Rebirth Read online

  “Mags! What the hell was that, do you have any idea what just happened?”

  She shook her head no and tried to speak, “Not the least!” She had trouble getting enough air to speak

  “You see the way that motherfucker. Swam. Off? Ooohh” She beat on the ground “He ain’t…got…no…fingers left.” She looked behind me and sobered up “hey, Rose!”

  She looked behind me, eyes wide, all laughter gone.

  I turned quick, pretty sure Harry was trying to get another grab on Beta, and came face to face with Harry, who was dangling from Morrigan’s hand around his neck.

  “Rose, I give you this. It will obey you.” She tossed him to the ground at my feet and continued

  “You know it’s a crow. It’s a smart crow. Use it. Kill it. It’s a damn crow. I do not care.” And she was gone.

  Harry was already raising his hand, probably reaching for Beta.

  “Damn it man! No, just hell no, don’t touch Beta, or anything friggin’ thing else, unless I tell you to!”

  Harry froze, then stood up and backed off a step or two, shoulders slumped, head hanging down. I mean literally his head was laying on his chest.

  “Mags, you mind checking to see if his neck is broke, that don’t look right.” I didn’t want to get close enough he could grab again.

  He picked his head up

  “My neck is not broken. Will you heal me?”

  I reached into him and fed in the energy to heal his hand. I healed him a lot more than I had before with less time and attention.

  He collapsed onto the ground, just turned loose of all his muscles and fell. He didn’t move to get more comfortable once he hit. Mags had walked over and stood looking at him.

  I asked “Mags, you ever run into anything like this before?”

  “No.” She poked at him with her foot. He didn’t move or let on it bothered him.

  “Harry, talk to me, what was all that with Morrigan, her giving you to me and all that? You know that don’t work, right? People can’t do that.”

  “Harry is not people. Morrigan is not people.” Apparently unbalanced by Mags foot, he rolled over. He made no attempt to deal with the falling. “Morrigan made me, can do what she wants with me.” His voice was muffled by the way his face was in the dirt.

  “Harry, get the fuck up so I can tell what you sayin!” I’d had about enough of his pathos and shit.

  He popped up onto his feet and stood there. I realized he was pale, he had lost a pretty good bit of blood and that and the pain was finally hitting him.

  “Let’s get you something to drink, some food, this has been a bad day for you.” I watched him to make sure he didn’t grab at Beta again, backing towards the kitchen. He followed with no real expression, just ambling along.

  “What is your problem, anyway? We were doin’ ok before even though you were an asshat and acting strange. Now you some kinda zombie? How come you changed?”

  He slowed down so I stopped and faced him, as he spoke;

  “Before, I could get away. Now I can’t. I know how cruel you are; that’s what I do, I know or I find out. You’re going to do me. You asked, so I had to tell you. That probably doesn’t matter. No point in putting it off, if that makes you do it, so be it. This is how I look and act when I have no hope, apparently.”

  “What makes you say I’m cruel, all I ever done to anybody was self defense or saving somebody, or protecting somebody. You don’t attack people, you all right as far as I am concerned.”

  “You are right, I am sorry, please forgive me. I spoke out of turn. Damn I hate this. You’re really good at it. I wish you would just kill me. I won’t be that much fun for you; I won’t last like the vampire.”

  “Man, what the hell you talkin’ about? The only vampire I had dealin’s with was that Chen bastard, and he was killin’ us till I figured out how to put him down. And, oh yeah, that one in the basement, I stabbed it when it grabbed me after it eat into that kids neck.”

  “What about the other one? The friendly one? The one who trusted you, and you have in hell right now?”

  “Andy? Naw, Chen killed him, cut his head off, I buried his head in the back yard. I don’t think he would want to be buried in a church cemetery. I just don’t know what to do with him. Is that who you mean?

  “You know that cutting off the head doesn’t kill a vampire, right? Until you burn the head, and the body, and spread the ashes. Really, burning the head will get rid of the identity, the body can rise but it will be a zombie. But the head can last a long time, oh, centuries; they don’t rot. They don’t age like living things. So they just sit there. In the dark. Buried in the dirt. After coming to in the coffin when he was made vampire to start with. And had to dig his way out over the course of days. He doesn’t have fingers now though. So he is stuck there, can’t move, in the dark, for centuries.”

  He raised his head and looked straight at me;

  “I would much prefer to be burned alive.”

  I was running to the back yard before he finished, oh damn, I had to fix this. I had dirt pop Andy’s head out of the ground, it rolled over and wound up on one ear looking upward with the sack mostly fell off. When I found it, soon as I recognized it I put it back in the sack, which was a pillowcase, and buried sack and all, at night, without looking at it real close.

  “It never occurred to me to check if the head was alive. Most times, you get a head in a sack, they ain’t no need to check for a pulse or breathing, I ain’t sure just what you check to see if it’s alive.”

  The head was blinking its eyes, it had dirt in them. I hollered “Mags!” and realized she was standing beside me.

  “Mags, will you bring the hose over here, Harry, turn it on when we get ready, just a little bit, that’s gotta hurt.”

  Mags handed me the end of the hose. I wanted to bump the head to knock the dirt off but I ran out of steam. There wasn’t a good place to hold it, the neck was ragged and nasty and it had mud and blood all over it. I asked dirt to get the dirt off it. Dirt was pissed and wouldn’t do anything with it. I waved at Harry to turn the water on and rolled the head so I could wash the dirt out of its eyes. I had it facing sideways and dribbled water carefully onto the top eye, which was spazzing, he’d try to open it, feel the dirt and snap it closed. I noticed a little smoke coming off it the head like steam, and he, or it, had a terrible expression, mouth open like he would scream, but no air to make noise with.

  I sat back on my heels and tried to figure out what to do. No idea at all how to heal a missing body. Especially a vampire body. And dirt didn’t want to deal with it.

  Harry said “I would have never thought of that. You are truly evil, to get pleasure out of so much pain.”

  “Hey, fuck you jerk, I’m tryin’ to figure out how to fix this, even getting the dirt out of his eyes is a bitch. So you either help or shut the hell up. I do appreciate you tellin’ me he was in this fix, I never thought of it. Now help or get the hell out of the way.”

  “You have a defenseless vampire head that cannot move in direct sunlight. You see that little bit of smoke? In a few hours, he might catch fire. Or he might last a few days, cooking in the daytime and healing at night.”

  I guess ‘whoops’ don’t really cut it. I put the head under my shirt against my bare belly and ran for the house.

  Thankfully Beta moved instead of cutting the head to pieces. I would have really felt bad about that.

  I got the head inside and put it in the sink and washed it, fuck it, I got all the dirt off. I did not use dishwashing liquid. Anybody that says I did is lyin’. No shit.

  It turns out that communicating with a head is not easy. It couldn’t talk, blinking for yes and no is bullshit. I couldn’t really ever remember whether it was one or two blinks for yes or for no, and the head had the same problem. It didn’t want to admit it couldn’t remember even after I admitted it. But there just ain’t that much shit you can find out from yes and no. “Do you want me to go get you another body from th
e graveyard and hook you up on the neck? I can try to get a real fresh one.”

  Mags said, “let me count this time, ok? That’s one blink. It was one blink for no, so that’s no. Right, Andy? You did one blink so you don’t want a body. Ok, he’s blinking again. We are looking for two blinks. This is one. This is a really hard blink, it is takin’ a long time. Well, what the hell. Was that ‘no’ to the answer to the question was ‘no’? Or did he get some more dirt in his eye?”

  And that’s how that was. We did finally agree that he should be kept in the dark and needed blood to heal, little bits to start with, more at a time later when he had somewhere to keep it. I sat him in a biscuit pan on a towel to catch overflow. I cut myself and dribbled some in a pint jar. I was gonna put a lot in but Mags said it wouldn’t store well and I might be too rich for him. Mags donated, then Harry surprised us both by donating. The mouth opened, we poured a little in two or three times and put the rest in the refrigerator. The towel showed that most of it had gone right on through. Maybe all of it. There wasn’t anything to work with the blood. Oh well. Doing the best we could. Gross. Icky. Yuck. But I didn’t let on, just another day in the hood. Carl showed up, he had been out working his lawn business. He now had six full time employees. Lawn season in the deep south lasts about 12 months a year.

  He was suitably grossed out by the head;

  “I’ll buy you a new biscuit pan. You give me that one when you finish.”

  “Ha, Carl I didn’t intend to use that to cook in any more. Thanks, though, I can always use a new pan, especially after I lose one like this. You know, raising the head?”

  He didn’t get it. Damn, it’s a tough crowd around here sometimes.

  Sixteen

  I had to introduce Harry and Carl. Apparently Carl has a claim on me. It makes me feel kinda good, wanted, I guess. But it’s a pain in the ass when I need to deal with someone else.

  Carl stood up real tall and examined Harry from head to toe. He was obvious about it. Harry was skinny, lanky, about my height, so around five feet tall. Dark complexion, maybe Hispanic? I never could tell much about such things, people had to tell me.

  “Morrigan gave Harry to me. He’s a teacher.”

  “Rose, that don’t sound right, how you give somebody? I mean, unless you talking about marriage or something like that?”

  “Morrigan has different rules, and Harry ain’t somebody, kinda. I guess. Shit, I don’t know, she said, ‘here ya go’ and give him to me and left, he thought I was really evil and reminded me of Andy and here we are.”

  “He has to mind you now? You gotta feed him and all that? Where is he gone live now? You gone make you a reverse harem? You know, you gotta have more than one if you gone call it a harem.” He couldn’t make up his mind to protect Harry, or me, or get between us, or what he was going to do.

  “Where’d you get that harem idea? You been readin’ again? What the hell, Carl, you know how to read?” God I love pulling his chain. Although it pissed me off that he was suggesting me with a harem.

  “Yes, I read, you avoidin’ the question.” He edged Harry away with his shoulder so he could sit at the table with me.

  “You want to be in my harem, don’t you? I knew it. That’s why you was wearin’ them damn shorts all the time!”

  Mags said “What is this harem? I don’t know that word?” She sat down by Carl and leaned her head on his shoulder, looking at me.

  “It’s like wives, a man gets several women and treats them all like they wives.”

  “Why does Carl ask if you have harem? Is only Harry. And maybe Earl, but you say not Earl. You got more?”

  “She got me, I’m the only one she needs.” Carl intended to say more but heard himself and ran down.

  “She got Harry now.” Mags was enjoying herself “Morrigan say Harry belong to Rose, is hers.”

  Harry was standing back away from all of us looking off into space, eyes vacant; either an idiot or in deep thought.

  “Y’all hang on a minute.” I held a hand up to hush Mags and Carl,

  “Harry, you ok? I don’t know how you knew about Andy, but I appreciate you telling me about him. I never would have done him that way if I had known what was going on.”

  He didn’t move, didn’t look around, like I hadn’t spoke.

  “Harry, can you hear me?”

  “Yes, I can hear you.” He didn’t look at me or change posture, still looking up toward the ceiling.

  “It’s polite to show you’re paying attention to someone talking with you.”

  “Thank you.”

  He kept on with the looking up thing.

  “You got something interesting you looking at up there?”

  “No.”

  “Am I botherin’ you? I owe you, I’m trying not to get upset with you, but it is getting a little difficult”

  Mags jumped over between us, “Rose, stop, you don’t know what you doin’.”

  Harry wasn’t looking at the ceiling now;

  .“She spoke, she can either hold to her word or break it.”

  “Y’all both stop, now. What the hell are you talking about, Mags?” The hair on the back of my neck was trying to stand up.

  “If you say a debt exists, you owe, you can lose yourself, they can take it away, you don’t have control any more. For one you own, you lose owning that one. If you owe a debt to one you do not own, then you owe what they demand in payment if they can enforce it. The powerful ones always enforce it.”

  Harry said, “I want you to release me and set me free.”

  “Well sure, shit, I would…”

  Mags stopped me again,

  “Rose, will you let me do this for you? You do not understand. You can start a shit storm with this if you don’t do it right.”

  “Yeah, I guess. You make sure he knows he’s free; that is just some silly shit.”

  Mags turned back to Harry,

  “Do not allow any harm to Rose and those who she claims other than in self defense and you will be free. Do you agree with this?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is done.”

  Harry exploded with a soundless blast of all colors of light, there was a loud flapping and no Harry.

  All I could say was “Wow.”

  Mags said, “Rose, you got to be careful. Not admit debt with monster, or creature, whatever. There are a lot of rules. You screw up, one of them own you.”

  “You talkin’ about slavery? They do that?”

  “No, not something that easy and simple. People with slaves, they get them a little while, a lifetime at most, and then it’s over. It’s bad. But if a powerful one owns you, they have you forever. They can wear you; talk with your mouth. They are different, you do not know what they might do, or why.”

  “Harry was one of these powerful ones, then?”

  “No, Harry was one that got caught. There is no tellin’ how long he’s been caught. And now you let him loose, some of them might be upset with you. Whatever you do, don’t tell any of them you owe them.”

  “Naw, I can see how that might be a bad idea. Is there any way to fix it so they ain’t mad?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. I just heard some of this while I was trainin. Some of it is common sense. I guess we just deal with it as it comes.”

  “Then how ‘bout you teach me how to deal with fire?”

  We had a long talk. Mags shared what she knew.

  All elements are part of the earth. She listed them and when she said silver I shivered but I said nothing. I didn’t want to appear greedy.

  Fire was cleansing, removed the old, changed and caused movement. Fast and impulsive compared to earth’s slow, deliberate persona. Each element requires a different mindset.

  She knew fire handling and had a mindset or interpreter for it.

  Experienced people made places cold with fire.

  “Let’s build fire, you try work. For me, it is two years, they let me try. You fast.”

  She got some twigs and pine str
aw together and looked around while feeling in her pockets,

  “I lighter, I carry, start fire.”

  Beta coated the back of one hand and shot fire into the little pile and it was burning. I knew what it was doing, I wasn’t thinking about it, helpful, getting Mags a fire started.

  Mags jumped, “Shit! What you do?”

  “I lit the fire so you could show me how you work with the fire elemental.”

  “What you use?”

  “Beta lit it, we discussed it kinda and it seemed like the thing to do.”

  “Well fuck, you funny. What you think?”

  “I used Beta, used to call it Necklace, you know what it is.”

  “Then is fire elemental. You already have fire, do what you want. What else you got?”

  “It said it was fire and iron and air and me.” Were those all elementals? Did they combine and make some other elemental? Could they separate?

  They were all different, yet the same, we/it/they could exist as molten iron, electricity, fire, iron, [a picture of some sort of wind/iron/fire mix, solid sparks shooting out of a fire hose], and more. I watched a picture of me turning to fire…naw, I think not, that would be strange and terrifying and probably painful. A little bit wrong would be a hell of a blister.

  “If I got those already, I wonder about water. I already dissolved in water. I wonder if I can deal with that?”

  “You not need to know, got it all.” She looked anywhere but at me, kicked at the ground, hands in her pockets. “You do air? Blow on fire?”

  I turned and watched as I/Beta moved the air across the fire. I focused it, the fire got brighter and sparks flew off, I pulled the sparks back in and circled them into the fire and moved the air faster, while I compressed the fire. It turned white and trembled. The heat pulsed in waves.

  Mags backed way off, “Shut it off, stop it! Damn, that is FIRE!”

  I pulled the heat out of it and stopped the air from moving and it disappeared in a couple seconds. I resisted clapping my hands and jumping up and down in glee.