Dead and Kicking Read online

  Rather than lingering on the ledge and risk someone seeing me, I quickly climbed through the window, but then stayed crouched beside the bed so I could scope things out. The bedroom door was open and I could see straight into the living room. Either Bryce was a complete slob, or someone had already tossed the place. It was going to be next to impossible to find anything in the chaos that once had been Bryce’s stuff. Still, I crept into the living room to see if luck was maybe on my side.

  Bryce said he used a laptop but, of course, there was no sign of one. Either the cops or the people that killed him had beat me to it. It didn’t matter; I wasn’t looking for his computer. I was looking for a small keychain fob with a digital display. Like that would be easier to find.

  I started at the most obvious place, the desk. It had been ransacked; the drawers pulled out and dumped on the floor. Beside it, the bookshelf and all the books it once held had been equally turned out. The heathens had even ripped apart some of the books looking for whatever might be hidden in the spines or covers. At least most of the casualties seemed to be computer textbooks.

  The kitchen and the dining room were also a bust. The last place to look was the living room. Bryce said he more often sat on the sofa than at his desk when working. Unfortunately, it had fared worse than the books. The cushions were strewn about the room and someone had taken a knife to them, the stuffing torn and spilling out, the back of the frame cut to ribbons. Feeling defeated, I flopped down on the bare sofa frame to think.

  Remarkably, the end table still stood beside the sofa, although the lamp that used to sit on it lay smashed on the floor. I tried to imagine Bryce working there. He probably would have set the token on the end table but a search of the floor around it turned up nothing, not even the remote, but since the TV was also missing, I guess that was no surprise. It looked like Bryce’s killers helped themselves to his 50” LCD TV as well as his life.

  I was beginning to think this little field trip was a total waste of time. It was a shame about Bryce’s nice leather couch, although I guess he wouldn’t need it anymore. I ran my hand along the soft leather, smooth as butter. I guess that’s what gave me my sudden epiphany, thinking about butter melting and sliding down the sculpted sofa arms. When you are sitting on your sofa where does everything end up? I slid my hand along the soft leather arm until I reached the point where it met the seat. You know what I’m talking about; the place where all the loose change and food crumbs go. I tried not to think about what all might be down there, when my fingers brushed against something hard and plastic. Bingo!

  Clutching the token, I headed back to the bedroom just as I heard a key turning in the lock. I dove under the bed as the apartment door opened.

  “Damn! They sure did a number on this place.”

  “Doesn’t look like we’ll get much help here,” a familiar voice replied.

  Detective Nash! Just my luck he would show up now. I huddled under the bed and held my breath. Nash and his partner, Dev, walked through the living room, randomly looking at the mess. When he reached the sofa, Nash stopped and inhaled deeply, a puzzled look on his face. He had done the same thing several times when I spoke with him earlier. He must have a sinus problem or something.

  My heart started to pound so loudly I was sure they would hear it. I took a few slow breaths and focused on lowering my heart rate, a skill Gran drilled into me when I was younger. When Nash reached the bedroom, I figured my goose was cooked. Luckily, I had thought to close the window behind me when I had entered the apartment. Nash stood beside the bed and examined the window, discovering the broken lock. He inhaled deeply again and his feet, clad in well-worn, black motorcycle boots, came to the side of the bed.

  “Hey man, this is getting us nowhere. Let’s get out of here.” Dev called from the living room.

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Anything that might have led to the killers is long gone,” Nash replied as he walked back towards the living room.

  I lay under the bed for at least another five minutes after they left. That had been too close for comfort. It was getting dark by that point and rather than use the window, I decided to risk using the door. I really didn’t want to climb out on that ledge again.

  Chapter Five

  "You did what?"

  “Without me?”

  Both Holly and Tess were home when I arrived with my prize and a bit of an adrenaline buzz from the whole adventure. Their polar opposite responses after I gave them the Reader’s Digest version of what had happened, pretty much summed up their personalities.

  Always my partner in crime, Tess and I had been raised together having both lost our parents as young kids - I never knew mine and Tess’s parents were killed in a car accident when she was a toddler. In typical Tess fashion, she was a bit miffed I committed a break and enter without her. Short and scrappy with a gorgeous head of shoulder length, wavy, black hair and Latino features, she’s a real knock-out who can literally knock you out with one punch. Trained in a multitude of martial arts, from Tai Chi to Krav Maga, she has black belts in four of them and beats up men twice her size on a daily basis at her uncle’s gym. She can also bench press twice her body weight, of course the fact that she’s a werewolf may have something to do with that.

  Holly, on the other hand, is a curvy blonde who looks like she belongs on the set of a California surfer movie. Her golden locks and perpetual tan, courtesy of no small talent in magical body modification, accentuate her usually sunny disposition (although she looked pretty stormy right now). Being five years older than us, Holly was often the de facto babysitter when we were growing up and when Gran died seven years ago and I was still under age, she stepped in. Caring was just in Holly’s nature; I didn’t think she could turn it off if she tried. It was probably a side effect of being a hearth witch with a very strong gift in healing. You end up getting a full dose of empathy to go with it.

  “I can’t believe that guy your Gran wanted to set you up with is dead.” Tess flopped down on the sofa. “Was he at least good looking?”

  “Really Tess,” Holly scolded sternly, “a man is dead. It shouldn’t matter what he looked like.”

  I looked around for any sign of Bryce but the coast was clear. “Holly’s right, but yeah, he was pretty hot.” I fired up the old computer again and stuck the USB memory stick back in. “Let’s hope this works so I can help him out.”

  “You should really just throw that in the trash.” Holly shook her finger at me. “You shouldn’t get any more involved than you already are.”

  “That’s the whole point. I’m already involved. I can’t ignore it now and I’m not throwing it out or turning it over to anyone until I know what it is,” I replied.

  I clicked on the video and the password prompt appeared again. I entered Bryce’s four digit PIN then the six digit number currently displayed on the RSA Token. This time the video started to play. The picture was kind of grainy because of low lighting, but you could still make things out. It appeared to be a security feed from an empty warehouse or parking garage. There was a small group of people in the background of the frame. At first you couldn’t really see them, but then the camera began to zoom in bringing them to the foreground.

  “I don’t like the look of this,” I said, shaking my head slowly. The small group appeared to be two men standing over a third man on his knees on the floor. His hands were bound behind his back and he was wearing a blind fold. There appeared to be several people in the shadows watching. I clicked pause on the video. “Uh…guys…you better come look at this.”

  Holly and Tess both came over to stand behind me and I started the video back up. The two men that were standing grasped a long knife together and held it aloft. They appeared to be chanting but there was no audio with the video so we couldn’t hear what they were saying. The kneeling man began to struggle until one of the
standing men grabbed his hair, pulling the man’s head back. He yanked off the blindfold.

  “They’re not going to…” Tess leaned in closer to get a better look.

  “I think they are,” I replied in shock.

  “I can’t watch.” Holly turned away from the monitor.

  The men holding the knife suddenly plunged it into the chest of the kneeling man. He crumpled to the floor and one of the other men held the knife aloft again. The man holding the knife continued to chant for a moment then appeared to wipe his thumb along the blood on the blade. He turned to his fellow murderer and drew a symbol on his forehead. For a minute nothing happened, then the man with the symbol began to convulse. Two other men rushed from the shadows and grabbed him as he began to fall to the floor, laying him down carefully. The man with the knife turned back to the body of the murdered man and cut his bonds, taking some blood from the knife and wiping it on the dead man’s lips. He bent over the corpse with the bloody lips.

  “Eww, he’s going to kiss the dead guy!” Tess made a disgusted face.

  Holly turned back, unable to look away any longer. “It looks like he’s doing CPR.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Why kill a guy only to then try and save him?” The whole thing was messed up. I had never seen anything like it.

  “This can’t be real. The whole video must be a fake.” Holly began to pace. “You should just throw it away and we’ll forget we ever saw it.”

  “Wait,” Tess pointed to the screen. “What the hell is happening now?”

  The guy with the knife was standing again, watching as the formerly dead guy jumped to his feet. The dead guy pumped his fists in the air. If there had been sound, I’m sure we would have heard him roar in triumph.

  “Did they just do what I think they did?” I looked from Tess to Holly. Their faces both held the same disbelief that I’m sure mine did. The men on the video had just jacked the dead guy’s body.

  Chapter Six

  There are a lot of scary things that go bump in the night that norms, what we call you non-magical folk, prefer to think are just stories. Vampires, witches, werewolves - they all exist - along with a myriad of other fantastical supernatural beings. Basically, if it’s made its way into literature, you can bet there is an actual kernel of truth from which the tale sprouted. Most non-humans prefer to keep their interactions with norms to a minimum but there are some that deal with humans, even need humans for their existence. The Cimmerian was what resulted from that need, providing an avenue for human-supernatural interaction, some would even say exploiting it, while ensuring that for the most part, the shadow world stays just that, in the shadows.

  The one story that norms manage to get wrong more often than not is the zombie. Zombies are not the shambling, brain sucking monsters you see in Night of the Living Dead, at least they aren’t when they’re done right. When called from the grave by a skilled and powerful practitioner, a zombie looks almost alive. They can walk, run, talk to some extent, but most importantly, they have superhuman strength. They aren’t indestructible, but because they are magically animated and feel no pain, they can take a lot of damage before they stop. The good thing about zombies is that they can only be made by someone with the extremely rare gift of necromancy. A gift so rare, it has been generations since the last one was recorded.

  As with anything though, there is always someone looking for an easier way. These are usually low level sorcerers that resort to blood magic to try and create a zombie. Jacks are one of the most heinous of these attempts and until now, I thought they were just a story.

  As we saw on the video, to create a jack, the sorcerer has to use the magical energy released by a violent death to reanimate the body with the spirit of another, usually someone who is really good at astral projection. Basically, the second sorcerer, the guy we saw convulse on the video, is spirit walking using the dead guy’s body. He’s hijacked it.

  “I didn’t think that was really possible.” Tess shook her head and looked at me. “Is it?”

  “I’ve only read about it. I didn’t think it had ever been done either.”

  “It’s not possible,” Holly replied adamantly. “This whole thing must be some sort of scam.”

  “I don’t know, it looked pretty real to me. But how did they do it?”

  “No, not how,” answered Tess, “but why?”

  ***

  After much back and forth, we finally gave up trying to figure out the how and the why, and came up with a plan. Tess and I felt we had to tell somebody about the video. Holly thought we should just forget the whole thing but was outnumbered. Obviously, we couldn’t take it to the police. We would have to go to the Cimmerian and the Magister. After all, it was his bailiwick so to speak. But, since the video belonged to Bryce and he more than likely died trying to get it to the Magister himself, I felt we owed it to him to figure out a way to use it to get his sister out of debt as well. Not to mention, it would cut the last ties holding him here and he could go on his ghostly way.

  “This whole thing is a mistake. But if you insist on going, I should go with you.” Holly looked at us worriedly.

  “No, for the last time, it’s too dangerous for you to go.” Tess shook her head.

  The only way to get to the Magister was to go to one of his clubs downtown. The aptly named Dante’s Inferno, was a multi-leveled nightclub that catered to the Cimmerian, mostly vamps and their human entourage, but shifters and werewolves like Tess were also welcome. Werewolves are pretty pack oriented though, tending to keep to Wolf-only bars and most don’t associate with vamps if they can help it. Holly had never been part of the Cimmerian, managing to fly under the radar and keep her gifts hidden. We didn’t want to change that by bringing her to the attention of the most powerful baddie in town.

  “Well, if it’s too dangerous for me, it’s too dangerous for Harry.”

  “I have to go. I’m the one making the deal. Besides, I’m not completely defenceless.” Like Tess, I also spent time under her uncle’s tutelage, mainly learning Kali, a martial arts style that focused on the ability to fight both with a weapon or empty handed and where the goal was to inflict serious, if not lethal, damage to your opponent as quickly as possible. I was also taking along a little extra protection in the form of my katana, a weapon I had been training with at Gran’s insistence since the age of twelve.

  “They’re never going to let you in wearing that thing.” Holly gestured to the blade.

  “Sure they will. They won’t even notice it.” I slid the katana into its sheath and adjusted its harness across my back. I liked to wear it across my back with the handle just to the right, behind my head. It made for the fastest access, allowing me to already have it in motion in a downward defensive sweep the moment it cleared the sheath. The black strap of the harness crossed my chest, but for the most part blended in with the black leather bustier I donned for the occasion. Of course, the little ‘no-see-me’ spell I had cast on it, would also help.

  Both Tess and I had changed into clothes suitable to mix with the crowd at Dante’s, which meant we were both wearing a lot of black and showing a lot of skin. Luckily, the three of us had all dressed up as biker chicks last year for Halloween so finding something to wear wasn’t a problem.

  Up top, I had on the short leather bustier that left my midriff bare and gave me the appearance of more cleavage than I actually had. Down below, I was wearing the equivalent of daisy dukes in black leather over top of some lacy, fishnet stockings. I finished off the ensemble with a pair of black, knee-height, lace up Doc Martens and a silver-spiked dog collar. The collar sounds over-the-top, but it wasn’t. It was actually the most important piece I wore besides my katana. The spikes were real silver and the collar itself would indicate to the vamp population that I wasn’t on the menu. I pulled on a black leather jacket to ward off the
chill and to cover my bare shoulders and arms. I looked totally badass or hilarious, depending on whom you asked.

  Tess was similarly dressed, but showing a great deal more bare skin. With her werewolf metabolism she wouldn’t feel the cold and besides, she was supposed to be the distraction so that I could go unnoticed.

  Chapter Seven

  It was just after midnight when we arrived at Dante’s and as expected, the party was just getting started, the line was only half a block long rather than the full block it would be later. It didn’t matter, we weren’t planning on waiting in line.

  As I had hoped, the bouncer at the door was a low-level vampire. He looked like something out of a Goth nightmare. Actually, he looked a lot like Ozzy Osborne, round, purple lensed glasses and all, so it was a surprise when the words out of his mouth sounded straight out of Jersey rather than jolly old England.

  “Hey! Youse gals will have to get back in line.”

  “We’re here to see Mr. Arroyo. I have an appointment.” I tried to keep on my best poker face.

  Bouncer Ozzy just laughed. “Yeah, youse and all these udders.”

  I stepped up closer to him and made eye contact. His pupils widened in surprise. Usually people try to avoid direct eye contact with a vamp no matter how low level.

  “You need to let us through. I have an appointment.”