Undead Chaos (5 page)

“In a nutshell, yes.”

“Peachy.” I deflated and pinched the bridge of my nose. I loved a good mystery, but only when it came to the books on my shelves. Real life was difficult enough without having to deal with fat, naked dudes returning from the grave for no good reason whatsoever.

I chewed on the inside of my mouth, mulling over the Necromancer’s information. I couldn’t decide which was more troubling, the apparent lack of control over Banks or the level of power Simeon claimed it would take to create him. There was no way someone could accomplish the task without leaving a trail of magical bread crumbs.

Or fingerprints.

“You say that reanimation is like any other magic?” I asked, suddenly.

Simeon lifted a brow in surprise. “Yes. Why?”

“Well, if all spells leave miniscule traces of the practitioner’s energy for a while, and if reanimation is as intensive as you say it is, then it stands to reason that jump-starting a corpse would slather it with the Summoner’s persona. It’d be like covering the body with magical fingerprints.”

Simeon weighed the idea. “True. The severity of the spell might allow the practitioner’s imprint to remain longer than normal, but it would still fade after several days. Re-killing the subject increases the loss exponentially.”

“But there’s still a chance that something is lingering.”

“Perhaps.”

“Mr. Fawkes,” I said with a smile, “how would you like to go on a field trip?”

* * *

“This was a terrible idea.”

Simeon was in the passenger seat of the Gray Ghost with his arms crossed. He glared out the window. A muscle in his jaw twitched.

“Stop fretting,” Quinn said from the back. She had the window down and her hair flipped playfully in the wind. The cool air turned her cheeks rosy, and she closed her eyes with a smile. “There’s nothing wrong with what we are doing,” she added.

Simeon grumbled something and continued to stare out the window.

In hindsight, I should have left Quinn behind. I kept glancing at her in the rearview mirror and almost sideswiped several vehicles. It’s a wonder we survived the trip.

Simeon was equally unhappy with her presence, but for a completely different reason. From his perspective, he and I were doing something borderline sketchy and he didn’t want her involved.

Unfortunately for him—and fortunately for me—she was a persistent woman.

“Under no uncertain terms,” she’d said to her father at the condo, “are you going anywhere awesome without me.” Based on the defeat in the man’s eyes, it was not the first time she’d won that argument.

Thankfully, the drive was short. Before we knew it, we were pulling into the parking lot of the county hospital. I took a ticket from the machine, found a space, and the three of us exited the vehicle.

Public hospitals are freakish places for the Skilled. The level of emotional output from the sick and dying make it uncomfortable for us to spend a lot of time indoors. The more sensitive of my kind avoid them altogether.

It’s part of the reason why my family built their own medical ward.

As we approached the threshold, Simeon paused and closed his eyes. I assumed he was focusing his mind in order to quiet the storm of feeling pouring out of the building. Quinn did the same, although she took more time than her father. I barely felt the psychological buzzing from the building, so I bided my time watching Quinn concentrate and wondering what her lip-gloss tasted like.

As I studied her, however, it dawned on me that I hadn’t been aware of her Skill at the apartment. Normally, the more powerful the Skill, the harder it was to keep it under wraps. Kind of like infrared imaging, we radiated differently depending on our power levels. Only the strongest of our kind could tamp down how they “felt” to others.

At the apartment, Quinn had been a cool gray, but standing outside the hospital, she burned white-hot.

Funny, sexy
and
powerful. God should just hand her a bag of chips and call it a day.

“Okay,” Simeon said when his daughter finally opened her eyes, “let’s enter.”

The barrier of the hospital met us, but unlike the ones I’d crossed recently, it was made of wispy cobwebs instead of barbed wire and Kevlar. We easily stepped into the gleaming white halls of the hospital.

The interior was a bustling hive of activity. Nurses in various colored scrubs tended the phones, worked the ER lines, maneuvered patients and administered as much help as they could. Their doctor counterparts walked briskly from room to room, their white lab coats snapping around their knees. Since we’d come in the main entrance and did not seem to be in distress, our appearance had no effect on the hustle and bustle around us.

I pointed to a hallway to our left. “This way.”

We scooted down the corridor and followed it around several turns, avoiding rushing nurses and doctors along the way. Occasionally a male practitioner gave Quinn the once-over, but otherwise we proceeded unnoticed.

We arrived at a set of elevators and I pressed the down button. When the doors opened, we found the interior not only empty, but deathly quiet. I punched the bottom button and sighed contentedly.

“What?” Quinn asked.

“No AC/DC,” I said. She raised her eyebrows in question and I added, “Long story.”

“Tell me later,” she replied with a wink. I nodded and felt my face turn as pink as her highlights.

The elevator pinged to a halt and emptied us into a cool, blue hallway. Our footsteps echoed down the vacant passage as I led our merry band of magicians toward the double doors at the far end.

“You certainly know your way around,” Simeon said evenly.

“It’s not my first time.”

“Ah,” he replied, glancing at the doors. The word “MORGUE” was stenciled across them in large black letters. I pushed my way through. Quinn and her father followed on my heels.

“Shifter!” a voice boomed from behind a white desk. “You made great time.”

LaDell Edgars, the coroner, was as massive as he was dark. His chest was as wide as the desk, his arms as thick as tree trunks, and his hands as big as catcher’s mitts. He was bald with a neatly trimmed goatee and a nose that had been broken more times than he could count.

We’d met a year earlier when I was called in to identify the body of something I’d killed, and we became instant friends. Not only was he a genuinely decent guy, but I appreciated that he never flinched when I put another “thing” into his care. He liked to joke that he only kept me around because I made his job interesting.

LaDell beamed. He rose from his seat and came swiftly around to shake my hand.

“Hey, bud.” I smiled as my hand vanished into his massive paw. “How’s business?”

“Slow until last night,” he said, crushing my bones.

“That’s a good thing.”

“I guess, but I can only do so many crossword puzzles in one day. Thank goodness you whacked that zombie.”

I cringed, unsure how Simeon would take the reference to Banks, but the Necromancer didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he gazed around the room, soaking in the sights and smells. The look of delight on his face was creepy.

“LaDell,” I said quickly, “allow me to introduce Simeon Fawkes and his daughter, Quinn. This is LaDell Edgars, head of this portion of the morgue.”

“He means the Freak Ward. Everyone calls it that since I get the oddballs.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Simeon said politely. To his credit, he barely made a noise as the coroner squashed his hand.

“Same,” LaDell grinned. Then he turned to Quinn and gently palmed her fingers. “And a very big pleasure to meet you.”

“Well, hello,” she purred.

I wanted to hit LaDell with something, but nothing in the morgue was large enough to cause a scratch. He released Quinn a moment later.

“Quite an impressive operation you have here,” Simeon said. “Extremely orderly.”

The coroner beamed. “Thank you. Winter Wonderland is my baby.”

Quinn frowned. “Winter Wonderland?”

“That’s
my
name for this place. ‘Freak Ward’ is too mean and depressing.”

She chuckled and Simeon gave LaDell an approving nod. “Indeed it is.”

“You have our subject all set?” I asked louder than was necessary. I told myself it was to steer the conversation back to our task and not because I wanted to impress Quinn by being the big man in charge. Deep down, I almost believed it.

LaDell waved a hand at the back set of doors. “Yessir. Waiting for you in all his glory. I’ll stay out here while you all do your thing.”

“Did you, uh,
fix
him?”

The coroner laughed. “Of course. Stitched the head back on in no time. It was easy with such a nice clean cut.”

“I aim to please. Thanks for letting us down here. I really appreciate it.”

LaDell clapped my shoulder. “Anytime, Shifter.”

As we approached the second room, Quinn stopped before the handwritten sign taped to the wall. It read:

Do not
,
under any circumstances feed
,
poke
,
lick
,
argue with
,
or try to intimidate the dead.
They deserve your respect.

Signed
—
The Management.

She laughed, and I couldn’t help but laugh with her.

“Lovely gent,” Simeon said with a rare smile.

The viewing room was chilly, the walls filled with refrigerator units that held the deceased. There were several washbasins for prepping bodies and enough gadgets for a medical examiner to conduct a thorough autopsy. I was glad that most of those items were put away. Carrying a sword every day was one thing. Being two feet from a bone saw was something completely different.

Banks lay on a metal table on the far side of the room. His skin hung in sickly gray folds with several flaps rolling over the edge. Mercifully, his lower half was covered with a sheet.

Gazing at the dead man, I was impressed with LaDell’s handiwork. The reattached head rested naturally and you had to get close to see the stitches on the neck. Which I didn’t. Instead I allowed Simeon to approach the body. To my great delight, Quinn hung back with me.

“Thank you,” she whispered as her father examined Banks.

I glanced down at her. “For what?”

“For this.” She motioned to her father. “I haven’t seen him this alive in a long time. I can’t even remember the last time he laughed. Despite his griping in the car, this means a lot to him.” She squeezed my hand. Her warmth was like a volcano in the icy confines of the room.

I shrugged and tried to act cool. “It’s nothing.”

“No, it’s a big something,” she replied earnestly.

My heartbeat quickened as she offered a smile that held more meaning than a simple “thank you.” I was suddenly tempted to kiss her, dead body or no dead body, father or no father.

“When did he die?” Simeon asked, ruining the moment. The tension in my chest faded as Quinn released my hand.

Reluctantly, I turned my attention to the Necromancer. “About a month ago.”

“Remarkable,” he whispered.

“What?”

“Whoever reanimated this man did more than just summon him back. They halted all decay and even stimulated growth.”

“I thought you said that wasn’t possible. That all returned beings suffered the inevitable.”

“They do.” Simeon gazed at the body in wonderment. “This is unheard of. Mr. Banks wasn’t just some recalled robot, he was a
living
being. Come.” He motioned me over, then picked up the fat man’s hand. “See the fingernails? There are signs of growth
after
the initial death. And the hair.” He parted the follicles on the head. “Those are fresh roots.”

I grudgingly examined the parts Simeon pointed out and, despite my ignorance, could see areas different than the rest. The bullet wounds weren’t nearly as grisly as they had been the night before either. The sight was as comforting as Simeon’s tone.

“Any chance we can figure out who the miracle worker is?” I asked.

Simeon paused his inspection. The boyish excitement faded and he nodded heavily.

“Yes,” he said solemnly. “Let’s see what we can find out. Do you have the supplies?”

I handed the man the sack of goodies we’d compiled at his place and tried to ignore the guilt I felt for ruining the man’s fun.

Simeon required little time to prepare the complex spell. He rehearsed everything in his mind and, once satisfied, removed several artifacts designed to amplify his Skill and cut down on the excess magical white noise. Once the setup was complete, he instructed that Quinn and I stand to one side of Banks with him at the head of the table.

“Are you sure there’s nothing we can do to help?” I asked.

Simeon shook his head. “Neither of you know what to look for. Besides, I’m banned from Necromancy, not from conducting research.”

“Research into a dead body doesn’t count?”

“I know
exactly
what my boundaries are.” His voice grew tight. “If my old craft were a building, then checking a corpse for lingering magic would be like peeking in the window. As long as I don’t enter, I’m fine.”

He gazed at Banks. “Moreover, you’ve piqued my interest with this creature, and I want to know who is behind him just as much as you do. Considering the time since his reanimation, however, there may be no traces of the Summoner left.”

“Understood,” I said. “But it’s worth a shot.”

“Indeed.”

Simeon placed his hands on either side of Banks’s head, murmured softly, and leaned forward. He held that position for a moment before moving his hands slowly down the neck and over the chest.

“Nothing. Only silence.”

He checked the corpse once again, murmuring more as he moved farther down the body. He paused at the toes, then worked his way back to the head.

“There is little that I can...” He drifted off, cocking his head to one side.

“What?”

“I may have found something, but it’s faint. Almost like an echo.”

“Echo, echo, echo,” I repeated softly. Simeon ignored me, but Quinn snickered.

“You’re weird,” she said.