by A. J. Aalto
“Harry was right; Spicer could give you lessons.” I cocked my head.
Batten's eyes darkened. “Harry said what?”
“How did Spicer get the drop on you, Kill-Notch? He really messed you up, look at your lip,” I wondered aloud, letting him see my bafflement. “Dude's badass. I'm so impressed.”
“Get out,” Batten told me tightly, giving up on me and turning his focus up at my assistant. “Declan, keys. Then get topside. Call Chapel. Get the Goon Squad here, pronto.”
I felt my eyes widen and I opened my mouth to yell that I'd told him to bring help, I'd offered to come with him, but he took off on me. The sight of fresh blood leaking from his nose, and his subtle, pathetic attempt to sniff it back up his nostril before I could see it, stopped my tongue behind my teeth.
“Goon Squad is behind us, but banged up,” I said quickly. “We're here now. We should take advantage of the time we have and make this a quickie.” I spared a minute to consider what I'd said, not bothering to hide a lewd smile.
“Woman,” he said warningly, making an experimental pull on the cuffs. “Keys.”
Angry, tied-up Batten. Yummy. I drank in the sight until Declan elbowed me. “Sorry! Sorry. I have a thousand rabid wolverines to kill later, and this is totally helping me re-load. Now, where did Spicer put your keys, did you see?”
“He hung them on the wall,” Batten said, motioning as best he could with his chin. “By the bench.”
Anne made a noise as I passed her and Declan started like he'd forgotten she was there. “We've got to put this poor thing out of her misery before Spicer gets back,” Declan said. “Do you know where he went?”
Batten grumbled something to him that I couldn't hear, and while they discussed where the bokor might have gone, I cooled to a simmer, searching the wall above the bench with the astral jars for a key ring, eyeing the zombies warily and fingering past various tools and hanging lanterns and junk. On the table, Anne moaned again around the iron in her throat, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut to quell my nerves.
There were no keys. I did a quick-fingered double check. “Hate to be the bearer of bad news,” I said.
“On the wall,” Batten repeated.
“Oh, you mean the wall?” I propped my fists on my hips. “Silly me, I was looking on the wall.”
Batten just scowled.
I said, “Did he hang them there before you passed out?”
“No, after I passed out, I saw him hang them there.”
“I'm making a point.” My leather-gloved fists creaked. “You might have seen him put keys on this wall, but I'm telling you, there are no keys on the wall now.”
“Oil and water,” Declan muttered under his breath.
“I suggest we move to step two: kill the monsters,” I said.
Batten shook his cuffs angrily. “Marnie.”
“Without Agent Batten?” Declan said uncertainly.
“We've got everything the modern monster hunter could want.” I put the backpack on the ground by my feet and unzipped it.
“Fuck's sake,” Batten groaned. “Dr. Edgar, go up and call SSA Chapel.”
“Well,” Declan wavered, shifting on his feet. “I really don't feel right about leaving you tied up with Dr. B. here and the monsters there.”
Batten opened his mouth to object, but then cut his eyes at the plugged-in zombies and the zombie-revenant hybrid on the table, and then to me. “Shit.”
“Damn skippy,” I agreed. “It's a bad situation. But I told you: I got this. I need you here with me, Declan. We'll take care of Anne first. We're going to have to expel the evil influences before we put her down.”
Declan's jaw dropped. “You're kidding, right? We don't have that kind of time.”
“We do this my way, Dr. E.,” I said firmly. “No grey areas this time. Proper invitations. Calling the Watchtower. We need all the help we can get.”
“I have no inroads with anything but the grey area,” Declan insisted. “I won't be able to amplify your power if you don't let me play from the grey. The Dark Lady doesn't hear the pleas of immortals, nor will the Green Man.”
I glanced at Batten to see if the word immortal had registered; momentary confusion showed across his brow in a ripple.
“Then you'll just assist me, Dr. E.,” I said, digging out four white votive candles from my backpack.
“No time for hocus-pocus,” Batten said. “Just get me out of here. I'll kill it.”
I didn't bother to smother my snort-laugh. “Like you did the first time you tried? Oh, wait.”
“Then you kill it,” Batten snarled.
“I can't kill her yet,” I said. “I have her soul in my back pocket. If I can save it—”
“Even if you could release her astral from the clutch of the necromancer — which you can't — her soul is promised to the Overlord through her commitment to Malas.” Declan looked despondent. “There is no redemption for the damned. I told you that before.”
“You don't know,” I told him. “What if you're wrong and I'm right?”
My assistant squinted at me like I was trying to sell him a steam powered television set. I sighed.
“Listen, Declan, you might be more worldly, and speak five languages, and have more degrees than me, and more experience with the dark arts, and …” I wrinkled my nose. “Where was I going with this? Oh, right, fucking shit up.” I turned to exchange my leather gloves into the backpack for black neoprene ones. When I faced them again, I was all business, Baranuik-style. “When it comes to screwing up other people's schemes and machinations, I am a motherfucking natural. Now, hold this.” I wiggled my back pocket meaningfully.
Declan blinked rapidly at my butt then took the jar of astral bodies from the pocket. “I will say this: belief is a powerful ingredient, Dr. B. You have that on your side. I just don't know…”
Batten offered, “She does have a point about fucking up.”
“Thank you, Jerkface.” I let him see me ogle his bondage once more, thoroughly enjoying his helplessness. “Now, could you hold our patient, Dr. E?”
Declan positioned himself behind Anne's head, at the end of the table; she craned to look at him, making wet, smacking noises and hissing around tiny fangs.
His voice wavered. “Whenever you're ready, Dr. B.”
I used my chalk to draw a protective circle around the table, laid the four white votive candles at North, South, East, and West, lit them, and began inviting the Watchtowers, elemental guardians that rushed in to offer protection against any possible intrusion from dark forces. Spicer would not have been greeted by these guardians; he was only interested in manipulating dark forces.
Once my working space was sealed, I said, “There. Let's see the bokor chuck his taint in this circle. Wait, that's not right.”
“Clay,” Declan said, “and salt. Tell me when to grab her.”
“Hurry it up,” Batten said.
I got closer to the table and Anne's focus swung to me with such intensity that I wondered if any part of her understood what I was attempting, and if so, how she felt about it. I smiled at her a little. She did not smile back.
“Okay, Dr. Edgar,” I said, keeping my voice calm, “hand me the jar, and grab her shoulders, if you please.”
Anne's head whipped back and forth between me and Declan. He handed me the soul jar. Drool leaked from the gaping wound in Anne's cheek. When I dumped the clay into her snapping mouth, followed by salt, she chewed them thoughtfully for a moment, and then spit them back out.
“I bind you, Anne Bennett-Dixon, to your own soul, to your own choices, to your own mind, and within your own body,” I said, unscrewing the little metal lid and holding the soul jar over her. “The touch of Hell be hereby renounced. The light release you; the light welcome you; the light call you home.”
The astrals didn't come out of the jar. I turned the jar upside down and tried to shake them out, whapping it with the heel of my palm like a bottle of slow-moving ketchup.
“Lord an
d Lady, hear thy—” smack, smack “—servant's plea and—” smack “—release this soul from its dark chains.” Finally, they dislodged from the jar with a quiet squish and landed with an undignified splat, like soft-boiled eggs that had missed the hash browns and ended up in a coffee cup.
The astral bodies didn't zoom into Anne like I expected they would. They didn't fly off up the ramp into the sky, or zip around the room, or light up, or dance. They simply faded away like drops of pale ink in a bucket of water. It was fairly anticlimactic, and I felt cheated.
Then the zombie-revenant gurgled something and her chest heaved. It looked like a sweet, desperate inhale after a long dunk underwater; Declan, Batten, and I held our breaths and froze, waiting to see what would happen, but she never exhaled. In fact, that was the last sound she made, but not the last thing she did.
Silently, she turned her head away from me and closed her eyes. One of the lids was torn, and her lashes hung to her cheek. My gorge rose. With a snap-spark of horrid stench, the necromancer's magic started to fall away, torn from the zombie's body, and all her putrid blisters began to pop and leak; they lay like empty balloons on her greenish skin. I couldn't tell if her soul was inside her, but I could tell she was suffering. I'd done my best to set things right with her soul. It was time to put a merciful end to John Spicer's cruel freakshow.
Gunshots rang out in the distance, outside, followed by answering fire, a male shout, and a wail of pain. I glanced back at Batten, whose futile pulls at the cuffs were starting to make his wrists raw. He'd spun around to plant both boots against the wall and was now working on trying to yank the bar from the stone, lips clenched against his teeth, growling in frustration and exertion. At the sound of the next gunshot, he did a double take over his shoulder and our eyes met.
“Quickly,” I said to Declan, dry-mouthed, throat clicking. “Where's your Wolfsbane?”
Anne didn't seem to like that idea, and lurched up as far as her restraints would allow, shaking the table's legs against the floor. Her head shook so hard that the Bluetooth unit Spicer had crammed in her skull shot loose to dangle against her shoulder.
Declan let go of Anne to dump his doctor's bag, shaking its contents all over the floor, sending bottles spinning across stone and bursting baggies of fine powder. He snatched up the bottles one by one and started uncorking. “Wolfsbane! Datura! Uh, um, here, sage!”
“Give me anything!” I cried. “Give me everything. The bolt's getting loose.”
“Here, here!” He dug out a sachet from my stash. “Try basil.”
“What am I making, bruschetta?” I yelled. “I need more than basil!”
“Try it!” Declan demanded, and he opened the sachet and dumped the dried basil in my hand.
I tossed it in her face. Piff! When it had no effect, I pleaded with him. “More stuff! More stuff! Hurry!”
I tossed almost everything we had at her. A piece of raw jasper bounced off her forehead so hard that it ricocheted across the room to hit Batten in the temple. His face jerked to the side but his focus was on tearing the iron bar from the wall.
Batten said, “Where's your Taser? Hurry the fuck up, someone's coming down the ramp.”
Before I could go for it, the bolt that held Anne's neck shackle snapped with a clang that echoed in the enormous room. Her shoulders left the table. She lunged toward Declan, fangs flashing. I ran towards that end of the table and pushed down on her, but I was no match for her strength.
Anne's silver chest restraints rattled a warning a split second before they let go.
CHAPTER 60
DECLAN AND I TUMBLED into one another in a mess of spastically flailing panic-arms before running in opposite directions while Anne pounced like a lemur at the wall. Crouch-running with one arm up over my head as though that could protect me, I hurried back to Declan's side and pulled him in the direction of Batten. Declan resisted, but I figured that even a chained up Kill-Notch was better than no Kill-Notch at all, and I didn't want to be outside Batten's circle of influence, however slim that might be. Also, Batten could have at least one weapon: the Taurus was always at his ankle. I was pretty sure Spicer would have taken the Colt from Batten's hip, but he might have missed the backup.
Anne's movement caught the attention of the zombies against the wall. Noises echoed down the ramp from the entrance, the sound of boots and fleshy slapping noises, followed by an eager, moist, gurgle-snarl that made my nipples shrink. Zombie! my brain squeaked. Declan and I did a synchronous jerk-spin of panic that might have been comical if we hadn't both nearly messed our pants.
Declan hissed, “Hide!”
We went down behind the boxes in a tumbling thud of limbs and asses; I ended up staring at Batten's dusty, denim-covered knee with one of my ankles trapped under Declan's butt cheek. I peeked around the side of the boxes.
Anne, in typical bonehead-stupid zombie fashion, lost interest in us the minute she couldn't see us; I sensed the revenant half of her was no longer high-functioning once her astral essence dissipated, which was probably for the best. Where Anne the person or Anne the revenant had gone, I didn't know and couldn't guess with panic gamboling about in what was left of my rational thought processes.
Anne peeled one hand off the ceiling and placed it on the wall, crouching in the corner like a spider, head cocked to listen to the noises coming from the ramp.
The object of her attentions no longer looked anything like Ben the Unicorn Furry, but for the cold malignancy in his eyes. Spicer's white hair had been completely shorn, he'd shaved his beard, and behind a belted drum, he was naked from the waist up, his hairless chest dusted by dry white powder that accentuated the bib of blood that had crusted on his chin and throat. A furious eruption of corpsepox had turned his entire body into one big rash, and from what little I could spy from my position around the corner of the boxes, he'd scratched nearly raw. Around one wrist, he wore a fetish of bones and feathers and something that looked like grapefruit rind. In his right ear was a Bluetooth headset; I wondered where he could possibly be keeping his phone.
Somehow, Spicer and his newest undead goon had gotten past my brilliant trap. The zombie that trailed behind him moved differently than Thing One and Thing Two. When Spicer approached, speaking softly into his headset, Thing One and Thing Two responded slowly, like old men. In his wake, the new rotting figure shuffled; the jerky way it moved set off warning bells.
It wasn't a Type R zombie, a shambler raised by the necromancer; it was a Type C berserker like Roger Kelly and Cosmo Winkle, held in check only by the determined hand of the bokor and the uncertain competence of his necromancy. The berserker stopped beside the table and my disemboweled backpack, seeing neither. My eyes fellon the pack, where my gun now was, along with the Taser. The berserker took another step toward the table, and its face lifted to the corner near the ceiling where Anne was crouched. Excitement rattled its molars in an audible clatter that made my skin crawl.
I watched, horrified to see that the power holding the berserker back was stretched thin by Spicer's physical weakness, a metaphysical leash as fragile as the pink spider web lacing my yard, ready to be torn away by the slightest touch. I could see in its blank eyes moments where Spicer's control slipped, and the jaw-juddering hunger roared back in, causing the ligaments in its face to flinch, strain, and twist. It reminded me of the tardive dyskinesia of psychiatric patients left too long on anti-psychotics: tongue spasms, squinting, chins and cheeks jerking, upper lips pulling. If this zombie slipped out of Spicer's control, not only would Spicer get slaughtered, but Declan, Batten, and I would never make it out of the mine shaft.
I put my face close to Batten's ear. “Berserker. He's only barely got that one under control.”
“Is that what I'm seeing?” he whispered back. “The Taurus.”
Heart thudding, I slid my hand under his pant leg and gripped it. The Taurus had blown half of Dunnachie's head off; even more so than my own mini Cougar, the Taurus felt like a trusty old friend in my hand.
I tucked it at the small of my back.
Unexpectedly, the berserker snapped and grabbed Thing One by the head. Spicer mumbled something that sounded like gibberish into the Bluetooth that the berserker apparently couldn't ignore. Fighting the necromancer's command, the zombie let out a long eeeuuurgggh punctuated by a wet, throaty noise.
Spicer instructed all three zombies to fan out; they closed in on either side of Anne's area.
Thing Two said, “Rend,” jostling loose my memory of Zombie Dunnachie tracking me relentlessly down the road at Shaw's Fist. Spicer's low-spoken gibberish began to take on the cadence of incantations as he approached Anne Bennett-Dixon; oddly enough, the tone of magic, though I didn't understand the words, put me in familiar territory.
This, I could deal with.
Anne hopped further up the wall like a huge, tailless lizard. The effort must have jostled her protruding, festering belly just enough to loosen things within her womb; in a great rush of reddish-black fluid, putrefaction gases, and pale, unwinding umbilical cord, Anne's fetus fell out.
Batten mostly silenced a grunt beside me.
I slammed both neoprene-gloved hands over my mouth to squelch a nauseated squeal, or vomit, or anything else that threatened to spill out. The zombies saw the slippery little meal dangling on a string from under Anne's stained hospital gown and their eyes bulged.
Spicer's jaw dropped; he probably hadn't been expecting to witness a coffin birth. He stumbled back, and his incantation stumbled with him.
Anne's dangling fetus swung back and forth like a putrefied piñata, and as she crossed the wall with a creeping lurch, the dead fetus swept all the baby food jars off the bench. They shattered on the ground, lids knocked to spin away.
Spicer let out a horrified cry, reiterating his incantations frantically to retain control over his pets. His voice shook as it rocketed up to a panicky falsetto. He stuttered in his chanting, and one of the zombies stopped and turned.
