, when Alexander had convinced me our relationship was probably a scheme by the charmer. By Ashleigh, I mean.”