Metal Read online

  “It’s just gum, a spare tampon, and some magical knickknacks, honest. I like to keep things around for a rainy day.”

  “Consider this my umbrella. It’s not the first time I’ve needed to track Finn down after he’s gone missing.”

  “This is why I don’t bother with love,” Alex said, shaking her head. “Too much work.”

  “I’m sure it’s love that doesn’t bother with you. Now step on it, who knows how long Finn will be where he is.”

  “You should be nicer to the woman driving your car.”

  “I’m paying you five figures, that’s nice enough.”

  ****

  “Mort?” Finn squeaked, staring at the … at the … corpse? “He’s dead?” Frozen in the doorway, Finn tried to decide how he was feeling at the moment. His necromancy insisted Mort was dead, that there was a void that could be filled if Finn would just let it slither over and hop in. His inner child was squeaking in terror, pushing him to turn and run upstairs and maybe hide under the bad. But his grown-up self was just confused.

  “He’s dead,” Finn stated, forcing his shoulders to relax slightly. Diana, still clinging to his arm, nodded.

  “Of course. I found him that way one day, but I made sure he could still come with me. He’s trouble, but not too much yet. Would you like him to go? Maybe you don’t want him here. Maybe I can tutor you alone.”

  “You found him … what way? Dead? Risen?” Stepping closer, Finn frowned at the man who’d terrorized him for the whole of his early teenage years. This man who’d forced Finn to raise dead animals and people and even insects when he was feeling inspired was standing stock still in the center of the dining room, his shirt smeared with something that may have been blood, his skin waxy and dry. Finn couldn’t discern an age in his features and would have, if forced to guess, given the broad suggestion of anywhere from fifty to sixty-five.

  Mort hadn’t been forthcoming when they’d met as to his exact age, and Finn had learned as he got older that children—even scared teens too distracted by their surroundings to focus well on facial wrinkles or skin tautness—often thought an adult was old when he was anything but.

  “I went out, I came home. I had dinner and he didn’t join me. I found him, and I made him join me. He doesn’t eat anymore. Shall we begin?”

  “Di, how long have you … has Mort been, ehm.” Finn didn’t want to say it, didn’t want to mar the term, but he forced his mouth to keep going. “How long’s he been family?”

  “I don’t know. Five years or maybe six? Longer than most of the others. Oh, here we go.” Head leaning back, gaze floating up, Diana focused on something in the space between her and the wall before Finn heard shuffling from behind them both. Recognizing the movement, Finn twisted, stepping back while trying to keep Mort in view as he watched the doorway for whatever was coming his way. He recognized the sounds of slightly ungainly, sliding steps as undead, but wasn’t sure what he’d find past that. If Diana would raise her dead mentor and father figure, what else might she want to bring into the home?

  A zombie carrying a corpse appeared, looking unbothered by the strain of carrying a person who, had they both been alive, would have dwarfed her easily. Finn flinched as she dropped the heavy body onto the dining table, but Diana and the zombie didn’t react.

  This is a nightmare, Finn thought, shaking his head. He was the only sane, kind person in the place and he was properly trapped by a small horde of zombies. He could feel the emptiness in their chests all around the house, both inside and out. Some were in clusters, as if they wanted company, and some were all alone at the edge of the property, perhaps forgotten about. Finn couldn’t tell which ones Diana held under her control and which ones had been brought to the house simply to rot, but she’d amassed quite a collection of corpses.

  And this one she’d brought him looked fresh enough that Finn worried it might be one of the neighbors.

  “Where’d you get—who’s this?” Finn asked.

  “I like Janet. I don’t know her name, but I call her Janet. Do you still use string?” she asked, repeating what she’d said earlier. “I have something better for you.”

  Without explanation or hesitation, Diana closed in, pushed Finn’s sleeve up with one hand, and stabbed a thick, metal safety pin into his forearm with the other.

  ****

  “This should be the neighborhood,” Veruca said, alert as she scanned the addresses they passed.

  “Yes, thank you Google Maps. Sit back, we’ll be there before too long.”

  Ignoring Alex, Veruca stayed pressed nearly to the window, scanning the numbers on curbs and garages intently. It was late, and not everyone had well-illuminated homes, but she could deduce from the others where they were. Once they pulled up on the house, though, she realized the numbers were unnecessary. Diana had marked her location much more obviously than a few nylon digits stuck to the side of a mailbox.

  The dead were all over the place, though they were joined here and there by the living. There was no attempt to make any of it look normal, though no mere human would look at the zombies standing around the house awkwardly and assume they were a slight distraction away from a murderous rampage.

  “That’s it!” Veruca said, already unbuckling her seat belt as Alex slowed slightly.

  “I can tell. We’re not going in there.” Speeding up, Alex reached down to catch the buckle before the strap could slide across Veruca’s chest and free her. “That’s bad news, right there.”

  “I can take care of the zombies.”

  “That’s … interesting. We’ll put a pin in that for later. I wasn’t talking about the zombies.” Pulling over to the curb just around the corner, Alex twisted slightly in her seat. “The men outside are mercenaries, and they’re good. I’ve worked with at least two of them, and who knows who’s out back and how I might know them.”

  Something in her expression made Veruca think of sex, but she just shook her head and insisted, “I can get rid of them.”

  “You wouldn’t get more than a shot off before they’d blow you full of holes. They’re human, may not all know about the fae side of things—or the zombie side of things, in this case—but they’re still willing and more than able to take you out with their purely human, purely deadly guns. We’re going to need more than the two of us to get through that door, even if you could take out the dozen or so zombies standing around like the Queen’s Guard gone rotten.”

  “I’ll give them money to leave, we’ll take out—”

  “No, no.” Alex shook her head, frustration leaking into her expression for a moment. “You don’t bribe mercs like that. They continue to get jobs because they don’t work for whomever’s paying them the most in the moment. They take contracts and they carry them out. If they’re not trustworthy, no one trusts them, capisce? I’m not suggesting you leave Finn in there alone, I’m just saying we’re not getting in there the way things are right now. Just driving by I saw at least four men, which means the bitch is crazy but rich enough to afford at least twice that. Who knows who’s around back, inside, poised to rappel through a kitchen skylight from a helicopter and shoot us all in the head? We need a plan.”

  Frustrated, Veruca fought off the urge to hit the door with her closed fist and just took a deep breath instead, looking back toward the house, even though she couldn’t see it from their place around the block.

  “You have to have done this sort of thing before,” Veruca said, turning her attention back to Alex. “What would your plan be?”

  “You think I’ve rescued idiot Irishmen from lots of nutty necromancers and their beefy bodyguards before? No such luck. I mean, I’ve had to sneak into a fair amount of places and make off with someone or something, but never with undead eyes all over and half a dozen men standing guard who could snap me in half. Personally, I’d probably just start blowing stuff up.”

  “Blowing stuff up?” Veruca rolled her eyes, figuring Alex was putting her on.

  “Yeah, empty cars, a fe
w garbage cans, maybe set a tree on fire if we wanna stick it to Mother Nature while we’re at it. It’ll cause confusion, maybe make them flee the premises, and we could grab Finn while they’re on the run. Maybe even get a shot off and take Diana out while we’re at it. Two crazy birds.”

  “Do you have explosives lying around?”

  “Of course, what kind of girl do you think I am?”

  Veruca considered before sighing. “I think you’re exactly the type to blow up some poor sap’s car.”

  Alex beamed at that, though Veruca hadn’t meant it as a compliment.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “What the hell, Diana?” Finn demanded, his hand hovering over the safety pin sticking out of his arm. He was unsure if he should pull it out or if it might turn the trickle of blood into a torrent. “Wha’d you do that for?”

  Even as he asked, he felt the connection between his mind and the corpse snap into place. He’d never felt that before with something so simple as a single safety pin, and his confusion shut him up long enough for Diana to switch to stand at his other side, wrapping her arm around his waist.

  “There you go, Finny. Hers is in her neck. Do you remember how to raise?”

  “I don’t understand, this isn’t blood or string. It’s metal. How do you connect metal to other metal? And there’s only one, I need more than that.”

  “I had them made from the same steel. They burn, that’s okay. Go ahead, make her stand up. I’ll protect you.” Absently, Diana began rubbing Finn’s back before lifting her hand just enough so she could trace lines around his chest with her finger. “Go on, Finny.”

  Raising he could do, though the pain in his arm was nearly distraction enough that he wanted to pull the pin out and try to run away rather than risk losing control and setting the zombie on himself. Diana wouldn’t let him go, though. If he had to guess, she’d probably send zombies after his brains before she’d let him out of her sight again. Sure, it wouldn’t be much of a feast, but they’d be pretty satiated when they moved on to eat the rest of him.

  So he did his best to follow her instruction and make sure he was just clumsy enough at it that she’d get a kick out of showing him how to do things right. It wasn’t a hard thing to fake, not with the state he was in. He made the zombie sit up, made her stand, and then made her topple to the ground as if her legs had gone out of service. It would have been a comical sight in any other situation. The zombie, lacking all awareness of self, just plummeted downward as if her legs had disappeared right out from under her in a puff of smoke. She didn’t try to catch herself or even tense as she hit the ground.

  Finn just left her there for a moment, content with focusing all his energy on how much the pin in his arm hurt for a few moments. He had to keep faking interest, no matter the pain, to keep pretending Diana’s presence didn’t unnerve him almost as much as Mort’s.

  Wincing, Finn slid his gaze to his former father figure, swallowed hard, and almost lost track of what the zombie was doing. He saw his own face looming in the small pocket of vision that was his necromancy and jerked back, halting the zombie’s progress before she could sink blunt teeth into his neck and grind his skin to tatters.

  “Whoa there, girl, back up,” he mumbled, already sending the order through his magic, not needing the verbal cues.

  “See?” Diana said, squeezing him enough that he swore her bony arms might snap with the pressure. “You’re doing well. Much better than you used to. Would you like to try more? I have others. You can have some of mine.”

  Bodies thudded upstairs and Finn jumped, flailing his arms and braining the zombie who’d gotten too close. Even before he could take the Lord’s name in vain or just yell, “Fuck!” his necromancy shot upward, seeing the empty vessels, rushing inside them and waiting for him to let it loose, like a child sitting eagerly atop a pony and waiting for a cowboy to yell, “Giddy’up!”

  Even though he hadn’t committed to raising the dead upstairs, he was already aware of them in his head. Necromancy was confusing, on top of being dangerous. Every corpse he got his power into became part of him in whatever way they could. If they could hear, see, or smell something, so could Finn. Their nerves didn’t work, except in rare cases, so he almost never had to feel what they felt, but the seeing and the smelling could often be enough.

  He could feel what they were feeling too, which was always bad. Zombies were hungry from the second they had enough awareness to allow Finn to control them. They were ravenous, starved, cold, empty creatures, and having the hunger pangs sitting like a pile of leaden porcupines in his gut made Finn feel awful. How Diana could even function while controlling the dozens of zombies Finn had seen in the house since his arrival was a mystery.

  Taking a deep breath, Finn tried to pick through the zombies in his control, wondering if any of them had any useful tricks to help him out of his current situation. Nothing sprung to mind immediately, as Finn had only human corpses at his disposal. But when he focused on the dead woman standing across the narrow hallway from the zombie he’d earlier noticed looked fearful, Finn frowned.

  “That’s one of the ones with the soul?” Finn asked, hoping she’d elaborate this time and not get distracted by names or flattery. Diana took her time in answering, pulling Finn’s main focus back into his own body by reaching up and petting his hair gently.

  “They feel scared sometimes. When you leave them in there. Would you like to see? I can’t give you Josh, but we can find someone else. Would you like to take a walk? Mort never let us walk.” Turning her attention to Mort she frowned, pulling away from Finn abruptly and pushing Mort hard with both her hands. “You never let us walk.”

  Mort toppled like a tree, stiff and completely unaware no one had yelled, “Timber!” Finn winced when he slammed into the nice wooden floor but tried to keep his cool. A walk might be good. A walk might present an opportunity for escape.

  But the zombie upstairs, the one Diana had decided was named Josh, haunted Finn just a little. Defiling a corpse by making it do your bidding was bad enough. Knowing the body could feel ways about being used was much worse.

  “Ms. Merighi, we’ve got company.”

  “Company?” Diana turned to the man who’d appeared to stand in the doorway and take up nearly the whole thing. He reminded Finn of the bodyguards Angelina had employed, but this one didn’t look stupid. He looked huge and aware and armed. Finn swallowed thickly, pushing his energy into getting the zombies upstairs to their feet in case he needed them to run down the stairs—or fall down them, if that was all Finn could manage—and save his shapely backside.

  “I didn’t invite anyone to dinner,” Diana said after a moment of silence. “Why do we have guests?”

  “It’s … I meant, someone’s watching us. Two women drove by a few minutes ago, parked around the corner, and one’s moved to the car in the neighbor’s driveway. I believe they’re here for nefarious purposes.”

  “Oh.” Diana swung her head around so she could glare at Finn. “They’ve found us. They’ll probably try to take you away from me. Finny, I don’t like your friend. I want to leave.”

  “My—Veruca!” Finn said, realizing instantly that Diana didn’t appreciate his enthusiasm. Something about the way she narrowed her eyes made the injury in his arm hurt even more. He was sure she hadn’t gained some sort of mind control over his wounds, but her anger was so suddenly intense it seemed to affect the atmosphere of the entire room.

  “I want my zombies back,” Diana said, crossing the floor and grabbing for Finn’s wrist. He flailed and tried to push her away, shoving the zombie he’d raised first toward her, but the man at the door acted faster than any corpse could and fired a bullet straight into the zombie’s brain.

  It was worse than having his yeti beheaded and Finn cried out, crumpling to the ground as if that would help the flash of confusion that had exploded inside his mind as the zombie’s brain was torn apart. Diana grabbed his wrist, yanked out the safety pin, and kicked Finn in the chest
harder than he would have assumed possible.

  “Him too,” she said to the man with the gun. “You, bring him.”

  “This way, ma’am.”

  Finn moaned, tried in vain to get to his feet but thanked his lucky stars he couldn’t. The sounds of a nearby explosion that rocketed through the house would’ve knocked him back down anyway.

  ****

  “I love doing that,” Alex said, patting Veruca on the back and pointing to the smoke and flames engulfing an SUV so stately that could have fit easily in the president’s cavalcade. “Now, we just watch everyone scatter, take stock of who runs where, and keep an eye out for your boy.”

  “You’re not going to pay those nice people back for their car, are you?” Veruca asked absently, straining hard to take in every detail of the house where she knew Finn to be.

  “You don’t know they’re nice. They could have computers full of kiddie porn for all you know. Luckily, insurance doesn’t care about whether or not people are nice as long as they pay their premiums. Heads up, I think that’s our girl.”

  “It is,” Veruca said, squinting at the bare bit of soul threaded weakly around Diana’s heart. It was a miracle she could function at all, Veruca thought, but lost interest immediately when her focus shifted. “I don’t see—that’s Finn!”

  “In that sack the big guy has thrown over his shoulder? Yeah, that’d be my guess too. Let’s move.”

  It was easy enough to grab the snippets of Diana’s soul glowing in the chests of the surrounding zombies and tug them out, but no sooner had the corpses hit the ground than Veruca was being shot at. Alex bumped her hard, throwing them both to the grass, easily hiding them below the mound of lawn that sloped upward toward the house. Gunfire continued rhythmically, and Veruca felt her temper rise with every explosion of sound.

  If the police weren’t already on their way it was only because any nearby neighbors had been caught in the crossfire and couldn’t call 9-1-1.