Roaring Blood (Demon-Hearted Book 2) (8 page)

“Nope,” I replied. “It was a necromancer. Guy named... Aga...mammary? Aganonomous...?” I turned to Kubo. “What the hell was his name?”

“Agamemnon,” uttered the chief. “A perp who's been on the Veiled Order's watch-list for many years. A practitioner of death magic.”

Mona wasn't one to emote; the drooping, wrinkly skin of her ancient face looked more or less the same whether she smiled or frowned. I did, however, detect a change in her expression when Kubo let that bomb drop. She paused, looking down to the floor, and loosed a great sigh. “A necromancer has the scythe?” She shook her head and slithered off into her workshop, momentarily disappearing from view. “That's very bad news.”

Joe was posted near the door, tinkering with a bunch of vials. He looked into them, sniffed at the liquids stewing inside, then cringed and set them back down. When he was done, he made his way to the table where I sat and had a look at my side. “I'll be damned. She really patched you up good, Lucy. If not for Mona, we'd have been screwed.”

Mona had done great work; she always did. But of far more interest at that moment was her talk of the scythe. The weapon belonged to the god of death, Thanatos? How in the hell had Agamemnon gotten ahold of it, then?

Kubo echoed my thoughts. “It's a formidable weapon, I'm sure, but it can't be the Scythe of Thanatos. How could a lowly necromancer take control of a legendary weapon like that? It's unthinkable. I don't know much about death magic, about this scythe's history, but relics of that caliber don't just turn up at a rummage sale. Surely it's just a knock-off, a cursed blade, Mona.”

Mona returned with a faded tome in her slight hands. She set it down on the table with a thud, sending up a cloud of smoke that gave me a hacking cough. “I wish it were so, Takeshi, but the fact that it could wound a Demon-Heart so seriously is proof-positive, in my book. Would that the scythe's only power was a deadly curse; the enemy you face has tapped into immense power-- power that mere mortals were never intended to wield.” She cracked the cover of the massive volume, flipping through it till she stumbled upon the passage she sought. “The Scythe of Thanatos allows its wielder to lord over the dead. For a necromancer, it will act like an antenna of sorts, amplifying his spell craft by an order of magnitude. To the best of my knowledge, the weapon hasn't been seen since the days of ancient Greece. It's the weapon of choice of Thanatos.” She looked to me, elaborating further for my benefit. “That is, the character humans often refer to as the 'Grim Reaper'. The god of the dead, who is responsible for claiming the souls of the deceased and ushering them to the Beyond.”

I chortled, hopping off of the table. “The Grim Reaper? No way... Like, a skeleton in a black cloak? You expect me to believe that?”

Hands in his pockets, Kubo sidled over to the book and scanned it along with Mona. “The depictions of such a figure throughout the centuries in works of art is no coincidence. I've never seen him, of course, but it's said he does indeed look like that. But that's the thing...” He fixed a steely gaze on Mona. “This is a
god
we're talking about. A god isn't going to just misplace a legendary weapon.
How
did he get ahold of it?”

Mona simply shook her head. She didn't have any guesses.

I toyed with my earlobe and began to consider everything I'd been told about this necromancer, Agamemnon. He'd been on a watch-list, considered a threat for more than two decades. Then, he broke out of jail and simply dropped out of sight. If I was remembering things correctly, he'd flown under the radar for the past ten years.

Ten years is a long time. Anything could have happened in that window. Maybe the clever bastard cozied up to the god of death at that time. Maybe he came up with some plan to steal his weapon. There was literally no telling. Curious as I was, I honestly didn't see the point of all this conjecture, though. The fact remained that the necromancer had the scythe, and that was a very
bad
thing for us.

“So,” began Kubo, “you mean to say that the scythe could give Agamemnon everything he needs to wage a war against the living? That he'll be able to raise an army of the dead and imbue his soldiers with incredible power? What can we do about it? Is there anything that can counteract the weapon's effects, Mona? Anything that can shut it down?” Kubo seemed desperate for answers; more desperate than I'd ever seen him. I wasn't used to seeing him so out of the loop; nine times out of ten, Kubo was the go-to guy, the one who knew it all. This time, I could see him squirming at the thought of returning to Veiled Order HQ and having to tell Amundsen and his bosses about what Agamemnon had in his possession. And that he didn't have a plan in place to stop it.

The wise old Mona, talented witch though she was, couldn't offer him much in the way of hope or intel. “My knowledge of the weapon is incomplete. There is an expert I could refer you to, a scholar who specializes in mythical weapons. His name is Germaine Fox, and he operates out of a small book shop in the Underground.”

Kubo took down the name in a little notepad and tucked it into his breast pocket. Then, taking my arm, he dragged me towards the door and called to Joe. “Thanks, Mona. We're getting out of here. I'll pay this Germaine a visit and see what we can do about this. I have a feeling I'll be in touch again soon.”

Mona cleared away the supplies she'd used in patching me up and waved weakly. “Do take care, Takeshi. Oh, and Joseph, how's your mother doing? Well, I hope?”

Joe barely had time to answer as Kubo shoved us out the door. “Fine, thanks for asking! She may not even need her cane much longer!”

The three of us stepped out of Mona's place, finding ourselves surrounded by majestic pines. Two well-worn footpaths flanked the little house, leading deep into the forest. A pestilential quiet reigned; no birds chirped, no insects buzzed.

“So,” I chanced as Kubo loosened his grip. “What're we doing, Chief?”

Kubo spat. “Not sure yet.”

I eyed the two paths in turn. One of them would lead us back to the real world, to the Detroit alley outside of Yao's. The other, though, led someplace else. Kubo wouldn't tell me just where it went, and it was a source of great curiosity for me. “Hey,” I said, nudging Joe. “Where does that other path lead?”

“Oh, you're not ready for that,” said Joe with a smirk. He smoothed back his grotty mane, clods of encrusted soil tumbling from his locks.

Damn it. Everyone knew about that path except for me. I should have been used to being out of the loop, being the team newbie and all, but the feeling of cluelessness still sucked in a big way. “You guys are assholes. How do you expect me to help out if--”

“Enough,” interrupted Kubo. “No time for that. We're going to race back to HQ.” He gave the two of us a shove down the familiar path, and in the next instant-- literally the blink of an eye-- we were all standing in a dim alleyway behind the Chinese restaurant. One of these days I was going to pick up a physics textbook and figure out how the fuck this little alley could exist in the natural world.

Kubo was a little pale, his gait less purposeful than was normal. He marched through the alley, leading us back towards the parking lot where the SUV was waiting, occasionally muttering to himself. I hated to see him this way. Kubo was certainly a douche sometimes, but I much preferred to have him act like a
confident
douche. The stress he was under was kind of catchy; clueless though I was, I couldn't help but get really anxious about what we were up against. If Veiled Order operatives with years of experience were losing their cool over this, then how was a rookie like me supposed to feel?

The alley opened up into the parking lot. The smell of fried food drifted through the air and visions of sweet and sour chicken danced in my head. “Hey, think we could stop just a minute for a bite? Looks like they're open late tonight, and--”

One of Kubo's massive palms caught me in the chest, stopping me in my tracks. Joe, too, had gotten pushed backward, nearly falling on his ass. The Chief's eyes were glued to the path ahead, to the SUV.

To the figures who shambled all around it.

“Zombies,” he muttered.

There were five that I could see lingering around the SUV, and every possibility that more existed just beyond it. The creatures didn't seem to have any agenda. They were simply limping through the parking lot, going for a mindless, moonlit stroll as zombies apparently felt compelled to do from time to time. But when they caught sight of us, there was a marked change in their demeanor. The shadowed figures straightened out, took on something of alertness, and not a moment later I heard the first of several agonized groans.

A battle-cry.

Kubo reached into his breast pocket. “Looks like we're going to have to fight our way out.”

TEN

The Chief rifled around in his inner pockets but came up empty. “Shit.”

“What's the matter, Chief?” asked Joe, counting the undead as they approached the alley. He'd switched on his lighter and was ready to start throwing fireballs at the slightest provocation.

“My seals are in the SUV. I took the damn things out of my pocket earlier.” From his shoulder holster he yanked his big, silver gun. “This will have to do. Not the best option against zombies, though. I'll cover the two of you and try to keep them at bay while you destroy them. Got it?”

“Sounds good,” said Joe, allowing the flame from his lighter to grow. It surged upward into a pillar of flame. Joe reached into the flame and pinched off a hunk as though he were working with clay. The fireball hovered above his palm, and with a grunt he gave it a toss at the incoming undead. The fiery fastball sizzled as it coursed through the air, eating up a fair bit of the humidity in its wake, and connected with its target.

Hit square in the chest, the zombie fell to the pavement and began to shriek, limbs splaying out and kicking the ground. Joe's attacks worked fast; I watched him focus on the flames as they spread over the reanimated cadaver. He was manipulating them, causing them to spread quickly so as to consume the body and destroy it with haste.

The other zombies took this as an invitation to strike, and rushed towards us in a tightly-packed unit.

I stepped up to the plate while Joe queued up a second fireball. Fighting these things was just like swatting at a swarm of bees. You had to treat the whole cluster as a single organism; focusing on just one was sure to get you stung. Loosing a growl, I jumped to the fore and readied myself for the onslaught. If I hit them just right I could smash them two at a time; a punch from the left, then from the right, would probably get the job done. I planned to kick the stragglers to pieces, and--

Just then, from the entrance of Yao's, I heard someone speaking. The metal door slammed shut as a thin man in glasses stumbled out. He was holding his phone out before him, evidently recording the battle. His sights were centered on the snarling, smoldering creature on the pavement, and his continued utterance of “Holy shit” distracted even the zombies.

“What the fuck is he doing?” asked Kubo, pointing to the guy. “Put that goddamned phone away,” he warned, waving his gun in the air.

The guy, college-aged and goateed, panned about the scene, capturing all of us in frame. “Y-you're all going to jail,” he began. “I see everything you're doing out here, and I'm going to the media with this.” He kneeled down, getting a better view of the scorched zombie in its death throes. “T-this will be trending on Twitter within the hour. It's a hate crime!”

The zombies, having paused, seemed to have trouble on deciding where to focus their efforts. They looked at Joe and Kubo, then to me. Lastly, they glanced at the college student, moaning with what I took to be the zombie equivalent of confusion.

That was all the time I needed.

Where the zombies hesitated, I rushed in and cleaned house. The first zombie was decapitated by a forceful palm strike before its friends even realized it. I threw some elbows, splitting brittle bones and fracturing rotten limbs. I took a zombie claw to the forearm in the process, but the counterattack was too slow. Balling my fist, I revved up for an uppercut and sent the bugger's lower jaw into outer space.

And, you know, I made sure to grunt a lot and strike some cool poses between every attack.

I figured that if this was going to end up online, I wanted to look as good as possible. Tensing my muscles a little extra and giving the camera a good look at my bare abs at the end seemed like a good touch.

“Lucy!” shouted Kubo, marching over. “Take his fucking phone!” He pointed his gun at the ballsy camera guy, his finger on the trigger. Kubo looked like he was about to blow the kid away, and probably would have if I hadn't stepped in.

The kid blanched and tried to run. His panicked jog couldn't compete with my sprint, though, and once I'd smacked the phone from his grasp, he began to spout profuse apologies. “Please, p-please don't kill me,” he said, his thin arms feebly outstretched.

I grabbed the kid's phone. It was enormous, practically a tablet. Pretty expensive. Looking him in the eye I held the phone in both hands and snapped it in two. “Hash-tag
this
, motherfucker.” I belted him across the cheek, sending him spiraling to the ground. Guy was unconscious before he even touched down.

“Get to the SUV,” ordered Kubo, charging across the parking lot. Joe pocketed his lighter and broke into a jog, looking back at me with a furrowed brow.

“What?” I asked, coming up to the passenger side door. “What's that look for?”

“You could've killed that guy, Lucy. You didn't have to hit him, you know.” Joe climbed into the back and slammed the door shut.

Yeah, I suppose Joe had a point. I didn't
have
to hit him. But guys like that have always pissed me off. We were fighting zombies for Christ's sake. Real-life zombies. This was some genuine
Walking Dead
bullshit we were up against and the kid had been trying to get it all on tape. If you ask me, sometimes lessons need to be learned the hard way. He'd probably wake up crying in a few minutes with a sore jaw, but maybe he'd mind his own business from now on. I shrugged. “He had it coming.”