Scarlet Dusk (17 page)

Zane’s eyes widened, looking at the map. “Then that son of a bitch high-tailed it to the lumber yard because…”

Raith was already nodding.

Zane studied the map harder, taking in the various marks that Raith had already applied. “So wherever he’s stowing Serena must be around…”—he circled his finger roughly around a site on the map as he looked at the pages from Ben’s file—“But where? Where?” he chanted to himself as he looked at the documents with a renewed hope.

Raith nodded, “That’s where I got snagged, too. So I figured I’d come find you; see if you couldn’t figure out something I was missing.”

Then Zane spotted the police report on the body at the cemetery.

“Bringing the dead back to…”

Raith leaned forward, “What? You’re mumbling, mate.”

Zane motioned to the page. “That report; they found that body dug up and lying a few feet from its grave.”

Raith nodded, “Yea. Pretty sick shit. It definitely stinks of our boy’s MO, but I couldn’t figure out
how
exactly? I mean, I have a few guesses, but nothing I want to think about too long, y’know?”

Zane shook his head, “No, he wasn’t digging up corpses to
fuck
them, Raith, he wasn’t digging them up at all! He told me earlier that he could bring the dead back to life; that he’d been able to do this way back before he was him. This body
did
dig itself up—just like those kids in the report said!—but it was
because
that son-of-a-bitch brought it back to life!”

“What? Like a Leiche or something?” Raith looked up at him.

“A what?” Zane looked back.

Raith’s palm met his face again, “Don’t you Council-appointed warriors have, like, homework or something that you have to do before they give you a bunch of weapons and turn you loose on the world? A
Leiche
is a… well, it’s like a zombie.”

It was Zane’s turn to cup his face in his palm, “You can’t be asking me to believe in zombies right now, Raith. You really can’t.”

“Just bear with me here,” Raith sighed. “A Leiche is
like
a zombie—the whole walking dead thing—except that they’re
not
all brain-dead and dull-witted and such. They’re like auric vampires—all that energy and aura-manipulation and whatnot—except that they gain their energy from
killing
; they are
human
magic users who, through magic, have locked their own essence into their bodies and
purposefully
died so that they could come back to life as one of these things. They’re like… like anti-aurics, in a way. They
absorb
the auras of the dead and use that power to manipulate death and decay.” He pointed to the picture of the corpse in the police report, “Like that! You told me he said he could raise the dead! When is the
only
other time shit like that happens?”

Zane sighed, still not believing what he was hearing; his entire life—his existence!—was set in the foundation that
nothing
that was dead could
also
be alive. It was why the growing zombie craze had become such a joke within the mythos community. “Raith, do you
really
believe that—”

“C’mon, Zane! I
know
you know this much!
When
can a
dead
body—gone,
not
a vampire in the midst of the change,
not
an enchantment; a true, blue
dead
body—come back to life?”

Zane sighed, “Only situation I can think of is if an aura winds up possessing it somehow.”

Raith nodded. “Exactly! An aura! Auric energy! We’ve seen it before; aurics are
always
taking control of minds to control them. The truly sinister ones outright
control
the people themselves!”

Zane nodded, “Right, but whenever they do the brain can’t take it. Humans under the control of an auric end up—”

“—dying,” both Zane and Raith finished the sentence; Raith nodding his point.

“See? A
living
body isn’t equipped to handle
that
much strain. An auric can’t keep those they control alive because, without the human’s aura in control of body—in control of the brain—it loses hold and passes. And a body without an aura is a
dead
body! If Maledictus was…” he shook his head, “If he
is
a Leiche—a death wizard—then he
could
have control over something like that; he
could
raise the dead. And it would sure-as-hell explain why he’s such a murder-happy bastard!”

Zane frowned and nodded, looking down at the file. “A sang needs blood, an auric needs life-energy…”

Raith nodded, “And a Leiche needs
death
-energy.”

“Fuck me sideways…” Zane shook his head, looking back at the map. “He said he’s got something big planned, Raith; something that could change the world. He said that it wouldn’t be long until he was strong enough to do it.”

“There’s nothing more certain in this world than death, man,” he looked over, biting his lip. “That’s
a lot
of fuel for something like that if it wants to start some shit.”

Zane groaned, wiping his brow. It was so much easier to want Maledictus dead when he was just a dangerous psychopath who’d made him and his loved ones suffer, but this was turning out to be something
far
greater than he ever could’ve imagined. “Okay, this is serious. He’s gotta die. Like,
really
gotta die; like, him… or
all
of us—
that
kinda serious.”

Raith nodded, “You’re not exactly a poet, mate, but you don’t hear me arguing. So where the hell is he?”

Zane looked at the area on the map that Raith had determined to be the likely region Maledictus was in, but it was still over fifty square miles of city. There had to be more…

He looked at the files again. Risen corpse at the cemetery. Spooked patients at the old folks
' home. Creepy shadows scattered about the region. Missing college kids. Murdered rape victims near the hospital.

“Like an animal,” Zane muttered to himself.

“What’s that, mate?” Raith looked up.

“You’d said that he’d been like an animal earlier tonight when he tried to lead me away from his ‘nest,’” he nodded to himself. “What if that’s how he’s acting now?”

“How do you mean?” Raith’s heart rate sped up in Zane’s ears, and he knew his friend could tell he was on to something.

Zane scratched the back of his neck, “I mean, he’s
in
an ykali body now. We moved that thing inside the corpse and Nikki used replicated the curse’s markings on his scales to transfer the essence into that thing; figured we could just dispose of it later.”

Raith nodded, “Yea. And?”

Zane shook his head, “It’s still an ykali, though. It’s not like we replaced its brain or swapped out all the old parts of what it
had
been; we just
added
a crazy psychopath
into
a dumb animal. Albeit, a seven-foot, ravenous
mythos
animal, but an animal none the less.”

“So you think that the ykali brain is still calling some of the shots?” Raith asked.

Zane nodded, “Why not? I always thought that he was such a vulgar, perverted fucker because
that
was how the taroe created him, but he wasn’t created; not like that, anyway. What if the bulk of what made up the personality of the
Maledictus
we know was how the essence of whatever he’d once been perceived itself through
our
vulgar, perverted minds. However old that thing is, I’m sure that it wasn’t words like ‘fuck’ or ‘cunt’ or the whole mess of porno-words he loves to play with; all that had to have been learned after we were cursed with it. And think of who he targeted when
we
were the hosts: all those close to us. It fooled me into thinking we’d killed Celine, and every time after that it was always local incidents. It never transformed and then went on some road trip to take revenge on somebody from a past life. It was
always
acting through
our
filter; it was those close to us.”

“So who’s close to an ykali?” Raith shook his head.

Zane smirked, “That’s the thing.
Nobody
! He’s got no modern filter
except
that of a blood-thirsty lizard. No connections or focuses; it’s probably why he’s even beginning to remember his old self.”

Raith nodded, “He’s got no other distractions from the ykali’s brain.”

“Exactly! All that’s there is basic animal instincts. And that pretentious cocksucker is so certain he’s on top of everyone and everything that he’d
never
suspect that his actions were being dictated by a ‘stupid animal,’ so he’s casually acting on ‘stupid animal’ logic thinking it’s his own. Which is
why
he went to such great lengths to lead me
away
from this area,” Zane motioned to the area on the map.

“So where would Maledictus, driven by an animal brain, think to go?” Raith finally asked.

Zane’s eyes moved around the map once more. “A stupid animal would want to stay close to its shelter”—he pushed a few pages off the table—“A stupid animal wouldn’t stray far from what it knew”—he ‘X’ed out a few areas on the map—“And a stupid animal would
always
seek out the perfect home to suit its personality…”

Honing in on a spot on the map, Zane smirked and drew a circle around the location of Maledictus and Serena.

“An abandoned loony bin? Are you kidding me?” Celine frowned, looking at the map while everyone suited up around her.

Zane nodded, fastening the last of the buckles on his boots before he hurried to begin arming himself. “Absolutely! That son-of-a-bitch has proven time and time again that he’s nothing more than a psychotic, misery-seeking asshole. He’d seek out someplace private, someplace that nobody would dare go poking around, and someplace
teeming
with pain and suffering.”

“He’s right,” Nikki offered, zipping up her leathers and securing her bright red hair in a tight ponytail. “If he
is
a Leiche—and all evidence points to it—then he’d be innately drawn to places where many had died.”

“And, though the records are a bit sketchy, this place has seen more localized death than
any
other site for the next hundred miles
at least
,” Raith, wearing minimal layers to allow for a quick transformation when the time called for it, didn’t bother looking up. “All irony set aside, there’s no better place for something like him to hide out, and almost every event we can tie him to took place within twenty-five miles of there.”

Isaac, like Raith, was wearing simple street clothes for the ease of transforming when the time called for it, and, like Zane, he was impatient. He’d initially refused the request to help them track down Maledictus, taking Zoey’s hand in his and telling them he wouldn’t leave her side for
anything
until she woke up. Both Zane and Raith—having their own lover to weigh their situations against—couldn’t argue with the loyal therion’s convictions, but they’d known that they needed as many on their side as they could get, and the few Vail warriors they’d been able to muster weren’t going to be enough. It had been Raith, having an understanding of
both
Zane’s desperation and Isaac’s focus on Zoey’s wellbeing, to convince him.

“Serena is the most powerful psychic this clan has,” he’d said, “Second
only
to Zoey. If
anybody
could get through whatever was clouding her mind and bring her back, it’s her.”