Underground

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 unca

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 ca

“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 ca

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.

CHAPTER 9

I don’t get hysterical at the sight of a spider, but I admit, even the hint of something arachnoid prowling the tu

I cursed Edward for planting the idea in my mind, but I still wanted to ask a few questions of Quinton. He’d said enough about his reasons for going underground that my sudden suspicions of him earlier had been allayed, but Edward’s hints bugged me. I thought Edward was just throwing shadows, but I needed to know for sure. And it wasn’t yet so late that Quinton would be unavailable.

Not knowing where he might be, I paged him and he called me back as I was returning the Rover to its customary slot in the “sinking ship”—the tilted triangular parking structure across the street from my office building, which reared from the block like the prow of a doomed liner. “Hi, Harper. What’s up?”

“I’m done with Edward—and Carlos and Cameron, too. I need to talk to you.”

“I’m at the Double Header with Rosa and Tall Grass—he’s a bit freaked about Je

“Not a bar.”

“Only place still open is Starbucks. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”