The Quick and the Dead Read online

  The Quick and the Dead

  D. B. Sieders

  THE QUICK AND THE DEAD

  By

  D. B. Sieders

  Copyright © 2019 D. B. Sieders

  Edited by Tee Tate.

  Cover Design by Mibl Art.

  All stock photos licensed appropriately.

  Published in the United States by City Owl Press.

  www.cityowlpress.com

  For information on subsidiary rights, please contact the publisher at [email protected]

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior consent and permission of the publisher.

  To my readers,

  Thank you

  “Thank you...for gracing my life with your lovely presence,

  for adding the sweet measure of

  your soul to my existence.”

  –Richard Matheson, “What Dreams May Come”

  Praise for D. B. Sieders

  “A unique cast of characters drives this beautifully crafted tale that demands you keep a box of tissue on hand. WAKING THE DEAD is a soul-wrenching look into the decisions one must make about life and death, not only for one’s self, but for a loved one. Ms. Sieders knows how to put words on paper that touch the heart, and invigorate the mind.” - 4.5 Stars from InD’Tale Magazine

  “Revolution brews in the spirit world. Vivian and Lazarus encounter a vibrant cast of allies—among them mambo woman Bijoux Briggs and Vivian’s sister Mae, who was disabled in life but is powerful in the afterlife—and develop a love connection despite their complicated past.” - Publisher’s Weekly

  “D.B. Sieders is a unique storyteller. CROSSCURRENTS is a mix of science fiction and fantasy that is woven together perfectly. Ms. Sieders’s characters are distinctive and the story is imaginative and fun.” - 4.5 Stars from InD’Tale Magazine

  “For paranormal romance readers who are looking for something a little different, Lorelei's Lyric could be your first step into a whole new world.” - Romantic Reads and Such

  “Sieders delivers a well-written and intriguing supernatural world with a plot that pulls you in and characters that keep you turning pages until the very end in FIRESTORM.” - ARC Reviewer

  “In WAKING THE DEAD, there is an emotional, raw honesty in Vivian and her struggles to care for her sister, Mae. It's so rare to find a heroine, one we root for, who is not a saint but is desperately trying to do the right thing and is not always perfect.” - ARC Reviewer

  “D.B. Sieders has a charming way with language, bordering on zany, sarcastic, and gritty. Waking the Dead is realistic, unique, honest, humorous, bittersweet, a little flirty, and a dark journey of hope. It is an addictive must-read!” - 5 Stars from Liz Konkel, Readers’ Favorite

  The Soul Broker Series

  By D. B. Sieders

  Waking the Dead

  Raising the Dead

  The Quick and the Dead

  Chasing the Dead (Short Story)

  Contents

  Want More City Owl Press Books?

  Keep Reading Urban Fantasy

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek of House of Ash & Brimstone

  Keep Reading Urban Fantasy

  Want More City Owl Press Books?

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Additional Titles

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  Want even more urban fantasy? Try HOUSE OF ASH & BRIMSTONE by City Owl Author, Megan Starks. And find more from D. B. Sieders at www.dbsieders.com

  Hell has come to collect, but Gisele Walker has no plans to pay the debt.

  Being a paranormal bounty hunter is flirting with death, even for a half-demon like Gisele Walker. An orphan with no memories of her childhood, she’s spent the last decade working for the foster father who saved her from the city’s streets. But when she’s partnered with Shade, an infuriatingly handsome demon who’s keeping secrets, her jobs spin sideways.

  Determined to ditch Shade, Gisele takes a contract to steal a mysterious curio and accidentally opens a portal to Hell. As a nightmarish ghoul hunts her down, and parts of Baltimore burn to the ground, she finds joining forces with Shade may be the only way to undo her unleashed mess.

  A white-hot attraction ignites between them, until Shade’s secret is exposed. The contract bringing them to Hell is nothing more than a ploy to lure Gisele to Hell’s royal court, where her devilish brother and aunt lie in wait. It’s a family reunion that has her wishing she’d remained an amnesiac orphan.

  To save herself and Shade, Gisele must face her past and venture into the twisted heart of the demon court where she was nearly murdered a lifetime ago.

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  Prologue

  She floated in the place between here and there…what was it called again?

  “Between life and the afterlife.”

  Her body materialized. Her body, but not her body—she’d never had this kind of body before she moved to the afterlife. Not that she remembered very much from that time, the time before she came to the place between here and there and…someplace else. That place had been dark, filled with many sad and hurting things, many angry things and they hurt one another. It was a place of great suffering for the things there.

  “Souls. You freed thousands upon thousands of souls.” The voice was one she knew. He was from the time before the afterlife, just before she moved on to the afterlife. Before she died.

  “I…” The word formed and sounded strange to her. Her voice before the afterlife hadn’t been in her control. She’d learned some words from Mother and Father and Sister, and others from television, but speech had been impossible for her then.

  The bearer of the voice, the man—and not man, wearing a body not his own from before the afterlife—touched her hand, holding it in his larger, warm hand.

  She gasped.

  “Hello, Mae. It’s good to see you here.”

  His hand was so warm, and it filled her with comforting warmth that seemed to come from the inside out. “You were there...before. You brought…something to me and to Sister. It was…nice, but more
than nice. I’m sorry. Words are hard.”

  He smiled, his eyes a lovely shade of green, his hair dark, his face…beautiful, but that wasn’t what people said about men. Her thoughts clarified, and she breathed deeply, without pain or the crunching rattle in her chest like before, when she’d been alive.

  “It’s all right,” the man said. “It’ll come to you. I had a hard time, too, but maybe not so hard as you. I was able to, ah, I was, um…”

  Her lips curled into a smile. She loved smiling. And laughing, but it seemed a little wrong to laugh at the man as he struggled to find words. His cheeks were red, and he looked away. Strange. She didn’t like it. Her mouth turned down in response to her anger. It reminded her of the before time when people didn’t want to look at her. People pretended she was not there, talked around her, and she could never talk to them because her body didn’t work like their bodies.

  “Look at me and say words to me. I am not invisible.”

  “No, you aren’t,” he said, meeting her gaze with a lopsided grin. “You’re a lot like her. I didn’t realize it when we first met. You were different. I was afraid to say that, to say something stupid like I was normal and you weren’t when we were alive. It seemed rude.”

  She shook her head, confused. “I was different. There is nothing rude about what is true.”

  He sighed, pulling his hand from hers. She missed the heat and the feeling that was more than nice. Running a hand through his hair, he walked around the place between here and there. Most of the others who crossed through this space were eager to move on. Grey, silent, without scent or taste or texture, it was the place that the others used to travel from the afterlife to the world of the living. For her, it was a place of calm and respite, the place that reminded her of the time before, when she’d been alive.

  She was not alive now, but she had not yet gone to the place that awaited all departed souls who chose forever. It wasn’t time. This place between here and there was home enough for now. She took a tentative step, marveling at how her legs supported her body and allowed her to move when she wanted. And she was high, standing, looking at the man without stretching her neck—she could control her neck sometimes when she’d been in her own body before the afterlife, but it was hard. People were always above her when she was in bed or in a chair.

  Now she was tall, and she could walk. She wanted to run. When she tried, her feet became tangled and she fell forward. The man caught her.

  “Easy. You have to learn to walk before you can run. As far as the truth not being rude, well, I’ll take your word for it. And in the spirit of being honest, my normal was nothing to be proud of. I wasn’t a nice man when I was alive, especially near the end.”

  She let him ease her back up to stand. When he tried to pull away from her, she held on to his hands with hers, refusing to let go. “You were nice when you came to me and to Sister. You helped me, and you helped her. She was sad and angry. You helped. What is the word for that?”

  He made a strangled sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Comfort. I wanted to give you both comfort and peace. It was my job, but I would have done it anyway.”

  She smiled. “You said I was like her. You mean Sister?”

  He nodded, then he met her gaze again, his filled with anger and worry. She knew anger and worry. Mother, Father, and Sister had been angry in the time before, and worried—about her.

  “Why are you worried?” she asked. Something deep inside the core of her being awakened. She’d unleashed it when she’d moved to the place between here and there and then beyond. Power. Power to do something to help.

  His face relaxed. Had she given him comfort and the thing called peace?

  “I’m worried about your sister, Vivian. She’s in trouble. I…let her down and now she’s in trouble. I need you to help her.”

  “Of course I will help Sister. I love her.”

  He tightened his grip on her hand and whispered, “I do, too.”

  “What is your name?” she asked. She’d forgotten. When she’d known him before she moved to the afterlife, he’d talked more to Sister. To Vivian. That was Sister’s name, but to Mae, she would always be Sister.”

  “I’m Zeke. I was your guardian, and Vivian’s guardian, for a while. But she saved me. You saved a host of souls. And if we can save Vivian now, we might just save every soul alive now and yet to be.”

  Chapter One

  “In point three miles, take ramp, on right, to Natchez Trace Parkway.”

  Ignoring the robotic voice of her GPS, Vivian Bedford pulled her car onto the shoulder of Highway 100 just shy of the ramp, put it in park, and leaned forward to place her forehead on the steering wheel. She heaved a deep sigh. Postponing the inevitable could prove unwise, but she needed a moment.

  She had not yet taken the time to say goodbye to her life.

  She closed her eyes and let the cadence of gentle rain falling on her windshield wash over her. Tennessee didn’t often experience the soft kind of rain. The weather normally wavered between bone dry and downpours. But today light rain blended with an autumn chill to create a low, crawling fog that permeated the landscape. Even in the midst of her latest crisis, auburn and amber oak leaves, mixed with the brilliant golden yellow and orange maple foliage, soothed her aching soul. This had always been her favorite time of year. She wondered if her own maple looked as lovely.

  She wondered if she’d ever see it again. She wondered if she’d ever see Zeke again, and the thought opened a gaping hole in her soul. No, there was no time for this…grief? Confusion? She’d deal with it later. Right now, she needed to deal with the present, with her exile.

  She needed to deal with the reaper.

  “So, what happened to my house?” she asked.

  Her passenger sighed. She didn’t know what he found more exasperating—her questions or yet another delay. He would answer her, though. He always did. He probably felt he had to.

  The reaper depended upon her for his survival now.

  “It’s being rented. Your friend Kay Clemmens is managing the details. I’m certain you’ll find it in good order when you return.”

  If I return. “So Kay still knows I exist?”

  “Yes, though she is the only living soul granted that privilege. You understand it’s for the best?”

  “Understanding doesn’t make it any easier.”

  She was being unfair. If she found her situation unfair, she could only imagine how Lazarus Darkmore felt. In saving her life and soul, the reaper had become mortal and lost much of his considerable spirit powers. He was also now vulnerable to illness, injury, death, and that final end would put him at the lowest level of the reaper hierarchy.

  Not a good position for someone with as many enemies as Darkmore.

  Vivian never meant for that to happen, but it didn’t ease her guilt. Of course, resentment and guilt walked hand-in-hand along the winding road in her heart. She resented the burden of caring for Darkmore and hated herself for resenting it.

  She hated owing him.

  Plus, she’d gotten herself entangled in the politics of afterlife management. The price of that entanglement? Not only had she inadvertently rendered a high-ranking reaper mortal, she’d been forced off the grid of the realm of the living. She and Darkmore traded life, at least her life, in Nashville for a life on the run from the guardian spirits she’d crossed one time too many. Vivian Bedford: soul broker, spiritual intercessor and liaison between the living and dead, keeper of the ancient and high-ranking reaper Lazarus Darkmore, enemy of the Archangel Guardian Council and, on account of that last part, accidental revolutionary.

  I’ll never be able to fit all that on a business card…

  The sound of the passenger side door opening jolted her out of her latest self-pity break and back to reality. Darkmore stood a few feet away from the car. He raised his arms over his head and stretched. She was still getting used to seeing him in normal clothing. He’d traded his standard white suit for Levis and a polo s
hirt. At least they’d saved his Stetson. He filled out the jeans nicely, though, especially from the rear. If he had to be trapped in human form for a while, at least he’d look good doing it.

  Darkmore started walking away, which raised Vivian’s internal alarm. They needed to get going. Every guardian spirit in Nashville, Tennessee, and probably the world at large would be looking for them. Mississippi meant safety. Probably. She clung to that belief now.

  The alternative held little appeal.

  She opened her door and called out after him, “Where’re you going?”

  “I’m off to answer the call of nature,” he yelled back.

  That’s a first. Bet he hasn’t peed in a few centuries.

  Powerful spirits assumed the illusion of a living, human, corporeal form by channeling their spirit energy and building a body out of the elements around them. Those illusions were convincing and…functional in many capacities. She’d seen many of them eat. Most did so with relish, no doubt missing that which was denied them and their senses most of the time. But she’d never known any corporeal spirit who’d needed to tend to other human bodily functions.