Dead Man (Black Magic Outlaw Book 1) (3 page)

 

 

 

 

South Beach in Miami consists of three main roadways: Washington Avenue, which houses most of the bars and clubs; Collins Avenue, which has all the hotels; and Ocean Drive, which, besides being on the sand and having a beautiful view of the Atlantic, is crammed with restaurants and hotels and whatever hotspots you can imagine.

There are two alleys between the three avenues. I was now in the second of them. Only Ocean Drive remained, and while there were a lot of people to mix in with, I stood out like a sore thumb. I needed to find a place to lie low, and fast.

This alleyway was more claustrophobic than the previous one. A large cement wall blocked my path like the battlements of a castle. This particular building was built like one as well. The wall was part of the blocky structure, with a Spanish-styled roof and window grates. This obstacle spanned a good portion of the block on either side of me, and I debated which direction to run.

The thing is, I was tired of running. And tired of fighting too. I just wanted to stop. I lamented my bad luck until I realized what the giant building was.

The Versace Mansion was a decadent residence of the infamous Italian fashion designer. An honest-to-goodness house on Ocean Drive overlooking the palms and the sands and the water. When the designer was shot dead on his front steps years ago, the property languished in auction. Who had the money to afford a place like this?

That neglect was gonna pay off for me.

I shoved a double-wide dumpster underneath one window and hopped on top. The metal security grating was locked and I didn't think I could break it. Remember, my metallurgy's only good for weak metal. This steel was designed to keep people out. But that wasn't a problem. I scaled the bars and pulled myself up to the window above it, then higher to a tiny balcony wall constructed of the same grating. I hopped over the edge and snuck a quick breath before I turned to the double doors.

Once again, the security bars were sturdy. Fortunately, one of the doors was open. User error: locks only work when they're locked. I slipped inside and shut it behind me, leaving no trace of my entry.

I immediately felt like royalty. Everything—from the lavish curtains to the stained glass to the bedsheets to the cushions inset into wall benches—was patterned maroon. The furniture and floor were impeccable, turn-of-the-century hardwood. The cream-colored wall faded into a baby blue at the top and was detailed with painted vines and flowers. The single chandelier was modest but still probably cost a fortune, and I was thankful its bulbs were dimmed.

The room was surprisingly organized. Every single throw pillow (and there were a lot of them) was carefully placed. The bedroom was fully stocked and spotless.

A joint like this, the furniture sells with the building. Many of the accents had been designed by Versace himself and would likely increase resale value. It stood to reason there'd be staff maintaining the place.

You know, so random vagrants don't break in to take a load off.

That meant I needed to keep an eye out. This wasn't the perfect long-term hideout, but it would do in a pinch. I sat still, waited, and listened. I wanted to make sure I
could
relax before I actually gave in to the impulse.

Nobody interrupted the silence. Not the Miami Beach police. Not the Bone Saints. Not even Paul from the pool. I sighed and melted to the floor.

Some people might consider me fortunate given my escape but, as far as I was concerned, I had a bullet in my belly and a graze on my thigh. Worse, the Haitian banger had said I was dead. That they had killed me.

Is that what I'd been doing in that dumpster? Busy being dead?

It was ludicrous to imagine. Between my headache, the fog in my brain, and the fact that I felt like absolute crap, the evidence was pointing more to life than death.

I felt for a pulse. It was racing.

Whatever I had been, I was alive now. If the Bone Saint was telling the truth, that meant I'd been resurrected somehow.

That kind of magic was supposed to be impossible.

Don't misunderstand me. There are no real rules to spellcraft. Rules are just theories written down by those who want control. Rules range from mostly true to flat out wrong, and there are always exceptions.

But not for death, right? That's the one true law of the universe. You live, you die. Period.

The end of your life, but not the end of your story. You still exist. Your spirit still exists. What it does at that point is open for debate, but every necromancer knows about the truck stop of life called the Murk. That's where spirits live, tapping the Intrinsics, the lifeblood of the universe. Magic is the blood of life, and life is the blood of magic. Every animist knows that.

Now that I had some peace and quiet, I gazed inward and searched for answers. If I
had
been part of some resurrection ritual, I wouldn't very likely remember it. But I did feel a kind of dirtiness about me. Not just the physical grime. I had that in spades, but there was something else. A lingering aftertaste of dark magic. With my necromantic leanings, it should've been more familiar, but I couldn't recognize it. I'm far from an expert. No one truly is.

Here's the thing: there's no singular authority on magic. There's not even a single
kind
of magic. It's ethereal. Natural, but exotic. Knowledge, but unknown.

This works to our advantage. The reason people don't believe in magic is because there's no one thing that
is
magic. People pray for miracles but discount the supernatural. Others see ghosts but don't believe in monsters. Psychics discount telekinetics, and so on.

There's a natural order to only believing what you see. It's smart, most of the time. But since nobody can be everything, we're all guilty of pushing away new ideas.

Like an astronomer arguing with an astrologist, people will fight to the death over their perspective. Think of the scattered opinions on religion, race, sex, and identity—just in the United States alone. Then add all the other countries and cultures in the world. Consider then that the present is a single point and place in time, and you'll concede there are many more outlooks than your own.

That, my friends, is magic in a nutshell. A complex interweaving of subjects and understanding. Something entirely different depending on who you ask.

Is that
my
view? Sure. Like I said. It depends on who you ask, and you asked me. So even though I'm falling victim to the same frailty I just explained, I
still
say resurrection magic is impossible.

Yet here I was. Living proof.

Enough reflection. When I think too much, I contradict myself. If I kept at it, I'd find myself in a full-fledged argument.

The phone in my pocket rang.

The relaxation I'd worked so hard to find bolted. I pulled a solid Nokia candy-bar phone from my pocket and answered. "Go." I saw someone say that in a seventies cop show once and thought it was cool.

No one said anything. I waited a moment before asking who it was. No one spoke, but I swore I heard someone breathing.

 

 

 

 

I ended the call and checked the screen for the number. Blocked. I frowned and wondered who would call a dead man.

That wasn't my phone. Like the tattoos, I didn't remember getting it. Maybe I really had died. It would explain not recalling anything in the hours and days before the dumpster. I couldn't tell you a thing about that time. It was gone. I had no memory of that stuff whatsoever, and maybe I never would.

The long-term stuff—who I was, my friends and family, my talents—I could remember all that. I even benefited from residual muscle memory in some cases, as with the Norse shields. That gave me hope the information I needed was somewhere inside my head.

I checked the rest of my pockets. Besides the bokor's knife in my waistband, all I came up with was the stolen wallet. Cisco Suarez, a regular pickpocket. I apologized to Richard Greene of 3032 Temecula Street as I thumbed through his ID and the other contents. I took the bundle of cash. Ninety-two bucks. The bills looked different, like the Fed had just minted a new, high-tech design. As long as it spent, it was good with me. I kept the cash in a front pocket and stuffed the wallet in the back.

I stood on shaky feet that weren't ready to support my weight yet. I sighed, trudged to the bathroom, and closed the door. It was safe in here to flip on the bright light without being visible from the windows. I ignored the Italian marble countertop and the brass fixtures and all the other mind-numbing amenities. A couple of days ago, I would've felt like a king. Today I realized it was all bullshit. Living mattered, not possessions, not stuff.

I rubbed my eyes and focused on the wall-spanning mirror. The car window had been kind to me. I was a mess.

Besides the sexy new muscles, there was nothing else to cheer about. My hair was tangled and knotted, almost to the point of dreads. My chin and neck were covered in a coarse beard. Besides the expected dirt on my skin and clothes, my tank top was flaking dried blood. Probably mine, if what that Haitian had said was true.

I pulled the shirt off and considered my new pecs. The resurrection magic had been good to me, but I'd still been to hell and back. Literally. A large purple bruise covered my heart, which explained the stiffness. Luckily, it was just a bruise.

I checked my lower belly. I could still feel where the bullet had tagged me, but there was no wound. My stomach ached from the hit and a red mark was spreading, but nothing had penetrated. The same with the graze on my thigh. The jeans sported a horizontal tear and there was a burn on my skin, but no blood.

In a way, that scared me more than the alternative.

I smiled at my dark-red alligator boots, wondering if they were a joke from the devil. Then I pulled the knife from the waist of my jeans.

It was a bronzed little thing with runes etched along the blade. A slight curve to the edge and an opposite curve in the decorated handle. Nothing I recognized, and nothing powerful from what I could tell. It was probably a keepsake more than anything. Something used by a necromancer in ceremonies. Something that someone might want back.

I shrugged and leaned over the sink, grabbing a handful of hair and raking the knife as close to my scalp as possible. The bokor had kept a good edge on the blade. It cut through my mane so well that I had a familiar crew cut in no time.

I drew a hot bath. No showers here. I'd been dead—I deserved the hot spa treatment. I steamed up that room real good. While I waited, the sharp knife served as a straight razor and left my chin and neck real smooth. I soaped and soaked. I even nodded off for a few minutes there.

Somewhere in that luxury, I got to thinking about my situation. A lot needed figuring out. The Bone Saints had killed me. I didn't know why. Someone had resurrected me, and I
really
didn't know why (much less who or how). And then there were the tattoos and the fact that bullets had bounced off my skin. I didn't know how I'd managed that, but it sure was new to me.

There are various pursuits of spellcraft. Offense is a common example, but there are many more. Some animists care more about seeking knowledge. Others, utility. But protection is something every animist covets. It's a biological imperative. It's what makes us durable.

Imagine having all this power but no defensive magic. The secrets of the universe are helpless against a large fellow with a baseball bat. So aside from some purist specialists, every animist learns some secondary protection. How far you wanna go with that is up to you. Do you want to stop knives? Bullets? Bombs?

That's the part that depends on practice.

Shadow isn't the most potent force out there, but it's hella good at defense. But hardiness against bullets without conscious effort? New to me.

I wondered if it had to do with the dark energies in my aura. The thought sickened my stomach. I drained the black water from the tub, dried off, and wrapped myself in a towel. When I wiped the condensation from the mirror, I introduced myself to the new, clean-shaven Cisco Suarez.

It was me. But it wasn't.

I looked different. It wasn't just the extra mass on my frame. My face was weathered. Older, if that was possible. I definitely didn't look twenty-four anymore. It might be an oxymoron, but death had really aged me.

I dressed myself in the only stinking clothes I had, wondering exactly how long I'd been dead. That's when the real-life considerations hit me. The social ramifications.

What did my family know? What did they think when I never came home one day?

(So what? I still lived with my mom and dad and little sister. Sue me.)

But darker questions came to mind. For instance: if someone wanted to kill me, was my family in danger as well?

I needed to warn them. I needed to protect them.

Rest time over, I marched from the bathroom with a mission. And that's when I saw the drunk couple having sex on the floor by the door.

Jeez, they hadn't even made it to the bed.

The girl screamed when she noticed me and rolled off her partner. The guy stood up and, to his credit, put himself between me and the girl before vanity took over.

"Who are you?" he demanded, grabbing a teddy bear from a shelf and holding it over his privates.

"What are you doing here?" I returned, stumbling to form an excuse.

"Me? What are
you
doing here? This is my room!" He turned around. "Brenda, go get security."

She was hunched into a corner, clutching her shorn clothes over her body. "I'm kinda naked right now."

"Oh, right."

I threw my hands up and looked away in my best gentleman impersonation. "Chill out, guys. Maybe this is my mistake."

"Maybe?" yelled the man.

"Okay. Definitely. But what do you mean this is your room? This is Versace's room." I inched closer to the far wall, circling away from the couple and the bedroom door.

"Dude," he said, readjusting his teddy bear. "What are you, a stalker? That was years ago. This is a hotel now."

The look on my face must have been priceless. "No, it's... Since when?"

"A year ago, you idiot." The man stormed over to the phone beside the bed and pushed a button. "Security?"

I ran to the balcony door. "Speaking of security," I said, slipping outside. "Little tip: make sure to lock these up at night."

And then I bolted.