The Pulptress Versus The Bone Queen: Blood and Bone (6 page)

"They let whoever is wearing them see how hot or cold something is," I tried to explain.

She held the goggles up to her eyes and looked over Aramis, stepping slowly closer, and putting a hand to his chest just over his heart. "This is the only part of you that's even close to a regular base human temperature. That’s your gem?"

“Yes.” He said.

"So it's already warm?" I asked. "That means the other gems are close?"

"I suppose?" Jackson looked to Aramis.

He nodded. "Yeah, that's how I know it's here. I can feel it."

"So the closer we get, the hotter that spot is going to get?" I asked.

Aramis leaned against the wall. "Yes," he finally answered.

"So, will destroying these gems destroy her completely?" I asked.

He bit at the side of his mouth. "I don't know for sure. I know it will limit her power, but most importantly it will keep her from being able to summon a plague."

"A plague?" Jackson took the goggles back off.

Aramis nodded. "Your history books called it The Black Death."

"Wait, so she summoned the Black Plague?" I asked. "How is that—"

"No. No." He shook his head and sighed. "What happened doesn't matter now, but she didn't do that. She...stopped it."

"What are you talking about?" I frowned.

"She wasn't always like this. She just wanted to stop what was happening, and got too caught up in it, in the power." Aramis' voice softened. "I don't think she ever wanted things to go like this. And, if there's any part of that girl left then I owe it to her to stop her from bringing this plague back to earth."

"What?" Jackson frowned. "Okay, the plague was not caused by magic, it was-"

"All those the plague killed came back to life and began to raze the world," Aramis cut her off. "She stood to stop that, to keep the dead truly dead. She wanted that more than anything." He clenched his fists, and then let out a deep breath.

"I don't care about how this all happened,” I said. “I just need to know how to stop her from raising anything else from the ground. Is there some special way the gems have to be destroyed?"

"They can only be destroyed by the touch of a living creature,” Aramis said. “They can be damaged and disrupted by a touch like mine, but the only way to rid the world of them is for a living soul to destroy them. I've tried, and seen it tried by others, and it never stops the gems, just delays the inevitable."

Jackson sighed. "Well, I'm going to get some supplies together for this cemetery exploration. You both are welcome to stay here for the night. There are couches upstairs that I think escaped destruction."

I didn't think I'd be able to sleep, but accepted the offer any way. "Trying to sleep wouldn't be a bad idea I suppose."

Jackson led me upstairs to one of the only rooms to escape assault by the attacking chiffoniers. Two small twin beds with paisley sheets sat in the middle of the room.

"Why do you have a bedroom here anyways?" I asked.

Jackson shrugged. "Sometimes I stay the night, work gets busy. Sometimes officers need a place to sleep for an hour or two. I had the extra space in this building, might as well put it to better use than yet another storage closet."

I nodded. "Thanks for your help, and for contacting me."

She smiled. "Thanks for actually coming here and not cussing me out and calling me crazy over the phone. That's what I was expecting to happen to be honest. How many people would believe that a dead man came to life with your information in his hands?"

I laughed. "Well, maybe you got lucky this time." I dug through my bag and found the smallest pistol I had. I put it in her hands, "This is for you. This is the safety, don't turn that off unless you're about to shoot something, and don't point at anything you don't want destroyed. This won't do a lot of damage, but it packs enough of a kick to get those things away from you long enough to let you run." I put some rounds in her hand.

She looked at the gun, pointing it toward the wall and testing the weight and movement. "I haven't been shooting since I was little. My dad use to take me."

"Then you've got some experience," I said, "Good, that'll help. And I hope that you don't have to use it."

"If those things are attacking the house then I can't imagine what the cemetery is going to look like."

I offered, "They tend to attack when it's dark. We're going to be there bright and early. She might be cruel and crazy but she isn't stupid. She's not going to send her entire hoard out in the middle of the day to chase us from the cemetery." I hoped I was right. I wasn't sure what the Bone Queen was capable of anymore.

Jackson nodded. "Keep the door locked just in case something does come in the night."

"Don't worry I will. Where are you going?" I asked.

"I’m going to set up a room for Aramis then I'll be down in the lab for a while getting some things together, and then I'll probably join you up here. I've got a key for the room so don't worry."

"I apologize in advance for probably pointing a gun at you whenever you come in here. Habit," I explained.

She nodded. "Get some sleep Miss Pulptress."

"There's no ‘miss’." I reminded her.

"Honey, in the south, everyone's a miss or a missus," she said with a smile and left the room.

I sighed and put my pistol on the bedside table in easy arm's reach. I closed my eyes and tried counting backwards from 100 to get to sleep, but every number just flashed like bone shapes in front of my eyes. I groaned and pulled the blankets up over my head, but sleep resisted me.

I was still tossing and turning when I heard the key turn in the lock, and the door slowly squeak open. I peered out from under the covers and tracked Jackson as she tiptoed into the room and into the other bed. She sighed heavily, taking her hair band out of her hair with a yawn and flopping into the bed. Within a few seconds, I could hear her softly snoring.

I laid in silence, staring at the ceiling, and taking slow deep breaths. Eventually my eyes closed and I drifted off.

*****

I woke to a raven screeching outside of the window.

“Mmm…What is that?” Jackson grumbled, sitting up.

“Raven.” I sighed and slowly got out of bed. “We should get going. Looks like the storm has let up.”

Jackson nodded and yawned, putting her feet on the floor and stretching. “And we need to go before someone from the police department comes looking for those bodies.”

I rubbed my temples. "Go get Aramis, I'll get my things and then we'll get out of here."

Jackson nodded and disappeared off down the hallway. I took a deep breath before quickly changing into jeans and a plain white t-shirt. I pulled my hair up into a tight ponytail to hold it out of my face. Loading up my bag, I double-checked that I had everything I could think of for any kind of adventure with the undead. Guns, bullets, knives, baton, and a few flashlights. The only thing I hadn't brought was a shovel because that was a pain to carry around on. "Jackson?" I called down the hallway, "Do you have a shovel?"

"A shovel?" Aramis answered. "Are you going to bury me?'

"If only," I replied. "I figure a shovel might be helpful if we find anything needing digging up, like a gem."

"I've got one in the closet by the back door," Jackson called, coming back up from the basement with Aramis behind her.

I went down the hallway and grabbed the shovel, an old, rusted one, but it would work well enough. Tossing it to Aramis, I tightened the bag straps over my shoulders and around my waist to hold it securely in place. Aramis gets the shovel secured to his back, strapping it into place.

"You driving?" I asked Jackson.

Jackson nodded. "We can take the truck." She and I both looked at Aramis. "You ride in the bed," Jackson said.

"The what?" Aramis asked.

"The back of the truck," I explained.

He frowned, but didn't argue as Jackson grabbed her bag and headed out of the house. Jackson threw her own bag of supplies over her shoulders, a baseball bat stuck out of the top flap of her supplies. She locked the door behind us, and opened up the truck. I threw my bag into the truck bed, and Aramis climbed in to sit beside my stuff.

I nodded, “Keep my stuff secured.”

Aramis grinned, and nodded. “Sure thing.”

I got into the passenger side and shut the door behind me. Jackson started the truck and headed down the road.

Chapter 5

Glancing in the rearview mirror, I watched Aramis cling to the side railings and flop around in the back of the truck. When we finally got off of the rough dirt road and onto solid, relatively smooth asphalt, Aramis and I both let out a long sigh of relief.

Jackson pulled into the gravel lot. and hopped out. "Alright, best bet is for us to start at the main entrance and work through the three areas of the cemetery."

"How many are buried here?" I asked.

"Depends on what historian you ask," Jackson answered after a moment. "Most of these bodies came from the Civil War, most of them fleeing Sherman when he burned Georgia top to bottom. There weren't a whole lot of options for burials so mass graves were started."

"Why all the rosemary here?" I asked.

"Rosemary's used to say that someone won't be forgotten. It's a nice way to keep a memory alive. You know, they do say that scent is the sense most closely connected to memory," Jackson explained.

*****

"Nothing around here looks disturbed. Not from anything but a storm at least," I finally said after we had circled the entryway.

Jackson knelt by the rosemary busy, cutting a small piece and carefully putting it into a plastic evidence bag. "We can try the old slave burial grounds next. That's just right past that last hill there in the back." She put the rosemary sample into her bag and led the way across the field.

"How frequently do people visit?" I asked. “Any chance anyone’s seen anything?”

"Visit here?" Jackson sighed, "God, I don't know. Not very much. It's not exactly a thriving tourist attraction and this isn't a real big metropolis, you know."

I nodded, letting out a long breath as we passed a small wall and another statue, this one a granite carving of a flame reaching upwards.

Jackson walked past the statue. "Grandpa's out here somewhere. Or at least that's what we think. There aren't really any records of where he died."

"So the burials here are unknown? How many?" Aramis asked.

"Um...Well yeah, most of the ones here are unknown. There's a sort of listing of the names of some of those believed to be here, but it's nothing confirmed. A lot of slaves, freed slaves, and anyone whose skin was a hair too dark got dropped out here. I guess it's lucky some of them even got a burial." Jackson shrugged.

"Nothing looks disturbed out here either," I said. “The grounds have no recent holes.”

Jackson shook her head. "No it doesn't. I guess someone pulling up bodies would be kind of obvious, let alone the effort and mess you'd make just digging through the clay."

"What was the third section you mentioned?" Aramis asked.

Jackson ran her hand along the stone statue, tracing the smooth lines with her fingers, playing over the rough granite. "It's the old money section. All the mausoleums and big graves are there."

She led the way to a small, carefully laid out stone-lined path that trailed past a few manicured bushes and flowers. Over another small hill she spotted the first mausoleum carved into the shape of a tiny church, a cross reaching to the heavens from the top of the ornate granite. Stained glass windows decorated all four sides of the building. One depicted an olive branch, one a dove, one a chalice, and one a rising sun. The doors were chained shut; rust lined them, red creeping along the metal.

A few more carefully laid out gravestones scattered around the building with a bench laid out by a bed of flowers. "Someone comes to take care of these?" I motioned to the flowers.

"Yeah. The historical society has a gardener they hire to come out from time to time. I think every month or two," Jackson guessed. “The grass has been recently cut so I’m thinking they’ve been here in the last week.”

I followed along the stone path past a few smaller buildings and a gravestone with a book closed carved into stone above the names of a family. I frowned when I spotted one mausoleum carved from a black stone that sat at the back of the cemetery. One of its doors hung faintly open.

“That looks promising,” Aramis chimed in.

“Stay quiet, and stay here.” I told him.

Jackson lingered behind me to take samples of some of the plants nearby and a few small samples of the dirt. She murmured to herself as she carefully labeled, bagged, and put away everything she collected.

I headed to the open mausoleum. "Look at this," I called to Jackson.

She finished bagging the last sample and hurried to my side.

"What mausoleum is this?" I asked.

Jackson shook her head. "I'm not sure. The name’s worn off of the front here." She walked a slow circle around the building, running her hands over the rosemary bush beside the entrance. The building was simple, short without any windows and with no elaborate designs or carvings.