Incubus Dreams

“Tell him he’s supposed to guard you, and he can’t do that on the grave.”

“You’re supposed to guard me, Graham, you can’t do that from here.” The sharp scent of wolf thickened around me as I said it.

Graham reacted to it like he’d been struck. He cringed to the ground, doing the wolf grovel. “I’m sorry, you just smelled so good. I forgot myself.”

“Stop groveling and get back to work.” Richard said it first, and I echoed it for him.

Graham did what he was told. He went back to very serious bodyguard mode, looking out into the dark for whatever might come.

Richard took in a deep breath, and I smelled that thick, sweet scent of deep woods. He’d run miles, effortlessly, not for the same reason that a human will run well, but because the land itself helped him run, gave him strength, welcomed him.

He stood there in the middle of the woods, his feet anchored into the ground. I realized that Richard was my ground, my center, his joy, his heart pumping in his chest from that joyous run. I kept my tie to him open and full of scents and sounds and things faraway from here. I put my hands on the grave, and even with Requiem at my back, touching me, it wasn’t as real as the pounding of Richard’s heart miles away.

“Edwin Alonzo Herman, with will, word, and flesh, I call you from your grave. Come, come now!” It was all wrong, all different from usual, but it was right just the same.

I felt the corpse shift, solidify, piece itself together like a puzzle, and begin to rise up through the earth as if it were water.

I’d watched this happen countless times, but I’d never been kneeling on the ground when it happened. The earth buckled and rolled like an earthquake that was trapped in a few feet of ground. The ground flowed under my hands like it was something else, not water, not mud, but something both less and more solid. I don’t know what Requiem thought was happening, but he didn’t try to pull away, he stayed solid at my back. He rode it with me and never made a noise. Brave vampire.

Hands met mine through the shifting earth, cool fingers wrapped around my warmth. Edwin Alonzo Herman’s hands wrapped around mine like a swimmer who’s given up hope and finally touches a rope. The grave threw him upward like a flower springing free of the earth, but the push of it forced me to pull him upward, to find my feet with Requiem steadying me. If the vampire hadn’t been there to hold me standing on the writhing, twisting ground, I would have fallen. But Requiem kept me standing, and I pulled the dead man from his grave, pulled him perfect and whole, until he stood taller than me, with the grave dirt falling away from a perfect black suit that looked as if it had been freshly pressed. His hair was balding with a thick fringe just above the ears and down the collar, and thick sideburns that curved to a walrus thick mustache. He was portly, nearly fat, which had been in style among the rich. When Edwin Alonzo died, only the poor were ski

I felt Richard still standing by the edge of that small stream.

The air was cooler by that musical run, and his pulse was begi

I stared up at the zombie, and even to me, it looked like damn good work. With a big enough blood sacrifice I could raise a zombie that looked alive, close at least, but this, this was perfect. His skin looked full and healthy in the starlight. He had a faint smile on his face, and his clothes looked as if he’d just put them on. Even his shoes were near spotless and gleaming with polish. Polish so shiny I noticed by moonlight. The hands that were pressed to mine were cool, but they didn’t feel dead. He wasn’t breathing, but he looked, felt, more alive than dead. It was u

I lifted my left hand away from the zombie’s, and he didn’t cling to me, his fingers just opened as I moved. I held my hand at shoulder level, toward the vampire at my back. “Undo my bandage.”

Requiem kept one hand on my shoulder, but used the other hand to peel back the tape on my wrist.

“Take it off,” I said.

He finally ripped the bandage away. I couldn’t stop a small jerk of pain.

Richard called inside my head, “What are you going to do?”

“He needs blood, so he can speak. I didn’t kill an animal. This is all the blood I’ve got.”

He didn’t say anything, but I felt his pulse begin to pick up speed.

I offered my wrist upward to the slightly taller body in front of me. Something slid through those pale eyes, something I’d seen before in the better preserved zombies. It was as if something went through them, something that paused in their eyes, as if there were darker things waiting, waiting for a chance for a body to inhabit. Something, not so much evil, as just very, very not good. But that whiskered face turned toward my wrist, sniffed the air, and the moment it scented the blood, that otherness in its eyes vanished. Driven out by the promise of something that all the dead value, a bit of the living.

The zombie grabbed my arm with both of its hands and smacked its mouth against my wrist like you’d grab a kiss from your dearest lover.

Just the impact hurt the wound, made me gasp. But I knew what was coming, because I’d fed zombies off my own blood before. Not often, but often enough. The mouth locked around the wound, and his mouth was wide enough to take it all in, to set his teeth against the torn edges, and grind. I made a small sound, because I couldn’t make no sound. Usually the zombie’s mouth felt less real than this one. Except for how cool the flesh was, I couldn’t tell the difference between the zombie and a person. It was a very good job, solid all the way through, even in places that only I would feel.

Richard bounded across the stream, hitting the edge of it with one foot, as if he wasn’t quite steady. He began to run up the other bank, began to run with the night and the trees and the smells.

Edwin Alonzo Herman’s mouth locked around my wrist and began to suck. The wound had begun to heal more than I’d realized, because to get to the blood, he had to pull hard and tight on my wrist. It hurt, really hurt. Yeah, I liked teeth in the right situation, but this wasn’t it, and what might feel good during sex just fucking hurts during violence.

Richard was ru

He ran, and slipped in the leaves, and fell and was on his feet and ru

The zombie had fallen to his knees, as if sucking at my wrist was the most exquisite thing it had ever tasted. It cradled my wrist against its mouth, and its tongue explored the wound.

My breath came out in a harsh word, “Shit!”

“Are you hurt?” Requiem asked softly.

I shook my head. It hurt, but I wasn’t hurt. There was a difference, but usually a zombie starts to slow down about now. This one was still sucking hard and fast, as if he were a baby that had been starved. Of course, I’d never raised anyone this long dead without an animal sacrifice. Maybe that was the difference? I hoped so, because anything else would mean that something had gone wrong, really wrong.

He shook his mouth like a dog with a bone, and I swallowed a scream. It wasn’t just that it hurt. That was way too much enthusiasm for a zombie. “Edwin, stop feeding.” My voice was clear, and he ignored me. Shit. I licked suddenly dry lips. “He’s had enough. Help me pry him loose,” I said, voice low. Mustn’t scare the clients.

Mustn’t let them know that everything had gone wrong tonight.

Richard fell again, slid in the damp autumn leaves, slid until a tree stopped him, sudden, and abrupt and bruising. He looked up, and I saw those wide brown eyes, saw what he was ru

He waited for me to be horrified, but I wasn’t. If there was anyone who could resist doing the great bad thing, it was Richard. I trusted his control, not always his temper, but his control-that I trusted without doubt or reservation. I whispered, “Just because you want to do something, doesn’t mean you will do it, or even that you have to do it. You’re human, Richard, you have a mind and willpower.

You aren’t just your beast.”

“You don’t understand,” he said, and the moment he said it, I knew what he’d done, by accident.

“You can feel what the zombie is doing?” I said.

He hid his face from me and scrambled to his feet, and ran. He ran out of the trees, and hit a paved road, and was across it before the headlights could be sure what they’d seen. Fast, faster, run, run.

Run, but what he was ru

“Richard, make the zombie stop feeding on me.”