Guilty Pleasures

“Why doesn’t he answer me?”

“The question is too complex,” Zachary explained. “He may not remember who Lucas is.”

“Then you ask him the questions, and I expect him to answer.” Her voice was warm with threat.

Zachary turned with a flourish, spreading arms wide. “Ladies and gentlemen, behold, the undead.” He gri

“Did you see a vampire murdered?”

The zombie nodded. “Yes.”

“How was he murdered?”

“Heart torn out, head cut off.” His voice was paper-thin with fear.

“Who tore out his heart?”

The zombie started to shake his head over and over, quick, jerky movements. “Don’t know, don’t know.”

“Ask him what killed the vampire,” I said.

Zachary shot me a look. His eyes were green glass. Bones stood out in his face. Rage sculpted him into a skeleton with canvas skin.

“This is my zombie, my business!”

“Zachary,” Nikolaos said.

He turned to her, movements stiff.

“It is a good question. A reasonable question.” Her voice was low, calm. No one was fooled. Hell must be full of voices like that. Deadly, but oh so reasonable.

“Ask her question, Zachary.”

He turned back to the zombie, hands balled into fists. I didn’t understand where the anger was coming from. “What killed the vampire?”

“Don’t understand.” The voice held a knife’s edge of panic.

“What sort of creature tore out the heart? Was it a human?”

“No.”

“Was it another vampire?”

“No.”

This was why zombies still didn’t do well in court. You had to lead them by the hand, so to speak, to get answers. Lawyers accused you of leading the witness. Which was true, but it didn’t mean the zombie was lying.

“Then what killed the vampire?”

Again that head shaking, back and forth, back and forth. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He seemed to be choking on the words, as if someone had stuffed paper down his throat. “Can’t!”

“What do you mean, can’t?” Zachary screamed it at him and slapped him across the face. The zombie threw up its arms to cover its head. “You…will…answer…me.” Each word was punctuated with a slap.

The zombie fell to its knees and started to cry. “Can’t!”

“Answer me, damn you!” He kicked the zombie, and it collapsed to the ground, rolling into a tight ball.

“Stop it.” I walked towards them. “Stop it!”

He kicked the zombie one last time and turned on me. “It’s my zombie! I can do what I want with him.”

“That used to be a human being. It deserves more respect than this.” I knelt by the crying zombie. I felt Zachary looming over me.

Nikolaos said, “Leave her alone, for now.”

He stood there like an angry shadow pressing over my back. I touched the zombie’s arm. It flinched. “It’s all right. I’m not going to hurt you.” Not going to hurt you. He had killed himself to escape. But not even the grave was sanctuary enough. Before tonight I would have said no animator would have raised the dead for such a purpose. Sometimes the world is a worse place than I want to know about.

I had to peel the zombie’s hands from his face, then turn the face up to stare at me. One look was enough. Dark eyes were incredibly wide, fear, such fear. A thin line of spittle oozed from his mouth.

I shook my head and stood. “You’ve broken him.”

“Damn right. No damn zombie is going to make a fool of me. He’ll answer the questions.”

I whirled to stare at the man’s angry eyes. “Don’t you understand? You’ve broken his mind.”

“Zombies don’t have minds.”

“That’s right, they don’t. All they have, and for a very short time, is the memory of what they were. If you treat them well, they can retain their personalities for maybe a week, a little more, but this…” I pointed at the zombie, then spoke to Nikolaos. “Ill treatment will speed the process. Shock will destroy it.”

“What are you saying, animator?”

“This sadist”—I jabbed a thumb at Zachary—”has destroyed the zombie’s mind. It won’t be answering any more questions. Not for anyone, not ever.”

Nikolaos turned like a pale storm. Her eyes were blue glass. Her words filled the room with a soft burning. “You arrogant…” A tremor ran through her body, from small, slippered feet to long white-blonde hair. I waited for the wooden chair to catch fire and blaze from the fine heat of her anger.

The anger stripped away the child puppet. Bones stood out against white paper skin. Hands grabbed at the air, clawed and straining. One hand dug into the arm of her chair. The wood whined, then cracked. The sound echoed against the stone walls. Her voice burned along our skin. “Get out of here before I kill you. Take the woman and see her safely back to her car. If you fail me again, large or small, I will tear your throat out, and my children will bathe in a shower of your blood.”

Nicely graphic; a little melodramatic, but nicely graphic. I didn’t say it out loud. Hell, I wasn’t even breathing. Any movement might attract her. All she needed was an excuse.

Zachary seemed to sense it as well. He bowed, eyes never leaving her face. Then without a word he turned and began to walk towards the small door. His movements were unhurried, as if death wasn’t staring holes in his back. He paused at the open door and made a motion as if to escort me through the door. I glanced at Jean-Claude, still standing where she had left him. I had not asked about Catherine’s safety; there had been no opportunity. Things were happening too fast. I opened my mouth; maybe Jean-Claude guessed.

He silenced me with a wave of a slender, pale hand. The hand seemed as white as the lace on his shirt. His eye sockets were filled with blue flame. The long, black hair floated around his suddenly death-pale face. His humanity was folding away. His power flared across my skin, raising the hairs on my arms. I hugged myself, staring at the creature that had been Jean-Claude.

“Run!” He screamed it at me, voice slashing into me. I should have been bleeding from it. I hesitated and caught sight of Nikolaos. She was levitating, ever so slowly, upward. Milkweed hair danced around her skeleton head. She raised a clawed hand. Bones and veins were caught in the amber of her skin.

Jean-Claude whirled, claw-hand slashing out at me. Something slammed me into the wall and half out the door. Zachary caught my arm and pulled me through.

I twisted free of him. The door thudded closed in my face. I whispered, “Sweet Jesus.”

Zachary was at the foot of a narrow stairway, leading up. He held his hand out to me. His face was slick with sweat. “Please!” He fluttered his hand at me like a trapped bird.

A smell oozed from under the door. It was the smell of rotting corpses. The smell of bloated bodies, of skin cracked and ripening in the sun, of blood slowed and rotting in quiet veins. I gagged and backed away.

“Oh, God,” Zachary whispered. He put one hand over his mouth and nose, the other still held out to me.

I ignored his hand but stood beside him on the stairs. He opened his mouth to say something, but the door creaked. The wood shook and hammered, like a giant wind was beating against it. Wind whooshed from under the door. My hair streamed in a tornado wind. We backed up a few steps while the heavy wooden door fluttered and kicked against a wind that couldn’t be there. A storm indoors? The sick smell of rotting flesh bled into the wind. We looked at each other. There was that moment of recognition of us against them, or it. We turned and started ru

There couldn’t be a storm behind that door. There couldn’t be a wind chasing us up the narrow stone stairs. There were no rotting corpses in that room. Or were there? God, I didn’t want to know. I did not want to know.