Dead Stare (Ghosts & Magic Book 3) Read online

  “I know,” I said. I had planned to go out that way. I looked at Frank. “I didn’t ask you to follow me. There’s a kill team coming, and I know the guy who’s acting as their heavy. He hates leathers, and he won’t care that you used to be human.”

  Frank glanced at Daisy again before nodding. “Okay, fine. It’s still wrong.”

  I had no intention of arguing that. I ran past him, out the door. He followed behind. We reached the emergency stairs with two or three seconds to spare.

  “We need to slow them down,” I said. “Can you carry me?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t love the idea of being cradled either, but I like the idea of being shot to pulp even less. Can you carry me?”

  “I knocked down a steel door, pal. You weigh, what? Eighty pounds?”

  “Ninety-seven. Keep going south until you reach the outside, and then head east. My van is parked two blocks away.”

  “Got it.”

  He scooped me up. I closed my eyes, reaching out for Daisy one more time. We were getting further away, and it took more effort to hold the stronger connection. If I hadn’t gotten the meds, I wouldn’t have even tried.

  I moved Daisy out of the room and into the hallway, right in front of the incoming team. Two rounds hit her expertly in the chest, knocking her to the ground.

  “Hold up,” I heard Amos say. “She’s a corpse. Your bullets won’t do shit.”

  I pushed Daisy back to her feet. I could see Amos through her blurry eyes. His massive bulk, his stupid afro, his shit-eating grin.

  “You doin’ kids now, Baron?” he said, guessing that I might be able to hear him.

  “Why didn’t you protect me?” I said, pushing the words to Daisy’s lips. They came out in a childlike groan, painful and sad. “You were supposed to keep me safe.”

  Amos’ face turned white. “Are you shittin’ me?” he whispered.

  “Your only job was to protect me, Amos,” I said.

  I was laying it on thick, and it was hurting. I knew it would. I wanted him to hurt. His change of allegiance not only pissed me off but turned his loyalty to Dannie into a joke.

  “Why didn’t you protect me?” I said. “You should have been there.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” he said.

  “Amos, you let me down. You knew I couldn’t take care of myself. You let me go into the Machine alone.”

  “I said shut the fuck up,” Amos shouted. He had a tear in the corner of his eye that trickled down his cheek. “You’re a son of a bitch, Baron. When I catch you, I’m going to break your bony ass in half.”

  “You killed me, Amos,” I said, pushing a little more. “It’s your fault. All your fault.”

  I pulled myself back and broke the tether. It was a good thing Frank was carrying me because I didn’t think I could stand at that point. My entire body shook from the pain.

  “Drop me on the driver’s side,” I said.

  “Are you sure you can drive like that?”

  “No, but you won’t fit behind the wheel.”

  We reached the van a moment later. I was shaking as I started the engine, my arms wobbling while I turned the wheel. Frank climbed into the back, crouching down to fit into the space.

  “Prithi, I’m out,” I said.

  I hit the gas, and we were gone.

  6

  My Best Imitation of Myself

  “That was terrifying,” Frank said as we made our way to the interstate, back south toward my place in Jersey.

  Of course, there was no way I was making it home tonight. I was exhausted and as near to death as I ever wanted to be. My heart was thudding rapid fire, my breath was shallow, and I could barely hold back the hacking enough to drive. I was looking for a pit stop, a motel to pull into and inject myself with the prize. Everything else could wait.

  I reached up and pulled the small receiver from my ear. Prithi had bailed the moment I announced our escape, likely to spend some quality time with Myra. Or maybe she was pissed at me because of what I did to Amos? There was no love lost between those two, and at the same time, she had seemed at least a little disappointed when we had parted ways. It could be she didn’t like the idea of being my only friend.

  I glanced back at Frank. He was sitting in lotus position in the back of the van, his head almost reaching the ceiling from the floor. He had shifted his hospital gown to rest it across his lap and hide his more delicate bits from view. The adrenaline was wearing off, and he was shaking like a dog on the way to the vet.

  “You have no idea,” I replied. “That one was easy compared to how things have been going for me lately.”

  “Are you crazy, pal? I’m scared just being in this car with you. You raise people from the dead. Kids. That is so fucked up.”

  Dannie’s face flashed in front of my eyes. “Again, you have no idea.” I was way more messed up than he knew. Then again, he hadn’t met Death in person.

  “I do now.” He paused, looking at the floor. Then he looked at me again. “It was kind of cool, though. The way you destroyed those locks and got me out of there. The way we took out Roberto together.”

  I winced. If the little dead girl wasn’t going to completely turn him off to my way of doing business, nothing would. I knew what came next.

  “We make a great team.”

  I spotted a Motel 6 off the side of the road, and an exit ramp approaching. I headed for it, covering my mouth with my arm and coughing up some blood.

  “Frank,” I said when I was done. “You don’t know the first thing about anything.”

  “I know that I used to be human, and now I’m not. Do you have any idea what that’s like?”

  I did. In a way, that was much more painful that he could probably understand. That was a pity party for another day.

  “I can’t go home,” he continued. “My mom won’t recognize me like this. She’s afraid of ogres. I have no money. I have nowhere to stay. I’m probably not very good at much of anything this shape is suited for.” He examined his hands. “I was a thief, you know? Nimble fingers, like you have. Not these sausage paws.” He sighed. “Not to mention the fucking racists.”

  There was one thing that shape was especially well-suited for. Even so, I was hesitant to open his eyes. The world was a scarier place than he knew, despite what he had already experienced at Mr. Black’s hands. Black was only one of the Houses. The others weren’t any better, and some were worse.

  “I don’t even have any pants,” he said softly, burying his head in his hands and sobbing.

  I shook my head. Back to regrets. Was I going to be sorry about getting him involved? Was it already too late? Black was sure to find out he had escaped, and that fact could make him a target regardless of anything else he did. Did I want to give Black the satisfaction of an easy mark?

  “Mr. Black was turning you into a monster to find a way to reverse the process,” I said. “If you want to be you again, your best bet would be to go back.”

  I had to dangle that carrot. If I was going to make an effort to help him out, I needed to know he wouldn’t turn on me for the promise of getting his life back.

  He raised his head. I looked up at him in the rearview as I turned into the motel parking lot.

  “Go back?” he said.

  “Let him finish his experiments. It might hurt, but there’s a chance he can undo it.”

  Could he already do that with his magic? I knew he had found one way, but that had required a dragon’s egg that he no longer had any way to capture, seeing that it had hatched. There had to be others. Frank needed to know about that, too. I couldn’t risk Black promising it to him at an inopportune moment and finding his sausage paws wrapped around my scrawny neck.

  I stopped the car in the lot, shut her down, and shifted in my seat. I was near-delirious by now, but I had to finish what I had started back at the research facility.

  “I’m going to tell you this once, so listen carefully,” I said. Frank stared at me and nodded. “Mr. Blac
k is a wizard, Not a user, like Robert or me. He has access to every kind of magic there is, except for death magic. He’s the head of House Black. There are a number of Houses. I forget how many exactly. All of them are color-coded. Everyone who runs a House is a wizard like Black. Except for House Red. Are you with me so far?”

  “I’m not as dumb as I look. Why isn’t House Red run by a wizard?”

  “It’s a long story. The thing is, the Houses run the world. Not governments. Not militaries. The Houses. Nothing happens without their influence or permission. They stay out of the limelight and work from the shadows, and they use people like me to do the dirty work that keeps everything humming.”

  “Necromancers?”

  “No. I’m the only necromancer. Users, yes. Others, too. Ex-military. Former Special Ops. Mercenaries. Anyone with the skills and the motivation can get in as long as they’re morally compromised. We’re called ghosts, and we go by handles. Code names. It’s all a kind of retro-online-gaming bullshit, but it helps us stay a little bit anonymous.”

  “Your handle is Baron?”

  “Yeah. A friend of mine told me I looked like Baron Samedi.”

  “Who is that?”

  “The Voodoo Lord of the Dead.”

  Frank chuckled. “Heh. I get it. So you’re one of these ghosts, and you’re suggesting that I could be, too?”

  “You have the size and strength of an ogre and the healing abilities of a troll. That makes you a rare commodity. I think you could be. That wasn’t my only point in telling you all of this.”

  “Oh?”

  “Mr. Black isn’t just a wizard. He’s the wizard. The most powerful of them all by a long yard. I wouldn’t be surprised if he could use his magic to make you human again. No experimentation required.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  I stared at him. It took about five seconds for him to catch on.

  “He hates you that much?”

  “He doesn’t hate me. Not like that. It isn’t his way. He despises death magic, both because of what it can do and because he can’t use it. He dislikes me for messing up his plan to put the world back the way it was before the reversal. He’s annoyed with me because I’ve got a barrier to his magic and he can’t keep tabs on me. For a man like Black, I’m an annoying thorn in the side that he wouldn’t mind putting himself out a little bit to get rid of.”

  “So, I bring you in, and he makes me human again?”

  I nodded. “If you can take me. I’ve got a few more tricks up my sleeve.”

  “You’re pissing off the most powerful wizard alive, you have terminal cancer, and you’re still here? I’m not going to start with you, pal. I get it, though. You don’t want me having a change of heart in the middle of it.”

  “Loyalty is important for ghosts. So is honor, believe it or not.”

  Hypocrisy, I name you.

  “I believe it.”

  “That doesn’t mean you can’t change sides. It does mean that you finish the job you’ve committed to, and you make your intentions known.”

  “Yeah. Honor among thieves, right?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I liked being human. If this body can make me something else, something more, maybe it isn’t a bad thing?”

  “That isn’t my call.”

  “Do the jobs pay well?”

  “They can. Mine do.”

  “Which House do you work for?”

  “Red.”

  I couldn’t say it without thinking of Jin. Every once in awhile, I would catch myself wishing she were still around. She had seen past the sickness to the person underneath. The person I had once been, and the person I had become. She had liked me anyway.

  “You said Red isn’t run by a wizard. I’m not surprised that’s the team you’re playing on if wizards hate necromancers. Who runs House Red?”

  “I’m going to rent a couple of rooms for the night. Wait here, and I’ll bring you your key.”

  “You aren’t going to answer my question?”

  I did my best version of a smile. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  7

  Breakfast at Six

  I woke up six hours later with the worst hangover of my life. It was unexpected because the injections had never done that to me before. Usually, I started feeling better right after I took a hit. Not so much this time. The new concoction left me in horrible agony for an hour before I passed out to escape the pain, and now this.

  I sat up slowly, the entire room spinning around me, and the throbbing threatening to knock me down again. I steadied myself on the edge of the bed, still made and barely disturbed, letting my eyes settle on the view of the highway out the second story window. The sun was up. The weather looked decent. Whatever.

  Was I still about to die? That was the primary question on my mind. Clearly, the meds I took weren’t the same as the ones I had before, even if they had the same label. Black was making progress in the refinement. Did that mean I would be an unintentional casualty of progress?

  I closed my eyes, listening to the chaotic discord of the death magic. I was still dying. In fact, if I wasn’t mistaken the din of the resonance was louder than it had been yesterday. Did that mean it hadn’t worked? I wasn’t coughing. I didn’t even have the urge to cough. That was an improvement.

  I hated the ambiguity.

  There was nothing to be done about it. I forced myself to stand, ignoring the pain. I decided to head down to the included breakfast buffet and down a few cups of coffee and hope that helped. If it didn’t, today was going to be a very, very long day.

  Frank was at a leather-sized table in the corner when I arrived, digging into a massive pile of potatoes and corned beef hash. He was the only leather in the place, paired with six old-fashioned humans and a half-elf who were doing their best not to stare. I normally didn’t care much for racist crap, but given that Frank was unique for a Newhu, as Amos called them, it made sense that people would stare. Hell, other leathers would stare too if there were any around.

  He saw me coming, raising his hand to get my attention as if he didn’t stand out. I acknowledged him with a short nod, handed the server my ticket, and immediately grabbed two mugs and filled them with coffee. I could feel the eyes on me as I brought my liquid breakfast over to where he was sitting. I wasn’t sure which of us was more of a spectacle.

  “Good morning, B-”

  I put my hand up to silence him.

  “Conor,” I said. “My name is Conor. Rule one: you don’t advertise in public. Time and place.”

  He smiled. “Yeah, sure.”

  I stared at him, suddenly realizing he was out in public and not naked. “Where’d you get the threads?”

  He was wearing a humongous flannel shirt and a pair of equally large jeans. They looked ridiculous on him.

  “Trucker came through after you went inside. I bought them.”

  “You don’t have any money.”

  “I broke into the lockbox in the back of your van. Well, tore it open, more like.”

  I dropped my coffee onto the table and considered putting my hand on his wrist. “You what?”

  “I know, I know. Trust. I needed some clothes, pal. I only took enough to pay for them, and I put the rest back. I’m sure you would have given me some cash if you hadn’t been so beat.”

  “What about the book?” My heart was starting to pound in response to my panic.

  “What book?”

  “About this big,” I said, framing the air with my hands. “Really old.”

  “Oh.” He reached to the seat beside him and held it out to me. The binding was slightly bent from being under his ass. “I thought a little reading might help me sleep. It’s not in English though.”

  I grabbed the book from him. It was an ancient thing, wrapped in leather that I assumed had been made from human flesh, hardened on the binding with bone, and containing about one hundred pages that seemed as if they had been burned into the parchment. There was no f
anfare to it. No fancy design. It was utilitarian and useful.

  A spellbook.

  More specifically, a necromancer’s spellbook.

  I didn’t know where Tarakona had gotten it from. I wasn’t about to ask. He had been part of this world for over forty-thousand years. He knew shit that I was sure I didn’t want to know. He had done things, seen things I couldn’t even imagine. I could still hear his voice in my mind, warning me about the things that slept while magic was dormant.

  Things that were worse than Mr. Black. Things that were still waking up.

  “Do you always help yourself to other people’s things?” I asked.

  “Kind of comes with the territory of being a thief,” he replied.

  I walked right into that one. “Right.”

  “What language is that, anyway?”

  I didn’t know. Somehow, I was able to understand it and recite it even though I couldn’t actually read it, which felt as strange as it sounded. “I call it Necronic.”

  “That’s dumb.”

  “The other people Black took from your prison, they didn’t like you very much, did they?”

  He smiled. “Sorry, boss. I’m still trying to get used to all of this. You look better today, by the way. Your paleness is a little less pale.”

  “Good to know.”

  “So, what’s our next play? Do you have any more work lined up?”

  “No. Not yet. We’re going to keep heading back to New Jersey. I’ve got an apartment in Hoboken.”

  Prithi’s parents had been happy to see me go. Especially when Prithi had told them she had made up everything about the two of us being an item and that she was gay. They didn’t want to blame their sweet daughter for her love of t and a, so they decided to blame me as if it were some failure of mine that had caused it.

  Of course, they had made Prithi’s life an even bigger hell, and we had both fled their roof as soon as we could. She had bolted for Myra, and I had upgraded to a conversion in the heart of one of the ugliest cities I could find. Not because I wanted to live there, but because the death frequency was fairly strong, and I was trying to learn my upper limits.