Chapter 1
The dead man chased me through the graveyard.
My breath rasped in my throat as I ran for my life. With each labored gasp I tasted the Arturo Fuente 858 I’d enjoyed after dinner. It didn’t taste as good coming up as it did going down. I ducked between grave stones and marble monuments like a scared quarterback hustling through a broken field of meth-snorting linemen. The dead man right behind me meant to do more than tackle me; he meant to snuff my life out and roll what was left of me into a hole.
I’d already killed him twice. He hadn’t taken the hint.
Mud splashed up from the soaked grass as I ran. My shirt darkened with sweat and mud and my ponytail beat on my collar.
Trying to stay alive is hard work, but I’ve found that not dying is a great motivation to work hard.
I fumbled a spare magazine into my Glock 19. The antique crystal rosary wrapped around my left hand hindered my usually flawless exchange, but I wasn’t overly worried about technique at this point.
I held the power of Christ in one hand and a 9mm pistol in the other.
The sacred and the profane.
My life in a nutshell.
I dodged sharp left around an ancient concrete mausoleum, the edges melting into the gray of curdled milk. On the other side stood a full-size statue of the Blessed Mother Mary. This was a good place to make my stand. The Holy Mother was one of my patrons. She held me close as she holds all the children of men. She’d once held the man whose body now shambled after me. The decaying flesh no longer held the original soul, now passed into the Light: the shell that pursued me was inhabited with the twisted fury of a dark spirit bound by a sorcerer’s will.
A zombie is hard to stop. The undead flesh is rotting and the nerve ends don’t work. Only the force of will and intention from the dark spirit keeps the body moving. They shamble, they drag, they stumble.
But they never stop and they have incredible strength.
So my Zen koan for the night was “How do you kill the undead?”
The first magazine of 9mm I’d put into the zombie didn’t slow it down. When it first came out of the bushes along the bike path off Nicollet Street, I thought it was a mugger, so I treated it like one. I drew my Glock 19 from my Philly Holster Appendix Rig and put a burst of Hornady Personal Defense into its chest.
The gunfire was loud. If anyone else was out on the moonlit path, the shots would have cleared them away. Five rounds of high-performance 9mm into the upper chest would have gotten a mugger’s attention, according to my gun-fighting mentor Dillon, whose presence I keenly missed right about now.
The lack of effect on the zombie was what he would call a clue.
Another burst of 9mm verified my initial impression.
If not an undead, or some other variety of hostile paranormal, it was a bullet-resistant mugger. So flight was called for. I don’t have the ability to fly in the Middle World, but I can run. If required.
Tonight was such an occasion.
Running isn’t my thing. I consider it pointless pain except when truly necessary. In my normal day running’s not necessary. It also isn’t my style. One thing I’ve learned in my life—and my extended spirit apprenticeship—was that you must face that which you fear.
So I stopped and turned to face it.
And to catch my breath.
The undead had been a big man. Over six feet tall. A broad frame only slightly diminished by his brief stay in the grave. The remains of an expensive dark suit rippled with pulses of the energy that kept dead bones and meat moving. He would have been handsome, with sharp pronounced cheekbones and a square jaw. Now the skin was sallow and pulled taut over the bones. The eyes yellow and red with sorcerous fury. Blackened lips drew back across yellowed teeth in a feral smile.
“Shaman.…” it hissed.
“Yes,” I said. “That would be me.”
The yellowed shirt beneath the dark suit coat leaked fluid from the holes my 9mm had punched in the chest. Center of mass hits don’t mean much when the heart and plumbing in there no longer function. That doesn’t apply to me. I’m a fragile bag of meat and water. The supernatural strength that drove the undead across from me would enable it to choke the life out of me and tear my lifeless form to pieces.
But I knew what I was dealing with.
And I knew what to do.
The rosary wrapped snug around my hand, I held my pistol in a strong Isosceles and carefully aimed my Glock.
“Sword of Michael…” I murmured.
I shot twice. Once in each undead knee.
If they can’t stand, they can’t hurt you. Shattering the leg’s bony structure robbed the creature of its ability to walk. It toppled and before it struck the ground I saw surprised rage pass across the decaying face. It went down as though praying. Then it raised its head, looked at me, and began ripping into the wet manicured sod with clawed fingers.
Two more carefully aimed shots, one for each elbow, brought it to a stop.
It raised its head.
“You’re delaying the inevitable, Marius,” it whispered. “Sooner or later…”
I squatted down. “Who sent you?”
A cackle like branches scraping across the icy glass of a winter’s window.
“So many hate you, Marius. So many grievances…is it someone here, or someone who’s come back, or…?” it said.
“I compel you,” I said.
The dead face twisted. It gagged from a rotting throat.
The voice changed. Sickly sweet words, obscenely feminine: “You cannot compel me, shaman. I am bound to no living flesh…”
I holstered my Glock. I took out a squeeze bottle of Holy Water. I took a deep breath, gathered myself and called upon the Powers of Light.
“Michael, Mighty Archangel, General of the Mighty Warriors of Light on Earth, I call on you for your help…cleanse this flesh of the Dark Forces in the name of Creator God and by the power of Jesus Christ, rebuke this unclean spirit and cast him out of this vessel!” I shouted. I sprayed Holy Water over the undead.
The corpse rippled like a pond in a strong wind. Darkness rose out of it. Black mist on a midnight moor.
“We’ll be back, shaman. We’ll be back…” whispered a disembodied voice.
I continued with the clearing. “Michael and Uriel, Mighty Archangels, I call on you for your help…enclose this spirit in a super bubble of Divine Light, contain it so that it may do no more harm…”
The trees bowed as a wind rose from nowhere. With the vision that is not-vision, the seeing that is not-seeing, the gift of shamanic sight, I saw the dark spirit struggling within a bubble of light, surrounded by the Warriors of Light taking it away—
—And one mighty figure surrounded in blue light paused to look back.
Michael the Archangel. General of the Legions of Light. Protector of the Sons and Daughters of the Light.
He faded away, leaving only the memory of light in the darkness.
I stood. I replaced the rosary in the velvet bag I wore around my neck. Put the Holy Water back in my pocket. The corpse on the ground began to draw in on itself. A bright light in the center of the chest drew it in like a whirlpool of light. Then it was gone.
Faint and far off were distant sirens.
My strength ebbed from me. I spurred myself into a slow jog to the edge of the cemetery. I slowed to a walk on the pavement, cut across the street, and headed for home. I hurried past well tended houses slowly lighting themselves up as my neighbors woke to the dawn.
What a night.
The Dark Forces were back. With a vengeance. And they’d sent an advance party to deal with me.