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  “That’s a neat story,” I said. “But I still don’t see what this tells me about myself.”

  “Probably nothing,” Linus said. “It’s most probably some mishmash of folklore and hearsay that has been passed down over the millennia. But still, I’ve been wondering ever since the moment you brought me here…”

  Linus held out his hand. “Could I be so bold as to ask for the lady’s hand?”

  I didn’t see the harm in humoring him. I had passed through and been passed through by enough spirits to know there wasn’t really a sensation involved with the process. There was always a moment of unreality when the brain tried to cope with part of the body moving through something that looked like it had substance, but that went away pretty quickly.

  I slid my hand through his, as requested. Only, I didn’t. I encountered something cold, and electric, and entirely solid.

  I jumped back with an undignified screech. “What the—!”

  “You okay?” Francie asked, moving over to my side. “Are you hurt—”

  “I—I touched him!”

  “Yes, yes you did.” Linus’s face irrupted in a wide smile. “You still want to know where Gladys is?”

  “You’ll tell me?” My heart was practically hammering through my chest, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get that last piece of vital information.

  “I will if you’ll hold my hand again,” he said with a coy smile. “Who knows, it may be the last bit of contact I will ever have.”

  It was a small price to pay for what he was offering. Actually, it wasn’t a price at all—it would cost me nothing but a moment of time.

  Still, I hesitated. The sensation of coming into contact with Linus was… almost indescribable. It wasn’t painful or anything easily quantifiable like that, but there was a kind of wrongness to it. Almost like I was feeling what it was like to be in his position.

  Feeling what it was like to be dead.

  “Come on, you would deny me this one last—”

  “Okay, it’s a deal,” I said before I had a chance to second guess myself. “But you have to tell us where she is.”

  “On my honor as a bloodthirsty creature of the twilight.” Linus held his hand back out to me with an eager expression on his face.

  I reached out and grasped his hand gingerly, but the dreadful sensation swept through me just the same. Linus held on tight and began to kneel toward the floor.

  “What are you doing.” I followed him down until we were both awkwardly on our knees.

  “I’m so overwhelmed I couldn’t stand,” he said with a mischievous grin. He reached back toward where Luka was standing, and Carl was lying, but didn’t turn his head to look.

  “Or… something like that.”

  He winked. And then he was gone.

  Chapter 24

  “Serves me right for even hoping for something different,” I said, standing back up. “My whole week has been one of those days…”

  “What happened?” Francie and Luka asked in unison.

  “I’m not exactly sure, but I have a sinking feeling I was bamboozled by a smooth-talking vampire ghost. Either way, he’s gone now. So, I guess that puts us back at the mercy of our unconscious friend.”

  “Puts him back at my mercy,” Luka corrected.

  “Phrase it how you like, big guy. But if he doesn’t talk…”

  “I’ll talk.” At the sound of Carl’s voice, Francie jumped back a couple of feet and then stared daggers at the man for making her look silly.

  “And I didn’t betray you,” Carl continued.

  “You didn’t?” I took a few steps until I stood directly over him. “Are you forgetting about the part where you tried to put a bullet in me, old man? How about the revenant that almost killed Luka?”

  “I’ll ignore the old man gibe,” he said, sitting up with a groan. “Because, while insulting, it is not incorrect.” He held each of his hands out in front of himself and turned them front to back, examining. “Wrinkled, battered, and just a little concussed… but it’s better than nothing. Not by much, mind you.”

  Carl wedged his hands under himself and tried to work his way up from the floor, but he went right back down with a grimace and a groan. “Dear god, Mr. Train, what did you do to his feet—my feet? I’ve got to get used to that, I guess.”

  It probably took me longer than it should have, likely because one didn’t encounter body-hopping vampire spirits every day, but it finally clicked. “Linus!?”

  Carl’s—Linus’s—face lit up in a grin. “In the flesh. In the old, wrinkly flesh…”

  “How about putting the man onto a stool?” I asked Luka. “It’s making me uncomfortable watching him writhe down there.”

  The Primal scooped the newly possessed Carl up from the floor and placed him onto the nearest barstool. He did so with a scowl etched onto his face, and the moment Linus was in place, Luka turned the full force of that scowl in my direction.

  “This is a trick,” he said, jabbing a thick finger back in the direction of Linus’s chest. “He is more than capable of this kind of deceit, and you would do well not to buy into it. He is manipulating you.”

  “She-eesh,” Linus tittered. “Carl was not the giant’s favorite person…”

  Luka whirled. “Do not test me, little man. I know you for what you—”

  “Hold up.” I had to half-shout to be heard over Luka’s tirade. “We can figure this out easily enough. We just need to ask him something only Linus would know.”

  “Like?”

  I looked at Carl for a moment, fighting what the visceral part of my brain was telling me about the man who was sitting in front of me. On an intellectual level, I believed he was Linus, but it was going to take a while for it to feel correct. “How did you die?”

  Linus tilted his head toward the bar and the creature that lay behind it. “I believe you have all met the method of my demise.”

  “Yeah, but how?” I stretched out the word. “The, uh, gory details.”

  “Oh, I get you. Well, from my perspective, it all came about rather fast, and the end was sort of just there. But I think the gist of it was…” He drew his index finger across his throat and then made a loud pop, like the sound of a champagne cork being released.

  “There you go.” I turned to Luka. “He was decapitated by something like your sparring buddy over there.”

  “It proves nothing. Carl could have easily known those details. He could have been the one who specified the method of the vampire’s execution for all we know.”

  He had a point.

  “I know how we can settle this.” Francie walked up to Linus with one hand tucked behind her back. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  Linus chuckled, but Luka’s scowl only deepened. “This is not a game,” Luka grumbled.

  “I understand that.” Francie’s expression went from playful to razor-sharp death stare in a fraction of a second. “But your hotheadedness is going to cost a man his life. Sit down and count to ten or something.”

  “He is—” Luka started.

  “Sit. Down.” Francie punctuated each word with a jab of her index finger against the giant man’s chest.

  He sat down.

  I nearly did, too.

  “There, that’s better.” Francie squared her shoulders and turned to me. “Now, let’s figure this out, shall we? I’m getting a little antsy.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “I think we can all see that. You think maybe it has something to do with the dismembered monster on the other side of your bar and the fact that this place is about fifteen minutes from opening time?”

  “Oh crap!” Francie skittered over to the door and snapped the locks.

  “Back to the matter at hand,” Luka grumbled. Although, I noticed some of the air had been taken out of his righteous anger.

  “There’s a simple way to settle this,” Linus said. “I’ll simply take you to Gladys. I think it’s dangerous, and more than a little foolhardy, but if you
r bent on seeing it through that way… who am I to stop you?”

  “How do we know we’re not walking into a trap.” Luka crossed his massive arms, letting his body language do most of the talking.

  “What’s the difference?” Linus asked. “I already told you she’s likely to kill you all… It’s not like I’m trying to sugarcoat this thing. Trap or not, I’m pretty sure this isn’t a smart move. Run away has been, and still is, my earnest advice.”

  “You’ll go with us,” I said before Luka could reel off another complaint.

  “That doesn’t sound like a request, but I suppose I’m in no position to bargain. And I do owe you my life… quite literally.”

  “Then we go now,” Luka said, standing. “Before my battle rage has had time to quiet.”

  “Uh… shouldn’t we, I don’t know, call in some backup?” I asked. “I’m not sure the three of us—”

  “Four,” Francie interjected.”

  “Sure, okay. But I’m still not sure the four of us are enough if what Linus has said is true.”

  “Oh, it’s definitely not enough,” Linus said cheerily.

  “It matters not.” Luka scooped Linus from his stool and started toward the door. “There is no one else I trust—no one I can be sure hasn’t been compromised by Gladys. We will see this done today, even if I have to see to it with my bare hands.”

  Chapter 25

  The four of us walked about ten blocks north to the parking garage where Luka kept his car. It was a huge, dark rectangle of steel that looked like the late ‘70s idea of luxury cruising. It fit the four of us well enough, and I doubted anything smaller would have accommodated Luka’s considerable stature anyway.

  Before we set out, I called Hiram and let him in on the full details of our impromptu mission. I figured it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to have someone with knowledge of the situation acting as a lifeline if things took a wrong turn.

  We were headed to a little blip on the map about thirty miles north of the city. If the information Linus had was still accurate, Gladys had bought out an old warehouse complex and was using that as her base of operations. That large footprint probably said something about the scale of what she had in mind for an army of revenant minions.

  I just hoped that scale was something she was aspiring to… The prospect of rushing into an entire complex full of revenants wasn’t terribly appealing. Luka had dispatched one, and he was pretty sure that one was commanded not to kill him. So, a hundred or five hundred was a death sentence.

  But, then again, one or two revenants was also pretty much a death sentence, which meant worrying about it now was pointless.

  “I’ve been wondering about something, Linus,” Francie said as Luka pulled us onto a narrow two-lane highway about fifteen minutes out from our destination.

  I had asked Francie to join Linus in the back seat. It seemed like the longer Carl’s body was in Luka’s field of vision, the more volatile he became. And the last thing we needed was a road rage incident on the way to the place where we were all likely going to be murdered.

  “Do tell.” Linus’s cheerfulness had yet to waver. I guessed being resurrected had a way of putting a positive spin on things.

  “Is… Carl in there somewhere with you? Or did you, like, boot him out when you jumped into his body? And, if that’s the case, is his spirit rambling around somewhere out there?”

  “Ah, the age-old question of what happens to the possessed once the possessor moves in and takes control, eh?”

  “Yeah, something like that…”

  “Well, I’m not sure how it works in other cases, but it’s pretty straightforward for my situation. That powerful friend of yours in the front seat simply shoved my, uh, essence over top of Carl’s. He’s still in here, but he’s no longer in control of the headspace. You can think of it as a large software patch that pretty much overrides the original program.”

  “I guess that makes some kind of sense,” Francie said. “But I have to say, a vampire making a computer-themed analogy is just plain surreal.”

  “What, you thought my kind were still stuck in the medieval times? That we lurked around in dark, drafty mansions with naught but a melting candlestick to light the way? I’m pretty sure that’s racist…”

  “Whoa, wait, I didn’t mean—”

  “I’m just messing with you, barmaid. I wouldn’t be surprised if half the vampires in the world were still lurking in dark castles lit by whale oil lamps. It’s hard to keep up with the trends and technology. Especially when you’re of a certain age.”

  “So… you have his memories?” Francie continued. “Or is it all you in there?”

  “Trying to gauge just how in control I am, are you?” I could hear the smile in Linus’s voice. “Well, rest assured. It’s just me behind the wheel, so to speak. I can see some of his memories—guess that’s just a byproduct of sharing the same gray matter—but it’s more like seeing someone else’s home movies. And they’re fragmented and out of order… No powers either, which is a bit of a bummer.”

  “Not to change the subject or anything,” I said. “But now that we’re pretty much beyond the point of turning back, what’s the deal with Gladys anyway? Is it just the revenants that we have to worry about, or does she, I don’t know, shoot lasers out of her eyes or something?”

  “She’s an Empath,” Luka replied. He had mostly been silent up to that point in our journey, and I wasn’t sure if he was still angry with Linus or if silence was just his default mode.

  “Empath? So, what, she can feel people’s emotions? That doesn’t sound all that dangerous to me.”

  “It means she can feel emotions and she can influence the emotions of others,” Luka said. “Which can be a rather valuable tool in convincing people to do what you want, or so I would imagine.”

  “Still doesn’t sound all that dangerous…”

  “That’s not why she’s dangerous,” Linus said from the back seat. “And it’s not just the revenants either. She was the first conversion. The blood of The First runs through her veins.”

  “Hold up, she is one of those monstrosities too?” That was just perfect. The best plan I had come up with, if plan was even an accurate word for the vague notion I had going, was to do my best to avoid the revenants and confront Gladys one on one. Or… four on one, I guess. But that wasn’t exactly likely if she was one of those things.”

  “Nope, I’m afraid you’re just not that lucky, my scarlet-haired life-giver.”

  “But you just said…”

  “I said—” Linus tapped out a drumroll on the back of Luka’s car seat. “—that she was converted—turned, if you will—not botched. She’s a full-fledged vampire. More than that, really. She’s as close as you can get to the original thing.”

  The car grumbled to a stop as we pulled off to the side of the road. Luka hastily flung the gear stick into park, killed the engine, and then flung open his door.

  “Uh, Luka, this… isn’t the place,” I said as he started out on the driver’s side.

  “I am ridding us of one passenger.”

  “Don’t let him back here!” Linus no longer sounded so playful.

  “Luka! He’s not Carl.” I tried to grab his arm, but he shrugged me off.

  “I am aware. But this one is worse. You do realize he is responsible for what we now face, do you not? He helped create those… things. And he aided Gladys in what she has become.”

  “He… was involved, sure. But—” I searched Linus’s eyes but didn’t like what I saw lurking there. I knew he was wrapped up in all of this, but I guess I hadn’t considered how much of this might be his fault. And it hadn’t mattered when he was dead.

  But he wasn’t dead any longer…

  “Listen.” Linus shifted nervously toward the back car door. “Ada pulled me into this mess. I’m not shifting the blame solely onto her, but I was too far in before I even knew what was going on. And by the time I did know… well, you saw the repercussions for straying from the
prescribed path. I was murdered, for God’s sake!”

  “You were dead,” Luka growled. “I am simply going to make sure you stay that way this time.”

  Linus threw open the car door and lunged out and onto the side of the road. He was face down in the dirt after one step. Apparently, his feet hadn’t miraculously been healed.

  “Just… let him be,” I said, touching Luka’s shoulder. “He’s helping us now. I don’t know if that makes up for anything, but we can use all the help we can get.”

  “He’s an old man who’s wriggling around in the dirt like the snake that he is. How much help do you think he might be?”

  “He told us where Gladys is.”

  “We have yet to confirm that,” Luka replied coolly.

  “You’ll see it’s true.” Linus’s voice came from somewhere near the bottom edge of the car.

  “And he might know more,” I said. “Inside information might end up being the only thing we have going for us here. We need to hang on to every advantage we have.”

  “Listen to her, Mr. Train. She has wisdom far beyond her short years.”

  “And,” I continued, “if we make it out of this alive, you can punish him as you see fit.”

  “Listen to the first part,” Linus groaned. “But ignore the rest. Her wisdom fades…”

  “I suppose it cannot hurt to wait a while longer on the matter.” Luka hopped out of the car, grabbed Linus by the scruff and waistband, and tossed the man back into the car amid a stream of curses and complaints.

  “Besides,” Luka continued, sliding back behind the wheel and starting the car once again. “I would like his feet to heal before I dole out the appropriate justice. It would amuse me to see him run.”

  “Hardy har, Mr. Train,” Linus wheezed from the back seat. “I know you’re really a big ol’ softie inside. Mark my words, we’ll be fast friends before this is all done.”