Guilty Pleasures - Laurell K. Hamilton [11]
Dolph had pissed somebody off, or he wouldn’t have been here. But Dolph, being Dolph, was determined to do the best job he could. He was like a force of nature. He didn’t yell, he was just there, and things got done because of it.
“Well,” he said.
That’s Dolph, a man of many words. “It was a ghoul attack.”
“And.”
I shrugged. “And there are no ghouls in this cemetery.”
He stared down at me, face carefully neutral. He was good at that, didn’t like to influence his people. “You just said it was a ghoul attack.”
“Yes, but they came from somewhere outside the cemetery.”
“So?”
“I have never known of any ghouls to travel this far outside their own cemetery.” I stared at him, trying to see if he understood what I was saying.
“Tell me about ghouls, Anita.” He had his trusty little notebook out, pen poised and ready.
“This cemetery is still holy ground. Cemeteries that have ghoul infestations are usually very old or have satanic or certain voodoo rites performed in them. The evil sort of uses up the blessing, until the ground becomes unholy. Once that happens, ghouls either move in or rise from the graves. No one’s sure exactly which.”
“Wait, what do you mean, that no one knows?”
“Basically.”
He shook his head, staring at the notes he’d made, frowning. “Explain.”
“Vampires are made by other vampires. Zombies are raised from the grave by an animator or voodoo priest. Ghouls, as far as we know, just crawl out of their graves on their own. There are theories that very evil people become ghouls. I don’t buy that. There was a theory for a while that people bitten by a supernatural being, wereanimal, vampire, whatever, would become a ghoul. But I’ve seen whole cemeteries emptied, every corpse a ghoul. No way they were all attacked by supernatural forces while alive.”
“All right, we don’t know where ghouls come from. What do we know?”
“Ghouls don’t rot like zombies. They retain their form more like vampires. They are more than animal intelligent, but not by much. They are cowards and won’t attack a person unless she is hurt or unconscious.”
“They sure as hell attacked the groundskeeper.”
“He could have been knocked unconscious somehow.”
“How?”
“Someone would have had to knock him out.”
“Is that likely?”
“No, ghouls don’t work with humans, or any other undead. A zombie will obey orders, vampires have their own thoughts. Ghouls are like pack animals, wolves maybe, but a lot more dangerous. They wouldn’t be able to understand working with someone. If you’re not a ghoul, you’re either meat or something to hide from.”
“Then what happened here?”
“Dolph, these ghouls traveled quite a distance to reach this cemetery. There isn’t another one for miles. Ghouls don’t travel like that. So maybe, just maybe, they attacked the caretaker when he came to scare them off. They should have run from him; maybe they didn’t.”
“Could it be something, or someone, pretending to be ghouls?”
“Maybe, but I doubt it. Whoever it was, they ate that man. A human might do that, but a human couldn’t tear the body apart like that. They just don’t have the strength.”
“Vampire?”
“Vampires don’t eat meat.”
“Zombies?”
“Maybe. There are rare cases where zombies go a little crazy and start attacking people. They seem to crave flesh. If they don’t get it, they’ll start to decay.”
“I thought zombies always decayed.”
“Flesh-eating zombies last a lot longer than normal. There’s one case of a woman who is still human-looking after three years.”
“They let her go around eating people?”
I smiled. “They feed her raw meat. I believe the article said lamb was preferred.”
“Article?”
“Every career has its professional journal, Dolph.”
“What’s it called?”
I shrugged. “The Animator; what else?”
He actually smiled. “Okay. How likely is it that it’s zombies?”
“Not very. Zombies don’t run in packs unless they’re ordered to.”