Wakeworld (15 page)

“I’m sorry, but this is bigger than you. It’s important, Brett.”

“You can’t just dig up a grave. Besides being illegal, it goes against nature—the dead should be left alone.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You can’t do that,” he mimicked. “Of course not. Care to tell me why?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Of course it’s complicated. You know what I wonder? I wonder why in all the years I’ve worked in this town there has never been a grave robbery. And now, not only are there two within a couple of weeks, they are apparently all interested in the same grave. You know anything about that, Vivian?”

She exchanged a quick glance with Weston and then shook her head. “Honest. I don’t have a clue.”

“What about him?”

“He doesn’t know anything either. Who was grave robbing, Brett?”

“It’s—classified.”

“What—like FBI again?”

“No, like an embarrassment to the police force. If people find out and it comes back to me, I’ll be tarred and feathered.”

“We’re not going to say anything. Right, Weston?”

“I can keep my mouth shut. Don’t plan to be around to do much talking, anyway.”

Deputy Flynne sighed. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this. Round about a week ago—Mr. Lawrence was here visiting his wife’s grave. Comes in every evening to tell her good night. That’s over in the new part of the cemetery. He’s a martinet, Mr. Lawrence—anything out of place bothers the hell out of him. So he saw a light over here, and he couldn’t figure out who would be visiting the old cemetery. He called 911.”

“And?”

“And Kim and Olivera show up, and lo and behold there’s a mound of dirt piled up and a lantern in the grass. Not a flashlight, mind you, an old-fashioned hurricane lamp. Footsteps take off across the grass, but they’re blinded by the light and can’t see. They yell ‘Freeze’ and all that, but the person keeps on running. Olivera runs after the perp and does a tackle move from behind, and it turns out to be this nutjob old woman.”

The dark seemed darker all of a sudden, looming outside the beam of the flashlight. Vivian’s hand went to the emptiness at her breast.

“What did she take?” Weston asked.

“Is your friend okay?” Brett said. “You don’t look good, buddy. She’s a doctor, let her check you out.”

Weston raised his voice. “Tell me what the woman took from my sister’s grave.”

“Your sister’s grave?” Brett’s face was still hidden, but Vivian recognized the tone. Obviously, anybody old enough to be Grace’s brother should be lying in his own grave somewhere, not engaged in digging up bodies.

“We’ll explain later,” she said. “Please answer—what did she take from the grave?”

“Only some old book. Amazing, but it was still in readable condition, wrapped up in layers of what I’m told is oilcloth. Not that I’ve ever seen oilcloth, but that’s what the tech called it.”

Vivian’s own knees went weak. “She dug up the grave for a book? That’s it?”

“I know, right? Bizarre. Wasn’t even a diary or anything valuable. Just some old book of myths.”

“And this was a week ago?”

“Round about. One week, maybe two. I was still at Sacred Heart hallucinating penguins and freezing my ass off. My partner told me about it.”

“Is there an investigation ongoing? Why isn’t she in jail? Felony offense and all . . .”

“That’s where the embarrassment comes in. She got away. Little old thing like that, and she escaped from two armed deputies.”

“How did she get away, exactly?”

“Well, Kim and Olivera swear they had her in handcuffs and put her in the back of the car. You know, once she’s in she’s secure—locked from the inside and all. They swear they stood right outside the door for a minute discussing strategy. See, they figured there was no way someone of her age and weight could have dug that hole all by herself. They were wondering if maybe they should call in reinforcements to search the graveyard. Kim got in the car to radio for extra bodies, and she was gone.”

“That sounds far-fetched,” Vivian said, but it wasn’t.

“Well, that’s what the rest of the cops think, too,” Brett said. “They figure one of those guys left the door open, that they turned their backs a little longer than they were letting on. Figure they’re covering for each other. She could have slipped the cuffs; that’s been done before. They deny it. But policy was to keep it hushed—doesn’t do for the community to know the cops screwed up and let a criminal loose. Nobody’s seen her since. Figure she must have had an accomplice and he or she helped her make the slip.”

Weston broke the silence that followed. “So, where’s this book, now?”

“Safely locked away in evidence.”

“I need to see it,” Vivian said.

“Oh, now you’re asking me to break the chain of evidence. I can’t do that.”

“Sure you can.”

“Vivian—”

“I’ve got to have a look at that book, Brett. Just a look. Time to see what it is, and then you can put it back.”

“Can’t be done.”

“Can it be done if I threaten to let everybody know you told me?”

“You wouldn’t do that.”

“You think? A word or two to Rich and Cal tomorrow morning at Sacred Grounds and it would be all over town by nightfall.”

“Come on, Vivian. I’m already hanging by a thread. The entire force skirts around me like I’m crazy and it’s contagious.”

“Which is why you’re going to let me see this book.”

For a minute she thought she’d misjudged him, and that his sense of honor would win out even over this threat. She knew she’d use the Voice again to compel him if she had to; prayed it wouldn’t come to that.

She heard the surrender in his voice, along with the anger, carefully contained. “Oh all right. Where will we meet?”

“A to Zee. But give us an hour.”

A moment of silence followed, broken only by the sound of breathing. Just long enough for Vivian to worry he would change his mind, radio in for help, arrest them both. “Fine. I’ll be there.”

The shadow, all she could see of him, moved away.

“You gonna live?” she asked Weston.

“I’m fine.”

“No, seriously. Are you having chest pain? I don’t want to leave an extra body in this coffin.”

She jammed the edge of the pick into the space between coffin and lid and leaned all of her weight on it.

“My heart is fine. Give me that.” He worked at the lid, one side and then the other. With a creak and splintering of wood it came free.

He tossed aside the pick, blew a puff of air out through pursed lips. “Ready?”

She nodded. “You?”

He shook his head.

“Only bones. They can’t hurt you.” She was talking to herself more than to him. The horrible manner of Grace’s death would be in their favor now. Little flesh left for putrefaction and decay. She hoped the part about only bones was true.

“Feel like I’m in a horror movie, cast as Old Guy, First to Die,” Weston muttered. “On count of three?”

“One, two, three—”

They stood side by side, holding their breath, staring at the thing in the coffin. As Vivian had hoped, the remains were skeletal and the smell not overpowering. The bones were blackened, evidence of the severity of the burns.

“Maybe smoke inhalation got her first,” she said, seeking some sort of comfort.

“Doesn’t matter now,” Weston said roughly. “Shine that light in here, will you? Book’s gone, but there might be something else.”

Reluctantly, she did as he asked, illuminating every corner of the coffin. No hidden compartments, as he seemed to expect. She just wanted to get out of here—fill in the dirt, leave the dead in peace. The whole scenario made her skin creep on her own bones. Weston, on the other hand, was businesslike and curt, directing her to shine the light here or there while he tapped and prodded.

He took the bones of the right hand in his and lifted. Vivian cringed as the connective tissue gave way and they tumbled out of his grip and into the coffin with a dry rattling sound. But when he held up a piece of paper she forgot all about that and tried to decipher the words.

“It makes no sense.”

“It’s our old code—the one we used to exchange messages so the old man wouldn’t know what we were doing.”

“What does it say?”

“I’ll decipher it at this bookstore of yours. Let’s get out of here—gives me the heebie-jeebies poking around the body like this.”

Something had changed in his own body language and in his voice, though, and she shook her head. She trusted him, to a point. But there was no telling what the long years of grief might drive him to.

“Tell me now,” she said.

He hesitated, his trust also a tenuous thing, and then sighed. “In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess. I’m hoping you don’t take it wrong.”

Vivian listened, and shivered, wondering how there was a way to take it right.

Z
ee woke in the dark, staring up at a sky studded with stars. A soft breeze flowed over his skin, not cold, but caressing, scented with flowers and the smell of fresh leaves. Hope came with it, a fragile emotion at first, tentative, feeling its way into his heart. This story wasn’t over yet. It didn’t have to end in darkness. Perhaps, by some twist of luck or fate, he could still put things right.

One by one he tested his joints and muscles, gauging the extent of bruises and injuries and finding that he was still functional. If anything, the wounded arm moved a little more freely, his side pained him a little less. He’d been going to do something before he fell asleep. Something important. For a moment he couldn’t remember and then it all came back.

Right. Bandage Jared’s wounds. Give him water. Keep the bastard alive when he really wanted to kill him.

But a delightful languor kept him where he was, relaxed and drifting between earth and sky. Anticipation of something unknown and wonderful crept over him, and when he heard a rustling of grass he sat up with expectation and without alarm. A woman stood looking down at him, dimly illuminated, as though by an internal glow. She wore only a thin white shift, the outline of breasts and thighs visible through the translucent fabric. Auburn hair curled over shoulders white and unblemished, her eyes were gray and soft with love and desire. So many nights he had dreamed her thus, so many nights she had slipped away from him.

“Vivian,” he whispered, disbelieving.

She knelt and laid a finger over his lips. “Shhh. You’ll wake him.”

He knew, as one knows these things, that she meant Jared. He took her hand, so slender and fragile compared to his, and pressed a kiss into the palm. She made a small sound of pleasure and turned her face so that her cheek rested in his hand.

“Are you a dream?” Zee asked her, turning her face so that her eyes looked directly into his. He ran his hand over her shoulder, the skin like silk beneath his touch. “I’m sorry, about the dragon,” he murmured, waiting for her to pull away.

“I was wrong to fault you. You did what needed to be done.” Her lips were parted, her breath uneven and tremulous.

He dared then to bury his other hand in the thick fall of her hair. She smelled of cinnamon and spring, and his body roused to her presence with such urgency he could hear his own breath loud in his ears.

“Zee,” she murmured, and her voice undid him.

Tilting her chin up to his he kissed her, lightly once, lips barely touching, breath mingling. She gasped, knotted both hands in his hair and pulled him closer. He felt the sense of two things long held asunder returning to a union always meant to be, and then he was lost in sensation worlds away from thought. Her lips pressed hard against his, opening for him to thrust his tongue into the heat of her mouth, her hands on his back stroking his bare skin.

He pulled away for a moment, breathing hard, his brain stumbling over something in the distance that might be important.

“Please,” she murmured, her breath warm against his ear. “I’ve wanted you for so long. You were right that we should be together.”

She pulled away from him and lifted the shift over her head so that she was clothed only in the fall of her hair. When she lay down and pulled him down beside her, he did not resist. She took his hands and guided them to her breasts. Her nipples rose and hardened beneath his fingers and she gasped, arching her head back to let him kiss his way down her neck. His lips lingered a moment at the hollow of her throat, moved down to take the erect nipple in his mouth.

Her hand encircled the heat of his erection and then there was no room in his thoughts for anything but the pleasure, so long denied. She pulled him on top of her and lifted her hips toward his with a low moan of desire.

“Please, oh please oh please . . .”

And he thrust at last into the heat of her center as she rose to meet him. The stars swirled around them as they moved together and climaxed with an intensity of pleasure that washed away all memory of pain or worry.

He held her, after, with her head on his shoulder, a treasure beyond price. “Tell me you are not a dream,” he murmured into her hair, knowing what would come next. Always in his dreams, she left him. And still, he was unable to fetter the hope that beat in his breast. In all the dreams, through all the years, she had slipped away before he was able to claim her. Maybe this time it would be different.

She only smiled, and kissed him one more time, lingering.

He raised his right hand to her hair, flinching as the torn muscles cramped and burned. And only then did the thought come clear, the thing that had nagged at him before all thought was driven from his brain by pleasure.

Vivian would first have seen to Jared’s wounds, and his.
No matter what her wants or desires, dreaming or waking, her first instinct was always to heal. Always. Even an asshole like Jared.

With his hand still tangled in the woman’s hair, his lips on hers, he froze.

“What is it?” she asked, pulling back to look into his face. Vivian’s eyes, Vivian’s voice.

He searched her face for anything about her that looked wrong. It took a moment, before he realized: She looked as he wished Vivian to look, and not as she really was. Gray eyes, not gold, the shoulders free of the mark of the dragon. Guilt flowed over him in a flood of self-loathing.

“You’re not Vivian. Who the hell are you?”

Her face—Vivian’s face—crumpled, and she bit her lip. “Did I get it wrong? I thought you would be pleased with this shape.”

“Only when Vivian is wearing it. Where is she, what have you done with her?”

“We don’t need to talk about her right now—this is about you and me and what we can do together.” She took a step toward him, and the mix of desire and disgust awakened by a stranger’s soul in Vivian’s body nearly pushed him beyond control.

“Stay away from me.” His fists were knotted, his body thrumming with the familiar energy of violence.
Don’t hit a woman, even an evil one.
Especially not in Vivian’s body—it could have been hijacked or possessed.

She stopped and stretched out white hands to him. “I need your help, Warrior. I have been looking for you.”

“Why would I help you? I don’t even know what you are.”

“I swear I don’t come here as an enemy. The form I wear is one I thought would please you. See—I have brought you a gift.” She held out a dagger, the bone hilt toward him, the blade concealed in a leather sheath.

“Thank you, but my sword is weapon enough.”

Vivian’s lips turned up in a smile, but it wasn’t right, a crafty, sly expression that would never cross the face of the woman he knew. “But this is a special knife to be used for dragon slaying. You could kill them all, one at a time. Nights, this body will be yours to love and cherish. Days, you will kill dragons for me. All of your dreams fulfilled. Do you see?”

Zee took a step back, dismayed to find the words a temptation. She offered him a chance to pursue his two conflicting passions. In the real world he would always be torn between his hatred of dragons and his love for Vivian, because she was both things in one. Here was a solution, easy and clean, if he was willing to let go of reality.

But he could not love Vivian’s body without her soul filling it. The desperation to find her, to see that she was safe, blazed into a flame of need and desire.

“Where is Vivian? What have you done with her?”

“She’s safe enough. For now. Do we have an arrangement?”

“No. God, no! Tell me where she is!”

All of the ways he could kill the creature spun through his head, but on the chance that this was still Vivian’s body and her soul was elsewhere, he couldn’t harm it. He could do nothing but make empty threats. And he needed to know what he was dealing with. “Show me your true form, and then we will talk.”

She hesitated, an expression of what might have been fear filling her gray eyes. “Will you promise not to kill me if I make the change?”

Zee stared at her. Rage filled him, drove him. If this—thing—was not Vivian, had done something to her, harmed her in any way, all he wanted in the world was to wreak vengeance. But Vivian’s safety came before vengeance, and he knew nothing about where she was or how to find her. Cautiously, he answered, “I will not seek to harm you unless it is self-defense.”

“Do you give your word?”

“I swear it.”

“Very well.”

A wavering and shifting of muscle and bone and her appearance began to change. The slim white body softened and sagged. The auburn hair turned white and the gray eyes went dark. Her face was hollow with age, her teeth yellow and broken. Around her wattled old neck hung Vivian’s pendant.

It was the old woman they had run over with the van.

Zee lunged forward and grabbed for the pendant, but she eluded him, too quick and lithe for a woman of her apparent age.

“Give it to me.” He had sworn not to harm her, and that promise was tearing him apart. His breath rasped in his lungs; his entire body trembled with the effort to hold his hand from lopping off her head.

“The pendant belongs to me, as do all things. So tell me—are you with me, Warrior, or will you be so foolish as to stand against me?”

Vivian’s voice emerging from the old crone’s body made him shudder with revulsion. She stepped forward, close enough to lay an arthritic hand on his arm.

Zee shoved her away from him, harder than he’d meant. The dagger spun out of her hand as she sprawled backward into the grass. She lay as she fell, bony legs spread, naked breasts empty bags hanging down her chest.

His stomach churned with sickness at the thought that his hands had caressed the creature’s body, that he had kissed her lips. “Cover yourself, in the name of all things holy.” He tossed the shift to her, but she made no move to put it on.

“Have you made up your mind then? No more kisses? I can take on many forms.”

His hand clenched so tightly around the hilt of the sword that he could feel it digging into the flesh of his palm.

She moved as if to get up, and he extended the sword toward her. “Don’t move.”

“You said you would not harm me.”

“And I’m trying to keep my word. Lie still and don’t test me.” She obeyed, the dark eyes not leaving his face as he bent and picked up the dagger. The handle was made of bone, yellow with age and worn smooth with use. Not uncommon, although he found himself hoping the bone was animal and not human. The blade, when he pulled it free of its leather sheath, was a thing of wonder. It was carved from an unfamiliar stone, dark bloodred. No tool marks marred its glasslike surface, and yet it had been honed to an edge so keen it seemed as if just the look of it could cut.

“Give that to me,” the old hag hissed, and there was clearly fear in her eyes now. She scooted backward away from him. “It was only yours on condition.”

“Give me Vivian’s pendant and I’ll think about it.”

“You promised.” At last she was fumbling at the shift. Not to put it on and cover her naked old body, he realized too late. Digging something out of the pocket, something small and shining that she held up toward the stars.

She vanished. No slow dissolution, no cloud of obscuring smoke. She was there and then she was not.

Zee stared into the darkness until his eyes ached and burned. He thought he saw something large and serpentine, but when he ran after it there was nothing there. Only a trick of the shadows. He tried to tell himself that it had been a dream, but her scent and that of their lovemaking lingered on his skin. When he looked up at the sky, the stars no longer offered comfort. The constellations were subtly wrong. An unfamiliar planet hung low in the sky, pulsing red and ominous.

Zee lifted his arm to hurl the dagger into the pond, but at the last minute he held back. A good throwing knife was invaluable. And the old woman had clearly feared it. He would use it to survive now—for hunting and protection, and when he found her, as he would do, then his promise would no longer be binding and he would kill her with her own blade. The thought gave him pleasure, though it did nothing to assuage his guilt.

A low moan of pain drew him back to the moment and his responsibilities. He pulled on his cotton breeches and the T-shirt, slightly dew-damp and full of holes but clean at least, shoving the knife into a pocket for safekeeping.

Jared was worse. Heat radiated off skin dry and so hot to the touch it seemed one tiny spark would send him up in flames. When Zee called his name, his eyes flickered open but there was no recognition in their depths.

Zee knew he had been a fool. But he had wanted so much to believe, had made it so easy. And since Vivian wasn’t here, it fell to him to do what she would have done, which meant trying to keep Jared alive even if he couldn’t heal him. Holding his breath against the ungodly stench of the wound, he grasped his enemy under the armpits and dragged him into the pool, hoping it might cool the fever.