Dead Red (Ghosts & Magic Book 2) Read online

  Dead Red

  Ghosts & Magic, Book Two

  M.R. Forbes

  Published by Quirky Algorithms

  Seattle, Washington

  This novel is a work of fiction and a product of the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by M.R. Forbes

  All rights reserved.

  Cover illustration by Tom Edwards

  tomedwardsdesign.com

  Contents

  1. Are you gonna go my way?

  2. Dinner at seven

  3. $19.95 a month

  4. Who knows what fear lurks

  5. Death becomes him

  6. Red light. Green light

  7. Gulab

  8. Keep driving

  9. Rats

  10. This is going to be fun

  11. Fran-tastic

  12. See you in Vegas

  13. You thought I was creepy

  14. Red sky at night

  15. Sideways

  16. Round one

  17. Ugly

  18. Thanks for dragging me into this

  19. Safe house

  20. You're next

  21. The bargain

  22. Round three

  23. Regret

  24. It's a mystery

  25. Enter Sandman

  26. A helluva town

  27. Blackout

  28. A very important date

  29. Deus Ex Machine

  30. Love connection

  31. Lux or Dare

  32. There is a spoon

  33. The necro and the Jin, redux

  34. Help. I need somebody

  35. Just like old times

  36. I love anime

  37. Area 52

  38. Hail mary

  39. Teacher's pet

  40. Love connection

  41. Imnipotent

  42. Out of the frying pan

  43. Into the fire

  44. Two plates of spam

  45. Time to go

  46. Me

  47. Have mercy

  48. I'm a doctor, not a

  49. I still like cake

  50. Black is the new black

  51. My own prison

  52. Patients

  53. The greatest escape

  54. Let it rain

  55. The big dig

  56. One foot in the grave

  57. The demon you know

  58. Something new

  59. Crazy

  60. Do you believe in magic?

  61. In for a penny

  Dead Stare.

  About the Author

  1

  Are you gonna go my way?

  I always tried to be quiet when I got back from a job. I always tried to step down the rickety wood steps to the basement of the small house in New Jersey where I was currently holing up without making a single creak.

  Most times I was successful.

  This wasn't one of those times.

  There was a pattern on the steps that I'd memorized. First step was six inches to the left, second was four to the right, skip the third step completely and try to come down on number four near the front edge. I was tired tonight, my limbs like rubber, my throat and stomach constricted. It was taking all of my energy just to keep from losing my lungs on step number five.

  So of course, I hit six and slipped.

  I don't know what caused it. Maybe some bird flew by and shit right where I needed to put my foot. Maybe it was just bad luck. Either way, the end result was the same. My foot went forwards, my head went backwards, and I came down across the entire stairwell, making a racket that would wake the dead as well as I could.

  It didn't need to wake the dead to be in trouble. All it needed to do was wake Prithi's parents.

  I hit pretty hard though my overcoat absorbed a good portion of the pain. The ballistic material kept the edge of the steps from pushing too hard into any one spot, and even in my general state of near-deadness the blow didn't cause any lasting damage.

  What it did was send out a crash that echoed through the manicured suburban backyard, up and into the bedroom of Satyan and Bindi Sharma.

  Fuck.

  I laid there, looking up at the sliver of moon that was peeking over the roofline. I held my breath, waiting for the bedroom light to go on, for Bindi's round face to poke out the window and see what the hell had just happened. I cursed myself for my weakness, the bird for its excrement, and Ms. Red for leaving me in this predicament in the first place.

  Ms. Red. Miss. Fucking. Red. Jin. I could see the ghost of her in my mind's eye, vaporous in front of the moon. She was wearing a tight red number, a crazy thing like the ancient Greeks used to wear, with a front that only covered one breast. The other was exposed, as was the most badass tattoo of a dragon I'd ever seen. It snaked down and around the supple and perfectly defined curve, claiming ownership. It was a nice treasure to guard, damn her.

  I saved her life a few months back. I'd done what both she and Mr. Black had asked me to do, even though it had left my best friend Danelle dead, and me even more destitute than when I'd started. Yeah, I'd gotten to keep the money that was promised to me in the end but I had nothing, literally nothing, by the time it was over. I lost Dannie, I lost my van, I lost all my guns and ammo and the house I was living in. I lost the only girl who could get my libido to do anything more than mock me with its ineffectiveness. Hell, I'd even lost my favorite corpse.

  The pity party was fun for a while at least.

  One point whatever million sounds like a lot when you have someone else doing your accounts payable. It sounds like a lot when you don't have Death himself gunning for you. When you're me it isn't enough. Not nearly enough.

  "Conor?"

  I leaned my head back so I could look up the steps. My eyes tracked from the broken, weedy concrete to a pair of dark, bare, shapely legs, up to some skimpy boy shorts, up a little more to a flat stomach and then a large chest. Most men might have paused there, but I was used to it. Well, not in this exact situation. Not in panties and a night shirt with no bra underneath. Not on a cold night. I waited for a reaction. Dead as usual.

  "What the fuck, Conor?" Prithi said. My eyes finally settled on her face. She was normally a pretty girl, delicate and silken. The way her face was turned in anger and her eyes burned into me stole a lot of that away. The only thing that saved her were her clothes, or lack of them.

  "Slipped," I said. I finally started moving, trying to get back to my feet. Of course, the steps made a racket the moment I moved my weight.

  "Shhh," Prithi said, glancing up at the bedroom window. "My folks barely tolerate you as it is. You wake them up, they're going to find a new tenant first thing in the morning."

  "I don't know why they hate me so much," I said, moving more carefully now. I managed to get back to my feet with a minimum of complaints from the stairs.

  Prithi crossed her hands over her chest as if she just realized she ran out of the house in her underwear. "They think you're creepy."

  "I am creepy."

  I had terminal cancer. I was in a perpetual state of dying. Grey skin that rested tight against my skeleton, no hair anywhere to speak of. Creepy came with the territory.

  "You're also two months behind on the rent."

  I reached into one of the pockets of my trench coat. I pushed my hand past the small pistol hidden there and found a wad of cash. I pulled it out and tossed it up to her. "Not anymore, thanks to you. That job you helped me set up paid off. Should keep a roof over my head for another month or two."

  Prithi had to move her hands to catch the money. She did it awkwardly, trying to use just her
wrist to keep herself covered. It was a disaster. The cash landed on the grass in front of her, and she bent over to pick it up without thinking. I was nice enough to turn my head before she fell out of the shirt.

  "Shit," she said, rushing to cover herself up.

  The light when on upstairs.

  "Oh crap," Prithi said. "Damn it, Conor. Move." She came towards me, hopping the steps with practiced expertise. Then she shot by, exaggerating her steps as if to say, "Go this way, don't fuck it up again."

  I followed behind her. She pushed the door open without making a sound, and we both ducked inside. If Bindi had seen us... I listened for a moment, expecting to hear her pounding down the steps, coming to scream at both of us for whatever she assumed I was doing with her daughter.

  Of course, she didn't know Prithi was gay.

  "I'm sorry, P," I said. "Tough night." My legs were still shaky, my lungs still burning.

  She turned to face me. At first, she was stoic and serious. When the mob didn't show up to torch Frankenstein, she started laughing.

  "You looked like an idiot laying there like that."

  "What do you think you look like?" I asked. She'd forgotten her near-nakedness in the run. She put her hands back over her chest.

  "You didn't look."

  "I'm an asshole. I'm not desperate."

  "What's that supposed to mean? You don't want to see?"

  "Even if I did, what would be the point? You don't like guys, and I couldn't even if I wanted to. If I just want to check out a pair, I've got the internet."

  She sighed and shook her head. "You're impossible."

  "No, I'm creepy."

  She laughed again, and then bypassed my shitty old sofa to get to the inner door out of the basement. I stared at her ass while she did so she wouldn't get too offended. She spun back on me when she reached the door. I looked away.

  "I saw that."

  "You were supposed to."

  "Get some sleep, Conor. I might have another job lined up."

  I waved her off. She vanished out the door, and I listened for her feet on the stairs. Once they faded out to nothing, I shrugged off the coat and dropped myself onto the couch. I grabbed one of the pillows, held it over my mouth, and let go of the hack I'd been holding the whole time. It lasted a couple minutes, hurt like hell, and left a nice splotch of blood on the linens.

  At least I was quiet.

  2

  Dinner at seven

  My dreams were rough, as always. I saw my ex-wife, Karen, and our daughter, Molly. I heard the laughter, the maniacal laughter that had come from everywhere when Dannie's corpse had popped back up on its own to sling threats at me. A moment later, a dark shape appeared and tore them both to pieces.

  That was when I woke up sweating, the same as I had every night since I'd buried Dannie. It wasn't normal. It wasn't natural. I had pushed too hard on the boundary and pissed off the wrong guy. He'd been pushing back since.

  I swung my legs off the couch so I could sit up. I ran my hand over my bald scalp, scraping off the sweat and wiping it on the arm of the sofa. I grabbed my coat and found my pocket watch. Six-fifteen. Four hours would have to do. Again.

  I didn't know who or what had taken control of Dannie. I called it Death because I had no idea what else to call it, and it seemed to suit. I mean, any of the heads of the Houses could probably have pulled off the trick, couldn't they? No. I tried to convince myself, even though I knew they couldn't. Death magic was only for necromancers and whoever had mind-fucked me was no necro. I was pretty certain I was still the only one, and even if I wasn't, it would take a long time to learn to raise a corpse without touching it. I'd been going for five years past the sell-by date, and I was nowhere close to being able to do it.

  Without a House wizard, and without a necro, that left... what? The idea was terrifying. All kinds of shit had shown up when the magnetic poles had reversed, and magical energy had made its way back to the surface. Everything changed in some random way or another. Orcs, goblins, ogres, werewolves, vampires, man-eating plants, giant spiders, the list went on and on. Some of it was good, some of it was bad. All of it was crazy. None of it fit what I had experienced.

  No. Not nothing. The mask was like that. The dice. An evil spirit somehow magicked into a set of ancient artifacts that had arguably fallen into my possession through some pretty random fate. Arguably. I wasn't convinced the spirit itself hadn't manipulated the whole thing.

  If the mask was an evil spirit, then the voice was an evil spirit. Except, it never seemed evil to me. Just pissed because I refused to die. Really pissed.

  Therefore, Death.

  I was rightly terrified.

  What to do? What can you do? You can fight death, and I had been fighting for a long time. You can't beat it in the end. Death always wins, just like he said. The only other option was to put it off for as long as I could. That meant staying alive, which meant having a nice savings account to pay for my illegal and increasingly hard to find meds.

  Hard to find is what brought me away from Chicago. I dropped by Dalton's with a nice fat prepayment, enough for three doses, and he told me he could only get me one more. Why didn't he tell me sooner? Dannie asked him not to. She was going to tell me herself. She never had the chance.

  I was still in pretty good shape. The hacking and blood was normal. I wasn't taking any chances. There was still one person I knew who had a knack for getting information and could probably locate the prize. I found Prithi's home phone online and gave her a call. I figured she owed me one after I saved her life.

  I got to my feet, went to the bathroom, stripped down and showered. I avoided looking in the mirror when I got out, heading back into the single room where I lived with nothing on.

  Prithi was sitting on the couch.

  "Towel?" she said, looking me over, her cheeks darkening. The first time I'd met Prithi, she'd been timid and frightened to the point that she had wet herself. I don't know if it was from spending a couple months around me, if her 'Azeban' Machine personality was starting to spill over into the real world, or if somehow she was talking to Dannie across the great divide. Whatever the cause, she'd been upping the snark lately.

  "Knocking?" I replied, ignoring her request and heading over to the laundry basket where I kept my clean clothes. Just because I was dying didn't mean I had to be wrinkled and smelly. I grabbed a fresh t-shirt and a pair of jeans, pulling them on and belting the pants to keep them up.

  "My parents want to talk to you."

  I winced and looked up at the ceiling. I could hear their feet above me, and smell the masala getting started.

  "What about?"

  "They wanted me to invite you to dinner."

  I paused. That one caught me off-guard. "What?"

  "My mom met me at the top of the stairs last night. I didn't think she saw us, but she did."

  I shot people to death. I put my hands on them and sucked their life away. I used a pair of ancient dice that brought them to a horrible end and fed their soul to an evil spirit. I'd been shot at, had water speared through me, fire thrown at me. I'd been gut-punched by a twelve-foot ogre.

  Her statement scared me more than any of that.

  "What?" I repeated.

  Prithi stared down at her feet. She was dressed now, in a pair of dark jeans and a t-shirt. Her long, black hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she'd put makeup around her eyes that gave her an exotic nerd look.

  "I told her that we were in love."

  Bad to worse.

  "You did not."

  "I'm sorry, Conor. You don't know my mom. She wouldn't have believed that I came down here in my underwear just to say hi, and if I told her we were just having fun she would have kicked you out already."

  "Why not just tell her you like girls and get on with your life?"

  "That's easy for you to say. If I tell her that she'll kick us both out." She came over to where I was standing, placing herself in front of me and giving me sad kitten eyes. "This
works out for both of us, you know. My mom's not a total conservative. She's okay with us not getting married or anything like that, as long as you don't get me pregnant."

  I laughed when she said it. How could I not? "P-"

  "It means I can come down here whenever I want." She motioned her head towards the back corner of the room, where I'd put up a partition to keep nosy parents from getting too nosy.

  The guns and meds took a good portion of the money I'd earned. The rig for the Machine had stolen the rest. It was my payment to Prithi, my bribe to get her to go back into the Machine as Azeban and find me more of the illegal pellets that kept me alive. It was her weakness, her addiction, one that she hadn't been able to fill since she lost her job as a developer on the alternate reality. It had been easy to tempt her with.

  "That's good for you. How does it help me?"

  "You need more money. Machine plus work equals money."

  "So your mom's not pissed?"

  "Don't be stupid, of course she's pissed. I spent two hours arguing with her about how much I love you and how if she messes it up I'll never get married. Seeing as how you're the first guy she's ever seen me with, she doesn't want to take that chance. Anyway, dinner tonight. Seven o'clock."