Dead Ice

“Better be sure soon,” Domino said, as he stripped off his jacket and tossed it out of the grave. His guns were very stark against the whiteness of his T-shirt, even by the light of the moon.

He was right. It wasn’t like me to waffle so much; I was usually yes or no. Manny touched my arm. “If he’s still moving, they need to shoot him, Anita.”

I nodded, but I didn’t give the order.

“Why are you hesitating?” he asked.

“I think I feel guilty.”

“Feel guilty, but do what is needed.”

I nodded, and said, “If he grabs for either of you, shoot him.”

“Thanks, Manny,” Domino said as he went back to shoveling dirt onto the edge of the pile the backhoe had already made beside the grave.

“He heard that?” Manny asked.

“He can hear your heartbeat from feet away,” I said.

“Yards away if it’s beating hard,” Domino said, without looking up or hesitating as he shoveled.

Manny gave me wide eyes, shrugged, and smiled. I almost asked him if he had any friends who were shapeshifters, but if he did they’d be very careful around him to appear as human as possible. If I told him that, he’d just be uncomfortable around them next time they socialized, so I let it go. A lot of friendships are based on partial truths and work for years.

“Do I stop when I reach the coffin?”

“The coffin may not be intact, so if you touch wood just stop and we’ll reevaluate.”

“How not intact?” Nicky asked, rifle still pointed very seriously down at the dirt.

“Maybe not there at all,” Manny said.

“So I’ll hit body before I hit wood?” Domino asked.

“Maybe,” I said.

“A lot of maybes tonight,” he said.

“I know.”

He glanced up at me. “You’re not even going to apologize for it?”

“No.”

We had a moment of looking at each other. “You’re the boss,” he said, and went back to digging.

“Maybe more scraping the dirt than digging,” Manny said, “so the body isn’t damaged.”

“If it’s moving, I intend to damage it.”

“A lot,” Nicky said.

I wanted to tell them, Don’t. This was my fault, somehow this was my fault, because I hadn’t known Warrington had been a cannibal? That was ridiculous; there was no way for me to have known that. It was his deepest, darkest secret; he wouldn’t have written it down where someone could find it, read it, know. I had done my due diligence. Both the research firm we used for searches and our office staff had found out everything they could on him and checked for the red flags that would have made me pass on the job. So why did I feel like I’d done something wrong?

Domino was scraping smaller scoops of dirt now, looking to see what he was hitting with the bladed edge of the shovel. Nicky was very seriously watching the ground underneath them for movement. Manny and I were here to help control the zombie if it woke ready to eat people. Susannah and Eddie were close by with hoods in place, so we could all scatter and they could fry the zombie. We had it covered, but I was supposed to be the big bad necromancer who knew everything there was to know about the undead. It had been a long time since I’d been caught this flat-footed by a zombie that I’d raised from the grave. I’d been surprised badly by other people’s undead, but never by my own. Was it professional pride that was hurting? I didn’t know. I just didn’t know why this was hitting me so hard, but it was; it really was.

“Movement!” Nicky said, voice loud, but the rifle never wavered.

Domino sprang out of the grave like magic, one minute in the grave, the next not, as if he’d translocated, not just leapt up like the cat he could be. Nicky stayed on post in the grave. I moved up with the shotgun, trying to see what he had noticed. The dirt looked black and empty to me.

“Get out, I’ll cover you,” I said.

“Maybe it was a mole or something,” Zerbrowski said, peering into the grave.

“Not unless it’s bigger than any mole I ever saw,” Nicky said.

“No self-respecting mole would stay around this much digging,” I said. I had the shotgun tucked in tight to my shoulder, my cheek sighting down the barrel, while I looked for movement. “Get out of it, Nicky, that’s an order.”

He had to do what I told him to do as my Bride, though my own desire for him to be more independent had made it not as automatic as it had once been. He grabbed the edge of the grave and started to jump out when I saw the ground heave, a second before a hand grabbed his ankle.

“Shit,” I said.

I couldn’t fire that close to Nicky’s leg without risking hitting him. He tried to leap out of the grave the way Domino had done, and if a human, or even another lycanthrope, had grabbed him he could have done it, but the dead hold on tighter than the living. Nicky made it to the edge of the grave and halfway onto the ground, where Domino grabbed him and helped pull him forward, but it didn’t free him from the zombie’s hand. It pulled the hand, the arm, and part of a T-shirted shoulder into sight, but the hand stayed tight to Nicky’s ankle.

I had my finger on the trigger, half-pulled, when I heard something that made me hesitate. A voice calling, “Help me!”

Warrington was down there, alert, awake, and craving flesh. He was down there begging for help. Motherfucking son of a bitch.