aren’t you screaming and yelling about being here? Why aren’t you freaking out? Why aren’t you asking what’s going on?”
She tipped her head to the side. “Why should I freak out? This is a chance in a lifetime, Corazon. Not many people get to actually visit the Akasha.”
I glanced at the little woman. “The man who was with me, Ulfur, he said something about the only way you can get out of this place is if someone summons you. Is that right?”
“Yes, it’s right. Although I should note that unless you have some sort of a bond with the Summoner, it’s not easy to remove a member of the Otherworld from the Akasha. It’s policy, you see. Now, you mortals, you’re different.”
“We are?” My hopes leaped up with a happy little song on their lips. “You mean we can leave?”
“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head and glancing at her watch. “It would hardly be a place of perpetual punishment if you could just walk out, would it? I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to cut this short if I want to see the lich you mentioned before I have to give the welcome speech at the meet-and-greet breakfast. It’ll be held to the south, by the way, in the fifth quadrant, at the lodge level in the Hall of Burning Flesh.”
“Fifth quadrant?” I asked, watching as Margaretta made a tick mark on a list of names and bustled off. “Hall of Burning Flesh?”
“Sounds like such fun! Are you coming?” Diamond asked, trailing after Margaretta.
“Er . . . no, I think I’ll pass on the flesh-burning breakfast.”
I looked upward, at the sky, as if an answer to all my woes would be written there, but there was nothing but brownish gray sky that led down to the stark, inhospitable landscape. “Could this day get any weirder?”
No one answered me, for which I was strangely relieved. I decided that if I had a better chance than most at getting out of the (probably quite literally) godforsaken spot, then I’d best be looking around to find that way out.
I wandered around for what could well have been days. I know it was at least a few hours, because my shoes were beginning to show wear from the sharp rocks. The color of the sky didn’t change, however, and I didn’t seem to find any way out of the rocky-moor area, assuming Margaretta wasn’t full of bull about there being welcome breakfasts in what sounded like the civilized part of the Akasha.
“I swear I’m going around in circles,” I muttered under my breath as I glared suspiciously at a car-sized boulder vaguely in the shape of a hand flipping the bird. “You look familiar. Right. I’m going to go that way this time.” I moved around the rude rock and came to a dead stop. Lying on the ground snuggled up next to the base of the boulder was a man. At least I thought it was a man.
“Hey. You OK?” I asked, not wanting to get close, but at the same time wanting to make sure he wasn’t hurt or something. “Mister? Dammit.”
I crept closer, my skin twitchy as I neared him, the devil in my mind pointing out that it was just last week that I’d watched a horror movie where a body that looked dead actually wasn’t, and had leaped up in a manner guaranteed to cause incontinence in viewers, subsequently ripping the unwary couple who stumbled over it to shreds with long, razorlike claws.
I checked the guy’s hands, but there didn’t seem to be any signs of claws. As I neared him, I adjusted my image of someone who might need help, to someone who was long past it.
“Oh, you poor guy.” I squatted down next to his head, taking in his gray skin, and cheeks so sunken, the cheekbones stood out in painful relief. His mouth was a slash of gray the same color as his flesh. He wore what was probably a very expensive weathered black suit coat and pants, but was now covered in the same brown dirt that tinted everything in the Akasha. His hands bore long, sensitive-looking fingers, the sinews that stood out on the backs of his hands lending credence to the fact that he was dead. “Did you die out here all by yourself? I wonder.”
There were no obvious signs of injury, no blood, no mangled limbs. . . . It was as if he’d simply lain down and died. A strange sense of sorrow filled me at the sight of the man. He looked almost familiar, but as I studied his face, I realized that it must have been a trick of the shadows. Still, I felt an inexplicable, frustrated need to help him. Perhaps there was someone I could call to take care of his remains? Someone who would clean him up and give him a decent burial. I brushed back a lock of hair that lay across his forehead. His hair was dark brown, almost black, sweeping back from the brow down to about ear length. “When you were alive, I bet you were quite the hunk,” I said, gently combing his hair into a semblance of order, wishing I could wash the dirt from his face.
Without thinking, my fingers trailed down the length of his jaw, his slight stubble rasping softly.
“
A brown beetle emerged from under his open shirt, wandering out across his collarbone. I picked it off, lifting up his shirt a little to peer underneath and make sure there were no more insects inside it.
My fingers traced the curve of a thick pectoral muscle.
“OK, I’ve changed my mind. You weren’t just hunky—you were mind-numbingly gorgeous. What did you do to end up here? And why did you die?” I sighed, and tidied up his shirt, standing up to look around. “Let me see if I can’t find someone—hey! You! Yes, you! How many yous do you think there are around here?”
About a hundred feet away, a slight woman with a hunted look on her face was dashing around the rocks in a serpentine manner, tossing a worried look over her shoulder. She glanced toward me, pausing with the body language that said she was going to bolt any second. “Run!” she said, waving a hand vaguely. “There’s a wrath demon on the hunt!”
“Bully for him. There’s a dead guy here who needs our help.”
“No one can die in the Akasha,” the woman said, glancing behind her again.
“Well, someone has, and he needs a proper burial. Are there some sort of funeral-home people here?”
“No one dies in the Akasha,” she repeated, stepping toward me a half-dozen feet. She peered over the edge of the boulder. “Oh, him. He’s not dead. He’s a Dark One. He simply has no blood left.”
“He’s a vampire?” I looked down at the man, aghast. “What’s he doing here?”
“Nothing, unless someone feeds him, and no one is crazy enough to do that. Dark Ones are not to be messed with.” She looked over her shoulder again, suddenly jetting off, throwing back at me, “And neither are wrath demons! If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get out of here!”
I looked in the direction she had pointed, but didn’t see a sign of any movement. Still, if something scary was coming, it would be best to move along.
“I’m sorry,” I told the comatose vampire. “It’s nothing personal, but my brother-in-law aside, I haven’t had good experiences with you guys.”
I hurried off in the direction that the woman had taken, my feet slowing as I thought back about the brush of the vampire’s hair against my fingers. It was long and silky, despite being coated with dirt. And the stubble on that sexy chin had felt soft, yet abrasive enough to make my fingertips tingle. Likewise the soft brown hairs of his chest when I had picked off the beetle. It struck me then that his flesh hadn’t been deathly cold.... It was cool, below room temperature, but not the icy chill of death.
“Poor guy,” I said again, turning back to look at the obscene rock. I couldn’t believe I was feeling any sort of empathy for a bloodsucking fiend, but somehow, the shrunken, gray-skinned man who lay back there didn’t seem at all to be the fiendish short. He was . . . needy.
“No one will feed you,” I said, gnawing on my lower lip. The savvy part of my mind told me to run far, far away from the vampire. I knew how deadly they could be—I had almost nightly reminders of that. But the idiot part of my brain, the part that fell for con artists, and lost puppies, and kids who cried in stores because they couldn’t have a toy, that part commanded my feet to take me back the way I’d just come.
“This is stupid,” I told the man when I got back to him. “You’re a vampire. You’re nothing but trouble. I’m not going to feed you and have you go kill someone.” I knelt next to him, wondering how one went about feeding a comatose vampire. It wasn’t something that came up much at the office. I pried open his lips and smooshed my wrist up against his teeth, prodding him on the shoulder as I said, “Mister? Soup’s on. So to speak. Oh, god, what am I doing? I can’t believe I’m actually trying to save you. Only . . . if you’re as powerful as I think you are, then you
