Zamani (2 page)

Chapter
One

Midnight, October 17th, 2012

Alex was so cold.
 
She couldn't remember ever being so
cold; winters in New Orleans are relatively mild, and the bone-chilling cold
she felt now was totally unfamiliar to her.
 
She was disoriented and unsure of where
she was.
 
It was completely dark and
silent except for the hum of something that sounded like a refrigerator.
 
As she came to, she felt the presence of
something over her face.
 
In her
mind, it made sense that she would have burrowed under the covers from the cold
she felt.

But the fabric on her face
was not soft or comforting.
 
In
fact, there seemed to be something rough and biting, metallic and cold against
the bridge of her nose. A zipper.

The same moment she realized
the fabric was not a blanket, she shifted on the cold slab. At the sound of
rollers moving and the sensation of sliding, she reached full panic attack mode.
As she fought to keep from hyperventilating, she heard and felt the zipper of
the body bag she was in move.

As the fabric parted, light
filtered in and she gasped for air.
 
Her eyes darted around as she tried to find clues as to why she just
woke up in a body bag and who was setting her free.
 
After her eyes adjusted to the light,
she saw a face above her own. The woman was pale, with a splash of freckles across
the bridge of her nose.
 
She had
green eyes and wavy red hair, some of which had fallen out of the clasp that
held it back from her face. Squiggly strands dangled over her furrowed brow as
she worked at the zipper. Alex’s brain told her to speak or to reach out to the
person, but she was still so cold, and she felt paralyzed.
 
She also wondered if this slight woman put
her in the body bag.

The woman who rolled the
morgue shelf out of drawer 212 (a number Alex would soon know) was petite. Alex
couldn't tell her age, but she looked young.
 
She was wiry and strong; Alex could tell
that from the way she moved and how easily she pulled the shelf out.

When she noticed Alex’s open
eyes watching her, she spoke.
 
“Hi,
there.
 
I know you can't do much
right now, but I want you to know I'm here to help you, not harm you.
 
You were brought to the morgue because
the police do not understand.
 
I
know your kind, and I'm here to help.
 
Will you let me help you?"
 
The woman smiled reassuringly, her eyebrows arching up at the end of the
question. "It's ok to just nod or to take my hand."
 
Alex felt the heat of the woman's hand
hovering above her own.
 
She concentrated
and was able to lift her hand the short distance to grasp the other woman's and
intertwine their fingers; even this felt like hard work.

"Good. Good.
 
I suspect all of this is new to you,
Alexandria, but we have time."
 
She removed her hand from Alex's and took a small package out of her
back pocket.
 
To Alex, the case
looked like the ones that they used to keep dissection kits in when she was in
advanced biology in high school, but this case only seemed to have scalpels in
it.
 
The woman pushed back her own
sleeve and made a cut that was just deep enough to make the blood bead up.

At the sight of the blood, Alex
was terrified. She was at first repulsed by the black ruby drops beading on the
surface, and her heart raced in fear that the woman would strike out at her,
too, cutting her flesh.
 
The other
woman remained calm, though, and simply offered her arm up to Alex like an
offering.

Alex felt a surge of desire
that her brain tried to reject. As she realized that there was no threat, her
repulsion turned to an overpowering need to press her mouth on the wound.
 
Her physical need was too great and her
rational mind could not overcome the desire to drink.

The warmth of the woman's
blood slowly seeped into Alex and she drank as greedily as she could.
 
Just as she felt like she might regain
her strength, the woman took her arm away.
 
It surprised Alex to hear her own groan of displeasure at having the
taste of blood removed from her lips. She was still in a fog and everything
lacked a sense of reality.

"That's all I can
safely give right now, but it should be enough to get you out of here.
 
Can you sit up?"

Alex tried; it was sort of
slow going, but she managed.
 
She swallowed
hard and somehow was able to ask,
 
"Where am I?"

"You, my dear, are in
the morgue."

"Morgue? Why?"

"Well, because most
people think you are dead.
 
I,
however, am very aware you are quite alive." The woman smiled again.
 
"I would introduce myself, but you
will probably realize you already know more about me than any name could tell
you."

Alex started to protest, but
then she realized the woman was right. The initial fears she had about her had
disappeared. She couldn't explain it, but she knew that the woman could help
her. She knew the woman was not who put her here, and she also knew the woman's
name.

"Lucy."

"Aha! We're going to do
just fine. You're going to have to help me, though, with a Jane Doe who is
going to take your place.
 
First,
though, we're going to have to get you a set of scrubs. You can't walk out of
here dressed like that."
 

Alex looked down at her
clothes. Lucy was right; they were covered in blood, the darkest stains near
the neckline of her shirt.
 
She had
a flash of memory of Wren at her throat, of pain and terror, but as her hand
flew to her throat she realized she wasn't hurt.

"Hurry up and strip
those off. We want to hurry so we can get going. I'll go get you those clean
scrubs."

Lucy left Alex sitting on
the slab, the body bag crinkling under her as she swung her legs over the side
and slid down carefully, testing her footing.
 
She still had her shoes on, and the toe
tag identifying her was attached to the laces of her right shoe.
 
She was relieved she’d at least be able
to keep her shoes. By the time Lucy returned, Alex was stripped down to her
underwear and shivering.

Lucy handed her the
scrubs.
 
“Put these on.”
 
She then started looking at the other
numbered drawers, finally finding the one she wanted.
 
“And here is your replacement.” Alex
slid the scrub top over her head and stepped into the scrub pants as she slid
off the slab. She
 
moved down the
row to where Lucy was pulling out another drawer that was higher up than her
own had been.
 
“This is why I need
your help.
 
Help me slide her down
and we’ll put her on the slab where you were.”
 
Lucy pointed Alex toward the foot end of
the body bag and she moved to the head end.
 
Together they gathered handfuls of the
bag to get a hold on the body.
 
Then, they began to shift and slide it toward them.
 
Alex wrapped her arms around the legs
while Lucy shifted to grab the bag above the shoulders.
 
They hoisted the body between them and
moved down to drawer 212, pushing Alex’s body bag off the slab as they replaced
it with the occupied one they carried.
 

Lucy unzipped the bag.
 
Alex could see the woman had nearly been
decapitated, a ragged gash across her neck.

Lucy started working to
undress the corpse, not saying much.
 
Alex didn’t know what else to do, so she helped.
 
Once they got the woman’s clothes off,
Lucy picked up Alex’s discarded, bloody clothes and began the awkward task of
dressing the corpse in them.
 
“Her
injuries look enough like yours that this should work well.”

“What happened to her?”

Lucy stopped for a second,
looking at Alex before answering. “She was a working girl who had the bad luck
to be picked up by a drunk trick who ran his sports car under the bed of a semi
on Elysian Fields.
 
They were moving
fast enough at the time that the shear almost took off her head.
 
Stupid trick died, too, if that’s any
consolation.”
 
She swapped out the
toe tags. “This poor gal didn’t have ID on her, and it’s not likely anyone will
come looking for her.
 
The Janes
that are working girls don’t tend to get claimed as no one is interested in
picking up the tab for disposal.
 
Their families wrote them off long ago, typically, and most of them are
from other places.
 
Their pimps
aren’t interested in being connected to them either.
 
They are disposable.”

Alex wasn’t sure if she was
more surprised by Lucy’s callous attitude or by her own lack of reaction to the
whole situation. She felt numb, though, and couldn’t quite manage enough energy
to question or do anything she wasn’t instructed to do.
 
She did notice that her replacement
looked a bit like her and she felt a pang of panic as Lucy slid the zipper back
up, closing Jane in the bag.
 
It was
an otherworldly feeling, as if Alex really were simultaneously inside the bag
and outside of it.
 
She shivered
again, this time from a different coldness.

“You said her injuries were
similar to mine.
 
What did you
mean?”

Lucy looked up from the body
bag that was now zipped closed. “Your friend Wren did a number on you. It was a
sloppy job, and she tore into your throat.
 
The wound looked worse than it was, I suspect, since you were able to
recover.”
 
She watched Alex and knew
that she didn’t believe her.
 
“The
scene was so gruesome that the cops could barely look at you.”

Returning to her work, Lucy
attached a wire lock onto the zipper and started wrapping it in electrical
tape.
 
Once that was done, she slid
the drawer shut and picked up Alex’s former body bag and the clothes, if they
could be called proper clothes, from the prostitute.
 
“Less to dispose of, at least.
 
Can’t imagine wearing such skimpy things
myself.”
 
Alex saw that Lucy also
picked up two cut wire locks like the ones she had just placed on the zipper of
the body bag Jane was in. Finally, she removed the small identification tag
from the now empty drawer where Jane had originally been.

The clothes, the tag, and
body bag went down an incinerator chute.

“Let’s get you out to my van
before my partner wakes up from his nightly nap break.
 
The couple of shots he drank after we
went on pickup rounds earlier are likely wearing off.” Lucy headed out of the
storage area and Alex didn’t know what else to do but follow.
 

In the parking lot, Lucy led
Alex to an old Volkswagen van that looked to be in mint condition.
 
“I am on duty for a few more hours.
 
You need to rest. You’ll be safe here. Once
I’m off work, I’ll answer your questions. I know you have a lot of them.”
 

Alex climbed into the bed
that was made up in the back of the van.
 
“You’re just going to leave me here?”

Lucy laughed a bit and
simply said, “You want to wander aimlessly in scrubs with no identification or
personal effects? Be my guest.”

Alex realized as she watched
Lucy walk off that she was right; she had no phone to call a cab even if she
had enough money to take one. She wasn’t even really sure where she was other
than a parking lot.
 
The bed also
looked so much more comfortable than a slab in the morgue. She was exhausted.

Seeing no better options,
she pulled the covers over her head and went to sleep.

Chapter
Two

Lucy returned to the morgue
office where the night shift morgue attendant Daniel was still sound asleep.
Daniel had been working the night shift just long enough to develop a pretty
good drinking habit, which made Lucy’s undercover duties even easier.
 
She bumped him intentionally on her way
toward the computer terminal where she would enter the tag numbers and clear
out the information on the pick up of the Jane Doe.
 
She was glad that Alex had been too much
in shock to ask a lot of questions just yet.
 
The reintroduction into the world was
always a horrible process for those Lucy found who were not still alive but not
truly dead.
 
And, she knew that Alex
wasn’t just any half-turned vampire.
 
She was someone important.

Earlier that evening, Lucy
arrived to pick up the body after the CSI team did what they had to do on the
scene. The house seemed to vibrate with energy.
 
Even if there hadn’t been a few officers
still in the room where Alex’s body was, she would have been drawn to the
spot.
 
Her head buzzed with the
energy emanating from Alex and the energy that hung in the room.
 
She could sense old forces there, older
than anything she’d sensed in a long time.
 
Olivia had been here.

For Lucy, reading the
lingering energy was like trying to hear someone whispering on the other side
of the room during a packed cocktail party.
 
Different energies overlapped each
other, but the quieter tones were the ones that she knew were most important to
listen to at the moment.
 
Alex’s
voice was the one she had to focus on for now.
 
She knew as time went on and as she
helped Alex transition that she’d learn more about Alex’s true identity and her
role.

By the time she’d shown up,
the police had taken statements from Alex’s partner Liz Camp and from two other
witnesses, John Kirby and Mike Courtland.
 
There would be no need for further identification of the body, as Liz had
positively identified Alex.
 
Lucy
shuddered to think how that must have been for Liz, and she thought of her own
lovely Mina who had tried her best to protect her and save her from
herself.
 
She wondered if Alex and
Liz would ever find each other again as she and Mina had.

“Oh, hey, doc.”
 
Daniel called her “doc” even though he
knew she was just a coroner’s technician.
 
“You get everyone in ok?”

She smiled as she started
logging from the handwritten notes in her tiny notebook.
 
She’d dropped the locks she’d taken off
the two body bags in a lockbox in her van when she led Alex out there; she’d
dispose of them properly once she got home. “Yep.
 
It’s a relatively slow night, so if you
want to keep taking a break, no problem.” While she talked Daniel pulled a
flask out of his back pocket and took a pull off of it. He passed it to her,
and she took a swig and passed it back.

“I still don’t get how
someone as hot as you are winds up working with stiffs all night.
 
I mean, for me, this is just a good desk
job where I get to drink a bit and hear some good stories, but you. . .you
really like this shit, don’t you?”

Daniel had a tendency to try
to flirt with her or figure her out once he’d had enough to drink.
 
Lucy always humored him, but she was an
old hand at not revealing the truth. She’d had more than enough practice with
attendants before him.
 
The guys who
worked the desk at night usually were writer wanna-bes who did more drinking
than writing and hoped to be the next Stephen King or J.A. Konrath. They took
the job as “research” that never led anywhere.
 

“Um-hmm.
 
I do.
 
It feels good to be of service to
others, don’t you think?”

Daniel just shook his head
and took another swig off the flask before sliding it into his pocket.
 
He picked up his ragged paperback and
settled in for a bit of reading.
 
Lucy hated the way he always folded his paperbacks backwards, hiding the
cover and ruining the binding.

She’d been working at her
current job for a very long time; Zofia had been the one to suggest it and she
was the one who orchestrated everything.
 
No one questioned how Lucy stayed so young or how she had worked there
for so many years, or if they did they forgot to question it after a visit from
Zofia.
 
Lucy was grateful for the
protection her group of vampires offered her, and she reasoned that at least
they were nice vampires.

Over the years she’d worked
in the morgue, she’d awakened several vampires. She was their first point of
contact in their new world. And, often, she could just destroy the evidence and
not worry about replacing the body. No one missed a local working girl or a
street kid who didn’t have ID anyway.
 
But Alex would be missed if her morgue drawer was empty, so she’d been
relieved to find that there wouldn’t be any need to identify the body and that
there was a Jane Doe that resembled her enough that there wouldn’t be questions
later.
 
And, if there were, Lucy
knew Zofia could take care of it. The bigger question was what to do about Alex
once Olivia realized she was not dead.