Brimstone/Dead Like Me: Five Grim Reapers Zeke Met on a Job (Zeke, Ensemble | T | 2,766w)
[ Zeke, Roxy, Mason, Daisy, Rube, George | T | 2,766w | 2007-05-07, 11, 15, 22, 25 | Mirror ]
Five grim reapers Zeke ran into while he was at work. ~ (Also written for dlm_fanfiction crossover challenge.)
Beta: Thanks to erin2326!
5: Roxy Harvey
“Up out of the way, sir,” the policewoman said, moving past him with a strength Zeke was used to associating with his quarry. “This is a crime scene.”
“I’ve got clearance,” he said, flashing his badge.
She scowled at him, snatching it right out of his hand.
“Mr. Stone-if that’s your real name-this thing ain’t worth the paper it’s printed on. Wrong state and fifteen years out of date? You’re gonna have to do better’n that you expect me to let you near this body.”
“Let me ask you something,” Zeke said, taking the badge back and casually leaning against a lamppost. “Why did I see you here before all the other cops?”
“Routine patrol,” she responded on what sounded like auto-pilot, and then narrowed her eyes at him. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Okay,” he said, willing to accept that. “But how come I saw you talking to our victim over here ten minutes before he was killed?”
She took a step closer to him; he didn’t back down, even though she was incredibly intimating for a woman who stood a full two heads shorter than him.
“You say what you’re tryin’ to say or get your ass the hell off of my crime scene.”
Zeke shrugged with a wry half-smile. “I thought I saw something. A little light show. Got some magic in your hands, Officer?”
She took a step back. (Zeke would have let out a relieved breath if he’d needed to breathe.) “Well, shit. Whyn’t you just say so? Rube didn’t tell me to expect anyone else tonight, how was I supposed to know? All this crap with fake IDs.” She shook her head, muttering something about pissing off those DMV bitches before she spoke up again. “So, Mr. Stone, what do you need here?” She asked, her tone and demeanor completely different. Not friendly, but also not on the verge of pulling a gun on him, which was always an improvement.
“Special liaison,” Zeke fudged, still a little surprised that whatever he’d just implied had worked. “A last minute mix-up. I just need to take a look for the records.”
“Well, what’re you plannin’ on doin’? Soul moved on just before you started sniffin’ around. Big blue train came for him.”
“Still,” he ducked under the caution tape, “For the records.”
“Paperwork,” she said with a disapproving snap of her gum, hands on her hips, “Glad I don’t reap back East. Y’all can’t take a soul without triplicating it.”
“You know management, always getting on our asses,” he said, desperately trying not to reveal that he had no idea what his half of the conversation should sound like. He didn’t take his hand off the tape as a professional courtesy, waiting for her signal.
She waved him on. “Just don’t touch him.”
Zeke nodded his thanks and strode briskly towards the body before he lost his window of opportunity.
He wasn’t about to tell her that touching the body wouldn’t help him track his loose hellion.
4: Daisy Adair
“What it lacks in ambiance it more than makes up for in atmosphere.” A woman’s voice, soft and with a genteel accent, startled him; he almost raised his gun at the sound of her voice, but just barely stopped himself. He wasn’t used to people (supernatural creatures, yes, but not people) sneaking up on him.
“Jesus,” Zeke said under his breath, lowering the gun with half a mind to warn her about talking to strangers. “Where did you come from?”
The woman stepped further out of the shadows, from the pew into the aisle. An enormous cross glinted in the faint light coming through the stained glass; she was rendered in tones of silver and blue.
“A little late night prayer is good for the soul, don’t you think?”
Her voice tickled the back of his mind like déjà vu, but he couldn’t place her face.
“Who are you?” He asked, wondering if he’d been too quick to keep his gun down.
“You don’t remember me, my dashing Mr. E. Stone? Fifteen years ago, New York.” She smiled, fluttering her hands in the air, “a dark and stormy night. Very fitting for the scene. You must remember, detective-I screamed for help and you came, the hero to my rescue.”
Zeke backed away a step. It couldn’t be... but her voice.
“I’ve always relied on the kindness of strangers,” she said, brushing her hand down his arm with a blinding smile. “I just don’t know how I can ever thank you.”
Seconds later, he’d been shot in the face. And he’d seen her-and her real face. The same one that was before him now, unchanged after all this time.
If Zeke’s heart were beating, it would have stopped right then. “You killed me.”
“I? Daisy Velma Adair, commit murder?” Her hand went to her chest as her head shook denial. “Oh, no, your poor, confused man. That awful fellow in the mask killed you. He was the one with the gun, wasn’t he?”
Head spinning, Zeke managed to nod.
She nodded, too, looking primly satisfied at the logic of her argument. “Well, there you are.”
But he also had vague memories of her staying with him until a brilliant blue light appeared, waving when he’d stepped through it.
“Did you send me to Hell?” The Devil had told him more than once that he wasn’t the one who made the rules. Was this woman...?
“Oh, dear. What have you been doing all these years, Mr. Stone? You’re so very mixed up.” She took him by the arm, patting him gently on the elbow, her soft features schooled into a reasonable facsimile of sympathy, though even in his bemused state he could tell that it didn’t penetrate past the surface.
“You know, usually I don’t mix with my reaps, but you were so very gentlemanly I think that I’ll just have to make an exception. Tell you what-I’ll let you buy me a cup of coffee and we can get this all straightened out.”
Zeke, head spinning, let her lead him out of the church, his hunt forgotten for the moment.
3: Mason
“You’re a right bloody weirdo.”
Zeke looked at what the guy was holding in his hands.
“You think I’m the weirdo?”
“Yeah, hanging out with dead corpses, that’s a right bloody weirdo thing to do.”
“You were here first.”
The guy smiled like something was funny. “Well I have a job here. What’s your excuse?”
Zeke sighed and flashed his badge. “Police business. I suppose next you’ll tell me that you’re undercover FBI?” Actually, with some of the people he’d met in this millennium so far, he wouldn’t have been too surprised.
“Something like that,” the guy said, throwing another piece of popcorn in his mouth and leaning over the body. “But we’re a good lot nicer than those government tighty-whitey-pants.”
Zeke nodded, not understanding in the least but also recognizing that further questions along this line wouldn’t shed any more illumination. Clearly he was dealing with the mental equivalent of a twelve year old.
“So what happened to him?”
“Big growly fellow looked at him funny and he just-” The man waved his hands, popcorn container and all, very roughly pantomiming a vertical descent, “keeled right over. I can’t wait to tell Georgie. She always gets the best ones.”
“Growled at him?”
“Yeah. Lots of-” The guy contorted his face and made some even more contorted-sounding noises, holding his hands up like claws. “And a few sparkly-sparks.”
The sad part was, Zeke was able to picture exactly what he was talking about.
“Thanks. Your testimony has been very helpful.” It was supposed to be a subtle hint, but the guy just crouched down and started thumbing through the dead man’s wallet, still tossing popcorn into his mouth with the other hand, missing about half the time.
Zeke, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets and shaking his head, just walked away, unable to shake the feeling that he didn’t have the authority to shoo off the strange young man.
2: Rube Sofer
“Excuse me, sir.”
Zeke jumped away from the marks he’d been examining on the side of the building, ready for the worst.
“Would you happen to have the time?” The gentleman asked politely, a rolled-up newspaper between his hands and an amicable expression on his face.
“Sorry,” Zeke said, holding his hands out. He hadn’t tried to wear a watch since coming back; he was pretty sure they’d all get broken when he was working, anyway. “I’m no help.”
“Much obliged, sir. I appreciate your time-well, perhaps more accurately, your consideration, for what we both lack at the present is the telling of it.” The man tapped the watch on his own wrist, “forty years, and it has never given me a lick of trouble. I wonder why this misfortune has come down upon me tonight.”
“Forty years,” Zeke was impressed.
The man nodded. “A trusted companion.” He took it off, the gold metal glinting briefly in the lamp glow before he put it into his pocket, and then he extended his gloved hand. “Forgive my rudeness. Rube Sofer.”
Zeke took it, pleasantly bewildered by the man’s exacting courtesy.
“Zeke Stone.”
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance.” His hand went back around the newspaper, which he used to gesture at the wall with. “Do you mind my asking, Ezekiel, just what it was you found so engrossing on that there bit of mortar and brick?”
“I’m...” Zeke thought about improvising, perhaps modifying the checking-for-mold excuse he’d used at the last building, but he sensed this Rube guy wouldn’t buy it. He had a sharpness about him that most people didn’t.
“Looking for clues,” he finally settled on.
“I see. A detective, no?” Rube’s mouth quirked in what could have been a smile at Zeke’s surprised nod. “Well. I’m sorry to have taken you from your work, Ezekiel.” He looked at the wall; now he definitely was smiling. “Happy hunting.”
Zeke watched him go until Rube passed around the corner, and wondered why he had the baseless but incredibly distinct feeling that Rube was no more alive than he was.
1: George Lass
When you’re alive, it’s considered morbid to hang out at graveyards. But when you’re dead? Zeke’s not sure. He hangs out with the dead for a living, now, and makes sure they stay that way.
The current pain in the Devil’s ass-and by proxy, a pain in Zeke’s-apparently had an affinity for places like this: row after row of stately graves washed silver by the crescent moon, twining ivy wrapped around mausoleum columns, and a deep quiet that seemed to muffle his footsteps as he walked, swallowing up his very presence. This was the third one he’d been to already-who knew the city had so many? Big city, big graveyards, he supposed. And all the Devil would unhelpfully tell him was that it was time for him to “make some new acquaintances.”
It was along the fifth row he was walking that he saw her. A tiny girl, sitting in front of a grave, legs folded under her and blond hair falling in a straight line down her back. She was ghostly.
Her? he thought doubtfully, lowering his hand to his gun nonetheless. He’d seen less likely candidates before.
“Are you gonna mug me or something?” She said without turning around, in a droll sort of voice that sounded like she couldn’t be bothered by a mugging right now.
He sighed. He was so tired of all these supernatural opponents who had senses better than he did. It rendered all his stealth training pointless.
He didn’t take the gun out, but kept his hand on it. “I’m a police officer. This cemetery is closed, miss.”
She scoffed in a way that reminded him of Max when he suggested that she shouldn’t have so many shots of tequila. “Yeah, and I’m Jack the Ripper. Daisy and Rube told me about you. You haven’t been a cop for a long time, buddy.”
Oh. She was one of them.
Slipping his hand out of his pocket, he took a seat next to her, settling down in the damp grass. “I was sent here. What’s your excuse?”
He could see her smirking in her shadowed profile. “A reaper’s work is never done. And all that crap.” She reached into her jacket pocket and drew out a tiny slip of paper; holding it up to the light, Zeke saw it was a black post-it, with glowing white script on it.
Shadygroves Memorial
E. Fairbanks
ETD 2:35AM
“What does it mean?” He asked. He ran his hand along his arm, reminded of his tattoos.
“You tell me.” She put it back in her pocket, looking up at the sky. “We don’t get black post-its. I mean, look at all this...” She waved her fingers in front of the ethereal script, “glowy stuff. This is totally weird, even for reaper business. And Rube didn't tell me you were going to be here. Of course, no one tells me jack shit, anyway.” She threw her hands up, thin fingers slicing the air with her frustration. Then, she did turn and look at him, her eyes narrowed. “Do you know who E. Fairbanks is?”
Zeke shook his head, keeping his suspicions to himself. He doubted they’d make her feel better.
“Great. Just great. We’re sitting out here in a graveyard with no idea of who we’re looking for or why.”
Zeke shrugged. “Hang around me long enough, and something is bound to happen sooner or later.”
“Fan-fucking-tastic.”
He grinned inwardly. She would have fit right in with his old squad with that mouth. “Zeke Stone,” he offered along with his hand.
“George.”
After that, they were at a loss for what to do other than wait.
*
E. Fairbanks showed up about thirty minutes later, just when Zeke’s pants had been soaked all the way through and George was contemplating leaving the glowy post-it with him and heading home to get some sleep. Mr. Fairbanks was obviously one of those who had escaped Hell through a stroke of sheer luck; he was wandering through the lines of graves muttering under his breath, caressing the stones with the rapture of a lover on his face.
“The wicked never rest, the wicked never rest, I heard you screaming in the stones and I came to free you from your earthly graves, just as I was freed, as I was so wicked and I was freed, and the sky will bleed with us...”
Zeke raised the gun and George went to stand behind him, keeping her right hand slightly in front of her like it was her weapon. Fairbanks started laughing, and came to the grave he’d apparently been looking for; crouching down in front of it, he gripped it tightly in both his hands. They advanced on him, and Zeke leveled the gun at his back.
“Time’s up, Fairbanks,” he said, feeling a little sorry for the bastard, and reminding himself that he was already dead.
But Fairbanks didn’t turn, didn’t even seem to hear Zeke; white light was glowing from his hands, and Zeke read Ella Fairbanks on the gravestone and backed away at the sudden flare of premonitory electricity up his spine.
The corpse burst out of the ground without even the slightest warning, showering dirt everywhere and filling the air with the horrid scent of decay. He heard George swearing and ran around to the other side of the grave to get a clear shot, not bothering with any warnings or extra kindnesses this time. He shot Fairbanks square in the eyes and watched him dissolve in unearthly spires of blue light amidst mad laughter.
Lowering the gun, he shuddered when he saw Ella Fairbanks. Undoubtedly once a beautiful woman, she was hardly more than insubstantial ghost-light over a skeleton.
I shouldn’t be here, her voice that wasn’t a voice intoned, sounding like a cracked church bell tolling.
He looked at George. She swallowed, nodding, and stepped forward, quickly swiping her hand down the skeleton’s arm.
The bones crumpled into dust, and the earth settled back into place as the last of the blue light faded into the night.
After a few minutes, Zeke was done asking himself how that could have possibly just happened.
“Coffee?” He said, buttoning up his coat. “My treat.”
“Fuck yes,” she said, and fell into step beside him.
They had done a good night’s work.
Five grim reapers Zeke ran into while he was at work. ~ (Also written for dlm_fanfiction crossover challenge.)
Beta: Thanks to erin2326!
5: Roxy Harvey
“Up out of the way, sir,” the policewoman said, moving past him with a strength Zeke was used to associating with his quarry. “This is a crime scene.”
“I’ve got clearance,” he said, flashing his badge.
She scowled at him, snatching it right out of his hand.
“Mr. Stone-if that’s your real name-this thing ain’t worth the paper it’s printed on. Wrong state and fifteen years out of date? You’re gonna have to do better’n that you expect me to let you near this body.”
“Let me ask you something,” Zeke said, taking the badge back and casually leaning against a lamppost. “Why did I see you here before all the other cops?”
“Routine patrol,” she responded on what sounded like auto-pilot, and then narrowed her eyes at him. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Okay,” he said, willing to accept that. “But how come I saw you talking to our victim over here ten minutes before he was killed?”
She took a step closer to him; he didn’t back down, even though she was incredibly intimating for a woman who stood a full two heads shorter than him.
“You say what you’re tryin’ to say or get your ass the hell off of my crime scene.”
Zeke shrugged with a wry half-smile. “I thought I saw something. A little light show. Got some magic in your hands, Officer?”
She took a step back. (Zeke would have let out a relieved breath if he’d needed to breathe.) “Well, shit. Whyn’t you just say so? Rube didn’t tell me to expect anyone else tonight, how was I supposed to know? All this crap with fake IDs.” She shook her head, muttering something about pissing off those DMV bitches before she spoke up again. “So, Mr. Stone, what do you need here?” She asked, her tone and demeanor completely different. Not friendly, but also not on the verge of pulling a gun on him, which was always an improvement.
“Special liaison,” Zeke fudged, still a little surprised that whatever he’d just implied had worked. “A last minute mix-up. I just need to take a look for the records.”
“Well, what’re you plannin’ on doin’? Soul moved on just before you started sniffin’ around. Big blue train came for him.”
“Still,” he ducked under the caution tape, “For the records.”
“Paperwork,” she said with a disapproving snap of her gum, hands on her hips, “Glad I don’t reap back East. Y’all can’t take a soul without triplicating it.”
“You know management, always getting on our asses,” he said, desperately trying not to reveal that he had no idea what his half of the conversation should sound like. He didn’t take his hand off the tape as a professional courtesy, waiting for her signal.
She waved him on. “Just don’t touch him.”
Zeke nodded his thanks and strode briskly towards the body before he lost his window of opportunity.
He wasn’t about to tell her that touching the body wouldn’t help him track his loose hellion.
4: Daisy Adair
“What it lacks in ambiance it more than makes up for in atmosphere.” A woman’s voice, soft and with a genteel accent, startled him; he almost raised his gun at the sound of her voice, but just barely stopped himself. He wasn’t used to people (supernatural creatures, yes, but not people) sneaking up on him.
“Jesus,” Zeke said under his breath, lowering the gun with half a mind to warn her about talking to strangers. “Where did you come from?”
The woman stepped further out of the shadows, from the pew into the aisle. An enormous cross glinted in the faint light coming through the stained glass; she was rendered in tones of silver and blue.
“A little late night prayer is good for the soul, don’t you think?”
Her voice tickled the back of his mind like déjà vu, but he couldn’t place her face.
“Who are you?” He asked, wondering if he’d been too quick to keep his gun down.
“You don’t remember me, my dashing Mr. E. Stone? Fifteen years ago, New York.” She smiled, fluttering her hands in the air, “a dark and stormy night. Very fitting for the scene. You must remember, detective-I screamed for help and you came, the hero to my rescue.”
Zeke backed away a step. It couldn’t be... but her voice.
“I’ve always relied on the kindness of strangers,” she said, brushing her hand down his arm with a blinding smile. “I just don’t know how I can ever thank you.”
Seconds later, he’d been shot in the face. And he’d seen her-and her real face. The same one that was before him now, unchanged after all this time.
If Zeke’s heart were beating, it would have stopped right then. “You killed me.”
“I? Daisy Velma Adair, commit murder?” Her hand went to her chest as her head shook denial. “Oh, no, your poor, confused man. That awful fellow in the mask killed you. He was the one with the gun, wasn’t he?”
Head spinning, Zeke managed to nod.
She nodded, too, looking primly satisfied at the logic of her argument. “Well, there you are.”
But he also had vague memories of her staying with him until a brilliant blue light appeared, waving when he’d stepped through it.
“Did you send me to Hell?” The Devil had told him more than once that he wasn’t the one who made the rules. Was this woman...?
“Oh, dear. What have you been doing all these years, Mr. Stone? You’re so very mixed up.” She took him by the arm, patting him gently on the elbow, her soft features schooled into a reasonable facsimile of sympathy, though even in his bemused state he could tell that it didn’t penetrate past the surface.
“You know, usually I don’t mix with my reaps, but you were so very gentlemanly I think that I’ll just have to make an exception. Tell you what-I’ll let you buy me a cup of coffee and we can get this all straightened out.”
Zeke, head spinning, let her lead him out of the church, his hunt forgotten for the moment.
3: Mason
“You’re a right bloody weirdo.”
Zeke looked at what the guy was holding in his hands.
“You think I’m the weirdo?”
“Yeah, hanging out with dead corpses, that’s a right bloody weirdo thing to do.”
“You were here first.”
The guy smiled like something was funny. “Well I have a job here. What’s your excuse?”
Zeke sighed and flashed his badge. “Police business. I suppose next you’ll tell me that you’re undercover FBI?” Actually, with some of the people he’d met in this millennium so far, he wouldn’t have been too surprised.
“Something like that,” the guy said, throwing another piece of popcorn in his mouth and leaning over the body. “But we’re a good lot nicer than those government tighty-whitey-pants.”
Zeke nodded, not understanding in the least but also recognizing that further questions along this line wouldn’t shed any more illumination. Clearly he was dealing with the mental equivalent of a twelve year old.
“So what happened to him?”
“Big growly fellow looked at him funny and he just-” The man waved his hands, popcorn container and all, very roughly pantomiming a vertical descent, “keeled right over. I can’t wait to tell Georgie. She always gets the best ones.”
“Growled at him?”
“Yeah. Lots of-” The guy contorted his face and made some even more contorted-sounding noises, holding his hands up like claws. “And a few sparkly-sparks.”
The sad part was, Zeke was able to picture exactly what he was talking about.
“Thanks. Your testimony has been very helpful.” It was supposed to be a subtle hint, but the guy just crouched down and started thumbing through the dead man’s wallet, still tossing popcorn into his mouth with the other hand, missing about half the time.
Zeke, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets and shaking his head, just walked away, unable to shake the feeling that he didn’t have the authority to shoo off the strange young man.
2: Rube Sofer
“Excuse me, sir.”
Zeke jumped away from the marks he’d been examining on the side of the building, ready for the worst.
“Would you happen to have the time?” The gentleman asked politely, a rolled-up newspaper between his hands and an amicable expression on his face.
“Sorry,” Zeke said, holding his hands out. He hadn’t tried to wear a watch since coming back; he was pretty sure they’d all get broken when he was working, anyway. “I’m no help.”
“Much obliged, sir. I appreciate your time-well, perhaps more accurately, your consideration, for what we both lack at the present is the telling of it.” The man tapped the watch on his own wrist, “forty years, and it has never given me a lick of trouble. I wonder why this misfortune has come down upon me tonight.”
“Forty years,” Zeke was impressed.
The man nodded. “A trusted companion.” He took it off, the gold metal glinting briefly in the lamp glow before he put it into his pocket, and then he extended his gloved hand. “Forgive my rudeness. Rube Sofer.”
Zeke took it, pleasantly bewildered by the man’s exacting courtesy.
“Zeke Stone.”
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance.” His hand went back around the newspaper, which he used to gesture at the wall with. “Do you mind my asking, Ezekiel, just what it was you found so engrossing on that there bit of mortar and brick?”
“I’m...” Zeke thought about improvising, perhaps modifying the checking-for-mold excuse he’d used at the last building, but he sensed this Rube guy wouldn’t buy it. He had a sharpness about him that most people didn’t.
“Looking for clues,” he finally settled on.
“I see. A detective, no?” Rube’s mouth quirked in what could have been a smile at Zeke’s surprised nod. “Well. I’m sorry to have taken you from your work, Ezekiel.” He looked at the wall; now he definitely was smiling. “Happy hunting.”
Zeke watched him go until Rube passed around the corner, and wondered why he had the baseless but incredibly distinct feeling that Rube was no more alive than he was.
1: George Lass
When you’re alive, it’s considered morbid to hang out at graveyards. But when you’re dead? Zeke’s not sure. He hangs out with the dead for a living, now, and makes sure they stay that way.
The current pain in the Devil’s ass-and by proxy, a pain in Zeke’s-apparently had an affinity for places like this: row after row of stately graves washed silver by the crescent moon, twining ivy wrapped around mausoleum columns, and a deep quiet that seemed to muffle his footsteps as he walked, swallowing up his very presence. This was the third one he’d been to already-who knew the city had so many? Big city, big graveyards, he supposed. And all the Devil would unhelpfully tell him was that it was time for him to “make some new acquaintances.”
It was along the fifth row he was walking that he saw her. A tiny girl, sitting in front of a grave, legs folded under her and blond hair falling in a straight line down her back. She was ghostly.
Her? he thought doubtfully, lowering his hand to his gun nonetheless. He’d seen less likely candidates before.
“Are you gonna mug me or something?” She said without turning around, in a droll sort of voice that sounded like she couldn’t be bothered by a mugging right now.
He sighed. He was so tired of all these supernatural opponents who had senses better than he did. It rendered all his stealth training pointless.
He didn’t take the gun out, but kept his hand on it. “I’m a police officer. This cemetery is closed, miss.”
She scoffed in a way that reminded him of Max when he suggested that she shouldn’t have so many shots of tequila. “Yeah, and I’m Jack the Ripper. Daisy and Rube told me about you. You haven’t been a cop for a long time, buddy.”
Oh. She was one of them.
Slipping his hand out of his pocket, he took a seat next to her, settling down in the damp grass. “I was sent here. What’s your excuse?”
He could see her smirking in her shadowed profile. “A reaper’s work is never done. And all that crap.” She reached into her jacket pocket and drew out a tiny slip of paper; holding it up to the light, Zeke saw it was a black post-it, with glowing white script on it.
Shadygroves Memorial
E. Fairbanks
ETD 2:35AM
“What does it mean?” He asked. He ran his hand along his arm, reminded of his tattoos.
“You tell me.” She put it back in her pocket, looking up at the sky. “We don’t get black post-its. I mean, look at all this...” She waved her fingers in front of the ethereal script, “glowy stuff. This is totally weird, even for reaper business. And Rube didn't tell me you were going to be here. Of course, no one tells me jack shit, anyway.” She threw her hands up, thin fingers slicing the air with her frustration. Then, she did turn and look at him, her eyes narrowed. “Do you know who E. Fairbanks is?”
Zeke shook his head, keeping his suspicions to himself. He doubted they’d make her feel better.
“Great. Just great. We’re sitting out here in a graveyard with no idea of who we’re looking for or why.”
Zeke shrugged. “Hang around me long enough, and something is bound to happen sooner or later.”
“Fan-fucking-tastic.”
He grinned inwardly. She would have fit right in with his old squad with that mouth. “Zeke Stone,” he offered along with his hand.
“George.”
After that, they were at a loss for what to do other than wait.
*
E. Fairbanks showed up about thirty minutes later, just when Zeke’s pants had been soaked all the way through and George was contemplating leaving the glowy post-it with him and heading home to get some sleep. Mr. Fairbanks was obviously one of those who had escaped Hell through a stroke of sheer luck; he was wandering through the lines of graves muttering under his breath, caressing the stones with the rapture of a lover on his face.
“The wicked never rest, the wicked never rest, I heard you screaming in the stones and I came to free you from your earthly graves, just as I was freed, as I was so wicked and I was freed, and the sky will bleed with us...”
Zeke raised the gun and George went to stand behind him, keeping her right hand slightly in front of her like it was her weapon. Fairbanks started laughing, and came to the grave he’d apparently been looking for; crouching down in front of it, he gripped it tightly in both his hands. They advanced on him, and Zeke leveled the gun at his back.
“Time’s up, Fairbanks,” he said, feeling a little sorry for the bastard, and reminding himself that he was already dead.
But Fairbanks didn’t turn, didn’t even seem to hear Zeke; white light was glowing from his hands, and Zeke read Ella Fairbanks on the gravestone and backed away at the sudden flare of premonitory electricity up his spine.
The corpse burst out of the ground without even the slightest warning, showering dirt everywhere and filling the air with the horrid scent of decay. He heard George swearing and ran around to the other side of the grave to get a clear shot, not bothering with any warnings or extra kindnesses this time. He shot Fairbanks square in the eyes and watched him dissolve in unearthly spires of blue light amidst mad laughter.
Lowering the gun, he shuddered when he saw Ella Fairbanks. Undoubtedly once a beautiful woman, she was hardly more than insubstantial ghost-light over a skeleton.
I shouldn’t be here, her voice that wasn’t a voice intoned, sounding like a cracked church bell tolling.
He looked at George. She swallowed, nodding, and stepped forward, quickly swiping her hand down the skeleton’s arm.
The bones crumpled into dust, and the earth settled back into place as the last of the blue light faded into the night.
After a few minutes, Zeke was done asking himself how that could have possibly just happened.
“Coffee?” He said, buttoning up his coat. “My treat.”
“Fuck yes,” she said, and fell into step beside him.
They had done a good night’s work.