Shallow Grave (The Lazarus Codex Book 3)

by E. A. Copen

  I tried to get up but suddenly felt a crushing pressure on my wrist as the Archon’s shoe came down on it. “Ah, ah,” he said. “You should know better.” He ground his foot into my hand until I had no choice but to release my grip on the sword. With a smirk, he kicked the sword away from me.

  “You can’t win,” I wheezed out. “I’m not killing those kids so you can have my body.”

  “I don’t need you to kill anyone so I can change bodies, you fool. The sacrifices aren’t for that. They’re for my ascension. Devouring all twelve souls at once under the blood moon during the ceremony will give me more power than you could dream of, mortal.” He finally stepped off my hand.

  Well, shit. I hadn’t thought of that, but I should’ve known. He’d taken Jean’s body without much of a fight. It stood to reason he could do the same to me. And if he took my body, he’d get control of my powers. He could pull those kids’ souls out himself. The rain suddenly felt a lot colder.

  I let out a gasp of pain and rolled onto my back, gripping my hand, sure he’d broken something. “And with that power, you’ll barge into Faerie and force them to make you king of the Shadow Court? Somehow I don’t think it’ll be that easy.”

  “Perhaps not. Which is why I’ll have to make a show of power by crushing the Summer Queen and her court. With the power I gain here tonight, I’ll have more than enough to kill every one of them in a single blow. They will bow to me.” He paced a few feet away, smiling to himself. “Before dawn, I shall be the Shadow King, and this disgusting city will be mine to deal with as I wish.” He made a fist and stared at it, shaking with excitement. “I’ll wipe this city off the face of the Earth completely this time in the greatest storm the world has ever seen.”

  “Why?”

  He turned very slowly and put his hands behind his back. “Why what?”

  Despite the pain burning in my back and the increasing numbness in my legs, I rolled over and managed to push myself to my feet. The rain falling on the deck made it slippery, but a small pole stood nearby, and I used it to my advantage. “Why do you even want to be the Shadow King? Have you even met any fae? They’re kind of a pain in the ass.”

  Rain pelted the side of his face. The wind picked up, and the boat dipped noticeably into a wave. “There’s a war coming. One you’ve got no chance of winning. And when it comes, I want to be on the winning side. Can’t do that if I’m stuck here, rotting away. With an army at my back and the power of Shadow and the conquered Summer Court behind me, I will have the largest power base in the northern hemisphere. Anyone will think twice about moving against me. I can wait out the war and return to claim whatever’s left.”

  “Why destroy the city?” I shook my head. “There are four hundred thousand people there. Surely that’s worth something to you.”

  “It’s worth something to my enemies,” he said.

  Thunder rolled through the sky above. A huge wave crashed into the side of the boat, threatening to overturn it.

  My stomach knotted itself as the realization hit me. Scorched earth tactics. He meant to run, retreat from whatever he thought was coming, and destroy anything of tactical value behind him, preventing his enemies from using it. He’d kill almost half a million people just to make sure someone else couldn’t use them.

  “You’re nuts,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I’m evil. Now, do hold still Lazarus. I’m afraid the transition is quite painful.”

  I didn’t have enough time to blink, let alone brace myself for impact before something slammed into me. I flew backward, but it didn’t feel normal. It felt as if my skin was being ripped from my bones. It was only after I found myself looking down at my own body from above that I realized what’d happened.

  The Archon had taken my body.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Jean Lafitte’s decaying body fell over, suddenly lifeless while mine checked himself over. The Archon in my body immediately slouched, grasped for his back and then his arm where the ghoul bite was.

  “Heh, joke’s on you buddy,” I said. “Dying slowly hurts like hell.”

  But no one, not even the Archon, heard me. I was a disembodied soul, and only a necromancer or a medium would be able to see or hear me now. I looked down at my hands which were now completely ethereal.

  “About time,” said the familiar voice of Jean Lafitte.

  I turned to look behind me. There he floated, leaning against the same pole I’d used to pull myself up on moments ago, arms crossed. He appeared to me as substantial now as he had when I’d manifested him in my shop: blue jacket, feathered cap, black boots. Jean looked more real than ever.

  Behind him, scattered all over the deck, were other ghosts. Dozens of them. Some looked like sailors that might’ve been at sea two hundred years ago while others looked even older, practically Neolithic. A few children in modern clothes stood among them.

  “Wow, that’s quite the crowd,” I said to Jean.

  He pushed off the pole with his hip. “You said to get everyone I could find. When I went into the After and started offering people the chance to avenge their deaths and take down the Archon that murdered them, well… Response was above average.”

  I smiled to myself. I hadn’t hoped I’d need Jean’s help. If your plan relies on ghosts to work, it’s generally not a very good plan. Yet I was glad I’d taken that precaution and had the kids help me call him into the circle. I’d told him to go find help, and he’d delivered. Now, it was just a matter of putting that help to good use.

  If I’d had my necromancer powers and my body, I could’ve caused all kinds of mayhem. As a disembodied soul myself, and no access to magic? My options were a lot more limited, but not totally non-existent, especially since I understood ghosts a lot better than your average guy.

  “Listen up,” I said, loud enough for all of them to hear. Surprisingly, my ghostly voice carried very well through the air. “There’s three kids on that boat. We’re going to save them. Then we’re going to wreck my body’s day, preferably without doing too much damage to the body. You know, just in case I get it back somehow.”

  “What exactly did you have in mind?” Jean asked and pointed toward the deck. “Doesn’t look like we’ve got much time to get a plan together.”

  I followed what he was pointing at. The Archon had pulled the kids out of the cabin and was in the process of lining them up while his flunky retrieved the sheut. Brooke was crying, but the other two went without a fuss while the Archon in my body whispered comforting words to them, pretending to be me.

  Anger surged in my chest. That bastard was using the trust I’d forged with those kids to get them to listen. They had no idea that I wasn’t me anymore.

  There weren’t a lot of useful things on the deck, but I did spy the sword he’d kicked away from me resting against a chair that was bolted to the deck. Then there was the boat itself. It was going down, albeit slowly. The Archon would have plenty of time to complete his ritual before it capsized unless we helped it along. The goon still had the gun strapped to him too.

  “Okay, listen closely,” I said. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

  ***

  Every year, there are thousands of reports of ghost sightings across the globe. People report hearing footsteps, voices, seeing objects move on their own. Even full body apparitions. You’d think interacting with physical objects as a ghost would be easy, but it was damn near impossible.

  For starters, affecting the physical world took a lot of energy, and only ghosts with a lot of willpower could do it. That counted out most of the ghosts on the deck. I knew Jean could. I’d seen him do it a few times, and besides, he wasn’t really a ghost. Not in the traditional sense anyway. Neither was I. That gave us a little more power than most, so we led the charge. Seeing as how I didn’t know my way around a sword and he didn’t know the first thing about guns, our paths of action were practically chosen for us.

  I took the goon.

  He stood off to the side, pacing an
d licking his lips while the Archon talked to the kids, telling them to stay calm. He’d shifted the gun so that it was pointed at the deck, but still ready if needed. The shoulder strap wasn’t particularly well made. In fact, it looked like it was repurposed from something else, something with a buckle. I carefully slid the leather strap through the buckle. The goon didn’t even notice until it fell loose. Then he fumbled to catch the gun as it fell.

  He never got his hands on it.

  I caught the gun before it hit the deck, though it almost slipped right through my fingers. Floating back from the goon, I turned the gun on him and opened fire. The gun barked out six shots in rapid fire, the bullets slamming into the surprised goon with enough force to send him flying back. At the same time, the boat tipped hard to one side as a wave caught it. The goon slid over the deck, leaving a bloody smear behind. He got caught on the boat railing for a minute when his belt caught on a bolt, but the leather quickly tore, and he plopped into the water, thrashing all the way.

  I turned to shoot the Archon, but hesitated when I remembered he was in my body. The distraction cost me. The gun slipped from my fingers and clattered to the deck. The Archon paused, standing behind Spencer, one hand drawn, poised to plunge into Spencer’s back to grab his soul from behind.

  “Spencer!” I shouted, throwing the same concentration into my voice I’d used to grip the gun. “That’s not me!”

  On the mortal plane, it would have sounded like a whisper. With the wind howling, the waves crashing, and thunder rumbling, no one could’ve heard me on my own. But a chorus of ghostly voices joined mine, repeating my words until the sound grew.

  The Archon’s head whipped around, eyes wide with terror. “What’s this? What are these lights everywhere? Who’s there? You can’t stop me. I’ve won! They’re mine!” He turned back to Spencer, but the kid had spun around.

  “You’re not Lazarus. You’re an asshole,” he said, then reared back a foot and kicked my body square between the legs.

  That was the one and only time I was happy to get kicked in the balls. I cheered as the Archon went down, eyes wide with surprise. Guess he’d never had to deal with unwilling victims before, since a Horseman had already subdued his prey in the past before he showed up.

  The minute Spencer turned on him, the other kids did too. Since they’d exhausted the limits of their magic earlier, they didn’t sling any spells, but fists and fingernails worked just the same. The Archon grabbed Spencer when the boy leaped onto his back and tossed him. With a kick, the Archon sent Violet sliding over the deck. Brooke followed.

  I looked to Jean who was still working to get the sword free from where it was wedged. “Jean!”

  He looked up as the Archon stalked over the deck toward the kids. “Get the children off the boat!” Jean shouted and gave the sword one more hard pull. It came free, and he turned, pointing it at the Archon. “I’ll deal with this one.”

  At that moment, the clouds moved away from the moon, and a red light slid over the shining ball of silver in the sky. As the red eclipse ate the moon, it cast a supernatural shadow over the water. Every ghost the shadow touched shimmered and became more real, visible in both planes at once thanks to the temporary bridge caused by the eclipse.

  The Archon paused his forward march, suddenly aware of the ghosts swarming the ship.

  The shadow moved over Jean just as he brought the point of his sword up and he assumed a stance that proved he knew what he was doing. “En guard, you scallywag.”

  “That voice.” The Archon turned away from the kids, rage glinting in his eyes. “Impossible. I destroyed you.”

  “You destroyed my body,” said Jean moving the sword ever so slightly. “And for that, you will pay with your life.”

  The Archon sneered, an expression that looked foreign on my face, and turned, searching for a weapon. He found it hanging from the belt that had caught on the side of the boat when his goon went over. Lightning flashed across the sky as the Archon drew the other sword and charged at Jean.

  For a moment, I stood in the moonlight, dumbfounded as I watched my lanky body move without me, making graceful twists, turns, and lunges like I was an expert swordsman. Jean matched every move with the same prowess, drawing the Archon across the deck and into a sword fight that I could only describe as beautiful.

  Sword fighting a ghost pirate in a thunderstorm on a sinking ship. Now that’d be an awesome way to go out. I just hoped Jean wasn’t too hard on my body. I still had a use for it after all.

  “Holy shit!”

  Spencer’s exclamation brought me back to the task at hand. He stood, bug-eyed, just a few feet away.

  “Language!” Violet and I shouted at the same time.

  “You’re a ghost!” Spencer said, and his jaw went slack.

  “Disembodied soul, technically. We’ll discuss it later.” I searched the deck for the lifeboat and found it not far from where the kids were. I went to it and gripped the rope, unwinding it from where it was tied. “Get in.”

  The three kids did exactly as they were told. Brooke was limping heavily and couldn’t get in the boat by herself. I reached to help her, but Spencer got there first, pulling the girl over the side and helping her to a spot in the middle.

  I looked back over the deck. The front of the boat was noticeably tipped toward the water, the swirling, greenish surface of the lake looming too close. The other ghosts, which I’d tasked with tearing apart the hull, were doing their jobs. The boat would go down sooner rather than later.

  “What about you?” Spencer asked as I shoved the boat toward the water.

  “My ship’s sailed, kid. I’ve been a goner since before I even met you guys.”

  The boat swung out on the pulley over the lake, and I lowered it to the water’s surface as gently as I could. It still went down faster than I wanted and landed in the water with an audible splash. I ran to the edge and looked over, relieved to see all three kids still inside the boat, alive and well.

  Violet cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted. “Thanks for saving us! Sorry you died!”

  Brooke signed something at me that I actually understood: Thank you. It made me choke up. I didn’t know the sign for “you’re welcome” so I just said thank you back. She grinned so wide it must’ve hurt.

  The kids safe, I turned back to the fight on the deck. Now to figure out how to deal with the Archon. I took a step toward him.

  Jean had goaded him into following him to the other side of the deck where the moon’s shadow had already passed. To the Archon, it looked as if he were fighting an invisible man. The Archon lunged at Jean who moved to one side. I saw the mistake even with my untrained eye. With a victory cry, Jean stepped in behind the Archon and plunged his sword into his back.

  I felt the icy steel bite into me between the shoulder blades just as it happened and blinked as a rush of air hit my face and I was pulled forward, back toward my body. The last thing I heard before my disembodied soul snapped back into my dying body was dark, oily laughter.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  At death, the brain works overtime. Neurons fire at lightning speed. Supposedly, that’s what accounted for the whole life flashing before your eyes bit. All those rapid firing brain cells trigger a response that sends you hurtling down memory lane. It lasts only a second on the outside, but inside it’s an entire lifetime.

  I didn’t get my trip down memory lane when Jean stabbed me in the back. Instead, my brain got busy trying to work out exactly what’d happened. The Archon could jump bodies pretty much at will, but it didn’t seem he could survive outside of a body very long. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have stayed in Jean’s rotting body. He’d kicked my soul out when he slammed into me. He’d also definitely been in my body when Jean first stabbed me. It seemed to me that he’d decided to cut his losses and run, abandoning the dying body when he realized he’d lost. For some reason, that pulled my soul back into my body.

  So, there I was with Jean Lafitte’s sword in my back, dying
from a swordfight I’d never truly been in. Life’s a bitch.

  I looked down at my chest. The blade hadn’t gone all the way through, but I swore I could feel it knocking on my breastbone. Jean gasped and let go of the sword. I staggered a step, turned, a question forming on my lips. In the distance, the little rowboat filled with three kids fought against choppy waves. Behind them, a bright light flashed. Fog had rolled in over the lake with the dusk and they passed beyond my sight into it, but the light remained. I vaguely recalled stories of lights and tunnels from various near-death experiences and sank to my knees.

  At the same time, Jean Lafitte’s rotten body sat up. That son of a bitch had gone back into his rotten body. He’d have a few months, maybe a year, before the next blood moon when he’d try again. Only next time I wouldn’t be there to stop him. I’d be dead.

  The red shadow marched on, falling away from Jean’s soul. His arm disappeared, and he gave me a regretful look. “Lazarus, I—”

  Whatever he was about to say was cut off when the eclipse’s shadow retreated further.

  “How sad,” said the Archon, rising and coming closer. “All this and all you’ve managed to do was slow me down.”

  I looked down at the sword still in my hand. Every breath caught in my chest and escaped as a desperate rasp. In a minute, maybe two, I’d be dead. But until then, I had a job to do. With the last of my strength, I swung the sword in a lateral chopping motion. It hurt like hell, but it was all worth it to see the look of surprise on the Archon’s face as I cut off his foot. His arms shot out, flailing as if he could fly. Then he fell to one side.

  “Looks like you don’t have a leg to stand on,” I said, or tried to. Mostly, I just wound up wheezing and spitting blood.

  Water touched my feet, and I looked around. The whole boat was sliding rapidly under the surface of the lake. The yacht shuddered once, and the bright light in front of me intensified. I swayed and raised a hand to block it out, squinting. There was no need. A figure appeared in front of the light, breaking it up. The average height, average weight silhouette of a man followed by the silhouette of a curvy woman in tight clothes.