Bloodstone

“Yes. I thought it might help.”



“It was a good thought. It’s not healing her, but it’s prevented the injury from getting worse.”



“Do you think the wound is poisoned?” I told her how I’d given Daniel a swab from the Old One’s sword for analysis.



“Offhand, I can’t think of any poison that would harm a vampire. Their system won’t absorb most poisons. But I’m not an expert. I’ll be interested to learn the results of the analysis.”



So would I. Until then, I didn’t know what to do—and neither did Mab. That was an odd feeling. I was used to relying on my aunt to have all the answers.



“Axel told me that the last four or five times he’s checked on her, she’s been asleep like this,” Mab continued. “He couldn’t rouse her.”



“It’s like she’s in a coma.”



Mab shook Juliet’s shoulder, gently at first, then more vigorously. No response.



Resting her chin in her hand, Mab sighed. “I don’t understand it. I suppose it could be a poison, something augmented by silver, perhaps. But at least she’s stable for the moment.”



Out of options, we let Juliet sleep. We went back upstairs and carefully closed the hidden door. In the main room, a customer had arrived. He sat alone at the bar, hunched over his drink. When he heard us come in, he looked up and sneered. I knew that sneer—it was Norden, the Goon Squad cop.



“Been to the ‘Ghouls’ room?” he said. “What the hell do you females do in there, anyway?”



“Powder our noses.” I walked past him.



Mab sat on a stool and began talking to Axel in that troll language. He pulled out a bottle from under the bar—must be some kind of special reserve if he hid it there—and poured her a generous portion.



“Aquavit,” Mab explained. “The Scandinavian ‘water of life.’ It’s from Axel’s private stock. Would you like some?”



She held out her glass to me, and I sniffed. The liquid smelled strongly of alcohol, but also of herbs. It had a licorice smell, and lemon, and something else—carraway, maybe?



I shook my head. “Too intense for me. Can I have my usual, Axel?”



He sighed and produced a bottle of lite beer. Mab made a face when she saw it, then sipped her aquavit. Axel watched her anxiously. She nodded, and they were off on another Trollspråk conversation. A troll. I couldn’t get over it. Mab was likely bringing him up to date on the Billy Goats Gruff—they’d probably bought a condo together in Oslo or something.



Abandoned, I drifted down the bar and found myself talking to Norden. Or trying to.



“What brings you to Creature Comforts?” I asked. “I’ve never seen you here except when you’re working.” Giving Axel and his customers a hard time is what I meant by working.



“I’m on patrol later,” he said. “Just killing time.” He stared into his drink.



That seemed to exhaust our conversation. I sat there, peeling the label off my beer.



After a few minutes, Norden snorted. “If you’re going to sit there nursing a beer, at least get something that tastes like one.”



“I don’t like beer. This stuff is okay.”



He replied with another snort. And we went back to having nothing to say to each other.



At the far end of the bar, Mab and Axel laughed uproariously. I wished they’d let me in on the joke. Axel poured more aquavit into Mab’s glass. Great. If they kept it up, I was going to have to borrow a wheelbarrow to get “Aunt Mabel” home.



I turned back to Norden. “How come you’re back on the Goon Squad? When I saw you last month, you’d quit to go solo.”



“And you saw how well that worked out.” He lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. “It’s a living.”



“Yeah, but—sorry for being blunt—you hate paranormals. You call us freaks and monsters. Why do you even want a job where you spend all your time in and around Deadtown?”



Another half-shrug. “It was different when Sykes was alive. Or undead, or whatever the hell he was. When he was here. We’d been partners before the plague, back when he was human. Sykes was okay. But maybe I spent too much time with him, because after he died, I didn’t know how to be with real people anymore.” His eyebrows lowered, and he tossed back the contents of his glass. “Bartender! I’m dry here.”



Axel sauntered to our end of the bar and poured a shot into Norden’s glass.



“Make it a double,” Norden said. “And gimme a beer chaser while you’re at it.” He glanced at my bottle and grimaced. “Make sure it’s real beer.”



“You sure you want to drink all that before a shift?” I asked after Axel had gone back to Mab. The two of them were singing now.



“What the hell is it to you?”



“Just saying.”



Norden twisted away from me on his stool, grumbling something about nosy freaks who can’t mind their own business. Then he twisted back. “You know why I’m back on the Goon Squad? ’Cause I’m a freak, just like you. There’s no place I fit in anymore. Ever since I got out of the hospital, nothing’s been the same. I’m just a goddamn freak sitting in a goddamn freak bar.”



Mab and Axel broke off their song and stared. Axel’s eyes narrowed as he gauged whether it was time to throw Norden out.



Before he made his decision, the front door burst open. Throngs of zombies tumbled into the room, laughing and chanting, “Let us out! Let us out!” Norden tensed beside me, and I knew what he was thinking. Permits were rescinded. Zombies were restricted to Deadtown; they couldn’t even go into the New Combat Zone. And he was the lone cop in a bar full of law-breaking zombies.



In the crowd, I saw a familiar face. I made my way over to him.



“Carlos, what’s going on?” I said.



“We stormed the checkpoint! It was amazing. We marched to the border of Deadtown, and then people started chanting, ‘Let us out!’” The chant still resounded through the bar. Carlos grinned and raised his fist in time to the chant. He turned back to me. “Why should we stay penned up in Deadtown? We’re not criminals. We don’t belong in jail. You should’ve seen it—the crowd surged right past the barriers. There wasn’t a thing the border guards could do.” He laughed at the memory.



The chant had changed. Now it was “Bring us beer!” Carlos called for beer, too, pounding on the table. Zombies don’t get drunk, but for some reason they still like the taste of beer. Maybe reanimation damaged their taste buds.



Axel got busy filling pitchers. Mab went behind the bar to help, and I offered to carry pitchers to the tables of thirsty zombies. As I picked up a tray, I noticed Norden wasn’t doing too hot. He was trembling, and sweat ran down his face.



“Are you okay?” I knew he should’ve slowed down on the drinking.



His lip curled, and he wiped a hand across his forehead. “Damn zombies. Too many of them. The smell. It makes me—” He covered his nose and mouth with both hands. “I can’t stand it!” he screamed through his fingers. He jumped from his stool and ran out the front door.



Normally, you don’t try to push your way through a crowd of zombies. But they moved aside to let Norden through. Everyone stared after him, silent. Then the chant of “Bring us beer!” started up again.



It was then I noticed that Norden’s second drink was untouched. So was his bottle of beer. So what was the guy’s problem? I knew he hated zombies—hell, he seemed to hate everyone—but I’d never seen him freak out like that before.



Axel cleared away Norden’s drinks as a zombie took his spot at the bar. I carried pitcher after pitcher of beer to the euphoric protesters. Something told me their party wasn’t going to last long. Sure enough, within an hour the Goons arrived to break it up and close down the bar. There was no trouble. The zombies went peacefully back to Deadtown—they’d made their point and downed a few beers besides. It was a good night for them.



We couldn’t risk seeing Juliet again, not with Creature Comforts full of Goons. Axel promised he’d check on her before he went home for the night. Mab and I left with the protesters.



Outside, Goons lined the street, and the zombies walked between them as they filed back into Deadtown. I noticed Pam McFarren, Norden’s zombie partner, among the Goons policing the crowd. But there was no sign of Norden.



Despite all the aquavit she’d consumed, my aunt was completely sober. Her walk was straight, her gaze steady, although I did catch occasional snatches of hummed Norwegian folk tunes as we made our way home.



19



WHEN MAB AND I GOT BACK TO MY APARTMENT, IT WAS two in the morning and Kane was watching live coverage of the zombie protest. There wasn’t much left to cover, now that the march had ended and the zombies had all gone home. No violence, no arrests, no bloodshed. The media must have been disappointed. The last time hundreds of zombies had gathered—at the Paranormal Appreciation Day concert in February—a Morfran attack that was invisible to news cameras had caused mass panic, a stampede, and nearly a dozen deaths. The entire norm world thought the zombies had gone crazy. In comparison, tonight’s event was a big snooze.



Still, after-the-fact commentators analyzed the march to death; talking heads who hadn’t been there spouted off on the protest’s significance, twisting events to fit their own political agendas. For some, the march ushered in a new era of freedom and autonomy for Deadtown’s residents. For others, it was a clear signal that the government needed to crack down on the monsters. One crazy-eyed preacher from an obscure cult claimed it was the final sign that the world would end two weeks from tomorrow.



Sweet. Maybe I wouldn’t have to pay my electric bill.



I picked up the remote. “Are you still watching this?”



Kane shook his head, and I clicked off the TV. He lay down with a sigh and put his head on his paws, staring at nothing.



It had to be hard for him, sitting on the sidelines. I’d called his office to let them know he’d be “away” for a few weeks, but I knew he hated missing out on this kind of action. Normally, he’d be in one of those television studios right now, setting the norms straight and advocating for PA rights. He’d point out that the march had been nonviolent, and that the zombies (he’d say previously deceased humans, or PDHs) weren’t looking for trouble; they only wanted to stretch their boundaries a bit. And even though the zombies had pushed their way out of Deadtown, there’d been no Reaper murder tonight. Hampson’s restrictions were meaningless.

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