I opened my phone again and flipped to Rachel's picture. I had to know. I dialed her number and closed my eyes against the tears as I heard her ringtone. I carefully edged around the faery ring and picked up her cell. The screen was crushed, but it was still working. Two missed calls.
“Shit!” I screamed it. Big mistake. I heard boots crashing through the trees behind me. I looked around for an escape route, but I was trapped. The fence penned me in on one side while lights closed in from the other. I collapsed to my knees and buried my face in my hands. Let them arrest me. I would wait for the effect of the full moon to wear off and kill everyone in the prison. I just felt despair. Rachel was gone. I didn't even glance up when the first person came at me through the foliage. Hands grasped my shoulders and I looked up, startled.
Corey.
He wasn't looking at me but at the ring of mushrooms behind me. His green eyes were bright with worry and tinged with anger. I bit my lower lip and tried not to cry. There wasn't time for it. Corey pulled me to my feet and slipped both phones into his pocket. I didn't want to let go of either, but I knew that now wasn't the time to argue.
“Corey?” I asked, breathless from running but wanting to hear him say something, anything to me really.
“Just hurry up, George, there are cops crawling all over this place.” I followed him back towards the frozen creek and up the steep, boulder strewn hill on the other side. All the while, lights cut across our faces and seared into our eyes, but no one stopped us. They didn't even come close. Glamour. If there was anything Corey was good at it, it was magic.
His Silverado was parked in the leaf litter next to a park bench. I climbed into the passenger seat silently and waited for him to get in. There was some rustling from the bed of the truck and when Corey climbed in, he handed me a gun. I took it but looked at him pleadingly. I didn't know how to use it. “Just hold it,” he snapped as we drove slowly, headlights off, down the trail and towards the street. It didn't take long and soon we were speeding down the highway and past the spot where I had left Elizabeth. The cop car was gone and there was no sign of anything amiss.
“Corey,” I tried to touch his arm but he pulled away from me. I went silent and stared at the floor mats. I poked at a bit of dried mud with my boot. My earlier despair was leaking back in. Rachel. I swallowed the lump in my throat. Either she hadn't known there was a faery ring there, or she'd gone for it purposely. Neither option boded well for my friend. If she wasn't dead already, it was because she was being tortured. There weren't any other options. But why had she called me? What had she expected me to do? It might have been an accident, or it might not have. “They must have dragged her through the ring,” I said slowly and quietly, my voice barely audible over the rush of the highway. Corey didn't say anything. I hunched in my seat, the gun a cold weight across my legs, and closed my eyes. I had known using her magic would bring the Unseelie down on her; Rachel had known it, but she still did it. Why? I just didn't expect them to act so fast. Did she let it slip; did she drop her glamour completely?
“Elizabeth came to me. She told me where you were.” Oh. I owed her another favor. Oh well. I didn't much care at that moment. We rode the rest of the way home in silence. When we pulled up to the house, Elizabeth, and our resident vampire, Lynna, came running out. She grinned, purposely showing her teeth and gave me a slow once over.
“You look terrible,” Lynna remarked unnecessarily. I wanted to say something to her. I wanted to tell her that I had liked her better before she was turned. That no self respecting vampire lets a necromancer summon them. But I was too burnt out to say much of anything, so I let her pretend to like me and put an arm around my shoulders. I glanced back at Corey who was staring up at the fading darkness in the sky as Elizabeth curled herself around his arm and gave me a smug look. I turned away and followed Lynna into the foyer. At least I hadn't had to use the gun.
The marble floors and the expensive statues stared back at me, both lofty and condescending. I wasn't in the mood for it, so I pulled myself from her grip and began to ascend the staircase towards my room.
“I want to talk to you later,” Corey said from below. I stopped, but I didn't turn to look at him. This is not going to go over well. Not at all. I should climb out the window and leave. It was a ridiculous thought, but I was still entertaining it, despite the impossibility.
“Suit yourself,” I replied sullenly and dragged myself along the pompous upstairs hall and into my room.
If I was even here to talk to later.
CHAPTER TWO
GHOST
“Ethereal and often diaphanous, a ghost is an intermediate student's best friend. Though they can be lacking in physical strength, ghosts retain their soul and can often communicate with other, less formless undead entities and convert them to their master's cause.”
Thoughts of Rachel invaded my dreams as I tossed and twisted in Corey's bed. It turned out that I hadn't had enough guts to leave. Don't know where I'd planned on going anyway; I just hadn't wanted to talk to Corey, but in the end, I had stayed. Elizabeth was right: I was a goody-goody. Most of the time.
I had stripped out of my skirt and boots and stepped into a hot shower, only to be joined by Corey shortly after. Apparently, he had not just wanted to talk to me. In fact, he hadn't really wanted to talk to me at all. We had fucked quietly, furiously before falling asleep in each other's arms. We were both exhausted. I didn't know what had happened the few hours I was gone, but it couldn't have been good. Corey was mad, but not just at me.
I rolled over and stared at the curtains. The barest hint of light was showing underneath the lace, speckling the wall with dancing globes. I wanted to go back to dreaming, to another world that wasn't as fucked up as this, but I didn't have a choice in the matter.
I was leaking.
I shook Corey awake. He stretched and his eyes fluttered open. Upon seeing me, smelling me, his smile faded and he rolled away and off of the bed.
“God, George,” he snarled, pulling on some jeans. “I set an alarm.” I turned the clock towards me and stared at the time. Two forty-five.
“I didn't hear anything,” I said quietly, twisting the clock away again. Corey shook his head and wiped at his chest with his shirt. He was covered in it. In me. My flesh. I broke into a sob, my rotting throat giving just a little and making it sound more like I was wheezing. Corey's face softened and he came around to my side of the bed.
“It's okay, baby. I'll go get the stuff.” Oh no. Elizabeth hadn't told him. She had left it for me to do. That cruel bitch.
“Corey,” I said slowly, trying not to wince at the sound of my ruined voice. “There's something that I need to tell you.” He smiled sadly and reached out to touch me, but thought better of it and wiped his hand on his jeans instead.
“Tell me after. We have a lot to talk about anyway.” I shook my head.
“No!” I shouted, voice cracking. “You don't understand.” Corey's smile dropped and he waited, muscles tense.
“It's all gone, gone. I stole it. I gave it to Rachel. You know – ” I didn't need to say anymore. Understanding dawned on Corey's pale, Irish features.
“You're the blood thief?” he asked me carefully. I nodded and stared down at the floor. My eye was leaking down the side of my face, lugubrious zombie tears from ruined sockets. Thankfully, it didn't hurt, but it was disgusting. Really though, I was lucky to be able to see at all. Corey was an amazing necromancer.
“I'm sorry,” I whispered. At that moment, I really, truly was. Rachel was gone anyway. They had come for her, regardless of the bargain she had made with them and here I was, a rotting, stinking corpse. There would be no glamour for me today, no rounded hips and perky breasts, no shining hair and white toothed smile. Today, I was all me, all zombie. I was in a slightly slowed and altered state of decay but a state of decay nonetheless. Of all things undead, this is what I had been raised as. I wasn't glamorous, like a vampire, or whimsical, like a ghost. I was a zombie. But then a
gain, my soul was never supposed to have stuck around like this. I was a freak. I couldn't even die right.
I held my face in my hands and tried to cry. My tear ducts were shot, so I ended up shaking and wailing more than anything else. Apparently, Corey had run out of sympathy for me. He sighed and I heard his footsteps walking away. I looked up as he went into the bathroom, stripped out of his jeans again, and climbed into the shower. I wiped a hand across my face and cringed when it came away covered with a white substance.
The bed was a mess of green and brown fluid. I didn't want to know what that meant, but the whole place stunk to high hell. I opened a dresser drawer and put on what I liked to call my coffin clothes: black gloves, a long sleeved, floor length dress, as well as an auburn wig and a big hat with a veil to cover my face. I looked like a Victorian woman in mourning. Twelve hours a month of moonlight is not enough. What am I supposed to do without any glamour? I sighed. I was going to have to assume that this was how I was going to spend my day. I could hold out hope though. Corey had been pissed, but not worried. He had to have a backup somewhere, and if I was lucky, Anelie had been generous last night and we'd have a fresh supply sooner rather than later. I spritzed myself with a dash of perfume and wrinkled my nose at the mixture of flowers and death. Like a fucking funeral. But showering was out of the question. Water and corpses don't mix.
I refused to glance at myself in the mirror; it would only confirm my worst fear, the fear that I was getting worse. I didn't know what would happen if Corey couldn't find a solution. He claimed that he would, promised that he would, but still … that one thought kept nagging at the back of my mind. What if?
I turned away from the dresser and pulled back the curtains. The grounds here were beautiful, wild and untamed but with the hint that someone at some point had cared for them very much. Not anymore. The flower beds were overgrown and weeds filled every available nook and cranny; the central fountain ran dry, and the bricks in all the walkways were cracked with the occasional few missing here and there. I liked it like that. I could relate to it. Beauty lost to decay. I opened the window and breathed in the fresh air. It felt good, but at the same time, there was a dry heat to the air that I found disappointing. I always smelled worse in the heat. I sighed and left Corey to his shower; I didn't much feel like being around him at that point in time.
The inside of the mansion did not share the same fate as the outside. Corey was obsessed with detail. Each and every inch of the walls and the floor were cleaned regularly and decorated to perfection. His love of cleanliness and detail sometimes bordered on the edge of obsession, and I had wondered, more than once, if he had some kind of problem. Then again, he took my state, and the state of the others under his care, in stride. The undead couldn't be called neat on a good day.
I passed one of our silent servants in the hall; he didn't look at me, but his eyes pleaded, the stitches across his mouth stretching as he worked his jaw in a soundless call for help. I shut my eyes against the pain in his and kept walking. Downstairs, I found Lynna and Elizabeth chatting in the kitchen. Wonder Twins powers activate!
“Oh! You smell terrible!” Elizabeth squealed, pinching her nose with an actress's flair. “Go away before I throw up my breakfast!” I ignored her and the subsequent laughter at my expense. I opened the fridge door before I realized. Not for me. Not today. If I wanted to eat, it was going to have to be … something else. I closed it, to the delight of Lynna and Elizabeth who were chuckling again. I ignored them and wandered back into the main hall. Corey was coming down the stairs, toweling his wet hair and wearing nothing but boxers. The girls drifted in from the kitchen, and I watched in frustration and jealousy as they eyed Corey's wet body. “You look wonderful today, Corey,” Elizabeth cooed as she trailed her fingers down his arm. Corey ignored her.
“You look like hell,” he said, face tight with anger. Thanks for the vote of fucking confidence. “I want you to eat again.” I tried not to cry. Not again. I was only supposed to suffer through that once a month. If this wasn't torture, I didn't know what was. “There's a new one in the backyard, buried shallow. I went looking for you downtown and she followed me back here.” Oh. The blonde.
“How did you … ?” I asked though I wasn't sure I wanted to know.
“Actually,” Lynna said, licking her lips and sharing a look with her fellow starlet. “That was me.” I scowled. Eating vamp leftovers was like eating old French fries, wilted and spongy. Not that it ever tastes good. For the second time in as many days, I prepared myself to go to the extreme for survival. That was life, or death, I guessed, at its worst. Dog eat dog. Or human. I shivered.
“Gee, thanks.” I made my way towards the back door, stealing another glance at Corey before I went outside. Elizabeth was still fawning all over him. I wanted to snap her little glamoured neck. Oh well. It would wear off soon enough, and at the very least, if I was wrong and Corey had nothing up his sleeve, then she wouldn't even be able to touch him. I supposed there was a positive side to all of this.
“Bitch,” I muttered to myself as I wandered around the browning, overgrown hedges and into the back gardens. The flower beds back here were even worse than the ones up front, and it didn't take me long to find the patch of newly turned earth where the blonde was buried. Aside from the hole Corey had dug last night, it was the only patch of ground not covered in weeds. I knelt down, wincing at a strange sensation in my knees. I hated to think that all that was holding me together was magic; it was disconcerting. I pushed the thought from my mind and began to dig.
The grave was shallow and new, revealing its secret prize far sooner than I would have liked. I stared down at the first glimpses of pale and bloodied skin and tried not to throw up. I wasn't sure if I could, or what would happen if I did. I couldn't imagine it would bode well for me. “Goddess take me,” I whispered bitterly as my stomach cried out in hunger. I was a monster, true, but even monsters have to eat. I just needed to get my mind off the thought that this had been a person. Only last night this woman had been shoving a cross in my face and shouting bible quotes. Now she was lying in an unmarked grave waiting to be eaten by a zombie. Life was cruel.
I picked up her hand and cradled it to my chest for a long moment before covering it back up. I couldn't do it, just couldn't do it. I was weakhearted, I admit. Last night had taken all of my resolve and then some. And I hadn't spoken to that girl. Hadn't seen her lips move and her body tremble. I shook my head and poked at the dirt as my mind searched for something else to think of besides food.
Rachel.
That thought was even harder to stomach, so I stood up and dragged myself across the yard. Staring down at the blonde's grave and feeling sorry for myself wasn't going to do me much good. I knew that my self loathing and pity wouldn't get me far. It wouldn't get me a new body; it wouldn't make me alive again, but I couldn't help it. I didn't want to eat her. But if I didn't, my body would rot faster than it already was, and I would be left a sentient pile of flesh.
I decided to search the yard for the other grave.
I wandered around aimlessly, pausing to rest my hand on a wooden stake next to the garden shed. Another grave, this one older than the rest. I had used to mark them, didn't anymore. I had thought that by giving them some sort of proper burial, that it would make me feel better. It didn't. In fact, it only made things worse. It was too personal. Even now, I could remember who this grave belonged to. This one, previously a young man and also a religious nutbag, had made it up the back trellis and into Elizabeth's window before being discovered. How he had accomplished this, I didn't know. Normally Elizabeth was impossible to sneak up on. Whatever the reason, she had taken no time in dispatching him. I closed my eyes against the memory.
“It's practically a graveyard out here.” No one was there to comment, and I sighed again. I felt tired, mentally. Physically, I felt nothing. Through some small miracle of Corey's magic, I could move, I could talk, but I couldn't feel pain. I didn't know how he did it, but I was gra
teful for it. The state of my body was such that if I could feel, I was sure that I'd be writhing in agony.
I dropped my hand to my side, ignored the fluid that was seeping into the fingers of my glove and decided that this time, the safety of my mind was going to have to come before the safety of my body. I wasn't going to eat, not this time. If I was careful with my lie, Corey would never even find out.
I wandered around the yard until an appropriate amount of time had passed and ended up back in the living room just as an argument began to ensue.
“I won't do it.” Elizabeth was floating above the couch, knees crossed, and still just as beautiful as she always was, if less corporeal. “This is all her fault, anyway. I hate her.” I ignored her comment and adjusted the plastic covering on my favorite chair before sitting down.
“I'm sorry you feel that way,” Corey said pointedly, giving me a look. “Though I can understand where you're coming from.” I would have blushed had I had skin capable of such a thing.
“Sorry,” I mumbled uselessly. It wasn't like me to give in to Elizabeth, but I really did feel bad about it this time. But not for her, for me.
“Hmph.” Elizabeth turned away from me and stared at the towering brick fireplace. “I'm not speaking to you, you dyke.” I ignored her comment and tried to focus on the problem at hand. I would not give her the satisfaction of an argument.
“There must be somewhere we can get more,” I said, focusing my attention on Corey. “What I gave to Rachel was only enough for a week anyway.” His green eyes were narrowed, his mouth pinched, unhappy.
Gray and Graves: A Dark Fae Menage Urban Fantasy (The Three Courts of Faerie Book 1) Page 3
