Zombies Sold Separately

TWENTY-SIX



Eyes wide open and sightless.

Chests not moving to draw in breaths.

Limbs at odd angles.

The Sentients and Olivia’s Host body were dead.

“No!” I screamed.

I whirled to face the Sorcerer, drew my arm back, and punched him. He brought his hand to his jaw as I shouted, “You killed them. You’re not supposed to kill them!”

Desmond raised his hands to ward me off. “They’re not dead.”

I held my arm up, ready to punch him again. “They sure look dead to me.”

“It’s a spell.” Desmond grasped my arm. “More Sentients may come. We need to leave.”

“Oh.” I looked at them again. “Are you sure? Will they recover completely?”

“Yes, they will be fine.” Desmond tugged me toward the window again. “I swear by all that is magic that I will leave you here to face them alone if you do not come with me now.”

I had to talk with the Sorcerer. He seemed to know a lot about about these Sentients and Hosts. And then there was the fact that the Magi had sent me to him. No, I couldn’t let Desmond leave without me.

“I need to call Rodán and the PTF to clean this up and take the Sentients and—” I scooped up my purse and glanced at Olivia’s body, a lump rising in my throat. “—take my partner to the infirmary.”

“Make it fast,” Desmond said as I drew out my phone. “The spell will not last over an hour.”

The phone was ringing for Rodán as I said, “More than enough.”

Rodán answered and I told him, “I don’t have time to talk. I’m with the Sorcerer and we have three Sentients captured who need to be taken in to custody.”

“Where?” Rodán asked.

“The Sorcerer’s loft.” I told him the location then said, “I don’t understand it, but they got to Olivia. Desmond said her body is a Host now. I have to find out what is going on and he seems to have some answers. He’s leaving and I’m going with him. He’s concerned more Sentients will get here soon. Olivia will appear and act like Olivia, but it’s not really her.”

“Call me when you have additional information,” Rodán said. “The PTF, Lulu, and a team of Trackers are on their way.”

I didn’t ask how he’d managed to contact them all with the information while talking with me, and how he could know that they were coming.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Call me as soon as you know more,” Rodán said.

“I will.” I hung up, slipped my phone into my belt, and took one last look at Olivia. Her neck was twisted and I was afraid it was broken. I could see a crescent-shaped burn mark behind her left ear. Had Desmond’s magic done that?

“Are you sure they’re okay?” I asked the Sorcerer. “What if more Sentients get here before our people?”

“They’re fine, you have my word.” Desmond jerked me harder toward the window and this time I ran with him. “I’m sure your Tracker team can handle anything they come across.”

How had he known that they were even coming? Maybe Sorcerers had exceptional hearing. Or it was a good guess.

The icy wind stung my cheeks and the iron railings were cold beneath my palms as we rushed down the fire escape. I kept my purse with the stones pressed close to my side. Metal clanged beneath his boots and his messenger bag bounced at his side as he rushed down.

When we reached the final rung, the Sorcerer grasped it, swung, and landed with surprising litheness and grace. After all of the noise he’d made getting down I thought he might fall on his butt.

I landed in a crouch next to him on the side of the building.

Thoughts of Olivia kept bombarding me. How could that have not been Olivia? I’d talked with her. She knew details about things that no one could fake. She acted and looked like Olivia. How had some being taken her over like that without me even knowing?

I ached. Had I lost my friend forever? Was she really gone?

Desmond let out a shrieking whistle as a taxi zipped by. The cab came to a screech and a halt and backed up in reverse so quickly that it was as if a pulley was drawing it to us.

The Sorcerer grabbed my hand again and we ran toward the cab. I got in and slid onto the bench seat on the passenger side and Desmond ran around to the other side.

We both slammed our doors shut and Desmond said, “JFK.”

“What?” I seemed to be saying that a lot today. “We’re not going to the airport.”

“Trust me,” he said.

“Should I trust you?” I asked.

“If you want to know what’s going on and have a chance to stop it then yes,” he said. “And just maybe you’ll be able to restore your friend.”

My stomach clenched. “Restore Olivia?” I grasped his arm. “Is that possible? Restore her from what?”

“I’ll explain,” Desmond said. “Once we get to my safe house.”

The cab driver maneuvered the taxi through heavy traffic. I turned enough that Desmond and I could face each other.

“Who are you?” I said. “What do you know about Sentients and Hosts and how did you know they would come after us? How do you know we can save Olivia?”

Desmond glanced at the blond cab driver who had a goatee along with dreadlocks beneath a skull cap that had red, green, yellow, and black stripes around it.

The Sorcerer raised his fingers and I saw a shimmer in the air as if a window had been raised between us and the driver. Desmond had put up a shield. A green spark snapped in the air where the shield was.

He met my gaze. “I know everything. That is why the Magi sent you.”

“Well, good.” I settled my purse in my lap. “Now you can tell me.”

Desmond pushed his wavy shoulder-length, wild hair away from his face. Wild looked good on him. His gray eyes had calmed considerably, and I had no idea why except that perhaps he had accepted the situation for whatever he thought it might be.

“Like I said, once we get to the safe house it will be easier to explain to you,” he said.

“Safe house?” I glanced out the car and saw that we were well on our way to the airport. “We’re not flying anywhere,” I said again. “We’re staying right here in New York.”

“Of course.” He looked out the back window. “But we’re going to make sure we’re not being followed.”

I blinked. “Okay.”

Desmond didn’t seem inclined to talk so the trip was mostly silent. I kept thinking about Olivia and all that had been happening. It was getting beyond crazy. Out of control.

We changed taxis at JFK, then headed for downtown Manhattan. Desmond gave a Greenwich Village address.

“That’s practically around the corner from your loft,” I said.

He nodded. “That’s why we needed to make sure we weren’t followed.”

Made sense in a convoluted way, I supposed. There would have been easier, faster ways to do the same thing.

It was so close to sunset that I was afraid I was going to have to stop the cab in the middle of the street and run for some place safe to shift.

The taxi stopped on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village. The cabbie parked beneath a big restaurant sign with neon green lettering, directly across the street from a tavern with a red awning.

Because I didn’t have time to wait for Desmond to root around in one of his pockets again for cash, I threw a couple of bills in the direction of the driver and scrambled out of the cab.

I grabbed Desmond’s arm, dragged him after me, and rushed toward a nearby building. “We need to make a stop,” I said as I pulled him down an empty stairwell of a closed business that might have been a restaurant at one time.

It was impossible to tell by sight because of the gray skies, but the tingling beneath my skin told me the sun was about to set.

Desmond resisted. “My safe house—”

I used my Drow strength, catching him off guard, and jerked him into the darkness. He almost tumbled down the stairs.

“Turn your back and stand right there.” I ground my teeth as the change started. “I have to shift and I’m not doing it with an audience.”

“Shift?” He looked puzzled but I put my hand on his shoulder and pushed him so that he turned away from me. “Oh,” he said as he turned. My hair had already turned blue.

The shift was a little painful if I didn’t stretch into it, but I wasn’t taking my eyes off the Sorcerer. I clenched my jaws together as my body took on its changes from my stronger muscles, my small fangs, to my amethyst skin. My arms were a little bigger causing my blouse to feel tight around my biceps and my slacks were more snug.

When I finished the change, I held onto my purse and walked up behind Desmond. “Let’s go,” I said.

The Sorcerer faced me and looked me up and down. “Definitely Drow.”

“And your first clue was…?” I said as I walked past him. “How far away is your safe house?”

“I’m going to draw a glamour so that I can’t be seen now,” I said.

“A glamour?” He frowned as he glanced behind him. I almost ran into his back. “Where are you?”

“Here,” I gave a light push to his shoulder.

“Why didn’t you just do that when you shifted?” he asked.

“If I could pull a glamour while shifting, it would be great,” I said. “However, I don’t have that particular talent.”

Desmond looked around us as he stopped at the top of the stairs. “By any chance can you cloak me, too?”

“Sure.” I took his hand and called on more of my air elemental magic to cloak us both.

“Interesting,” he said. “I can see you now.”

“Yeah, but no one can see us.” I gestured for him to go. “Lead the way.”

“With your ability, I suppose we could have avoided the long cab ride, couldn’t we?” he said.

“It would have saved a bit of time and the fare,” I said. “But you were sketchy on details, except to say that we were going to JFK, or I would have suggested it.”

“Well, I will know next time,” the Sorcerer replied with a slight crack of a smile.

I certainly hoped there wouldn’t be a next time.

We slipped into an apartment building above an ale house restaurant with a Scottish name and thought that it was probably a place where the Sorcerer might hang out. With a few tweaks of his accent, he’d fit right in.

We jogged up the stairs to the top floor. “Do you have a thing for heights?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “I like to have a few options available and the rooftop gives me another one.”

“Options for what?” I asked but he only shrugged.

When we reached the last apartment down the hallway, Desmond held his hand up to the door and paused. He closed his eyes and a green glow radiated from his hand until the surface of the door was entirely covered with the glow.

“It’s safe,” he said as he opened his eyes. He held his hand above the doorknob. It clicked and creaked as the lock turned and the door opened.

I dropped the glamour when the door closed behind us. “This is more like I thought a Sorcerer’s place might be.” I studied the front room as we walked in. “Not the stark look your loft in SoHo has.”

“Stark?” He raised his eyebrows. “You call that stark?”

“Compared to this, yes,” I said

Paintings hung on the walls, so many that every available space seemed to have an oil, an acrylic, a watercolor, or a multimedia piece of art.

I swept my gaze over the work. “None of these are yours.”

“Not only do I enjoy painting,” he said, “but I enjoy collecting, too.”

“I see that.” And I saw a whole lot more that told me about the Sorcerer. “You’ve been here a while.” The collections of books in the built-in bookcases looked worn and well-read, but there was a certain feel to them, as if this had been their home for a very long time. That everything here had been a part of his life for countless years.

“How long have you lived here?” I asked as my gaze returned to meet his.

“Since I left my home,” he said. “The Doran Otherworld.”

I frowned. “I’ve never heard of Doran before the Magi mentioned it.”

“As we preferred it.” Desmond set his messenger bag on top of a black piano next to a bookcase on my left. “Unfortunately my world was discovered by a ruthless race of beings, the Kerrans.”

My forehead wrinkled as I concentrated. I let him continue.

“They came from Kerra which is a relatively small Otherworld and you have even less of a chance of knowing what it is.” He shook his head. “Or was.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“One moment.” Desmond went to the center of the room. The room was filled with an eclectic selection of chairs, lamps, end tables, and a coffee table, along with two bookcases and the piano. It managed to look comfortable and roomy at the same time. Maybe it was magic. “I’m better with pictures,” he said.

Made sense. He was an artist, after all.

Desmond held his palms close together and formed a ball of green light that sizzled and crackled. His fingers were still stained green and brown but the streak that had been on his cheek was gone.

He released the ball of light. It floated upward and expanded into a sort of magical hologram of a planet.

“This is Doran.” The Sorcerer gave a wistful smile that faded away. “It is beautiful and it was my home.”

When I started to say something he held up one hand. “This will move on quite a bit faster if you stop asking so many questions.”

“Fair enough,” I said as I gripped my purse, feeling the weight of the stones in it and wondering when I’d get a chance to show him.

He held his palms close again and this time formed a blue ball of light. He released it and it floated a good distance away and formed a much larger hologram.

“Otherworld,” I said, somehow knowing at once that it was my home world.

He nodded as he formed an orange ball and it expanded and the easily recognizable Earth Otherworld came to be. It was smaller than the other two holograms, considerably smaller than my Otherworld.

Then the Sorcerer released a red ball of light that grew almost as large as the one for my Otherworld. “Kerra,” Desmond said with a scowl.

I studied it and the amazing detail of the Sorcerer’s magic floored me. I could see desert wastelands, volcanoes spewing lava, great rivers and oceans, all in a holographic outline.

“Kerra is almost dead.” He touched the magic hologram and it turned around, blackness eating the world in a slow flood of black sludge.

It gave me such a creepy feeling that I shivered.

“When the world started to kill its people, their leader began to look for a new world to take over.” Desmond flicked his fingers and a figure appeared, an older man in about his seventies, wearing a blue robe. The man’s graying red hair was long enough to reach the middle of his back. He looked so … familiar.

“The Sorcerer Amory,” Desmond said with clear disgust in his voice. “With him is where it all begins.”

“Amory…” The name turned over in my mind and a shudder rippled through me. “I’ve heard that name … I’ve seen him.”

Desmond glanced at me. “That body was failing when I last saw him. He should have taken a new Host.”

I shook my head. “I saw him. I know it.”

He moved to the larger blue hologram of Otherworld. “You must have been very young,” he said.

A slow chill rolled over me. “I saw that male when the Zombies came to Otherworld.” My gaze snapped to his. “I was five.”

Desmond gave a slow nod. “Otherworld was the second world he chose, but the atmosphere proved incompatible in the long term for them, so they moved on.” He held up his hand again when I started to talk so I closed my mouth and listened.

When I was quiet again, Desmond formed another ball of light in his hands, this one purple. He released it and it floated near Kerra. “This is Yorath, a magical Otherworld. Twenty-five years ago when Amory’s world started to die, the atmosphere was changing and becoming uninhabitable. Amory began searching for ways to save his people.”

Desmond frowned at the image of the Sorcerer Amory. “Without finding another world, his people would all die eventually. He had to find a new world where his people could thrive. Not to share, but to take over,” Desmond said. “When they found another world, Amory wanted to own that Otherworld. So with few weapons and no presence of strength in a new world, Amory had to develop a way to quietly take control of the selected Otherworld.”

I listened to Desmond talk, trying to imagine a being caring for his people but ultimately evil in his intentions to people of any other world.

“Amory had an idea, but he had to develop and perfect the method. He began to travel back and forth between Yorath and Kerra,” Desmond said, “stealing Yorathians and experimenting on them. He killed many Yorathians in his search.”

Desmond’s expression turned sad as he studied the purple hologram. “It took Amory much trial and error but he found a way to harness a person’s essence, their brain if you will. Some might call it their personhood, or even their soul.” Desmond drew something in the air next to the image of the Sorcerer Amory. “He discovered a way in that first magical world to retain essences which are taken over in stones found there, and allowed them to maintain life while held in a suspended type of existence.”

I started to tell Amory about the stones in my purse but he gave me a look that had me shutting my mouth.

Desmond showed an image of a male standing next to the Sorcerer. “Step one … Amory gave an ‘empty’ stone to one of his people, a Sentient.” The Sorcerer in the image gave the stone to the male in front of him. It was like watching a movie in 3-D.

“Step two … the Sentient traveled through a portal to the Yorath Otherworld and went to a preselected Host body.”

The image of the Sentient with the stone floated over to the purple planet. An image of another male appeared, coming from Yorath.

“Step three … the Sentient with the stone needed only to touch the individual from Yorath.” The Sentient from Kerra reached out and touched the image of the male from the other world.

“Their essences were exchanged.” Light traveled from the Sentient to the Yorathian’s head and another burst of light went to the stone. “Now the essence of the Yorathian is trapped in the stone. The essence of the Kerran is now in the Yorathian’s Host body.”

My forehead wrinkled in concentration. “So the Sorcerer gives a stone to one of his people, a Sentient. That Sentient travels and touches a person in the other world and their essences are traded.”

“Yes, in a way,” Desmond said. “The essence of the person whose body becomes a Host is trapped in the stone while the Kerran’s essence takes over the Host’s body. Those in the stone exist in a suspended world. They are there, but it is as if no time moves. They are conscious, yet they are not.”

My head hurt from trying to make sense of what he was telling me. “So now that person is in the stone, the other person is in the body of the first.”

“Yes.” Desmond smiled. “You are a quick study.”

Sure I was. It still had my brain twisted. “Then what happens to the Sentient’s body?”

“Once the essence is gone from the Sentient,” Desmond said, “the body becomes a Shell. What you call a Zombie.”

“Step one give the stone to a Sentient, step two find a Host, step three exchange essences from the Sentient to the Host and the Host to the stone.” I was determined to figure this out. “The former Sentient’s body becomes a Zombie.”

“Yes.” Desmond nodded.

A chill crept over me at the thought of the beings. “Why are the Zombies so … so murderous if they no longer have an essence?”

“Amory programs them with an appetite to hunt, to kill, to eat.” An angry expression crossed Desmond’s features. “They assist him in taking over the Otherworld he wants to conquer. He can turn that program on or off to fit his purpose.”

I swallowed. This so did not sound good. The more Desmond talked, the worse everything sounded.

“Let’s get back to my explanation,” he said with a nod to his holograms. “Step four … the Host returns to Kerra with the stone now containing the Host’s essence.”

The 3-D image of the Host went to the image of the Sorcerer Amory that was still standing beside the red hologram. “The Sorcerer takes the stone and keeps it in a special room, after he performs a spell to seal the Sentient in the Host’s body. If it isn’t sealed the exchange can go awry.”

My brows furrowed in concentration. “What do you mean it can go awry?”

“It means that if the stone is touched by another being, an exchange of essences can happen instantaneously.”

My head was spinning, trying to comprehend it all. “So does this mean that if a Host is sealed it can’t be reversed?”

Desmond frowned. “No … there is a spell which will allow the exchange of essences from a stone into the original Host’s body. The Sentient’s essence would then go into the stone.”

It was too much to absorb all at one time. “Okay, skip the hosting part and move on to the next step, if there is one.”

“Step five.” Desmond took a deep breath. “After a ‘normal’ exchange of essences, and a ‘normal’ sealing, Amory then puts the stone into a collection he keeps and sends the Host back to the Otherworld he’s trying to take over. The stone must not be lost or damaged or its Host body will die, so great care is taken to preserve and protect these stones.”

“So the Host’s essence is still around,” I said. “It’s just trapped in a stone now.”

“Yes,” Desmond said, “that is exactly what happens.”

I said, “That means all of these Zombies running around were once Sentients.”

Desmond nodded.

“So you said the purpose of this was to take over this new world?” I asked.

“Correct. No cause was known, but Kerra was a dying planet and killing its people with no remedy to change that,” Desmond said. “Amory had to find someplace to take his people. A world to take over and make his own.”

“What happened with Yorath?” I asked.

“The world turned out to not be hospitable to the essences the Hosts now carried so he had to abandon his takeover,” Desmond said.

I glanced to the blue sphere. “What about when he came to Otherworld?”

Desmond moved so that he was now beside the hologram of my Otherworld. “The environment wasn’t as hospitable as they had hoped.”

I tried not to think about those dark days. “They weren’t there for long.”

“Amory found Doran.” Desmond rubbed his temples. “The Sorcerer’s magic worked in my world and his people thrived. He was ruthless. He and his Sentients took over my world and my people.

“The entire world.” Desmond turned his pain-filled gaze to me. “Amory took or murdered everyone.”