Body of Ash Read online

  Still though... strange.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I DON’T MIND THE SILENCE on the drive across county lines. I do mind that Terrance has the heat blasting. It’s spring; it’s not that damn cold anymore. I don’t say anything though. I shrug out of my jacket, maneuver it around the seatbelt across my chest, and fold it against my lap.

  My mind is focused on the task ahead, but my heart is focused back on the men I’ve left. Weak Kyle, Liam with his emotions always right below the surface. And a nagging suspicion is growing in my stomach—that it’s my fault the Light and Dark Court are meddling in Bonneau. And I’m sure that Liam’s disinclination to speculate was because he didn’t want to say that obvious truth.

  “Here. Now, it’s not some chauvinistic bullshit, but let me do the talking. You and your cop speak will set Dan on edge. You just try too damn hard.”

  “Admit it, you find it endearing as hell.” I unbuckle as the engine goes quiet. A short, lean man is standing on the steps of a modern-looking building with mirrored glass windows. I whistled. “This looks brand-spanking new.”

  “It is,” Terrance nods as he walks towards the building.

  “Makes Bonneau look like—”

  “And now it’s silence time,” Terrance loud-whispers back at me. I quirk an eyebrow, and a teensy part of me wants to throw one of those ‘don’t tell me what to do’ hissy fits that so many women employ when they feel put down by a man, but Terrance wasn’t that sort. And he’d explained why he needs to take lead here. So I shut my mouth, smile pretty, and give good ole Dan my best duty-bound female impression.

  The two men chat as Dan unlocks the building and ushers us in; he glances at me, gives a slight nod, then goes back to focusing on Terrance. I wonder if he knows who I am—not just a consultant, but the cop-nicknamed Casper of Bonneau. A southern spook with a penchant for trouble.

  “I had the other counties send over shots of their victims. The coroner reports are, for all intents and purposes, identical. You look at this body, you’ve seen them all. Right down to the little scratches on their necks.” Dan leads us to a set of gleaming stainless-steel doors. I waited to feel something in the building like I do in the Bonneau morgue, which is smaller and older than the official county building located in Hanahan. There used to only be one morgue per county in the US. One county coroner. But The Rising made death a big business, and one official wasn’t enough to go around in most places. The change stuck, even after the bodies stopped piling up... and reanimating, as it were.

  Through the doors, the compact man with authority thick as nineteen-eighties’ shoulder pads beelines for a lower level storage drawer. He checks the tag to be sure, then opens the lock pad and door. The body inside is covered by a thin white sheet. It’s a vinyl-blend, not cloth as you see often in the movies. Vinyl’s more resilient, easier to sanitize. Have you ever tried to get residual body fluids out of a white shirt? Cold water only goes so far.

  Dan pulls the tray out slowly, then he takes his time, almost reverently, folding back the sheet to fold around the victim’s hips. He preserves her lower dignity, though it’s impossible to keep her upper half covered. Not that there’s a whole lot to shield. I want to say, like always, that the body is just a vessel, that the respect, whilst a nice gesture, isn’t necessary.

  But it is, of course, for human grieving. We need the reality of what we see, not the emptiness that’s left when a soul is well and truly gone from our world.

  My first thought is that the woman was pretty. Not in a conventional way, but in a... dignified and wise way, with high cheekbones and dark arched brows. Her hair is smoothed back, tied nicely behind her neck. The coroner here isn’t like Bonneau’s, who often has a cavalier attitude towards the bodies he processes.

  I moved past the collarbones, past the small expanse of chest before breast level.

  Where a hole the size of a Belgium waffle waited to be recognized. It was cleanly done, like a hole punch through paper. The cavity was charred, as if cauterized during the wound-making. It was a tunnel, through which I could see the stainless steel table beneath the body.

  Bodies didn’t normally make me queasy. I worked with them for a living. But the woman, with her Katherine Hepburn face and her heartless chest, made bile gather in my mouth.

  Terrance looks as pale as it’s possible for him to look, and his navy-blue eyes are red-rimmed. I’ll never understand how such an experienced cop can still be so soft spirited.

  Dan and Terrance move off to the side, giving me space. I wish they hadn’t, but I take my cue and lean forward to study the body. With little effort, I find the scratches on her neck that Dan mentioned. They’re not, though. Not exactly. Too precise, shallow enough not to bleed too long. They are too evenly space. The edges too clean.

  Five perfect lines across the neck. They would have sent tiny rivers of blood down the woman. And I suspect, though do not know, that they were made before the heart was removed. I swallow, and move my gaze back to the silo-shaped space. I’ll never look at grain storage the same way again.

  “The report says the wound was cauterized as it was made?” I asked absentmindedly as I turn around and search for gloves. “And that the scratch marks were made with a very sharp tool, like a scalpel, but even more narrow.”

  “That’s right, ma’am,” Dan’s voice, which I’ve not really focused on totally since he and Terrance did their man thing whilst I tagged along, is clean with only the slightest drawl beneath the words. Like a memory of a history he’s tried to smash down.

  I find the gloves. Purple instead of blue. I’m used to blue. I don’t know why that strikes me as odd. It shouldn’t. It’s not important. Though, the idea of blue gloves flashes me back to Doctor Sherwin, to almost losing Mei to that psycho. Terrance hasn’t brought that up in months, not since I had to witness in court. The last time he mentioned the case was to tell me they’d set an execution date.

  Every state has the death penalty now, because if they didn’t then it wouldn’t be legal to kill a necromancer—if one were stupid enough to get caught. There had been just enough sane people in the government during The Rising to not write in a singular, specific law that would allow the death penalty to be applied only to one type of individual. It was either all or nothing. And a neighbor couldn’t just accuse Jane next-door of being a necromancer. There had to be solid proof. Of course, the necro-genetic test made that a piece of cake once it was devised.

  After I’ve put on the gloves, I poke gently at the charred flesh inside the chest tomb. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but there’s more to this, I can feel it in my bones. I press gently, covering every inch of the damaged flesh. Until I feel something hard.

  Beneath the heat-melded surface.

  “There’s something here,” I look up at the men, find the Sheriff’s badge on Dan’s uniform. “Sheriff, is there a way to get your coroner here to handle the body? I think there’s something they missed.”

  “She’s out of town. Death in the family.” He crosses his arms over his chest, looks thoughtful. “Are you able to do what’s necessary?”

  Nodding, I speak slowly. “I am, but I’m not sure how that works with your... protocol.” I’m trying to be respectful, when all I really want to do is slice and dice the body and figure out what the hell is under the burned skin.

  “There’ll be some paperwork.” He says, but then uncrosses his arms and motions at me to proceed. It’s this universal movement that men seem to know when they’re allowing a woman to do a job. A little wave of the hand, just a teensy bit condescending. Or maybe that’s just in my head, boiled up from hot feminist blood. Ha. My grandmother had some strong opinions on actual equal rights.

  “Okay then,” I murmur, replacing my gloves. I go through the stainless cabinets until I find sealed autoclave pouches. I pull out one marked scalpel and one marked curved forceps and open them, dropping the ruined pouches into the non-hazard waste. Returning to the body, I set down the forceps. The
scalpel feels heavier than my normal brand. I take a deep breath and feel around until I find the hard spot again. I press the blade against the skin and feel a tinge of guilt as I push. It’s just a vessel, idiot. Like you want to tell people every single time someone dies. So I cut, a bit larger than the hardness.

  The scalpel clinks against the stainless steel table and I pick up the forceps.

  At first, the foreign object doesn’t want to release from the flesh. I pause, trying to see if I need to widen the hole. I don’t. It’s plenty big. I don’t understand. Something’s keeping the object in place.

  “Something wrong?” Terrance questions, coming forward in such a way that he blocks Dan’s view of me for a moment. I give him a confused glance and try to convey that ‘there’s some weird my kind of shit going on here’. His expression in return looks... like pure exhaustion. More of my stuff.

  I look away from him, my eyes falling on the woman’s neck. The five perfect lines. Five.

  Points to a star.

  The element marks.

  Victims.

  I change tools, picking up the scalpel again. And I slice a line through the five perfectly-made ‘scratches’. As soon as I do, I hear a clink much like placing the tools on the hard table. My heart pounds, but I don’t look yet. I methodically put the sharp knife on the table, steady myself, and then finally look back into that abyss that was once a woman’s chest.

  At the bottom of the hole—that seems too long now, like the great fall of Alice through the tree after the rabbit—I see a jade-hued object. I pick it up gingerly. And I recognize it instantly.

  A Lazarus Eye. A flawed jade, black tracing through the center. But... something’s wrong. Different. The traditional runes have been altered. Instead of giving life back to its bearer, it would siphon life. Siphon essence. It would keep their souls bound to whoever had embedded the eye. It would keep the power regenerative. A constant supply. That... together with tapping into the ley lines...

  What had Mordecai said? It would take two to represent the originals. A woman and a man. An Eve and an Adam. I need to find them. But first, I need all the eyes. I need them, and they need to be destroyed. It would be harder for the coven leaders to open the Hellmouth without the power of their dead brethren behind them. Or, I assumed it would.

  It had to be. Because I had no fucking idea what else to do to keep Bonneau from becoming demon central.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “LOOK, I DON’T KNOW how you’re going to get the rest of the Lazarus Eyes from the bodies. But you have to figure it out. The power they represent... destroying that might be the only thing that gives us a fighting chance against what’s coming.”

  “I’m still not clear on what that is, Tori. I need more than the blind faith I’m putting in you right now.” Terrance is leaning against his cruiser, parked next to my car at the bar. He looks tired, but that’s no excuse for being a prig.

  “Suddenly trusting me’s hard, Terrance?” I say his name pointedly, trying to make him see how his attitude towards me is shifting. Maybe he doesn’t realize it. Maybe I’m reading too much into his words. But telling him was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and regretting that decision is a lot easier than standing by it. “How many times have I helped you? I’ve saved more than one life. Haven’t I? And I’ve been able to, precisely because of what I am.”

  Terrance moved away from his patrol car and crossed his arms. “If it were just you, Tori, it’d be easier to swallow. But now every damn time I turn, there’s some supernatural bullshit dicking with my town. I don’t like it.”

  “And you think I do?” I turn away and start walking towards the bar. I’m not leaving yet, not before I check on Kyle and Liam.

  “You’re part of the problem. It’s not the same for you.” Terrance says it in his normal voice, but it seems almost like an accusatory whisper at my back as I’m moving away from him. I spin around.

  “And your kind? Magicless humans? You’re the ones who chased down children and slaughtered them simply for having a gift. Which do you think is more evil, Terrance?” I hold up a hand as his mouth opened to say something in retort. I don’t want to hear anymore. “Save it. I don’t have the energy for this. Believe me, or don’t believe me. At the end of the day, I’m going to be the one to save your precious town.”

  “Tori, wait.”

  I twirl one more time, fire in my heart like a funeral pyre. “No. I’ve got a sick supernatural boyfriend and a fairy on the run who both need me. Maybe it’s time I stick to my own kind.”

  I slam through the bar doors, but can’t help myself looking back at Terrance—the man I trusted. No, the man I do trust. Trust to keep my secret, to not betray me. He’s got his hands shoved into his pockets, his dark eyes staring at the bar. He’s not turned away to get into his car. Because he’s thinking. And I wonder if I’ve just burned a bridge that can’t be repaired. Terrance can turn me in at any time. It wouldn’t matter that I have a clean genetic test on record. The world would believe him—partly because of the badge he wore, but mostly out of irrational ingrained fear.

  Yet as mad as I am, as heartbroken as I feel that Terrance harbors doubts about me, I also can admit—in a tiny, tiny sliver of room within my brain—that he may have a point. Bonneau probably would be a better, safer town without bear shifters and Dark Court games and necromancers.

  Terrance said he was tired of supernatural bullshit.

  But supernatural bullshit...

  Or human bullshit.

  It all smells the same.

  “LIAM! KYLE!” I YELL out as soon as I’m in the bar, and then I realize the bar is... open right now. And half of the town day-drunks are staring at me like I’m crazy. I wave awkwardly and mouth ‘sorry’ before moving past them all and into the bathroom hall.

  In the storage room, I can see the office light is on, but the door is closed now. Maybe to keep out the noise of the active bar behind me. When I get to the door, I lift my hand to knock, but hesitate. They might be sleeping. Twisting the door knob, I crack open the hollow metal door. Liam is sitting on the sofa, his head leaned back and his eyes closed. Kyle is...

  Kyle’s head is cradled in Liam’s lap and he’s breathing heavily, but his face isn’t as pale as it was when I’d left.

  The sight of them sat together like that creates mixed feelings in me. I get flashes of a future where we could all coexist. Not... sexually. But as friends, partners in dealing with the paranormal stuff that creeps into our existences.

  They look peaceful together. Like Kyle isn’t jealous. Liam doesn’t have the hots for me. They are just brothers, caring for one another.

  “Are you done looking?” Liam’s voice is low, and somehow both soothing and full of heat at once.

  I start, feeling blood rush into my cheeks. I hate blushing. “Sorry, I was... erhm... just debating whether or not to wake you.”

  Gently, Liam lifts Kyle’s head, shifts out from underneath him in a bendy fashion that’s definitely physically improbable, and then sets Kyle’s head back down on a decorative bear pillow I’d bought ironically for the office months ago.

  Liam comes to the door, pushes through, and joins me in storage. He’s cautious though, making sure the door closes slowly, and quietly. The care I’m seeing in him throws me off-kilter. It’s thawing that little seed inside me that holds out against full-on loving him. It’s a haunting truth that you can love more than one person. Yet, I don’t believe you should have more than one person at once. I just don’t. “And how was your morning with our beloved Sheriff?” Liam’s mouth is wet and pink, like he’s just licked his lips as I’ve been lost in my thoughts. I wonder if he’s listened to them...

  I hesitate. “It was enlightening. And further enforced what Mordecai warned me about.”

  “How so?” he presses, before walking over to a row of kegs and sitting down atop one.

  “It’s something my grandmother used to talk about before she died. We had an ancestor, a centu
ry ago or so, come back from the dead. The townspeople thought it was a miracle. But it wasn’t of course. It was necromancer magic. Our ancestor somehow harnessed the power to raise the dead into an object. A Lazarus Eye.” I cross my arms and walk to where Liam is. I don’t sit on one of the adjacent kegs, instead choosing to lean against one of the steel columns nearby.

  “I’ve not heard of that,” Liam says slowly, his brow scrunched. He’s not used to not being in the know, not used to me being the one with information.

  “It’s really rare. And a closely-guarded secret according to my grandmother.”

  “You’ve never told me about it. And we’ve studied your grandmother’s journals. And the Necromancer tome.” He looks offended now, like I’ve purposefully kept this from him.

  “It’s not written down, Liam. Like I said, it’s been closely-guarded. And when would it have come up?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Liam spoke again, his voice still laced with suspicion. “Maybe when we were talking about tools of the necromancer? How about when we discussed magical objects of the fae and I let you in on one too many a secret of the Courts?”

  I hold up a hand. “Fine, fine. But it didn’t occur to me. Honestly. And again. Rare, Liam. It’s so damn rare I didn’t expect to see one in my lifetime, let alone five.”

  “Five?” He gets up from the keg.

  “I’m assuming five. The body I saw this morning. The heart was ripped out. It was... fucking awful. But a Lazarus Eye was embedded in the chest. The runes were different than they should have been. And I assume the heart had to be taken to avoid the Lazarus Eye from trying to work the way it was intended. I don’t know. I don’t know the details, Liam.”