Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [181]
Hands met mine through the shifting earth, cool fingers wrapped around my warmth. Edwin Alonzo Herman’s hands wrapped around mine like a swimmer who’s given up hope and finally touches a rope. The grave threw him upward like a flower springing free of the earth, but the push of it forced me to pull him upward, to find my feet with Requiem steadying me. If the vampire hadn’t been there to hold me standing on the writhing, twisting ground, I would have fallen. But Requiem kept me standing, and I pulled the dead man from his grave, pulled him perfect and whole, until he stood taller than me, with the grave dirt falling away from a perfect black suit that looked as if it had been freshly pressed. His hair was balding with a thick fringe just above the ears and down the collar, and thick sideburns that curved to a walrus thick mustache. He was portly, nearly fat, which had been in style among the rich. When Edwin Alonzo died, only the poor were skinny, only the poor looked starved.
I felt Richard still standing by the edge of that small stream. The air was cooler by that musical run, and his pulse was beginning to slow from the run, the light sweat starting to cool on his skin. He wasn’t afraid, or horrified. He simply stood rooted to the ground, steadying me with the pulse and beat of his body, the thick musk of wolf faint in the autumn air.
I stared up at the zombie, and even to me, it looked like damn good work. With a big enough blood sacrifice I could raise a zombie that looked alive, close at least, but this, this was perfect. His skin looked full and healthy in the starlight. He had a faint smile on his face, and his clothes looked as if he’d just put them on. Even his shoes were near spotless and gleaming with polish. Polish so shiny I noticed by moonlight. The hands that were pressed to mine were cool, but they didn’t feel dead. He wasn’t breathing, but he looked, felt, more alive than dead. It was unnerving. I’d known there was a lot of power tonight, and I’d had to force all of it into this one grave, so I guess it was alright that he looked this good, but for a moment when I looked into that plump, smiling face, I was afraid. Afraid that I’d done more than I’d been paid for, but when I reached his eyes, I let out a sigh of relief. The eyes were thick and full and looked, again, perfect, grayish in the starlight, probably would be blue in the brighter light, but there was no one home in those eyes. They were empty and waiting. I knew what they were waiting for, those empty eyes.
I lifted my left hand away from the zombie’s, and he didn’t cling to me, his fingers just opened as I moved. I held my hand at shoulder level, toward the vampire at my back. “Undo my bandage.”
Requiem kept one hand on my shoulder, but used the other hand to peel back the tape on my wrist.
“Take it off,” I said.
He finally ripped the bandage away. I couldn’t stop a small jerk of pain.
Richard called inside my head, “What are you going to do?”
“He needs blood, so he can speak. I didn’t kill an animal. This is all the blood I’ve got.”
He didn’t say anything, but I felt his pulse begin to pick up speed.
I offered my wrist upward to the slightly taller body in front of me. Something slid through those pale eyes, something I’d seen before in the better preserved zombies. It was as if something went through them, something that paused in their eyes, as if there were darker things waiting, waiting for a chance for a body to inhabit. Something, not so much evil, as just very, very not good. But that whiskered face turned toward my wrist, sniffed the air, and the moment it scented the blood, that otherness in its eyes vanished. Driven out by the promise of something that all the dead value, a bit of the living.
The zombie grabbed my arm with both of its hands and smacked its mouth against my wrist like you’d grab a kiss from your dearest lover. Just the impact hurt the wound, made me gasp. But I knew what was coming, because I’d fed zombies off my own blood before. Not often, but often enough. The mouth locked around the wound, and