Chapter 1

Monday, October 13th, 2014

At least my birthday wasn’t on Friday the 13th this time. Eight years ago, when I woke my first dead thing, I wasn’t so lucky. I’d been sixteen back then, and that girl wouldn’t have recognized me now. But we would have bonded over the fact that Lockwood was coming.

I’d chosen to meet him at Rosie’s Café, just a converted log cabin down the street from the library where I was working. I liked Rosie’s. A guy named Chuck ran it, said he’d named it after his daughter. He had it decorated with logging memorabilia, long saws, axes, lanterns, even a whole harness rig for the draft horses hung from the ceiling. Black and white photo reproductions from the state library archives showed weary loggers posed in front of trees wider than a semi. I don’t know how those men could take down something so big without power tools, but they managed it.

On a Monday, at lunchtime, most of the tables in Rosie’s were unoccupied. A few former mill workers huddled over coffee at a couple tables in the back. Chuck gave the coffee out for free to mill workers ever since the mill shut down.

Ridley needed that mill but I don’t think that anyone really expected it to re-open. The Ridley city council kept coming up with plans to attract more tourism to our small corner of the Northwest, the last effort several years ago added all sorts of metal statues around town. It helped some, made the depressed place a bit more welcoming to tourists coming down 101. With the greenway trail put in with federal money I thought the city should focus on bicyclists, but I didn’t go to the meetings.

I didn’t want the attention and I didn’t want to be around too many people. It’s hard when you’re a witch.

Not that they know. To people in town I’m just Ravyn Washington, the pretty twenty-something — twenty-four today — that works over at the library. I helped bring in a crowd of lonely loggers to the library, each eager to chat. Sometimes I even convinced them to check out a book.

I know which ones are harmless, with a casual infatuation. I feel what they’re feeling. Among other things I’m an empath now, courtesy of Maggie Russell, the witch who taught me to control my abilities and betrayed my trust by reporting me to the Inquisition.

And in a way saved me from being burned at the same time.

I’m still a little bitter about that. Sort of like Chuck’s coffee. I put down my mug, a big ceramic mug with an inappropriate “Pole Sitter” printed on it above a picture of a logger sitting on a topped off tree.

The antique grandfather clock, over by one of the big posts holding up the rafters, showed five after twelve. Lockwood was late. The Inquisition’s finest didn’t show up late. Not unless something got in his way.

I slid forward on my seat and reached around my back until my fingertips touched the reassuring presence of my Glock. I checked the windows. Nothing visible outside except the rain falling and the flat, rust-red metal logger statue that stood in front of Rosie’s.

I reached out instead with my mind, opening a crack in the barriers I kept in place, like peeking out through the blinds. The three mill workers at the other table were wrapped up in their own depression and anger. One felt embarrassed about something but I couldn’t tell what. I felt emotions, I couldn’t read minds. If they were asleep I could have entered their dreams and if they died I could wake them, open a connection to the other side and have them rise as dead things. I had picked that little trick up from my grandmother, the infamous necromancer Helen Richardson.

Yep, the same Helen Richardson that Stefan Roland featured in his fourth film, Trailer Park of the Dead Things. That was the movie that also showed my father getting killed by a dead thing that she had woken.

These days she still lives with my mother. If you call sitting in her room drooling a life, thanks to the Inquisitions attempt to ‘cure’ her of her ability through surgical and chemical means. It’s called burning, and even though it’s gotten much more sophisticated I still worry about it. I grew up around the results, so I’ve seen how it can go wrong.

Right now I had to wonder. What if Lockwood wasn’t coming? What if the Inquisition had decided I was too much of a security risk? What if they’d sent another recovery team instead? There could be a team of inquisitors outside right now, ready to take me one way or the other.

The Inquisition didn’t really like it when I left. Lockwood got me out, but politics might have changed things.

I extended my reach. I felt Chuck’s relaxed boredom back in the kitchen. Underneath that he felt a simmering anxiety but it didn’t feel focused to me. Not like he had anyone in the kitchen with him.

I’d half risen out of my chair. The hair on my neck was standing up. Even though I didn’t feel anything my nerves told me to move. Now.

I acted on instinct. I left the table and moved over to the stout pole by the clock and put my back against it. I still didn’t draw my weapon, though I was tempted. I didn’t know if I was spooking myself or there was something seriously wrong.

My senses, natural and preternatural, hadn’t turned anything up yet. Other than Lockwood being late.

I had other options. I could astral project my awareness out of my body, but that drained my energy quickly and left my body open to possession. I’d been there and really didn’t want some dead thing from the other side moving in while I checked out the neighborhood.

That just left one other trick. It made me sick, physically sick to my stomach to think about, but I needed information. I focused on breathing through my mouth and reached out with my mind again. I feel the energy reaching out like a cold wind, as if I was exhaling until my lungs were completely empty, but somehow I kept going.

I found what I wanted scattered around Rosie’s in the window tracks and corners. Up on the rafters. Under the artifacts on the wood hutch against the east wall. Dead things. The dried, desiccated bodies of flies, mostly with a scattering of mosquitoes and moths. I felt them the way you might feel pebbles beneath your bare feet, and with that mental wind I blew on them as if they were coals.

That energy twisted through them and opened tiny pin-hole connections to the other side. With the connection made more energy was sucked from me down that conduit, feeding into whatever exists on the other side. Horrors I never wanted to see reached through with tiny fingers of energy.

I heard buzzing noises around the room as flies spun in circles in the dust. Moths battered their wings against the logs. The ones with intact wings finally took off, buzzing around the room.

A surge of disgust from the mill workers as flies buzzed past them.

“Chuck!” One barrel-chested guy hollered. “You’ve got a bunch of flies out here!”

Another one of the guys noticed me standing in the middle of the room by the post. I felt a surge of lust from him as he looked at me, but I’m used to that. Men do it all the time. You get used to it. I felt like I was being pulled in twenty directions by all of the dead insects I’d woken but I made myself reach into my pocket and pull out my cell. I pretended to study the screen.

Useful things, cell phones. You can talk to yourself and do all sorts of things, but if people see you holding a phone they ignore you. The mill worker felt a twinge of regret, sorrow and turned back to his buddies while casually swatting at one of the flies buzzing around the room.

Dead things don’t like taking orders. But then most necromancers don’t have my level of control. They end up waking too many dead things only for the whole horde to descend on them, following the connection back to the one that woke them.

I pushed out with my mind. Forcing them to move out of the building. Some battered themselves uselessly against windows, but others found their way out through cracks and holes in the structure, slipping under the door, through the corner of one window, wherever they could.

That was the easy part. Just being connected to the flies and other dead bugs made me feel sick. I have a thing about flies, in particular, but I kept breathing and tried to ignore that. This next part was hard.

I shifted my awareness along the lines that connected me to the bugs. Like peering out through a spyglass. I didn’t leave my body, especially not when connected to dead things that were in turn connected to the other side. That was a recipe for disaster. But I could peer through the connection. I closed my eyes and concentrated. Down that tiny connection to one of the flies.

Clouds. Ground. Statue. A dizzying array of images glimpsed and gone, shattered and refracted around. It made me so sick that my stomach churned, threatening to spray Chuck’s bitter coffee out on the floor. I kept it down. Seeing through a fly’s eyes? Not recommended. They don’t see well, or the way we do. My brain struggled to understand what it got through the connection.

Things switched too fast. I switched to the next. Wood grain as seen through a kaleidoscope. Next. Grass. Water. Dirt. Next. Cedar shake roof below. Rosie’s from above.

Blurry. Unsteady. Without changing my focus I leaned back against the post. The feel of the solid wood against my back steadied me even as the fly flew erratically through the air, spiraling back down closer to the building.

I forced it to turn. Willed it to do as I wished. Controlling a fly? Hard. Controlling a zombie? Don’t even get me started. So hard. The sorts of things that animated the fly were easier to influence. Move up to a zombie and the things that possessed them from the other side had much more awareness. And hunger. Not the sort of thing I wanted to mess with.

Fortunately I only had a fly to contend with. After a flash of malevolence through the connection the insect did as I wanted. It flew an erratic zigzag course over Rosie’s toward the parking lot.

I was seeing something that looked like a blurry watercolor seen through a kaleidoscope. Drops of water as big as my head flew past, now and then becoming startlingly clear. The fly dodged the rain drops. But for how long? It didn’t feel like it was flying very well. Something wrong with one of the wings.

I pushed it on.

It was hard to make out but eventually I decided that the dark shape on what had to be the street was in fact a black SUV. Ford-made, familiar from the red pin-striping.

Inquisition. Standard issue, reinforced vehicle that could double as a command and communications center, and mobile armory. Usual vehicle for recovery teams.

What looked like double-vision from the fly was actually two vehicles. Had to be two, each carrying two to four inquisitors. But where were they?

The fly flew in a wider circle. It dodged, dropped, spun and swerved around rain drops until I would have fallen to my knees if I weren’t leaning against the pole. I clutched the cell phone in my right hand and forced a smile out of my grimace.

“Yes, were do you want to meet?” I said aloud, still trying to cover.

Disjointed. My attention split in two places. My left hand found the pole and my fingers slid along the polished surface.

Outside the fly dropped, grazed by a rain drop. I reached along the other connections to the insects that made it outside. Those still battering themselves against the walls and windows I released, drawing back the energy used to wake them, then severing the connections. They dropped where they were back into lifeless dry husks.

More and more eyes joined the effort to find the inquisitors outside. I flipped rapidly among them like switching stations on the television. If they were in close proximity I could take the view from several, but the further apart they got the harder it became.

My stomach churned unhappily is the images stabbed into my brain. I couldn’t keep this up forever.

Red. I snapped my attention back down the connection to several flies and a moth which all showed red. There.

Gotcha!

The image shattered. Reformed, split and combined. Through the distortion I could make out four inquisitors. All dressed in red. Again, standard uniform of the Inquisition. I didn’t have to see it clearly. I knew it well. The red suits, black shirts, black tie and black shoes — that’d been the uniform of the Inquisition for decades. Even going back farther, the red and black were consistent though styles had changed. All except the grand inquisitors who wore red ties instead of the standard black. I couldn’t see well enough to make out that detail through the bugs.

Four inquisitors, in positions behind the lumber jack statue outside. Good cover for a frontal approach to the café.

I relaxed my control on the bugs but didn’t sever the connections just yet. I might need them still but I couldn’t focus and move. I opened my eyes. The room spun around me. I braced myself on the post and breathed. I could still feel the connections like tiny coffee straws stuck in my mind, sucking away at me.

I pushed away from the post. At least I could move now. Had to move. Any second the agents would come through the door.

Maybe I could get out the back. My car was parked a few blocks from the library. I didn’t keep it at work or at home. If anyone was going to block it they’d have to find it first. I didn’t believe in making it easy for them. I had my bug-out kit all set up in the trunk. Everything I needed to drop out of Ripley and start over somewhere else. Weapons, clothes, money and new identities. All courtesy of my training with the Inquisition. They might know what I was going to do, but they still had to stop me.

This time, if they caught me they’d probably burn me. Not only to strip me of my abilities but to remove any knowledge of the Inquisition. I’d be lucky if I could tie my shoes after this.

Damn Lockwood! Even if he hadn’t set me up now, he’d set me up by convincing me to join the Inquisition in the first place. Witches serving as inquisitors was a public relations nightmare, and not one that the Chief Inquisitor wanted to deal with, I was sure.

I breathed deep and headed quickly to the back of the café. I pushed right through the staff-only door as if I had every right to be there. The air was rich with hot, sizzling beef and potatoes.

Tony, over at the grill looked up. I felt his surprised fire down his nerves. A touch of guilt there too. Sampling the food? I didn’t care. His broad face spread in a wide smile when he saw me. He felt genuine happiness at seeing me, now that the surprise was ebbing.

“Ravyn? What’s up, doll? You need something else?”

I pocketed the cell and took out a twenty. I slapped it down on the counter. “That’s for lunch and an extra tip to let me throughout the back. Ex-boyfriend coming in from the front and I’d rather not see him.”

“Sure thing, doll. You need any help?” He felt a surge of concern, fear and anger, not, I thought, directed at me. He wanted to do the right thing but it scared him a bit too.

“No, Tony. No trouble. Just act like you haven’t seen me. I don’t want to see him get hurt.” Not that there was any danger of that but I felt Tony’s pride bloom at the words.

“Sure, go right ahead. Down there.” Tony pointed down the aisle through the kitchen.

A door opened past the counters and Chuck walked out. Chuck who looked like a lumber jack himself, always with flannel shirts rolled up on his beefy forearms. Tight blue jeans. He looked a bit like Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, aged handsomely into his late fifties.

Chuck looked at me, at Tony. Warm curiosity swirled through his mind.

“I’m just going out the back,” I told him, already moving closer. If he tried to stop me I’d take him down but I didn’t feel any threat from that quarter.

“Ex-boyfriend,” Tony offered, trying to help.

Chuck nodded. “Take care, Ravyn. Don’t worry about him following.”

“Sure, guys, thanks.”

I slipped past Chuck, smelling his Old Spice as we passed each other in the close space, and then I was in the back hallway. Boxes of condiments stood stacked against the wall, past those were containers filled with vegetable oil.

I didn’t believe that the team out front left the back unguarded. They had eyes back here too. I’d guess a third vehicle parked in the alley and another two agents watching both ends. It only took a second for me to get to the back door. I leaned against the wall, pressing my hands flat against the wood paneling and reached out for my remaining connections. I focused on those at the rear of the building.

A spider, climbing up the brick wall across the alley and a couple flies buzzing around in the space between the buildings. Through their distorted vision I saw areas of light and dark. Left, down the alley something dark obscured the view. That had to be the car, just as I expected.

Red. Red. Where were they? I forced my energy down the lines into the flies. I seized control and compelled them to fly steadier, slowing in the air so I could get a steadier vision.

There. Both sides of the door. Red splashes against the walls. The door opened inward. They’d have the drop on me as soon as I opened that door. I needed a distraction.

Two big bags of garbage sat in the hallway. Those could work. I didn’t want to hurt the inquisitors outside. That’d only make things worse, but I might have to hurt them. A little bit, if I wanted to get away. I couldn’t let them alert the others out front.

There wasn’t time to do it any other way.

I pulled back the energy from the dead insects outside and severed their connections to the other side. They dropped like stones. I grabbed up the trash bags and lifted them in front of my face as I opened the door.