Bloody Bones: An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novel

1IT WAS ST. Patrick’s Day, and the only green I was wearingwas a button that read, “Pinch me and you’re deadmeat.” I’d started work last night with a green blouse on, butI’d gotten blood all over it from a beheaded chicken. LarryKirkland, zombie-raiser in training, had dropped the decapitatedbird. It did the little headless chicken dance andsprayed both of us with blood. I finally caught the damnthing, but the blouse was ruined.I had to run home and change. The only thing not ruinedwas the charcoal grey suit jacket that had been in the car. Iput it back on over a black blouse, black skirt, dark hose,and black pumps. Bert, my boss, didn’t like us wearingblack to work, but if I had to be at the office at seven o’clockwithout any sleep at all, he would just have to live with it.I huddled over my coffee mug, drinking it as black as Icould swallow it. It wasn’t helping much. I stared at a seriesof 8-by-10 glossy blowups spread across my desktop. Thefirst picture was of a hill that had been scraped open, probablyby a bulldozer. A skeletal hand reached out of the rawearth. The next photo showed that someone had tried tocarefully scrape away the dirt, showing the splintered coffinand bones to one side of the coffin. A new body. The bulldozerhad been brought in again. It had plowed up the redearth and found a boneyard. Bones studded the earth likescattered flowers.One skull spread its unhinged jaws in a silent scream. Ascraggle of pale hair still clung to the skull. The dark,stained cloth wrapped around the corpse was the remnantsof a dress. I spotted at least three femurs next to the upperhalf of a skull. Unless the corpse had had three legs, we werelooking at a real mess.The pictures were well done in a gruesome sort of way.The color made it easier to differentiate the corpses, but thehigh gloss was a little much. It looked like morgue photosdone by a fashion photographer. There was probably an artgallery in New York that would hang the damn things andserve cheese and wine while people walked around saying,“Powerful, don’t you think? Very powerful.”They were powerful, and sad.There was nothing but the photos. No explanation. Berthad said to come to his office after I’d looked at them. He’dexplain everything. Yeah, I believed that. The Easter Bunnyis a friend of mine, too.I gathered the pictures up, slipped them into the envelope,picked my coffee mug up in the other hand, and went for thedoor.There was no one at the desk. Craig had gone home.Mary, our daytime secretary, didn’t get in until eight. Therewas a two-hour space of time when the office was unmanned.That Bert had called me into the office when wewere the only ones there bothered me a lot. Why the secrecy?Bert’s office door was open. He sat behind his desk,drinking coffee, shuffling some papers around. He glancedup, smiled, and motioned me closer. The smile bothered me.Bert was never pleasant unless he wanted something.His thousand-dollar suit framed a white-on-white shirtand tie. His grey eyes sparkled with good cheer. His eyes arethe color of dirty window glass, so sparkling is a real effort.His snow-blond hair had been freshly buzzed. The crewcutwas so short I could see scalp.“Have a seat, Anita.”I tossed the envelope on his desk and sat down. “What areyou up to, Bert?”His smile widened. He usually didn’t waste the smile onanybody but clients. He certainly didn’t waste it on me.“You looked at the pictures?”“Yeah, what of it?” “Could you raise them from the dead?”I frowned at him and sipped my coffee. “How old arethey?”“You couldn’t tell from the pictures?”“In person I could tell you, but not just from pictures. Answerthe question.”“Around two hundred years.”I just stared at him. “Most animators couldn’t raise a zombiethat old without a human sacrifice.”“But you can,” he said.“Yeah. I didn’t see any headstones in the pictures. Do wehave any names?”“Why?”I shook my head. He’d been the boss for five years,started the company when it was just him and Manny, andhe didn’t know shit about raising the dead. “How can youhang around a bunch of zombie-raisers for this many yearsand know so little about what we do?”The smile slipped a little, the glow beginning to fade fromhis eyes. “Why do you need names?”“You use names to call the zombie from the grave.”“Without a name you can’t raise them?”“Theoretically, no,” I said.“But you can do it,” he said. I didn’t like how sure he was.“Yeah, I can do it. John can probably do it, too.”He shook his head. “They don’t want John.”I finished the last of my coffee. “Who’s they?”“Beadle, Beadle, Stirling, and Lowenstein.”“A law firm,” I said.He nodded.“No more games, Bert. Just tell me what the hell’s goingon.”“Beadle, Beadle, Stirling, and Lowenstein have someclients building a very plush resort in the mountains nearBranson. A very exclusive resort. A place where the wealthycountry stars that don’t own a house in the area can go to getaway from the crowds. Millions of dollars are at stake.”“What’s the old cemetery have to do with it?”“The land they’re building on was in dispute between two3families. The courts decided the Kellys owned the land, andthey were paid a great deal of money. The Bouvier familyclaimed it was their land and there was a family plot on it toprove it. No one could find the cemetery.”Ah. “They found it,” I said.“They found an old cemetery, but not necessarily theBouvier family plot.”“So they want to raise the dead and ask who they are?”“Exactly.”I shrugged. “I can raise a couple of the corpses in thecoffins. Ask who they are. What happens if their last nameis Bouvier?”“They have to buy the land a second time. They thinksome of the corpses are Bouviers. That’s why they want allthe bodies raised.”I raised my eyebrows. “You’re joking.”He shook his head, looking pleased. “Can you do it?”“I don’t know. Give me the pictures again.” I set my coffeemug on his desk and took the pictures back. “Bert,they’ve screwed this six ways to Sunday. It’s a mass grave,thanks to the bulldozers. The bones are all mixed together.I’ve only read about one case of anyone raising a zombiefrom a mass grave. But they were calling a specific person.They had a name.” I shook my head. “Without a name itmay not be possible.”“Would you be willing to try?”I spread the pictures over the desk, staring at them. Thetop half of a skull had turned upside down like a bowl. Twofinger bones attached by something dry and desiccated thatmust once had been human tissue lay next to it. Bones,bones everywhere but not a name to speak.Could I do it? I honestly didn’t know. Did I want to try?Yeah. I did.“I’d be willing to try.”“Wonderful.”“Raising them a few every night is going to take weeks,even if I can do it. With John’s help it would be quicker.”“It will cost them millions to delay that long,” Bert said.“There’s no other way to do it.”