Biting the Bullet Read Free

ready to give up. Not when her darling had finally reopened her lovely blue eyes. Even if they were, well, vacant.
    “Mira, mine. Come home now. We’ve got so much to do.”
    But Mira, the part that mattered, had already gone home. The bit that remained marched to the drum of a new master. That part opened its mouth wide, sank its teeth into Hilda’s wrist. And chewed . Hilda screamed, shoving at Mira’s forehead, trying to get her to release her hold as blood began to spurt from her deepening wound.
    Mira growled with irritation as Hilda pushed her away, shoving her half off her tasty treat. She released the wrist but snapped right back to target. Hilda recoiled, but not fast enough. This time Mira had her by the hand. I glanced down at my own hands, marked forever by the talons of a pissed-off reaver. And that’s when I really began rooting for the underdog.
    After a brief tug-of-war backed by Mira’s growls, Hilda’s screams, and Madame Otis’s delighted cackles, Hilda finally broke free.
    She ran out of the cottage, trailing blood as she went. Again the picture faded.
    “From then on I spent all my time researching necromancy,” Hilda’s robotic voice informed us. “I discovered that the truly dead can be reanimated by the energies of the necromancer, but she must be choosy. Because though the soul has left the body something remains. A shadow that can become difficult to manipulate depending on how the person lived. Children and those who were obsessed or fixated in life are the easiest to control in this way, as long as the necromancer keeps visual contact with her subjects. I have just discovered there may be another, more insidious method of controlling the dead. But it requires much more sacrifice on the part of the necromancer, because the soul is trapped inside the victim’s body. Therefore this method is rarely used.” A new, more energetic voice suddenly replaced Hilda’s. “Before Hilda could complete her research she was killed. See eyewitness account by Letitia Greeley.”
    But when Cassandra tried to reference that account, the Enkyklios simply offered up a name — Sister Doshomi.
    “What’s that mean?” asked Cole as he popped a blue bubble.
    “The Letitia Greeley story is in her Enkyklios,” said Cassandra. “I’ll have to contact her and see if she can send me a copy.”
    “Seriously?” marveled Cole. “There’s more than one of these out there? I mean, I thought yours was, you know, the database.” Cassandra shook her head. “Even the Enkyklios is limited in what it can hold. If we were to lose one, we certainly would be devastated if we had no backups. And despite what you may think, it isn’t easy, or even recommended, for one person with one Enkyklios to travel the world recording stories. And so” — she shrugged — “sometimes we find we must still share information the old-fashioned way.”

    “By telephone?” Cole ventured.
    Cassandra rolled her eyes. “No, silly, by e-mail.”
    But Sister Doshomi had proven hard to pin down. In fact, she’d been mountain climbing when Cassandra tried to contact her and wasn’t expected back until after we left Ohio.
    While we’d begun the mission with an incomplete view of raising the dead, at least the Spec Ops guys had given us solid information regarding a meeting our necromancer would be attending. They knew the time, location — they’d even snagged a picture of their nemesis. The first ever and quite a coup for Dave’s group. He’d probably still be basking in the glory if he hadn’t simultaneously discovered his unit had a mole. The only one who suspected, Dave had tried to hand off the meeting coordinates, along with the job of exterminating the Wizard, to another unit. Instead SOCOM, with the direct support of the DOD, had requested that we team with them.
    They knew the CIA had a consultant on staff with insider knowledge of the Wizard. They’d heard our particular department fronted a team of assassins that