Page 68 of Witches of Dubious Origin
Jasper shrugged. “All right. I’ll bring him down. You follow and you can help arrange him in the casket.”
“Wait, if we’re both down there, how will we get out?” I asked.
“I can lift you out from below and you can pull me out again,” Jasper said. “Shine the light for me?”
He didn’t wait for my response but pushed to his feet and hefted the body bag over his shoulder once again. I held the light steady while he slid down the side of the hole, barely keeping his balance when he landed in the bottom beside the casket. He placed the body bag inside and glanced up, waiting for me.
I half fell, half slid, just as he had, and together we unzipped the body bag and rolled what was left of Moran into the casket. The scent of lavender and whatever else Olive had used to mask the decay was still working, but the rotting flesh, which had begun to slide off his bones, made my knees weak and I thought I might be sick.
As Jasper rolled up the body bag and tossed it out of the grave onto the ground above, I gently tried to arrange Moran’s arms as they would have been for his initial burial. I crossed them over his chest, hoping the look of peaceful repose would allow him to have just that.
I straightened his tie one last time. When I went to rise, Moran sat straight up in his coffin. I shrieked and his eyes flew open, one eyeball hanging a bit lower than the other, and he made a garbled sound in his throat as if he was trying to speak.
“Oy!” Jasper reached for me, but he was too late.
Moran clutched me by the throat with one bony-fingered hand and started to squeeze.
“She’s toostrong…I…don’t…want…to…kill…you.”Moran was muttering, clearly fighting to get every word out.
I grabbed at his arm, trying to break his grip. I felt Jasper lurch forward and his hands joined mine as he attempted to pry Moran away from me. My breath turned into a wheeze as my airway got smaller and smaller. I thrashed against Moran’s hold as panic surged inside me. My vision went blurry and I felt myself start to black out.
I heard the sickening crunch of bones being crushed. My eyelids flickered as I fought unconsciousness. I was petrified that sound had been Jasper’s bones and that this was to be our ill-fated end. Weird to think that right now I rather missed our homicidal Viking.
Focus, Zoe!I berated myself. I had to help Jasper!
“Corpus regressus ad mortem,” I murmured, causing my throat to burn with pain. I didn’t care. Whatever I had to do, I was willing if it meant we survived this. Inhaling through my nose, I forced the words out more emphatically this time. “Corpus regressus ad mortem.”
The hand around my throat dropped away and Moran fell back into his coffin. I fell into the dirt on the side of the casket, no longer caring about arranging his limbs. Jasper reached around me and slammed the coffin shut.
He collapsed beside me and I turned to find his fierce gaze boring into mine, “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”
“I’m okay,” I said through chattering teeth. “Totally okay…” But I wasn’t. I wanted to run, cry, scream, punch somebody—basically I was on the brink of a complete and total mental breakdown. “How did he rise again? I sent him back. He even wanted me to. How did he return?” My voice got higher with each word.
“I don’t know.” Jasper frowned and pulled me into hisarms. He hugged me tight until I stopped shaking. When he released me, I stepped back, feeling awkward and shy. I wasn’t a hugger by nature and I was never clear on what I was supposed to do when the hug was over.
“He’s gone now, but given that we don’t know how he came back, I think it’s best we get out of here as quickly as possible.” Jasper took my hand and guided me to the side of the grave where I’d dropped my flashlight. He picked it up out of the dirt—it was still working—and handed it to me. He laced his fingers together and said, “Are you ready?”
I nodded. I wanted to get as far from this place as possible as fast as we could. I put the flashlight in my pocket and braced myself with a hand on his shoulder. I put my foot in his hands and he said, “Up you go!”
He hefted me as if I weighed nothing. My upper body was up out of the grave and I flopped against the grass as I tried to pull myself the rest of the way.
“Not to get too personal, love,” Jasper said, “but I’m going to give you a push.”
His hands cupped my ass and he gave me a hearty shove. I skidded across the ground and my coat took the brunt of the abuse, but I didn’t care. I was free! I rolled onto my back and stared up at the night sky. The temperature had dropped and I suspected it was near freezing out, but I was so hot from my previous panic that I welcomed the chilly air against my feverish skin. I pulled the collar of my coat aside and tried to cool my neck where Moran’s fingers had tried to squeeze the life out of me.
I closed my eyes for just a moment and then crawled back to the grave to offer Jasper my hand. He grabbed it, and Ipulled while he dug his toes into the side of the grave wall. In moments he was up and out. I flopped back down and he fell back onto the cold, hard ground beside me.
“I think we need to ask for a raise,” he said.
That surprised a chuckle out of me. “What’s the going hourly rate for being almost strangled by the undead?”
“Not enough.”
“Agreed.”
“I’ll admit this career path does take some getting used to,” he said. “But I can say this, working for the BODO is never ever boring.”
“Is that why you do it?” I pushed myself up to a seated position and Jasper followed.
