Undead Chaos (2 page)

Sirens in the distance signaled the approach of the authorities, so I eased away from her. She never noticed. I gave her a disgusted glare, then gazed at her husband.

“What in the world possessed you to come back for her?” I asked the corpse.

Chapter Two

The Homestead

I awoke the next morning to the buzzing of my phone.

“Hello?”

“Morning, sweetie,” my mother said. “Did I wake you?”

I sat up and closed my eyes to minimize the pounding in my head. “Yeah, but it’s okay. What’s up?”

“Just calling to find out where you were.”

I glanced at the clock.

Aw hell. Breakfast.

“At the townhouse. Let me shower and I’ll head over.”

“Hot date?” she asked hopefully.

The pain behind my eyes intensified. Someday she’d learn to stop pestering me about my love life. Apparently not today.

“No, a job. Reanimated husband haunting.”

“Wow, those are rare.” She did a pretty good job of covering the disappointment in her voice.

“I know. It was a referral from another client. Nice payout too.”

“Good for you.” Her voice was filled with genuine motherly pride instead of frustrated wanna-be-grandmother. “Can’t wait to hear the details.”

We said goodbye and I eased myself out of bed and into the bathroom. My leg ached and was a gross shade of yellow. Unless I visited a Healer, I’d be on an ibuprofen and ice pack diet for at least a week. I double-checked for zombie bites and was pleased to find none.

A hot shower and a half a tube of toothpaste later, I was a new man.

I rummaged through my closet for a suitable outfit to wear to breakfast. My wardrobe leaned more toward secular preppy and less toward the traditional garb my kind preferred. The only times my formal robes saw the light of day was for the rare Skilled ball or Normal costume party. Eventually I settled for casual slacks and a light shirt. Then I limped slowly down the stairs.

My place wasn’t much, just a simple townhouse in the older section of Reston, Virginia. It had four walls, thick carpet and ice-cold AC. Best of all, it overlooked a golf course. The inside desperately needed remodeling when I’d bought it several years earlier, but a little elbow grease and lot of money spent at the hardware store had put the house back in shape. It wouldn’t win any interior design awards, but until a woman’s warmth was felt within the walls, it was fine enough for me.

My first stop of the morning was the local coffee shop. Say what you will about medication, but nothing beats a good mug of coffee to soothe your morning ailments.

Steaming cup of Joe in hand, I swung by the bank to deposit Carly’s payment. The attendant greeted me with a bored expression until she opened the envelope and saw the thick wad of bills inside.

I shrugged. “Hey, checks bounce.”

Traffic was light, so the drive to Great Falls was smooth and uneventful. I wound my Honda SUV—nicknamed the Gray Ghost—through the woods of Northern Virginia for at least twenty minutes before coming to a small, unmarked gravel road. The Gray Ghost bounced over the dirt path for a hundred yards before pulling up to a set of large iron gates. I rolled down my window and smiled at the man in the guard shack.

“Howdy, Frank. How’s it going?”

Frank nodded, but said nothing. In all the years I’d known him, he’d never uttered a word. Dad swears he was a Warlock of renowned Skill, but he’s always come across as a quiet, possibly odd, old man. The gates swung open and he motioned me forward with a nod.

“Thanks,” I said, and drove inside.

Until the middle of the twentieth century Great Falls was nothing more than an isolated farming town outside Washington, DC. By the end of the millennium, however, the growth of DC enveloped the surrounding rural counties. As the population boomed and neighborhoods replaced farms, my family was forced to expand their defenses to keep unwanted visitors off the property.

Part of that security was Frank, the gates and the two dozen or so Normal guards we employed to patrol the grounds. Additionally, the folks utilized a wide variety of deception spells that masked the perimeter of the grounds. Unless you were welcome, the Homestead was almost impossible to find. Even if one of our enemies was able to locate our home, the woods that enveloped the property were packed with enough spells and scary creatures to ward off unwelcome guests.

I’d spent much of my childhood happily playing in the trees, completely unaware of the threats around me. The creatures never bothered me because I was a member of the family, so I assumed the stories of their existence were fabrications from adults to keep me in line. Not long after my thirteenth birthday, however, I stumbled upon an oversized puma with stubby horns butchering a deer. The sight of meat being so easily rended from bone not only instilled me with a newly discovered sense of mortality, but also stopped my forays into the wild altogether.

As an adult, however, I appreciated the multiple layers of security.

Long before the formation of the Delwinn Council, the Shifter family was dedicated to protecting the world from monsters that liked to prey upon humanity. Over the course of thousands of years, we’d killed or imprisoned a wide selection of murderous beasts, not to mention plenty of our own kind who’d gone bonkers, so our list of formidable enemies was longer than a Meatloaf love ballad.

The Gray Ghost crunched through the gravel before finally pulling around a large fountain in front of the gargantuan house. Constructed two hundred years earlier, the Shifter Homestead was the center of power and operations for my family. It stood three stories tall and was comprised of a central node with two separate wings, one to the north and one to the south. In addition, there were two basement levels that housed a medical ward and an armory.

The latter contained some of the most powerful and notorious magical items in history. The only reason we kept them was because no one had figured out how to destroy them yet. Still, that many devices in one place made me nervous. It was a tempting target for evildoers, but the combination of family secrecy and the impressive defensive perimeter had kept seedy customers at bay for generations.

An aged footman dressed in the family colors of black and red greeted me as I exited the Ghost.

“Good morning, sir,” he said.

“Morning, Carl,” I replied cheerfully. “Good to see you again.”

I’d always liked Carl. Not only was he kind and pleasant, but he was also a vault when it came to secrets. He’d never once squealed on me when I ran amok as a kid.

You just can’t buy that kind of trust.

“And you as well, sir. Care for a saltwater taffy?” He produced several sweets from a pocket.

That was the other reason why I liked him.

I stuffed two in my mouth, waved goodbye and mounted a set of large marble stairs. As I reached the top, the huge ornately carved wooden doors swung open. Another elderly, regal man welcomed me.

“Master Marcus,” Cornelius Jones, the family butler, announced to no one in particular.

Part of me felt sorry for the old stiff. Trying to keep tabs on me as a kid must have been exhausting and was undoubtedly the cause of most of his gray hair. He was just doing his job, but I was kind of a hellion and went out of my way to get into trouble. Not that I’d disliked the guy, but young boys are full of piss and fire and any form of authority that’s not blood is a threat. I’d long since outgrown my youthful exuberance, but the wary, exhausted look he gave me whenever I came home was a clear sign that the emotional scars I’d caused still ran deep.

Then again, it might also have been because the other part of me still enjoyed needling him every once in a while. But only because the poor guy needed to loosen up a little.

“Howdy, Cornelius,” I mumbled through a mouthful of sticky candies. The butler nodded with an air of resignation.

“Your parents are waiting for you in the side-kitchen,” he said evenly.

“Can you let them know I’ll be there in a few minutes? I need to check on my girls first.”

“Of course, sir. I’m sure your parents will understand why you’ve kept them waiting.”

I ignored the sarcasm dripping from his voice, tossing him a taffy instead. “Thanks, bud.” He caught it, then held it between pinched fingers with a frown. “You’re too kind.”

The hallway leading from the central house to the South Wing was long, and my footsteps echoed off the polished marble floors. Suits of armor worn by valiant ancestors famous for defending the innocent or some crap like that stood proud and erect in countless alcoves. In addition, sculptures and ancient paintings that had been presented as gifts to our family in thanks lined the walls. Most of the items were priceless with historical significance, which annoyed me to no end. I was constantly lobbying to donate them to a museum. They deserved to be enjoyed by the public, not shoved into dark corners of a chilly old wing of our mansion.

My recommendations always fell on deaf ears. Too many relatives, most of whom had drifted to various corners of the globe over the decades, were passionate about the “classical” design. And since the Homestead was the main base for the Shifters, my folks begrudgingly obliged. Thankfully the staff took the time to change things out, so at least our beautiful and selfishly private displays never got dusty.

I picked up the pace as I passed the door to an empty, long-forgotten ballroom. My heartbeat quickened as the memories of heat and scorched marble threatened to push their way to the front of my mind. I shoved the images and feelings back into their emotional box, turned down a corridor, and escaped the effects of that room as quickly as possible.

As I crossed the threshold into the South Wing, the personality of the building changed. The ballrooms and priceless artwork gave way to worn marble floors and walls covered with thumbtacked pictures of childhood scribbles. It was the section of the mansion where I’d grown up, and the only part of the building that didn’t feel like an exhibit.

This was also the wing where I’d learned how to become the hellion I was as a kid. In my roaming I’d discovered hidden passageways that linked various rooms together while peepholes in murals allowed me to keep tabs on house staff as they pursued me through the mansion. All of them, especially Cornelius, swore my rambunctiousness would get me killed some day.

Leaving the memories of my reckless youth behind, I exited through a thick wooden door and jogged across a gravel path to a small single-room stone hut that served as my beekeeping headquarters. Originally designed as a storage facility for food, the structure sat unused for years before I claimed it as my Honey House. One wall was filled with shelves where I stored boxes of wooden beehive parts. Organized against the opposite wall were large metal tins used to extract honey. On the back wall were more shelves with bottles of honey and a small hanging rack with a dirty, well-worn beekeeping suit.

I removed the white coveralls and zipped myself into the outfit. Then I pulled on a mesh-screen veil and picked up a bucket packed with tools. Ready to face the girls, I stepped back into the light.

The apiary, or bee yard, was located about twenty-five yards from the Honey House. On a warm day the hive’s entrance was like the air traffic pattern over JFK. Considering the activity that morning, I decided to approach the rear of the boxes rather than wade through thousands of arriving and departing bees. I dropped my bucket at the base of the left-most hive, whipped out my hive tool, then cracked the top cover open.

There are few things in this world as pleasant or calming as the smell of a warm, busy hive. In the years between my leaving the Skilled community and my return, beekeeping became one of the few activities that eased the tension that weighed on me. Only when I was surrounded by thousands of my girls did I truly feel removed from judging or expectant eyes. When my life was at its darkest, when I was struggling to contain the fury of emotions that threatened to crush me, I’d sought solace in my bees, coming to them often for the tranquility they offered.

As I removed the wooden cover, the scent of honey wafted up and I let the feeling of peace wash over me. For a moment, my world was nothing but soft hums and the gentle flutter of tiny wings. Then one of the girls bounced off my veil with a whisper of “
Keeper?
” which pulled me back to reality.

“Hello, girls.” I set the top cover on the ground and got to work.

As much fun as beekeeping can be, I somehow had the added bonus of a special connection with the bees. I assumed it was because of my Skill, but I hadn’t heard of anyone else with a similar experience. Ironically, during the years when I allowed my powers to atrophy from neglect, the connection between my girls and me intensified. I’d never told the folks about it, but somewhere along the line I’d realized that I could understand the bees. But instead of a direct spoken link, our bond was something ethereal. Like with the bee that had bounced off my veil, I could “speak” with them only if contacted directly. For the most part, however, their dialogues were too fast and overlapping to understand. It was like eavesdropping on a party through a thick wall, but every now and then a word or two came through.

Thankfully the bees were also aware of the bond and recognized that I was not a threat. Still, I was mindful to be gentle. Even the best of friends can anger one another if treated poorly, and honeybees have basic instincts, like to protect their honey, that cannot always be reasoned with. Since getting stung was not my idea of a good time, I took great pains to alarm as few of them as possible.

It took almost an hour to inspect all three hives, but by the end, I was happy. The bees seemed healthy, there were few mites, and they were storing a lot of honey for the winter. Their conversations revolved around foraging, cleaning and an occasional mention of the “keeper” outside their hives. None of them felt threatened by my presence, and I smiled with triumph. Another inspection without a sting.

On my way back to the Honey House, one of the girls landed on my veil with a soft thud.

“
Food?
” she whispered, her body wiggling with excitement.

Occasionally I provided the hives a sugar-syrup to help supplement the nectar flow, especially during a dry season. I hadn’t thought to make any that morning.

“Sorry. Maybe next time.”