Teaser Tuesday raises zombies!

Hi everyone! 

After quite a while of radio silence from me (mostly due to crazy deadline insanity from all sides), I figured I should probably pop back in here, now that the blog's moved to its new and shiny location - and why not do so with a bit of writing? 

This is part of what may turn into the opening for my YA urban fantasy THE CURSEBREAKER'S MARK - an idea that blends the German Nibelungen myth together with zombies and shape shifters in an urban fantasy set in today's Frankfurt, Germany. This excerpt is a drastically revised version of last year's NaNoWriMo draft (which was every bit as terribly convoluted and wordy as I expected it to be after I cracked it open more than four months later, heh!) Hope you'll enjoy this. Posting this bit, which may with some more editing turn into chapter one of the actual novel. This piece here is actually something I'm planning to read and submit for a project we're doing with my writer's workshop class. 

Hope you enjoy meeting Ash and Sig. 

Cheers,

Alex.

Accidental Zombie Raisings

by Alex Harrow

I didn’t mean to raise the zombie. It was an accident. Honest

Karstens was going to kill me. Or whatever the zombie left of me, knowing my boss, he wouldn’t be too choosy there. Crap.

I scrambled away from him so fast, I almost knocked over one of my candles, my heart beating like a death metal drum solo. With an emphasis on death. The zombie didn’t make a move, just stood there, tall, very blond and leaning against the cemetery’s crumbling brick wall. He looked almost bored, kicking back with his hands buried in the pockets of his black duster. Watching.

Hope sparked. Maybe he wasn’t like the standard rotting-flesh, brain-eating sort of zombie. But that was crazy. As crazy as the idea that I had raised him in the first place. Because that would take magic and the whole deal with the black candles and low murmurs and clichéd voodoo airs I’d put on sure as hell didn’t have a whit to do with magic. That was just part of the show. The part that usually convinced the client that they hadn’t just handed over a wad of cash to yet another scammer claiming to have some sort of connection to the Beyond.

I clasped my left wrists, covert fingers running up my sleeve, to the burn mark on the inside of my left wrist. Just to make sure. The scar was still there, of course. Ugly as ever, a daily reminder that my magic was dead and gone and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

“Um, Miss Rivers?” a small voice next to me said, “Are you going to ask him about the gold or not?”

Aw, shit. I had completely forgotten about Wittemberger, the client. Not that there was much about Karl-Heinz Wittemberger that made me want to remember him. Everything from the shiny black polish of his shoes and the golden clip to the pair of tiny rimless glasses that balanced on a fat knobby nose screamed corporate executive. Frankfurt was overrun with his kind and at some point they just all started to blend together like a swarm of hungry locusts, only that they lived off hedge fonds, dividends and bankruptcies these days.

Wittemberger looked kind of green around the nose as he eyed the zombie. Guess he hadn’t been the only one convinced that I’d never pull this off. Still, there was a greedy glimmer in his beady eyes. Like leaving his perfectly standardized cubicle and following me out of the city center into some dinky graveyard just outside of Frankfurt Westend was suddenly all worth it.

A hysterical giggle bubbled up the back of my throat. If this had been some screwed up black comedy, it would have been hilarious.

I had to get him out of here. Scrap that, I had to get both of us out of here. Pronto.

My eyes darted to my duffel bag that I’d dropped on the ground just a few feet away. Underneath all the fake voodoo stuff it had my weapons, mostly of the sharp and pointy kind. I’d brought the simple stuff, nothing too bulky. Daggers, machetes, even a hatchet or two. When really what I wanted was a gun. A big gun, good for blasting brains out. Or maybe a rocket launcher. Sadly German authorities really had an issue with all of the above, so down to knives I was.

It didn’t matter. The bag could as well have been lying a mile away. No chance that I’d get to it before the zombie would rip my head off and slurp my brains out like a smoothie. Not exaggerating here. I’d seen it. Not pretty and so not how I planned to end my night.

Karsten’s would have said I deserved it. “Sloppy,” I could almost hear his voice in my head. “Sloppy planning. Sloppy preparation and sloppy execution. Leading to an even sloppier, let alone messy death. Good work, Ash. You’ve outdone yourself yet again, congratulations.”

Looked like he could congratulate my dead body when all was said and done. My grip on my wrist tightened, fingering the hilt of the knife I kept strapped there. More of a comfort thing for myself, really, because up and close with a zombie, I might as well attack him with a toothpick, the same good it’d do me.  

Maybe I should just make a run for it. On my own I might even have a chance, while the zombie would get a bite or three out of Wittemberger. My fingers closed around the hilt of the knife, warm against my skin.

 “Miss Rivers,” Wittemberger whined again. “The gold?”

Yes, maybe I should just leave him. Do the world a favor.

Still, Karstens would kill me for this and that was only the beginning. Once they’d find whatever was left of his chewed up body…. No. Couldn’t do it.

I sighed inwardly and cleared my throat. “Right,” I said, figuring I should probably do something other than stand there with my mouth open. “The Gold. Um--”

Whatever I was about to say ended in a squeak when the zombie took a few steps forward. With the heel of his boot, he knocked over another one of my candles that had formed the corners of a pentagram etched into the cemetery lawn. His upper lip curled just a little when the candle went out with a hiss and the zombie stepped out of the circle of salt that connected the corners, obviously unimpressed by my third-rate zombie-raising props.

“Really,” he said, his mouth curling into a derisive sneer. “One would think you mortals would get more creative over time. I suppose I am bound to be disappointed.”

He looked at me, then shook his head, blond hair gleaming in the low light. “The gold. That’s what you brought me here for?”

“Ah, um, yes.” My mouth shut with a click. Smooth. Real smooth.

The zombie laughed. It was a surprisingly light sound, clear and rippling like a bell through the cool night air. "Of course, what else could it be? Well, let's spare both you and me some embarrassment and let me tell you that you are indeed wasting your time. There is no gold."

"There is no— what?" The tremble in Wittemberger's voice gave way to a shrill high pitch. "That's impossible. You’re lying The myth clearly says Hagen von Tronje threw the gold into the Rhine to hide it after he—, after your death. All the sources say it should still be there, but no one has found it until now. We just need to know where—"

The zombie's face darkened like a storm cloud, blond eyebrows furrowing as he turned to Wittemberger who positively shrunk in his ridiculously overpriced suit.

"Keep your delusions and pretty stories about hidden treasures, but I’m no liar. There is no gold. And even if there was, you may understand that I was a little caught up in getting killed to know where exactly the gold went afterward.”

Yikes, talk about the wrong thing to say. Figures that the guy would be just a tad touchy about the whole business of getting himself killed over some alleged fortune that way too many people had wanted to get their grubby hands on in his time. And then he’d been offed by his best friend, who’d taken the word backstabbing just a bit too literal. Or so the story went. No wonder the guy was still having a grudge. I’d be pretty pissed too, if someone dragged me back from the afterlife just to ask me stupid questions about something that’d gotten me killed over a thousand years ago.

“The gold is cursed, in case that eluded you. So I suggest you don’t mention anything of it to anyone ever again. Are we clear on this?”

Wittemberger's mustache trembled under the zombie's cold gaze. Still, his jaw had that defiant set that screamed finance shark. His kind wasn't about to give in easily. But neither was the zombie and once he got his hands on him he'd be done for.

"Clear," I said, somehow managing to keep my voice even. "We're done here."

"We're not!," Wittemberger snapped, his face flushed with a little more than symptoms of high blood pressure. "You," he pointed his finger at me. "You punk.You're not going to let him walk like this. I paid good money to get what I want and what I want is to know where the gold is. And if that's really Siegfried of the Nibelungen, then he knows perfectly well where it is, cursed or not. I want it. So use your hoodoo or whatever it is you do and make him tell me!"

Things happened fast after that. The zombie shot forward before I could even get a hold of the knife on my belt. Wittemberger gave a strangled yelp; it made him sound like one of those annoying little lapdogs, the kind glittery rich girls could carry in their purses. The zombie got a handful of his starched shirtfront and yanked him close, pinning the poor guy between him and one of the more ornate mausoleums he’d been standing by.

I noticed the hilt of a long sword in a scabbard slung over his right shoulder. Definitely fit the legend that Siegfried of the Nibelungen was supposed to be some famous dragon slayer type. Here was hoping he wouldn’t go all dragon slayer on Wittemberger instead. But he made no move to draw it. He didn’t need to. He was freakishly tall, for one of the walking dead – especially one who’s supposed to have kicked it more than a millennium ago – and ended up literally breathing down Wittemberger’s neck.

Yep. That was it. The zombie was going to kill him. And Wittemberger knew it too. His little eyes looked like they were about to pop out of their sockets.

"No one," the zombie snarled, his voice precise and cutting like cold steel, "calls me by that name anymore. That name died the day Hagen rammed that spear into my back.” His eyes took on a dangerous glint, burning like blue flame in the night. “After all your trouble it seems you have resurrected the wrong one. If you really want to know where the gold went, you should ask Hagen himself. I wish you the best of luck with that. As for me, no one is going to make me do or say anything. Do you understand?" The zombie's eyes stayed fixed on Wittemberger, their faces only inches apart. All that the zombie would have to do is lean forward and tear Wittemberger's throat out. For once Wittemberger knew better than to object.

 "I...understand", he whispered with the voice of someone who was just about to wet his pants. "I...I'm sorry. I..."

The zombie gave him a wolfish grin, showing off rows of perfectly white teeth. "Good. Now leave."

No need to tell Wittemberger twice. He scampered off and down the hill to his car much faster than I’d ever given a fat balding corporate credit for. Apparently his need for survival outweighed his greed just for once – though I wouldn’t bet on the effect to last very long. The sound of a car door banging shut and the engine of his Mercedes S class revving in a very un-Mercedes-like way and gone he was.

Which still left me alone smack in the middle of a Westend graveyard with a zombie.

“So,” the zombie said pleasantly. “Now that the distractions are taken care of, I think it’s time for a proper introduction.” He held out his hand. I tried hard not to look at it like I expected half of it to fall away the next second. Then again there probably was no point in trying to pretend that I wasn’t about ready to run like hell, or take my chances with that toothpick of a knife I still had strapped to my wrist.

Apparently the zombie was as unimpressed by my obvious panicking as he was by my wannabe magic, because he carried on seamlessly. “My name is Siegfried Nibell,” the zombie said and actually took my hand to shake it. His skin was cold, fresh-out-of-the-grave-cold, but at least it wasn’t falling off in chunks. Yet. “But then again you already know that, don’t you, Miss Ashley Marian Rivers?”

I blinked. “How do you— Call me Ash,” I grated out, somehow saving myself from choking on my own tongue. “Go ahead and kill me, if you want, but don’t call me Ashley ever again. It’s way too Gone with the Wind.”

That one got me a brilliant smile. “Oh I have no intentions of killing you,” the zombie said in that weird cut-glass accent of his. “At least not before you tell me why you dragged me back here. People usually do this kind of magic without ulterior motives. And how do they say, they better be good. If you get my meaning.”

I laughed. It was a dry, humorless sound and did a pretty poor job covering up my panic. Time to get creative. Time to get real bloody creative. And fast.