The Dead (The Thaumaturge Series Book 1) (12 page)

And I was avoiding the most uncomfortable question: what exactly was Leo going to do, if - no, it was definitely a
when
- he found Marcus? I kept seeing those enormous green eyes, the way they had crinkled a little at the corners when he had smiled at me. There was no way he'd been flirting with me. But he'd said that he would come back . . .

To do what? I reminded myself sharply. He'd made a fool of me. I'd sicced my vampire on him. It didn't matter at all what those smiles had meant. There was only one way things ended.

A small movement caught the corner of my eye, and I straightened, reaching for my binoculars. The sun had risen just a little more, and the morning fog rode thick along the trees. I'd been woolgathering for too long.

Glassing over the valley, I waited for movement, searching for orange against the snow. I hoped that if deer were bedded down there, they hadn't already slipped away in the dawn. It was possible. I hadn't really been paying close attention.

But I saw nothing but magpies and sparrows, and settled back against the tree. After a while, I saw Cody walking west along the gulch. He stopped and waved to me, making a circular motion, which I took to mean that he was making his way back in my direction, and I got to my feet to meet him halfway.

By late morning, we headed back down the gulch, having seen no game at all. My limbs moved stiffly, my toes felt numb, and my cheeks burned from where the cold bit into them. But the woods made me feel more refreshed than I had in days. Cody started to loosen up, telling me about the new truck he was rebuilding, and the ranch rodeo he had competed in over in Wilsall. He didn’t mention his brand new ex-wife. The sun peeked out again and burned away the last of the fog, and by noon it was downright balmy. We began shedding layers.

“What do you think?” I asked Cody as we scanned the forested hillside.

“I think my parents’ hot tub is calling my name,” he said, wiping his runny nose on the sleeve of his coat.

“You want to start back to the truck?”

He rustled through his pockets, finally producing a tube of Chap stick that he carefully applied, delicately holding the tube in his big hands. I bit back a snort.

“Yeah,” he said and popped his lips together a few times, smearing the Chap stick around. “Let’s call it. I’m freezing my ass off.”

We followed the creek down into the hollow, the wet grass sliding against my waterproof pants and dragging on my boots. The sun warmed my face, and I could see dozens of tracks in the snow, everything from elk to the tiny toes of mice.

It was when we were headed back up the ridge that I finally saw the herd, their tawny bodies almost invisible against the scrubby rock and sage, their breath steaming in the icy air. A jolt of adrenaline went through me, and I took a deep breath to calm myself, willing myself to relax and to look. Beside me, Cody had likewise gone still. Slowly, we eased forward, moving to bring the herd into view.

Five does, one buck. The buck was a beauty, a five point at least and he was fat on the alfalfa from the ranch. But I was looking for a meal, not a trophy, and so I sighted on one of the closer does, waiting for her to pass behind a rock. Cody waited for me. He gave me a nod.

“You go ahead,” he said.

I breathed. I waited. I shot her.

A second later, birds burst into the sky, circled once, and disappeared. We slid down the icy slope, towards the limp body lying in the trampled snow.

Sometimes when I was about to gut deer, I thought about bringing them back, the life returning to their graceful limbs, awareness coming back into their eyes. Their bloody tongues withdrawing into their mouths. They were always so beautiful to me in that moment, with my hands resting on fur still warm. It was the potential. The possibility. Maybe it was the power.

The afternoon faded fast by the time we got back to my truck, the gutted deer dragging behind us. I was tired and bloody, but pleased. The doe would yield a good seventy pounds of meat after I got her processed, and a well-stocked freezer going into winter cheered me up considerably.

It was a good feeling, after all the complicated bullshit of the previous day, to simply feel happy and accomplished. Together, Cody and I hauled the deer in the back of the truck. I peeled off my coat, and hopped in the truck to head back home, turning up the radio.

I crept along the rough road, carefully steering over the ruts and around the rocks. Cody had gone quiet again, picking at the cuticles around his nails. The clock on my dashboard said 4:46 - Leo would be up soon and I was anxious to talk to him, to find out what, if anything, had happened the night before. What if he had found Marcus?

The late afternoon light faded to shadows as we bumped down the mountain. I took a corner slowly, then sped up again as the road stretched. Out of the corner of my eye, something was illuminated by my headlights. A lump, misshapen and out of place amongst the underbrush.

We drove on, through the corridor of trees, but uneasiness slammed into my chest. I could have imagined it. My feet tapped the brakes anyway, and Cody swung his head towards me. I bit my lip, staring straight ahead, my hand hovering over the gear shift.

I stopped the truck and backed up, steering the truck slightly to the left to shine the headlights into the trees. I switched off the radio and sat breathing in the sudden silence.

“What is it?” Cody asked faintly.

I pushed the creaky truck door open, my boots crunching on the rough, rocky, dirt. I crept forward, my heart pounding. Behind me, the truck door slammed and Cody appeared at my shoulder.

“Oh, Jesus,” he said.

I swayed. My body understood long before my mind did.

There was a body on the side of the road. I would have recognized the face, too, even as bloody as it was, but it was the scarf that my eyes fixated on. That and the gaping red smile sliced across his stomach.

Feeling calm, I thought musingly that Leo would be disappointed to know that I had found Marcus first.

And right behind that thought was this one: Or had I?

I dropped to my knees beside Marcus and reached out a tentative hand. His fine wool coat lay spread open, half crusted to the cold ground. Between the black folds of the coat, his gutted stomach gaped open, ruined and horrible. Somehow, his organs had remained mostly inside his body. Or they had been put there, like cuts of meat stacked in a cooler. Dried, sticky, blood covered his torso and legs and I remembered what Leo had said about the abdominal aorta. Steeling myself, I glanced up at Marcus's waxy face; he looked surprised, his eyes blank and wide and staring.

I blanched, and lowered my head, taking a few deep breaths before resuming my assessment. His arms lay at his side. His pale palms seemed terribly fragile, terribly real. His legs stretched out before him, all very posey, like he'd been carefully set there. There was no point in feeling for a pulse, though I instinctively wanted to. He was very dead. From the look and feel of him, he had probably been dead since late last night.

“You fucking asshole,” I said out loud, tears at the back of my throat. I had expected Leo to maybe
question
him or something. Or at least let me talk to him before fucking gutting him like a fish.

There was a strange chuffing noise behind me, and I glanced back at Cody. He was green. No, white. His eyes bulged and he stood absolutely still, his hands held oddly at his side.

“Ebron . . . ” he moaned and then abruptly turned away, took a few jerky steps to the tree line and started puking.

“Fuck,” I said, watching him for a second before turning back.

I frowned, looking over Marcus's body with as much impartiality as possible. It wasn't Leo's style, I had to admit that. There were no marks on his neck and I found it extremely unlikely that Leo would kill someone without drinking from them first; he would consider it a waste. Unless he didn't want to because of Marcus being a witch, but in that case, why slit him open? Mimicking the dead girl from the other night was even less of a Leo move. Despite all our differences, and his general flippancy towards humans, I knew for certain that Leo would never do something to deliberately hurt me or put me in danger. Not willingly anyway.

No, it couldn't have been Leo. Something had gotten to Marcus first. And that meant that within two days, two people had been killed by disembowelment.

“Is he dead?”

Cody crept up behind me again, and braced himself against his knees.

“Yes,” I said tightly, trying to keep the well-duh tone from my voice.

“My phone . . . ” Cody patted at the pockets of his coat, swaying alarmingly.

“No,” I said firmly. “Don't call the police.”

“But-”

“No.”

He went still, looking at me warily. I focused on Marcus's face, the dark stubble on his jaw, the smooth line of his throat.

“You're gonna-you can - you know - do something.”

Startled, I looked at Cody more closely. His eyes were huge, glassy. He knew I was gay; it had never occurred to me that he knew all my secrets.

“Yes,” I said, making my decision quickly. “Help me.”

I moved back to my truck, pulling out one of the tarps I had used to cover the deer. Cody followed mechanically, helping me to spread the tarp out flat beside Marcus. I sucked in a few more shaky breaths, and then positioned myself at his side, leaning over to hook my hands under him. Cody moaned again, but settled down, shoulder to shoulder with me.

“On three, okay?” I said to him, and he made a weird, gagging noise, sticking his tongue out and panting a little.

“Cody, please?” I said, more sharply than I meant, and he nodded jerkily.

“I can see his organs, Ebron,” he said flatly.

“I know, I know, I'll fix it. Just help me.”

I pulled up, feeling his dead flesh move sickly under my hands. After a second, Cody pushed too, and together we rolled him into the tarp. Marcus’s clothes stuck to the ground, and we had to push hard, making the bloody coat rip like Velcro. Cody kept moaning, and I finally just planted my feet and put my weight into it, making Marcus flop over with his face smashed to the ground. The utter lifelessness horrified me. I hated how familiar it all was.

Cody whipped his head to the side and gagged again, wiping his gloved hands on his pants.

“Fuck,” he said in a low groan. “Oh, fuck.”

Carefully, I turned Marcus's head to the side, and tucked his hands against him. I folded up the edges of the tarp, making sure that his feet were covered.

“Okay,” I said to Cody. He lay panting and moaning at my feet, and I put my hand on his shoulder.

“Hey,” I said, giving him a shake. “I'll take care of it, okay? Just help me get him into the truck.”

Cody nodded again, and stumbled to his feet. He spat on the ground a few times, and then looked at me. He waited for instructions.

“Okay,” I said again. “Grab his feet.”

We hauled him up and swayed under the weight of him. The truck was only a few steps away, and we managed it all right, Cody moving awkwardly backwards in a shuffle. There was no way to gently set Marcus down, so I mentally sent apologies as we heaved him into the bed of the truck. His head made a dull thump as it hit the metal.

I took the other tarp and draped it over the two bodies in the back of my truck. Carefully arranged, one could imagine that I had just shot a rather large, lumpy deer. To be thorough, I checked over the spot, peering into the dark grass for anything that may have been lost in the grass. There was so much blood but I thought of the way his limbs had been arranged, so careful. Someone had put him here.

My mind raced. I got back in my truck and we started down the mountain.

“Drop me off at home,” Cody said, into the heavy silence.

“'Kay.”

He stared straight ahead, his hands held stiffly in his lap.

“Cody?”

“Hmm.”

“How did you know?”

He still wouldn't look at me. “People talk, Ebron.”

Silence, so uncomfortable and thick that I longed to turn the radio back on or something, anything to fill that emptiness.

“So it's true?” Cody said, just as I was turning up the dirt drive to his house.

I didn't want to answer. I didn't want to see how he would look at me now.

“It's true.”

“Hmm,” he said again, and when we pulled up to his house, he got out without a word. Then, a few paces away, and stopped and came back, waiting at my window until I rolled it down.

“Be careful,” he said, his eyes meeting mine.

I swallowed heavy. “Thanks. Sorry, Cody.”

He waved it away, and was gone.

I put the truck in reverse and sped home as fast as I could. I hit a pothole and winced at the muffled thump from the bed of the truck.

I backed the truck into my driveway, getting as close to the stairs as I could. Moving Marcus's bloody, mangled body into the trailer was going to be hard enough. I didn't need neighbors calling the cops before I could get him back on his feet.

Thankfully, it was as dark a night as I had seen, with little moon, and few of the lights were on at my neighbor's. I managed to get Marcus – his dead body,
God
- in a shaky fireman's hold, and staggered my way to the trailer. I nearly went down on the stairs, but threw my shoulder against the wooden rail, bracing myself there until I could re-settle him over my shoulder. My back and knees screamed in protest. My face pounded in time with my pulse.

I propped open the door with a shoe, and manhandled Marcus inside, stumbling a little but making it to the living room before I dropped to my knees and dumped him unceremoniously onto the carpet.

“Leo!” I called out, but there was no answer. Johnny came hesitantly forward, sniffed at the tarp and then skittered away to sit in the kitchen. He watched me with mournful dark eyes.

“I'm doing my best,” I said to him, and he gave a small swish of his tail, but didn't move.

I kneeled next to Marcus, gently peeling back the tarp. I hated seeing him so mangled and vulnerable, so undone, so in contrast to the confident and sure man I'd met yesterday. Without thinking about it, I reached forward with shaky, bloody fingers and traced them over the curve of his lip. The coldness of his skin shocked me, and I drew back, my stomach rolling. I had to get to work.