I tried to grin back. “Hey, somebody ruined your haircut.”
“Chicks dig injured guys, Captain. Wait till you see how much action I score out of this, since my dick still works. Wanna see?”
“No. That’s all right. Really.” I was more relieved than disgusted, but he really should come with a warning label. I started back down the ramp. The Bradley troop compartment was too crowded, and I didn’t want to get in Hanzo’s way.
“Hey, Captain,” Rafe called.
I looked back.
“Thanks,” he said softly.
I smiled, nodded and turned away. My throat tightened, making it painful to swallow. I’d started to blink rapidly too. Goddamn smoke. Always stinging my eyes.
Another explosion at the rear of the building boomed like thunder, echoing back from the surrounding streets like an artillery barrage. I stood a few feet from the Bradley and watched the flames consume Bokor Gelzonbi Foods. The firefighters set up their hoses, but only stared at the fire, holding off at our orders.
Would we get paid for this since there’d been no confirmed necromancer kill? I tried to remember the exact language of our contract and couldn’t. My mind was filled with images of the yellow-orange blaze of fire, of burning corpses and Rafe crawling toward me in the smoke. It would be a nightmare identifying the necromancer anyway, with all those crispy zombie bodies. But maybe we’d get lucky.
Lucky. Who was I kidding?
Mai walked up to me. She had only one ferret left with her—she’d already ported the others back to their home world on Planet Furry Demon or whatever.
“Captain,” she said. “The bus is gone.”
Chapter Seventeen: To Hell and Back, On A Bus
Diminished Undead Army in Asset-Relocation Program
Zombie
School
Bus
SE Powell Boulevard
, Portland, Oregon
12:06 p.m. PST April 16th
Deposed Necromancer of the Unrighteous Order of the Falling Dark Jeremiah Hansen drove the school bus down the street at precisely the speed limit. Blake sat in the first seat of the opposite row, his hands wrapped over the top of his briefcase like a gargoyle clutching a rainspout. The slightest frown marred his usual bland expression as he stared out the front window.
Jeremiah glanced at the tall side mirror. He could still see the massive column of smoke twisting up into the clouds a mile or so behind him. What a completely fucktastic epic disaster. All his work, all his dreams, literally up in smoke.
A zombie moaned in one of the back rows. Jeremiah glanced in the wide overhead mirror before he coasted to a stop at a traffic light. Less than fifty zombies remained. One of them, a Hispanic guy in a muscle shirt, still smoldered, and the white smoke rose off him like steam from boiling noodles. The air inside the bus smelled of burned hair, smoke, and strangely, BBQ pork. He wanted to open all the windows but couldn’t risk stopping and didn’t quite want to risk ordering Blake to do it. Blake had been silent since they’d escaped. Disturbing.
Sirens warbled in the distance. He came to another intersection and scanned for cops. A block farther south a fire truck rushed past. The traffic light turned green, and Jeremiah proceeded through the intersection in a responsible fashion.
Blake leaned toward him, raising his voice to be heard over the diesel engine. “How soon might we acquire new undead assets?”
“I don’t know.” His hands tightened on the wide steering wheel. It’d taken him a long time to gather all those zombies and now most of them had been cremated. Story of his life. A sip of success, and then the sweetness stolen away. “Depends on the local death rate, how many funeral parlors and hospitals we could get to. I don’t think I can get another zombie shipment from Idaho. It’d take forever to ship them from Mexico.”
“We managed to extract fifty-three undead, by my count. I suggest our first move might be to secure a place to lay low, as they say.”
No shit. He wasn’t exactly on his way to the local Hooters for hot wings and hot pants. The term
furious
summed his feelings up nicely. Now throw in the words
alarmed
and
discouraged
and pick out a prize. He yearned for vengeance…but wreaking maniacal revenge with only fifty zombies would be a serious trial and tribulation.
“I have a couple of storage garages I rent at Sam’s Secure Shacks,” Jeremiah finally replied. “We could ditch the zombies inside. Abandon the bus somewhere.”
“At this stage I’m hesitant to lose one of our biggest assets. Transportation is a requirement. Even transportation such as this.”
“Good point.”
“We have access to funds, I assume?”
“Yeah.” He had access to some of his stolen money, squirreled away in safety-deposit boxes, although a good deal of the rest had metamorphosed into ash when the plant burned. That damn woman. Sure, she’d looked smoking hot—what he could see of her outside of her helmet and all that armor, anyway. But she’d had those eyes, the fiery gaze of some pissed-off dragon. Not somebody he wanted hunting him.
Instead, he’d rather hunt her. Since she’d been the one who’d destroyed his manufacturing venture beyond salvage, he intended to extract some fair market value for watching his dreams burn. If he could turn all of those mercenaries into zombies…not the werewolf, that wouldn’t work because they were immune to his death magic, but the others, that pretty fire girl and that Clint Eastwood-squinting hard-ass guy with the pistol. The demon would have to go, of course. But the Asian woman had been a summoner, so maybe he could get a bonus. A sub-army of undead summoner monsters. An interesting prospect. With zombies like that—
paranormal
zombies—maybe he’d been setting his sights too low with the gelatin thing. Maybe he needed to rule a city. A small one at first, so he could get the gist of it without bankrupting Los Angeles or turning it into a smoking heap in his first week.
More
of a smoking heap, that was.
From there…well, what if he managed to lobby for the right for zombies to vote? An intriguing idea. Establish an undead voting block. They’d be lax on the FDA, EPA and indifferent to the SEIU and other unions…but knowing zombies, they’d be antagonistic about the Second Amendment and gun rights, which meant no NRA support. What about social programs? Were zombies pinko Santa Claus-esque socialists? Nah, they didn’t strike him that way. On the flip side, though, zombies weren’t likely to be pro-military either. So how would the Moral Majority take them? Did the Bible say anything specific about cannibalism? He was pretty sure it wasn’t specifically in the Ten Commandments, the only thing they ever seemed concerned about anyway.
He opened his mouth to tell Blake about the new zombie voting demographic idea, but before he spoke something tripped all kinds of alarms in his skull. His necromancer magic swirled around him in a silver and black aura, making it next to impossible to drive in a straight line.
He could see something…something across the web of psychic connection he shared with his undead minions. One of the zombies—no, one zombie
head
—was still active. In fact, those damn mercenaries had it. Apparently, they’d decided to tote it around in a plastic grocery bag. He could hear the rumble of a large diesel engine. He concentrated harder and heard the sound of a man’s voice across the telepathic link.
“Did you see the captain go nuclear?” a male voice said. “She, like,
exploded
the building. It was the most awesome thing I’ve ever seen.”
“And did you see?” a female voice answered, smooth and delicious and sexy. Jeremiah immediately got hard. “Captain Sanders refused to leave her side, even when she told him to.”
“Yeah,” the male voice replied, “and he’s lucky she didn’t bite his head off and do the Charleston on his body for ignoring her.”
What the hell was this?
Days of our Lives
? He dimmed the connection so he could focus on driving and avoid ramming the bus up the tailpipe of a Volkswagon. Still, this had turned into a beautiful stroke of luck. A zombie head was better than a tracking beacon for a person of Jeremiah’s particular skills. Those mercenaries had been damn unnerving. He’d thrown everything at them, shot every barrel, and even when it seemed he might win, they’d managed to blow up the best gelatin manufacturing plant this side of the Rocky Mountains. Now he’d make them pay. Pay
extreme
restitution.
He glanced at Blake and smiled. “I think I have a plan.”
And, of course, it involved zombies. Sometimes he even amazed himself.
Chapter Eighteen: Gods and Generals and Zombies
Mercenary Wing Rv6-4 “Zero Dogs”
Zero Dog Compound
Garage
2041 Hours PST April 16th
The Zero Dogs got home well after dark. I should’ve been tired, but instead I felt as if I’d downed half a dozen energy drinks with coffee chasers. Things had broken down along these lines:
Rafe’s wounds healed over, and Hanzo patched up all Rafe’s burns and bites. He treated the rest of the assault team for smoke inhalation and minor injuries. I had to admit, when he wasn’t running around in black pajamas waving his stupid sword, Hanzo was a damn fine healer. I only wished he realized it. Or maybe I just wished he’d finally accept it.
The Bokor Gelzonbi Foods manufacturing plant burned to the ground. Only a section of the south wall still stood, scorched black and sprouting broken steel girders and rebar. When the police commissioner learned there’d been zombies inside, he sent in HazMat teams with the firefighters digging out hot spots and spraying down the smoking rubble. The heat had been so intense that body identification would remain an iffy prospect.
Worse, a witness had positively identified Necromancer Hansen and a bunch of zombies fleeing the scene in a school bus. The police put out a BOLO on the bus, but the cops didn’t have a bus number or plate number, and the necromancer had a large head start.
Finally, Norville Ford from city hall had shown up in his government-black SUV foaming at the mouth about how we’d pay for the damage to the property, for the cost of the fire and police response, for the cost of cleanup, city-worker overtime, paperwork handling and on and on.
Then Jake went and impressed me without even pulling out his gun or stripping down to his jockeys. He’d taken Norville aside, one hand on his back, bent close and had spoken in a low, calm voice so I couldn’t quite make out the words, although I’d have sold a kidney to eavesdrop. A couple minutes later, Jake had strolled back to me and Norville had abandoned the scene. I hadn’t asked Jake what he’d said, and he hadn’t volunteered, despite his cat-who-ate-the-canary smirk.
We’d rolled out long after the sun had gone down, detouring through the Taco Bell drive thru to grab dinner because everyone was starving. Rafe didn’t even complain about all the saturated fat, trans fat, sodium, butylated hydroxyanisole, sodium nitrite and monosodium glutamate in the fast food. At the pick-up window, the girl’s eyes had bugged out when the Bradley had rolled up. I’d had to climb down from the turret to get the food…all three hundred dollars of it.
Now, hours later, I had a tension headache and pain all through my shoulders. I’d been in the garage for the last twenty minutes going over the supplies. I’d showered the moment we got in, but despite washing my hair three times and standing in the hot water for half an hour I could still smell the lingering stink of smoke.
“I’ve been looking for you, Andrea,” Jake said behind me.
I jerked, my pen skating across the clipboard. I spun around, heart pounding, annoyed with myself at the effect he had on me, even though I was bone-weary. I fought to keep irritation out of my voice and failed. “I’m gonna staple a bell to your forehead,” I snarled. “What do you need?”
He shook his head. The shadows had gathered in deep pools inside the garage with only a few overhead spot fluorescents on. Half his face was lost in darkness. The smells of oil, iron and lingering diesel fumes filled the air.
He shoved his hands in the pockets of his black fatigues. “What do
you
need?”
I glanced around. “There an echo?”
“A rough day. What can I do to help?”
“I’m almost done.” I turned away, and then looked back over my shoulder. “But…thanks.”
He shrugged, but didn’t leave. I went back to counting the remaining ammo Tiffany had unloaded from the Bradley’s Bushmaster chain gun, trying to calculate how much it would cost to replenish it. Using the chain gun on zombies had been complete overkill, and now our bank account would feel the pain. The price of diesel fuel already had my stomach in knots. At least she hadn’t fired any of the Javelins.
I noted numbers for a few minutes more. After I recounted the same ammo box for the third time I had to stop and admit I couldn’t focus with Jake this close. My thoughts kept circling back to him, and whenever he made the slightest sound, I wanted to look at him.
I sighed, capped the pen and set the clipboard on an engine stand. “I can’t concentrate.”
“You look stressed.”
“And they say men don’t have any powers of intuition. Obviously they’re present, but like their brain, underutilized.”
A grin. “You’re lucky I’m not easily offended.”
“And you’re lucky you’re a barrier mage and I can’t just bounce you and your incredible inflatable ego out of here.”
“So prickly.” He cocked his head. “Why is that?”
I looked away, staring at engine parts. “I’m not comfortable answering—”
“I thought maybe things had changed after what happened earlier, but you keep right on trying to insult me away. The constant sniping about men. Am I a threat?”
“Hardly.”
“So why the hate?”
“I don’t hate men. I love them to death. They’re just exasperating.” I thought for a moment. “And easy to make fun of.”
“Ah.”
“Look. I’m just teasing. Don’t get your testicles in a knot.”
“How about I start
teasing
back?”
I didn’t answer right away. While everyone had to admit I was pretty fucking high-larry-us most of the time, I wondered how many PMS, toilet seat or shopaholic jokes I could take before going DEFCON 1. “All right. You made your point. I’ll be nice.”
“I don’t want nice.” He moved toward me, taking unhurried steps. His eyes never left mine. They burned with a quiet intensity, like a predator…or a lover. He came very close to me, his face now fully revealed in the yellow light. A hard face, with hard eyes, yet I noticed something else in them now. Something that made my stomach flutter.
He moved even closer.
“Don’t,” I warned.
“Why?”
“I’m…taking inventory and I’ll lose count.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He moved around behind me. I started to face him, but he placed his hands on my shoulders. I immediately tensed, but forced myself to relax. That I’d even let him get this close spoke volumes.
He began to massage my back and neck, rubbing his thumbs against my muscles and helping them unclench. I tried to keep my eyes open and swallowed a sigh. A distant, and quite frankly minority part of me wanted to tell him to take his hands off. But Mother said never turn down a good back rub, so for a while I let everything go and enjoyed it.
“I’m exhausted,” I finally said. I stepped away from him and his touch I’d been enjoying too much. “I can’t deal with this now.”
“I want you,” he said, and I could hear it in his voice. I opened my mouth to pop off with something wiseass but he held up his hands. “I can see you want me too. It’s in your eyes.”
“You’re an arrogant bastard.”
“Am I? I was trying to be direct. Like you. Thought you’d appreciate it.”
I didn’t answer.
“We’re adults. We’re attracted to one another.” He touched my hand. Not possessively, but with an almost hesitant grace, as if seeking invitation to touch me more. “Haven’t I proven I’m not a threat?”
“I can’t deal with you. We already talked about this.”
He watched me, his head tilted, waiting me out.
“I have responsibilities. People are counting on me. You blow in here, upset all the routines. Hover on the edge of compromising my command. And you expect us to hook up?”
“I want to see if this spark between us leads anywhere.”
“I know all about sparks and fire and the burning-searing-inferno metaphors. Talk to somebody other than a pyromancer.”
“I can use any metaphor you’d like,” he said. “Or none at all.”
I had to stop this now.
Had
to. I couldn’t take it. Couldn’t take lowering my defenses and letting him charge all over me and leave me a smoking, looted ruin.
I waved a dismissive hand at him. “Look, I have duties. We’re gonna be done here—likely this necromancer guy is halfway to Mexico by now, planning to wear sombreros, drink tequila and play in a mariachi band—and you’re gonna leave and I’ll still have to deal with everything. I believe in making a clean cut. A
pre
-cut in this case.”
Jake nodded. Yet he leaned toward me, holding my gaze, and kissed me. His lips felt soft and warm on mine. My traitorous lips opened in response. Second time he’d kissed me. Second time I’d ignored my own protests about why we wouldn’t ever work.
I let him break the kiss after a long, far-too-short amount of time.
“That doesn’t change anything,” I said.
He smiled. “It’s a start. And that’s all I ask.”
He turned and walked off. I watched him leave, part of me wishing he’d come back.
But he didn’t.
My apartment echoed as I stalked through it. The place seemed eerily empty and joyless. I poured myself a glass of scotch—the amount of amber liquid in the bottle had grown noticeably lower since
he
had arrived—and sipped it as I paced around the room, looking at the art on my walls and thinking about Jake.
Annoying. Vexing that I should be saddled with him—making me think about him when I should’ve been thinking about the ongoing manhunt for Jeremiah Hansen. This was exactly what I’d feared would happen. Jake was in the way of me doing my job like a professional, dammit.
Fatigue leached away my energy and made my thoughts random and confused, but I felt too restless to sleep. I slipped on shoes and abandoned my room. I wandered through the house like a ghost, half-hoping I’d run into Jake again in some secluded hallway, half-irritated with myself for even nursing such a stupid, trite fantasy.
I passed by the laundry room on my way to the kitchen and noticed Stefan inside. He leaned against one of the huge industrial front-loader washers and stared at something out of my line of sight. I hadn’t talked to Stefan yet tonight, so my scotch and I paid him a little visit.
He glanced up at me and frowned before turning his attention back to the object on a sorting table—the zombie head Sarge had collected and brought back to the house. The severed head sat in the round white laundry basket I’d left in here a couple days ago. I approached it with caution, as if sneaking up on an alligator, and peered over the top. Bringing the head back with us hadn’t been my idea, but Sarge believed there might be a way to trace the silver cords of death magic from the zombie head back to the necromancer. Jake had agreed. I’d finally gone along, not wanting to lose any chance at a lead, but really,
really
loathing the thought of an undead cranium wrapped in a plastic shopping bag within a ten-mile radius of me.
“Stefan.” I tried keeping my tone even, calm, Zen-like. “Why do you have a zombie head in the laundry room? Or do I not want to know?”
He stroked his right fang, still staring down at the head. The zombie head had belonged to a guy with a long shaggy haircut in fashionable—if somewhat greasy—disarray, a close-cropped beard and filmy blue eyes. Those eyes had rolled in their sockets and locked on me the moment I peered over the edge of the basket. His mouth dropped open and his tongue lolled out. The zombie closed his teeth on his tongue and began to chew on it, which qualified as the most unnerving thing I’d seen in at least an hour and a half.
“Gavin gave me this…
thing
to watch. He made some disparaging comment about the undead watching the undead.” Stefan’s face betrayed his disgust. “Never a man mind that vampires are not even distant cousins to zombies. It’s an egregious insult.”
“Mmm. So why are you in the
laundry
room? And why is a zombie head in
my
laundry basket. A basket that has, on occasion, held my lingerie?” Now I’d have to send the basket to the incinerator. No way I’d ever use it again.
“Because I needed to wash my whites, and I very well can’t have this head rolling off when I turn my back.”
“That’s a great image,” I replied. “A bowling-ball zombie head tumbling down the hallway. Thanks, I’ll sleep better.”
He rolled his eyes and showed me a little fang—unconscious vampire body language. I wondered if he’d had that widow’s peak before he became a vampire, or if it were just some kind of genetic side effect.
“All irrelevant buffoonery aside,” he said. “I see you warm bloods have been up to no end of mischief without me. A fortunate thing I’m on salary.”
“We managed to burn down another building, if that’s what you mean.”
“I assume that was your doing, Captain.”
I favored him with a mysterious smile and took another sip of scotch.
“So where is the necromancer now, may I ask?”
“Nobody knows. The cops have an APB out on the school bus. We’ll see if anything turns up.”
“A school bus. Villains a hundred years ago wouldn’t be caught dead or
un
dead in such a vulgar, unstylish contraption. Things have truly gone to the curs of late.”