The Dead (The Thaumaturge Series Book 1) (3 page)

Almost a week past Halloween and still strings of fake spider webs hung in matted knots across the bar back. Grinning jack o’ lanterns fell in on themselves as they started to rot. For a Wednesday, it was crowded, half full of the young, windblown ski bums who invaded our town in winter and the rest neighborhood old timers who resented the kids but didn’t mind ogling the nubile young ladies.

“You want anything?” I asked Leo as we approached the bar. He shook his head, his dark hair damp with snow and curling around his ears. Depending on the day, Leo either looked like a murderous mafia hit man or a lovable pirate. Tonight, with his black coat bringing out his pallor and his eyes almost glowing, he looked like a wolf. He was already attracting his fair share of curious looks from the snow bunny crowd.

The bartender approached after a few moments, breaking away from her conversation after enough time had passed to let me know that I was an inconvenience. She smiled at Leo, though.

“Hey, Kelsey,” I said to her to remind her we had known each other since preschool.

“Hey,” she said, stone-faced, and then waited, clearly uninterested in pleasantries.

I ordered a nice, locally brewed beer and sat on a stool to drink it. Leo leaned beside me with every muscle in his body tight and poised, his head cocked and his eyes shooting around the room. Occasionally, he scented the air like a bloodhound.

“Jesus Christ, Leo, you have to relax,” I mumbled to him, feeling unfriendly gazes on us. “You look crazy.”

“Sorry,” he exhaled with effort, and let his posture slump a bit.

Leo had become a vampire in the mid-eighties and being as young as he was, hunting humans remained a challenge for him. “I can't feed from humans without ripping them apart,” he’d admitted to me when we first became friends. Learning to feed without killing was apparently a big deal to vampires - leaving a trail of corpses wasn't an option, not in the age of camera phones and forensics. My ability came as big help when he went too far, when he couldn’t stop in time. It became routine for me to accompany him on his nightly hunting trips. For a lonely, small-town kid like me, meeting Leo had been like winning the lottery. Hunting with him had made me feel important, dangerous, sexy. Back then, ignoring the moral implications had been easier. His answers turned vague when it came to how he fed when he wasn't with me, and I didn't really ask him questions like that anymore. My morality remained flexible, but lately I found my mental health was heavily reliant on my own ignorance.

“Let me ask you something,” I said, taking a pull from my beer.

“Hmm,” he murmured noncommittally, his attention elsewhere.

“How hard is it to disembowel someone?”

“What?” he looked back at me, leaning in a little further. “What did you say?”

“Is it hard to disembowel someone?”

He regarded me for a moment, dark eyes searching mine. “Your dead guy tonight?”

“Girl. Teenage girl. Stomach slit open, her guts hanging out.”

“Ugh.” he raised an eyebrow and considered me, then looked back at the dance floor, populated by half a dozen women gyrating to country rock.

“Christ, the music you kids listen to these days. Back in my day...” he trailed off, not looking at me, but the set of his mouth told me he was thinking hard.

“Disco’s dead, man,” I said softly and the corners of his mouth twitched up.

“Disemboweling is not pleasant,” he said finally, looking back at me. “It’s messy. Not my go-to method. Did you ask how it happened?”

“No.”

“But you’re worried.”

“No,” I said firmly. “Just curious.”

He shrugged. “Not something you usually see, though, not around here. You didn't even ask?”

“No. It's safer for me not to know.”

“Is it? If you're involved, you're involved, aren't you?” he tilted his head and I finally had to look away from the weight of his gaze.

“So you're asking because you're curious, but you don't want to know,” he said.

“I just meant . . . I don't know. I can't stop thinking about her.”

“Hmm.” he shifted a bit, moving fractionally closer to me, close enough that I noticed that he wore one of my tshirts under his coat. The shirt stretched across his chest. Mindful of the eyes on us, I kept my gaze fixed above his neck.

“Was it clean?” he asked. His arm brushed mine as he leaned in.

“Yeah. It wasn't an animal. It was a knife. How long would it have, you know, taken?”

He shrugged. “If it was deep enough to slice through the abdominal aorta, it wouldn't have taken any time at all. She would have passed out pretty quick, and bled out in - I don't know, maybe a few minutes?”

“I wondered – “ I cut myself off, shaking my head. There was no point in asking questions. She had been dead and now she wasn't and I had done that. I didn't need to know any more.

Leo waited, but when I didn't say anything else, he turned his attention back to dance floor. We lapsed into silence, and I watched the denizens of the bar swirl around me, a living mass of humanity from which I had always felt hopelessly disconnected. It was getting loud, laughter and happy shouts drowning each other out. People streamed by us, women alone or in pairs, men sizing us up as they walked by. I saw people I recognized and no one that I wanted to talk to.

I drained my beer and nudged Leo with my elbow. “Did you pick someone yet, or can I get another beer?”

“I’ve got someone,” he said, and this time he growled.

I paced the sidewalk near the back door, lingering awkwardly behind Leo as he walked the woman to her car. They were laughing, he held onto her elbow as she slipped on the slushy pavement. Then she leaned into the driver’s side of her battered, bumper-sticker-covered Subaru, turning on the car to warm it up. Leo whispered something to her, and she laughed again, turning to rest a hip against the rear door. Her arms lifted, snaking around his waist.

I saw him press into her, his hands on her face. He tilted her head in as though to kiss her, and when I heard her gasp, I rushed over to them.

To any casual observer, his face buried against her neck would have looked like foreplay. Her arms went tight around him, her face slack with pleasure. As I watched, her tongue darted out and licked her lips, and she gave a soft moan, her fingers bunching into the collar of his coat.

“Leo,” I said warningly, keeping my eyes on her face. I barely got his attention; a tiny jerk of his head was the only indication that he was aware of my presence. She didn’t notice me at all, completely caught up in whatever sensations he was causing. I wanted to look away, hating the intimacy of this witnessed moment. I hated him for making me watch it, and hated myself for the unwelcome flare of sympathetic arousal I felt as her mouth form a soundless moan. His hips thrust into the dark hollow between them.

My eyes wandered from her onto him, seeing his throat working as he swallowed, the way his hand held her jaw to the side. I couldn't see his face, pressed against her neck, but I imagined that his eyes were closed. Her hand twinned around his neck and fisted into the collar of his shirt. My shirt. He must have come into my bedroom while I was in the shower to get it. Had he thought about me, naked ten feet away? Who was he thinking about now?

Breath left her lips in a staccato gasp, and I looked back at her. Her face lost color, fading to white under her light make-up, her lips paling with alarming speed. Her arms loosened from around him and I watched as they went limp to her sides. He hoisted her up, completely supporting her now. His throat bobbed steadily.

I grabbed his shoulders and wrenched at him hard. With a snarl, he released her and turned on me, fangs bared and bloodied, and his eyes glowing gold. The woman slumped over, sliding down the car to rest on the snow ground, her legs splaying akimbo before her. Ignoring him, I crouched beside her, pressing my hand to the twin wounds on her neck. Blood dribbled in a weak stream down into the hollow of her clavicle. She mumbled something, her head rolling a bit and her eyes trying to open.

“Shh, it’s okay,” I said softly.

It took nothing at all to heal her. Not even a pinch or a twinge. Her neck repaired itself almost faster than I could see, a smear of blood on her shirt all that remained. I kneeled there for a moment beside her, my jeans getting wetter by the second, watching the glowing lights float down into the snow. It was beautiful, the way they shone like glittering diamonds just before they melted. Sometimes I wanted to stay up there forever.

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” Leo said to me as I stood up. I spared him a glance. His face looked ruddy now, his lips full and red. His eyes fixed on me with burning intensity, a little wild with blood lust. He swayed towards me and for one second I thought that he was going to kiss me, there in JJ's parking lot with the girl dazed at our feet. I would have let him; that's what he did to me.

“It’s fine,” I said, and he blinked, like I had surprised him. “Get her back up.”

“Ebron, I’m really –”

“Shut up. Grab her legs.”

He bent, scooping her up a though she were weightless and settled her sidewise into the driver's seat. The girl moaned, her head rolling on her neck. She blinked, looking uncertainly at us.

“You should go find your friends.” I said to her, in what I hoped was a comforting voice. “I think you need a ride home.” She nodded sluggishly, her hands reaching up to pull her coat tighter around herself.

“Go back inside,” I repeated to her, turning off her car and pressing the key into her hand. She nodded again. There was a touch on my back and I turned as Leo slid one hand along my shoulder and gave me a tug.

“Come on,” he said softly. I looked back as he led me out of the parking lot. She hadn't moved.

Leo avoided my eyes as we walked through the falling snow.

“Thanks,” he said stiffly, after half a block in silence.

“You’re welcome.”

“I’m getting better, don’t you think?” he asked.

“Yes,” I agreed. “Comparatively, you are much improved.”

“Just takes practice,” he said, and I couldn’t help the shiver down my spine.

“Are you staying tonight?” I asked Leo as he followed me through the front door.

“Yes,” he said. He was himself again, collected and distant. “Too cold to go anywhere. And I want to watch more
Breaking Bad
.”

“Are you staying . . .for a while?” Like I didn't care one way or the other.

Leo had been known to stay for weeks or even months at a time, then disappear without a word. Despite that, he was the most constant person in my life. Person. Vampire. Whatever. He was the only one who had ever stuck by me.

“Thought I might,” he replied casually, kicking his boots together on the doormat and toeing them off. I felt something in my chest relax a bit at his answer, my shoulders easing from where they'd been hunched up by my ears. He wasn't looking at me, so I let out a small, relieved sigh before schooling my mouth into a disinterested line.

“Well, you’re welcome to it,” I said, indicating my lumpy couch, ignoring the fact that come morning, he would be holed up in the closet in the spare bedroom, safe from any pesky sun rays. “I've got to eat something and get some sleep.”

I expected him to make for the couch, but instead he wandered into the kitchen behind me and watched as I rummaged in the fridge for leftovers. His eyebrows went up into his hairline as he noticed the bottle of vodka and I shook my head, shoving it aside. Finding a carton of chow mein, I popped it in the microwave and turned back to face him. Johnny twirled joyfully between us, and I caught his furry head in my hands and kissed his nose.

“You feeling okay?” Leo asked casually. “Headache?”

“I’m all right,” I said. “I just need to eat something.”

He nodded, but he didn’t look convinced.

“What?” I asked. He didn’t answer right away and I looked into the microwave, watching as the little white carton slowly revolved in circles.

“Five years ago you would have been flat on your back with a migraine,” he said finally. “You’re getting stronger.”

I shrugged. “It’s been a while since I did anything.”

“Still. You did a full resurrection earlier and then healed that girl for me. I’m just saying. Even a year ago, you would have been feeling it.”

“I am feeling it,” I said with a flash of annoyance. The low-grade headache I’d been nursing was dulled by alcohol and adrenaline, but hadn’t gone away, still thumping in my temples. “Like I said, it’s been months since I resurrected anyone.”

“You’ve been conserving energy?” he asked, a little sardonically and I scowled. He noticed and put a mollifying hand.

“Hey,” he said softly. “I’m not picking on you. I’m just pointing out the obvious. There’s still a lot we don’t know. Can you conserve it? Could you stockpile your power and then be able to resurrect ten people?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “And no, I don’t want to practice. Don’t show up with ten dead bodies, Leo. Seriously.”

He heaved a sigh and looked away. I opened the microwave door to poke at the food with a fork.

“I’m just saying –” he started.

“It’s just that –” I said, at the same time, and we looked at each. He raised his eyebrows.

“Okay, maybe,” I snapped. I raked my hand over my eyes. “Maybe it’s getting easier. I don’t know; it’s hard to compare. Maybe I just know what to do now.”

He nodded, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, a very human motion that I suspected he did for my benefit.

“You need to understand your limits,” he told me, gentle but firm. “I can get you a pile of dead animals to practice on, but humans are the real challenge and unless there’s a convenient massacre, we’re just guessing.”

“I know,” I said back, my voice raising. “You’ve been telling me this for years. I’m not going to overdo it, I’ll be fine. Okay?”

“I know you will be,” he said and he leaned towards me, the hardness leaving his face. “I just worry.”

That made some of my irritation chip off and fall away and I gave him a small, close-mouth smile. “I appreciate that,” I said. “I do. But I can take care of myself.”