by E. A. Copen
“I bet Emma is pissed,” I muttered, handing the phone back.
Beth tucked the phone into her bra since she didn’t have any pockets. “I’ve probably lost my job, too.”
I put a hand on Beth’s leg. That would be a hard blow for her to take. She was that job. She’d been willing to trade twenty-five years of her life for a little recognition in her field. If that was gone, she’d have a hell of a time recovering.
“Maybe Dr. Feneque will understand.” Her boss was a god, after all. A god who sort of owed her and me for taking out his three psychotic brothers. “I’ll talk to him, okay? He’ll listen to me.”
She tried to smile. “By that, you mean he’ll tremble in fear. He’s scared of you.”
“Good,” I grunted and leaned back on the window.
We didn’t say anything else to each other the rest of the ride to the cemetery. When we got out of the car, Beth paused to add a sizable tip to the driver’s fare in the app.
The gates to the cemetery were locked since it was after hours, but that had never stopped us before. Of course, it was usually me picking locks while she kept watch and not the other way around, which made it slightly unsettling for the roles to be reversed.
“Where’d you learn how to pick locks?” I asked, trying not to focus on the gurgling in my stomach. I’d gone from being nauseous to starving in the space of a few minutes. The fever was still kicking my ass, but my instincts were screaming that I could fight it if I ate enough meat. I could fight the urge, but my will to do so was wearing thin.
“You taught me,” Beth said. “Remember?”
“No. I was always the lock picker.”
“That’s because I suck at it, which is why this is taking so long. Could you hold this phone for me? I need some light.”
I took the phone and lifted it so the beam of light coming from it illuminated her hands as they worked. There was a time when I would’ve pointed out that she’d just committed several crimes in a row just to hear her voice as she defended herself. Stealing a phone, a phone with an Uber app that was probably linked to someone else’s bank account, breaking and entering, trespassing. Add assault on a police officer, and she could be looking at as much time as I’d done.
Probably not, I thought. Statistically, women didn’t get convicted of violent crimes at the same rate as men. As an upstanding citizen with a history of service to the public, she’d get probation at worst. If she got the right judge, she might not even get that.
My story read differently. Foster kid from a broken, abusive home whose only known address put him square in one of the most impoverished areas of town. Escalating offenses dating back to age twelve including shoplifting, a couple breaking and entering charges, and an assault charge from high school that got dropped when Pony pulled some strings for me. Yeah, I wouldn’t have stood a chance.
Beth’s path had diverged from mine so far that we weren’t even on the same level anymore. Once, I thought maybe she just had a thing for bad guys. Every girl does at some point. When she came back into my life, I thought maybe now was our chance. Maybe it would’ve been, but as much as I cared for Beth, even I knew it wasn’t going to work. It had been too easy to walk away and accept that before. She was too good for me to draw her into my world. Beth had a chance to get out, to live a normal life where none of my bullshit would hurt her. I knew I had to let her go.
That sank in as I watched her fight with the lock. I shouldn’t have kissed her. In the moment, though, I hadn’t seen it. Every once in a while, I made the mistake of thinking I could have what normal men did. Wife, family, house, a dog…it was all out of my reach. I’d traded it all for the power to save people.
“Got it!” Beth gave the lock one good twist and it popped open. The chains holding the metal gates closed fell away.
I pushed the gate open and paused. Once I stepped into the cemetery, I didn’t know what would happen. Normally, I’d get a big boost in power, but normally, I wasn’t slowly turning into a ghoul.
“Stay here,” I told Beth. “And lock the gate behind me. No matter what, don’t you open this gate for me.”
“If I don’t open the gate, how will you get out?”
“Oh, I’ll be able to get out if I’m me. If I’m not me…let’s just say you don’t want me getting out.” I let go of the gate and stepped into the cemetery.
Chapter Eleven
My mental shields slipped as soon as I was inside. It was too much effort to keep them up and fight the growing hunger at the same time. They fell like the walls of Jericho, crumbling into dust. Death and decay crawled into my psyche, clawing at it without reprieve. Ghosts rushed me, their icy presence chilling me to the bone.
With a grunt, I dropped to my knees and let the power swallow me. Much like sitting in a sinking car, the best way to move forward would be to let everything equalize inside and out. An angry ghost lashed out and struck my face, leaving three burning lines behind. The skin on my face would be untouched. This damage was being done on a spiritual level. More of them tore into me and I gritted my teeth, letting them. Another five seconds and they’d regret it.
The grave filled every hole they left behind. When I opened my mouth, the power of death itself streamed into me, forcing its way down my throat and filling me inside out. Organs burned, each one melting into putrefied liquid. At least, that’s what it felt like. In reality, my physical body remained whole. It was my psyche, my very soul, that I had to expose to death. More than that, I had to let it in, accept it, and make death a part of me, cell by cell.
Once I felt the pressure of death equalize inside and out, I reached for it and activated my Soul Vision. Ghosts danced around me, some of them barely spectral forms. Others had claws. The closest one drew back its hand to slash at me again. I caught the ghost’s limb as it came down at me, the power flowing through my body allowing me to straddle the space between life and death. The ghost looked at me, surprise mixed with rage on its face.
I tightened my hold on it. “You know, it’s not nice to kick a guy when he’s down.”
The ghost shrieked as I jerked it through the air, dragging it toward me. Just like I’d done in the past with the soul of a god, I aimed to heal myself using the souls of the departed.
It wasn’t without its risks. First of all, if I lost control of the ghost, it could possess me instead of healing me. Now that I was just the Pale Horseman and not a necromancer, the chances of that happening were greater. The Pale Horseman could see souls, interact with them, and use them to heal him, but he couldn’t command them to obey. My hope was that the process of absorbing the soul would merge it with mine, but I didn’t know for sure that’s how the process worked. If I was wrong, I’d have no escape. I made sure of that when I told Beth not to open the gates for me.
Using my hands, I rolled the soul into a tight, glowing, bite-sized ball about the size of a cookie. It struggled in my grasp. I opened my mouth and popped it in, swallowing it without even attempting to chew it up. It wriggled all the way down. I waited to feel it grip me from the inside and take over, but it didn’t happen. Best of all, the horrible gnawing feeling of hunger I’d been feeling subsided a little.
I reached for another soul. It screamed and tried to flee, but it wasn’t fast enough.
All told, I made a meal of four trapped souls in the cemetery that night. After each one, I felt a little less hungry and a lot more chilled out. Elated. Almost giddy. It was the best I’d felt in months. All the crap that had been bothering me faded into the background. No more thinking about saving the bitch that had used me, or even about being used. No more worrying about how I was going to deal with being a dad when I couldn’t even balance my checkbook and do my laundry. For the first time, none of that even registered. All I wanted to do was keep chowing down on souls and maybe take a nap. And some chili cheese fries. Not because I was hungry or anything. They just sounded good.
“Lazarus!” Beth hissed from the gate. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Shhh!” I waved her off and leaned to one side. “There’s another one somewhere around here.”
The gate squealed as she pushed it open. “Are you okay?”
I lost my balance and fell to the ground. For some reason, that was hilarious, and I sank into a fit of laughter that left my insides splitting.
Beth stared at me, horrified. “Are you…are you stoned on souls?”
“No.”
She grabbed my hand and hauled me to my feet. I staggered, but she kept me upright.
“Maybe. Man, I feel great, Beth. My head is clear for the first time in months.”
“Great, but we need to go. We have to be back in Faerie by dawn.” She tugged me toward the gate.
Go back to Faerie? Why the hell would I do that? People there were assholes.
I pulled my hand free. “No way I’m going back there.”
She spun around, her nose wrinkled. “Laz, you have to. If you don’t go back, you die. For real.”
That sobered me a little, but not much. I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t want to go back there either.
Beth marched up to me, hands drawn into fists. “We need to go find Athdar’s acorns and work on a cure so you don’t turn into a ghoul, and we’ve only got a few hours. Pull your ass together and act like an adult for once in your life!”
I blinked and swayed away from her. “Wow.”
Her eyes widened in shock as she processed what she’d said. “I’m sorry, Laz,” she said and reached to touch me.
I took a step back and out of her reach, swatting her hand away. “That how you really feel? You think you’re better than me? Why? Because you went to your fancy Ivy League college and got your job at some prestigious university?”
“No, Lazarus. It’s not like that.”
“Be honest with me, Beth. Given the chance, you’d rather go out with someone smarter, with more money. Someone safer. You don’t want me. Not who I am now. You want things the way they used to be when we were kids. Well, that isn’t going to happen. We aren’t those people. You can quit looking at me like I’m a cat up a tree. I don’t need you to save me.”
Her mouth fell open and her jaw trembled before she snapped it shut. She wrapped her arms tight around her and stared at the ground. “You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved,” she mumbled and turned her back. “Come or don’t. I’m not going to stand here and watch you destroy your life all over again.”
Beth went to the cemetery gate and pulled it open.
Reality hit me suddenly, like a slap in the face with an iron gauntlet. I cursed and chased after her, stopping just inside the gates to rebuild my mental barriers. Once those were back up, I turned and chased her down the sidewalk. “Beth, I—”
“Save it, Laz. We don’t have time to talk about us right now. If we don’t get you cured, we’ll never have time.”
I dropped my head and followed her around the block. I’d been an ass, and I would own that, but I was right. I’d known since she laid down next to me in bed months ago. It was the same for me. Maybe there had been the spark of something there between Beth and me, but it was gone now. We were just going through the motions. She deserved better. Someone out there would be good for her. I wasn’t that someone.
She turned her head to the side to look over her shoulder at me. “Are you feeling better at least?”
“Yeah, I guess.” I touched the back of my hand to my forehead. “I think I’m still running a little fever, but I’m good for a few hours now.”
“That’s great. Where are we headed?”
“Need to get to the office. There’s a spare key to Odette’s apartment there. If all her stuff hasn’t been moved out, that might be where we find the acorns. If not, we might be able to figure out where they moved her things when they cleaned the apartment out.”
Beth paused next to a trash can on the street corner and tossed the phone in it.
“Hey, how are we supposed to get to the office? It’s a heck of a walk from here.”
She looked both ways and charged across the street so fast I had to run to catch up to her. “It won’t be long before the owner of that phone comes looking for it. Carrying it around is asking to be picked up by the police. We’ll have to flag down a taxi.”
“And pay the cabbie with what? Thoughts and prayers?”
She turned on me when we reached the sidewalk, standing toe to toe with me. “I don’t know, Lazarus. I’m trying, but I seem to be the only one here. So far, you haven’t put out any suggestions. If you have any, I’m all ears.”
I looked around. We needed reliable transportation that was faster than walking and unlikely to get us arrested. Our options were limited. My eyes settled on a beat-up white pickup parked along the street. Car theft wasn’t exactly on my bucket list, but if I didn’t want to kick said bucket, we had to get going and soon. The truck was unlikely to belong to a soccer mom since it only had two seats, so I didn’t have to live with myself from stealing from a single mom with kids or something.
Keeping an eye out for any witnesses or cops, I approached the car and stopped by the driver’s side window to glance in at the locking mechanism. It was an older model truck, mid-nineties. The kind with absolutely nothing automatic in it and those pushdown locks that sat at the top of the door. Perfect. I bent down and untied my shoe before pulling the shoelace out. Hopefully, it’d be long enough.
“What are you doing?” Beth asked behind me.
“What’s it look like I’m doing?”
“Looks like you’re stealing a car.”
“Truck, actually,” I grumbled and tied a slip knot in the shoestring.
It took some doing, but I got it wedged in the corner of the driver’s side door by sawing the string back and forth. With a little trouble, I got the slip knot around the locking mechanism, tightened it and tugged up. The lock slid with it.
“Hell yeah. We’re in.”
I pulled the door open and slid into the driver’s seat to lean over and unlock the passenger door for Beth. She got in while I rummaged behind the seats in search of the last thing I needed.
The thing about old trucks is that they break down a lot. The only people who owned old trucks like that one were handymen who had the know-how and time to fix it when it broke down every other week. My dad had been that kind of guy, though he’d neglected to pass that skill onto me. Cars were not my forte. Theft, on the other hand, was a specialty of mine. I found the screwdriver and turned back to the dash to pop open the starter.
“Where did you learn to steal cars?” Beth asked, frowning at the ease with which I worked.
“In prison, I had two choices if I didn’t want to get the shit beat out of me every day. It was either join the AB—which I had no intention of doing—or make nice with the people who supplied them. That would be thieves.”
“The AB?”
“Aryan Brotherhood. White supremacists. They run things on the inside. Well, they ran my cell block anyway.”
I closed my eyes and finished up. The truck chugged to life, and I breathed a sigh of relief. When I turned to grin at Beth, however, I found her looking like she was going to cry.
“What’s wrong?”
“I…it’s just hard to think of you like that. In a gang. Making deals with people like that just to survive. It must’ve been horrible.”
I grunted and put the truck in gear, pulling out of the parking spot. “It wasn’t like that. Mostly, guys on the inside are all the same. They want candy and stamps from the commissary and time in the yard. I had it pretty easy honestly. People liked me.”
“You almost sound as if you miss it.”
I thought about it and shrugged. “Not really. It was just simpler inside. Everything is simpler when you take choice out of the equation, and that’s what prison is. The complete absence of real choice. You don’t choose what to eat, what to wear, where to go and when. All that gets stripped away, and you’re left with a lot of time in your own head.
The people who make it learn to use that to their advantage. You learn who you are when you’re alone. It either breaks you, or it makes you stronger.”
I didn’t tell her how hard it was assimilating back into a world that suddenly wanted nothing to do with me. When I got out, I had to line up a job and a place to live. Finding work as a felon sucked, but I eventually picked up something in fast food that allowed me to save enough money to get out of the halfway house I’d wound up in. I started my own business doing tarot, charms, and fortunes. I’d had magic to fall back on, and it carried me when I’d have otherwise fallen back between the cracks.
Prison tested me and made me stronger, but it also erased possibilities from my future I’d have otherwise had. And it got me no closer to finding Lydia’s killer.
Focus, Laz. Have to focus on the task at hand. I turned the stolen truck down the next road and tried not to think about how if I got caught in it, I’d be right back inside.
My shop waited at the end of the street in the dark. The last time I’d been there, an Archon had smashed through the door and broken Emma’s bones to get me to work with him. That had been two months ago. Thinking about it still made me furious. Emma had trusted me to keep her safe, and I had failed. Like everyone else who got close to me, she got hurt.
I parked the truck out front and hopped out. “You can stay here,” I told Beth. “It won’t take me more than a few seconds. Hit the horn if there’s any trouble.”
It felt weird walking up the steps at night. I very rarely stayed at the office late. For me to be there after dark was almost unheard of. The wards weren’t up anymore, but that was to be expected. Without me around to keep them charged up, they’d have died within the week.
I pushed open the door and stepped into a small waiting area where the chairs had been moved around from where they normally sat, probably to accommodate the EMTs that would’ve come to get Emma. Pamphlets on ghosts and demonic possession littered the small table in the corner, and the purchase counter held bins full of crystals and colored rocks. I walked by all of that headed for the back room through a set of beaded curtains.
