Boneyard (The Thaumaturge Series Book 2) (12 page)

“You go open the door,” Leo directed. “I’ll carry the body inside.”

“Leo,” I said helplessly. “Christ.”

He frowned. “Keep it together, babe. We’re almost done.”

“What if there are cameras? What if someone’s watching?”

“There’s no one around,” he said firmly. “I would smell them. I don’t know about cameras, but there’s no one nearby.”

I craned my neck to peer around the rooftops of the surrounding buildings, seeing nothing of course, in the dim light. No blinking red lights to indicate Big Brother was watching. We’d just have to hope.

Damp, swollen boards thudded under my feet as I trotted up the wooden stairs to the rarely used backdoor. It took me three tries to get the thing unlocked, and then I had to throw a shoulder into it to unstick it from the frozen door jam. It gave, and I half-fell, half-stumbled into the storage room.

I blinked into the dim, UV light, warm, earth-scented air rising around me. Half a dozen fresh plants sat basking under the grow lamps and I threaded my way past them to slap the overhead light on.  I used the back storage area to grow fresh herbs and, more recently, to store dead bodies. More specifically, I used the tiny, non-functioning bathroom at the room of the space to store dead bodies, but I had room to expand if necessary.

Leo raised his eyebrows at me when I finally unlocked the bay door and rolled it half-way up. “You need to turn those heat lamps off,” he told me. “She’s starting to smell.”

I made a disgusted noise, but took a big whiff anyway. I could smell nothing but mint and dirt, but if Leo was starting to smell her...

“This is all over soon, though, right?” I asked. “You’ll get your friend and he’ll take care of it.”

“I hope he’ll take care of it,” Leo said, jamming the keys into the trunk of the Oldsmobile. “But I’ll come up with a plan B anyway. Do you have a dolly, by any chance?”

“Really?” I tried not to look into the cracked open trunk. “Can’t you just carry him in?”

“I will. I was joking.”

“Hilarious.”

“I’m going to set him on the edge and then we’ll slid him in the rest of the way, okay? He’s pretty stiff.”

I looked skyward, my stomach doing ninja kicks and summersaults. I kept my eyes trained on the exposed brick near the ceiling as the trunk squeaked open. Leo rustled inside it for a minute, and gradually my eyes dropped down. I took a few breaths. Not like I hadn’t seen a dead body before. Just my first time seeing the dead body of the person I had killed.

“Here we go,” Leo told me, his arms up to his biceps disappeared inside the trunk. Then he lifted the shape out of the trunk’s shadows, bigger than I had expected, feature-less and covered with the tarp. In three quick steps, Leo crossed the distance between the Oldsmobile and the dock and he set the shape down on the lip. When it landed, it made a thumping noise that sounded alarmingly... inanimate.

Leo leapt smoothly up onto the dock, landing soundlessly like a cat. He shouldered me to one side. “Okay,” he said. “Get the bathroom door open.”

“They won’t be able fit in there,” I said, my voice high.

“They’ll fit,” he said, bending over to reach under the tarp. I didn’t want to look, but I did. The tarp slid to one side and then Corvin’s dead, waxen, ruined face pointed right up at me.

My own lack of reaction surprised me. I stared at him, took it all in—the large chunk missing from his face, the withered point of his tongue visible between his shriveled lips, the discolored bruising along the left side of his face. I took it in. Absorbed it, accepted it. I’d killed him. He was an asshole and a murderer and I’d killed him to stop him. And I had to move on.

“Okay,” I said. “Let me move her.”

“I can do it,” Leo said quickly, but I waved him off.

“Just drag him over,” I said, and opened the bathroom door for the first time since we’d dumped Morgan in there, a week ago.

Breaking into the local morgue had been surprisingly, ridiculously easy. Granted, Heckerson really had no
morgue—
not like an official one, where the county kept bodies. Instead, two rival funeral homes battled for the honor of disposing of Heckerson’s dead, but only one had a contract with the local law enforcement. Morgan had been squirreled away in the refrigerated basement of Morrison Pells Mortuary. It had taken Leo less than fifteen minutes to slink in, breaking the locks as he went, and then slip out, Morgan’s remains neatly contained within a white body bag. He’d crossed the parking lot with her over his shoulder to where I’d waited in my idling truck. Dumped her in the bed and then hopped in and we’d sped away. No problem. Butter.

In the newspaper article about the body snatching, Jory Pells, owner of the funeral home, had vowed to install a state of the art security system. I wondered if Jory knew about me, about what I could do. I wondered if he resented me for hurting his profit margin.

That white bag lay crumpled, half-curled around the old porcelain toilet. It wasn’t dignified, dumped like that on a cold concrete floor. I didn’t know if she deserved any better—she’d tried to kill me, after all, and had succeeding in killing Cody—but nonetheless I wished for something not so profane.

Cautiously I nudged the white bag with my foot and connected with something solid.  I shuddered and glanced up to gauge Leo’s progress. He’d already hauled Corvin’s tarp-covered corpse into the center of the room and now stood to pull the overhead door closed.

Steeling myself, I bent down, worked my arms under the bag, and pushed. The bag shifted but its contents did not. It wasn’t heavy—
she, a voice whispered in my head, she’s not so heavy—
but it was terribly stiff. And not particularly malleable.

“Here,” Leo said from behind me. He pushed past, crouched down and just shoved. The bag—and its contents—scooted across the floor, jamming tighter into the space beside the toilet. Something poked up, tenting the bag, and I looked away.

Leo stood and gestured to the floor. “Okay,” he said. “Now him.”

“You do it,” I said and moved aside. He scooped up Corvin and dumped him beside the sink. The corpse landed with a dull splat, partially on top of the other corpse and the noise they made when they connected sounded like an ordinary thump and also like something I could have gone my whole life without hearing.

“And that’s that,” Leo said, wiping his hands.

“Wait,” I said and turned back into the store room.

Leo watched, one eyebrow raised, as I tossed some soiled hand towels on top of the tarp and set a few cans of dried paint on the bathroom floor. I cast my eyes around the store room, looking for any other miscellaneous supplies that I could use to camouflage the bodies.

“You’re not making them any more inconspicuous,” Leo said wryly.

“Just in case someone looks in there,” I said.

“Who’s gonna look in there?”

“I don’t know,” I said defensively. “Just in case.”

“If someone looks in there,” he said. “They’re going to see a paint can sitting next to a couple of dead bodies, if they notice the paint can at all.”

“Whatever. It makes me feel better.”

He shrugged. “Well, lock up. Now we have to go clean out the car.”

“Clean the car?’

“Yeah,” he said darkly. “Corvin leaked.”

My head started to hurt.

Twenty minutes later, we pulled the Oldsmobile into the self-service car wash behind the Dollar Tree. Dim streets light cast strange shadows on the pavement, along the walls of the bay. Somewhere close, I could hear the pounding beat of music, something fast and with a lot of bass.

I hovered at Leo’s shoulder as he popped the trunk. Some sick curiosity compelled me to peer into the darkness, searching for, I don’t know, blood splatters or chunks of brain matter or something. Instead, I saw nothing in the spacious, empty trunk.

“I thought you said he leaked,” I said and then wondered why the fuck I sounded disappointed.

“He did,” Leo said.

“I don’t see anything.”

Leo shot me a side-eye. “Trust me, he leaked,” he said.

I opened my mouth to protest, but Leo leaned over and began snuffling like a bloodhound, bending over so far that his nose almost touched the trunk lining. He frowned when he stood up.

“Oh,” I said, trying to appear nonchalant at his unconventional forensics.

“Yeah.” He gave me a look, like,
vampire, remember
? “Let’s just take it out and wipe the whole thing down.”

I moved in to help, but he just grabbed the top of the liner and pulled it out in one quick stroke. Underneath, the damage was obvious. There were several congealed pools of blood along the edge of the trunk, and I could see a few strands of dark hair. The sight of them made me feel cold, then hot all over and I whipped around.

 I breathed heavy through my nose. My mouth flooded with saliva.

“Fuck,” I whispered. “What the fuck are we doing?”

He spared me a dark look. “Don’t. Keep it together.”

“Fuck,” I whispered again. I pressed my palms against my knees, leaned over and spat a few times. My spit tasted sour, metallic.

“Grab the bleach,” Leo said. “And then go spray this down.”

He thrust the liner at me. Feeling weak, I pinched one corner of the liner and retrieved the bleach we’d borrowed from my shop. He took it without a word.

The spray nozzle required quarters and I dug through my pockets to find enough. Then the spray came out with frankly unnecessary force, and I blasted the opposite wall with soapy water before I got the damn thing under control. Bubbles welled up on the liner, rust in color. I washed them all away, still spraying long after the water had run clear.

“Here,” I said when I rejoined Leo. I dumped the liner at his feet and then just perched my butt on the bumper to watch him meticulously swabbing down the inside of the trunk. The bleach smell stung, and I watched his nose wrinkle in distaste.

“Have you done this before?” I couldn’t help myself from asking.

He shrugged. “I’ve done a lot of things before.” He scrubbed at a corner of the trunk and when he pulled the rag away it was brown with blood. I stared at it, feeling too many things, feeling not enough.

“I need to make some fucking changes in my life,” I said aloud.

It surprised me when he laughed. “Yeah?” he said, wiping his brow with his forearm. “You gonna start going to church? Doing hot yoga?”

I nodded, and gave a short, stuttering laugh.  “I might get a membership to the Y. Use the sauna.”

He smiled faintly.

“I mean it,” I said. “There needs to be fewer dead bodies. In general.”

“It’s been a rough month,” he agreed.

“I should be out doing normal things. Like, mountain biking or something. I should have friends.”

“You have friends,” he murmured and dove back into the trunk, sniffing again.

“All I smell is bleach,” I said and he made a humming noise that I took for approval.

“So,” he said as he began to stuff the damp liner back into the trunk. “Tell me more about this boyfriend gig. What are the perks? Rights and responsibilities? What am I agreeing to?”

I froze. He sounded casual and for a second I was suspicious, hurt a little even, that he would make fun of me for that, for something that he knew I wanted so badly. But I could read the set of his shoulder and his eyes were soft when he looked at me.

“What do you mean?” I asked cautiously.

He said, “Ebron, I told you. I’m in. I just need to know what you’re expecting.” He gave me a shy, self-deprecating smile. “It’s been a while, you know.”

“A while?” I repeated. “Since how long? Since you were, you know, turned?”

He lifted one shoulder. “I’ve fucked a lot. You know that. But no, not like a
relationship.
And that’s what you want, right?”

“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,” I said. I gestured to the pile of bloody rags, but he looked right at me.

“You’re telling me,” he said. “I figured I would spend the rest of my unholy existence just fucking and killing. I wasn’t expecting... love.”

To my embarrassment, I actually sort of gasped a little and his eyebrows immediately drew in. Because yeah, I had said the L-word to him a week ago and he had reciprocated, but I sort of figured it didn’t count. Neither of us was in a stable frame of mind. We had been exhausted, beaten, in shock.

He’d said it under duress.

There was a weird feeling in my chest, like something moving or tightening or opening up, and Leo just looked at me.

“Are we doing this?” I asked finally, wondering if he could hear how hard my heart beat.

He didn’t give anything way. His face stayed blank. Cautious. “I’m in if you are.”

“I’m in,” I said and couldn’t stop a small smile, which he returned.

“So what does this mean?” he asked. “I mean, I don’t know what you need me to do.”

He sounded so utterly unsure that I took a step forward on pure instinct, struck with the unfamiliar sensation of wanting to provide comfort. Leo took one look at my face and straightened his spine, amended quickly, “I can’t be here all the time, though, babe. That hasn’t changed.”

“Then you have to get a cell phone,” I said promptly. “One that you leave
on
. I need—I want—you’re gone for
months
, Leo. Last time it was almost a year.”

“I know, I know. I will, but Ebron—” he made a frustrated sound in his throat and raked his hands through his hair. “There’re things you don’t understand.”

“Things you don’t tell me,” I corrected and he gave a grudging nod.

“Other people know about me?” I asked quietly. “Other vampires?”

“No.” He shook his head quickly. “Well, yes. But I trust them.”

“Who?” He never talked to me about others of his kind, never mentioned if he had friends or, I don’t know, family? Were there vampire families?

“No,” he said sharply. “I won’t talk to you about that. But there are others out there, Ebron. People who
cannot
know about you.”

“Like that lawyer?” I guessed and then my heart sank like a stone when he nodded.

“Yes. The lawyer. The people he represents. He can’t know about you.”