The Voodoo Killings (3 page)

It was also the only way I’d get any useful answers from Cameron, such as who the hell had raised him.

I took another sip of my Pilsner and motioned for Cameron to drink from the Thermos. I’d worry about finding real brains after I got him back to my place.

I then realized where I’d seen him before: on local TV. I was looking at one Cameron Wight, the up-and-coming Seattle artist….

My beer went down the wrong pipe and I started to cough.

Cameron jumped at the noise, his movement jerky from a deteriorating nervous system.

I swore under my breath. A stray zombie was one thing, but a famous stray zombie? I racked my brain for details about him from the
interview I’d seen, but I’d been more concerned with watching the eBay bids on one of my voodoo books than listening to the plastic-fantastic host read cue card questions to a painter. Cause of death could be anything from suicide to accident to, well, worse. How had this man ended up a zombie?

I studied his features and tried to gauge a timeline. I figured he was no more than three days dead but no fewer than two, so he’d died between Tuesday and Wednesday.

I leaned back in my seat to check the closest TV screen: near the end of the sixth, Mariners up, bases still loaded. The bar might be oblivious, but eventually someone in Seattle was bound to notice Cameron was missing, if they hadn’t already. I needed to get Cameron out of here now.

I took the half-finished Thermos of mixed brain slushie, refastened the steel lid and shoved it back into my bag.

I placed a hand on Cameron’s arm and kept it there until he looked at me. “We need to go now,” I said.

He glanced down at my hand and back up at me, then nodded and stood. I silently thanked the universe I’d got lucky, and wasted no time steering him towards the kitchen and door.

We were almost there when someone tugged at the sleeve of my leather jacket.

“What the—?” Startled, I let go of Cameron.

A man, maybe late thirties, with tobacco-stained teeth, was hanging on as if my jacket were a handle. A baseball hat shadowed a face that would have verged on handsome if not for an ugly scar running down the side.

“Hey gorgeous, have a seat,” he slurred.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I yanked my sleeve back, but Yellow Teeth just smiled and stepped closer.

Of all the lousy nights—

Two more men appeared behind him, the one to his right sporting an MMA faux hawk and the one to the left sporting no hair at all. They weren’t regulars at Catamaran’s, as far as I knew. Figured. Liquid courage and relative anonymity do wonders for pushing boundaries.

Wrong girl, wrong bar.

Faux Hawk made a grab for my jacket next. I jumped back and readied my boot to strike.

Cameron stepped in front of me. “Leave her alone,” he said.

Shit. If this idiot managed to hit Cameron and a chunk of skin peeled off, it’d be game over.

The three men edged around us, forming a small circle. Damn it, I hate assholes.

I inserted myself between them and Cameron. Thank god his hood hadn’t fallen back.

Slam
.

The four of us froze as a wooden baseball bat hit the bar beside us. The entire room fell silent and turned to us as one.

Randall primed the bat over his shoulder as he addressed the three men. “She said she isn’t interested.”

I don’t think they even breathed as they stared at the bat.

It came down on the bar again. “So scram already,” Randall said.

He didn’t need to say another word. They obediently filed out of the bar, never taking their eyes off Randall and his baseball bat. The door shut behind them and I breathed in deep, holding the bar to steady myself. My hands were shaking, but not from the three idiots; it’s not like I’ve never had a punch thrown at me. It was the narrow miss of having Cameron exposed. I managed to smile at Randall. “I owe you one,” I said.

Randall didn’t smile back. “Kincaid, get him the hell out of here or you can bet your ass I’m calling the cops.” He pointed the business end of the bat at Cameron’s head.

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” I said. I grabbed Cameron’s hand and led him out through the kitchen. When we reached my Honda Hawk, I started the bike and passed Cameron my helmet. I figured he was more likely to fall off than I was, and it wouldn’t do either of us any good if he cracked his skull open. Cameron didn’t put the helmet on, just ran his fingers over the red detailing on the cracked leather seat.

“Never been on a bike before?” I asked.

“Never on the back,” he said, “and usually on better bikes.”

Tough, I thought, you’re dead. You don’t get to turn your nose up at my bike. Besides, he had no reason to be turning his nose up: my Honda Hawk was a work of art, despite the scratches. “Just get on before Randall sends a mob of crazed baseball fans after us.”

I scootched forward, and Cameron got his leg up and over then settled in, placing his hands on my waist. I suppressed a shiver at having a zombie that close. If he came unhinged on the short ride back, hopefully he’d fall off….

CHAPTER 2

NO SUBSTITUTE FOR THE REAL THING

Cameron grimaced and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his Mariners sweatshirt. “That’s disgusting,” he said, and slid the second empty silver Thermos towards me across the kitchen table. I stopped it before it careened over the edge.

“Cameron, the taste is the least of your worries right now,” I said, handing him the last Thermos from the freezer. Well, maybe not so much “handed” as “threw.” Best way to check his reflexes.

It sailed past him and smacked into the backsplash of the kitchen sink.

Yeah, those reflexes were nowhere near what they should be after two Thermoses of brains. I retrieved the Thermos and handed it to him. “Keep drinking,” I said.

His face contorted into what I figured was a look of disgust—it was hard to tell as all the muscles didn’t move—but he opened it and tipped it back.

I took my seat across from him. “Remember anything?” I asked.

He swallowed and shook his head, and stared down into the Thermos.

I closed my eyes. All these brains and Cameron still had no idea what had happened. But he looked better. His eyes were now a shade of green that would pass for alive, and his smell had improved to a “trace of musk.” Both big pluses in my books, even if his nervous system was slow on the regeneration uptake.

I sighed. He needed human brains. Hard to come by and not cheap.

I glanced down at my cellphone. Still no new messages. Come on, Max. What the hell could be taking you so long?

I checked the time: 10:30 p.m. Screw it, I couldn’t put off calling Mork any longer.

“Back in a sec, Cameron. Stay put.” I ducked into my bedroom. I grabbed a fresh burner phone from the bottom of my underwear drawer and dialed Mork’s number from memory. No one picked up, but then no one ever picked up. I let it ring five times then hung up; no one ever left messages either. I slid the phone into my pocket, turned, then jumped a foot in the air, my heart racing. Cameron loomed in the bedroom doorway, holding the Thermos of brains.

“Cameron, I swear to god, don’t sneak up on me….”

He looked down at the Thermos and then around my bedroom.

Conscious of the mess, I slipped past him and gently closed the door. No sudden moves allowed; they unnerve zombies.

“Can I take a shower?” he said, his eyes following me back into the kitchen. “I smell awful.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but not until we fix you up a bit more. Water causes—” I stopped. There didn’t seem much point explaining that water would warp his skin until it peeled away like birchbark. “Let’s just say it won’t help any.”

He followed me back into my less disastrous kitchen.

“Look, as soon as I have you fixed up, you can have a nice long shower and start getting your life sorted out.”

“I’m dead.”

“Being dead doesn’t mean you get out of paying rent. I need to get you functional,” I said, sliding back into my chair.

Cameron frowned. I got the distinct impression that the tidbits of his personality filtering through the zombie fog didn’t appreciate my dry sense of humour.

“Okay, Cameron, this is what I know. Yes, you are dead. You were—
are
—a Seattle artist, an almost-famous one. By the looks of it, you’ve been dead a couple of days and you were probably animated this morning.”

I waited for him to respond, then prodded: “Any of that ring a bell?”

He stared at me as if on the verge of remembering something, and then it was gone, like every other time I’d asked him. “No,” he said. “I’m hungry. Why am I so hungry?”

God, I needed Mork to call me back right now. Mork was never this slow—and neither was Max.

Every single zombie I’d ever raised—and I’d been a full-fledged practitioner for almost a decade—remembered exactly how they’d died. Heart attack, murder, overdose, even dying in their sleep—a zombie always remembered. Hell, it was the first thing they wanted to talk about. Yet Cameron didn’t have a clue.

Maybe if I took a little peek at his bindings…

In polite paranormal circles you only look at someone else’s work if you have permission from the zombie or binder. Since Cameron’s binder was nowhere to be found and Cameron was in no condition to be giving permission to anyone for anything, polite was impossible. The bigger issue was that Cameron would feel it, and for all I knew, his bindings were already unravelling him into one big dangerous zombie mess.

Which was all the more reason to take a look.

“Cameron, hold still a sec,” I said. Before he could respond one way or the other, I pulled a globe.

Pulling a globe—being able to breach the barrier to the Otherside—isn’t some kind of special talent or gift. Most people dabble in college but then give up because they don’t actually want to deal with what they see past that barrier. Me? I dabbled too, but I’m stubborn, persistent, and I have a strong stomach. And then there was the fact
that there weren’t a lot of jobs out there for history majors who dropped out before they got their degrees. Whereas there was a substantial and surprising niche for practitioners willing to call up ghosts and zombies for law enforcement, for lawyers, and for good old entertainment value. And then it turned out I was already in a prime location for practitioners. Seattle is the North American mecca for all things paranormal. I blame it on the violent gold rush history and the 1990s heroin-obsessed grunge scene, though it’s probably more the geographical location of the city itself. Near water—and all of Seattle is pretty near water—the barrier to the Otherside is paper-thin.

Tonight, as soon as I tapped it, cold Otherside flooded my head in a rush. I bit back the usual wave of nausea and waited for Otherside energy to fill my skull. Once I had stabilized my globe, I opened my eyes to a world bathed in the telltale grey Otherside haze. I looked at Cameron as I let Otherside expand around me like ripples from a raindrop.

As the first wave of energy hit Cameron, he drew in a sharp breath and gripped the arms of my kitchen chair. He started to stand but sat back down as I sent a second wave at him.

“Cameron, just stay still,” I said, my teeth clenched. “You just need to put up with me for a few seconds.”

I searched first for the gold glow of his bindings. I picked up the four anchoring lines, heavier and brighter than the rest, running through his arms and legs. All four lines coalesced in one spot, Cameron’s heart, in a bright gold beacon typical of Western and African bindings. Then the secondary lines flared into view, branching off the main lines and into his fingers and feet, getting thinner and thinner until they were fine gold threads that reminded me of nerve endings. It was good work. Most practitioners wouldn’t have bothered with the fingertips. They’d have called it a day at the wrist, maybe the palm if they were feeling generous. So with such careful bindings, why the hell was he in such bad shape?

I checked his head next. I expected to see a fifth line, but there was none.

Shit. He was one line short of a full deck.

Without a fifth anchoring line in his head, no amount of human brains could fix him. I’d been sure he was a five-line, but whoever had raised Cameron had meant him to be temporary. With the detail on the hands, it had to be Max, or else there was another very good practitioner lurking around Seattle.

Not that it mattered. I couldn’t leave Cameron up and running with only four lines. I’d have to put him back myself.

I took a deep breath, pushed the Otherside nausea down, and readied to untie his lines.

“Kincaid?” Cameron said through clenched teeth. He was still gripping the arms of the chair.

“Not much longer, Cameron,” I said.
Almost over
.

I pushed more Otherside through his lines and flushed out the symbols: traces of the incantations used to write the bindings onto Cameron’s body, the bolts that were holding his lines together, so to speak.

Cameron winced as the symbols flared a gold only I could see. Sweat collected on my upper lip. One more push and then everything would unravel, and whatever was left of Cameron’s ghost would siphon back to the Otherside. He’d never know what hit him. Or at least that was the plan.

I sent the final wave at Cameron.

And that’s when things got weird.

The four main animation symbols, all ones I recognized from classic voodoo, floated up from each of the anchor lines. I expected that. But then six more symbols flashed to life inside his head.

Cameron arched as if in the throes of a seizure, his head twisting. The six new symbols flared brighter and brighter. Celtic? Norse wasn’t out of the question either. Then a fifth line leading from Cameron’s heart to his head, the one I’d expected to find in the first place, flickered into existence. The six strange symbols brightened as Cameron convulsed, and then they began to spin slowly, like gears in a clock.

“Kincaid.” Cameron’s voice was strained. No kidding.

I sent another wave of Otherside towards him, hoping the symbols would stop their revolutions. Instead, they sped up, and all five main anchoring lines wavered. Cameron convulsed again.