Hellforged d-2

by Nancy Holzner

  In his recording studio, Monster Paul looked into the camera. “There’s so much raw talent in Deadtown, and it’s time to give that talent its due. I want the world to know that zombies are previously deceased, not dead—you know? So I’m putting together a new band. It’ll be made up of paranormals, 100 percent. I’ll be auditioning musicians and backup singers on January 22. If you think you’ve got what it takes to join my Zombie Freak Show, come on over to the old Orpheum Theater from eight ’til whenever we’re done.”

  The screen displayed the time and date, as Harris wrapped up her story: “You heard him, Deadtown. Paranormal musicians and singers are encouraged to try out tomorrow night—that’s January 22—at the former Orpheum Theater on Hamilton Place, starting at eight P.M.”

  “Omigod!” Tina shouted, pulling open a drawer. “I need a pencil!”

  “You are not writing that in Russom’s.” I snatched the book from her.

  “It’s okay, I already wrote it down,” Jenna said.

  “We are so going to be there.”

  “Can either of you play an instrument?”

  “What for? Weren’t you listening? He’s looking for singers, too.” Tina launched into “Grave Robber,” and Jenna joined her. I think one of them was off-key, although it’s hard to tell with monster rock. They sounded like a couple of furious parrots challenging each other to a death match. Then I considered the concert clip PNN had played. The two of them were naturals.

  I LEFT TINA AND HER FRIEND SCHEMING ABOUT WHAT TO wear to the audition and drove to my rented garage. Once the Jag was safely locked up, I hoisted my weapons bag and walked to the building where I shared an apartment with Juliet, my vampire roommate. Deadtown was only a couple of blocks wide by five blocks long, from Winter Street to School Street. Because all Boston’s paranormals had to live here, housing was at a premium. That made for some strange … if not bed-fellows, then roomies, anyway.

  Zombies thronged the streets, shopping, eating, talking, eating, laughing, eating, heading home from work, eating. Oh, and eating. If I ever give up demon extermination, I’ll open a hot dog stand in Deadtown. I’d make a fortune.

  Dusk-to-dawn was the busy time in this part of town, and the nighttime streets belonged to the zombies. For one thing, at more than two thousand strong, they just plain outnumbered the rest of us. Vampires spent their after-dark hours in the human parts of town, trawling for blood donors, while more and more werewolves worked norm hours, taking eight-to-five jobs in human-owned companies. State law required them to spend the three days and nights of each full moon at a secure werewolf retreat, but they managed to work around that restriction. Human and paranormal Bostonians lived side by side in a truce—often uneasy, but a truce nonetheless. Much of that was thanks to Alexander Kane, Boston’s high-profile werewolf lawyer.

  At the thought of Kane, a confusion of feelings tumbled through me. Mostly, I missed him. He’d been in Washington for three months, preparing to argue a case before the Supreme Court that could establish paranormal rights at the federal level. Right now, each state had its own rules. Some, like “Monsterchusetts,” gave paranormals limited rights. That’s because the zombie plague happened here, and the state had to accommodate its citizens who’d died and been reanimated. But other states—most of them—gave us no rights at all, not even the right to be alive (or undead, as the case may be). Kane was trying to change that.

  Kane was doing important work; I knew that. And I supported him in it. But his work consumed him, and sometimes it felt like there wasn’t much left over for me. We’d dated off and on for two years—more off than on—and sometimes we went weeks without seeing each other. He worked days, I worked nights, and neither of us was willing to stick our career in the backseat.

  Before Kane left for Washington, we’d agreed to see other people—his idea. I’d gone out a few times with Daniel Costello, the human detective I met in the fall when one of my clients was murdered. I liked Daniel. We were still getting to know each other, but we had fun together. But Kane made it clear he had no time for anything but work.

  I’d expected to be one of those things he didn’t have time for. But since he went to Washington, he called me a couple of times a week—more than we talked, sometimes, when we were in the same city. Somehow it figured that being five hundred miles apart brought us closer.

  Sighing, I pulled open the door to my building. In the lobby, a massive bouquet of red roses towered over the doorman’s desk. An explosive sneeze trembled the flowers, and a zombie face appeared, rising like a gray-green moon over a forest—if the man-in-the-moon was having a really bad night.

  “Nice flowers, Clyde,” I greeted the doorman. “You got a secret admirer?”

  “Actually, no. These arrived for you an hour ago.”

  For me? Who’d be sending me flowers? My first thought, with a flutter of pleasure, was Kane, but that was silly—he came to mind because I’d just been thinking about him. Who, then? Sometimes grateful clients sent gifts, but most of my recent demon exterminations had been run-of-the-mill. Except tonight’s. Somehow, though, I didn’t think Professor Milsap had speed-dialed his favorite all-night florist to show me his undying gratitude for getting rid of that Glitch.

  Clyde sneezed again. It was a funny, dry sound, like somebody pretending, not very convincingly, to have a cold. “Please take them away. I was terribly allergic to flowers before the plague. You’d think being previously deceased would put an end to that, but—” Another dry sneeze. “But perhaps what’s left of my body remembers.”

  “Allergies, huh? That must have made life difficult when you were a minister.” I lifted my duffel bag’s strap over my head so it crossed my torso. “Didn’t the church ladies load up the altar with flowers each Sunday?”

  “Then I could get allergy shots. Those wouldn’t help now. At least I’m not bedeviled by watery eyes or a stuffy nose. Just this infernal … aaaah-choo!” The roses trembled again.

  I lifted the vase. It was surprisingly heavy.

  “Be careful.” Clyde held out a steadying hand. “I think it’s Waterford.”

  “Was there a card?”

  “Presumably there’s one inside the envelope attached to the bouquet.” He scowled as though I’d accused him of steaming open my love notes.

  I couldn’t see where I was going through the dense foliage—rose leaves and ferns and baby’s breath—waving in front of my face. I stuck my head out on the left and crossed to the elevators, my weapons bag banging against my hip with each step.

  All those roses made the elevator smell like a florist’s shop. I almost started sneezing, myself. I was glad when the doors opened to my floor.

  Outside my apartment, I raised a knee to balance the vase against the wall as I fished in my pocket for my keys. Even through the closed door, I could hear Juliet’s massive TV blaring, but I didn’t bother to ring the bell. She wouldn’t be home at this hour, not with so many necks out there waiting to be bitten. And she had a bad habit of turning on the TV—loud—then losing interest and wandering away.

  I pulled out my key ring and sorted through it one-handed. Inside, the phone rang. I found the key, turned it in the lock, got the door open, and flew into the living room. I dropped the flowers on the coffee table, ducked out of the duffel bag strap, scooped up the remote, and powered off the TV, all while diving for the phone on the far side of the sofa. Don’t try this at home, kids, I thought, as I belly-flopped onto the cushions and hit the Talk button. I’m a trained professional.

  “H-hello?” A trained professional who panted like she’d run a marathon after making it all the way from the front door to the sofa.

  “Vicky.” Kane’s voice flowed warmly over the phone. “Did you get the flowers I sent?”

  “Those are from you?”

  In the long pause that followed, I reflected that maybe I’d sounded a little too surprised.

  “You thought they were from someone else?” A new note strained his voice.

  “N
o, no. I just got home. I didn’t have a chance to read the card.” I searched my memory for an anniversary or other occasion I’d forgotten, but came up blank. “Sorry. I guess I didn’t have you pegged as a champagne-and-roses kind of werewolf.” Champagne, maybe. Kane liked expensive wines.

  His chuckle brought the warmth back into his voice. “Okay, I get the hint. Next time, I’ll include champagne.”

  “Make it a box of chocolates instead and you’ve got a deal.”

  “Done.” I could almost see his smile over the phone. Kane had a smile that could break hearts across three states. He’d be sitting back, grinning, his gray eyes alight with amusement, his silver hair gleaming. Because it was outside norm working hours, he’d have draped his suit jacket over the back of his chair, maybe even loosened his Italian silk tie. “How’d the job go tonight?” he asked.

  I rolled over onto my back and shimmied up against an armrest, getting comfortable. “I got the Glitch, but I may have damaged one or two processors in that fancy supercomputer.” I told him about the night’s events. He growled when I got to the part where the security guard stuck a gun in my face, but Kane knew better than to lecture me that my job was too dangerous. We’d argued about it too many times for even Mr. Successful Trial Lawyer to have a prayer of winning.

  “You’re up late,” I observed, to change the subject.

  “Late, early—I’m not sure I can tell the difference anymore. I’ve been reading more of Justice Frederickson’s opinions. She has me worried, Vicky. She’s consistently interpreted citizenship and civil rights in the narrowest way possible.”

  Chief Justice Carol Frederickson, who’d been on the Court for a couple of decades, was its most influential member. That didn’t mean she always swayed the other justices’ opinions, but nobody knew how she might affect a close vote.

  “And yesterday,” he continued, “someone told me about an informal conversation where she insisted that civil rights are human rights and as such apply only to those who meet the genetic definition of human.”

  “So those of us with the wrong genome have to obey their laws, pay taxes to them, and live as second-class citizens.”

  “Not citizens at all. Not even second-class.”

  “Where does that leave zombies? They’re genetically human, right? They just died and came back to life.”

  “Yes, and that’s precisely why you shouldn’t call them ‘zombies.’ ” To Kane, zombies were previously deceased humans—PDHs for short—and there were no monsters in Deadtown; we were all Paranormal Americans, or PAs. Sometimes dating Kane felt like living in a bowl of alphabet soup. But his scolding tone didn’t last. “The virus changed their DNA, and that’s an important factor in this case. The other side is arguing that the altered DNA makes them inhuman—and Justice Frederickson seems sympathetic to that view.”

  “But you can’t be fully human one day and not even a little human the next. It’s not like they committed a crime. All they did was get sick.”

  “Exactly. That argument is one prong of our strategy.” He went on to talk about the case he and the other lawyers on his team were building. I didn’t understand all his legal mumbojumbo, but I loved hearing the passion in his voice. It was easy to see why Kane was a successful lawyer. When he stood up to make an argument, half the jury would swoon and the other half would be moved to tears or to action, whichever he was going for. I hoped the Supreme Court would be as susceptible to his charms.

  “I’d better go,” Kane said. “I probably won’t be around much for the next week. The full moon’s only a few days away, and I’ve got a foot-high stack of things I need to deal with before I head to Virginia for the retreat.”

  “I hope it’s easier this month.” Kane had spent the previous two retreats fighting off challenges from various pack alphas. Werewolf packs were family groups, usually no more than a dozen members, and because the Virginia retreat was a big one, that meant lots of wolves eager to challenge him.

  “The locals don’t like a lone wolf coming into their territory. I don’t blame them. I’d do the same thing in their place. It’ll get better when they realize I’m not trying to take over their packs.” He spoke casually, like it was no big deal, but strain squeezed his voice. “The hardest thing is to make sure any challenge ends in a draw. If I gave some of these alphas the beating they deserve, I’d get stuck with responsibility for their packs. That’s the last thing I need.”

  “So there’s no point in saying, ‘Be careful’?”

  That trademark Kane chuckle again. “No more than when I say it to you.”

  “Touché, counselor.”

  After we said good-bye, I pulled a rose from the vase and twirled it in my fingers, breathing in its scent. In all the time I’d known Kane, he’d never sent me flowers. Not that I had much use for bouquets and such things. Usually, when Kane gave me a present it was a gift card to my favorite weapons shop in Allston. (One of those would’ve come in handy for stocking up on fresh Glitch Gone, but I tried not to think about that.) Roses were new territory for us. It was kinda nice to get them.

  I thought about what it must be like for Kane in D.C., absorbed by work for most of his waking hours, fighting off unlooked-for challenges during the three days each month when he should’ve been able to recharge. In those rare moments when he found himself alone, without a legal book or a deposition or a snarling werewolf facing him, what did he think about?

  Could Kane be lonely? Was that even possible for a lone wolf?

  I wondered what he’d written on the card. I reached over, plucked it from the bouquet, and opened the envelope. The card held a single word: Kane. I flipped it over. On the back, jotted lightly in pencil, was a phone number with a 202 area code—I recognized it as the Washington law firm collaborating with Kane. Penciled below the number was the name Susan.

  Okay. No big deal. Somebody named Susan, obviously an assistant at the law firm, had called the florist.

  Except it was a big deal, damn it.

  I tossed the rose aside and sat up. I was stupid to think Kane might be lonely. Kane was the most self-sufficient, purpose-driven being I knew—of any species. He probably felt sorry for me, imagining me pining away for him all by my lonesome. That’s why he oh-so-generously said I should date other guys, out of pity. Then he plugged some auto-reminders to call me into his calendar and told somebody’s secretary to send poor Vicky something nice. He didn’t put two seconds’ thought into what.

  Was I being petty? Probably, but so what? On the scale of personal failings, how did “petty” measure up against “can’t be bothered”?

  I wasn’t going to waste my time trying to figure that one out. And I wasn’t going to sit around an empty apartment getting hay fever, either. It was still early. I pulled on my jacket to go out. Not to that place where everybody knows your name—that’s a tourist bar on Beacon Street—but to a place where it was impossible for someone like me to feel sorry for myself, a place where I could hang out with zombies, vampires, and a werewolf or two.

  3

  CREATURE COMFORTS IS A BAR IN THE NEW COMBAT ZONE, the no-man’s-land between Deadtown and human-controlled Boston. It’s also where I go when I want to unwind. As I pushed open the heavy oak doors, warm air puffed out, scented with beer, sweat, tobacco (good luck enforcing a smoking ban in the Zone)—and the slightest tinge of blood.

  As I stepped inside, a sandy-haired zombie rushed past with a tray. His orange, yellow, and turquoise Hawaiian shirt clashed with his green-tinged skin, and he moved stiffly, as zombies do. He was fast, though, and something about his bearing suggested he’d been an athlete before the plague. He set the tray on a table and unloaded drinks, smiling and joking with the customers.

  Must be Axel’s latest help. Creature Comforts wasn’t Boston’s classiest bar, with its beer-sloshed floor, red-vinyl booths, and sticky tables. But business had been up lately, now that zombies were allowed to wander the New Combat Zone without a permit. Zombies and humans had been on pretty fr
iendly terms since Tina had led other zombies in defending Boston’s Halloween parade from a Harpy attack. The thawing of human-PA relations had lured more norms to venture into the Zone and live a little dangerously by visiting a monster bar. One of the most popular spots was Creature Comforts, which had always been a one-man operation in the past. (Although come to think of it, the bar’s owner, Axel—a seven-foot-tall, hook-nosed, bearded, shaggy knuckle-dragger—might best be described as something other than “man.” Nobody was quite sure what he was. But nobody was brave enough to ask.)

  The new waiter zipped off to take orders from a booth. Behind the bar, Axel filled a pitcher with beer. I caught his eye, and he nodded in greeting. I went over. “Looks like your new guy’s doing a good job.”

  Axel shrugged. No scowl, so he must’ve thought the kid was okay. In the past two months, since he’d become an employer, Axel had hired and fired a procession of waitstaff: two vampires who’d snacked on the norms, a werewolf with an unfortunate customer-sniffing habit, even a human vamp tramp who’d pestered every vampire in the place to turn her—against Massachusetts law. Based on that track record, anybody who managed to serve customers without taking a bite out of them was doing very well indeed.

  I climbed onto a bar stool and ordered a beer.

  “What kind?” Axel asked.

  “Um, you pick.” Can you tell I’m not much of a drinker?

  His lips twitched in what might have been a smile, but it was hard to tell under the beard. A minute later, he gave me a bottle of something pale and yellowish.

  “Lite beer, huh? Daniel wouldn’t approve.” Daniel Costello was a beer connoisseur. When we went out, he always ordered something exotic sounding, like red ale or oatmeal stout.

  “If it tasted like beer,” Axel said, “you wouldn’t like it.”

  Probably true.

  I took a sip. Not bad. Axel was right, it didn’t taste like beer. It didn’t taste like much of anything. I swigged—and nearly choked when a tray slammed down on the bar an inch from my left arm.