Venom Valley 02 - Stakes & Spurs by Hank Edwards

Author:Hank Edwards
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2013-09-10T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

“Hicks?” Sergeant Maxwell asked, his voice quiet and shaking.

“It’s not Hicks,” Glory said as she stepped back from the door and Balthazar. “Keep away from him.”

Maxwell glared at her. “What do you mean it’s not Hicks? He’s right here.” Maxwell approached the corpse and extended a hand toward him.

Hicks turned his head fast to snap at Maxwell. The sergeant jerked his hand away and took several steps back. His shock was apparent by the expression on his face, and Josh forced himself to look away from the living people in the room and focus on Hicks. Now that the body had risen, he needed to try and repeat what he had done with the miners when he had been with Dex. Much as he hated to do it, he needed to control Hicks, use the body to their advantage.

Josh closed his eyes and cleared his mind, focusing on a simple course of action. He pictured Hicks turning to the door and approaching Balthazar. But try as he might to connect with the thing across the room, Josh couldn’t do it. The day’s work had left him tired, and the struggle to contain the power of resurrection had sapped what little energy he had left. He opened his eyes and watched as Hicks struggled to his feet, his limbs stiff, and a low, wet moan rumbling in his ruined throat.

Hicks found his footing and stood upright, turning his vacant eyes to Sergeant Maxwell who stood closest to him. He took one shuffling step, and then another as he advanced on the man.

“He moves as if alive,” Maxwell said in a low voice. “How can this be? I saw him die.”

“He’s dead,” Glory assured him. “He’s beyond our help now.” She looked at Josh, her expression concerned and on the verge of fearful. “Can you do it?”

Josh shook his head and tightened his lips. He closed his eyes and focused all his energy on trying to make a connection with Hicks.

“Dear God in Heaven above,” Donegan said in a shaky voice. “What deviltry is this now?”

“I ain’t seen a dead man get up and walk before,” Beatrice said. “Who’s tellin him to do it?”

No one spoke; all eyes were on Hicks as the private advanced on Maxwell.

“Hicks?” Maxwell said, his voice quiet and unsure.

Josh formed another image in his mind, this one of Hicks turning toward Balthazar. He made the vision as clear as possible and pushed the thought out to Hicks, but the corpse continued to stagger toward Maxwell.

“What is this?” Balthazar asked.

Josh could feel the vampire’s gaze on him but refused to open his eyes. Instead, he took a deep breath, clenched his fists, squeezed his eyes even tighter, and conjured the scene in his mind. He pictured the inside of the smithy, saw where everyone stood, and set Hicks’s stumbling corpse within that space. Then he changed the angle of Hicks’s path in his mind, envisioned him approaching Balthazar instead of Maxwell, and pushed that thought out along the unsteady connection he felt with Hicks.

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