Chapter Ten
We practically threw each other aside as we leaped to our feet Any softness, any sex, forgotten, we crossed to the trampled, bloody grass and gaped.
“What the hell?” Murphy’s gaze flitted nervously to the surrounding trees. “If he wasn’t dead, why didn’t he try and kill us again?”
“I think he was dead. Probably from the beginning.”
Silence was the first clue that I’d spoken my thoughts out loud. Murphy’s guarded expression was the next.
“What did you say?”
I shouldn’t tell him, but he’d risked his life for me. He had a right to know what we were dealing with.
“Our friend was already dead, which was why it was so damn hard to kill him. Again.”
“Already dead,” he repeated. “Which means?”
“Silver didn’t cause fire, so not a werewolf.” I frowned. “I don’t think. Could be something new. And the crucifix—”
Hell, he’d run off with my necklace still stuck in his neck. I doubted I’d be able to find another out here.
“Didn’t work, either,” I continued, “so not a vampire. Probably a zombie, though I can’t be sure since the zombie-revealing powder got blown into your face.” I brushed a last bit from his eyebrow. “At least you’re not one.”
Murphy put his palm against my forehead, just as I used to do with Sarah. I j erked away. “I’m not sick!”
“Not physically.” He lowered his arm. “If I’d known you were nuts I wouldn’t have been seduced by your sad eyes and that lovely tight ass.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Murphy. You were seduced by the money.”
“I guess you haven’t seen your ass lately,” he muttered.
I made a derisive sound. I knew what I was and what I wasn’t. I also knew what he was and wasn’t.
Great comfort and the promise of excellent sex aside, Murphy was an adventurer to say the most, an opportunist to say the least, and I really shouldn’t trust him. But he was all I had.
“The guy could have walked off.” Murphy hunkered down and peered at the ground.
Unfortunately, night had fallen and the ground was hard to see. I couldn’t discern any tracks. From the tightening of Murphy’s lips, he couldn’t, either.
Which screwed up my theory. A zombie would walk off; only other things disappeared. I’d even heard tales of invisible werewolves.
I glanced at the steadily darkening forest. I just hoped there weren’t any here.
Murphy straightened. “Just because I can’t see footprints doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”
“How do you explain his resistance to stabbing and shooting?”
“Killing people isn’t as easy as you think.”
“I’ll take your word on it,” I said, my mood much lighter now that I hadn’t killed someone.
“Guy looked awful good for a zombie,” Murphy said.
My mood lightened even more. He had looked good, which gave weight to the rumor that Mezareau was a very talented man.
“That’s why you have to meet the bokor,” Murphy blurted. “You want to learn how to raise the dead.”
I guess Murphy had picked up a little knowledge of voodoo and the nature of a bokor while living in Haiti, men put two and two together.
I shrugged and didn’t answer.
“Why?”
That I wasn’t telling him.
“Why wouldn’t I want to raise the dead?” I asked. “Seems like a handy talent to have.”
“You aren’t the type who’d do anything for money.”
“Who said anything about money?”
“Why else would you want to raise the dead? Can you imagine the kind of cash you could rake in on that scam?”
Only Murphy would make the leap from raising the dead to making money on the practice.
“It isn’t a scam,” I said.
His eyes narrowed. “You don’t actually believe the dead can be raised.”
“You don’t actually believe the man who attacked us was just a man?”
Murphy didn’t seem to have anything to say to that.