Still Not Dead Enough , Book 2 of The Dead Among Us
Page 29
Anogh smiled. The sly bastard knew exactly what Paul was doing. “As you wish,” he said, bowing as if he were about to leave.
Paul spoke up before he could do so. “I am thankful you gave me the hint I could walk the halls of Sidhe back to the Mortal Plane. But I am mindful it was convenient for you that I met Suzanna and fell in love, convenient that her murder and that of my child led me to kill Simuth, and convenient that that freed you from your oaths. Very convenient, wasn’t it?”
Anogh’s smile disappeared.
Paul continued, “If I ever find that you took any overt action that lead to their deaths, such as helping Simuth find them, the boon I ask of Magreth will be your death at my hands.”
Anogh bowed and said, “You will never have cause to doubt me.” Then he disappeared.
~~~
“One moment, Mr. Conklin, I’ll see if she’s available.”
The sound in the phone changed to canned music as Katherine’s receptionist put Paul on hold. He’d tried to call her twice before, with the same result.
It didn’t take Judy long to get back to him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Conklin,” she said quite loudly, as if she wanted Katherine to hear her tell him to go away. “Dr. McGowan is unavailable at the moment. I recommend you call back later.”
The same message as before. Paul was about to put down the phone when Judy said in a hurried whisper, “She does want to see you, she just doesn’t know it. Be here at three o’clock sharp. Wait in the hall outside the office. I’ll make it happen.”
Paul had hours to kill until three, tried to think of something to occupy his mind, couldn’t think of anything but Katherine, couldn’t put her out of his mind and moped around the apartment. When the time came, he removed all bandages that weren’t absolutely necessary, which left some nasty scrapes and bruises visible, but he no longer looked like the walking wounded. He threw on a pair of khaki slacks, a nice sports shirt and a coat.
He arrived a few minutes early, waited in the hall, and true to her word Judy stepped out of the door at exactly three o’clock. She closed the door, looked at him, appraised his bruises for a moment and frowned. “I don’t know what you two went through, but you’ve got even more bruises than her.”
Paul simply said, “It wasn’t good.”
“Well whatever it was, I know it wasn’t you. And I know she wants to see you, though she’s in denial about that.” She chuckled quietly. “Look at me. I’m a better shrink than she is.”
She leaned close to him conspiratorially. “I told her I had to go to the ladies room, so I forwarded the phone lines into her office, and she’s got a half-hour gap before the next patient. Just walk right in.”
Judy disappeared down the hall as Paul carefully opened the door to the reception area. No one there so he crossed to Katherine’s office door and opened it slowly.
Katherine sat behind her desk, her eyes on some papers, her hair pulled back in a ponytail very unlike her. Without looking up, she said, “That was fast. I need the records for—” She looked up and spotted Paul, her mouth frozen in an open, unspoken word. She’d managed to hide the bruises on her face beneath makeup, though since Paul knew what to look for, he could still see faint traces here and there.
All he could say was, “Hi.” He closed the door behind him.
“Hi,” she said and smiled, but it was one of those artificial smiles of the lips only, with nothing but sadness in her eyes.
As he crossed the room to stand in front of her desk she frowned. “This is a Judy conspiracy, isn’t it?”
Paul smiled at her. “Well, more a Judy and Paul conspiracy.”
Her eyes glistened with moisture. She looked down at her desk, shuffled some papers, “Paul, I’m busy. I have another patient in—”
He interrupted her, “In half an hour.”
She shook her head and said, “Damn her!” but she smiled, and this time it was a genuine smile.
Paul stepped around the desk, but she stood, stopped him with the palm of her hand in the middle of his chest. “No. Don’t.”
She wore one of those suits he found so attractive, navy blue coat and skirt, white blouse with a frilly collar. He said, “I’m sorry.”
She turned away from him, walked around the desk as if it gave her comfort to put the desk between them. “Don’t apologize. It’s not you. It wasn’t you. You did what you had to do. I know that. It’s just . . . you don’t know what it was like to be raped by him, mind and body, over and over.”
“But I do.”
She turned back to him sharply, frowned, met his eyes carefully for several seconds. “Yes, I suppose you do. But . . . I can’t forget it.”
He didn’t know how to address that, so he went by instinct. “You said it was a spell to amplify our own desires. So there must have been some desire there to begin with, otherwise there would have been nothing to amplify.”
She shook her head no, nodded yes, somehow managed to do both. “Yes. That’s true. But it’s just . . . it’s just . . .”
If he could just touch her, hold her, comfort her, he could break down any barriers between them. But to do that he’d have to literally chase her around the desk and force her to let him hold her, and that wouldn’t work at all. So he waited, just waited.
She shed a few tears that rolled down her cheeks, didn’t sob or cry. Then without warning anger boiled up and clouded her features. “I wanted him dead too. I wanted to kill him with my own hands, and I cheered when you did.”
She gasped, shook her head at him, and turned away from him again. “I don’t understand how I could be that way.”
He said, “He deserved it.”
With her back to him she shook her head again, and he saw the finality of her decision in the set of her shoulders. He turned and quietly left her office.
~~~
When he got home Dayandalous was sitting at the breakfast nook in his apartment, sipping on a cup of coffee, a long narrow bundle of cloth resting on the table in front of him. “Hello, Paul,” he said as Paul stepped into his apartment.
Of course, with Dayandalous there, Paul remembered all their previous interactions, and knew that as soon as Dayandalous left, he would forget everything. He sat down at the table next to Dayandalous, resigned to the inevitable. “What do you want this time?”
“Actually,” Dayandalous said, smiling pleasantly. “I want nothing. In fact I’ve come to give you something.” He waved a hand at the bundle in the middle of the table.
Paul reached out carefully, not sure what to expect, pulled aside a flap of the cloth bundle, ready for almost anything to happen. He unwrapped the cloth, which smelled of something like gun oil, uncovered the sheathed sword he’d come to recognize.
He’d never had a chance to look at it carefully. It had ornate scrollwork running the length of the sheath. The hilt was long enough for a two-handed grip, with a simple cross brace. On the end of the hilt sat a cast, metal dragon, with two tiny rubies for eyes that shown an unnatural red, and the dragon’s tail coiled about the hilt in an endless spiral. Paul gripped the sheath in his left hand, the hilt in his right, felt power in the blade, mortal power, not Sidhe power. He drew about six inches of the blade, saw a patchwork of runes running its length. It appeared to be a mortal, steel sword, not an enchanted Sidhe blade. He snapped the blade back into the sheath. “What is this?”
Dayandalous smiled that irritating, knowing smile of his. “You will know what it is, when you have the strength to know what it is.” His expression made it clear Paul would get no more out of him.
Paul awoke with a start, sat up on the couch where he’d been napping. He had a vague impression of dreaming something about a sword with runes etched into the blade and the sheath, wanted to recall the dream, but couldn’t bring to mind any more than that.
He shook such thoughts from his head, walked into his small kitchen, noticed an old rag lying on the floor. When he picked it up he noticed it smelled of something like gun oil, but it was just an
old rag so he tossed it in the trash.
~~~
He didn’t really like San Francisco. He kept remembering that as he drove across the Bay Bridge into the city.
I know, the voice said. But he’s here, and she’s here, and we’ll have no peace while they live.
The End
Other Books Available by J. L. Doty :
A Choice of Treasons (hard science fiction)
To save himself, he first had to save two empires . . . but when he tried, his options were limited to a choice of treasons.
As a lifer in the Imperial Navy, York Ballin’s only hope at an honorable discharge is the grave. Matters only get worse when he finds himself deep behind enemy lines on a commandeered imperial cruiser without a trained crew, commanded by an incompetent nobleman, with the empress and 200 civilians as passengers, and everyone hell-bent on turning them into a cloud of radioactive vapor.
The Thirteenth Man (hard science fiction)
Beware the curse of the thirteenth man, for should he not fall, all may fall before him.
Charlie Cass returns from five years in a squalid POW camp to find the nine Dukes and the King conspiring against each other, and plotting with Charlie’s old enemies. As interstellar war looms, he’s forced to assume the mantle of the thirteenth Duke de Lunis, who, according to legend, is destined to fall beneath the headsman’s ax. But if he can survive the headsman, all may fall before him.
Child of the Sword, Book 1 of The Gods Within (epic fantasy)
When gods and wizards go to war . . . it’s best to just find a good shadow and hide.
Rat is no ordinary thief. A feral, filthy and malnourished child; he survives on what he can steal. But he creates his own shadows and hides within them, though he’s completely unaware of his use of magic. When a clan of powerful wizards see his shadowmagic they adopt him, because they want such magic in the clan. Perhaps that’s a good thing for Rat, as long as they don't kill him in the process.
The SteelMaster of Indwallin, Book 2 of The Gods Within (epic fantasy)
Can one ever rule both the steel within, and the shadows without?
When Morgin’s sword goes berserk and wants to butcher everyone at the annual meeting of the Lesser Council, he’s barely able to control its rabid bloodlust. But the Lesser Council declares him an outlaw for bringing such a dangerous talisman onto the Mortal Plane. So with a price on his head he goes on the run, a wizard without power always just one step ahead of the next bounty hunter.
When Dead Ain’t Dead Enough, Book 1 of The Dead Among Us (contemporary fantasy)
The dead should ever rest in peace, but when dead ain’t dead enough, the living should fear for their mortal souls.
Paul Conklin is a rather ordinary, thirtyish fellow, sharing his ordinary, present-day San Francisco apartment with the ghosts of his dead wife and daughter. Suzanna’s cooking for him again, and Cloe’s bouncing around the apartment in her school uniform, and things are almost back to normal. But a piece of Paul realizes he’s really bug-fuck nuts, or at least that’s what he thinks. He has no idea that a Primus caste demon from the Netherworld covets his soul, and that he’s going to have to take a crash course in killing big, bad hoodoo demons, or lose his soul for all eternity.
About the Author
Jim was born in Seattle, but he’s lived most of his life in California, though he did live on the east coast and in Europe for a while. From a very early age he made up stories in his head, but he never considered writing. In his family you went to college, got a degree in something useful and got a real job. So he got a Ph.D. in optical engineering, and went to work as a research scientist. But he was still making up those stories in his head, so he wrote the first draft of A Choice of Treasons, and as he says, “It was 250,000 words of pure, unmitigated crap. It was terrible: poorly written, poorly plotted, shallow characters that no reader could come to care about. It was the hardest decision I ever made, but I literally threw it away and turned to other projects.” He spent more than a year writing the first draft of Child of the Sword. Then he went back to A Choice of Treasons and started again, from scratch, a complete rewrite from the get-go. He worked on it for several years before releasing it, and also spent some years putting Child of the Sword through a number of rewrites to insure quality.
Science has always been a passion of Jim’s, but writing is an addiction. He’s finished six books now, with three more that are in various stages of completion. Still Not Dead Enough, book 2 in The Dead Among Us, is scheduled for a April 2013 release.
Jim has a big pet peeve regarding lasers as weapons in science fiction. He spent decades working in the laser and electro-optics industry, even did some research on laser weapons in the 80’s. And when writers use a laser as a weapon in a story, they invariably get it wrong, usually by violating some basic law of physics.
Jim intends to keep on writing and producing more stories, but no laser weapons.
Visit the author’s website at http://www.jldoty.com
Contact the author at jld@jldoty.com
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