Z-Risen (Book 2): Outcasts (22 page)
“I think he likes you, babe.” Lester frowns as he comes to his feet. He carefully extracts the pistol from her hand and points it at the ground.
Angela studies the man, then steps closer. Lester grabs at her arm, but she slides away with a little shooing motion.
“I just want to get a closer look. I won’t let him touch me.”
“Just be careful.”
She ignores him and approaches the fence but keeps a cautious foot or two from the man’s grasping hands. Marlene joins the guy at the fence, and they wave their arms like a pair of drunks reaching for last call at a bar.
“Hey Marlene, you in there?” his girlfriend asks.
The deader shuffles back and forth, putting more pressure on the fence. The black guy reaches forward so far that he has to raise one leg to make the stretch. It comes up and close to the top of the fence. Then it makes the connection between the tiny barriers holding him back from the couple, and he practically staggers over the chain link.
“Get back, Angela, I’m
gonna take him out!”
Angela stares at Marlene for another second as if transfixed by her eyes. She stares and stares and doesn’t see the other deader fall forward, hand outstretched toward her. He lands face first but not before grabbing the top of her dress and ripping it down her chest. Angela takes a hasty step back and covers her now-bare breasts as if there were any need to be modest in front of the mindless things.
Lester doesn’t really care for a peek now; all he can think about is the fact that one almost got his girl! He pulls her back roughly and then shoots the guy a few times. The deader thumps and bashes into the ground as the bullets strike. Puffs of blood rise from his back, neck, and head as they punch through his body. Then, with a groan, the guy goes still.
“Son of a bitch!” Lester howls. “Don’t you get it? You stay on that side of the fence and you get to live.” Fucker fell in his yard. How many more will figure that out?
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A sample chapter from:
AT THE BEHEST OF THE DEAD
The first novel in a new urban fantasy series
By Timothy W. Long
"I highly suggest picking this one up today!"
4.5 out of 5 -- sciencefiction.com
"Timothy W. Long brings his undead wit and wiseassery to the urban fantasy genre to fearsome effect. Necromancers, demons, and mayhem...what more could you want?"
-- Tim Marquitz, author of the Demon Squad series
Phineas Cavanaugh likes to play with dead things. As a centuries-old necromancer he is Seattle's foremost investigator on the recently deceased, and he hasn't met a corpse he didn't like.
Hired to track down a serial killer, Phineas and beautiful Detective Andrews face off against an enraged beast that should not exist. Things go from bad to worse when is summoned to probe the murder of his teacher and oldest friend.
Phineas learns the hard way that the two cases are related when a demonic force attempts to devour him. Now, if he is to survive the night, he will have to join forces with his former flame, a witch named Glenda; Frank, a Native American changer, and a snarky demon--who may or may not be--under Phineas's thrall.
With the power over the dead at his command, Phineas' destiny leads to a showdown in Hell, where the price of failure may be his soul, and nothing less than the very Earth itself.
Enjoy a sample chapter
:
I was up to my ball sack in muck, rain puddles, overgrown grass, and more than a few discarded beer cars before I realized that my prospects for the night weren’t looking so hot.
I should just get the words “expect the unexpected” tattooed on my palm. That way I could smack the hell out of myself every morning.
It should have been an easy job, but there were a couple of things I’d learned in my short existence. No job is ever what it seems and the client always fudges some facts.
It was dark, without even a proper mist. If I was going to be traipsing through the woods at oh-dark-thirty, the least the ground could do was offer up a little bit of creep factor. Of course it was raining. You can’t go anywhere in this damn city without the clouds rolling in and pissing on you. Then there was the moon--also a no-show. Probably hiding out behind all the clouds. Not that I could see either one since looking up just got me a face full of water.
In my mind I was creating the warlock version of a golf umbrella. Big puff of black that would expand when tossed into the air. I had the whole thing worked out. A couple of glyphs to control it, kick some elemental ass for the propulsion mechanism, and make them get along with some words of binding.
That’s when I spotted him.
The demon was a little guy. Like someone had taken your garden-variety salamander, made it the size of a fat pug, then tossed it into a lake of slime and hate. There were at least eight eyes angled around its head, and when he snuffled the ground they shifted in every single direction of the compass. I got dizzy just trying to track all his ocular movements. His mouth was a horror that gave him the appearance of a freaky pie with teeth. Skin mottled grey, slimy, and in some places slack. It hung over his back legs, and when he shuffled forward all that mass shifted around his body. It sounded like he was covered in half filled water balloons. If I’d had a dart gun, I could’ve dumped a gallon of demon ooze on the ground.
He lowered his head and sniffed. Looked up and stared at the clouds as if distracted. I held my breath because I wasn’t sure if the little bastard had nostrils. Rain pelted the bizarre mouth, letting water run out of a pair of gills along its neck.
I held my breath until I got dizzy. If I made a noise, moved a millimeter, it might well become aware of me, and then I would either be in for a fight or a test of its loyalties. Of course it could always ignore me and continue to hunt whatever it was here for. As long as it wasn’t me, I was happy to let Mr. Shifty Eyes snort bugs and mud for the rest of the night.
I thought relief had arrived when I heard barking in the distance. Mr. Demon on the hunt? Meet your victim. But the evil pug didn’t even need to move its head.
Shit! I decided that breathing was an important part of staying alive and spent a few seconds sucking in air as quietly as possible.
He took a ponderous step away from me, and then one more.
Earlier, I had pulled down my eyelids and rubbed a thick ointment onto them. It burned like fire and made me want to reach for a gallon of saline solution. But after a few minutes the burning gave way to a dull itch that felt like summer allergies. It sucked, but it was also a small price to pay for night vision. It wasn’t perfect. I didn’t get a crystal clear version of the world like a changer might, but it was at least as good as the goggles the military employ. I knew this because I had tried to sell the army the formula. That didn’t sit too well with the league. There was talk of stringing me up.
Others just wanted to kick my ass.
Arcanist’s have no sense of humor.
The demon didn’t give up. He just stared in eight directions while his nose sucked at the ground. I could take my chances with a blast of lighting, or maybe freeze him in place until the morning then try to have a unit pick him up. That would be a funny conversation.
“This is Phineas Cavanaugh. I need a demon picked up at Alear Park in Auburn Washington. How long until you guys can get here?”
“How long until you can piss off?” would be the likely answer.
The safest thing to do would be to leave the damn thing alone and get back to my house. Then I could come back in the morning and try to pick up a remnant of Clarence Whitfield, the dead guy I was hired to track down.
Yep. That would have been the
smart
thing to do.
The problem was I loved a challenge, and it sometimes got in the way of the common sense side of my brain.
I slashed my hand through the air and mouthed words. This would keep my scent hidden. My pinky finger was covered in a potion of dubious design. Something I had developed all by myself. The league didn’t like that too much either. If warlocks were going to be coming up with new formulas, they wanted to profit from it. That’s why they got pissed about the night vision goop, too. It wasn’t that I stepped out of line and spoke out of school; it was because they weren’t getting a cut.
This park was an unlikely place to find a warlock, and even more unlikely to find someone of my calling, a necromancer. We preferred to keep a low profile since no one wanted
our
filth around.
Genus Warlockus Necromanus
were the whipping boys of the warlocks. We got no respect because we liked to dig in the dirt and talk to the dead. But were demonologist any better? I’d certainly never met one that I liked. Who wanted to consort with denizens of the six wards? All demons did was lie and stink up a room. Plus, if you lost your cool or spoke the wrong words they were just as likely to haul your screaming ass back to their fiery pit as look at you.
But you mention warlock to someone and they get an uncomfortable look. Say necromancer and they suddenly have business in another state.
Even the league didn’t like necros, though we got officially sanctioned not long after everything went public in the nineties. That was a fine time to live through. The nightly news centered on witches, warlocks, and all manner of ‘Fae’ creature that had kept their asses well and truly hidden for the last few centuries.
Then someone opened
their big fat mouth. At first he was a laughing stock, but after making a skeleton not only walk around on live television but also attempt to speak, it became clear that there was more involved than a charlatan’s tricks. He was ostracized, kicked out of the league indefinitely. Warlocks cursed his name and changers crapped on his lawn.
It took me a long time to get back in everyone’s good graces.
But that’s another story.
There was no chance of me finding a trace of blood in this park. I had an idea where the murder had gone down, but any bloodstain evaporated the second the rain arrived. Even if I had some high tech police spray to squirt all over the ground, I’d need a biplane and a couple of thousand gallons.
The park was a one off. Converted from a cow pasture and farm house back in the 70s, now it was mainly used as a dog park. During the day you could bring your golden retriever and work off its energy, if you had a strong enough arm. At night, it was closed and silent.
I’d spotted a small rise to the east that was surrounded by tall maples. It had made a perfect location to land behind and hide my pitchfork. Then it was just a quick half-mile jaunt that saw me cursing my ridiculous robes. They dragged across the ground and created a soggy mess that soon soaked into my boots, socks, and jeans. I probably looked like a refugee from a renaissance fair.
The walk wasn’t bad and went a long ways toward waking me up. I should have been in bed, but the widow had been very specific about the place where her Chucky had passed while walking their Pomeranian. It made me suspicious of his death. Pomeranians? Really? A man can only take so much – maybe he jumped in the river.
I slid from behind a tree and motioned again to nullify my scent. The potion worked but only in
five minute spurts. And I wondered why it’d been a financial failure.
I slid a potion out and worked at the cork top with my fingertips. The bottle itself was a hundred years old and had seen more action than a roman statue. It was thick and the cork was in there deep and tight. I seasoned my corks over several months to remove any traces of water before they spent time in a humidor. The last thing I wanted was some of the crazy concoction spilling while I’m was a thousand feet in the air.
Frogs were making an unholy racket somewhere to the south. I thought there might be a small pond in that direction. This time of year, it, and the area around the water, were probably a swamp.
The demon grunted and stared straight at me. I froze in place, reasoning that if I’d already stood here for close to an hour, I had time to blend in, become one with the shadows.
Another note to self, “I’m no damn ninja.”
“Oh crap,” I muttered and worked at the cork with my fingernails.
It came up on hind legs that were severely disjointed. One knee pointed toward me, the other knobbed and jointed in the opposite direction. Bumps dotted its limbs like giant pockmarks. I thought the beast was small, but it had been keeping its form in a tight ball. Its body expanded, tripling in size as if filled with air, or something it was tapping into on the other side of the cusp.
Two arms stretched and moved up and down, as if trying to sense me. The little cuss had a third limb that was folded close to its chest. This one opened up like a praying mantis preparing to strike. It was long, serrated along its forepaw, and ended in a massive hook that looked deadly even in the poor light. I had to assume it was welded in place because I’d never heard of a demon born with knives. Claws the size of goats, sure. Actual metal hooks? That was a first.
The rain let up just as I took a step back and got my foot stuck in yet another puddle. Water and gunk rushed to suck my foot into the ground.
It moved faster than quicksilver. The main problem with demons was their inability to focus on anything else once they had a target. I’d made the mistake of assuming it was hunting something else. That it’s presence here was purely coincidental. Last note of the night to myself, “You are an idiot.”
“Bad demon. You’re off my Christmas list.” I panted and did the smart thing.
I ran for my life.
**