Laurell Hamilton - Flirt

Nicky stood up and started moving toward me.

“Don’t do it, Nicky,” he said.

“It’s not her fault, Jacob,” he said, and kept moving toward me.

“Don’t shield her!”

“If you want the second half of your money, Mr. Leon, she needs to be alive to raise my wife from the dead.”

I think the lions had forgotten about Bennington, or maybe he’d stopped being important. It was his money and his desire that had begun everything, but he was strangely not part of the tableau between Jacob, Nicky, Ellen, and me until he spoke. Then it was as if Jacob remembered why he was there, what had made him risk so much: money.

“The prostitute died while they were screwing,” Bennington said; “we don’t have a human sacrifice.”

“We have something better,” I said, and I looked at Jacob.

“No,” he said.

“You said it yourself: he’s dying, and it’s his fault the woman is dead. I think it has a nice symmetry to it that Silas is our sacrifice.”

“Symmetry,” Jacob said, and he sounded like he was choking; “is that what you call this?”

“If you let him die without me raising the dead, then this is all for nothing. You won’t even get your money.”

Jacob lowered his gun and nodded. “Do it, do it before I change my mind.”

Ellen grabbed his arm. “No, don’t let her do this.”

He jerked away from her. “Can you raise the dead?”

She stared at him with large dark eyes, and just started to cry again.

“Can you?” He screamed it into her face, so that she recoiled from him.

“No,” she yelled back.

“Then shut the fuck up.”

I moved forward, and Nicky moved with me like a big blond shadow. “What can I do to help?”

“Stay close,” I said, and dropped to my knees on the grave, beside the dying werelion. Jacob looked at me across the body of his man. “You need to put up a circle of power,” he said, in a voice that was dull with all the shocks of the evening.

“Ellen’s put a circle up so wide and deep that I can’t feel anything from my vampire master or the men I’m tied to metaphysically. I think her circle will keep out any damn thing.”

“Which means what?” he asked.

“It means give me a blade so I can finish him and raise the dead.” I held my hand out, and he lifted a hunting knife out from under the back of his shirt. It was almost as big as the one they’d taken from me. It gleamed in the bright moonlight, and you just knew it would be sharp.

I looked at the crying woman who was huddled beside the weathered tombstone. “Can you hold the circle?”

She glared at me, some of the heat of the look ruined by the tears. “I can hold my end up.”

“Good.”

“You’d better be as good as your reputation,” she said.

I nodded. “Yeah.” I knelt on the grave, knife in one hand, and grabbed Silas’s hair. I bent his neck back, and it was Nicky who said, “You only bend the neck back in the movies; it’s actually easier if you don’t hyperextend the tendons.”

I didn’t argue, just put the neck back to a more natural angle, and then put the blade against the throat. I dug the tip in and pushed deep as I pulled the blade across his throat. I’d forgotten what kind of power you got from killing a person. I’d only done it once before. And I had forgotten the kind of power you got from killing someone who wasn’t a person, but something more than human. I’d only done that once before, too. The power poured over me, through me; my skin vibrated with it, my bones ached with the thrum and beat of all that POWER. Oh, God!

The knife dropped from my hand to the grave, and I dropped to my knees with it. I put my bloody hands on the grave and visualized reaching down through the dirt and pulling her free of it, as if it were water and she were drowning and only I could save her. I screamed her name, “Ilsa Bennington, rise, come to me, come to me, Ilsa!” The dirt moved under my knees, against my hands. I shoved the power into the grave, into the pieces of body, and there was so much power. I felt her re-form, felt pieces come together that weren’t in the grave. The power remade her into something perfect and whole, and that something grabbed my hands through the dirt, and I pulled it from the grave.

She rose blond and dressed in white, her face in perfect makeup. Only her blue eyes were empty, and it took more than power to fill those up. I touched the still-bleeding neck wound on Silas and drew fresh blood across Ilsa Bennington’s lips. She blinked, and then a delicate tongue flicked out and licked that blood. She licked her lips, then she blinked again and she was suddenly in there.

She looked at the grave, and at me, and the body, and started to scream. Tony Bennington came and took her from the grave, comforting her, as she asked, “Why are we here? That’s a dead man? Tony, what’s happening?”

He walked his dead wife away from the grave, but the power from Silas’s death was still there, still in me, and now that the zombie was raised, the power beat through me again. It pulsed through me, hammered along my bones; I’d never felt anything like it. I fell onto the grave, writhing in the pain of it. The power wanted to be used. It was as if my necromancy had become something closer to the beasts inside me, or the ardeur , as if the power had a will of its own and that will wanted the dead.

Nicky knelt by me. “Anita, what’s wrong?”

“Too much power from the one death for just one zombie. Too much power for just that.”

“We’re in a cemetery; why raise just one?”

I looked up at him, and thought, why not? I got to my knees and put my hands back on the earth and I knew what the power wanted. I knew exactly what to do with it. I put my hands back on the grave and I cast the power down and out. I sent it out and out and out in an ever-widening circle until I touched every grave, every body, and I called, “Rise, rise to me. Rise!”

Ellen screamed, “No!” But she was too late, so too late.

The ground moved under our feet, like a small earthquake. The zombies crawled from their graves, but there were hundreds of them and even this much power couldn’t bring them back like I’d brought Ilsa Bennington back. These were the shambling, rotting dead, and they pulled themselves free of the earth.

The power hit Ellen’s circle and shattered it. I could suddenly feel Jean-Claude and knew that he was closer than two hours away. Every connection I had was suddenly back in place, and I could sense, smell, taste the skins of my men. They were all safe, and some of them were on their way. They’d followed the trail, but now I’d put up a metaphysical bonfire to guide them to me.

But it was Jacob who was yelling, “You stupid bitch. You didn’t just shield her from her people; you cut me off from ours. They were captured hours ago.” He hit Ellen hard enough that her body spun and lay still on the ground. He screamed his rage to the stars.

Ilsa Bennington was having hysterics. Only her husband’s soothing voice finally quieted her shrieks. She was screaming, “Ugly, they’re so ugly. Take me home, Tony, take me home!”

Jacob called out to Bennington as he moved through the cemetery of watching dead. “ Bennington, you have your wife just like you asked.”

“I do, she’s perfect.”

“Then transfer the rest of the funds.”

“I will once my wife is safely home.”

“Three of my men are captured. One of my men is dead; the other is lost to me, and I just hit Ellen harder than I’ve ever hit a woman before. Make the damn call now.” There was an edge of a growl in his voice.

Bennington looked offended, but he also looked a little scared. Maybe he was scared of Jacob, or maybe it was the zombies. There was plenty to be scared of in that cemetery. Bennington got a cell phone out of his expensive suit and made the call. “It should be in your account now.”