Death Dealers

by M. G. Gallows

  “Touch them and lose a hand,” the Keeper warned.

  I scowled at him. I’d take my rusted-out shitheap over that collection of expensive useless any day. The garage door opened ahead of us, and we stepped onto the front driveway. Tall trees and stone fences topped with razor wire surrounded the yard. There were cameras everywhere. Security was definitely the owner’s priority.

  A cab rumbled up the driveway, a bulky yellow number that I recognized. Agni gave me that smug half-smile from the driver’s seat. “Hop in, Alex.”

  I hesitated. “If you try teleporting me anywhere, I’m going to puke in your cab.”

  Agni drove south. The splendor and wealth of the neighborhoods, gated and secure against the vulgar, unwashed commoners like myself, dwindled away until he exited onto the highway.

  “You’ve had a long day, Alex. What brought you to this part of town?”

  “Wasn’t my choice. Jocelyn had that bracelet of yours.”

  “Yes. The question is, why did she need to use it?”

  “We were at the Arlington. A drug den Downtown.”

  “Curious place for a date.”

  I flinched. “It wasn’t a- we were trying to find her brother.”

  “Hm. Jesse Kendall. Did you?”

  I glanced out the window towards Downtown. I thought I could see traces of hazy smoke in the night air, but I couldn’t be sure. But I told Agni everything. I didn’t like him, or the situation, but keeping secrets and acting petty wouldn’t save my bacon.

  “They’re using drugs and magic to make zombies,” I concluded. “Violating that one Edict. Sanctity. And a bunch of others. Who knows how many they’ve changed? How many are hooked?”

  “And where did they go?”

  “They bolted. Summoned all their junkies away and burned the place down. I bet they called the cops to pin us there.”

  “Did Jocelyn witness this ritual?”

  “No.”

  “So you have no evidence or witnesses to corroborate your story? This doesn’t inspire confidence, Alex.”

  “It’s what happened. What reason do I have to lie?”

  A sudden sharp pain formed in my chest. Walter Breckenridge’s hex glowed through the fabric of my shirt.

  “That’s a pretty compelling reason, isn’t it?” Agni asked, after the pain had faded.

  “You want evidence?” I dug into my pocket and produced the flower the Haitian had given me. “How’s this?”

  “A flower?”

  “The man who gave it to me thought it was important, before he died.”

  “And what do you intend to do with this flower? Present it to the Council and say ‘case closed’?”

  The jerk had a point. “I don’t know. I need to talk to someone. Someone familiar with Vodou, or the potions they use to make zombies.”

  “The mages of Haiti keep many secrets from the Society, possibly because many of their traditions violate the Edicts.”

  When we arrived on Sutcliffe Street, Agni parked in front of my house. “What’s your next step, Alex?”

  I shrugged and got out of the car. “Hit the internet. Look for some answers.”

  He shook his head. “Are you familiar with the Westbank Art Gallery?”

  “No.”

  “Take a visit tomorrow morning. Ask the receptionist about Vodou. You may find better answers there than on the internet.”

  His ancient taxi roared off and disappeared.

  Westbank? Ask the receptionist? I didn’t know what game Agni was playing, but it almost sounded helpful.

  My answering machine was beeping when I got through the door. “Alex, it’s Dietrich. I just had an interview with two detectives who wanted to know about you. They wouldn’t tell me much, but they don’t have to, do they? I want to talk to you the moment you hear this, I don’t care what the hour is, understand?”

  I deleted it and stripped out of my street clothes. I caught a hint of Jocelyn’s perfume on my jacket. Heather honey. It was hard to get her off my mind. She had been the most helpful person involved in my dilemma so far, she needed help, and she was beautiful.

  But our motives didn’t sync. I didn’t care about her brother. His actions convinced me he was trouble. When the Society came calling, and I had to give them Jesse, would she back me up? Or would she run with him and leave me to burn, only for him to turn on her later? I thought about how tight she held onto Eddie. Her family, twisted as it was, meant more to her than anything.

  I shook my head. All I had was a flower and a few ideas about what the Brothers Midnight wanted. Vodou and zombies. I’d see where that took me and get evidence on my own.

  I took some Aspirin from my bathroom cupboard, then sat at my computer to do some research. You’d think you can’t research magical lore online. That’s not true. Basic information is prevalent across the web, often shared by ordinary people with an interest in the occult and supernatural. They could never, in a thousand years, guess that they were toes-deep in the real deal. That’s the beauty of being a mage, you know it when you see it. Most ordinary people don’t, so they pass over it like it’s fantastical nonsense.

  Still, that doesn’t mean all information is easy to find. Mages covet their secrets, and even those born before electricity recognized the power the internet represented. So they did what they always do with forbidden knowledge, they destroyed it or hid it.

  So what I found was mostly bullshit. Hollywood, and racism, had done a number on both topics, presenting Vodou as a savage faith practiced by ‘primitive’ African immigrants and evil wizards. As for zombies, well. Everyone knows how modern perspectives on zombies turned out.

  I had even less luck with the flower. ‘White and purple’ was a description that applied to a lot of different plants, and after a few hours of browsing, I pushed away from the PC in frustration.

  My eyes ached, and I was torn between brewing a fresh pot of coffee, or trying to get some sleep. Maybe a few hours will help, I thought. For all I knew, I could have been staring at the answer the whole time and not realized.

  I jumped as my burner phone rang.

  “Alex, I heard about the Arlington.” Piotr’s voice was icy. “You told me you did not want war. This looks like war. I wipe my hands of it. Don’t call me again until I call you.”

  He hung up before I could utter a response. Agni’s tip started to sound more appealing, so I looked up the address for the Westbank Art Gallery.

  The clock read past midnight, so I crawled into bed.

  The squeal of tires on asphalt outside woke me up. Frantic voices approached my home, and fists pounded on my front door. It felt like my head had just hit the pillow, but the clock by my bed said it was two in the morning.

  What now? I thought. Jocelyn, Jesse, the Mambas? An army of zombies, come to finish me?

  I lurched to the door and swung it open. Donnie was on the other side. He was pale and shaking.

  “Alex!” He cried. “Y’gotta help! Help her!”

  Max hovered outside. Blood stained his face and shirt. He babbled to himself, eyes vacant. Frankie and Jeb pushed by him, and carried a body into my home. It was a girl, in her late teens or early twenties. She gurgled through a tear in her neck that pumped blood onto my floor with every dying heartbeat.

  THIRTEEN

  I never expected to discover the Gallows. When the Visatori had abandoned me, they’d destroyed my sense of belonging, of family. I was rudderless and numb. I’d ventured into the city, somewhere I knew the Visatori wouldn’t go, and tried to make sense of the empty world I found myself in.

  I was on the subway when I felt the tinge of undeath. Norton Mwela was on one of his rare trips to gather ‘food’, medical waste from a local hospital. He tried to evade me, but I blundered into the Gallows, struck by suicidal curiosity.

  The sanctuary’s founder, one Artemis Hughes, had gathered them together over the decades, and taught them as best he could on how to survive, before he vanished. They had survived, but they lived in
darkness and squalor like rats. It was heartbreaking, and I felt compelled to help them, to show them some compassion, some dignity, so they didn’t have to feel like monsters. Because they weren’t.

  And I thought I’d be part of something again.

  I got a job, found a place. Every penny I could spare, I invested in the Gallows. Beds, electricity, the internet. Weeks turned into months, and then a year. It became a home, not a miserable hole to hide in. To see them take joy and pride in that was a balm for the soul.

  But as proud as I was, I couldn’t help but feel responsible for them. That meant being the authority. I set limits. Hounded them to be sure they ate and kept underground. Because the hunger was always there, and one moment of weakness would break the cardinal rule of the Gallows. Hughes had carved the words into the brickwork of their refuge. A daily affirmation.

  We do not eat the living.

  A year of being the caretaker of the Gallows flashed through my mind, as I watched Jeb and Frankie put the bleeding girl on my bed. They shouted, pleaded for me to act. To have some sort of answer.

  “No.” Panic shattered my last ounce of calm. “No, no, no!” I yanked them off the girl.

  The wound had opened her jugular and windpipe. That she was still alive seemed impossible.

  “The kit in my bathroom!” I snarled at them.

  It doesn’t matter. It can’t save her.

  I told that part of my mind to shut the fuck up.

  Jeb ransacked the bathroom to find the First-Aid kit under the sink, and I swept my nightstand clean to spill the contents out and rummage through it.

  Don’t kid yourself, you’re no EMT.

  I had dismembered bodies. I’d never had to fix them.

  You can’t fix her.

  “What the hell happened?” I asked, loud enough to silence everyone. I pressed the wound with some cotton. The most useless gesture in the history of useless gestures.

  Frankie grimaced. “We were at a concert, they were talking-”

  “Who?”

  “Max,” Jeb said. “She’s his girlfriend, Maddie. They were talking, then arguing-“

  “He bit her?” I sounded hysterical, despite how calm I felt inside. It was like I wasn’t in my body, but away from it, apart from the chaos. “Call Nine-One-One!”

  Donnie blinked at me from the doorway. “But-”

  “You should have taken her to a hospital, you fucking moron!” I snarled. He retreated, his footfalls thumped down the front steps. “Get out! All of you!”

  They retreated to my yard to pace and curse at each other. I didn’t care if the cops showed up. Everything had gone south in the worst way possible.

  There’s no way to help her.

  The bitter truth of it settled onto my shoulders. A doctor would know how to help her.

  If they could get here…

  But there was no time. Her blood was a puddle on my sheets, and her skin so pale it was almost blue. Haggard gurgles came through the hole in her neck. Her eyes—sharp green like fresh leaves in Spring, or a river stream—locked on mine.

  Oh God, I thought. She’s dying on my bed, she knows it.

  They had attacked her, then carted her off to a stranger’s house to die on his bed. I took her hand. Her grip was weak, and her heart-rate had slowed. Air bubbled from her wound.

  “I-I’m sorry,” I whispered. “This is all my fault. If I hadn’t let them-”

  I paused. Her wrists had scabbed puncture marks, maybe a dozen each. And more near trailing up to the inside of her elbow.

  Was she a Stig user? She hadn’t been at the Arlington. Flesh and blood, bone and breath. Could she know something? Something that would help? A grim choice formed in my mind. I had seconds to go over the morality of what I was about to do.

  “Hey,” I said. Her eyes met mine again. “I… can help you. You won’t like it. It will hurt. It will leave you different. It’s not a choice you should have to make, but I can let you die, or I can do something that may feel worse than dying. You won’t understand, you’ll never understand, even if we had time. You won’t be alive, but you won’t be dead. That’s- that’s the best I can do, kid.”

  I took a long, shaky breath. “One blink for yes, two blinks and I… I let you go.”

  One blink. She squeezed my hand with all the strength she had left.

  I nodded and got to my feet. I needed things. Symbols. Items. I went into the living room and grabbed Hughes’ book. When I had introduced myself to the wights, Deb had given me a journal written by its founder, left behind when he vanished. Artemis Hughes had been two centuries old, and devoted his undeath to understanding his condition, buried under millennia of mythology and conjecture.

  It was as scientific as he could make it, for someone born in the 19th century. From his journal, I knew why wights feel a hunger for human flesh. Why they needed to stay close to their burial soil, and more.

  Unavoidably, his observations had insights into necromancy, though Hughes wasn’t a mage himself. The journal didn’t have spells to memorize—magic doesn’t work that way—but it gave me ideas on how to create them. A burst of necrotic energy that stunned the undead like a taser. A spell that scoured dead organic material from an area, and one that decayed it into ash. I could preserve a corpse for months without refrigeration.

  And I knew how to make someone into a wight.

  I had never considered it before. I didn’t have any friends, or enemies, I’d want to inflict such an existence on. But there I was, about to perform it on a complete stranger.

  I went into the living room and grabbed the terracotta herb pot by my door. The girl’s eyes followed me as I returned.

  “Yeah, you’re not gonna like this one bit,” I said. I dumped the soil over her legs and torso. It was enough to count as a burial. Then I ran into the kitchen and grabbed a knife. Her eyes widened as I cut my palm.

  “Sorry about this,” I said. I grabbed a clump of earth and pressed the bloody muck against the hole in her neck. She let out a gargled scream. I grimaced, then took a long breath and cast my magic on her, as much as I could muster.

  Her soul rocked in its moorings and tried to pry free as death overtook her. I saw her divided, one body and one soul. Her scream turned into a shriek that battered at my ears and made the windows rattle. I didn’t know how she could scream so loud, even if her lungs weren’t full of blood.

  But I realized her body hadn’t made a sound. It was her soul that screamed. Her spectral eyes met mine. I stared back, uncertain of my course but determined to see it through.

  Her body went limp, but ensnared by my magic, her essence returned to it. I held the mud against her neck until I was sure it would stay put. Then I pushed the remaining soil around, so her body was more or less covered, and pulled my blood-stained blanket over her like a shroud.

  I sent a steady current of magic into her makeshift grave. The pulse of necromancy chilled the room and fog gathered at my feet. When I sensed the fractured bonds between her body and soul, I bound them together again. That magic was a part of her now. It would be what held her together for the rest of her existence.

  The process was slow. Whenever I felt a ‘leak’ of soulstuff, I gathered it back into her body and sealed it with my power. After a while, I could feel the broken bonds begin to ‘clot’. She was whole again, more or less. But not in any way that was natural.

  Every bruise ached, my throat was sore, and I hadn’t moved from her side in almost an hour. I limped into the bathroom to wash off, bandaged my cut, and got dressed.

  Then I went into the kitchen. Part of me resisted, but I knew that if I let it go, I’d never get a handle on it again. I took the box down from the fridge and tucked its contents into my belt behind my back.

  Then I went outside.

  Donnie, Jeb and Frankie still stood on my lawn. They’d ended their shouting match to wait, confused and scared, like family members in a hospital waiting room. Only Jeb had the guts to look me in the eye. Frankie watched h
is shoes. Donnie looked past me, into my house.

  Max sat on the front step. He rocked back and forth, holding temples. I could see the blood on his hands, but I couldn’t see his face.

  “Why didn’t you take her to a hospital?” My voice was cold and steady.

  Donnie didn’t have it in him to answer, so Jeb did. “We thought you could stop the bleeding. Donnie said, maybe you could save her.”

  Donnie gawked at his friend, and then to me. “I didn’t- I don’t-”

  I stared him down, and he shut up. Then I turned my gaze to the wight on my porch.

  “Max.”

  “I didn’t mean it,” he said. He repeated it several times. “I-I didn’t mean it. She wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t let me explain. So stupid-” He muttered to himself, over and over, a broken record of half-completed thoughts. He didn’t mean to. She wouldn’t listen.

  He just got so mad.

  “It won’t happen again,” he promised. “It won’t. I swear to God. It won’t happen again.”

  I exhaled. “Yeah.”

  Then I drew the old revolver from my belt and shot him through the skull.

  FOURTEEN

  Max’s body flopped into my long-neglected flower bed.

  “What- what did you do!?” Donnie shouted.

  I met his gaze and stepped onto the lawn towards him. He stumbled over his feet and landed on his ass. The surrounding air darkened into an icy fog.

  “You were supposed to watch him,” I said. “You said he was fine. Was he fine, Donnie?”

  He didn’t have an excuse left in him. He stared at Max’s body and started sobbing. Black tears streaked his face.

  I looked at Jeb, who withered at my stare. “Get back to your tomb.”

  He nodded. “W-what about Max?”

  I snarled and lashed my arm at Max’s corpse. His flesh and clothing blackened and crumbled. In moments, there was nothing left but ashen dust. I went inside and slammed the door behind me. A few moments later, I heard Donnie’s old town car leave my yard.