Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [192]
He hissed, “Shit,” under his breath.
Blood welled out, almost black in the starlight. Not a lot of blood, just a trickle along the edge of the cut. The blood began to glide out of the wound, and I rubbed my fingers through it. I turned with my fingers stained with Graham’s blood, turned to the zombie still waiting on the grave.
“Don’t touch me with that,” he said, and he recoiled away from me.
“Stand still, very still,” I said, and he froze in place, unable to move, or back away. Only his eyes showed, wide and frightened.
I had to stand on tiptoe to touch his face, and Requiem was at my arm, as I wobbled. “With blood I bind you to your grave,” I said.
Herman’s eyes didn’t get one bit less frightened.
I raised the machete up, and he made small protesting sounds, because I’d told him not to move and he couldn’t scream. I tapped him with the flat of the machete. “With steel I bind you to your grave.”
I spoke to Requiem, “The salt now.”
He turned and got the open jar that he’d laid down by the foot of the grave. He held it out toward me. I took a handful of salt, and I’d used the wrong hand and gotten blood in the white crystals. All the salt would have to be dumped. Damn it.
I turned to the frightened zombie and threw the salt on him. “With salt I bind you to your grave.” I waited for what should happen next, and prayed that this part, at least, would go like normal.
The fear, and fierce personality in those pale eyes began to fade, to leak away, until he stood open-eyed, but empty. His eyes were the eyes of the dead.
Relief poured through me, because if his eyes hadn’t gone dead, then we’d have had more problems on our hands than I wanted for tonight. But he was just a zombie, a really good, well-made zombie, but just a zombie. Yeah, he’d fought me, but he was just dead clay, like all the others.
“With blood, steel, and salt, I bind you to your grave, Edwin Alonzo Herman, go, rest, and walk no more.”
He lay down on the ground like it was a bed, and then he simply sank into the ground. I moved us off the grave, so that that heaving, shifting earth settled around him, without us having to go along for the ride. When it was over, the ground was undisturbed. It looked as it had when we’d first walked up, like an old grave in an old cemetery.
“Wow,” Graham said into the silence, “wow.”
“Wow, indeed,” Requiem said, “you are very good at this.”
“Thanks. There are aloe baby wipes in the Jeep for cleaning up. First aid kit for Graham, then get me back to the club.”
“As my lady commands, so shall it be done.”
I looked at the tall vampire and frowned at him. “There’s going to come a time between us when I’m going to ask you to do something and you won’t say that.”
“How can you be certain of that?” he asked, and offered me his arm for the walk back to the Jeep. Graham was already packing everything up, except the machete, which I had cleaned with a rag for that purpose, and was oiling down with a cloth that I’d bought for the occasion. The two rags lived in the same bag, until one got bloody. Then it went in the trash. Organization is the key.
“Because, eventually, everyone says no.”
“You are terribly young to be so cynical,” he said.
“It’s a gift,” I said and put the machete back in its sheath, and that went on top of the bag that Graham had waiting. He was awfully efficient for a werewolf.
“No,” Requiem said, “it is not. It is something learned through harsh experience.”
Speaking of harsh experience, I had to check something. I knelt on the now pristine grave. I laid a hand on the hard ground.
“What are you doing, Anita?” Requiem asked.
“This zombie fought me more than most. It seemed more . . . real. I’m just checking to make sure that it is back to being bones and rags.”
“Why, what happens if he isn’t?” Graham asked.
I closed my eyes and opened just a little of that metaphysical hand that I’d had to squeeze back into a fist.