Alexander Death (The Paranormals, Book 3) Page 3

  “Well, shit,” Seth said, and the manager flinched once again. “Okay. Where's the jail?”

  “I will have to research that, as few guests of this hotel face problems with the police, as one can imagine.”

  “Just tell me where to go.”

  “I would be more than happy to do so,” the manager said. He printed off a Google map with directions to the jail and slid it across the desk. “Do let me know if there's anything further that will make your stay at the Mandrake House more comfortable. Perhaps we might direct you to a bail bondsman, or a criminal defense attorney.”

  “Yeah, very funny,” Seth said. “Thanks for the map.”

  He tipped the man a dollar—normally he would tip more, but he suspected the hotel manager was subtly being a douche to him throughout the conversation. Then he walked out to his car.

  The jail was a zoo, full of parents bailing out kids who'd been swept up from the previous night's riot. Seth had to wait in line.

  “Weeell, look what the dog dragged in,” a voice said beside him. Seth turned to see Darcy Metcalf's father approaching in his wheelchair—Mr. Metcalf was a very obese man who'd lost a foot to diabetes. His face was blood-red, and he sneered at Seth. Darcy's pale, cringing mother trailed behind him.

  “Mr. Metcalf,” Seth said, surprised.

  “Don't you 'Mr. Metcalf' me, you dumb fancy-pants ball of shit,” Mr. Metcalf said. “Run off with my daughter on a Friday night, then I come to find out I got to bail her big ass out of jail on Sunday morning? In goddamn Charleston. What do you got to say for yourself?”

  “We were just coming here for orientation,” Seth said.

  “Oh, I bet you orientationed the shit out of her, didn't you?” Mr. Metcalf said. “Who's gonna pay for this baby, that's what I want to know.”

  “Morris—” his wife began.

  “Shut up. I got a few things to say to Little Lord Fancy-Pants here. I had to pay Darcy's bond, and how am I gonna afford that when I'm on disability?”

  “I'll pay her bail—” Seth said.

  “Naw, here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna call up your daddy and tell him the Metcalf don't have to make no mortgage payments for the next three months. That's what you're gonna do.”

  “I'm sure something can be worked out—” Seth began.

  “You bet your ass something can be!” Mr. Metcalf interrupted. “Matter of fact, make it four months. I got a pregnant slut daughter to feed.”

  “Morris!” his wife gasped.

  “I'm sure this is a misunderstanding, sir,” Seth said. “Darcy and I are both going to College of Charleston, and she asked for a ride to orientation.”

  “College of Charleston!” Mr. Metcalf roared. “Darcy ain't going to college, richy-pants. She got a baby. She's gone take that job at the Taco Bell in Vernon Hill, she knows what's good for her.”

  “She's not going to college?” Seth asked. “That doesn't make sense. Why did she want to come with me?”

  “I guess so you could stick your pecker in her babyhole,” Mr. Metcalf said.

  “Morris!” Mrs. Metcalf gasped again.

  “Darcy and I aren't together like that,” Seth said. “I didn't even want to bring her. It was just a favor to my girlfriend, Jenny.”

  “Jenny got-damn Morton!” Mr. Metcalf said. “It's a bad crowd she's fallen in with. No wonder she got knocked up.”

  “Daddy?” Darcy's voice whispered. A woman in a guard uniform had escorted her out, and now removed the handcuffs from Darcy's wrists. Darcy look dirty, confused and terrified.

  “Darcy, what happened?” Seth asked. “Where’s Jenny?”

  “Jenny?” Darcy looked him and up down. “Seth Barrett. Are you talking about Jenny Mittens?”

  “Don't you talk to that boy!” Mr. Metcalf interrupted. “You come right over and wheel me out of this goddamned place.”

  “Darcy, I don't understand what's going on,” Seth said. “Have you seen Jenny?”

  “No!” Darcy cried. “Why would I have seen her? Is she in jail, too?”

  “Why did you get a room on the fifth floor of the hotel?” Seth asked. “Was Jenny staying with you? To spy on me, maybe?”

  “I don't know!” Darcy wailed. Tears were already running down her face. “I don’t even know why I’m in Charleston! I can't remember a dang-blasted thing! Honest Abe I don't!”

  “Darcy, language!” her mother said.

  “You tell Mr. Fancy-feathers I expect to get paid back for them charges on my credit card, too,” Darcy’s dad said. “What was you thinking, Darcy? We don't stay nowhere nicer than the Motel 6, since I lost my foot. We don't own a bank like some folks.”

  Seth just looked at Darcy, hoping for some kind of explanation from her, but the girl looked like she was tottering toward a nervous breakdown.

  “Darcy!” her dad said. “Wheel me on out of here. I'm gonna whup you good when you get home.”

  “Okay, Daddy.” Darcy was blubbering as she turned his wheelchair and rolled him through the crowd toward the door.

  Seth watched them leave, more puzzled than ever. Why had Darcy swiped her dad's credit card and rented a separate room, when Seth had rented a two-room suite for them to share? And why had Darcy come to orientation at all, if she wasn't going to college?

  Altogether, it had been a terrible and senseless weekend.

  Seth returned to the hotel, gathered up his overnight bag and the little suitcase in which Darcy had packed her things for the weekend, and then he checked out.

  He climbed into his blue convertible, lowered the roof, and drove home through the stifling heat and humidity. The packet of orientation papers sat on his passenger seat, weighed down by his overnight bag. He wasn't looking forward to college. He wasn't looking forward to much of anything these days. Jenny had grown increasingly distant from him, and angry at him, over the last several weeks—even before last night's events—and he didn't understand why.

  He drove home to Fallen Oak, feeling very cold inside, and very alone in the world, just the way he'd felt after his brother died. He still missed Carter a lot—without him, there had been nobody he could talk to, until he met Jenny.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Cessna soared through the night over the Gulf of Mexico, which lay like a black chasm below. Though Jenny was tired and sore, she found the night sky around her dazzling, and she was feeling giddy at her impulsive choice to run off with Alexander. The narcotic pain medicine he'd given her was helping, too, putting a nice warm and fuzzy halo around everything.

  She gazed at Alexander, the boy who'd stepped out of her dreams and into her life, just in time to rescue her from the mob whipped up by Ashleigh's opposite—whose name was Tommy, according to Alexander.

  Alexander stared straight ahead as he piloted the small aircraft.

  The mystery of where he'd come from and where he was taking her thrilled Jenny. She felt like she knew him very well—in her dreams of one of their past lives, he'd been an ancient king of Sparta, someone who had protected her and cared for her. He had found a purpose for her deadly touch. Life must have been easier, Jenny thought, in those past incarnations when she could attribute her deadly touch to some god or demon, some easy myth where she could fit. The modern world had no such comfort to offer.

  “Alexander,” she said. “Tell me more about the past.”

  “Which past?” He grinned at her. He had a nice smile, and his dark eyes glittered, framed by his shaggy brown hair. His clothes were simple—a white shirt, tailored jeans—yet seemed terribly expensive. His shirt had felt soft and smooth to her touch, like it was made of cashmere. Maybe it was. Jenny wondered what a cashmere T-shirt must cost.

  “Any of them,” Jenny said. “Greece, maybe.”

  “You know about Greece already,” he said. “I should tell you about Egypt.”

  “I had a glimpse of Egypt,” she said. “But it was all mud huts then. No pyramids or anything, not yet. They thought I was some kind of goddess. My job was to decide if
people were guilty of crimes, and then punish them.” Jenny paused, trying to recall the scrap of past-life memory. “I think I believed them, when they said I was a goddess. What else was I supposed to think?”

  “Oh, that's primitive,” Alexander said. “There's a more interesting one a couple thousand years later. I was a pharaoh called Netjenkhet. And your name was Hetephernebti. It was an age when people had time for really long names like that.”

  Jenny laughed.

  “We conquered north into the Sinai, south into Nubia, expanding Egypt in both directions,” he said.

  “Was it always about war?” Jenny asked. “All of our lives?”

  “The humans make war constantly. As long as we live among them, we must be like them. When they discover the things we can do, they either kill us or worship us. It's difficult to live in peace among them. They don't love peace enough for that.”

  Jenny thought about the mob Ashleigh had raised against her in Fallen Oak. It had been a slow build, really—from the time Seth healed her dad in front of too many witnesses. He'd saved her dad's life, but it had really fired up the town on the subject of witchcraft. With plenty of help from Ashleigh, of course.

  “And what are we, exactly?” Jenny asked him.

  “We're old.”

  “I know that.”

  “I mean 'old' measured in eons,” he said. “We're outcasts, leftovers from the chaos before the universe. We've been human, off and on, for maybe a hundred thousand years—maybe longer, it's hard to judge, there are just a lot of lifetimes of lurking around in caves with hunters and gatherers.” He tapped the side of his head. “All those early lives kind of run together. Like we were all sleepwalking.”

  “But before that?”

  “As formless beings wandering in the abyss?” he asked. “Billions of years, I would say.”

  “Then where do normal human souls come from?”

  Alexander laughed. “I wouldn't know. They seem like snowflakes to me, winking in and out of existence.”

  “Do they reincarnate like us?”

  “Anything's possible.”

  Jenny frowned. “I thought you would know more, if you remember so many lives.”

  “I know plenty. Just not that.”

  “I still don't understand this whole 'before the universe' thing.” Jenny was eager to learn. She'd yearned for someone to explain this to her, to make sense of the memory fragments she had brought back from her glimpse beyond death.

  “When you're ready, you can see it all for yourself,” Alexander said.

  “How?”

  “I'm going to show you.”

  “When?”

  He laughed. “Any of us can wake up and remember what we are. But it's a process. I'm going to help you through that process, Jenny. So you can remember me. So we can be fully together, with both of us knowing who and what we are.”

  Jenny chewed on that, not entirely sure she liked the sound of it. The only thing she knew for certain about her past lives was that she’d done plenty of horrible things, which she regretted remembering. She looked around the cockpit and switched to a less-scary subject. “What do you do, Alexander?”

  He studied her for a moment. “I live. I look for opportunities. I try not to miss out on the wonders of being human.”

  “Okay...but I mean more like, what do you do for work? I'm guessing you're not a waiter.”

  “I don't think we should define ourselves by our work.”

  “You didn't mind mentioning that you were a pharaoh.”

  He smiled at her. “And you were my queen.”

  Jenny rolled her eyes.

  “I have friends in Mexico,” he said. “They have some special uses for my ability.”

  “What do you mean? They need zombies?”

  “They do.”

  “For what?”

  “Agriculture.”

  “What, like a zombie ranch?”

  “That's the plague-bringer I remember,” Alexander said. “A mind full of curiosity.”

  “That's how you think of me? The plague-bringer?”

  “Plagues have been a powerful shaping force in human history,” he said. “You were behind some of them.”

  “Ugh. And what are you? The dead-raiser?”

  “Exactly. You're remembering already.”

  “Nope, just thinking. So your opposite...?”

  “She can listen to the dead. Pick apart their memories. She listens to the dead, I command them.”

  “But she hates you.”

  “We've never gotten along very well.”

  “Why not?”

  “War.” Alexander shrugged. “We've ended up on opposite sides too many times.”

  Jenny felt like he was being evasive, but the painkillers made her brain feel like thick oatmeal. It was hard to think straight, or make too much sense out of his words. Then she had a memory-flash of Seth, with the strange girl on top of him, the girl who looked so much like Ashleigh…

  She opened the brown pill bottle again.

  “Careful,” Alexander said. “Those are strong.”

  “I like them,” Jenny said. She popped a pill and settled back in her chair to watch the stars.

  Later, they banked into a long, low curve, the plane angling down into the darkness below. The plane's control panel beeped and a red warning light appeared.

  “What's that?” Jenny asked.

  “Nothing,” he told her. “We're just out of gas.”

  “What?”

  “Don't worry. We don't need much more.”

  “Are we there already?” Jenny peered down. “I don't see any airport.”

  “There isn't one.” Alexander turned on the radio and spoke in rapid Spanish. “Jenny, help me watch for the fires.”

  Jenny squinted. Below a pair of bright red spots flared in the dark. Then two more, and two more, in straight, parallel rows. She pointed. “Is that what you're looking for?”

  “It is. Fasten your seatbelt, Jenny.”

  The plane spiraled down toward the rows of firelight. Alexander dropped to the ground between them, and the plane rattled and shook, jarring Jenny back and forth and up and down as it bounced across the rough, uneven earth. The weedy dirt landing strip was illuminated by a row of old oil drums on either side of it, with raw flames pouring out the top. Each barrel was immediately extinguished as the plane rolled past.

  “This is such an impressive airport,” Jenny said. “Do they have a Starbucks?”

  “Welcome to Chiapas International, specializing in people and cargo looking to avoid, ah, excessive government regulations.” Alexander braked the plane, and it dragged to a halt between the last pair of flaming oil drums. These, too, were extinguished. In the plane's own lights, Jenny could see the rocky track extending forward several more yards, before it the view turned to rocks and thick forest.

  “You're a smuggler,” Jenny said.

  “Nope. I have friends who are smugglers. The only thing I'm smuggling is you.” Alexander flipped off the landing lights, leaving them in darkness.

  “And you're sure we're safe here?” Jenny looked at the solid black outside the window.

  “Safety is something no honest person can guarantee,” Alexander said. “But if anybody tries to mess with you, just kill them.”

  Jenny laughed. “Great advice. Do you handle all your problems that way?”

  “I try to avoid problems before they ever happen.” Alexander opened his door, and Jenny heard men speaking in Spanish outside. “But sometimes, people just have to die. Welcome home.”

  He hopped out of the plane. Jenny opened her door but couldn't see where she was going, so she waited for him to help her down.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Dr. Heather Reynard of the Center for Disease Control stood in the morgue of the Medical University of South Carolina and looked at the bodies that had been collected from the residential street in downtown Charleston. There were just over two dozen of them, every age, every condition.

&nb
sp; Also in the room were the dean of the medical school as well as the county medical examiner Cordell Nolan, who had returned the bodies with the help of local police, and two morgue assistants who had witnessed the bodies' departure from the morgue. She wasn't sure what to make of their story.

  “So,” Heather said, “He comes through this door. He opens the drawers. And then...could you review the next part again?” She looked at the two morgue assistants, one an older black man named Corinthius, the other a twenty-four-year-old kid with dark green hair, whose name was Steve.

  “And then that's where it gets fucked up,” Steve said. “He starts bringing them back to life. Bam, bam, bam, one after the other they sit up, and he sicks them on us like a pack of wild dogs—”

  “Not like a pack of dogs,” Corinthius interrupted. “More like a pack of turtles. They were slow, dragging their feet, but they were coming for us. He could make them attack.”

  “And how exactly did he bring them back?”

  “Hell if I know,” Steve said.

  “I meant, what exactly did you see him do?” Heather asked.

  “He touched 'em,” Corinthius said. “That's all. He touched each of them one time. Then he did kind of a funny wave with his hand—” Corinthius raised his own hand, “And then they got up and walked toward us. That's when we ran the hell out of here.”

  “It's not my job to deal with zombies,” the green-haired kid whined. “They're supposed to be fully dead when they get here, and then stay that way. I ought to get hazard pay or overtime or something.”

  “Kid's got a point,” Corinthius said, with a glance at the dean. “Ought to at least get some extra vacation time.”

  “We'll see,” the dean said.

  “Every one of 'em was dead last time I saw 'em,” the county medical examiner said. “Got more injuries now than they did before. All post-mortem, of course. Mostly cuts and scrapes.”

  “That's all he did?” Heather asked. “He just laid his hands on them, and then he could animate them?”

  “You gotta believe us,” Steve said.

  “I do believe you,” Heather said. “I've reviewed the hospital's security footage. I saw them walk. I just can't begin to figure out how.”