Dead Things (2 page)

But that’s on this side. Over on the Twilight Side, that between world where the dead park their carcasses waiting for whatever comes next, he’s a burning, churning mass of faces. The Loa, those same Voodoo spirits who gave him enough keno numbers to keep him in booze and cigarettes, dance under his skin, glowing like hot coals. I’m not sure he’s even human anymore.

After Washington died, word started getting through the grapevine that he was doing some really nasty magic down there. It happens. Cheating death for a bit isn’t as hard as you’d think. He’d been screwing around with the Loa, feeding on ghosts he’d hunted down in nearby towns.

Nobody tried to stop him, of course. That’s not how wizards roll. The only interest anyone took was purely academic. We couldn’t give a rat’s ass as long as he doesn’t rain on our parade or draw too much attention from the normals.

Magic’s like Fight Club that way. You don’t talk about it. Can’t have the regular folk knowing this shit’s real. We might have to share.

“You are one tenacious motherfucker, Eric Carter,” Washington says. He tips back a Miller, takes a drag on his cigarette.

“It’s part of my charm,” I say.

On the other side, I see the faces in his skin flare up like gasoline dumped on a bonfire. Seeing the land of the dead overlaid onto our side has its uses, though it’s sometimes hard to see what’s real and what isn’t. But I’ve had years of practice. Mages are born with a knack. Illusions, transformations, divinations. Some people are just better at some things than others.

I got dead things. Yay me.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you. I knew you’d come here,” Washington says. “Once I killed enough people I knew you’d sense it. Come straight for me.”

I’m good, but I’m not that good. I point a thumb over my shoulder. “Nah. Just lucky. Got a scanner in the car. Heard the cops roll out. I was about to head south. I figured you’d fucked off to Mexico by now.”

Washington had been in his swamp palace doing his thing for a while. Not really dead, not really alive. At some point, probably about a year or so ago, he took things a little further off the reservation. Instead of begging the Loa for favors, he started trapping them, experimenting with them, slicing them into snack size pieces. Stitching them together and wearing them on his soul like a psycho killer’s skin suit.

This has made some things very not happy. As a general rule of thumb, you don’t fuck with things that have big brothers and sisters. They might come after you. Or worse, they might send someone like me.

“You could just leave me be,” he says. “Drop this whole farce and let one of your own live his life in peace. One necromancer to another.”

I’m not a big fan of that word. Makes me think of towers on the moors and medieval skullcaps. Sure I bleed the occasional black ram under a full moon, but come on. It’s the 21st fucking century. Get with the program.

“Two things,” I say, ticking off points on my fingers. “One, you don’t have a life to live. I’m not sure you’re even human anymore, not that I have a problem with that. Different strokes, you know. And two, this is kind of my job. I have a contract. Sorry.”

“Don’t say I didn’t give you a chance, boy,” he says.

“Yeah, ’cause that worked out so well for you back in Florida.”

I’d hit him down at his mansion in the swamp. He’d been using that as a ritual and research space. Smart move. The place sat on top of a nexus of wild magic that bubbled up through the swamp like methane. Whoever built the place knew what they were doing. Gave his spells a lot more oomph.

I almost didn’t make it. Got lucky. While he was pounding the shit out of me and tossing me around the room, I saw a piece of one of the Loa hanging off him like a loose thread. That’s all I needed. I tossed a banishing spell at it, tore it loose and sent it home to mommy.

Like an unraveling sweater, it started pulling out the rest of the Loa. Washington’s hold on them wasn’t as strong as he’d thought. Scared the holy fuck out of him. He tossed me through a window and bugged out, salvaging what he could.

Took me three days to track him to Miami. Holed up in a four-star resort on Fisher Island. Thought surrounding himself with salt water would hide him. It did for a while. But like a lot of mages, he keeps thinking magic’s the only way to do anything.

I found him by grilling the local prostitutes until I found one he’d hired. Man spends a thousand bucks a night trying to hide from me and goes for a cheap hooker with a meth habit. Twenty bucks and a fake badge is all it took.

“Look,” I say. “We’ve been playing hide and seek now for the better part of a month. I know I’m sick of it. I figure you probably are, too.”

“You sound like you want to make a deal with me.”

“No, I just want to get this over with.” I draw the Browning, unload a couple of rounds at him, bolt for an overturned table. Even with damn near perfect shots, the bullets are just a, “Hey, how ya doin’?” If they make a dent in Washington’s defenses I’ll be surprised.

I hear a loud snap of splitting wood and the building shudders. A tremendous crack tears through the floor, ripping it in half. I jump aside, pop another round. That’s three. I don’t want to lose count.

Washington calls up a purple fireball and heaves it in my direction. He tried that crap in the swamp. I learned the hard way how to deal with it.

I pull a fistful of powder from the pouch on my belt and throw it between us, making a point of scattering as much as possible on the closest corpses.

The spell in the powder works a treat. It’ll do fuck all if he pulls out the good china, but this is just a warm-up. The fireball fizzles the second it passes over the line of scattered powder.

We could do this all day, but I’m really not in the mood. I haven’t had lunch yet, and the nearest tacos are twenty miles up the road.

I feint left, pop off a couple more rounds. Five. He levitates a table and throws it at me. I duck and it gets me closer to him. I don’t want to make this look too easy.

More gunfire. There’s a sense of wounded pride coming from the gun every time I purposely miss. Seven rounds total. It’s time to get this over with.

I dive under a thrown chair, smack right into Washington. Before I know it he’s got his hand around my throat.

He slams me hard against the wall. I’m beginning to think maybe this was a mistake, hope that the spell that I scattered onto the corpses is doing its job.

“You thought you could kill me with a gun?” Washington says. “You’re weak. And I’m gonna enjoy snackin’ on your soul.”

I make a croaking sound. It’s the best I can do under the circumstances.

“You got something to say, son?” I nod and he lets up his grip a little bit.

“Gotcha.”

He freezes as he feels the barrel of the Browning press against the side of his skull.

I’ve been keeping my distance this last month because I couldn’t think of another way to take him out. I needed to be close enough to get the drop on him while he was distracted. And I needed help to pull it off. How nice of him to leave me some corpses lying around.

The headless body standing behind him pulls the trigger and bullet number eight—made of silver and gold and engraved with the symbols for all of the families of the Loa: Ghede, Rada, Kongo, Petro, Nago, blessed by Baron Samedi and Maman Brigitte themselves—blows his head off his shoulders.

His body falls to the floor, green flames erupting from the stump of his neck. The fire spreads quickly and I pull his hand from my throat to keep from being consumed with him. He’s dying for real this time.

A little shred of his soul stands on the twilight side looking at me, dumbfounded. Then panicked as the Loa tear loose from him, each shadowy figure ripping its way free.

Soon he’s nothing but a withered image, glowing dull as wind-blown coals, and then gone.

Chapter 2

There’s no point cleaning anything up. I wouldn’t even know where to start. More Troopers will be here soon and I’d rather not have to talk my way out.

I leave the truck in the lot. It’s stolen and I like Washington’s Caddy better. It’s a sweet ride. I throw a don’t-look-at-me spell on it and head north to New Mexico. About ten miles up I see a line of State Troopers barreling down the highway.

I’d hate to be them right now. They’re going to need a shovel to pick up all the pieces. I pull over to let them pass, watch them disappear in the rearview mirror. And that’s when the shakes start.

You’d think by now, after a lifetime of dealing with the dead, after years of honing my craft and seeing horrors even worse than what Washington did in that bar down the road, that I’d be used to it. That it wouldn’t get to me.

You’d be wrong.

I get out of the car and throw up all over the side of the road. Bodies I can handle. The dead I can handle. But what he did back there, what he could have done to me if I’d fucked it up.

I get back into the car, wipe my mouth on a crumpled up map, pull onto the road. Take all those thoughts and shove them deep in the back of my head where they can’t get in my way.

I cross over into New Mexico about an hour later, make good time and roll into Carlsbad before sunset. Hit a motel on the outskirts of town by the college. Twelve-unit deal with cable TV, wireless internet, a cafe and grocery next door. I grab a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red from the store.

I pick up a few wanderers on the way to my room, untethered ghosts that aren’t tied to a place. Most of them are trauma patients from the nearby hospital. Burn victims, car crashes, gunshots. Yeah, I run with the cool kids.

Ghosts come to me like moths to a flame. I can see them and they can see me. They hover like groupies. I scatter a handful of sunflower seeds outside the door, stick a couple of Post-its with palindromes written on them to the doorjamb. If I really wanted to get rid of the ghosts I’d nail a dead cat to the windows, but that’s always struck me as a bit extreme.

They stop at the door, counting the seeds, reading the palindromes backward and forward and doing it all over again like good little obsessive compulsives. I close the door on their empty faces.

I take a shower, wash off the sweat and dust. Adrenaline had me going back at the bar and I didn’t notice Washington had smacked me around pretty good until I was ten miles down the road. Bruises, cuts, one of my ribs feels like it’s been hit with a sledgehammer. Butterfly bandages take care of the worst of the cuts.

It’s hard to see the bruises. I’m tattooed over most of my body. Neck to wrists to ankles. Wards and sigils. Symbols in dead languages to help ward off threat, divert attention, help me focus my magic. Started collecting them years ago and I keep adding ink.

I’ve got one that looks like a starburst in an eye that wards off spells that affect the mind, another of an armadillo that’s pretty good against gunshots. Does fuck all for baseball bats. Found that out the hard way in an alley in Philadelphia.

Got a murder of crows in flight that covers my chest from shoulder to shoulder. I can’t look at it too long in the mirror. It keeps moving. Gives me a headache.

Compared to me, the Illustrated Man’s got a tramp stamp he tore off a yoga mom from Orange County. One patch on my left forearm is bare of tattoos, but covered in small scars. A lot of my spells need blood, and there’s not always a black ram around when you need one.

I crack open the bottle of Johnnie Walker and pour some into a glass that’s been thoughtfully sanitized for my protection. I sit in the one chair in the room, a recliner that only goes partway back. Feels like home.

Which it pretty much is. I don’t do well staying in one place for very long. Roots are not something I want to lay down. Been there, done that. Didn’t work out so well. My life is a succession of rest stops and cheap hotels. Walmart fashion and estate sale finds. I’ve got three suits from Goodwill that were in fashion in the sixties. Most of my stuff belonged to dead men. Like my new Cadillac.

I’m getting settled in with my second glass of whisky when there’s a pounding on my door. I pull the Browning, look through the peephole. Hotel staff. I thumb back the hammer of the gun, open the door onto two men and a woman I’ve never seen before.

Then I notice one of the men isn’t wearing any pants.

“Oh, it’s you. Come on in.”

The woman and one of the men step into the room with an almost regal bearing. The pantsless one half-lopes, half-skips in. Thank god he’s at least wearing briefs. And for some reason, his socks and shoes. I offer the chair to the lady, let the men figure out where they want to be. I stand next to the door.

As Loa go the Barons Samedi and Kriminel and Samedi’s wife, Maman Brigitte, are about as high-ranking as you get. They head up the Ghede family, the Loa that oversee the Dead. Loa aren’t the only spirits that do that sort of thing, of course, but they’re some of the better known.

The Loa possess their followers, riding their bodies like horses, rather than appear on their own. If they don’t have a member of their flock around I suppose some random housekeeper will do in a pinch. Their hosts won’t remember any of this. Which is probably good for the guy with no pants.

“Barons,” I say. “Madame. I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow night.”

“We come when we fucking well want to come,” Kriminel says in a thick Haitian accent that sounds weird coming out of a middle-aged white guy in tightie whities. He snarls, spit running down his chin. He’s always like this.

“We thought it wise to come sooner, Eric,” Maman Brigitte says.

“Is something wrong?”

“Wrong?” Samedi says. Compared to Kriminel, his and Brigitte’s accents are almost unnoticeable. “No, nothing’s wrong. Our children and brothers and sisters have come home to us.”

When they hired me, Samedi told me that he was representing all of the families. Washington had stolen Loa from each one. They weren’t afraid of Washington per se, but they were concerned. He had ensnared so many of them that the Royalty didn’t want to take any chances and end up in his hands.