Resurrection (19 page)

Though it hurt like nothing I’d ever felt before, I managed to flop over onto my side, panting like a dog from the effort. The world was a blur of stinging light, crashing against my vision in chaotic waves, tiny spots of bouncing darkness intermingled. My thoughts still clouded, unsure of what I was seeing, I blinked my eyes to chase away the tears and clinging dirt. It took a few moments, but my vision at last cleared.

And I instantly regretted it.

The dark spots I’d seen between the white, had been Katon. Mauled by the revenants, he was being tossed back and forth between them, each tearing away a chunk of flesh before passing him on to the next. His shredded skin hung in red, wet strips, swinging in time with his every movement. One of his eyes trailed from its socket, a gory pendulum. His left arm lay limp at his side, the bone protruding from his shoulder like a sharp spear. Half of his scalp was peeled back, the white of his skull peeking through the leaking redness.

Yet through it all, he still fought. With his sword clutched in his right hand, he struck out at every opportunity, but his blade failed to hit home. Even though he had to know the revenants were toying with him, Katon would battle to his last breath. I couldn’t let him do it alone.

I tried to get to my feet, pressing my hands beneath me to support my weight. Turned out, that wasn’t such a good idea. Ice pick pains brutalized my senses, pillaging my nerves as I crumpled into a heap of suffering. Barely able to see, let alone form a coherent thought, I looked to my hand.

Or to what was left of it.

The backfire had blown off my first three fingers. Nubs of charred blood and flesh were all that was left. My pinky remained, though it was clearly broken, pointing out at an odd angle. Only my thumb appeared relatively normal, open to the bone along the bottom, but still there, as was most of my palm.

Sickness welled up inside of me and I felt weak, my thoughts swirling as if down a drain. A pang of guilt for failing Katon fluttered against my conscience. I only had a second to think about it before the shadows poured over me, drowning me in a cold, black emptiness.

* * * *

The dark faded and all I could see was blurry white. It took a few moments of blinking my eyes to bring them into focus. A moment later I could see, and the agony returned like stars exploding against my nerves. A split-second after that, I was begging for the cold numbness to return.

“You live. Excellent.” Daartan hovered over me, his eerie smile cracking his face. In his ghostly hand was Katon’s sword.

“If you’ve hurt—”

He chuckled, setting the tip of the sword against my throat. “Oh, we’ve hurt the vampire. Hurt him near to death, no doubt.” He leaned in close, cold wisps of breath stinging my face. “He’s a spiteful beast, and as willful as any I’ve ever seen. I’ve no interest in freeing his soul only to have him seek revenge upon me, as one of my own kind. That would be unwise of me, so fear not, he lives.”

“You’ll get what’s coming to you,” I muttered through clenched teeth, my voice weak.

We both knew the threat was empty.

“Of that, I am assured.” He stepped away, waving Katon’s sword in the air with a victorious flourish. “You still claim no allegiance to Reven?”

I tried to spit at him, but I didn’t have the strength. The glob of saliva ran warm down my chin, mixing with the blood that leaked from my myriad wounds.

“No matter.” He pointed to the twitching pile of red and black that lay in the dirt. “If you wish to see your friend again, find the necromancer.”

My stomach lurched as I tried to sit up, tsunami waves of nausea and pain keeping me down. I lay on my side choking, trying not to vomit while the revenants lifted Katon’s broken body between them and drifted off toward the darkness. Daartan stared after them for a moment, then turned back to me, a crooked smile on his illuminated face. He reached down and set an ornate, silver amulet with an obsidian stone in its center, on my chest.

“Once you have Reven’s location, break the stone. I will come to you.”

“That supposed to be comforting?”

He smirked. “You remain alive only because you still have some use. Do not force me to reevaluate that presumption.” He spun the sword once more before holding it out before me, just out of reach. “Your companion knows not the value of this blade or he would not carry it about so lightly.” He ran his spectral hand along the blade, tiny droplets of light spilling from his fingers as it bit into his ghostly flesh. “Once you’ve delivered the necromancer to me, I will show you its true glory.” With a sputtering laugh, he flew off to join the rest of the knights.

As the darkness returned, the revenants’ light gone, I was alone with my agony. The zombies that had stood by peacefully had been slaughtered by Daartan and his knights. They lay about in shattered pieces, not much different than how I felt.

After giving myself a while to rest and prepare for the utter misery that lay ahead, I slipped the amulet around my neck and tried to stand. It took eight attempts, each a trial in suffering, before I managed to stay upright. Sad thing about it all, standing was the easy part.

The pitch of night stretched out before me, with only the tiny flickers of city lights way off in the distance to guide me off the ranch. Rather than worry about it—there was plenty of time ahead for that—I just walked, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. I knew if I fell I might never get back up.

Cold due to blood loss from the oozing wounds that covered my body, compounded by the desert night and the chill of my predicament, I kept warm by thinking of how Daartan would pay for what he’d done.

By the time I reached one of the intersecting highways, I was sweating, a furnace of fury burning inside.

Chapter Fifteen

Out on the road, I got lucky. A passing rancher, on his way home from a late night bender, happened to see me stumbling down the asphalt and stopped to lend a hand. Like pretty much everyone these days, besides me, he had a cell phone.

It took me a few minutes to convince him not to call 911 and to just let me use it. A good old boy, he was willing to risk going to jail for drunk driving just to get me help. I felt bad for lying to him, but it had to be done. I told him it was a couple of crooked cops who’d come after me, leaving me out there to die. If he called for an ambulance, they’d find out about it and would come looking for him and his family.

He handed the phone over in a hurry.

After contacting DRAC, I thanked him for his kindness and sent him on his way with my eternal thanks. Because of me, he’d probably never stop to help anyone ever again. That was a shame, but I was still glad for his kindness.

After what seemed like an eternity, Rahim plucked me up and whisked me back to my house for a dose of my uncle’s blood. It took a few fumbling minutes to dig out my stash and get a few drops into me, but when I felt its burning magic taking hold, I cried in ecstasy.

Under the narcotic sway of the blood, it was hard to stay focused, but I watched as it knitted my crippled hand back together. Drawing from the essence of myself, the bones of my fingers grew back first. White protrusions inched upward from the ruin of flesh, like morbid blooms, the skeleton of my hand reforming. The veins and tendons came next, weaving their complicated routes as the flesh crept behind to seal it all in. In but minutes, the nails, and even the hair, had returned, my hand just as it was before my weapon exploded. The rest of my wounds healed as well, metallic shards lay in a scattered bloody mess atop my blanket where they’d been ejected from my body.

I gave thanks to my uncle, wishing him goodwill, wherever he was. Once again, though gone, he’d saved my ass.

Afterward, we headed to DRAC. There, no trace of my wounds visible, Abraham stared at me over his cluttered desk, his eyes bulging behind his glasses.

“Are you sure it was Daartan?”

“At this point, Abe, I’m not sure about much of anything.” I shrugged, stretching my repaired hand, glad to have it back. “I’d never met the guy before, but I can’t think of a reason he’d lie about who he was? There’s not a whole bunch of folk who even know he exists, let alone have the power or interest to fake being him.”

Abraham shook his head while Rahim scowled behind him, fury engraved upon his face.

“I don’t care who he is, he has Katon. We have to go after this knight.”

While I felt the same way, I tried to calm him down. “He had the chance to kill Katon, but he didn’t.” I’d left out just how bad the revenants had hurt him, not wanting to stir the wizard up more than he already was. I also didn’t tell him about the amulet that would summon Daartan. There was no reason to waste it on an emotional suicide run. “Daartan is powerful, Rahim, and he has Katon’s sword to boot. We need some time to plan, to prepare to face him.”

Rahim was having none of it. “You two chat about what’s best, I’m going after Katon.”

While still somewhat hobbled by his injuries, they didn’t slow him down one bit. He headed for the door, driven by rage, his anger masking his pain.

“Rahim!” Abraham called after him, the slamming door drowning him out.

He sighed, taking his glasses off and rubbing his eyes. “His wounds have taken a toll on his mood,” Abraham explained, unnecessarily.

“Can’t say I blame him any. If I hadn’t seen how easily those guys took us apart, I’d be out the door with him.” I sunk into the chair, leather squeaking. “The problem is we’re way overmatched. For me, that’s business as usual. But with Katon kidnapped, Rahim still recovering and out of sorts, and Baalth about to crack up, I’m not sure we can handle this. Shit. Even Scarlett is
incommunicado
. We’re not exactly running on all cylinders here.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I’m not sure, really.” I sunk further into the accommodating seat. “With Forcalor in Heaven, and out of touch, I don’t have much left in the way of friendly and powerful contacts in Hell, so I can’t go there for help.”

“What about this…Karra woman? She seems capable and strangely reluctant to do you harm. Could we use this to our advantage?”

I shrugged. “Do you really want to risk the fate of the world on my relationship with a woman?”

“Good point.” He slipped his glasses back, leaning back. “There must be something we can do.”

“I’ll be damned if I know what. Maybe Rahim will stir something up.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Abraham replied, his voice a quiet whisper as he drifted off into thought.

I stood, peeling away from the leather chair, recognizing the end of our conversation. Abraham stared off into space, barely acknowledging I’d moved.

“I’m gonna head over and ask Baalth if he knows anything useful about our White Knight buddy. Keep our folks on the cemeteries and the like, still. Reven has been losing a bunch of zombies lately, so he’s gonna need to replace them. If we can keep him from collecting the blood he needs, we might be able to delay Longinus’s resurrection until we have a better idea of what’s going on. Maybe by then, we’ll know how to stop it.”

Abraham agreed, on the phone before I’d even finished talking.

I waved and started to leave when I spied Candy’s cell phone on the desk. I snatched it up, checked to see if it still had service, then stuffed it in my pocket. With a nod to Abraham, still too distracted to notice I was there, I left. On the way out, I replaced my exploded gun at the armory, stocking up on ammunition.

Exhausted, my mind a thick sludge of coagulated thoughts, I needed something to get the blood flowing.

Since my first choice of a blowjob was probably out of the question, coffee would have to do.

Chapter Sixteen

Thanks to Baalth’s outburst, I had to take the long way around Old Town. While the fires had been put out and the asphalt roads had cooled enough to walk on, the streets were still filled with rubble and marred with giant, steaming potholes. The sidewalks were non-existent, scaled models of the Himalayas. Slabs of concrete rose at ninety degree angles in some places and sunk, close to the same, in others. Not up for a hike, I circled the neighborhood until I found the easiest access point.

Just as I’d crossed the line into ground zero, I heard a quiet voice call out from behind me. I spun around to see the daintily smiling face of Lilith.

“Hi, Frank.”

My heart pounded in my chest and at my groin, a blast-beat of raw lust.

Eschewing the dress she had on the last time I’d seen her, she wore a pair of ultra-tight jeans, which outlined everything as if they weren’t even there. It hurt to lift my eyes, but when I finally did, they got stuck at her chest. A thin, white wife-beater did absolutely nothing to hide her perfect boobs. They stood out in defiance of gravity, daring me to look away.

They knew I wouldn’t.

Caught off guard, my own pants mimicking the tightness of hers, I just stood there and stared, while visions of leather and chains danced in my head.

Lilith understood the way to a man’s heart was through his crotch. She was a sexual sniper: one shot, one kill. If my uncle’s bloodline hadn’t run so fiercely through my veins, I’d have been panting at her feet. As it was, I could have welded steel with the fire burning in my pants.