J Duncan - Deadworld

Shelby reached out and took her hand. “What is my aura telling you now?”

Laurel swallowed hard, embarrassed that she was actually embarrassed. Okay, she had not been on a date in forever, but still. The woman’s touch sent goose bumps down her spine. “It’s telling me that maybe there’s another meeting in store for us. Soon.”

She squeezed Laurel’s hand and laughed. “God, I certainly hope so. I haven’t wanted someone so bad in years.” Shelby leaned over and kissed her quickly and then sat back on her motorcycle, zipping the leather jacket up to her neck. “It’ll happen. I can promise you that, but I need to get back out there. I can sense that fucker Drake in the area. It’s weird that he keeps fading in and out like this, but we’ll track him down. He wants us to find him, after all.”

“Call us if you do,” Laurel insisted. “Don’t take him on by yourself.”

“Worried about me?”

Again her cheeks began to flame. “You need to quit embarrassing me every two minutes.”

“It’s cute as hell though.” Shelby revved the engine and flicked on her blinker. “You telling Jackie what happened?”

“Yeah, I need to.”

“Will she believe you? Will she understand?”

Laurel shrugged. “Believe me, yes, even if she doesn’t understand it. What about Nick? Can you convince him to cooperate and help us?”

“I’ll talk to him again, but I don’t know. Part of me thinks he wants Drake to take him down.”

The thought sobered Laurel up in a hurry. “That’s no good.”

“Nope. He’s tired and full of guilt. Can’t blame him too much, really, but he can’t give up now. I think we might actually have a shot at Drake.”

“I hope so,” Laurel said.

“I know so,” Shelby said with a heartless smile. “He wants us to.” With that she gunned the BMW and roared off into traffic, taking the next corner nearly horizontal to the ground.

“Wow,” Laurel whispered, feeling the trailing cold tails of ghosts whip by her as Shelby vanished around the corner. The feeling lingered, however-cold and malignant.

Laurel turned and felt around, using her sense to home in on the spirit. It was near, a block or two at the most. Why had she not felt it earlier? There was something oddly familiar about it as well. Shouldering her purse, Laurel began walking down the sidewalk.

A cold wind picked up the closer she got to whatever it was. Whispering along with it, dark and unkind, came a voice. “Laurrrelll.”

It hit her then, why this spirit felt familiar. It had been the same one outside her window a couple days earlier, the one that had tried to claw its way through her protective charms. What was it doing over here?

The cell phone buzzed in her purse, reminding her she had yet to check in with Jackie. She could wait a few more minutes. She wanted to find this ghost before it stepped back into the world of the dead. Deadworld. Shelby had spoke as if it were a place you could go visit, like Holland or Bermuda. Shelby. The cool fingers on Laurel’s face had certainly not left her feeling cool. She grinned at herself, feeling light and a bit crazy. She might have a date with a vampire. What a strange world.

“Laurrrelll.”

There. A mini market across the street. She was sure of it now. Laurel waited for traffic to clear and hurried across to the corner store, its windows plastered with ads and posters for lotto tickets, cigarettes, beer, and other assorted healthy ways to spend one’s money.

Bells tinkled overhead when she opened the door and walked inside, looking much like any other inner-city mini mart one might walk into, crammed to the gills with overpriced convenience and an assortment of cheap, imported knickknacks. A young woman stood idly by the till, smoking a cigarette. The ghost was somewhere in the back.

Stepping around an end cap on the far side of the store, Laurel was surprised to see a materialized apparition, vaporous and not wholly formed, but definitely recognizable as a man. She studied him for a moment, but nothing about his features looked familiar.

“Hello?” she said quietly. “I can hear you. What do you want?”

It shimmered, a malevolent grin spreading across its face before it began to glow and stretch into smoky tendrils. Through this dim haze, darkness yawned open in the corner, and to Laurel’s amazement, an impeccably dressed man stepped through, wearing a dark blue suit with a crimson tie. His hair was short, graying, and combed straight back with a bit of a wave. It was thin enough on top that you could see his scalp peeking through in places. Your average fiftysomething executive. He smiled, but it was one of those humorless things that corporate types learned to plaster on their faces when meeting with clients or the competition.

And his gray, irisless eyes glowed like bright, hot coals.

“Good day to you, Ms. Carpenter. So good of you to come.”

Panic tried to claw its way out of her brain, but the signal to run had been short-circuited. Those eyes knew why. They knew everything. Deep, soulless eyes that gazed with the power of the Goddess herself, peeling away every last vestige of defense, exposing and revealing every horrible and hidden secret. There was no judgment in there, just the ambivalent acceptance that came from all things dead.

She absently fumbled in her purse for the cell phone, finding only the thin, painted empress card, and managed to squeak out three words. “And you are?”

“Drake, my dear, lovely woman. Cornelius Drake.” His smile stretched wider, revealing all his yellowing smoker’s teeth, and he stretched out a hand toward her. “Come. My car is out front. Let’s take a drive, shall we?”

Laurel extended her hand, watching it as if it were someone else’s, getting wrapped in the cold fingers of the grim reaper himself. His grip was comforting, reassuring, and-much like Shelby-Laurel knew she would do anything for him.

In their wake, the old empress card tumbled to the ground from Laurel’s other hand, its warning unheeded.

Once again Jackie stood in the entry of Nick Anderson’s house. He had given her the keys without even asking. She wanted to say a jail cell had made him cooperative, but he had given them to her as they’d walked into the FBI building.

“Go look,” he had said. “Save you the effort of getting a warrant.”

She had snatched the keys from his hand without reply and left him cooling his stubborn ass in a holding cell. Gamble and a handful of others were searching Shelby’s house. She didn’t expect them to find anything. If there was something to find, Jackie figured Nick’s place would be where they would find it.

Nick had said something about Shelby wanting blood to help find Drake, but the rest of the conversation was a blurred-out wash of noise. Anger and fear had been churning through Jackie so furiously that nothing Nick had to say mattered. The fact that Shelby had attacked someone for blood, and Laurel had gone off with her, was enough. Now, in the quiet of Nick’s house, reason had crept back into Jackie’s senses. Laurel had likely just turned off her phone and forgot, but it was still unlike her, and the fact that Shelby did not answer either was worrisome. What if they had gone off on her motorcycle and crashed? They could both be dead in a ravine somewhere.

Jackie tried calling Laurel again for the twentieth time and clicked off when the voice mail began. “Damnit, Laur. You’re pissing me off.”

“What was that, Jack?” Agent Pederson stood in front of her, looking into the living room.

“Nothing. Just annoyed at Laurel.”

“Probably just got her phone off. I’m sure she’s okay.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’re right.” Jackie didn’t sound very convincing. “Take Warren and Smith down to the bedroom wing there. Summit, we’ll start upstairs in the loft.”