From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (8 Book Collection) Read online

  I endured it for all of ten minutes. Say what you will, but I am proud that I lasted that long. A moment later, we were back on the road and heading towards Estacada. I swapped out her iPod for mine and was soon just a bit envious of Katrina and her ability to walk on sunshine. Lisa seemed unimpressed.

  We drove in silence for a while, but I could almost feel the pressure dropping as a storm moved in steadily. As we turned on to a stretch of highway that ran in a series of lazy curves beside some river or another—don’t ask me which one the damn things are everywhere in this state…and then there is the whole ‘Is it a river or a stream” thing. How should I know, and why do I care? It is moving water and you can skip rocks across it. Beyond that…is there really a difference? Anyway…it started to rain.

  “Why is your stuff music and my stuff crap?” Lisa grumbled. Ah yes, the leading edge of another storm had arrived.

  “I never said any such thing,” I replied, knowing very well that an answer like that would not divert or lessen the coming storm.

  One thing about being a ghoul, I do have a rather extreme sense of smell. Lisa was being paid a visit by Aunt Scarlet. I have heard some people say that PMS is a construct of the female psyche. Funny how most of those “experts” happen to be men.

  “You don’t have to say it. Every time I put on my music, you either make a face or turn it off.”

  “Look, when you get your car, and I have to ride in it, you can play your music to your little heart’s content.”

  In my mind, I was slapping my forehead. Hadn’t my own mother said that exact same thing to me when I was close to around Lisa’s age? And those words had come back to bite her in the ass.

  My senior year in high school, she had gone to Arizona to visit her mom and dad—my grandma and granddaddy. Guess who had to pick her up at the airport when she came home? And I was driving my beat up Toyota Corolla with a Kenwood stereo and hundred watt amp (that was probably worth more than the car)—ah, the Eighties. So, at the time, I was dating this guy named Joel. He was a big Van Halen fan. I hadn’t really gotten into them yet. I was still listening to the Top Forty.

  I credit Joel for really getting me started in the rock music. He took me to my first concert. It was Scorpions, Iron Maiden and Girl’s School. It was better than sex. Well, it was better than high school sex, but that is a topic for another time.

  Anyways, so I go to pick up my mom. In my cassette deck is the first (and best in my opinion) Van Halen tape. I may or may not have sat in the parking lot for a few extra moments fast forwarding to a specific spot on the tape. Say what you want about your CDs, and various digital music players, there was something magic about those days of having a small suitcase of cassette tapes in your back seat.

  We got my mom’s bags and threw them in the back seat, then once we both had on our seatbelts…I turned the ignition. When those first few bangs on the drum sounded…and then Eddie Van Halen tore into Eruption like I do a dead wino, my mom just about gave me a sunroof. As I backed out of the space, she started yelling about turning off ‘that infernal racket!’

  “When we drive your car, you can play your music,” I parroted a saying that she had used on me since I was about four.

  “Look,” I glanced at Lisa and tried my best to smile, “how about you ease me into your stuff. I’m sure you listen to something that doesn’t sound like somebody caught their testicles in a garbage disposal.”

  Lisa actually had the nerve to appear to be considering my offer! I was about to take it back, after all…it is my car!

  “Fine,” she agreed. “I have a few other bands I can probably listen to that you won’t hate.”

  “And if something of mine is just too much, then you let me know. I will try and keep it fair.” I was feeling pretty good about myself. My mother never would have made such a compromise.

  “This,” Lisa said, and then made a choking, gagging sound while clutching her throat.

  “What?” At this very moment, Steve Perry and the boys were urging me not to stop believin’. How could anybody have a problem with Journey?

  “Reminds me of that stupid show, Glee.” Lisa held her nose and waved one hand in front of her face. I saw her point. Maybe later I would try to sneak in some Wheel in the Sky or Lights.

  I thumbed ahead and introduced her to Dexy’s Midnight Runners. She seemed to hate them considerably less than Journey. We drove along the rest of the way in relative peace. I even grabbed her a four-pack of peanut butter cups when I stopped for gas. I don’t care what any doctor says, but when Aunt Flo stops by, chocolate is the answer.

  Eventually we rolled into what was considered the main drag in Estacada. No surprise, it was called Main Street. I pulled in to a little strip mall with a pizza place and a coin-operated laundry. At the moment, there were more people in the laundry. Sunglasses on—my eyes are black, not just the pretty part either…the entire eyeball was entirely black which tended to unnerve some folks—I hopped out of the car and strolled into the laundry.

  “So do we just start asking?” Lisa whispered.

  I glanced at her, and that was when it hit me. I didn’t have a plan. I had no clue what to do. Maybe zombies were like vampires. As a ghoul, I can smell a dead body from a pretty fair distance. They smell like the best thing you can imagine. Think pumpkin pie and chocolate chip cookies. However, vampires smell disgusting to me. The best thing I can compare it to is maybe chocolate cake frosted in Dumpster filth and dipped in sewage. I haven’t gotten around to asking why yet. I’m not sure if Morgan would know…or care.

  I briefly considered calling her up and asking, but I knew that nothing good would come of that. I decided that I didn’t need her. In fact, within just a matter of seconds, I had managed to turn the entire situation around and had myself convinced that the reason that Morgan had given me this job is because she had no clue. I was her only hope.

  I was about to head inside the pizza place when I caught a whiff of something. Have you ever visited a place that makes candy? Specifically, a place that makes all types of fudge and chocolate treats? That first blast of cocoa-scented air is magical. I used to go to this place in the Pearl District when I wanted to pretend that I was an affluent young woman. I always had my cover blown the moment I engaged in a conversation with somebody who was actually from the Pearl District. I didn’t know anything about art or what the latest must-read book happened to be at the moment. And Heaven forbid my phone ring. As soon as I pulled out my pay-by-the-month model with absolutely no special features…so busted.

  Back to what I was saying before I got sidetracked…

  This smell hit my nose and I am pretty sure I had a tiny orgasm. My knees almost folded up like a lawn chair. But then I caught a whiff of something else. It was just below the surface of that other smell, and I had to concentrate because I began to think that I’d imagined it. It was like my mind had decided that nothing could smell that good and so it had popped the bubble by creating this other smell.

  The more I tried to focus on it, the more it seemed to stay just out of reach. I turned back to the street and looked around. A few cars passed, but there was nobody on the street. That seemed wrong somehow. After all, it was Friday night and school was within a week or so of letting out for summer break. If nothing else, there should have at least been a few juvenile delinquents out prowling and working up the courage to cause trouble.

  I tried to home back in on that wonderful smell, but it had gone away as if it never had existed. Hmm…maybe it hadn’t. But no, my body physically reacted to that smell. It was real, and now I needed to track it down, because the only thing that has that sort of smell for me is something dead.

  “Did you see that lady?” Lisa tugged at my arm, snapping me out of my little aroma-induced trance.

  “Huh?” That should have been an obvious enough response for Lisa to be able to deduce my answer. However, Lisa often misses the obvious.

  “That lady that just walked into that pizza place?”
/>   “No, but what about her?”

  “She was…” Lisa stood there with her mouth open. It was like she completely switched off. The last time she did that…

  The smell hit me at the same time as I heard that voice. “Morgan told me that I would find you here.”

  “Belinda.” I tried not to make that one word sound at all how I felt about the person in question. “What brings you out here to the sticks?”

  “I have a thrall out here,” she said as she stepped from the shadows and sort of oozed behind Lisa, running her fingers along my friend’s shoulder.

  The thing you need to know about Belinda is that she was turned a few hundred years ago. She was obviously young, and now she uses that to her advantage. She dresses like jail bait and apparently has a thing for dirty old men. Her hair is blonde enough to almost be white and her blue eyes remind me of this baby doll I had as a little girl. They sparkle, but there is no life in them at all.

  Tonight she was wearing shorts...almost. I mean I am sure that they started off as shorts, but I just can’t see anybody modifying them to the extent that they have so many tiny rips in them located with such strategic perfection that they come very close to making her a flasher. And the bare midriff tee shirt looks to be a size or two small…at least for her bra-less boobs. It sports the Estacada High School Rangers’ logo, albeit somewhat stretched and malformed by the pair of unfairly firm mounds stuffed under it.

  “What, dare I ask, exactly is a thrall?” I decided to play along and play nice for now.

  “My need to feed is not something I can always find a source to quench. For just such occasions, I have a few humans that give willingly.”

  “So you are here for the cuisine,” I said with a laugh that I hoped sounded pleasant and not too mocking.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Belinda agreed. “But I actually wanted to find you first.”

  My warning bells went off. There was no universe where Belinda and I could be friends. She was rude and overbearing and thought she was God’s gift. Plus, her body was frozen in the form of a girl in her late teens which was so damn unfair. I mean, if I’d been transformed into a ghoul when I was her age and could walk around without my bra…then maybe…

  “Focus, Ava,” Belinda snapped her fingers in front of my face.

  “Sorry, just considering the likelihood of anything you say being anything that I want to hear.”

  “Actually, I wanted to let you know that one of my Kiss saw what he was certain had to be a zombie, but if you are going to be your typical—”

  “Wait,” I cut her off. “So one of your vampire minions saw an actual zombie?”

  “That is the thing…he wasn’t sure what it was until Morgan paid a visit and issued a warning that we should stay clear of the area.”

  “Can zombies hurt vampires?” I asked. Honestly…I didn’t know and needed as much information as possible.

  “Doubtful,” Belinda said.

  That is when it dawned on me…she didn’t know! She was not here to pass on any information, she was here because there was something going on and she didn’t know anything about it! I only had a moment to wonder if this was that OCD-level curiosity that vampires supposedly possessed.

  “Well then, what is it that you want?”

  Belinda was silent. That was perhaps the most peculiar thing. She was never at a loss for words. I was getting nervous. There were a lot of differences between her and me, so help was the last thing that I would expect.

  “If I tell you this,” Belinda started, her lips curled up into what I was almost sure had to be an equivalent of a smile, “then you and I are even. I owe you nothing.”

  Okay? Now I was really at a loss. What was she talking about? The only real interaction we’d had was when that vampire had come in to her territory and I’d been tasked to kill him. But I’d been paid. A lot.

  “I know that you are clueless, but you would eventually find out and then it would be even worse.”

  Nope. Still not getting it. I wish she didn’t have Lisa all tranced out. I bet she would be pretty helpful right now. She knows all this crap. However, she was still standing there with her mouth open and a single strand of drool starting to trickle out of one side.

  “You performed a favor for me,” Belinda stated. She said this like it was a complete explanation that made everything clear.

  When I just stood there, she made a low growl in her throat and her eyes did this flashing thing. It was weirder because her face did not change. Not a wrinkle of the brow, not a turning down of the lips. Nothing.

  “By the laws of the Kiss, any who do a service that are not a part of the Kiss must either be offered a place amongst us or be the recipient of a favor. Since there is absolutely no way that you can become one of us in your…condition (she said that word like it tasted bad coming out of her mouth), then I offer you some information that may be of great service to you.”

  “And when you give me this information that is so important, but that Morgan just happened to leave out, then we are even?” That seemed like a risky proposition. What if the information was bogus, or what if it provided me with absolutely nothing useful?

  “This information will be of great assistance, and I can promise you that Morgan was not aware,” Belinda said as if she could read my thoughts. “If she knew this then she might not have enlisted you. She might have gone outside her district for a professional.”

  I wanted to be offended, but the reality was that I was absolutely an amateur. Heck, the only knowledge that I was armed with up to this point had come from Google. I seriously doubted that they were the authority when it comes to the real supernatural world.

  “And if I agree, then you tell me and…what?”

  “Nothing,” Belinda said. This was not the first time that I cursed her visible lack of emotion. If that girl ever took an interest in poker, the card sharks of the world were in for a mess of trouble.

  “Can you be just a bit more clear?” I finally asked when it was obvious that she was done with her explanation.

  “Nothing is fairly self-explanatory. However, since I am aware of your intellectual short-comings, I will provide some clarity. What I am going to tell you is vital to your ability to handle this situation. As far as providing you with anything concrete? I doubt it, considering that what I am about to tell you has never been more than simple speculation for hundreds of years.”

  “Okay.” Now don’t mistake my one word response for simple approval. That word probably took at least five seconds to say. If I wrote it out the way it came from my mouth, it would have taken at least two lines. I just think that looks silly whenever I have read a book and the writer uses six O’s, five H’s, a single K, a dozen A’s and three Y’s. There was a lot of mixed emotion behind my response. Unfortunately, vampires do not have the market cornered when it comes to curiosity. Avas hold their own in that department.

  “You may be dealing with The Queen of the Zombies.”

  I have no idea how long that sentence hung in the air, but I do know that I stood there with my mouth open like my friend Lisa for quite a while.

  Then I started laughing.

  “I am glad you find that amusing, but I doubt that you realize just how serious this situation could be if that is a fact instead of just a rumor,” Belinda said. Now, once again, there was very little change in her expression, but she was definitely scolding me. However, there was something else there, and if I was right…this was no laughing matter.

  “Okay, so let’s say that this queen of the zombies (I had not yet learned to respect or fear her enough to speak with capital letters) is here. What’s the big deal?”

  “Since I am pressed for time, I will dispense with asking you what you know about world history between around 1340 and 1350. I know you have to at least have heard about The Black Death.”

  “That plague thingy that wiped everybody out?” Ha! I’m not so dumb.

  “If it had ‘wiped everybody out’ as
you so eloquently put it, we would not be having this conversation,” Belinda said. I really hated how much she enjoyed putting me in what she considered to be my place.

  “Fine, but didn’t it kill over half the people in Europe or something?”

  “Very close,” Belinda said, surprising me with a confirmation that my SWAG (Silly-Wild-Ass-Guess) was on target…or at least in the general area. “However, it was the Augustines and the Templars who created that version of history to be passed on.”

  “Huh?” Back to being the stupid girl.

  “I’m sure that you have at least heard about the Templars. Plenty of movies have used them in some manner or another as bad guys.”

  I just gave a nod. I didn’t think that another really long ‘okay’ was appropriate. Belinda looked around almost like she was concerned that somebody could sneak up on us. Trust me, if something could…I didn’t want to meet it.

  “The Queen of the Zombies came to power and tried to take the world,” Belinda said. “It took the combined efforts of the Templars and the Augustines to ensure that the history books said otherwise. In fact, it was the Augustines that convinced Giovanni Boccaccio to write The Decameron.”

  When I just stared blankly, she went on with her explanation. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe her; I was actually trying to figure out what the hell The Decameron might be.

  “Supposedly she was imprisoned in the same secret lair where Arthur’s sword, the Arc of the Covenant, and the Christ’s drinking goblet are secured.”

  Now it was just starting to sound like a bad Indiana Jones rip off. Still, as smart as she might be, I didn’t credit Belinda with the ability to make all of this up in the fly.