Resurrection (17 page)

Besides, from the sound of things, I was going after Reven already so what was one more reason? It sure didn’t hurt to be on Baalth’s good side.

He leaned in even closer, so close I could smell the ashy wisps of energy drifting off his naked skin. My nervousness grew as he crowded against me to whisper into my ear.

I could only hope the thing pressed warmly against my leg wasn’t what I thought it was.

“Do this for me—” A banjo serenade played in my head. “—and I’ll grant you a portion of my power as well as forgive your contract.”

At that moment, I didn’t care what he was rubbing on me. In fact, the promise of power had me contemplating a sore jaw. Fortunately, because I’d have embarrassed myself right there, that wasn’t one of the requirements.

Unable to wipe the smile from my face, I met his eyes as he stepped back. While excited by the offer of power for something I’d have done for free, I still knew better than to take his word for it. “Not that I don’t trust you, but—”

He cut me off with a wave, a narrow smile on his lips. He knew how things worked. In fact, I probably earned a few points of respect in his eyes by bringing it up.

With a flash of his hands a contract poofed into being. He bit his palm, letting the blood pool before making his mark. Finished, he blew on the contract to dry it, warm winds fluttering by. He then passed it to me. I read it over, scanning every word, looking for hidden caveats.

To my surprise, there were none. It was an amendment of our original, voiding the first and laying out the terms just as Baalth said they’d be. I took a second look, my mind unable to rationalize a catch-free contract.

“You sure about this?” Against my better judgment, I gave him an out.

He nodded. “The deal stands.” He gestured for me to return the contract. I did with a shaking hand. “Return my men to me, alive, and the power will be yours. You will owe me no more.”

The ground rumbled again, the relief on his face fading.

“Hurry, Triggaltheron.” He looked about at the ruin of his domain, his eyes moist. “For all of our sakes.”

Serpentine tendrils of mist seeped from the ground beneath him, coiling up his legs and wrapping him in ebony shadows. His weary gaze fell on me as the darkness swallowed his face. An instant later, he was gone.

Amidst the wreckage of Old Town, I stood with a blazoning smile amongst the burning buildings and the scorched earth as Rahim and Katon approached.

“You two an item now?” Katon asked.

“There you go with that jealousy act again.” I grinned. “You can’t have me.”

I knew Katon was mostly being sarcastic, but buried beneath his comment was a flowing undercurrent of distrust. He knew Baalth and I had a history, the demon lieutenant having saved my life long ago, and that would forever taint his opinion of me. He would never admit it, nor would he let it interfere with our work, but I knew there was a part of Katon that sat in reserve waiting for the day Baalth called in his marker and he’d have to kill me.

It was a chilling thought.

I never told anyone my original debt to Baalth was already paid, letting them presume otherwise. My guilt wouldn’t let me tell them. My stomach churned as I thought about what I’d had to do to free myself from the entanglements of Baalth’s strings.

Fortunately, Rahim wasn’t in the mood for my introspection, which was good, because I wasn’t either.

“Since even Ray Charles can see Baalth is to blame for this,” He gestured to the sputtering ruins, “can you tell me why?”

“Reven kidnapped his men: Poe, Marcus, and to top it off, McConnell.”

Rahim’s face showed a mix of understanding and crass apathy. He probably cared for Baalth’s goons even less than I did.

“I’m presuming since Old Town is a smoking crater and he handed you a contract, he was unable to stop the necromancer and wants you to do so?”I nodded. “He’s on edge, his power all over the place. You felt the rumbling, right?”

Both had.

“Is he dangerous?” Rahim asked, the unspoken understanding he meant more so than usual.

“Very much so,” I had to admit. “He passed the rescue on to me because I believe he thinks he’s about to lose it.”

Katon glanced around, a harsh laugh slipping out. “I think we’re past that point.”

“This is just a sniffle compared to the plague he’d unleash if his power slipped loose. I think he bit off way more than he could chew when he claimed Glorius’s soul. It’s eating him up inside.”

“And we’re worried about the zombie Anti-Christ when we’ve got a full blown Satan on our hands, counting down the moments until he blows?”

“Baalth is a known quantity. He values his life as much as we do ours. More importantly, he values his status. He won’t do anything to compromise his place in the new order. He’ll hold on as long as he can. At least as long as he thinks things are being handled.” I sighed, the smoke burning my lungs. “On the other hand, Reven and Longinus are unknowns. We have no clue as to their end-game plans.” It’s never good when I’m the voice of reason.

“Frank is right.” It must have hurt for Rahim to admit that. “We stay focused on Reven. When we’ve ended the necromancer’s threat, we’ll worry about Baalth.” He paused and let his eyes roam the destruction. “If we’re around to worry at all.”

The wailing sound of fire engines in the distance snatched my moment away. “I’m gonna look around a bit, see what I can see before the public servants show up.” Conflicted, and certain it was my penis telling me to believe Karra, I was desperate to resolve things, one way or another.

“I’ll stick with Frank,” Katon told Rahim. “If you’d inform Abraham of our plans, I’d be grateful.”

Though Katon tried to be subtle, Rahim’s face drooped, his mood flat-lining. Not used to being coddled, kept in the back with the children and elderly, he took it hard. It was the closest thing to a literal heartbreak I’d ever seen. His eyes narrowed, the corners fluttering, his lips drawn into a straight line. The muscles in his neck were tight, bulging against the skin.

Though he had to know Katon was only thinking of his well-being, the wound was no less deep. In fact, it was much worse. It wasn’t me who said it, someone whose opinion Rahim usually filed away as inconsequential. It had been Katon, the closest thing to family the wizard had, outside of Abraham.

“I’ll do that.” He wouldn’t meet Katon’s eyes. His voice was thick. “Let me know what you find.” A sparkle of red flickered at his hands then he was gone in a flash of energy.

Katon sighed. Though he hadn’t meant it, he’d dealt his friend the most grievous of blows. He sundered his ego.

“He’ll be fine.” I hoped I sounded convincing. “We all get old and—” The absurdity of my statement hit me. Katon shook his head.

I laughed. Not an amused laugh, but a sickly, whoops kind of laugh. Though I was only half devil, I’d inherited my uncle’s lifespan. I’d live forever provided no one took exception to my doing so. Katon, being a vampire, was in the same boat. Neither of us would get old or infirm. We’d never have to worry about porches or rocking chairs, adult diapers or Viagra.

I was just glad Rahim left before I put my foot in my mouth again. “I’m gonna look over here.” I wandered off to the perimeter of the ruined street while Katon went to the other side in silence.

With a raspy sigh, I started sifting through the rubble. Not sure what I hoped to find, my eyes were peeled for anything. The growing sounds of sirens spurred me on. While it would take the firefighters a while to arrive, the distance from Old Town with the wreckage in between slowing them, I didn’t want to be there when they showed up.

Halfway around the block, nearest the furthest edge of the conflagration, I spied something sticking out from beneath a pile of charred rubble. As I got closer, I realized it was a leg. My heart slowed.

While no saint, my hands stained with my own actions, I’d never been a fan of the slaughter of innocents, those who never intentionally, or willingly, gave in to the darkness that lurks inside us all. Old Town was full of people who could never comfortably wear the tag of innocence, but it was also littered with people who hadn’t let the corruption take hold and who were only here because they had nowhere else to go.

Baalth’s moment of weakness hadn’t been selective. His rage killed them all.

Torn between the morality my mother invested in me and the coldness life had impressed upon me, reality won out. I’d seen far too many horrific things to let their weight bear me down and keep me from acting. Though my actions often cost lives, they’d also saved them, the latter in far greater numbers than the former.

It’s easy to frown upon people who claim the end justifies the means, arguing the case of those who fell beneath the wheels. It’s much harder to accept that death is sometimes the price we have to pay for life.

Baalth’s tantrum had cost lives, but if it led me to the means to save more, I could live with that.

At least that’s what I kept telling myself.

I knelt down beside the protruding leg, stirring up the thick scent of charred flesh. It was bitter, rank. The skin not hidden beneath the ashy blackness was sallow and dry, tight against the bone. It looked odd to me, for some reason. Dark lines and smudges covered the leathery flesh.

Thinking it was maybe one of Reven’s ghouls, I dug around a bit more, clearing chunks of brick and mortar away, pieces of wood and wiring, until I found its head. Or what was left of it. Crushed beyond recognition, what stuck out had the same sickly yellow coloring as its leg, what was left of its jaw was stretched so tight it had no wrinkles.

Despite my inner voices telling me not to, I muscled the hunk of wall off the body’s head, an oozing wetness squeezing between my fingers. Blood and brain matter met me, streamers of gray, red, and yellow peeled away, sticking to the wall piece like a morbid rainbow. The remains of the head lay in a pool of blackish blood.

I knew then it wasn’t a zombie.

It wasn’t human either. Not anymore.

“We’ve got to go, Frank.” Katon waved to me from across the street, motioning with his chin toward the approaching fire trucks.

Grumbling, I took one last look at the body, trying to confirm what I suspected. I still wasn’t sure, but with no time left to examine it in detail, suspicion was all I had.

Prodded by the wailing serenade of the El Paseo Fire Department, I sprinted off after Katon. My head was a jumble of conflicting thoughts, tumbling about like hobbit acrobats. At that moment, there was only one thing I knew for certain as the drift of smoke filled my lungs.

I was in the mood for barbeque.

Chapter Fourteen

With no place else to go, Katon and I meandered over to the Triple B Ranch. Situated at the outskirts of the city, its massive expanse butting up against the desert, we had our work cut out for us.

A true ranching tycoon, Beuford Billy Bandy owned tens of thousands of acres of scrubland that stretched from the edge of El Paseo all the way into the neighboring state. Open ranged and uncultivated, with little in the way of markers, it was like looking for a clean needle in a drug den to find something that didn’t either moo or hiss.

“We’ve been out here for hours. Can’t you like, turn into a bat or something and do a flyover? My balls are swimming, man.” The sun was setting but the heat of the day had yet to dissipate.

Katon rolled his eyes. “I’m not Dracula, you Yahoo.”

“But I’m a shit-flinging ape, am I? Well, you’re lucky I only have to piss.” Grumbling I wandered off to find a strand of bushes that looked in need of watering. “You can blah me, Count Blackula.”

Though he tried to muffle it with his hand, I heard Katon chuckle as I slipped behind a wide strand of Creosote growing out of a nearby dune. I wasn’t sure if he was laughing at the joke or at me for being shy. Right then, it didn’t matter. All I cared about was emptying my bladder to get rid of the yellow haze tinting my vision.

A quick zip and yank later, Niagara Falls had come to the desert. Sighing as the biblical flood was reenacted at my feet, a colony of ants swept down the dune, I stared off through the bushes, my eyes on the yellowish-purple sunset. It didn’t get any better than this.

The pressure relieved, I shook a couple of times, then shook a couple more because it felt good. As I packed everything away, a flash off in the distance caught my eye. Pushing the creosote bush to the side, I stared across the desert to where I’d seen the movement, my breath catching in my lungs.

Just a couple hundred yards away, surrounded by scrub grass and molting zombies was Reven, his black cloak fluttering in the light breeze, giving him away. The bulk of his minions stood in a row, lifeless bodies hanging limp in their arms. The others stood over the same type of tubs I’d seen the last time, tearing out throats and draining the bodies of blood.

Suddenly mindful of where I was, I dropped down into a crouch and scanned the desert for Karra. The last thing I needed was for her to sneak up on me. While I had Katon with me, she’d proven far too capable for me to believe his presence was a guarantee of safety. Relieved I knew where she was, though still somewhat nervous, I spotted her on the far side of the zombies, partially obscured by their mass. She was pacing, kicking up dirt at every step, her hand never leaving the pommel of her blade. She looked tense. Can’t say I blamed her.