Nightshifted (30 page)

Ti nodded. I decided to lay everything on the line. “And I don’t want to die alone. I want to die with someone that I know, that knows me. It’s not too much to ask. At least I hope it’s not.”

“You’re not going to die, Edie—”

I shook my head back and forth. “Answers. Everything. Now.”

“You might not like hearing some of it, you know. If I start talking, I’m not going to sugarcoat things, or lie.”

“I can take it.”

One of his eyebrows rose. “For starters, I’m married.”

My stomach lurched, but I kept my game face on. “Go on.”

“She was perfect. Completely perfect.” He sat up, perhaps so as not to make eye contact with me, and stared up at my ceiling.

“Was?” I asked. “You didn’t—” I imagined him rising up from the grave, hungry for the brains of his loved ones.

“No. She’s been dead for almost two hundred years. So have I. I was killed after what’s now called the Battle of Saltville, in October of 1864.”

I did some math. “In the Civil War?”

“Union Cavalry.”

This was more like it. I placed my hand on his back and scooted closer. “Tell me.”

“I was injured in the battle. Some Confederate asshole came through the hospital tent and knifed all of us.” His voice was distant. I waited without saying a word. “Then, for a long while, I don’t remember. I had a master. I don’t remember much else. I did what I was told.” He shrugged. “Around 1950, I woke up. I assume my master truly died, and some portion of my soul he kept in thrall was finally returned to me.”

“Woke up—straight from 1864?”

He nodded. “I could barely understand the language. There were states I hadn’t heard of. Cars. Planes.”

I waited patiently for him to continue.

“I only barely knew what I was. And when I figured it out, I spent a long time working at cemeteries, digging graves. One time to put bodies in, and another time to pull them out.” He turned to look at me over his shoulder as he said this, and I steeled myself not to cringe. “Eventually I became a funeral home manager so that no one would ask questions.” He sat cross-legged, and I moved to be behind him, holding him, my breasts and silly badge pressed against his back. “There was nothing like Y4 back then. Or maybe there was—I don’t know, the vampires are good at looking out for themselves, but maybe zombies weren’t included. But for me, there was nothing.”

“How did you survive?” I didn’t mean the day-to-day business of survival, he’d made do, that was clear. I meant the endlessness of marching time, the loneliness of utter solitude. How could anyone face that and stay sane with even half a soul?

“I had a wife and a boy. They died while … while I was otherwise occupied. I looked them up, as best I could. The Internet’s made it easier now, even though a lot of old records were lost. But I am sure they are in heaven. And if I do enough good here on earth, I’ll get to someday join them. Whenever it is that I manage to cleanly die.”

I blinked. “You believe in heaven? For real?”

“It exists. It has to. And I’m going to get into it.” He put a hand to his own chest. “When I do the right thing, I think sometimes I can feel my soul start to grow.”

Stating things you desired to be true did not make them be so. An old quote about wishes, fishes, and nets that I’d read once burbled up from my subconscious. Ti took my silence for the negation that it was, and turned to look over his shoulder at me again. “Your own soul’s on the line, and you don’t believe?”

I pushed away from his back. “If I believe that I have a soul—which even at this late stage in the game, maybe I don’t—that might make sense. There’s a spirit that people have when they’re alive that they don’t when they’re dead. I’ve watched people die before. I know.” Ti nodded. I knew Ti had watched people die before. Maybe even killed them himself, when he was someone else’s servant. Who was I to judge—I’d killed someone too. “But if you believe in a heaven,” I went on, pushing myself even farther away from him, “then you have to believe that someone’s keeping score. And if someone’s keeping score, if what we do really matters, then life ought to be fair. And I’m sorry, it isn’t. Shitty things happen to good people all the time, and bad people never get what’s coming to them. Don’t tell me that there’s a heaven as some sort of perverse reward for being good. That is bullshit of the highest caliber, bullshit through and though.”

“Then why do you try? Why do you care?”

I inhaled and exhaled a few times, with the effort of trying to put how I felt into words. “Because someone has to. Someone who really exists.” I crossed my arms on top of my breasts. “And also they pay me.”

Ti laughed. He reached out to grab me, and I let him. He pulled me near and held me close. “Not enough,” he said softly, after a time.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Definitely not enough.”

We lay there, thoughtful and quiet, the outside world forgotten, for a full thirty seconds. And then his phone rang. Neither of us moved for a second, because the sound felt so foreign and unfamiliar—it had no meaning in the new space we’d created. Then he sat up beside me and reached for his cast-off jeans.

“Hello? Yes. The address. Yes. Yes. I’ll bring cash.” He flipped the phone closed.

“Does that mean what I think it means?”

Ti looked at me, at all of me, naked atop the comforter on my bed, his expression bittersweet. “Get dressed.”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

As an afterthought, I grabbed Grandfather on my way out of the house, and shoved him inside my coat. Ti drove us to a bank first. I asked why we couldn’t use the ATM, but ATMs had limits, and the amount of cash Ti was drawing out required a teller. I was going to fight him on this, but he pointed out he’d saved a lot of money because he didn’t need to eat.

And then we drove. Fear and adrenaline and the magic of good sex could only last so long. I found myself drowsing against the door of his car. We were going to buy information, and then we’d see what came next. I hoped that some plan eventually included me sleeping in it, or me getting a prescription for modafinil.

We parked in a warehouse district that didn’t look so bad. There was no trash on the sidewalks, and the streets had been recently swept clean of snow. He reached under the passenger seat between my legs and pulled out a thin case. Opening this revealed a Glock 23 with a clip of .40 S&W rounds—I’d shot both of them before at the range.

“You didn’t say there’d be guns.”

Ti gave me a half smile. “I’m undead, not stupid.” He leaned forward and tucked it into the rear waistband of his pants, then hid it with his coat. I reached for the door.

“You’re not coming, Edie.” He clicked the button on his door, locking mine. “Just stay here.”

“You think it’s a trap?” I peered out of my window and scanned the surrounding area with one eye. What distance was my crazy vision good for? All I could see glowing nearby was my own hand, and when I looked normally, just my breath fogging the glass.

“It could be. But I’m a zombie, remember?” He leaned over and kissed me on my lips. I remembered the heat we’d just had, and parts of me flared again, hungry. He unlocked his own door before I could protest, got out, and then clicked the door lock button again behind himself, trapping me in. Grandfather muttered something I was sure was unkind.

“Shush, you,” I said, putting one hand over my eye and watching Ti go into the front of the building. The side of it looked like a garage. His nimbus went through the glass door and faded—there was an aftervision of it, a ghost in my eyeball, perhaps—but not even odd shadow-vision could help me see through distant walls.

“Be safe,” I whispered. I concentrated harder and harder. Time passed—long enough for any true arrangement to have been made. I heard the sharp report of a gun—and then two more shots.

“Shit.” I tried for the door, and found it locked. This was a nineteen-seventies El Camino, for crying out loud—but when I looked closer, none of it was actually stock. The door-lock tabs were receded completely into the door—all the better to eat you with, my dear. Ti’s door wouldn’t open either.

Creepy-ass serial-killer-style fucking car. I pulled Grandfather out of my coat. “Can you—” I said, waving him at the door. More gunshots, and Grandfather growled something I couldn’t understand. Dropping the CD player, I scooted back to sit in the middle of the car and kicked the passenger side window with both my feet as hard as I could. No good—I only hurt both my heels. I cussed at myself and the door before opening up his glove box. Under years of registration papers, I found paydirt. A black metal flashlight.

I didn’t know what adrenaline I had left to dredge up at that point, or if my feelings for Ti had blossomed into a manic kind of love. But I scrunched my eyes closed and hit the window as hard as I could, and it shattered on my third try. I ran the flashlight against the window’s rim, knocking any loose pieces down, before carefully shimmying myself out. Then, clutching Grandfather, as he was the closest thing to a weapon that I had, I ran to the front door in the open, me and my winter coat bright against the snow, not thinking a second thought about how stupid I was being until I was nearly inside.

“Ti!” I shouted as I went in. There was a reception area here, with cheap desks and thinly upholstered chairs. “Ti!”

“Edie, stay back!” I heard from the inside. My heart soared. He was still alive.

“Ducken!”
Grandfather commanded, and finally I knew what he meant. I dropped to my knees as gunshots from the other room whizzed over my head. Of course Ti was still alive—I needed to concentrate on keeping me that way too. I crawled toward a desk and heard a sound I recognized from the range, but more clearly knew from horror movies and violent video games—a shotgun, being primed.

I pushed the nearest desk over and cowered inside of it. But to my left, if I winked just right, I found I could spot a nearby brightness, with a farther one nearing quickly. I could see through walls after all. They just had to be close ones.

“Ti, to your left!”

“
Mädchen! Lauf weg!
” Grandfather commanded.

Too late. There was a spattering volley of pellet shots from the next room. But Ti’s gun answered, or at least I thought it did, and the second aura dropped and faded.

“Ti?” I asked. I peered as best I could. I didn’t get an answer, but the level of visible brightness didn’t change. Another glow came into focus, on the far right-hand side.

“Ti, to your right! Far back corner!” I had no idea what the room he was in was like—but the second aura paused, and Ti’s gun went off once more. The other aura stumbled and then fell.

I wanted to crawl around the edge of the desk I was hiding behind. It was only particle board, almost worthless for protection. But the walls were even cheaper drywall; they wouldn’t be any better. “Ti?” He would answer, if he could. Reasons that he couldn’t, I tried not to think on.

I patted my coat down and found my phone. I flipped into my history and redialed Sike. It rang two times, three times—maybe I’d blown all my chances at getting her to answer—then she picked up, and I didn’t give her a chance to say hello. “Remember how you told me to call if you said I needed you? I need you!” I shouted over gunshots from the other room.

“Where are you?”

“Mädchen, raus aus diesem Zimmer! Ram!”

I gave her the address over Grandfather’s rising orders, and she hung up. How far away was she? Would she really come? I added to my desk fort by putting the chair and Grandfather’s CD player between the particle board and myself, then checked to make sure I could still see any action.

A swarm of dim clouds, converging on my brighter near one. How much ammunition did Ti have? I thought about running out for more—but how would I get it to him? Shots rang through the small room, leaving holes behind, and dear God, it was only a matter of time till one of them hit me and put me out of my misery. I curled into a tighter ball, no longer able to tell the difference between Ti’s light and those of the oncoming people, the room beyond him becoming a growing, glowing blur.

Then the door behind me burst open, literally. Shards of glass rained down, skittering off the desk I hid behind.

“Edie?” a voice I recognized asked aloud. Sike—and she sounded pissed.

“Help Ti! Please!” I rose up just far enough to see her run into the other room, her red hair streaking behind her like arterial spray.

With my other sight I could see the other lights pull back. I heard the sounds of fighting—but her light matched theirs, and so as long as the fighting continued, I couldn’t tell who was winning what. There was great speed—I assumed it was hers, and the sound of impact after impact. I imagined daytimer flesh hitting walls, tables, floors. The crunching of bone, an endless whirlwind of violence—but no guns. I crept forward, pushing Grandfather ahead of me.

Suddenly there were two smells that I could recognize. Vampire dust and rot.

I crawled faster, tucking Grandfather inside my coat. Ti was slumped in a corner down the hallway, missing his left arm. I could see the ragged stump where it had been, white bone jutting out from gobbets of pink flesh. His face was hidden in shadow.

“Oh, no,” I said, coming nearer. Looking over my shoulder I could see Sike wiping the factory floor with the last of the daytimers. Literally. She spun one around, his black coat fluttering in the brief moment before his head cracked open on a vise-gripped car frame. His skull cracked and dust poured out like piñata candy.