Shaded Vision

Camille let out a harsh snort. “That figures,” she said, but then bit her lip. “I’m sorry. It’s a knee-jerk reaction.”

“Once you’re in the chat room and forums, we can sort through and see if we can find any information to help.” I pushed the laptop back after setting up Shamas’s new e-mail. “What next? We can’t register him until we get the proxy server going with Tim, and I don’t think he’d appreciate being woken up at…” I glanced at the clock. “Oh man, at four thirty in the morning.”

Menolly suddenly jumped out of her chair. “I know where we saw that table! Motherfucking pus bucket.” Her eyes turned bloodred and her fangs descended. “If I’m right, and if it’s what I think it is, I’m going to feast on Wilbur’s blood tonight.”

“Wilbur?” I frowned, trying to remember. We’d been inside his house a couple of times, Menolly a couple more than the rest of us, since she was usually the one who showed up on his doorstep when we needed his help.

A blurry memory of standing in his dining room filtered into my head. The cramped chamber had held a large, old china hutch that was filled with books instead of dishes, and there had been several dusty plants, and…a dining room table. The table I’d described. “You’re right! Wilbur! That’s his table.”

“I knew it!” Menolly started to slam the wall, but Morio caught her wrist. She glared at him for a moment, then stopped. “Sorry.”

“You would have put a hole through it.” He held on to her wrist for a beat longer than he needed to, then stopped, looked at her, then Camille, and let go. Menolly pulled her hand back.

“We need to pay Wilbur a little visit,” she said. “We can do that now. I don’t mind waking him up this early.”

I sighed. “Might as well. Camille, you coming?”

She nodded. “Sure. But I want Smoky and Shade with us. That should be enough. If we show up en masse and we’re wrong, we’ll ostracize someone who has been, up till now, a valuable if questionable ally. Morio and Roz, you two wait near his porch. The rest of you stay here and keep an eye on the house.”

She stood up. “I guess we’d better get dressed. I sure hope to hell we’re wrong. I’d hate to think he’s been plotting against us.” She yawned. “What I want to know is why these things can’t happen when we’ve had more sleep? An hour just isn’t going to cut it for the day.”

The thought of being betrayed by Wilbur stung. He wasn’t a close friend. In fact, he was a lecher who looked straight out of a ZZ Top music video. A fairly powerful necromancer, he was rude and lewd and had a pet ghoul named Martin who had once been an accountant. But he had helped us more than once, and the possibility that he was working with our enemies would be a harsh blow.

“If he is helping them…” I glanced over at Menolly.

“Then we take him out.” She shook her head. “If he’s on the other side, he’s dead. No excuses. I’m going to change. I’ll meet you up here in ten minutes.” Turning toward the bookcase, she straightened her shoulders and headed down to her lair.

Camille gave me a look that mirrored my own feelings. If we discovered Wilbur had stabbed us in the back, we wouldn’t have to worry about him retaliating. Menolly would bleed him dry before we could even touch him.

I gave her a faint smile and shrugged. “I guess…we’d better get dressed.”

Wilbur’s house was known in the neighborhood as “the old London house,” though we had no idea why it had been named that. Another Victorian built in a similar design to ours, it was three stories high, but there the resemblance between it and ours ended. Wilbur had no illusions about keeping his property tidy. While it wasn’t an issue of junker cars and old refrigerators on the lawn, the driveway up to his house was overgrown with brambles and vine maple.

Wilbur had an old truck, one of those pickups with a rounded top and a running board. He also had a beat-up 1957 Chevy with the tail fins, in a bright cherry red and white. He tore out of his drive on a regular basis, and I wondered if the cops had ever flagged him down for speeding.

We walked down the driveway and across the road to his place, the tension so palpable I could feel it. Menolly was wearing a pair of her stiletto boots—the ones she used to put holes through her enemies. Camille, Smoky, and Shade were all dressed for a fight. And I was wearing jeans, a turtleneck, and pair of Doc Martens. Morio and Roz lagged behind, yawning and quietly whispering together.

I glanced at the sky. Sunrise wouldn’t come for over another two hours and it was still dark, but a low, overhanging bank of clouds had moved in, lighting the ground with a faint glow. Though the rain had let up in the evening, it now loomed heavy, moisture saturating the air. The scents of cedar and fir drifted past and I closed my eyes, inhaling deeply. The fragrance of the trees surrounded me with a comforting embrace, and I wished that this could just be a nice stroll down the road.

Camille slipped her hand into mine. “I know. I know.”

“You know what?” I gave her a soft look.

“I don’t like this, either. I don’t like not being able to trust someone we’ve come to trust. I don’t like thinking that he might have duped us. We should be asleep, at home, instead of heading over like a gang of thugs to break into his house and check out his table.” She stopped in her tracks. “Great gods, that sounds ridiculous.”

“Yeah, I just wish it were ridiculous. But it’s not.” We trudged our way up his driveway, avoiding the potholes. I skirted a patch of stinging nettle that reached out from the side of the road. The feel to the land was odd, but rather than feeling evil, it made me shiver, as if I were being watched.

When we got to the porch, I moved to the front with Menolly. “Let me do the talking,” I said. “You’re likely to just rip out his throat.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You know me too well, Kitten. All right, but don’t try to stop me if we discover…”

“If he’s ratting us out, you can do what you like.” We clattered up the stairs, Camille, Smoky, and Shade bringing up the rear. Morio and Roz waited at the bottom of the stairs. I steeled myself, wondering how the hell we were going to approach this, and finally forced myself to reach out and press the doorbell.

No answer.

I pressed again. This time, I heard a shuffling from behind the door and after a moment, it opened to show Martin, in all his undead glory, standing there. In a suit that smelled about five days ripe, he cocked his head—the metal brace around his neck made it difficult for him to turn it too far—and grunted. After a moment he backed up, opening the door.

Wondering what the hell was going on, I cautiously entered, followed by Menolly. The scent of sulfur wafted through the air, mingled with a whiff of mold, a tinge of damp upholstery and…something else. Burned flesh? No, not quite.

Martin reached out and for a moment, I was afraid he was going to attack me. Menolly had already broken his neck last year when Wilbur first moved into the neighborhood. But instead, he touched me on the sleeve, then closed his hand around my wrist. The clammy feel of his skin gave me the creeps—it wasn’t the same chill of Menolly’s flesh—but he just gave Menolly a quick glare and pulled me after him.

I followed him, with Menolly and the others behind me, as he led me through a narrow hallway, the walls covered with dusty tapestries, to the kitchen. A woodstove sat to one side, and a teakettle and cast-iron skillet were sitting on the stove. Right there, I saw what the other scent I’d been smelling was. It looked like someone had been attempting to cook, but the eggs were still raw and smeared across the cooktop, and a raw piece of steak sat on the sideboard, covered with maggots.

Gagging, I turned away and glanced around the rest of the kitchen. There was the table—the design exactly the way I’d seen it in the vision. I slowly moved over to it, rubbing my hand on the wood. The polished surface was smooth. The wood had been well oiled, taken care of in a way that belied Wilbur’s rough nature.

Martin grunted again, and I turned to find him pointing at a door next to a built-in shelf unit. I glanced at him. If it weren’t for the fact that he was a ghoul, I could swear I was seeing a look of concern in his eye.

“We’d better have a look.” I motioned to Camille. “You and Shade keep an eye on Martin, please. Smoky, Menolly, follow me.” I gently tapped Martin on the arm. “Go stand over there.” After repeating myself several times, he finally shuffled over next to Shade and stared up at him, his eyes glowing. Whether he sensed the Netherworld energy coming off the shadow walker, I’m not sure, but he seemed to find Shade terribly fascinating.

I cautiously put my hand on the doorknob and quietly turned it, opening the door to reveal a stairway heading down. A basement, most likely. With a glance at Menolly, I started down the steps, doing my best to keep from making noise.

Halfway down, I heard a faint groan. It sounded like someone in pain. Concerned, I hastened my pace. By the time I reached the bottom of the stairs, the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up.

The basement was dim, with a single bulb illuminating the room. The room was long and wide, with built in floor-to-ceiling shelving units partitioning off various sections. The shelves were filled with cans and jars and boxes, but overall, the space was organized and far neater than I’d thought Wilbur’s basement would be.

“Is anybody down here?”

No answer. I closed my eyes, trying to suss out the energy, but that was Camille’s department. I turned to Menolly and gave her a questioning look. She shook her head, and we glanced over at Smoky. He was frowning, sniffing the air.

After a moment, he pushed past me and headed around one of the shelving units, with us following. We found ourselves plunged into darkness—the light couldn’t penetrate through the packed shelves. I pulled out a flashlight and flipped it on, shining it into the floor. There, in the gloom, lay Wilbur.

“Wilbur!” Before I thought about what I was doing, I knelt beside him, feeling for a pulse. He was still alive, and he let out a faint wheeze, turning his head to shade his eyes from the flashlight as he looked up at me.

Menolly knelt on his other side. “Wilbur, can you talk? Wilbur? Can you understand me?”

He winced, managing to raise one hand to rub his head. His lips were cracked and chapped, and I wondered how long he’d been down here. He looked gaunt, and Wilbur wasn’t a gaunt person. He was a burly guy who never missed a meal. By the looks of things, Martin had tried to bring him food—there were scattered plates around with hot dogs and raw eggs and other delightful concoctions on them.

“Wilbur, can you speak to us?” Menolly frowned. “I don’t want to lift him up because we don’t know what happened—if anything’s broken. Call Sharah or Mallen. We need a medic here.”

“Please ask Camille to call.” I motioned to Smoky and he retreated up the stairs. As he left, I took the light and flashed it up and down Wilbur’s body, looking for signs of blood or broken bones. He had peed his pants and, by the smell, probably defecated, but if he’d been down here for some time, he wouldn’t have been able to help it. As I shone the light down his legs, I noticed that one of them was twisted in a direction that no leg should be twisted.

“Holy crap, look at that.” I motioned for Menolly to take a look.

“Broken, possibly crushed.” She took the light and examined his head. He murmured something, but we couldn’t understand what he was saying. “I think there’s dried blood on his head—skull fracture, maybe?” Another look-see at his arms and we found that one sleeve of his denim jacket was covered in dried blood, the material stuck to his skin.

As I stood up, preparing to go get some water so we could moisten his lips, a noise—like the crackling of lightning—sounded from the other side of the basement. Taking the light, I made my way over to the buzzing. As I peeked down the aisle next to the shelves, a shimmer caught my eye from the very end.

I slowly approached, wondering what the hell it was, when a loud flash sent me reeling against the wall. The next thing I knew, I was on my back, and the flashlight had rolled away from me. As I started to sit up, I found myself facing what appeared to be a Tregart. In front of him stood two zombies. And they were heading toward me.

Chapter 12

“Crap!” As the zombies came at me, two things became abundantly clear. One—these zombies moved faster than normal zombies. Not a good thing. And two—maybe, just maybe, Wilbur wasn’t the one betraying us. The jury was still out on the latter, but there was no time to dwell on it. As I rolled to the side and ducked away from a fist that came raging down to hit the floor, I was becoming more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. That blow could have split my skull. Just like somebody had split Wilbur’s.

I came up, swinging with my dagger. As Lysanthra made contact with the zombie’s arm, it let out a muted roar and pulled back. A lot of undead didn’t like silver. And she sang with the metal.

“Menolly, get over here now!” As I shouted, the zombies surged forward again. I leaped to the side, trying to dodge both of them. Zombies were brainless, no better than automatons. They would fight until destroyed.

The Tregart stood in back of them, arms crossed, watching with a bemused smile on his face. Apparently, he didn’t think much of my chances. And that assessment didn’t set well with me.

Realizing they were caging me into a corner, I decided it was time to get out of there and into some open space. The basement ceiling was fairly high—an advantage for me—and I’d been working out a lot over the past few weeks. I slid my dagger back into her sheath as I gauged how far I’d have to jump to get out of their way, then coiled and sprang. Using the wall as a springboard, I catapulted myself over the heads of the zombies. Only I miscalculated and ended up directly in front of the demon.