Flirt

"Don't shield her!"



"If you want the second half of your money, Mr. Leon, she needs to be alive to raise my wife from the dead."



I think the lions had forgotten about Bennington, or maybe he'd stopped being important. It was his money and his desire that had begun everything, but he was strangely not part of the tableau between Jacob, Nicky, Ellen, and me until he spoke. Then it was as if Jacob remembered why he was there, what had made him risk so much: money.



"The prostitute died while they were screwing," Bennington said; "we don't have a human sacrifice."



"We have something better," I said, and I looked at Jacob.



"No," he said.



"You said it yourself: he's dying, and it's his fault the woman is dead. I think it has a nice symmetry to it that Silas is our sacrifice."



"Symmetry," Jacob said, and he sounded like he was choking; "is that what you call this?"



"If you let him die without me raising the dead, then this is all for nothing. You won't even get your money."



Jacob lowered his gun and nodded. "Do it, do it before I change my mind."



Ellen grabbed his arm. "No, don't let her do this."



He jerked away from her. "Can you raise the dead?"



She stared at him with large dark eyes, and just started to cry again.



"Can you?" He screamed it into her face, so that she recoiled from him.



"No," she yelled back.



"Then shut the fuck up."



I moved forward, and Nicky moved with me like a big blond shadow. "What can I do to help?"



"Stay close," I said, and dropped to my knees on the grave, beside the dying werelion. Jacob looked at me across the body of his man. "You need to put up a circle of power," he said, in a voice that was dull with all the shocks of the evening.



"Ellen's put a circle up so wide and deep that I can't feel anything from my vampire master or the men I'm tied to metaphysically. I think her circle will keep out any damn thing."



"Which means what?" he asked.



"It means give me a blade so I can finish him and raise the dead." I held my hand out, and he lifted a hunting knife out from under the back of his shirt. It was almost as big as the one they'd taken from me. It gleamed in the bright moonlight, and you just knew it would be sharp.



I looked at the crying woman who was huddled beside the weathered tombstone. "Can you hold the circle?"



She glared at me, some of the heat of the look ruined by the tears. "I can hold my end up."



"Good."



"You'd better be as good as your reputation," she said.



I nodded. "Yeah." I knelt on the grave, knife in one hand, and grabbed Silas's hair. I bent his neck back, and it was Nicky who said, "You only bend the neck back in the movies; it's actually easier if you don't hyperextend the tendons."



I didn't argue, just put the neck back to a more natural angle, and then put the blade against the throat. I dug the tip in and pushed deep as I pulled the blade across his throat. I'd forgotten what kind of power you got from killing a person. I'd only done it once before. And I had forgotten the kind of power you got from killing someone who wasn't a person, but something more than human. I'd only done that once before, too. The power poured over me, through me; my skin vibrated with it, my bones ached with the thrum and beat of all that POWER. Oh, God!



The knife dropped from my hand to the grave, and I dropped to my knees with it. I put my bloody hands on the grave and visualized reaching down through the dirt and pulling her free of it, as if it were water and she were drowning and only I could save her. I screamed her name, "Ilsa Bennington, rise, come to me, come to me, Ilsa!" The dirt moved under my knees, against my hands. I shoved the power into the grave, into the pieces of body, and there was so much power. I felt her re-form, felt pieces come together that weren't in the grave. The power remade her into something perfect and whole, and that something grabbed my hands through the dirt, and I pulled it from the grave.



She rose blond and dressed in white, her face in perfect makeup. Only her blue eyes were empty, and it took more than power to fill those up. I touched the still-bleeding neck wound on Silas and drew fresh blood across Ilsa Bennington's lips. She blinked, and then a delicate tongue flicked out and licked that blood. She licked her lips, then she blinked again and she was suddenly in there.



She looked at the grave, and at me, and the body, and started to scream. Tony Bennington came and took her from the grave, comforting her, as she asked, "Why are we here? That's a dead man? Tony, what's happening?"



He walked his dead wife away from the grave, but the power from Silas's death was still there, still in me, and now that the zombie was raised, the power beat through me again. It pulsed through me, hammered along my bones; I'd never felt anything like it. I fell onto the grave, writhing in the pain of it. The power wanted to be used. It was as if my necromancy had become something closer to the beasts inside me, or the ardeur, as if the power had a will of its own and that will wanted the dead.



Nicky knelt by me. "Anita, what's wrong?"



"Too much power from the one death for just one zombie. Too much power for just that."



"We're in a cemetery; why raise just one?"



I looked up at him, and thought, why not? I got to my knees and put my hands back on the earth and I knew what the power wanted. I knew exactly what to do with it. I put my hands back on the grave and I cast the power down and out. I sent it out and out and out in an ever-widening circle until I touched every grave, every body, and I called, "Rise, rise to me. Rise!"



Ellen screamed, "No!" But she was too late, so too late.



The ground moved under our feet, like a small earthquake. The zombies crawled from their graves, but there were hundreds of them and even this much power couldn't bring them back like I'd brought Ilsa Bennington back. These were the shambling, rotting dead, and they pulled themselves free of the earth.



The power hit Ellen's circle and shattered it. I could suddenly feel Jean-Claude and knew that he was closer than two hours away. Every connection I had was suddenly back in place, and I could sense, smell, taste the skins of my men. They were all safe, and some of them were on their way. They'd followed the trail, but now I'd put up a metaphysical bonfire to guide them to me.



But it was Jacob who was yelling, "You stupid bitch. You didn't just shield her from her people; you cut me off from ours. They were captured hours ago." He hit Ellen hard enough that her body spun and lay still on the ground. He screamed his rage to the stars.



Ilsa Bennington was having hysterics. Only her husband's soothing voice finally quieted her shrieks. She was screaming, "Ugly, they're so ugly. Take me home, Tony, take me home!"



Jacob called out to Bennington as he moved through the cemetery of watching dead. " Bennington, you have your wife just like you asked."



"I do, she's perfect."



"Then transfer the rest of the funds."



"I will once my wife is safely home."



"Three of my men are captured. One of my men is dead; the other is lost to me, and I just hit Ellen harder than I've ever hit a woman before. Make the damn call now." There was an edge of a growl in his voice.



Bennington looked offended, but he also looked a little scared. Maybe he was scared of Jacob, or maybe it was the zombies. There was plenty to be scared of in that cemetery. Bennington got a cell phone out of his expensive suit and made the call. "It should be in your account now."



Jacob used his own phone to check on that. He nodded. "It's in the account. Take your wife home."



They started walking out between the silent watching dead. He was talking to her. "It's all right, Ilsa. Don't be afraid."



"You have your money," I said.



"Yes," Jacob said.



"She will rot, Jacob. Even with this much power she won't hold together. She can't, because she's a zombie and no matter how good she looks now, it won't last."



"You're sure of that?"



"Absolutely, and how do you think a man like Tony Bennington will take it when his flirty wife starts to forget she's alive and starts to rot?"



"He'll go to the cops," Nicky said.



"Or he'll hire someone else expensive to hunt you down, and he'll kill my flirty boys if he can't have his flirty girl."



"What are you asking me?"



"I'm asking you not to interfere, that's it."



"What are you going to do?"



"Something symmetrical."



"Symmetrical," he said, and then I watched as understanding crossed his face in the moonlight.



"Very," I said.



He looked past the waiting dead to Bennington and his pretty dead wife. A look came over his face, and he nodded. "I won't stop you."



"Stand near me, both of you. Zombies aren't particularly smart."



Nicky moved close to me, and I offered him my hand. Jacob picked up Ellen's unconscious body and joined us. I spoke to the dead. "Kill him."



There was a moment when they all looked at us, a moment when I felt them hesitate, and then I pointed toward Bennington and his blond wife. "Kill him." I thought it at them. I pictured his face and I wanted them to move forward, to surround him, and they did.



He yelled, "Mr. Leon, what's happening? What are they doing?"



Jacob called out, "It's symmetry, Bennington."



Then Bennington screamed, "Ilsa, Ilsa, what are you doing! Oh, my God!" The zombies closed around him and began to feed. Bennington shrieked for a long time, and then there were hands reaching for the dead hooker and Silas's body. The sounds were not good sounds. The visuals were graphic. It was like every horror movie you can imagine, but worse. Real bone is always both whiter and wetter. Real blood is darker, thicker, and you don't get the smells on a movie screen. You can always tell when they perforate a bowel by the smell.



One zombie grabbed at Jacob's pants leg. "Back up," I said, and it bowed low to the ground, crawling back to the feeding frenzy that had become Silas's body.



I offered Jacob my other hand, and he took it, balancing Ellen's body in his arms. I stood there in the midst of the dead I had raised, and the living they were eating. I stood there holding on to the two werelions, and it was to keep them safer, but it was also because I needed to hold on to something warm and alive. I needed to be reminded that I wasn't just this.



When all the bodies were eaten they turned to me, and I watched, and felt that there was more home in them. There was something in there now that hadn't been there before they tasted flesh. There are things that wait in the dark, that wait for a chance to find a body that they can walk around in, things that were never human. Sometimes you can feel them on the edge of your mind, the shadows that flit out of the corners of your eyes, and aren't there if you look directly at them. The dead that stood there in the moonlight with blood decorating their mouths held the shadows in their eyes. I could finally see what hid just out of sight, just out of thought, and I knew that I could keep the dead. I could keep them animated. They could be the beginning of my own private army. An army of the dead that knew neither pain, nor fear. It would be an army that no bullet would slow, no blade could kill, and only fire would stop.



Nicky squeezed my hand and whispered, "Something's in there now."



"Their eyes," Jacob whispered, "there's something in their eyes."



"I see it."



"What is it?" Nicky asked.



"Shadows," I said, and then I spoke loud, in that ringing voice that you use in ritual. "All of you, hear me, go back to your graves. Lie down and be what you were. Rest, and walk no more."



Their eyes flickered almost like a television that wasn't quite on station, like two channels trying to be on screen at once.



"Tell me you brought salt," I said, voice low and even.



" Bennington wouldn't let us bring any, because salt is for putting zombies back in their graves and he didn't want you to do that to his wife."



"Fine," I said. I knelt, very carefully, keeping my eyes on the zombies the way I did when I was on the judo mat. You never take your eyes off your opponent because if you do they can rush you. I knelt and found the blade I'd dropped into the grave dirt. The blade still had Silas's blood on it. Salt would have been good, but I had steel, and grave dirt, and power. It would be enough, because it would have to be.



I stood up, slowly, deliberately, and called my necromancy. I called it in a way I hadn't before. I called it to use against the shadows in their eyes, the shadows that were promising me power, glory, conquest. Just let us stay, it seemed to whisper. Just let us stay and we will give you the world. I had a moment to envision a world where the dead truly walked, and moved at my will, but I knew better. I could see it in their eyes. I had animated the dead, but I hadn't filled their eyes with dark power, or had I? Something about them eating human flesh without a circle of power had caused this, and I remembered the third reason for putting up a circle of power before raising the dead. It kept things out. It kept the shadows away.



I'd been arrogant, and I prayed for forgiveness for that particular sin. I was heartily sorry for it. Killing Bennington didn't bother me. "By steel, blood, and will, I command you to go back to your graves and walk no more."



There was another moment of that eye flicker.



I put power into the words, all the power I had, and willed it to work. I called the dead to me. I called them with the power that had made my dog rise from the grave when I was fourteen. I called them to me with the power that had put a suicidal professor in my dorm room in college. I called them with that part of me that made vampires hover around me like I was the last light in all the darkness. I called the dead to me, and bade them to rest and walk no more.



I shoved my power into them, and felt something else in there. Something else that shoved back, but the bodies were too much mine. Too much of my power animated them, and one by one their eyes emptied and they stood like shells waiting for orders.



"Rest and walk no more; by steel, grave, and will, I command thee." They shambled back to their graves in a silent mass; the only sounds the shuffling of feet and the brush of cloth. Ilsa Bennington came to stand in front of us. She was still the lovely flirt that her husband had been willing to kill for, but her blue eyes were as empty as all the rest. Her mouth was smeared with redder things than lipstick.



Nicky whispered, "God." But when I moved to the side of the grave, he and Jacob moved with me. Ilsa lay down on the grave and the dirt flowed over her like water. I'd never had so many zombies lay to rest at once. The dirt made a sound like waves crashing as it covered them all back up.



We stood in a silence so deep I could hear the pulse in my own body thundering in my ears. Then the first night insect called, then a distant frog, then the wind blew through the clearing, and it was as if the world had been holding its breath. We could all breathe again.



"You almost got us eaten alive," Jacob said.



"You kidnapped me, remember?"



He nodded, and he was pale even by moonlight. Ellen made a small moan in his arms. "She'll be all right," he said, as if someone had asked the question.



He looked at the gun that was still in his other hand underneath her body. I watched the thought run through his eyes. "Don't do it," I said.



"Why not? You don't have any more zombies to eat me."



"Jacob," Nicky said, "don't."



"You'll kill me for her, won't you?"



He just nodded.



Jacob looked at me. "I wish I'd turned down this job."



"Me, too," I said.



He looked at Nicky, then back to me. "They tortured our lions to get this location." I didn't know who he was saying it to.



"We'd have done the same," Nicky said.