At the Behest of the Dead

“Long writes with graphic glee.”
—
Barbara McMichael, The Tacoma News Tribune

“Sign me up!”
—
Jonathan Maberry, New York Times Best Selling Author of Rot and Ruin series and Patient Zero

"Timothy W. Long brings his undead wit and wiseassery to the urban fantasy genre to fearsome effect. Necromancers, demons, and mayhem...what more could you want?"
—
Tim Marquitz, author of the Demon Squad series

"Definitely a writer to watch…"—
HorrorNews.net

"Clever, engaging and above all terrifying…"—
David Dunwoody, author of EMPIRE and EMPIRE'S END

http://timothywlong.com

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Also by Timothy W. Long

Beyond the Barriers
(Permuted Press)

Among the Living
(Permuted Press)

Among the Dead
(Permuted Press)

Among the Ashes
(Forthcoming, Permuted Press)

The Zombie Wilson Diaries

The Apocalypse and Satan’s Glory Hole

Z-Risen: Outbreak
http://z-risen.com

For Erikson, Donaldson, Jordan, Cook, and Abercrombie

“AT THE BEHEST OF THE DEAD”

By TIMOTHY W. LONG

http://timothywlong.com

Copyright 2013.
  All Rights Reserved

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of “Timothy W. Long,” except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead or undead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

Cover art and design: J.M. Martin |
NineWorldsMedia.com

Add'l
stock: wolverine041269 and indigodeep via deviantART

All quotes credited to The Bard – Shakespeare

“You wanna be a badass warlock? Start by looking like one.”

—Phineas Cavanaugh

Chapter One

I
t was a Wednesday when everyone started trying to kill me.

Carlisle called the
night before with a job.

Carlisle’s my agent. He calls about once a m
onth with an employment offer and for the most part, I take them. If I’m up against my house payment then there’s a good chance I’ll be tracking down a lost soul or trying to get a trace on a murder. When he read me the details of this case I almost laughed.

“An old lady lost her husband while he was walking their dogs in a park. That’s all you’re giving me?”

“What do you want, Phineas? They come to me with a sob story. Cops can’t help. I need a pro. They all want the same thing. Was it painless? Did he have any last words for me? You know the drill.”

“Yeah, his last words were ‘why in the hells did you send me out to walk a Pomeranian?’”

“Very funny. You want the job or what? If you’re busy I can shuffle the work off to Conover. He’s dying for something.”

“Stu? He’s dying because he’s ninety years old. I’ll do it
, but I wanna to go on record as not being thrilled.”

“Yeah, great. I’ll add that to your file. I keep one filled with all your bitching and moaning.”

“You’re all heart.”

“
Yeah. I am.”

I jotted down a few notes and then clicked off.

**

Mrs. Whitfield was a handsome woman with white curls and a pair of glasses complete with gold chain to keep them around her neck. When I opened the door to her knock I was surprised that she didn’t scare away every bug in the neighborhood. She wore
Eau de Mothball
perfume with a will. Her hair was done up in a bun and she sported a dress that was probably made, by her, in the sixties.

She was the spitting image of a schoolteacher from t
he same decade. I kept my smartass comments to myself and my knuckles buried in the sleeves of my robe.

I’
d learned that none of my prospective clients took me seriously if I answered the door in jeans and a t-shirt. So I kept a black robe that had shapes of moons, planets, and a magic wand sewed on the front and back near. As much as I would like to say the robe had some magical benefits, it was just a gimmick that was about as dangerous as a wet paper towel. In fact I had tripped more than once on the stupid hemline. Don’t get me wrong, warlocks do wear robes, but they’re normally imbued with some kind of properties or laced with otherworldly powers. That’s right; I said it, ‘otherworldly.’

“Mrs. Whitfield. I appreciate you stopping by
, but do you know what I do for a living?”

“Certainly.” She pushed her schoolteacher glasses up her nose with one finger as she gazed up at me. “You’re a witch that can
communicate with the dead. I didn’t think a witch would be so tall and normal.”

I covered my reaction with a cough.

My lanky frame towered over her at six feet five. She had a comfortable rotundness that made me think of the stereotypical grandmother cooking pies and reading stories to children.

“
Warlock. I’m a warlock, not a witch.” I corrected her, but didn’t add that I was necromancer for two reasons.

One,
because I didn’t feel like spending the next half hour explaining the difference.

Two
, because I tried not to say the ‘
Necro
’ word whenever possible. People just didn’t have respect for those that played patty cake with corpses.

“Right, a
warlock.” She nodded like she met my kind every day.

“I get impressions and sometimes they point me in the correct direction during an investigation.”

“So the ghosts don’t talk to you?”

“No ma’am. They just guide me. Now tell me what happened.”

“The police said that my Clarence was killed by a roving band of homeless men.”

I hadn’t seen anything in the newspaper or on TV and wondered if the cops had spun the story to protect her
. Maybe she was in denial and had constructed the story to explain away a gambling debt. Maybe her husband’s secret gay lover got angry.

One thing was for sure. If Carlisle was sending me on a wild goose chase I wanted money up front.

But Carlisle didn’t work that way. When I finished I’d get my cut. He was sort of like a pimp. A warlock pimp.

Go ahead. Laugh it up.

“Tell me more about your husband.”

“He was an ex-marine and a sweetheart. He took the dog to play at the park. He didn’t come home.”

“May I ask how he was killed?”

She sobbed, dabbed at her nose, and then looked up at me with red-rimmed eyes.

“He was killed very violently, Mr. Cavanaugh. He had over a hundred stab wounds to his body. Can you do the job?” Her face was very sad, especially her eyes. She had lost a loved one and I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to have a little heart for a change.

“Carlisle told you our fee? You also cove
r expenses for potions, formulas, blood work, and materials used in rites.”

“They went over the rates and I can pay. He’s dead and in the morgue. I don’t imagine you need any more blood work.”

“Wrong kind of blood work, ma’am.” I smiled. I didn’t tell her that I might have to find a remnant, bring it home, cleanse out any blood, and then consume it. A hundred years ago this was mystical. Warlocks thought they got life force or the thoughts of the dead from their blood. Now we knew about DNA and the tree of life it contained, but it was still cool to play it off as mysticism.

“Harold had some money in his life insurance
, but he was already sick so he took some of it out to get ready for the end.”

“Took some out?”

“Cancer, in the pancreas. It was terminal so the insurance company let him withdraw half of his policy. Do you know what that pancreatic cancer means, Mr. Cavanaugh?”

I nodded but didn’t speak.

I did indeed. Depending on how far along he had been, his life expectancy might have been months or it might have been a year. Either way he had dug into his policy and taken out money to pay for medicine and possibly chemo. Maybe he had planned to take the rest and run for Tijuana. Couldn’t blame a guy for wanting to die with a smile on his face.

When she looked down at her old and cracked plastic purse
, I took pity on her and said I would take a look and work out a discount rate with Carlisle if I felt like the case was worth pursuing. I was essentially giving away my services for free but I felt a hint of pity.

I don't really believe in karma, but come on. Sometimes it pays not to be a dick to little old ladies.

This mission was strictly exploratory. I wasn’t even planning to pack heavy. Just the basics. Check for a whiff and then high tail it to the house. I was already half convinced that Mrs. Whitfield was a flake anyway and her husband wandered away, probably to escape the cloying smell of mothballs that followed her. I’ve never in my life seen Bilbo, my two-pound tarantula, hide so fast as when she walked in the door.

Next time I’ll take notice of that little fact and set off the alarm bells myself.

**

I was up to my ball sack in muck, rain puddles, overgrown grass, and more than a few discarded beer cars before I realized that my prospects for the night weren’t loo
king so hot.

I should just get the words “expect the unexpected” tattooed on my palm. That way I could smack the hell out
of myself every morning.

It should have been an easy job
, but there were a couple of things I’d learned in my short existence. No job is ever what it seems and the client always fudges some facts.

It was dark
, without even a proper mist. If I was going to be traipsing through the woods at oh-dark-thirty, the least the ground could do was offer up a little bit of creep factor. Of course it was raining. You can’t go anywhere in this damn city without the clouds rolling in and pissing on you. Then there was the moon--also a no-show. Probably hiding out behind all the clouds. Not that I could see either one since looking up just got me a face full of water.