Underground

CHAPTER 8

The After Dark club lies at the bottom of a circular marble staircase behind an iron gate that always seems to be locked. It’s the social club, audience chamber, court, and coliseum of the local vampire community—or pack, as I prefer to think of them. I’d let Quinton know where I was going and when—just in case I didn’t come back. I thought I could keep myself out of Edward’s clutches, but everything’s a bit of a crapshoot with vampires. They don’t have the same motives, fears, or taboos that humans have, and it’s all too easy to make a wrong assumption and end up a meal—or a toy, as one of my clients had discovered. I’d have to keep a tight rein on my recurring annoyance at the mornings scene with Will, too, or I’d be easy prey while distracted.

Even at a distance, I could feel their presence as a boil of fire and ice that sent billows of red and black into the Grey around the door. I took a couple of deep, steadying breaths of the frigid air and started down the stairs. The gate clanged shut behind me, cutting off a few hardy idiots who’d decided to come down to Pioneer Square to party in the densely packed clubs, bars, and restaurants the area was famous for. They wouldn’t have liked the reception at the After Dark, even if they’d gotten past the doorman, who opened the black lacquered doors as I reached the bottom landing.

He wasn’t quite a vampire, as far as I could tell. The usual aura of death, blood, and magic wasn’t the right density and he didn’t exude the psychic stink I associated with bloodsuckers. He was even a bit nondescript—which was something most vampires didn’t bother to cultivate. He looked me over with a flick of his gaze and held the door for me. “Ms. Blaine.” He put out his hand for my coat, but I didn’t surrender it. I never had before and I wasn’t going to this time, either; the undead don’t care what the air temperature is and there wasn’t much warmth to the air that crept from the open doorway. I didn’t know how long it would take to get the information I needed, but I’d be damned if I’d court hypothermia for it.

After a moment of wondering if he should allow such cheek on my part, the doorman let me pass into the club proper.

Just stepping past the foyer doors made me feel a little ill. The low-lit room looked a lot like a nightclub from a forties-era film, but this one was populated with flickering images of the past as well as the vampires, wrapped in black-and-red energy coronas. They watched me cross the room with unconcealed curiosity, every stare a blade. I was pretty sure they all knew who I was and that I had some status with Edward. They also knew I was off-limits unless things changed. Some of them must have hoped it would.

The normal grid of the Grey’s energy lines seemed slightly skewed and blurred, though I didn’t know why, nor had I noticed it the only other time I’d been here. But I’d been a little busy on that visit and hadn’t had the concentration to spare for studying the oddities of the ether. I also realized that there were very few ghosts, in spite of the thick presence of death. I pushed aside speculation and fear and headed deeper into the room, toward a corner booth where I’d spotted Edward and a few of his cronies.

I caught myself frowning as I drew closer. There were three people with Edward: two men in suits who seemed to be flunkies of some sort and a thin woman with long strawberry blond hair. They were all vampires, but the woman had a very dim aura devoid of the heavy blackness of most and she was dressed in a romantic sort of gown made of a floating white fabric—not Goth-y, but more like a costume from a Pre-Raphaelite painting. With that thought I recognized her and stopped a little short of the table, surprised.

Edward glanced up at me, already waving the men away. He still looked like a shorter version of Pierce Brosnan frozen at an unaging forty—and had the accent to go with it. “A moment, if you don’t mind,” he said. Then he turned his attention back to Gwen.

He may have been as fixed as Dorian Gray, but Gwen had changed a lot since I’d first seen her wafting, almost as insubstantial as a ghost, around the Grand Illusion movie theater. Where she had been colorless and fading in the Gray before, her energy signature was now taking on threads and swirls of red and black. It was still a very small aura, but it was discernibly there. She had been sickly and I hadn’t then realized that she’d been starving to death in a strange way, slowing fading from both worlds and spiraling down to apathy, madness, and self-destruction. That was not the case now.

I didn’t know if I was pleased at the prospect of any vampire gaining strength, but I wasn’t entirely unhappy to see someone who had been so pathetic reversing the downward trend of her… unlife? I don’t suffer the self-pitying too well and “Lady Gwendolyn of Anorexia” had been among the worst. Boredom I could understand, but most vampires tend more toward arrogance than ennui, and a vampire with a total lack of interest in survival seems contrary to their nature—at least so far as I could understand it.

I watched Edward whisper something in Gwen’s ear and then kiss the back of her hand before shooing her on her way. Gwen smiled and edged out of the booth, turning the expression on me as she stood. A sharp-toothed smile I didn’t like one bit.

“Hello,” she murmured in a breathy voice. “I’m so pleased to see you again.”

I gave her a small nod. “You seem to be doing well,” I observed in as neutral a voice as I could manage.

“I am,” she replied, nodding with enthusiasm. “I am. I don’t drink tea anymore.”

“You still go to movies and play role-playing games?”

“Oh, no. I’m much too busy. I miss the movies, though. Before winter’s over, maybe I’ll go to some again. Long nights offer so much more to do.” I’m sure.

She glanced back at Edward and chuckled, touching her tongue to her front teeth, before floating away.

I slid onto the nearest seat of the booth, keeping close to the outside.

“Taking on more projects?” I asked Edward, arching an eyebrow.

“Still mending fences—as you forced me to do.”

“As if that was such a bad idea.” The cold and nausea I experienced in the company of vampires was tempered with a roaring sexual heat Edward put out whenever he looked at me. I kept my distance both physical and emotional, maintaining a pointed cynicism as a ward against his routine manipulations. I didn’t care to be the next plaything in Edward’s collection. Gwen seemed to be recovering from that—depending on your definition of “recovery.” Most of his casual toys didn’t do so well.

He forced a sigh—very theatrical in someone who never breathes. “You are truly a demanding taskmistress, Harper.” He drawled my name with a purring sound that stroked down my spine with an insidious, lulling warmth and distracted me a moment from his moving closer.

“You don’t seem to suffer much on account of it,” I said, noticing his sudden proximity and giving him a warning glance. There was no place to recoil to without standing up, but I couldn’t do that; the interview would end one way or another the moment I let him get the better of me. I didn’t have much tolerance for any male playing games with me at that moment, but I’d have to go along at least for a while in spite of my distaste. I thought a defensive chill of disapproval was a little risky, but safer than any false friendliness. I set my teeth and kept to my seat.

Edward picked up my hand and held it in both of his, studying it as if he’d find some secret in the shape and arrangement of the bones beneath the skin. “My dear, I suffer the lack of your skills and guidance.”

I pulled my hand back from his with some difficulty, feeling a sickening, artificially induced reluctance to remove myself from his ramped-up heat. “If you lay that on any thicker you’ll need a trowel,” I said. I wouldn’t have been so bold if we’d never met before—even playing the noble suitor, he still had an edge of malice and considerable power to exercise it—but I thought the score between us wasn’t so uneven as he did. Yes, I had convinced him to do things he didn’t care for and he’d suffered physical harm for it, but the end results had been much better for him than for me.

“I’ve been very patient,” he started, letting his projection grow colder. The rolling unpleasantness of his annoyance made me queasy, but the chill was a relief. Still, I could sense him readying another tactic. “How long do you intend to pretend that your tiny existence, your tiny home, your tiny job, and your mayfly friends satisfy your talents? You could do so much more. And I grow extremely tired of waiting for you to earn out your debt.”

I laughed. I hadn’t expected him to be so clumsy about it. “What debt? As I recall we’re pretty even on the who-owes-who score. I brought some problems to your attention which, if left alone, would have destroyed you, and in exchange I asked for no favors for myself, only for payment to those you already owed. You got to keep your fiefdom, you got to be a hero, you got to play magnanimous lord of the manor and clean house of your enemies in one swoop. And—let me see—you saved Seattle and got Carlos back into your camp, which were certainly unexpected assets for you. How is that a debt on my part?”

“You got your payment for it,” he replied, his voice chilling further, even while I saw a gleam in his eye at the anticipated snap of his trap. I thought I’d play along just a little further before I disarmed him.

“I got nothing but survival, a new set of scars, and an association with you and your kind I could happily do without. Yes, my cases closed, but the consequences of them aren’t anyone’s idea of a reward.”

He leaned in a little, trying to catch my eye. If I let him capture my gaze he’d set his hook, whether he had a real claim or not, so I turned my head, glaring at him from the corners of my narrowed eyes.

Frustrated, his voice dropped to a hiss. “There is the small matter of a check, which you accepted and which therefore binds you to me in debt, since, as you point out, I owed you nothing.”

“Oh, yeah. Even ‘gifts’ come with a price.” I brought the heavy cream envelope out of my purse, meeting his eyes now, and snapped it onto the table between us.

The sound reverberated like a broken guitar string. “You mean this check?”

I’d kept the check in its envelope in the bottom drawer of my office desk since the night it dropped through my mail slot. There were a lot of zeros in the amount line, but the temptation they represented hadn’t outweighed the servitude I’d been quite sure would come with it. I’d twigged to the real cost of unearned rewards at an early age when I’d been offered an advance out of the chorus line—if I’d submit to the unpleasant kinks of the musical director. I hadn’t learned the lesson well enough, though, and had been caught few times before I’d had it hammered into my knowledge of the world like a spike—the final time with the back of someone’s hand.

I approach all offers of free lunches with suspicion, and the more lavish they are, the greater my skepticism. After my initiation into the Grey and with the effects of magical bindings lingering still, I had imagined the price would be even worse where magic and vampires were involved. Judging from Edward’s reaction and the feel of shattered magic lying between us, cynicism had been the right choice.

I watched Edward pick up the envelope and draw the check and its note—“for services to the community”—out. The temperature dropped until my breath left ice crystals dancing in the air between us. Fury isn’t always hot—if it had been, the paper would have been rendered into ash too fast to watch.

Edward placed the papers on the table with a delicate touch, as though something might break if he exerted even a gram more force. “Ah.”

“You should check your own bank statements,” I suggested. “Your accountants fell down on the job. I’ve had that since last May, but you didn’t notice it hadn’t been deposited.”

He raised his gaze to my face, neutral on the surface, but the aura around his head was shot with bolts of furious red lightning in a boiling black storm. Then he sat back, the squall of anger blowing out as fast as it had blown in. He shook his head.

“I should have known it wouldn’t work with you.”

“We’re not all that venal,” I said.

“Oh, it wasn’t venality I thought might catch you.” He didn’t say what he had thought would ensnare me, though. “But I’ve wasted enough time with this. What do you want from me—and this time you may very well incur a debt.”

“Don’t try and rope me, Edward. I just need information; I’m not asking for a favor.”

“Very well,” he snapped. “What do you want to know?”

“Who is killing the homeless in Pioneer Square?”

He seemed surprised. “However should I know? And why did you think I would?”

“The deaths have been very odd—not much blood in the bodies, hands and legs apparently chewed off in some cases.”

Edward scowled, sending a ripple of cold over me. “I suppose the seed of suspicion was planted by your unfortunately clever friend Quinton. I can’t say I care for the company you keep.”

“I’m not so fond of some of it, either,” I replied pointedly. “You worked together just fine before. Why the animosity?”

He almost smiled. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” Edward joked—not that it was a joke. “Why would you, cynical one, believe such a tale, even from a friend?” He put an unpleasant spin on the last word.

“I’ve seen some of the bodies myself. But I don’t know if these are vampire victims—I haven’t seen many, but none of them looked like this. So I don’t know what’s wrong with these—except that something magical killed them and took their blood and limbs along when it left. That sounds like your kind, but there are other factors. Besides the sleeping dead, there have been zombies seen in the area—one I think might be an earlier victim of whatever did this—and there’s a pattern that goes back sixty years or more. It’s not a human killing these people. But since vampires also walk after death, you can understand how I thought there might be a connection.”

Edward’s lip curled in disgust. “I assure you none of my people are responsible. We don’t… rend, and we don’t raise zombies. The occasional mistakes are dealt with, not allowed to roam the night.”

“If I accept that no vampire did this—”

“None did!” His voice carried force that battered against my mind and body. I didn’t quite stop myself from flinching. Edward seemed a little mollified by my discomfort. The rest of the vampires in the room glanced at us and then away with a ripple of surprise across the red-fired surface of the Grey.

“I don’t know that. I don’t know what becomes of vampires’ victims or where zombies come from. That’s why I’m asking you. Whatever nasty thing is doing this, it has to stop. I assume you don’t want the police to start asking public questions about bloodless bodies in Pioneer Square or the Weekly to begin spouting sensationalism about the walking dead and slaughtered homeless people.”

“Zombies are necromancers* business, not ours,” he spat. “We turn our kills only rarely and with care—”

“Like the care you exercised with Cameron?”

The growl he made raised black waves in the Grey. “That is not the matter at issue here. These dead are not made to walk—nor to lie bloodless in the street—by us. It would be madness and none of mine are mad. If you wish to know more, you should speak to Carlos.”

His anger left me dizzy and nauseated. I swallowed hard but held my outward cool—I think. “I probably will. I want to stop this—regardless of who may be responsible.”

“Be assured it is not one of mine.” He leaned away, indicating an end to the conversation. “I have no further information for you, but I shan’t hinder you in its pursuit.” Damn right you won’t, I thought. “I’ll even warn my people away from you and your lone wolf if that will help you to resolve this mystery.”

“That would help, as would any other information that flows to you about it.”

He gave a brusque nod. “You’ll have it. Is that all?”

I looked at the envelope still lying on the table. “Are we square?”

His lips and nostrils twitched but he nodded. “Yes. Though you might wish to examine the oddities of your… friend before you trust him further.”

I raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Then I slid out of the booth and stood beside the table. Leaving him angry wasn’t the best idea, so I nodded my head in what could be mistaken for a very small obeisance and said, “Thank you.”

I could feel a flatness in the heaving Grey behind me as I left, as if I’d managed to surprise Edward, though I doubted that was possible. My mind was whirling with disjointed bits of knowledge and questions trying to find each other, and I had to struggle to keep my attention on the dangerous path to the door. I assumed Edward’s word had some binding to it. I never trusted vampires, though I knew promises could have magical implications in such an atmosphere as that one. What I couldn’t know was if any of the other vampires might believe we’d broken whatever pact lay between Edward and me and started to think I’d make a lovely snack once I left the protection of the club. I had to watch them as I went, seeing calculation in some shifted gazes, eyes gleaming with hunger and curiosity as they watched me go.

None followed me out or appeared on the street once I exited the gate.

I didn’t know why Edward had been so disgusted and offended by the idea of zombies, but the weight of his words convinced me he’d been telling the truth about vampire involvement in the recent deaths of undergrounders. Not that he and his pack were innocent of preying on them under other circumstances, but I was reasonably convinced that they hadn’t done this. Or at least none that cleaved to Edward’s protection had. Which included Carlos.

Since Carlos was also a necromancer, it seemed the next logical step was going to him, which I dreaded even more than speaking to Edward. I did not wish to renew the despair and horror I’d felt at our last parting. Even more so I didn’t want to end up in his debt.

An itchy little idea flitted at the back of my mind and I thought perhaps I wouldn’t have to talk to Carlos after all. I’d helped his protégé, Cameron, a couple of months before with the problem of a dead man who might or might not wake up as a vampire. At the time, Cam had implied there were worse things the deceased might come back as—things that had made Cameron shiver with dread.

Not much fazes a vampire, even an infant one. Whatever it was, perhaps it was connected to my current problem. I’d helped to straighten out the mess of Cameron’s death and unlife, and I didn’t find Cameron particularly threatening—yet.

I pulled my cell phone out of my purse and called Cam’s number. He answered quickly.

“Hey, Harper.”

“Hey, Cam. I have a problem and I think you might have a hint of the answer.”

“Really? Well, then fire away.”

“I’d rather meet in person. There may be a bit more to it than a quick Q and A.”

I heard the static and fuzz of him putting his hand over the phone. The furry silence lasted a few moments before his voice returned.

“We’ll be at the Big Picture in fifteen minutes. In the den. Go straight at the bottom of the stairs and turn left after the ramp. See you there.”

He didn’t give me time to object that “we” was what I’d been hoping to avoid.

But at least the venue seemed safe. I’d never been in it, but I’d heard of it.

The Big Picture was a tiny movie theater in a bar under El Gaucho. It also rented space out for private meetings, so there was a good chance that we’d have privacy—unless one of them really wanted to see the film.

It was too chilly in my thinner dress clothes and with my knee reacting to the weather to walk so far or wait for a bus, so I took the Rover up to Wall and First and found a parking space in a surface pay lot that hadn’t yet filled up with young drinkers insisting on braving the cold to have a good time at the swankier establishments in Belltown. I walked in El Gaucho’s doors and turned right before the doorman could frown at my trousers, following the short corridor to the neon sign that flashed big picture over the staircase leading down. For a moment, I was bitterly pleased I’d never managed to see a film there with Will, and then I tromped on that thought and went on.

There’s something very odd about a cinema in a bar, though I had to admit that the idea of kid-free movie viewing piqued my interest. As I went down the stairs, the smell of perfect popcorn wafted up. If only they had played old noir films, I’d have been in heaven. I had a fleeting vision of popcorn, beer, and Bogey—or even a comedy like Bringing Up Baby—on a big screen and smiled.

The lobby was the bar with a few seating areas defined by collections of sofas, chairs, and tables like tiny living rooms without walls. The lighting was diffused and made the predominant golds and greens of the décor look rich and inviting. The soft effect dimmed the layers of time so the space seemed less haunted than most—which pleased me even more. A few potted palms were wound with colored lights. A handful of couples were snuggling and sipping drinks in various spots among the furniture, but I couldn’t hear their conversations even at the relatively small distances in the room. Apparently the soundproofing for the theater had been extended into the rest of the space as well, and there was no leakage of the swing dance band from El Gaucho’s bar, either. I saw a couple of doors at the far end of the room and figured them for the theater and private meeting rooms.

The bartender glanced my way, smiling, and invited me to get my ticket, order a drink, and go on into the theater, since the show was just about to start. I returned the smile and said I was looking for some friends…

“Harper!”

I turned and saw Cameron coming my way from nearer the theater doors at the back. He bypassed the bar and came to my side.

He hadn’t changed much in the past two months. He was wearing a black dress shirt over a gleaming white tee and gray trousers, his white-gold hair was still spiky short, and the darkness of his vampiric aura was still mild. I guessed he hadn’t done in anyone else since his slip in October, which had left him in debt to me. I wished I wasn’t calling in that marker. Although I still had a fondness for Cam, his developing habits and talents put me off. I had to reevaluate my feelings about the dead-guy incident, if I was going to be fair. I’d been disgusted and upset and wanted to distance myself from him over it, but going to the morgue on his behalf had introduced me to Fish the first time, and that was turning out to be helpful. I wasn’t going to let him completely off the hook, though. Call me a stickler, but I still disapproved of killing people.

“Hi, Cam.”

He grinned, flashing fangs. “I’m fetching drinks. What do you want?”

I hesitated.

“It’s just a drink. You can buy the second round,” he said.

What the hell, it seemed like a day that deserved a drink—to drown it in. “All right,” I agreed. “Bushmills, neat.”

He flashed the smile again and headed for the bar, and somehow no one asked me to buy a ticket. Bracing myself, I walked across the lobby and down three small steps to the den to meet Carlos.

The space was a small nook beside the theater wall with one large couch and an armless upholstered chair. There was also a small, glass-topped bamboo table and a sort of rattan ottoman lurking like a cat that hopes to get underfoot. Carlos—big, dark, and scary as always—had one corner of the sofa, which left me with the choice of sitting next to him—not too attractive—or of taking the least comfortable seat, which also put my back to the stairs but gave me more options if anything blew up. I took the chair.

Carlos nodded to me and the tiniest of smiles twitched one corner of his mouth.

He looked healthier than I’d ever seen him and I hated knowing how he’d gotten that way. I nodded back and he seemed amused by my apparent discomfort. Neither of us had a chance to say anything before Cameron returned with his hands full of glasses, which he distributed on the table. Then he threw himself into the other corner of the couch. He’d had a college student’s tendency to slouch and sprawl when we’d met, but now he lounged like a young tiger and picked up his martini. I wasn’t surprised that Carlos’s drink was red wine.

Cameron leveled his violet gaze on me and asked, “So, what did you want to know?”

“How crass can I be without losing a limb?”

Cameron snorted a laugh without actually choking on his drink and quickly put it down. He pinched his nostrils together and glanced at Carlos. “Oh, man. Alcohol up my nose still hurts.”

Carlos raised one black eyebrow. “Lack of breathing through it didn’t change the nature of your nose, boy.”

“I’ll remember that,” Cameron replied in a dry tone, rubbing the end of his nose and wrinkling his face as if about to sneeze. In a moment, he turned his attention back to me. “I think I’m shockproof, so ask what you want.”

I took a deep breath and plunged in. “When you were worried about your dead man, you said he might come back as something other than a vampire—if he came back at all. Would that have been some kind of zombie?”

Silence.

They both gave me blank stares and I felt the temperature in the room drop. Carlos turned his head and shot Cameron a look that could have flayed skin. Cam flinched.

“I don’t know anything about zombies,” Cameron said. “And after what didn’t happen last time,” he added, shooting a defiant glance back at Carlos that left a wake of red annoyance through the Grey, “I wouldn’t have anything to do with any that might be wandering around Seattle. I assume you’re not asking because you want to make a movie or something. Have you seen a zombie around here?”

Too late to back out, I nodded and explained in a low voice. Their expressions grew intense and frightening as they listened. I had to shift my glance between them as I spoke to avoid the slightly sickening sensation that came with locking eyes with either of them for long. “Yeah. I… uh… was presented with one a couple of nights ago. The… creature that brought it wanted me to… umm… The corpse’s spirit was still trapped in it and it wanted me to let it out. It was pretty messy.”

I didn’t say there’d been a witness. I suspected Carlos would insist on doing something to Will if he knew, and while Will and I weren’t together anymore, I didn’t like the things Carlos did when he felt that his world needed protecting.

I may have been angry with Will, but I didn’t wish that on him.

Carlos leaned forward, ignoring his wine, and put his hands flat on the table.

The bamboo groaned and I heard a sound like thin ice cracking underfoot. “Tell us what happened. What did you do and see?”

I felt the press of his will on me and squirmed away from it, pulling the edge of the Grey between us to cut it off. “You don’t have to compel me,” I growled.

Cameron sat back with pretended cool, pulling up his knees and resting his drink on them. “Hey, yeah. Bad form, Teach.”

Carlos’s furious glare was worse than before, but this time Cameron didn’t cringe. He glared back. “What’s that movie,” he asked me without shifting his eyes from Carlos, “where Paul Newman says, ‘You don’t treat your friends like marks’?”

“The Sting,” I replied.

“Right.” His voice took on a strange resonance. “I remember Mara said the same thing to me when we met.”

Carlos’s glare narrowed further, and then he turned his head aside with a derisive snort, breaking the glance between them. “Improving,” he muttered.

Cameron made a raspberry noise. “Sore loser.”

Carlos cast a hooded glance back at him that hit Cameron like a blow. The younger vampire’s head jerked forward and knocked against his tented knees, sending his drink to the floor. Carlos watched without expression until Cameron sat back up, putting his feet flat on the floor again.

Cam was parchment white. He closed his eyes and ducked his head, saying, “I apologize.”

Carlos nodded back. “Improving,” he repeated. Then he turned his gaze to me.

This time he made no attempt to pressure me, just asked, “Please tell us what happened. What did you do and what did you see?”

“The zombie was rotten—decomposing—but it was still moving around. It had a lot of tangled energy lines on and in it, which I figured must have been whatever was keeping it animated. I could see a lot of Grey threads all over it, like a net. They were odd things without any energy to them, just some kind of soft, neutral material.” I shivered at the memory of the thing and swallowed the urge to gag. “I had to reach into the decomposing body to pull the energy strands loose and then it fell apart. The body fell apart. And I separated the strands, which broke into two distinct energy forms. One obviously didn’t belong there and took off—it seemed familiar, but I couldn’t say how—but the other seemed to be the ghost of the body. I think he was Native American and he faded out. I don’t think he stayed. I think he’s gone. The other one I don’t know about, but I’ll find out eventually. Once the energy forms were gone, the body decomposed to dust and blew away.”

Carlos frowned like storm clouds. “Is there more?”

“I’ve seen those threads around a few other places lately. The soft ones. At the site of a recently dead body and hanging on another. Neither of those bodies stood up.”

Carlos glowered as he thought. Cameron looked at me and shrugged, waiting, but still unearthly pale, even for a vampire.

“Were the soft threads in the same shape?” Carlos asked. “Like a net, as you said.”

“No. The threads were just there.”

“Ah. An unusual creation. Not truly a zombie, but the term will do, for now. Your threads trapped the spirit in the flesh so it could not rest.”

“Not my threads,” I objected, “and how do you know its not a regular zombie—if there is such a thing?”

Carlos rumbled a chuckle and sat back. “There are several kinds. True zombies are forced into form—spirit forced into dead flesh—but their binding is energetic. This binding you describe wasn’t. Only because the body was decayed were you able to remove the animating spirit from the shell of flesh. You destroyed the net that bound the body together when you reached into the body.

So long as the body retained the shape of life, the spirit in the flesh could not leave. The soft material of the net is the casting of some creature that captured and killed the man.”

“So it’s a spell of some kind?”

“No, it’s a remnant, like a spider’s silk that wraps a fly. It has no energy of its own and draws none. It is dead material, not living magic. A true zombie can be bound only in a recently dead body.”

Carlos’s voice wove a dim image before me of a dark man kneeling in a cemetery, muttering words that shook him with bleak magic and brought corpses stumbling to their feet from shattered crypts and desecrated graves. I had to shake myself free of an uncanny lethargy as he spoke, as if I might fall asleep and tumble into one of the empty graves myself. I caught myself and shivered.

Carlos continued. “Were the body so decayed, it should have fallen apart on its own. The casting held it, otherwise you would not have had so easy a time removing the energy forms but would have had to rend the body apart.” Carlos frowned again and the room seemed to grow dimmer. “The second spirit, though—that disturbs me. It should not happen. There is a third party using this for their own ends.”

I shook off the last of my daze. “Using what to their ends?” I asked. “I’m not sure what’s going on.”

“These walking dead, these strands of material come from some magical creature that kills men. I don’t know what its purpose is and can’t be sure that the castings don’t linger past its own death. If they do, then whatever zombies are created will remain even after the creature is destroyed.”

“But there won’t be more zombies without this… thing making them?”

“Correct. At least not this kind of zombie. And those that remain must be destroyed as you did this one—by removing the energy form trapped within the body by the threads. Some spirits may flee on their own once the net of the casting is destroyed, but that can’t be certain. Removing the energy strand is the only sure way.”

I shuddered and Cameron looked grim.

Carlos smiled a little. “It is magical entanglement. You know that the shapes of magic tend to linger,” he said. “Destroying them requires dismantling their lingering shape. Were it a necromantic zombie, or a vampiric turning gone wrong, the case would be different. But this is neither of those. It seems to be random. The creature does not do it deliberately, consistently, or both your other bodies would have risen also.”

“Then I suppose I’m grateful for that or the city might have more than cold and power outages to worry about. There’ve been at least four deaths and possibly more among the homeless in Pioneer Square. Do you have any idea what the creature is that’s killing people and leaving these threads?”

“No.”

“Could it have been the creature that brought me the zombie? He—it was a sort of hairy man.”

“A shaggyman, I suspect.”

“What’s a shaggyman?”

He flicked his hand dismissively. “They are the old people—the creatures in between the native animal people of legend and the living people of the normal world. The legends of Sasquatch are tales of a giant among the shaggymen. They aren’t very intelligent or dangerous.”

“That’s bull. The first time I met one it wanted to make me ‘a little more dead’ because Wygan told it to.”

That obviously intrigued Carlos and I regretted mentioning Wygan or the shaggyman. “Did Wygan send it this time?”

“No. The shaggyman seemed to be on the outs with Wygan for not harming me the first time. It was scarred and it said I owed it for those scars, which it apparently got from Wygan. Destroying the zombie was what it wanted as recompense.”

Cameron leaned forward, looking worried. “You haven’t seen any other… weird things, have you?”

“What sort of weird things?” I asked back. “Aside from vampires and zombies and ghosts and shaggymen.”

“Not—” Carlos shot him a warning glance, but Cam went on. “Not us. Other creatures that prey on men… and other things.”

“Are you saying there’s something that eats vampires out there?” That idea sent my stomach to the floor in a rush. I didn’t want to find out what was worse than Wygan and Carlos. “What? Werewolves? Demons from hell? How much worse does this get?”

Carlos shook his head and hushed Cameron with another glower. Then he turned back to me. “You have nothing to fear from the shaggyman. It did not succeed in harming you,” he reminded me. “And they cannot wield things like the thread you describe. It brought the zombie to you for dissolution. It could not have made it, but it wanted to free the spirit. If it was, indeed, one of the natives, the shaggyman would have felt pain over the spirit’s plight, since the two have long been bound together here. Since the very beginning.”

“That doesn’t help me with the problem of zombies and dead homeless people who might or might not be getting chewed on by some kind of giant, man-eating, paranormal spider,” I sputtered. Christ, there really was a monster in the sewer! “I can’t let it go on!”

“Agreed. You cannot. But we are not the ones to help you,” Carlos stated. He seemed anxious to cut the conversation short, which struck me as sinister.

Carlos was not easy to disturb or discomfit, and if he didn’t want to talk he had no compunction to find an excuse. But now he stood and made it plain that he intended to leave. “This is not a necromantic matter, nor does it belong to the realm of vampires. I do not know what creature is causing this, nor how it makes its web nor why it casts it as it does. It falls to you to discover it and to destroy it.”

He walked past me and left the den, heading for the exit. Cameron started to follow him.

“What the hell, Cameron?” I asked.

He stopped and glanced down at me. “I’m sorry, Harper. There’s literally no power we can use on this… whatever it is. It’s not even making enough of a stir in the Grey to bother any of us. We’ve got no power other than the physical in this situation, and that won’t help you now. If you find this thing and need some muscle, that’s another story, but this isn’t something we’re any help on.”

“What are you afraid of? I can’t believe you’re scared.”

“I can’t tell you. But it’s not your monster—whatever that is. Believe me. And don’t ask about the… others. Please. Carlos is going to make me hurt for that one as it is, and you really truly don’t want to know more.”

Cameron slipped past and followed his master.

Dumbfounded, I sat and stared at the untouched wine and the spilled martini. I bolted my whiskey and left, knowing I would never catch them. Even if there was more they could tell me, they wouldn’t, and it was pointless to waste what remained of my evening in that hope.

But what in hell or out of it had made them clam up? I sent silent prayers to any god who might listen that I wouldn’t regret the lack of that knowledge.