Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [394]
I stood in front of the grave, though, since it had been nearly two hundred years in a cemetery that was as well-maintained as Sunset, there was no way for me to truly be sure of where the grave had been, not really. A lot of the graves had been moved here from smaller cemeteries over the years, as increased population had needed the land. But I had dropped just enough of my shields to know exactly where Edwin Alonzo Herman’s grave lay. His bones were under there, I could feel them.
To the watchers from the road who had paid for this show, it must have looked like I was standing a little far away from the impressive angel. But it had been my experience that once the zombie crawls out of the grave, the crowd always thinks they’ve had a good show. They’ll forgive almost any lack of showmanship on my part, once they’ve seen me raise the dead. Funny, that.
The crate with softly clucking chickens was near my feet. Graham had carried it and put it where I said to put it. No arguments. Once we left the Jeep, he went back into serious security guard mode. He was the unsmiling, business only person he’d been when I first saw him at the club. He was wearing a plain white T-shirt with his black jeans, jogging shoes, and his own short, leather jacket. He’d changed out of the Guilty Pleasures shirt without being asked. The joking, half-flirting man of a few minutes ago had vanished behind a very serious face and a pair of dark eyes that kept searching the cemetery, the people near us, and farther away, so he was very obviously aware of the perimeter. He seemed to vibrate bodyguard. I’d let the lawyers think he was and showed them the many bandages on my face, wrist, and fingers, to prove the necessity. No one had argued that this was private business and they didn’t like anyone but me here with them, once Graham put his dark gaze on their faces. He had a really good stare, a hardness to his face and eyes that did not match what he’d been like in the car. Interesting.
Requiem had carried my gym bag with all the rest of the zombie-raising equipment, except the chickens. I could have carried the bag, but it would have taken me two trips to get the chickens. They tended to squawk if you didn’t carry them upright and carefully. Since I was planning on killing them tonight, I tried not to scare them. I had to kill them to raise the dead, but I could make it as painless as possible. And fear definitely goes under the heading of pain in the wrong situation. Being a blood sacrifice probably qualifies as a wrong situation, even if you’re a chicken.
I’d persuaded Requiem to leave his long, black cloak in the Jeep, because in it, he looked like a cute version of the Grim Reaper. Out of it, he looked like he should have been going clubbing. Maybe it was the leather pants? Or the boots? Or the long-sleeved silk shirt in a deep green jewel tone that made his white skin almost shine in contrast. The shirt had made his eyes turquoise in the light, as if there was green in that bright blue somewhere. He’d been harder to explain than Graham, because even without the cloak, he didn’t really look like a bodyguard. He looked like what he was, and that was nothing that any of Herman’s descendants thought should be here tonight. The only walking dead they wanted to see tonight was Herman himself. I’d told them the vampire stayed, they could like it, or lump it. I also reminded them that I was not obligated to return their down payment if they changed their minds about raising Edwin Herman from the grave. I was here, ready to fulfill my part of the bargain.
When you start needing more than a hundred years worth