by Art DeForest
Lori’s eyes grew wide with shock. “She’s alive?” she asked, her expression becoming puzzled.
“No,” I said glumly. “She still came to visit, though.”
Lori’s expression became sad and sympathetic. The worst fear any hunter had was that someone he loved would be turned. It was a deeper fear than being turned yourself. Just imagine cutting off your mother’s head as she tried to rip out your throat and you’ll get some idea of just how deep that fear runs.
Jake cleared his throat. “Are you okay boss?’’ He asked gesturing at the claw marks, starting to ooze blood down my chest.
My hand came up once more in a vain effort to feel my amulet. “I’m fine, but Sam got away with my medallion. She’d have taken more than that if Siobhan hadn’t shown up when she did.” I looked at Siobhan quizzically. “Why did you show up when you did?” I asked.
“I was tracking the new vampire I told you about. Guess where it led?” she said sardonically.
I dropped down to a sit on my bed as I pondered the situation. Finally, I looked back up at Siobhan. “You said this creation was different somehow, right? Like the vamp had been created from another undead?”
Siobhan nodded in agreement. “That’s how it felt.”
“That son of a bitch must have turned them when they first died and had been keeping them in reserve this whole time.” I gritted out through clenched teeth. “Why now?” I asked plaintively.
“We keep kicking his ass.” Spoke up Jake. “He can’t take us going head on, so he tried sneaking in the back door.”
“That makes sense,” I said, my head starting to nod in agreement. “We need to start trying to anticipate his next move now. After all, he got what he came for.” I said as my hand trailed once more to the scratches on my neck and chest.
The room lapsed into silence as we all considered the implications of what had happened. Finally, I looked up and shook my head to clear it. “Well, we aren’t going to solve that one tonight,” I said looking back up at Lori and Jake. “You two should try to get what rest you can. We may have some long nights ahead of us.”
“We can stay boss.” Said Lori, glancing sidelong at Siobhan.
“It’s alright,” I said, nodding towards my beaten up bedroom door. “Get some sleep.”
Nodding, they headed out.
Siobhan sat down next to me on the bed but didn’t try to touch me. “I can’t imagine what you must be feeling right now.” She said. “It must have taken immense strength to resist giving her whatever she wanted.”
I sat there for a moment, going back to the encounter in my mind. “I...It was at first, but I realized that it wasn’t really her. She’s just a monster now. A puppet used to try to get to me.”
Siobhan sat for a moment, a troubled expression on her face. “Is that how you see us, Dale? As just monsters?” Her voice quivered as she said it. I could almost swear that moisture gathered in the corner of those glorious emerald eyes.
“I said, she was the monster. Not all of you.” I tentatively reached over and took her cool hand in mine. “My wife is gone. That part that made her what she was, no longer exists.”
Siobhan sniffed miserably, keeping her eyes downcast to where our hands held each other. Reaching out, I gently touched her chin and brought her head up so I could look her in the eye. “I never knew the Siobhan that was human. The vampire is all I’ve ever known, so our relationship has suffered no loss.”
“So you see me as more than just a monster?” She asked, her bottom lip trembling slightly.
Heaven help me. How could a centuries old master vampire look so vulnerable all of the sudden? The cynical part of me suggested that it was all just manipulation. “But to what end?” speculated the other side of me that appreciated the beautiful creature in front of me. “She has nothing to gain by it.”
I refocused my attention back and said, “When I looked at my wife at the end, when Ahriman took control, all I could see was the tool, the puppet used to acquire what he desired. When I look at you, I see a person with no strings making her dance to another’s tune. I just see you.” I said.
She smiled tremulously then. “Thank you, Dale. I feared you seeing your wife as a vampire had done irrevocable harm.“
“Naw,” I said with a grin. “Us tough guys know how to keep things in perspective.” I looked at her questioningly then. “Do you sense any change in how you feel about me, though?” I asked. “After all, my undead controlling mojo just got taken away from me.”
Siobhan’s head cocked to the side in thought. “No,” She said speculatively. “My feelings haven’t changed at all. But then again, I still feel a great deal of power inside you still.”
“So is it just the power that’s attracting you?” I said. It was my turn to feel vulnerable for some reason.
Siobhan leaned in and placed a soft kiss on my lips. “There is much more to you than the power from some musty old amulet, Dale Frost.”
Siobhan offered to spend the rest of the night with me of course, but once again I begged off. After the events of the previous few hours, I needed time to myself. As dawn started to lighten the eastern horizon, I finally got up and trudged into the kitchen, searching for coffee.
Lori was seated at the kitchen table with a steaming cup in her hand. I moved gratefully to the coffee, getting my own cup of inspiration. “Glad you have some pants on this time,” I said with a grin. “Highly unprofessional, fighting the forces of evil in your underwear. You know that, right?”
Lori snorted derisively. “Fine, I’ll take the time to get fully dressed before I come to save your ass the next time. Besides, you’re the only guy who complains when I come into a room with my pants off.” She said with a wink.
It was my turn to snort. “I bet they’d be scared to death if you barged in wearing no pants and packing that shotgun like you did last night. That was some scary shit.”
“You’d be surprised how certain guys would react to a naked girl packing a big gun.” She said with a knowing smile.
“Eww, now I need brain floss to get the image out of my head. I said with a dramatic shudder.
Both of us smiling slightly, we sat in companionable silence and nursed our coffee.
“I noticed Siobhan didn’t stay the night.” She said after a while.
“Sleeping with Siobhan after fighting off my dead wife just seemed wrong somehow,” I replied.
“What about Emily?” said Lori softly. “Did he bring her back too?”
I stared aimlessly into my coffee cup for a moment. “That’s what Sam said.” I managed to get out after a minute, with only a slight crack in my voice.
Lori reached out and gave my hand a squeeze. “I’m sorry Dale.” She said, with her heart in her eyes. “You know it's not really them anymore, though, right?”
“I know.” I sighed “But I can’t stand the thought of even a part of them being in that bastards clutches. They deserve to rest in peace.” I said.
Lori reached up and used her thumb to wipe a tear that had been running down my cheek, unnoticed. “We’ll get the bastard.” She said strongly. “We’ll put him back in a hole and your family will get the rest they deserve.”
8
Ahriman smiled triumphantly as his creature entered the room. Finally, after all, these eons the power would be his. It would take but a little spell work to finish the enchantments. Then, the full power of the amulet would come to bear.
Samantha approached her master demurely. “Your amulet, Master.” She said holding the piece of gold on it’s broken chain out to him.
He snatched the amulet out of her hand and clutched it tightly to him as if he thought she would try to keep it for her own. “Yesssss” He hissed as the power infused him. He felt himself growing stronger and stronger. Soon he would achieve his strength of old and then finish the enchantment so as to become the god of the undead in truth!
The smile that had been spreading across his face stopped, quickly becoming a frown as
the power transfer from the amulet suddenly guttered and dropped to a trickle. He opened his hand and stared in consternation as the last of its power drained into him. He continued to stare at it in disbelief. The power was barely half of what he had anticipated. What had gone wrong?
Slowly, a burning anger kindled itself in his chest as he considered the diminished amulet. Just as the amulet fed power into him, so it must also have fed power into the worthless human hunter. “How could this be?” He questioned silently, pondering the enchantments that he had laid on the amulet, so long ago. He started pacing in agitation as the answer grew in his mind. He didn’t get the chance to complete the enchantment. It must have left an opening of sorts. An opening through which some of the amulet’s power had leaked as it sat on the bare skin of the man’s chest, directly over his heart.
“Nooooo!” He shouted, shaking clenched fists in rage at the heavens. All this time and planning, for nothing!
“Master, what’s wrong?” Came the timid voice of the human’s dead wife.
An irrational spurt of rage coursed through him, directed at the cowering form in front of him. One of the fists that had been clenched in hate at the heavens came slashing down, knocking the creature across the room to slam into the far wall.
As quickly as the rage had come, it was gone again. He considered what he knew as he resumed pacing. “It might be possible,” he muttered to himself. Yes, it might just be possible to retrieve that which had been leached out. It would require the sacrifice of the human, but that was of no consequence. He intended all along to end the man’s miserable existence. After all, people needed to learn what happened to them when they attempted to thwart his will. It was quite possible in fact that the sacrifice could also generate the power he needed to complete the enchantments on his amulet at the same time.
A gloating smile crossed his lips as he contemplated a future. A future where he tore the still beating heart out of the insolent human’s chest and thereby cemented permanent control of all undead to his will.
++++
Money and John were sitting up in their respective beds when we got into the office, later that morning. “How are you guys feeling?” I asked as we entered the room.
“Weak as a newborn chick.” Grumbled John.
“Yeah” piped in Money. “Feels like my heads packed with cotton or something. Like my brain’s running at half speed.”
I shook my head and tried to look consoling. “Wights are a nasty business, but at least you can recover from their whammy. Mummys now, you don’t come back from mummy rot unless you’ve got a powerful cleric with you.” I finished with a shudder.
“I’ll take your word for it,” John said glumly. “It’s like I can’t call up half of what I used to know.”
I nodded in acknowledgment. “All part of the whammy. We’ll get you back up to top speed in no time. Just you wait and see.”
We chatted idly for a short time before Lori, Jake and I headed off in our separate directions.
I spent the morning filling out government paperwork for the wights we’d, well okay I, had taken down. There was a hefty price on the heads of those things. $150,000 a pop to be exact. It didn’t seem like enough, given that two of my people could barely walk right now, but at least it was a start.
About three o’clock I was just starting to think I needed to go down to the gun range and burn off some frustrations when my cell phone rang. Looking at it, I saw Alex’s name on the screen. “Hey Alex, what’ve you got?” I asked.
“What, I can’t just call to say hi? Maybe see how you’re doing?” He said in a mock injured tone.
“Cut the crap,” I responded jovially. “You never call just to see how I’m doing. That would be against the unwritten guy code, after all.”
Alex chuckled a little. “Okay, okay, you got me there.” he conceded. “Anyway, I think I might have picked up something from the unexplained death files.”
“Oh really?” I said, sitting up in my chair.
“Yup,” he said. “There’s been an uptick in strange deaths down in the south side.”
I snorted a bit. “What’s strange about that?” I asked in a derisive tone. “There’s death down there all the time.”
“True,” he said seriously. “But these bodies have been showing up without the bullet holes or knife wounds.
“That is strange,” I remarked. “Do they have anything in common?
“Not really.” He replied. “They seem to be mostly street people, homeless, prostitutes, etc., but there doesn’t seem to be any commonality along age, race or gender lines. They’re just showing up dead with no obvious cause noted.”
I thought about that for a moment before responding. “Still, that isn’t all that unusual for that area,” I said, playing devil’s advocate.
“Yeah I know, but there was one report that has me looking in that direction.” He replied. “It seems a group of guys was walking home from a bar down there when they noticed what looked to be a man hunched over something lying on the ground. One of the guys shouted out, asking what the guy was doing. Here’s the funny part. All the guys in the group swear that when this dude looked up from what turned out to be a body, his eyes were glowing this weird green color. Have you heard of anything like that before?”
“That’s a new one on me,” I said, shaking my head. “But there’s a lot about this case that doesn’t make sense.” I went on to describe the events of the previous evening.
“Fuck man, are you alright?” Asked Alex, the concern evident in his tone.
“I’ll live I suspect” I replied somberly. Can you get a read on where the killer, if there really is one, is based?” You know, triangulate based on where the bodies were found, or something?
Alex snorted. “This isn’t an episode of CSI, dude. Shit like that doesn’t often work in the real world.” He replied. “Still, most of the deaths seem to occur within about a twenty block square.”
I sighed at that. Given the size of Chicago’s city blocks, that was a lot of ground to find one guy in. “Any mortuaries or cemeteries in the area?” I asked on impulse.
“Several at a guess,” Alex replied. “You want me to put a list together?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “It's a bit obvious, but it gives us a place to start.”
“Alright man, I’ll look into it further. Hey, you be careful.” He said in concern. “You never know when this guy might decide to come after you again.”
“Why bother?” I asked a little gruffly. “The son of a bitch already has what he was after. It’s my turn to go after him for once.”
“Still, watch your six. Nobody ever accused necromancers of being rational.” He said before hanging up.
At sundown, I gave Siobhan a call.
“Hello love,” she said with just a hint of Irish burr. Things inside me fluttered a bit at her greeting. Partly because I still wasn’t sure that a hunter having a relationship with a vampire was kosher, partly because I was touched by the term of endearment.
“Hey, Siobhan,” I replied. “Any news on...the new vampire or this Ahriman guy?” I just couldn’t bring myself to say “my wife” especially given who I was talking to.
“I was able to track her for quite some time before the sense of her, simply vanished.” Said Siobhan in a troubled tone. “I think her master may be able to shield her, and himself, from detection.”
“Which way was she headed?” I asked.
“South and a little east.” She replied. “I was still quite a distance from her when I lost the track.”
I nodded at that. “Alex said there’d been some unexplained deaths in the south side recently. Over and above what’s usual for that area. He thinks there might be a connection.”
“I will send some of my people into the area to investigate. Perhaps we can get some indication of where the necromancer is that the human police might miss.” She replied.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I asked in a troubled tone. “This gu
y can control undead after all.”
“I understand your concern, but that very sense of compulsion may very well allow us to pinpoint his location.” She replied seriously.
“Tell your people to be careful just the same. The last thing I want to do is put down one of yours because they were compelled to attack.” I replied.
“You be careful as well love.” She said seriously. “He may have his amulet back, but he still might carry a grudge.”
“I doubt he’ll give me a second thought now that he has what he wants,” I said dismissively.
