Chapter Text
"You know people stopped doing house calls for a reason," I drawled as we approached a pristine lawn, framed by a crescent of willow trees.
They'd have been very pretty if there'd been even the hint of a breeze to lend to the graceful look of them. A small, man-made lake reflected the perfect blue of the cloudless summer sky. Harold Gaynor's landscaper deserved a raise for keeping the place as verdant as it was in the midst of the boiling August heat.
I was dreading the moment we'd have to step out of the air-conditioned interior of Bert's newly acquired Benz. Though Bert couldn't come right out and say it without risking a lawsuit, it had been heartily implied that I should wear slacks to the office for the foreseeable future. A month ago I'd suffered second-degree burns at the hands of a vampire intent on torturing me to death. As a result, most of my left leg was a patchwork of reds, pinks, and browns. I hadn't been much of a skirt sort of girl before the incident, but it had been nice to have the option when the summer months rolled around.
Bert wouldn't fire me if I wore one. He couldn't even suggest a change of clothing or the addition of stockings to cover the scars. I was one of his best animators, and probably the only person in the United States that could do the sort of job that Harold Gaynor wanted done.
Still, the implication was there. I wore the damn slacks because I didn't like the second glances I got walking down the street. Yes, if they didn't like it, they didn't have to look. It was their problem. But when I was at work, I didn't fight Bert on it. There was too much on my plate to quibble over the dress code. Besides, this trip was business. Harold Gaynor was a very wealthy man and if the contract got stymied by something as trivial as my scars, I'd be in deep shit with Bert. I'd all but lost my consultancy job with Saint Louis PD and I didn't want to risk losing my main source of income as well. Bert didn't have to fire me to bleed me dry financially. Just limit me to the really old corpses, the ones that rolled around only every two to three months.
Animating was as old as time, but the sale of it was recent. Trust Bert to figure out a way to capitalize on what had once been just an embarrassing curse, religious experience, or something straight out of a freak show. Sometimes all three at the same time. My options were slim if I wanted to find employment like it elsewhere. The only other firms were in California or New Orleans, and I wasn't willing to move that far away from my family. I may not have liked most of them, but it'd break Grandma Blake's heart if I moved all the way to the west coast.
"It's a lovely place," Bert said conversationally as we crunched to a stop on the white gravel drive. He was completely ignoring me. A promising start to the day.
"Yeah," I said. One word, terse and uninterested.
Bert frowned at me. "You're angry."
"I don't see why we couldn't have done this in the office."
Where it was cool and I didn't have to limp around the place.
"Mr. Gaynor isn't comfortable meeting in public. He said the raising he wants done is time-sensitive and very personal."
Call me paranoid, but I didn't like the sound of that one bit. It was down in Animators Inc's corporate charter that our sessions worked along the same lines as HIPAA. Unless the client posed a threat to others or themselves, what they decided to disclose to the animators they hired was their business. I'd only been forced to report two clients in the time I'd worked there. The first had been a woman who wanted to raise the uncle who'd molested her in order to light his corpse on fire and watch him scream (which I sympathized with but couldn't legally condone.) The other had been a man who'd lied to me about the purpose of the zombie raising and had smuggled the corpse across state lines in order to sell it to a necrophiliac.
Still, it was standard practice to at least give the gist of what you were looking for. It was a long, grueling process to research a person's suitability for raising. Any number of things could cause the corpse to come back wrong. In that case, you ended up with flesh-eating zombies. Sometimes worse, depending on what happened to them in life. The fee for the research was almost as steep as the price of the actual raising. If Bert was skipping that initial step, this was definitely sketchy.
"How much is he offering, Bert?" I asked, hand on the door handle, delaying the inevitable moment I'd have to step out into the August heat.
July had been incredibly hot and humid, like the devil himself had been breathing down our necks. August was the reverse, with a month-long dry spell. Harold Gaynor's sprinkler system was probably spewing out enough water to fill his pond twice over to keep it looking as green as it was. I was in an incredibly uncharitable mood already and thought briefly about turning some of the protesters that plagued Animators Inc. on this guy. I knew at least a few of them were eco-terrorists as well.
Bert's lips quirked in a would-be innocent smile. "Does it matter?"
"Yes. If you want me to walk into that house and talk to a man about raising a zombie I know next to nothing about, I need to know at least what it's taken him to buy you."
If it had been anyone else, they'd probably have been offended at the assertion they could be bought. Bert just looked a little smug. If he'd been born in an earlier decade, I imagined he'd have been the sort to live in the pocket of the mob. He looked the part of an enforcer. He was 6'3" with broad shoulders, close-cropped white hair, and a frame with enough muscle to make the average man think twice about starting something. He was going slightly to seed now, but it didn't mean that he'd be a pushover.
Bert was a devotee of the almighty dollar and would do almost anything to acquire more wealth.
"Gaynor is offering one million."
"Fuck."
The word popped out of my mouth without my permission. I'd been expecting several times my usual rate, plus the research, and private consultancy fee. Depending on the age of the zombie and the reason for raising it, that could have put the price tag at twenty grand, easy. But a million? Who threw that money away on one corpse, no matter how personal the matter?
Now I knew something was off.
Bert chuckled knowingly, mistaking the curse as one of grudging appreciation. "And that's the starting offer. I'm betting if we haggle, I could get it up to a million and a half. He used to work on Wall Street as an investment banker before...well, you'll see. He's loaded."
And I had to wonder exactly what a former investment banker wanted with a zombie. I doubted Bert had been able to hear the particulars over the sound of the blood rushing straight to his groin. A million. Fuck. Gaynor could ask for damn near anything with that price tag and Bert would give it to him.
Bert pushed open his door and stepped outside. It let blistering summer heat reach into the car and grip my chest in one scalding hand. I shoved out of the car as well, wincing as the motion pulled at the taut skin on my left side. The vampire who'd scarred my leg had started at my ribs. I'd begun wearing sleeveless cotton blouses, simply because they breathed better than silk. Pretty and decadent as it might feel to wear on sheets or in the arms of a lover, it was less than pleasant on a burn.
The heel of one boot crunched on the gravel as I straightened to my full and incredibly average height. Bert frowned down at them, probably willing them to transform them into something more flattering, like pumps or stilettos. These were the fashionable kind that barely rose above the ankle and hid easily beneath the slacks. They weren't the more comfortable and infinitely more useful combat boots, so I didn't see where Bert had any right to bitch.
I reached into the interior of the car and retrieved the jacket that matched the slacks, throwing it on over the sleeveless shirt. I'd feel like shit the entire time I was forced to wear it, but it beat the hell out of giving up the gun.
"Is that really necessary?" Bert asked, pursing his lips in distaste.
"The last time you convinced me to do work for clients outside of the office I was almost killed. Do you remember that Bert?"
He had the decency to flinch at the reminder. I wasn't sure if it was genuine empathy over the injury and near-death-experience or if he still shuddered to think how much revenue he'd lose without me. Because I was a giving soul, I put it down to both.
Near-death experiences weren't anything new to me. I'd been a registered Vampire Executioner with the state of Missouri for three years now. Once the official numbers for August rolled in, I'd be at a hundred and forty kills. Most of them in morgues all across the state when the state or local authorities weren't equipped or didn't have the stomach to execute their vampire felons. It wasn't any different than someone flipping the switch on the electric chair or pushing the buttons to administer a lethal injection. Just a job.
Have stake, will travel.
I'd earned myself the nickname "The Executioner" from the vampires. I had the highest kill count in my home state and was close to having the title for the whole of the U.S. if I didn't already. But those were only the official kills. I knew people with scarier resumes than mine. I knew the man the vampires called "Death" personally. He'd deigned to train me all those years ago. Maybe that was why I was as good as I was. Maybe it was inborn talent. But the student wasn't about to surpass the master any time soon. At the end of the day, I didn't have the sort of stomach it took to take money to kill innocents, the way he did. And there were innocents, even among vampires.
But the District Serial Murders were different. Bert had agreed to a meeting with Willie McCoy, an ex-friend of mine, and the emissary for the Master of Saint Louis, taking cash in exchange for the dubious pleasure of my company. Willie had blackmailed me, using proof of magical malfeasance to make me cooperate with the then-master's demands. The case had almost physically disabled me and had the potential to drive me to drink.
"Keep it hidden," he said finally.
My smile was tight and unamused. "That's what concealed carry means, Bert. It's a little obnoxious to be flashing it everywhere I go."
"Don't scare him. This is big. Who knows? We could get backing and set up offices all over the U.S."
I didn't think there was enough animating talent in the U.S. to staff them, personally, but that didn't preclude bringing in people from other countries. In Russia, Ukraine, the Middle East, and India, animators weren't just regarded as freakish. They could be jailed or killed. Applying for a work visa and getting the hell out of their country might be their only ticket to surviving long-term. Bert probably didn't think of it along those lines, but it wasn't a bad idea overall.
I shrugged. "It won't come out unless he threatens us first."
Bert looked askance at me, not believing a word. Maybe I should have been wounded. This time I'd actually meant it.
He eventually decided to let it go and we started up the drive toward the house. It was built in the English Tudor style, which I knew courtesy of the many seasons of Grand Designs Grandma Blake had binge-watched while I stayed over. She'd have liked Gaynor's home. Stately without being overdone. The white stone that made up most of the front reflected the sun back in our eyes as we approached. I'd left my shades in the car, at Bert's insistence. Eye-contact was crucial for friendly contractor-contractee interaction, or so he told me. Bert was like that. Genial, superficially charming, with a perfectly white smile that was designed to part the gullible from their money.
I tended to operate on two settings. Brusque and bitch. The line was thin at the best of times, and difficult to dance when I was hurting, stressed, or pissed off. Today I was all three. That boded well.
Bert must have sensed my irritation, because he changed the subject, trying to lift my mood.
"I hear the bill you had a hand in drafting has finally made it to the House of Representatives. If it's approved by the Senate and signed by the president, it'll be a landmark moment. You'll be a little part of history."
If this was his best attempt to cheer me, he really had a lot to learn about what made me tick.
"It should have been done a long time ago," I muttered. "Zombies as field labor? On oil rigs or down in mines? Even if you take out the gross moral turpitude, it's a disaster waiting to happen. Even the best animators can't keep them going forever. They don't have enough of a mind left to do the job for long. And it is wrong. They were people once, Bert. The dead deserve rest."
"Most of them were unidentified or intentionally willed their bodies to medical science or labor camps. You understand why there's pushback, don't you? Having them work in pesticide-laced fields and other dangerous jobs saves human lives."
"They had human lives once. The animators should be finding their families, not putting them to work. The law preventing the interrogation of a zombie worker is sick. John Doe and Jane Doe zombies deserve their justice too."
"Maybe it'll go through."
"Yeah, maybe." Bert didn't truly care about the zombies, just the publicity this law had the potential to bring to his firm.
We finally reached the front steps and Bert knocked sharply on the oak-paneled front door. It swung open in one smooth motion, revealing a broad-shouldered man wearing an orange polo shirt. It strained taut across a barrel chest. He'd probably have biceps to match the rippling muscle the shirt failed to hide but it was difficult to tell with the dark sports jacket he wore over the polo. When he shifted I got a good look at the shoulder holster beneath the jacket. That wasn't what worried me though. In the good ol' U.S. of A. anyone could arm themselves, and security (which this man almost certainly was) would find it necessary.
No, it was the Spetsnaz Ballistic Knife strapped to his waist that gave me pause. Ballistic knives with a spring-operated blade were illegal not only in the State of Missouri but nationwide, I was fairly sure. Maybe Gaynor didn't know his flunkie had it, but I was doubting it. And I was fairly sure it wasn't an accident he'd flashed me both the gun and the knife. This guy wanted me to know he was armed.
I was betting Gaynor wanted me to know it as well. The nebulous feelings of unease solidified and lodged like a pit in my gut. This was going to end badly. We should turn and walk away.
But Bert was already stepping past the bodyguard, who'd angled himself to let us pass, making his introductions as he did so. I stared at his back in mute frustration as he sidled down the hall. Damn Bert and his ambition. Damn it all to hell.
He craned his neck to look at me. He was still grinning, the greedy, short-sighted bastard.
"You coming Blake?"
The lemming was determined to take a dive off the cliff. The least I could do was try to catch him before he killed himself. With I sigh, I stepped in after him, wincing when the door clicked shut moments later. The guard fell into step behind us. I had a tingling feeling between my shoulder blades like he'd stick the knife in at any second.
"Yeah," I grumbled. "I'm coming."