Read The Vampire's Seduction Online
Authors: Raven Hart
“Oh, shit.”
Since Werm was still staring at me, he didn’t see the mottled hand burst out of the ground in the Savannah moonlight. He didn’t see it grasp at the chill night air.
A little while back, my evil grandsire, Reedrek, made a big show of murdering my friend and employee Huey. The poor little simpleminded fellow had the misfortune of being at the wrong place at the wrong time and, long story short, kind of got gutted like a trout. Since we didn’t want to get the police involved and since Huey didn’t have any family, we decided to bury him behind the wheel of his beloved Chevy with a beer in his hand.
Now as I’ve explained before, I have what you’d call an affinity for the dead, even beyond the fact that I
are
one, as the old joke goes. I can barely walk through a cemetery without the passed-on wanting to get all chatty with me. In short, ghosts love ol’ Jack. In fact, Huey had visited me once after he died, here in the garage, just to let me know that he was doing well in the afterworld. Then he went about his business. That was fine and dandy.
This wasn’t.
What stood before Werm and me was not a ghost. It was a zombie. It was a full-bore
Night of the Living Dead
walking corpse. It was Huey in the flesh, you might say. Mottled, rotting, putrid flesh.
Werm walked stiffly to a clump of bushes and retched quietly.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what had happened. My powers where the dead were concerned—those that were previously limited mostly to communication—had blossomed into full-fledged corpse reanimation. Yes indeedy. Thanks to a well-hung voodoo deity, I was now the proud owner of a bouncing baby zombie. Ask and ye shall receive.
Huey raised his hand, one of the hands that he’d just used to claw his way out of the earth. “Hey, Jack.”
“Hey, Huey.”
Werm appeared at my side. “
That’s
Huey?”
“That’s him,” I said. “Huey, this is Werm.”
“Hey, Werm.”
“Hey, Huey,” Werm said wanly. “Jack, I think I know what must’ve—”
“Yeah, me too.”
Werm and I walked back into the garage, Huey shuffling along behind us. The irregulars were playing cards now, like they did most nights. Jerry, who’d brought the cigars for the ritual, had evidently purchased enough for everybody, because there they sat, puffing away and sipping their beers as pretty as you please. Because Werm and I had come in ahead of him, they didn’t notice Huey until he sat down at his usual place at the table.
What little action there was at the table froze solid, as if, ironically, the living men had gone into suspended animation and only the dead man showed any sign of life. The only movement they displayed was the downward trajectory of their cigars, which now hung limply from the corners of their mouths.
For a moment I was reminded of that famous old painting of the dogs playing poker. That’s how still they were, as still as the dogs in the painting, until Huey grinned, showing a mouthful of greenish teeth and rotting gums.
“Deal me in, boys,” he said.
The Vampire’s Seduction
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Del Rey Mass Market Original
Copyright © 2006 by Raven Hart
Excerpt from forthcoming novel by Raven Hart copyright © 2006 by Raven Hart
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
D
EL
R
EY
is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming novel by Raven Hart. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
eISBN-13: 978-0-345-49073-5
eISBN-10: 0-345-49073-8
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