Almost as soon as Nina pushed me onto the small road that led into the cemetery, I could feel them. For some reason, I felt like the dead knew I was coming. They had been patiently waiting for me and now they had to wait no longer. My power flared up a bit when I thought that and I could have sworn I heard a sigh. I looked around and no one else seemed to have heard it. I wasn't sure why that bothered me. It was probably the wind and I was just hearing things.

When we were near the spot that I needed to get to, where the wheelchair couldn't go, I asked Nina to pick me up. As soon as I put my arms around her neck, my power flared up again and it touched every grave in the cemetery, just like last time. It was both cool and unnerving at the same time. I never had that much power before to empower all of the ghosts and spirits that I had felt the last time. They were still there in their chosen spots, only this time they were a little more visible. Some of the remnants were even full blown wisps of smoke.

I warned everyone again to not pay attention to them, because ignoring them was the best defense against ghosts. Attention seems to give them even more power and they tend to grab you. Unlike the last time, they believed me and listened. I also asked my two bodyguards to play gopher and to carry my wooden chest and the sacrifices.

“How are we supposed to guard you if we're carrying things?” Jillian asked, not happy.

“Um... drop them if something happens?” I asked with a smile and she chuckled and shook her head.

“All right. Fine.” Jillian said and grabbed the wire cage full of chickens and the rope tied to the goat. Carlos picked up the chest and the two of them were ready to follow.

“Nina.” I said and motioned her forward.

Nina gave my cheek a kiss and stepped onto the sacred ground. It sent a shiver up her spine and right into mine. It was like a bulb in my head had lit up and I looked at her face.

“This hurts you?” I asked, concerned.

“I would do anything for you, my love.” Nina said, without a sign of pain on her face. “I would even brave the inside of a church.”

I almost gasped at that. “Nina!”

“I would also consummate our relationship before God, if given the chance.” Nina said in a whisper. My mouth dropped open at that and she laughed under her breath at shocking me so much. The small crowd of people at the graveside dispersed for us as we approached them. I could feel the weight of their gaze upon me, not just the living, either. I could feel the dead were looking at me as well.

I couldn't have Nina hold me in her arms all night, so I had her sit me down on the headstone. It was just about the right height that I could sit comfortably and Nina only had to lightly brace me. She could also catch me if I fell. I looked around at all the expectant faces. Some of them showed surprise and I knew that they wouldn't be disappointed. Not tonight.

Carlos stood beside the grave and held my wooden chest at the perfect height for me. I opened it and started to reach for the big sacred blade I owned and stopped. Something was nagging at the back of my brain. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what it was. I took the blade from the bag and heard gasps from Mr. Anders' side of the grave.

I looked up at them and gave them an apologetic smile. “I'm sorry. I keep forgetting to tell people not to be shocked by what they see. I've done this so often that it's not second nature to me, it's first nature. I could do this in my sleep if I wanted.” I paused for a moment. SLEEP! I yelled in my head. That was what's been nagging at me!

I could feel something. A presence maybe? I was pretty sure that it was one that was in my dream. It was close, right here in this cemetery.

_______________

You have a critical choice to make. Do you try to remain safe, or do you put yourself in danger by putting your bodyguards in danger?

A) Send Nina to check. B) Send Jillian and Carlos to check. C) Ignore it for now.

The timer started counting down from five seconds.

Goddammit. I thought and didn't want to choose. I'll take C, dammit.

_______________

I thought about sending Nina or my bodyguards out to check for me; but, I wasn't sure if whoever it was, was alone. I could be sending the bodyguards to their deaths and Nina to her second death.

There's nothing I can safely do about it, not until I raised this zombie. I thought.

Being in a wheelchair most of the time, I have had to modify my performance for raising a zombie. Instead of ‘walking' a circle of protection around the grave like I was supposed to, I just imagined it in my head and took out a huge jar of red salt. It wasn't actually red salt, though. It was really crystallized blood. My own blood, actually. I had refined it myself in a cleansing ritual to purify it and made it into a magical medium.

“Give me a hand.” I whispered to Nina and told her what to do. She took two handfuls of the crystals and she walked in a circle around the grave for me and sprinkled the crystals from her hands. I hadn't actually tried it like this yet, with a helper; but, I knew it would work, as long as I was the one controlling everything.

Nina came back to my side and she nodded to me. Before I could tell her to carefully rub her hands over the jar to get the remains of the crystals off of her hands, she started to lick her hands clean. Her own power pulsed as each crystal hit her tongue and my power pulsed in turn. It almost felt like she was licking me somewhere else and her eyes locked onto mine as she made sure to lick off every single crystal from her hands.

I managed to stop my drool from leaking out of my mouth because of how good that felt. In fact, it felt so good that I had to look down at myself to see if it really did get that kind of a reaction from me. My eyes widened at the tent pole in my pants and Nina let out a little laugh as she carefully put the cover on the jar for me.

Even crystallized, you are delicious. Nina breathed into my mind and I looked up at her face. Yes, my love. I will definitely want to try this again later... with less witnesses.

Witnesses! I thought, now that I remembered where we were, and she laughed again and put the jar back into the chest.

“What is next?” Nina asked.

“A... chicken. Yes, we'll start with a chicken.” I said and told Jillian to give me one. She uncovered the crate and pulled one out. I told her to cover it again and before she could ask me why, I explained that I didn't want his buddies to see what might be happening to them.

Jillian laughed this time. “Why?”

“Because it upsets them.” I said with a shrug. “I don't feel like listening to five squawking chickens, do you?”

A sound of dismay came from the small crowd on the other side of the grave and I shrugged it off. Jillian nodded and covered them up again.

I got the chicken by the scruff of the neck and told Jillian to hold onto the body tightly and not to let it go. I readied my sacred blade, then brought it down in a clean strike across the chicken's neck and took the head right off. A larger than average gush of blood spurted out and covered the sacred blade and my hands. Jillian was so surprised by the gush that she dropped the body.

Just like the roadrunner, it ran all over the place as quick as a flash and sprayed blood everywhere. On nearby graves, the quite disgusted crowd, and the surrounding grass. I had a hard time keeping my laughter under control at the sight and pretended to cough to cover it up. We all watched Jillian chase the headless chicken for a full minute before I said anything. It was just too good of a show to not sit there and enjoy it.

“Just let it go, Jillian.”I said with laughter in my voice. “It should stop running around in a few minutes.”

Jillian came back to the headstone where I was and she was pretty much covered in blood. She also had a glint of amusement in her eyes. It must have been hard for all the were-cats to ignore a free lunch that was running around at their feet like that. I nearly let my laughter out again when the image of a bucket of chicken running around popped into my mind.

I pushed that thought away and imagined a circle of protection around the grave again, this time with the crystallized blood to give me a nice physical component. I rubbed the extra blood from my hands onto the headstone I was sitting on, then asked for another chicken. We repeated the beheading and Jillian kept hold of the chicken this time. I told her to walk the same circle that Nina did and to direct the chicken blood in the same pattern.

I had to use two more chickens to complete the circle, then used the last of the chickens and their blood to inscribe the proper symbols in blood over the headstone, the grave, and also on my own arms. I was essentially using the chickens as a connector between me and the zombie, lending it my power. Of course, the big sacrifice, namely the goat, would be needed to jump start the actual power exchange.

When I finished the last of the symbols and spoke the words of sealing to complete the summoning circle, that was when they attacked. Ghouls. About twenty of them had silently molested and eaten the headless chicken, while a dozen or so surrounded the grave site and us.

My wooden chest hit the ground as Carlos quickly drew his gun and opened fire on the threats. The chest didn't break, thankfully. Guns blared out into the silence of the graveyard and the hail of bullets had taken several of the ghouls by surprise and they fell. That surprise didn't last long, however.

Surprisingly, the ghouls rallied and they concentrated on attacking the bodyguards that were protecting me. Nina had stayed near me, because she could only fight up close and knew that getting in the way of people shooting was as dumb as attacking a pack of ghouls all alone. She might have been a vampire; but, that didn't mean she was invincible.

Keeping them close to me was the smart choice, then. I thought. Hold on. Why are they only attacking my bodyguards?

Thomas has a few guards of his own and they were taking him and their lawyers away from the fighting. This got my new self to pay attention and my barely repressed anger flared more of my power out from me, at the thought that Mr. Anders had somehow hired the ghouls to attack. I followed my instincts and did the same thing that I did in my dream, only better. I pushed that power out as hard as I could and concentrated on just the ghouls.

“STOP!” I yelled the command and used every ounce of power I had to enforce it.

You know that moment in the middle of a fight when everything seems to slow down? Well, this time everything stopped. Everyone within the sound of my voice and the feel of my power stopped dead. Unfortunately for the ghouls, it was quite literal. I had pushed so much power and anger into them that they had all dropped dead on the spot. Their skinny supernatural bodies couldn't handle the conflict between me and whomever had control of them.

The bodyguards fighting the ghouls had stopped fighting as well, glared at me for distracting them with my show of power, and then they looked back at their now fallen opponents. It took everyone else a minute or two to look away from me and notice what had happened to the ghouls. Except for Nina. She stared at me intensely and her eyes kept darting to my neck and I could almost hear her thoughts that begged me for a direct taste.

I ignored her need for now and the others eventually turned their attention back to me. I was surprisingly still full of energy, even after that big of an expenditure. Some of the people's faces were filled with what looked like awe, which included Carlos. Jillian had seen me do some crazy stuff, just like Nina had, and she took it in stride.

I was a bit uncomfortable for a few moments at the scrutiny, then the feeling passed and I composed myself as I turned to Mr. Anders. “Did you or anyone in your group arrange this?” I asked him, accusingly.

“I give my word, and will testify under oath and binding, that neither I nor my lawyers arranged this.” Thomas said, his face stern and unflinching as he stared at me.

“Well.” I said and smiled. “Barring any more disruptions, I am going to raise this zombie.” I waved at the grave. “Would you care to join me?”

If I didn't know any better, I would say that was a look of satisfaction on his face. I had thought about calling the whole thing off after the attack; but, his promise to swear under a binding oath told me fore sure that he had nothing to do with it. He and his group came back to the grave and waited patiently.

I was still sitting on the headstone within the ritual circle and I was a little surprised that a completed circle had no effect on my ability to push my power through it to affect things on the other side. With my power still at an all time high for some reason, I asked Jillian for the goat.

“Some of you might want to close your eyes for this.” I said and picked up my sacred blade. “Hey there, Billy.” I said and pet the goat.

“Stop playing with it.” Carlos whispered out of the side of his mouth. “You're making me hungry.”

I barked a laugh and that scared the goat. It froze stiff at the sudden sound and I quickly took advantage of the situation. I held the blade against the underside of its throat with my other had covering it, then yanked on the knife. A large cut appeared on the goat's neck and a small cut appeared on the palm of my hand. Blood poured out of the goat and a trickle from mine.

The blood combined and splashed down onto the grave. The ritual circle and all of the symbols I had drawn glowed to life as my power poured out and down into the grave. I looked down at the ground and called Alfred Anders from his grave. It was... easy. The extra power helped, almost like it wanted to be used. I felt better for using it, too. The better I felt, the more power I had. The more power I had, the more I fed into Alfred.

By the time Alfred had dug himself up from the ground, he looked just like the day when he was buried. A freshly tailored brown suit, a brimmed hat, and a pair of expensive shoes finished off the outfit. He had rosy cheeks, a double chin, and was slightly on the portly side.

I was impressed, especially considering that he was only dust for a couple of centuries, right up until a minute ago. There was nothing in his eyes, though. It wasn't until I raised the sacred blade to his mouth that he smelled the fresh blood and reacted. He licked the blade completely clean, not once cutting his tongue on the razor-sharp edge. As soon as he had finished I felt the snap of consciousness in his head, then the light came into his eyes.

“Mr. Anders?” I asked.

Both Thomas and Alfred answered at the same time.

“Yes?”

They looked at each other and smiled. I rephrased the question to ease the confusion.

“Are you Alfred Anders?”

“Yes.” Alfred said.

“I'd like you to meet your descendant, Thomas Anders.”

“Thomas? That was my father's name. It couldn't be him since you said descendant. So he would be...”

“Your great-great-whatever grandson.” I said.

“Hmm. Great-great-grandson, eh? Then that would mean...” Alfred got that look in his eyes that the dead had when they finally realized that they were actually dead. “How long have I been gone?”

Sometimes when a recently raised zombie knows it's dead, it has a hard time accepting it, but in this case, Mr. Anders seems to have come to grips with it rather quickly.

“Do you really want to know?” I asked.

“Yes, you might as well tell me.” Alfred said.

“It's been about three hundred years, give or take a few decades.”

Alfred coughed and it sounded like he actually drew in air. I knew I did good work, and the last few I did were really good, but this thing, even as old as he was, still looked more alive than I did. He turned to Thomas.

“Come here, boy.” Alfred said to Thomas.

Thomas looked like he was in his mid thirties, by no means a boy. Compared to five centuries of age? I guess he would practically be a baby. He only hesitated for a moment and moved closer.

“I don't believe this young man does this kind of thing for kicks, so I assume it was you who put him up to it.” Alfred said. “Why?”

Thomas was taken aback at the accusatory tone in Alfred's voice and at once came to attention. Alfred liked that reaction and smiled a bit.

“I wanted to talk to you personally after reading this.”

He reached into his jacked and produced the small journal. Alfred took it and examined it thoroughly.

“Hmm. I left this in the care of a good friend of mine, and yet all the dates have been changed.” Alfred said, confused. “How did you get it?”

Thomas' eyes lit up at the comment and explained how it had come into his possession after several will readings, estate searches, and fact-finding. “After a lot of speculation and digging around, I finally found it under the floor in our... ahem... your old house along with three ledgers.” He said. “When I read your journal and found out there was supposed to have been five ledgers...”

“AHA!” Alfred said. “I figured you'd be after my money!” He paced around the circumference of the circle of protection like a caged animal and sounded the same. “I worked damn hard for all that money and now some whippersnapper is trying to take it all away from me?” He spat. “You may be family...”

Thomas opened his mouth to try to reason with him and I motioned for him to be quiet.

“Alfred, stop.” I said.

Alfred stopped walking like I had told him to and he looked at me with wide eyes. “What did you do? I can't move!”

“Be quiet.” I said.

Just like what happened with Jeanette, Alfred's mouth was moving but not a sound escaped it.

“Alfred, Thomas is a self made man. I've checked him out. He's got more money than he knows what to do with it. His wife wears a necklace that costs double or even triple as much as my services cost here tonight.” I said. “He had all of this long before finding your books. Please calm down.”

Alfred, Thomas, and the lawyers stared at me, so I used a bit of power to ensure Alfred was calm.

“I'm going over there for a... while.” I waved at the direction of the jeep. “I suggest you listen to what Thomas has to say.” I had been about to say 'for a walk' and changed it at the last second. Walking wasn't happening anytime soon for me.

After telling Mr. Anders that he could talk and move around inside the ritual circle, Nina picked me up from the headstone and carried me back to the wheelchair. While she pushed me towards the jeep, Jillian and Carlos went to check the bodies of the ghouls. I didn't expect them to find anything. They came back over to us and reported that they didn't find anything.

Sometimes I hate being right.