Ghost-Ish- Lazarus Read online

  Adelaide chuckled, and Rin muttered, “Hey now, Barbie.”

  Kyler just said around the huge slice of pizza she had taken out of another box, “I'm just a kid, Aunt Shan. I don't know what their excuse is.” She was stuffing the cheesy nirvana into her mouth as fast as she could eat it. It was half the size of her head, and it was already mostly gone.

  I caught myself grinning. Their banter had the feel of family to me.

  Shannon opened the box in front of us and shifted it toward me when the two bird-brains started grabbing at the pizza. “Hey! Guests first. I swear you three are going feral or something. Manners are important.”

  She prompted me with her eyes as the steamy, scintillating aroma of a pizza done right hit my nose, causing my mouth to water more. I started to reach but then stopped, pulled back, and sat on my hands in case they decided to betray my will. “Sottocasa's is amazing, and it smells just as amazing. But I couldn't, not with my people back home going hungry. I don't really need to eat anyway.”

  The three shifters seemed to deflate a little, they knew who my family was, they had been there. Shannon just looked confused. It was the little one who just shrugged and said, “Just bring them a box. We can eat light.” She was three-quarters of the way through a second slice when she said it, where was she putting it?

  Then Shannon seemed to take in my appearance for the first time, and I could see her coming to the right conclusion, much to my chagrin. She said, “By all means. I can always go out for more if these feather-butts need it.”

  I hated taking charity. But I thought of the look that would be on Ferret's face if I returned with a whole pie for everyone to share. I just nodded, still sitting on my hands. Rin asked, “You don't need to eat... but do you eat?”

  I nodded slowly aware of all eyes on me. Rin just nudged her chin at the pizza, and I caved. I grabbed one of the huge slices, and that seemed to make everyone happy. Adelaide prompted her sort of daughter, “Ky? Drinks?”

  The little one nodded and started pulling sodas out of the little fridge in the kitchenette and handed them out. I accepted one, and she grinned then almost downed her can with a huge gulp. She snagged a third slice from her box and just started munching on it without slowing. It was unnatural how much and how quickly the young teen was eating. I looked around, they didn't seem fazed, so I shrugged and took a bite of my slice.

  I had to snort when, the moment I bit into my slice, the two shifter women started diving on the box, just to have their hands slapped away by Shannon. She gave them a cross look then almost daintily, with slow deliberateness selected a slice for herself and once she raised it to her mouth to take a smartass dainty bite, the other two descended upon the unsuspecting pie like starving wolves.

  I snorted and covered my mouth. Around the slice, Rin asked she was devouring like some sort of pizza eating machine, “What?”

  I pointed out as I savored my first bite, closing my eyes to let my other senses take in the heavenly culinary creation. “She's got you all so whipped.” Then I opened my eyes to see the two bird ladies staring at me in denial, pizzas half way to their mouths. Shannon had a hell of a cheesy smirk on her face, and I offered her my fist, which she bumped with enthusiasm.

  Rin muttered, “Says you.” Then she quickly moved her elbows off the little table when Shannon glared at them. I blurted out laughter in my own amusement, and the mini ninja growled, “I should have just killed you back there in the alley.”

  Then we all, except Rin, burst out laughing when Kyler interjected, “I thought they knocked you out, Aunt Rin.”

  The woman looked positively mortified as she defended, “The little sneak had help. Special Forces Lieutenant snuck up on me and took me down with his training.”

  I nodded and supported her, not, “Yes, in his wheelchair.”

  Shannon started laughing, and between bouts, she asked the pouting biker girl, “Someone in a wheelchair got the drop on you?”

  Rin crossed her arms almost petulantly. “Yes... did you miss the Special Forces part?”

  I shrugged and supplied, “I don't know what she's talking about, Matt's just a fry cook.”

  The laughing was infectious.

  I smirked at the woman who was looking at me incredulously, and I showed pity. “Fine, I believe he was a Green Beret, but he doesn't talk about it.”

  The leather-clad woman raised her nose imperiously in vindication. God, she was cute for someone so dangerous. Someone who attacked me in an alley. Ok... maybe I'm not as smart as I think I am, here alone with my attacker's crew. But I... liked them.

  She said to me, pointing to a second piece of pizza that was mostly devoured. “You owe me for that. You were going to tell us what is going on with you. It looked like you were part ghost or something, the glance I got of your chest.”

  The other girls perked up at that, Kyler pointed out to me, “We know ghosts, the three of us see them and lead them on their path after judgment. But you don't feel like one... you're something... else. Not like the zombies.”

  She spoke of ghosts and zombies like it was natural. There was nothing natural about them, nor these women, or myself I guess.

  I froze when I found Rin's hands on the zipper of my hoodie her eyes pinning mine as she asked, no malice in her gaze, “May I?”

  I put my hand over her's to stop her asking with a touch of acid in my tone, “See the freak?” I've never shown anyone. Ok... I was afraid. If someone saw, then it made it real.

  She rolled her eyes, and her nose and jaw distended to make a dangerous looking hooked beak. I chuckled nervously as she blinked golden eyes at me. “Point taken.”

  She was just Rin again, no fanfare or anything, and I swatted her hands away gently and took a deep breath as I looked around at all the eyes on me. It's odd, but the eyes of the three bird-shifters looking at me in curiosity didn't unnerve me as much as Shannon's. Was it because I felt I identified more with the impossible supernatural beings more than I did with the only human in the group?

  I was afraid of her judgment.

  I steeled myself pulled the zipper down exposing my torn shirt, exposing part of the circular hole through my chest, with the semi-translucent ectoplasm allowing an almost unobstructed view of the shirt on my back.

  Rin looked apprehensive like she was driven to do something but not knowing what it was she was supposed to do. Adelaide scare me a bit. Her eyes had gone that avian gold and her talons... yes talons, not hands, were cutting into the tabletop as she restrained herself from the action. Kyler was just silent, her eyes golden too, not able to take them off my chest.

  It was Shannon that stopped me from panicking and running long and far after exposing my secret. She reached halfway across the table and asked in an almost worried tone of empathy, “Does it... does it hurt?”

  I shrugged and said, “When it happened, it hurt like hell. But then it got worse when I realized I hadn't died. I had to...” I swallowed and then continued, “I had to pull myself off the pipe, an inch at a time, and that was like a thousand knives sawing at my flesh.” My voice was becoming a whisper on its own accord.

  Rin said to me, “You might want to breathe, you've been holding your breath for a while now.”

  Oh. I admitted after taking a shallow breath, “I sort of... don't need to anymore except to talk. I have to remind myself to do it, so I look normal.”

  I was going to say something else, but her fingertips brushed my skin around the wound, or whatever it was. She looked up into my eyes again. “But it's ok now?”

  I nodded. “I feel my injuries like anyone else does, but once the wound is inflicted, then it just feels normal again, but with a little less 'me' there.” I pulled the tear in the shirt up a bit to show three small translucent gashes.

  She sat back nodding in understanding.

  Then Rin hissed beside me, looking appalled, I understood, I was a freak. She looked positively repulsed. Or so I thought until she almost squeaked out a whisper in... shame? “I did that to you...”

  Her eyes sought out mine in my surprise she wasn't repulsed like I had believed, she was almost panicking in guilt? “I took pieces of you...”

  I exhaled and shook my head. “Not anywhere anyone can see.”

  She shook her head. “I'm sorry.”

  I smiled reassuringly at her. Was I upset I was one step closer to losing myself to oblivion? Yes? But did I blame her? No. I blamed whatever god damned experiment Lazarus was doing that made me like this.

  She reached hesitantly forward, and when I didn't protest, she laid her fingers on my injuries. Her skin was hot, unnaturally so. Then she looked up at me as she moved her fingers toward my missing heart. I swallowed and then she touched it. The ghost me. She hissed like a bird as after the initial resistance, when the ectoplasmic surface tension was overwhelmed by the positive charge of the matter in her fingertips, and her fingers slipped into the hole.

  She pulled back. I quickly zipped my shirt, feeling oddly content that she had not been disgusted. Instead, she said in an odd tone, “It's like you are there and not at the same time there.”

  I nodded and gave my theory... I've had lots of time to research since the accident. “I believe it is ectoplasm, in a juxtaposed quantum superstate of matter transition, existing both here and in different layers of time space. It's possible that the only thing tethering it here is the surface tension of its planar shift and energy resonance with my remaining matter.” Ok, I admit I wasn't fully versed in the concepts, as it truly boggled my mind, but I got the general gist of it, my chosen majors in college helped me grasp such abstract concepts better.

  She smirked and wiggled her brows at me, which I realized were laced with tiny black feathers at the time,
“You're one of those Beautiful Minds people... except smart-ass-er.”

  Ok, why was I grinning so fiercely at her? Frikity frack frick, I was attracted to the damn little ninja bird.

  It was Kyler who asked, “Ummm... does anyone else feel like they are living at the bottom of a pit of stupid?”

  They chuckled at her, and Shannon raised her hand. I duck lipped and shrugged. “I don't understand it all myself. But something is holding it here, leaving me sort of ghost-ish. I'm just afraid that if I lose too much of myself, that my body won't be able to hold itself together and I'll be gone.”

  God, it sounded weird voicing my fear out loud for the first time. I didn't want to talk about it anymore, so I tried to steer the topic away thoughtful eyes of the women surrounding me. “So, tell me about, Pigeon Maids.”

  Three of them let out exasperated sounds as I grinned, Shannon holding up a fist to fist bump me as Rin whined, “Raven Maids, Casper.”

  Then I kicked back to hear about Raven Maids. My eyes widening more and more as I found they were basically Grim Reapers. But they didn't bring death, they just escorted the dead along whichever path they deserved after the Vodun gods judged and weighed their souls... to their own private heaven or hell.

  It was a little shocking that when they touched the dead or a ghost, they essentially lived the dead's lives, and that conduit allowed those voodoo gods to open the appropriate path in the afterlife for them. The memories of those they escorted became theirs. And they had to learn to separate them from their own and bury them away or face insanity with so many voices shouting in their head.

  Adelaide had been the one to let a fellow Raven Maid, Annie Cumberland, Kyler's mom, finally be released of the soul slavery imposed upon her by the voodoo magic of Abigail Truit. Annie had such a strong will and strong love for her daughter that Adelaide found that she was a changed woman as a lot of Annie's personality and memories had become hers now. She really saw Kyler as her daughter.

  The secret society of the Raven Maids was something I wanted to learn more about. But one thing that was a relief was that they had said for certain, that I wasn't dead because none of their abilities worked on me. Even though their instincts were screaming that I was unnatural.

  The biggest takeaway from the night? Damn those girls could eat! I had one slice of pizza, as did Shannon, the other three polished off two giant family sized pies and were talking about getting more. I guess the energy it took to shift into Ravens really took a lot out of them which they needed to replenish.

  Chapter 5 – Eliza

  It wasn't until the awkward ride home on Rin's bike while trying to balance a pizza box that she realized I hadn't shared my story with them. She called back at a stoplight, “Don't think you're getting out of telling us how this happened to you. We're hunting Lazarus, and the Fates are going to want to talk with you. They are going to flip their shit when they see you.” She sounded almost excited about them 'flipping their shit.'

  I just exhaled and leaned into her back, one arm wrapped across her belly, under her leather jacket, and I smirked, she had a six-pack under her shirt. Mmm... the spunky woman was toned. Gah, what was I thinking? She couldn't be more than nineteen, I'm three years older... well I guess that wasn't too bad after all, she just looks so damn young to me.

  And don't forget she's a grim reaper, Cam.

  I about died of embarrassment when she called back, “Like what you feel?”

  I recovered well. “Was just checking for feathers, don't get full of yourself shortie.”

  When we pulled under the elevated tracks, she let the motor idle as we moved between makeshift shelters. Matt was still, as always, up. He started wheeling over as we parked. I asked the woman as we unsaddled and slid our helmets off, “So, what's Rin short for?”

  She almost growled, “Rin.”

  I nodded and then repeated like she hadn't just shut me down, “So Rin, what's Rin short for? Rinborkula? Rinterference?”

  She had her eyes on Matt who was halfway to us, and she almost hissed under her breath, “Trinity. But if that gets out, I will hunt you down, and you'll wish you had never met me.”

  I smirked as I handed her my helmet and gripped the pizza box more firmly. “You think I already don't?”

  She looked at me with an unreadable expression until she saw I was teasing, then she cocked her head and asked incredulously, “Rinborkula?”

  Matt rolled up looking cold in the chill air. “Ladies?” There was an expectant tone in that question that asked all the things.

  I shook my head at the man. “Long story, can't share much unless this one is ok with it.”

  He nodded slowly at that, he understood secrets. He had so many of his own, and I would never press the man. Then he asked, “What's a Rinborkula?”

  I almost jumped out of my skin when a young voice said from almost directly behind me, “Trinity is.”

  We all looked back to see a yawning Ferret peeking her head out of the blanket door of my cardboard castle, and I almost chuckled, seeing feathers peeking out along the length of Rin's black hair, and her eyes were golden. She had been as surprised as I had been, it was interesting that her bird aspect came out when startled.

  The bird-brain snapped at all of us, catching each of our eyes, “It's Rin. You best remember that or... or... or else.”

  In unison, we, and a couple people in the nearest lean-to shelters asked, “Or else what?”

  The poor woman was positively red as she blushed profusely, wondering how many people were listening, and how many had heard. This was possibly the fastest someone's secret had ever been dispensed, and I hadn't been the one to spill the beans.

  As amusing as it was to watch her consternation, I actually liked her name. It was pretty, and she tried so hard to be anything but pretty. I guess it didn't match the rough and tumble image she was trying to project. I showed pity on her and said quietly with a slight smile as I studied both the delicate and hard lines of her face which painted such an alluring and dangerous amalgam, “I think it's pretty.”

  She hid a smile by turning back to Ferret and cocking her head in that birdlike manner, narrowing her eyes. I shared, “She doesn't intimidate, Rin, save it for someone who does.”

  Then to the young, amused girl, I said, “You should be in bed, you have studying to do tomorrow.”

  She started pulling back inside grumping at me, “God, you can be such a 'mom' sometimes...” Then she paused when it registered what I had grasped in my hands. Oh yeah, almost forgot.

  I flipped the top of the box open to show Matt and Ferret. “Compliments of Rin and her friends.”

  My young box mate looked hopeful but reticent, and Matt just narrowed his eyes at me. Nobody here liked taking charity, though we all did from time to time. It shines a spotlight on the fact that for whatever reason, we wound up here, on the streets.

  Showing more insight than her aloof manner put forth, Rin offered like I had offered insult, “Cam wouldn't eat until we offered a box for everyone.”

  This made my friends relax, and Ferret grinned fiercely. I exhaled and told her, “Cut it up enough that everyone gets some?”

  She was out of the box in a shot, the tiny knife with the one-inch blade I gave her snicking out as she nodded. I had to smile as she picked off a pepperoni and popped it into her mouth before she started hacking at the oversized slices with the blade when she took the box from me and offered some to Matt.

  The man grinned at her and took one of the smaller chunks she had cut. He inclined his head toward Rin, and she almost imperceptibly acknowledged the silent thanks. The woman was deeper than she wanted people to know.

  We all watched as Ferret ran off, knocking on boxes or rattling tarps to give out the food. I turned back to see Rin studying me.

  I blurted, “What?”

  “Nothing. You love her.”

  I nodded and agreed. “Yeah, she's a little thief of hearts. She's going to get out of here soon and do something with her life as soon as she gets her GED. She's better than this.” I moved my hand between me and Matt, who just nodded his staunch agreement. The little one had more than two parents, she had over a dozen here, and we all had her back.