Abracadaver (Esther Diamond Novel) (13 page)

Across the hall was the room where they prepared the bodies for funeral services. The door was closed. Behind it, I heard a dull thud, followed by a noisy crash.

Nelli started barking furiously, her powerful body crouched for attack, her fur standing on end.

“Lucky!” I shouted to be heard above the dog. “Is there a new arrival in there?”

“Oh,
no,
” he said. “It sounds like it.”

Something thudded so heavily against the door across the hall that it visibly shook. Nelli kept barking, braced for combat.

Behind me, I could hear the cot shaking violently as Quinn struggled. His inquisitive grunts were audible despite the racket that Nelli and . . . and something
else
were making. The thing in the other room thudded hard against the door again.

Max raised his voice behind me. “We should untie Detective Quinn!”

“I got it!”

As I glanced over my shoulder, I saw Lucky flip open a pocket knife and, with one stroke, cut the slender cord that bound Quinn’s wrists to the metal frame of the cot. Then he handed Quinn the knife. The cop struggled clumsily to sit up and reach for his bound ankles, his eyes fixed on the dog and the door she was snarling at.

The door across the hallway creaked open. I whirled around to look at it—and then gagged as a fetid odor emerged from that room and poured into this one.

The other room was dark, but the light from the hallway illuminated the delicate form of a very petite, very old Chinese woman. Her eyes glowed with green fire and her lips were curled back in a snarl. Thick, yellow drool flowed down her chin.

Behind me, I could hear Quinn making guttural sounds as he struggled to free his feet from their bonds. Max started chanting in a language I didn’t recognize. I stood frozen on the spot, clutching Nelli’s leash.

The thing in the room across the hall took a step toward us.

I gasped and dropped Nelli’s leash as the fearless familiar leaped and hurled herself at the infernal being coming toward us. Nelli probably weighed twice what the corpse did, and she was all bone and muscle and teeth, attacking with bold fury to battle Evil as she had entered this dimension to do.

The two forms collided, wrestled for a moment—and then the petite little corpse threw Nelli aside as if she were a twig. Nelli hit the wall like a speeding train, bounced off, landed on the floor, and lay there without moving.

“Nelli!” I cried.

The thing grinned, and then its glowing eyes rested on me and it came forward, its bony arms outstretched and a dry cackle emerging from its throat.

B
OOM!

I flung myself sideways in reaction to an ear-shattering explosion right next to me. After falling to the floor and rolling, I looked up to see Lucky, gun in hand, shoot the cadaver again.

The reanimated corpse paused for a moment, swayed a little, and then kept on coming. As it entered the room, Quinn jumped off the cot and tore the gag from his mouth. He was bleeding where he had cut himself with the knife while sawing at his bonds.

“What the
FUCK?
” he shouted.

Max hurled his bottle of holy water at the moving corpse. It flung the bottle aside, said something guttural in words I didn’t understand . . . then paused and swayed.

Nelli rose clumsily to her feet, lurching and slipping in her disorientation as she reentered the storage room. She snarled as she prepared to launch another attack. I was still on the floor, and I skittered backward, trying to get away from the
thing
that was in this tiny room with us.

And then, in the blink of an eye . . . the corpse collapsed. Between one moment and the next, it simply fell to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut. It lay there motionless, its eyes closed, all signs of demonic presence vanished.

I became aware of the sound of fists pounding on the door from the reception hall. Beyond it, I could hear people shouting. A moment later, that door burst open and people stampeded through it. Footsteps thundered down the hall toward us.

John appeared in the doorway and his gaze swept the storage room. He took one look at the collapsed corpse, the disheveled cop, the crouching dog who was sniffing the cadaver, and the rest of us—and he apparently understood the situation. He immediately closed the door on all of us and said loudly to people crowding into the hallway behind him, “It’s all right! My uncle was playing with his dog and . . . and had an accident with some fireworks.”

Through the door, I heard the rumble of anxious voices, some of them speaking in English, some in Chinese. John raised his voice and said, “No, he doesn’t need help. He’d like us all to just return to the other room and leave him alone. He’s, um . . . naked.”

“Naked?” Lucky repeated darkly.

“He’s doing a . . . good job of . . . thinking on his feet,” I whispered, breathing so hard that it was a struggle to speak.

Nelli was still sniffing the corpse, but she had stopped growling.

“What the
fuck
is going on around here?” Quinn demanded. “What
is
this shit?”

“Shit . . .” I repeated vaguely, realizing that the fetid odor was gone. In the hallway, I could hear John’s voice, soothing people and urging them to return to the wake.

“Doc, what made that thing collapse?” Lucky asked. “Was it the second bullet? Or something else? If we knew what made it
stop,
we could plan for the next time.”

“Next time?”
Quinn repeated.

Breathing hard, Max said, “I postulate that it ran out of energy. It’s not strong enough yet.”

“Not
strong
enough?” Lucky repeated. “Did you see what it did to Nelli?”

“Reanimation of a dead being must be a tremendous drain on its power,” Max panted. “It could only sustain the effort for so long.”

“I think it said something.” My voice felt weak. “Did you understand it?”

“Sounded like gibberish to me,” said Lucky.

“I believe it said ‘life,’” said Max. “Or perhaps ‘to live.’ I think it spoke an archaic form of Aramaic.”

Which would explain why it sounded like gibberish to me and Lucky.

“What the
hell
are you people into?” Quinn demanded.

“Are you kiddin’ me?” Lucky said to him in disgust. “This ain’t our thing, you jerk. It’s
yours.
”

“What?” Quinn looked angry, disoriented, and shocked. “What are you . . . Jesus, what
was
that?”

John had opened the door and was slipping into the room as Quinn spoke. Closing the door behind him, he looked down at the petite corpse. “I’d say it’s Grace Chu.”

“Who?” Sweat was gleaming on Quinn’s face.

“Grace Chu?” I repeated. “Well . . . RIP, Grace.”

Reanimated, infernal, and pretty damn dangerous. Imagine if the kids and grandkids had seen
this.

Looking at the little old lady’s corpse, which now had two fresh bullet holes in the torso, I started laughing.

When I saw the way the others all looked at me, I laughed even harder.

“Jesus,” Quinn said in disgust.

“She’s overwrought,” Max said kindly.

“Is it any wonder?” said John.

“Everyone reacts different to these things,” said Lucky.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said Quinn, as I continued laughing.

I took a deep breath and pulled myself together. “Okay, I’m done.”

I hiccupped, which sent me into another peal of laughter. Then I looked at the body again—and suddenly I was ashamed and embarrassed and had no idea why I’d been laughing a second ago.

“Sorry,” I said.

They all brushed aside my apology, except for Quinn.

Nelli groaned a little and lay down next to me, apparently feeling the sting of her injuries. She’d hit the wall and the floor very hard. I started petting her big head, trying to calm both of us with that soothing, repetitive motion.

“Who the hell is Grace Chu?” Quinn demanded in a strained voice. “And what . . . what . . .”

John looked down at the body again. “She died last night. Natural causes. Ninety-two years old.” After a moment, he added, “I hope Sam will be able to hide the bullet holes. We don’t want to have to explain those to the family . . .”

“So here I’m worrying about Joe Ning’s body,” Lucky said crankily, “and you don’t mention there’s a body back
here?
”

John looked up. “I didn’t know. I mean, I knew we were expecting her, but no one told me she’d arrived.” He shook his head. “Sam must have brought her over this morning before he went home to take care of the kids. And with all the preparations for Uncle Six, I guess it didn’t occur to Dad to mention it.”

Lucky let out his breath on a gust and sat down on the cot, his gun still in his hand. “I guess not. After all, Nathan didn’t know
this
guy was here.” Lucky glared at Quinn.

“You didn’t tell him?” Max asked.

“Dad’s been pretty high-strung since Detective Quinn’s last visit,” said John. “We figured he didn’t need more stress in the middle of Joe Ning’s wake, so we agreed not to tell him Quinn was here again.”

“What does this have to do with
me?
” Quinn asked. “And what
is
‘this,’ anyhow?”

“You don’t know?” I asked, squinting up at him.

Instead of answering, he asked me, “Does Lopez know what you’re doing?”

“Even
I
don’t know what I’m doing.”

“No
wonder
he doesn’t want to talk about you.”

“Can we leave him out of this?”

My phone rang shrilly, startling us all. I jumped and gave a little shriek. Then I fumbled in my coat pocket and found the cell. My hands were shaking so hard I dropped the thing before managing to answer it.

My caller was Nolan. “What do you want?” I asked, having no desire to talk to him.

“You wanted to know where Quinn was, right?”

I watched Max examine Quinn’s hands, which were bleeding where he had cut himself.

“Oh.” I said, “I found him.”

It appeared that the shock of Grace Chu’s reanimation had made Quinn forget that we had been holding him hostage before the corpse walked. But I had a feeling he’d remember any moment now.

After a long pause, Nolan said, “Aren’t you even going to ask how things panned out with Danny Teng?”

“Who?” I realized I was sitting within two feet of the body, and this bothered me. But not enough to work up the energy to move.

“The guy you warned me is a killer too dangerous for me to follow,” Nolan prodded. “Remember
now,
Esther?”

“Oh. Right.” I couldn’t work up any interest in Danny now. I sat staring at the corpse of the tiny, elderly lady—and remembered the way this same petite body had thrown Nelli aside as easily if she were an apple core.

Man,
that thing was strong.

How were we going to defeat something that strong?

John asked Lucky to help him take Grace back across the hall. Max was suggesting to Quinn that he should sit down and listen for a few minutes. Quinn continued hotly demanding explanations.

“I think this guy’s all hot air,” said Nolan.

Still petting Nelli’s head, I watched Lucky slip his gun into his ankle holster, then help John lift the corpse. She looked so fragile now.

I shivered.

Nolan continued, “He didn’t go looking for a murderer or meet any sources.”

“No?” As if I cared.

“Nah, he just went to a bar, had a few drinks by himself, then picked up a hooker—well, she looked like a hooker, anyhow—and went home.”

So Danny Teng was full of hot air and making empty boasts at the funeral. Big surprise.

“Still, I got a strong whiff of underbelly by following him around for a while,” Nolan said, looking on the bright side. “So are you still at the funeral home? Anything interesting happening there?”

“I’m still here,” I said, watching a Gambello hitter come back into this little room to confer with a 350-year-old mage about the reanimated corpse we had just confronted. “But it’s very quiet here. If I were you, I’d just go home and, uh, mentally process today’s research.”

“Yeah, I think that’s what I’ll do,” he said. “Proper rest is as important as proper diet and exercise. Gotta maintain the balance.”

“Uh-huh.” I said goodnight and ended the call.

John came back into the room, too. “Is everyone okay?”

“No,” said Quinn.

“Esther?” John stretched out a hand to help me up.

“I don’t want to get up.” My legs didn’t feel ready to cope with walking yet. I just kept petting Nelli, who whined a little.

“Are you all right?” he asked me with concern.

“That was fast thinking,” I said to him. “The way you got rid of those people.”

“Naked,” Lucky grumbled. “He told them I was
naked
—alone back here where we keep dead bodies. What are those people gonna think?”

“Let it go,” I advised Lucky.

“I had a feeling about what I’d find back here,” said John. “I heard the barking and the shots—but when I tried to come back here, the door was . . . well,
barricaded
. It felt like someone had blocked it with a lead-lined safe or something, it was so hard to budge. A bunch of us were trying to push it open when it finally gave way—all of a sudden moving as easily as normal.”

Max nodded. “Yes, of course.”

“What do you
mean,
‘of course’?” Shaking his head in exasperation, Quinn strode out of the room, brushing past John. “Out of my way. I want to see that body.”

We all remained where we were. Lucky and John had just handled the body, so they certainly didn’t need to look at it again. And I didn’t
want
to look at it.

“The entity blocked that door because it didn’t want an audience,” Max said.

“What
did
it want?” I felt cold all the way through when I recalled the way its arms had reached out for me a moment before Lucky shot it.

“I rather suspect it told us what it wanted,” Max replied. “When it spoke.”

“Life?” I said, hoping I was wrong. This was too eerie. “To live?”

“Precisely.”

“Not many things give me goose bumps,” said Lucky. “But that just did.”

“If it wants to live,” I said, scooting closer to Nelli in search of some body heat, “you’d think it would realize that the day-old corpse of a departed great-granny isn’t its best possible option.”

“Yes, it’s interesting, isn’t it?” Max said pensively.

“Interesting?”
John repeated “I don’t think that’s the word I’d choose.”

But I saw where Max was going with this. “If it wants life, why has it twice reanimated dead bodies?”

“Twice that we know about,” said Lucky. “Might have been other times, too.”

“Indeed,” said Max. “Though based on Detective Quinn’s reaction this evening, he is unaware of other incidents.”

“Yeah,” Lucky agreed. “He don’t get it.”

“But why doesn’t it just possess Quinn?” I wondered. “He’s alive, after all, if that’s what it wants.”

“Why doesn’t
what
just possess me?” Quinn asked coldly from the doorway.

I looked up, not having realized he’d returned. “Oops.”

He looked at Max. “That body in there is dead.”

“Yes.”

“It’s been dead about a day.”

I said, “No wonder they made you a detective.”

“Shut up,” he said.

John bristled. “Don’t talk to Esther like that.”

“So how did you do it?” Quinn demanded. “And
why?
”

“We didn’t do it,” Lucky said tersely. “You did.”

“You assaulted a police officer today.” Quinn gave him a hard stare. “Held me hostage.”

“You assaulted him?” John groaned.

“Yeah, because I didn’t want him doing
this.
” Lucky’s gesture encompassed the scene we’d just been through.

“And look how well
that
worked out,” I said.

“You sound like you feel better now,” Lucky noted.

“Binding and gagging a
cop.
” I shook my head.

Quinn added, “All so you could stage this weird . . .
thing
for my benefit. I want to know
why.
”

“They really breed cops dumb, don’t they?” said Lucky.

Quinn shot back, “Not as dumb as they breed wiseguys who think they can get away with—”

“Everyone, please!” Max held up his hands for a moment, urging silence.

John and I exchanged a glance. Lucky scowled and folded his arms across his chest. Quinn glared at all of us.

Max folded his hands and looked at the cop with a very serious expression. “Detective Quinn, I believe . . . no, I am quite convinced that you are being oppressed.”

“Oppressed?” Quinn looked puzzled. “As in, being denied my human rights?”

“No, oppressed by a demonic entity.”