Undead to the World (31 page)

“I’m guessing handcuffs,” a voice says. Zev—
and he’s already in the room.

I whirl toward the voice. He straightens up from where he was crouched behind a hulking,
rotted desk; he’s got something in his hand.

A baseball.

He throws it too fast to see, his arm blurring like a special effect. Beside me, Doctor
Pete snaps off a shot with Charlie’s pistol. I hear a double
thump,
one close and one far: the baseball, ricocheting off Doctor Pete’s skull and into
the far wall. That’s good—it means it didn’t strike straight on, and the Doc has a
fair chance of surviving a glancing blow. I dive to the ground, already scrambling
for the pistol in Doc’s hand as he topples over, and hope that the blast from Charlie’s
shotgun will buy me enough time to grab it.

But the blast doesn’t come.

What does arrive is Zev, leaping through the air and landing in a crouch right in
front of me. His appearance isn’t what I expected.

He’s half thrope and half pire, but those halves aren’t distributed evenly and don’t
stay the same from second to second: Fur sprouts, then grows backward into his body;
fangs get longer, then shorter, in a mouth that shifts between muzzle and jaw; the
skin of his hands pales then darkens, while claws twitch and lengthen sporadically.
He grins at me with a lopsided, deformed mouth and says, “Hey, Jace. Miss me? I’ve
been waiting
forever.
”

I’ve got the pistol, but he swats it out of my hands before I can bring it to bear.

“Uh-uh,” he says cheerfully. “No gunsies. I’m not packing anymore, so neither are
you.” He raises his voice. “Hear that, Charlie? Give up the boomstick or I’ll rip
her head off.”

I glance over. Charlie’s not where I left him.

“Uh—I think we’ve got bigger problems,” I say. “You know where we are, right?”

Zev cocks his head to the side, just like a curious dog. “Relax. Home is where you
hang your hat; work is where you hang someone
else.
Right?”

I takes me a second to digest that. “You think we’re safe here because this is where
it
lives
? You think this thing punches a clock, comes home, and puts its feet up?”

Both of Zev’s eyes are blazing red and fur covers the lower half of his face, but
when he talks I can understand him perfectly; seems his mutating state is at least
partly under his control. “Why not? Morning Ralph morning Fred, night Ralph night
Fred. Hey, you think that sheepdog is a vampire?”

The backhand comes out of nowhere. It connects with the side of my head and sends
me sprawling with fireworks of pain behind my eyes, but I can tell he’s holding back.

“Strike one!” Zev calls out. “Fouled it down the third-base line—next time, for sure!”

He’s trying to draw Charlie out. But it’s not Charlie’s style to lay low and wait
for the right moment; he’s more a “charge straight ahead damn the torpedos” kinda
guy. Which means—

No. No, I don’t believe it. Not Charlie.

I get to my feet. “You get one for free,” I say. “Next time you pay.”

“Can I run a tab?” He tries something a little more flashy, a side-kick from a hairy
leg and clawed foot.

Mistake.

He’s fast, but I’m ready for him. I pivot, let the leg snap past me, then grab his
ankle with both hands. I shove the leg down, bring my knee up sharply, and snap the
joint like a piece of kindling.

Zev howls in pain, but I’m not done. I keep his leg up in the air and kick him in
the crotch. Twice.

He finally manages to wrench his limb free, but he’s off-balance. I step in and nail
him with an elbow strike to the face as hard as I can manage. That turns out to be
a mistake, because it sends him staggering backward out of range for a second.

That’s apparently all Zev needs to recover, because he immediately goes on the offensive,
lunging forward on his one good leg and slashing wildly with his claws. I dodge or
block most of them, but he gets under my guard and rakes my belly.

My turn to stagger backward. He laughs. “Strike two!” he shouts. “Looks like a triple
to me!”

I can’t spare the attention to check how bad the wound is, but my intestines still
seem to be on the right side of my skin. “Charlie?” I say. “Charlie, now would be
good.…”

No response. And Zev’s reaction to his broken leg is to make sure it’s straight before
shifting its morphology from thrope to pire, the fur replaced by pale white flesh.
White,
undamaged
flesh; you can’t break a pire’s leg. Not unless you use silver or wood.

“Well, it’s been fun,” Zev says. “But pitch number three is about to go over the plate.
Hey, I don’t make the rules.” He pauses, then giggles. “Okay, I guess I do. Same difference
either way—”

And that’s when the shotgun goes off.

The blast catches Zev in the neck. It’s good strategy; most supernaturals are susceptible
to decapitation. But the shotgun load is a mix of oak splinters carved from a table
leg and silver shavings painstakingly scraped from the back of an old mirror. It’s
enough to hurt something with a pulse, and probably cripple a pire or a thrope.

But Zev’s something else entirely.

The shot tears away most of his flesh, leaving his spinal cord intact. He stares at
me, his mouth moving soundlessly. That’ll happen when your larynx is abruptly removed.

And then the bloody knobbed column between his skull and his shoulders starts to sprout
ribbons of meat. Nerves, muscles, tendons. A thrope can’t regenerate that fast without
some kind of mystic boost, but Zev isn’t a thrope. He’s a trap, just like everything
else in this town, designed to prey not only on my pain but on my assumptions. Of
course he isn’t going to be easy to kill; he’s a wild card, a joker in both attitude
and application.

In a moment he’s got his pipes back. He turns around and smiles at Charlie, who’s
stepped out from behind the bookshelf he was hiding behind. He meets Zev’s eyes and
shrugs. “Hey. Had to give it a shot, right?”

Charlie hops forward, dragging his broken leg behind him. He’s still got the shotgun
aimed at Zev. “Maybe I should give it a few more. See how many times you can do that
little trick.”

Zev chuckles. “Go right ahead, tarbender. But now that I know it’s coming, don’t expect
me to just sit here and take it.”

He leaps onto a bookshelf, then crosses to another, moving as swiftly and surely as
a wild animal. I can’t beat Zev toe-to-toe, and Charlie won’t be able to do more than
graze him if he’s on the move.

And now he’s got a golf ball in his hand. Great. Somebody’s lifelong daydream of being
the next Tiger Woods is going to get one of us killed.

“I’ll give you a choice, Charlemagne,” Zev says. “Put down the Elmer Fudd Penis Substitute
and I’ll kill you quick. Touch that trigger and I’ll make you suffer.”

I’m still trying to figure out our next move when the unthinkable happens.

Charlie drops the gun.

“Charlie, what are you
doing
?” I blurt.

“Only thing I can,” Charlie says. “No-win situation, Jace. What’s the point in beating
our heads against a brick wall? Take a look around.” He gestures with one hand. “All
this junk is stuff people gave up so they could be happier. Worked, too. Sometimes …
sometimes you just gotta know when to let go.”

I can’t believe it. I
won’t
believe it. “
Charlie
. You said it yourself—look around. It’s this place, all these pathetic little mementos …
it’s doing something to you. Don’t let it—”

But it’s too late.

TWENTY

Zev springs from his perch, landing in front of Charlie. He casually kicks the shotgun
out of reach. “Okay,” he says. “A deal’s a deal—and hey, you did sell me an awful
lot of beer back in the day. But before I kill you, can I ask you something?”

“You can ask.”

“What the hell
am
I?” There’s a note of genuine frustration under the manic glee in his voice. “I’m
not a werewolf, I’m not a vampire. I don’t think my real name is even Zev. Everything
keeps sliding around in my head, and it’s getting
worse.
About the only thing I
am
sure of is that it’s
all her fault,
and you two seem to be real close.
So what am I?
”

Charlie regards Zev calmly for a second. “What are you? That’s easy.” He leans forward
an inch or two, locks eyes with Zev, and says, “You’re
done.
”

The noose drops over Zev’s head as silently as a snake, and tightens its grip just
as fast. It yanks him straight up through the hole in the ceiling and into the darkness
beyond.

Charlie and I stare up at the black mouth of the opening for a second. Then we
move.

I dive for the spot Charlie gestured to when he gave his little “I give up” speech.
Charlie scrambles after the shotgun, breaks it open, and reloads it with standard
shells.

I find the case peeking out from under a stack of old fashion magazines, almost invisible
unless you’ve got your face pressed to the floor; that’s how Charlie must have seen
it. I yank it out, undo the clasps, and rip it open.

Hello, my lovelies.

Twin
escrima
sticks nestled in black foam. Eighteen inches of polished ironwood tipped with silver
spikes, each with a folding silver blade a foot long that snaps out and locks at a
forty-five degree angle.

My scythes.

I yank them out, pop ’em open, and stand up. I wouldn’t say I feel invulnerable, exactly,
but an enraged grizzly could walk through the door right now and I’d tell
him
to run. One look in my eyes and he’d do it, too.

Charlie snaps the twelve-gauge shut. “How’s the Doc?”

“Twitching and groaning,” I say, glancing over at him. “Probably has a concussion—we’ll
ask him when he wakes up.”

“If that isn’t soon, he’ll miss the good part.”

Above us, absolute silence.

No growling, no thrashing, no curses or howls. The shapeshifting thing that seemed
unkillable a minute ago isn’t looking so invincible anymore. And any second now we’re
going to come face-to-face with the being that just ate it whole.

“How’d you know it would attack Zev?” I ask, my eyes fixed on the ceiling.

“That thing’s attracted to despair. Nobody makes as many jokes as laughing boy did
unless they’re hurting inside. Bad.”

I blink. “And what if it had come after you, instead? You know, to make
me
despair?”

“Then I’d feel pretty stupid. For a few seconds, anyway.”

“You know that hole is also our exit, right?”

“I wasn’t planning on stumbing around in these tunnels until it found us, no.”

“Ideas?”

“Lot of this stuff looks like it might burn.”

A natural chimney and plenty of fuel. Problem is, the top of the chimney is no doubt
covered, and that means we could find ourself not only trapped underground but blind
and asphyxiated. “I don’t think so. You have these things in your chest now, called
lungs; they wouldn’t appreciate suffering from smoke inhalation.”

“Then I guess we go up there and introduce ourselves.”

I have this sudden strong mental image of what we’ll find halfway up: the Gallowsman,
perched in a crazy-ass web of cables, ropes, and wires like a four-legged spider,
with Zev wrapped in a cocoon of the same stuff. The Gallowsman’s head will be tilted
all the way to one side, lying flat on his shoulder like it was glued there. His eyes
will bulge from their sockets, as big as hard-boiled eggs, his black, distended tongue
lolling from his mouth like a dead eel.…

“Sounds like fun,” I say. “How about we take a look, first?”

“You’re the one with the sharp things. Cover me.” I walk over and give him the flashlight.
He hops closer to the hole, holding the shotgun with one hand, and shines the beam
upward.

“Huh,” he says.

I’m ready to chop to pieces anything that might drop out of there. “What do you see?”

“Not much. Empty. Ends in a trapdoor, looks like. And there are rungs carved in the
side of the shaft.”

So that’s why we didn’t hear Zev struggling—it dragged him up and out. “Think you
can climb with that leg?”

Charlie grunts. “I’ll manage. You and the Doc might have to give me a hand.”

Speaking of which, Doctor Pete is now sitting up and clutching his head. “Goddamn
it,” he says. “This is—ow! This is not acceptable. Concussion damage in human beings
is cumulative.”

I walk over and help him to his feet. “If you can utter that sentence without slurring
your words, you’re probably okay. But Charlie isn’t—his leg’s broken. Take a look.”

Doctor Pete automatically shifts into professional mode—I knew he would—and examines
Charlie’s leg. We rig a makeshift splint, and then Doctor Pete and I start piling
up enough furniture to get us closer to the ceiling.

I go up first myself, with one scythe closed and stuck in my belt, and the other open
and clenched between my teeth. Charlie’s below me, shining the flashlight beam up.
When I get to the top of the shaft I have a moment of panic when I think the trapdoor
is locked—then I realize it’s on springs, and I have to pull down to open it, not
push.

Of course. Very like a real gallows, only this one closes automatically after use.
More like a doggy door, really.

That makes me think about Galahad, but I don’t have time to worry about him right
now. I cautiously stick my head through the opening, holding my scythe in one hand,
but nothing drops around my neck or tries to throttle me. The trapdoor’s set into
a round, raised stone platform in the middle of a dark room, the beam of the flashlight
from below showing me only vague shapes. I climb out and tell Charlie to come up;
he manages pretty well, even with one leg in a splint.

In a few minutes we’re all above ground again. The flashlight reveals a room very
similar to the one in Longinus’s basement: black draperies on the walls, lots of candles.
The door isn’t obvious, but with a little searching we find it; it opens into the
apse of the church, behind the altar.