Micah (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 13)

I knew I was touching earth, but it didn't feel like dirt. It felt warmer, more like very thick liquid, and yet that wasn't it either. It was as if the earth under my hands had become part liquid and part air, so that my hands reached impossibly down and through that solid-seeming earth until fingers brushed mine. I grabbed at those fingers the way you'd grab at a drowning victim.

Hands grasped mine with that same desperate strength, as if they'd thought they were lost and my touch was the only solid thing in a liquid world.

I pulled my hands out of that sucking, liquid, airy earth, but something pushed as I pulled. Some power, some magic, something pushed as I pulled the zombie from the grave.

The zombie spilled upward out of the grave in a shuddering burst of dirt and energy. Some zombies crawl out, but some, most of mine lately, are just suddenly standing on the grave. This one was standing, his fingers still intertwined with mine. There was no pulse to his skin, no beat of life, but when he stared down at me, there was something in his dark eyes, something more than there should have been.

There was intelligence and a force of personality that shouldn't have been there until I put blood on his mouth. The dead do not speak without help from the living, one way or the other.

He was tall and broad, his skin the color of good, sweet chocolate. He smiled down at me in a way that no zombie should have done without first tasting blood.

I stared down at my hands still grasping his and realized that my hands had been covered in Micah's blood when I plunged them into the dirt. Had that done it? Had that been enough?

Voices were speaking, gasping, exclaiming, but it was all distant and less real than the dead man who held my hands. I knew he'd be very alive, because there'd been so much power. But even to me, the only thing he lacked was a pulse. Even by my standards it was good work.

"Emmett Leroy Rose, can you speak?" I asked.

Salvia interrupted me. "Marshal, this is highly irregular. We were not ready for you to raise Mr. Rose from the grave."

"We were ready," Laban said, "because the rest of us want to go home before dawn."

Rose's head turned slowly toward Salvia's voice, and his first words were "Arthur, is that you?"

Salvia's protests stopped in midsyllable. His eyes were wide enough to flash their whites. "Should it be able to do that? Should it recognize people?"

"Yes," I said, "sometimes they can."

Rose dropped my hands, and I let him. He moved toward Salvia's side of the circle. "Why, Arthur? Why did you order Jimmy to put the boy's body in my car?"

"I don't know what this thing's talking about. I didn't do anything. He was a pedophile. None of us knew it." But Salvia's words were a little too fast. I knew now why he'd been trying to delay the zombie-raising. Guilt.

Rose stepped forward, a little slow, a little uncertain, as if he looked more alive than he felt. "Me, a pedophile? You bastard. You knew that George's son was a fucking child molester. You knew, and you helped cover for him. You helped get him his kiddies, until he got too rough and killed that last one."

"You've done something to his mind, Marshal. He's babbling."

"No, Mr. Salvia, the dead don't lie. They tell the absolute truth as they know it."

Micah came to stand beside me, holding his wounded arm up and pressing on it. He seemed as fascinated with the walking dead man as the rest of them. He might never have seen a zombie before, but then he wasn't really seeing one now, not the kind most people call from the grave anyway.

Rose had come to the edge of the circle. "The moment you had Jimmy put the boy in my car, I was dead, Arthur. You might as well have put a bullet in me." He tried to take another step toward Salvia. The circle held, but I felt him push against it. That shouldn't have been possible. No matter how good the zombie, the circle should have been sacrosanct, inviolate. Something was wrong.

I called out, "Fox, your report said he died of natural causes."

Fox came to stand a little closer to the circle but not closer to Rose, as if he found the dead man a little unnerving. "He did. Heart attack. Not poison, or anything like that. A heart attack."

"You swear it," I said.

"I swear," he said.

"Why put Georgie's last victim in my car, Arthur?" Rose continued. "What the fuck did I ever do to you? I had a wife and kids, and you took me away from them the moment that body went in my car."

"Oh, shit," I whispered.

"What's wrong?" Micah asked.

"He blames Salvia for his death. Not the pedophile that hurt the kid." My stomach clenched tight, and I started to pray, Please don't let this go bad.

Fox said, "You'd think he'd blame the guy who put the body in his car."

"He blames Salvia because that's who ordered it done," I said.

"You're scared," Micah said softly. "Why?"

I spoke to Fox, trying to keep my voice low and not attract the zombie's attention. "A murdered zombie always does one thing first and foremost: it kills its murderer. Until its murderer is dead, no one can control it. Not even me."

Fox gave me wide eyes on the other side of the circle. Franklin had moved well back from the circle, from the zombie, from me. Fox whispered, "Rose wasn't murdered. He died of a heart attack."

"I'm not sure he sees it that way," I whispered back.

Rose screamed, "Why, Arthur!" And he tried to walk out of the circle. It gave, gave like a piece of plastic stretched tight by a pushing hand.

I yelled, "Emmett Leroy Rose, I command you to stay." But the moment I had to yell anything, I knew we were in trouble.

Rose kept trying to move forward, and the circle was no longer a wall. It was folding outward--I could feel it. I threw my will and power not into the zombie but into the circle. I yelled, "NO!" and threw that no, that refusal, into the circle. It helped. It was as if the circle took a breath that it had needed. But I'd never tried to do anything like this before. I didn't know how long it would hold the dead man.

The dead man turned to me and said, "Let me out."

"I can't," I said.

"He killed me."

"No, he didn't. If he'd really killed you, you'd be outside this circle right now. If you were the righteously murdered, nothing I could do would hold you."

"Righteously murdered." And he gave a laugh so bitter that it hurt to hear it. "Righteous. No, not righteous. I took money. I knew was dirty. I told myself that as long as I didn't do any of the illegal stuff, it was okay. But it wasn't. It wasn't okay." He glanced back toward the circle, but then his eyes were all for Salvia. "I may not have been a righteous man, but I did not know what Georgie was doing to those kids. I swear to God, I didn't know. And you had the body put in my car. Did you see the boy before Jimmy moved him, Arthur? Did you see what Georgie had done to him? He ripped him open. Ripped him open!"

And he hit the circle, hit it with his hands like he was trying to reach through it, and it gave. I felt it begin to tear like paper.

I screamed, "No! This circle is mine! Within the limits of this circle of power I command. I command, not you, and I say no, no, Emmett Leroy Rose, you shall not pass this circle."

Rose staggered back from the circle. "Let me out!"

I screamed, "No! Fox, get Salvia out of here!" Then something hit me in the arm. Hit me so hard that it spun me around. I fell to all fours. I couldn't feel my arm, but I was bleeding. I had a second to think, Oh, I've been shot, before Micah moved past me, standing in front of me. Standing between me and where the shot had come from. He was pointing. I heard the second bullet hit the gravestone behind me, a sharp ping of sound.

Salvia was screaming, "Don't shoot her! Don't shoot her, you idiot. The zombie is up--don't shoot her now. It won't do any good."

I crawled around the tombstone, putting it between me and the shooter. My arm worked enough to help me scramble across the ground. The feeling was even returning to it, which was good, because that meant I wasn't hurt too badly.

The downside was that I was hurt, and now my body knew it. The bullet had only grazed me, but whatever grazed me had been of a big enough caliber that I could see things in my arm that were never meant to be visible to the naked eye. I hate seeing my own muscle and ligaments. It means the shit has hit the fan, and I'm standing downwind.

Gunshots were sounding, this time going away from us and out into the night. The FBI were returning fire. Good for them. I used my left hand to get my right one moving, so I could get my gun out. I wasn't as good left-handed, but it was better than nothing.

I yelled, "Micah!" With bullets flying, I wanted him with me.

But it wasn't Micah who loomed over me. Rose bent his large dark shape over me, reaching for me. I ordered him, "Don't."

"Let me out," he said.

"No," I said. I fired into him, though I knew better than anyone there that bullets wouldn't do a damn thing.

He was a zombie; they didn't feel pain. He grabbed me and lifted me off the ground as I fired point-blank into his chest. His body rocked with the impact, but that was all.

Claws blossomed through his throat a moment before I realized Micah was on the zombie's back, only his hands in half-clawed form, like only the really powerful shapeshifters could do. But you can't kill the dead.

Rose smashed me down with everything that his more-than-human body had in it. I hit the gravestone. The inside of my head was suddenly filled with white starbursts, then the starbursts were crimson, and the inside of my head spilled to velvet dark, and that was all she wrote. The velvet dark, and nothing.