Page 86 of Feral Possession

“Good.” She focused on the positive. “A second pair of eyes and ears couldn’t hurt.”

“Hello, Adam. Thank you for joining us. I’m Dove, your friendly neighborhood necromancer. And this is—”

“Marcus Steele,” Adam grated in a muted voice, the sound coming to them as though through a closed window. His lips spread into a wide smile on his horizontal head. “You’re alive. Oh, that’s grand. You survived and Helen failed. I am so glad you summoned me from the veil for this.” He scratched his nose and winced. “What the hell?” He held out his shredded arm before checking his injured leg. “Fucking hellhound.”

“You many choose your appearance,” Dove informed him, hoping he would choose wisely. “Imagine yourself as you desire, and your essence will follow.”

Adam’s image wavered and solidified again. This time, his body was unbroken. He wore a crisp set of black fatigues, his buzz-cut sharp, boots shining.

“That’s better.” He twisted his head, popping his neck, then glanced across the room at the corpse on the sliding tray. He sobered. “Is that me?”

“I’m afraid so, and I apologize, but we don’t have long. I can only keep you here for a short time. You see, we’re trying to find Helen and hoped you’d have knowledge of her location.”

Adam floated from the corner, drifting behind Marcus to his corpse. “Helen,” he spat. “She’s the reason this happened to me.” His expression turned haunted. “She said she loved me. Demanded I prove I was worthy of her love in return. Because of her, I betrayed my oath to my clan leader. Shared our secrets with her. Then the moment she decided I was of no further use to her, she hung me out to dry. She used me.”

Dove’s heart twisted in sympathy for the broken man. “Helen betrayed Marcus as well. That’s why it’s so important we find her. Do you have any idea where she may be hiding?”

Adam abandoned his corpse, circling behind her. The back of her neck prickled. Marcus kept the apparition in his sights, his grip on her hands tightening.

“You need information from me,” Adam stated.

“Yes,” Dove answered.

“What do I get in return?”

“Eternal peace, knowing you did the right thing.”

“Put me back in my body.”

“Sorry, but the threads that tie you to this plane have been severed. Your vessel is very postmortem. Putting you into a corpse won’t bring you back to life. You’ll continue to rot. Also, what you’re asking is like a twelve on a zero to ten scale. I doubt I can pull it off.”

He snorted. “So I’m to give you this information out of a sense of morality?”

“Yes?”

“She’ll put you in your body,” Marcus spoke up.

“Marcus,” she hissed.

“You can do this.” He squeezed her hands.

“Even if I could, Adam wouldn’t be right. The powers-that-be won’t like it. With the balance disrupted, the universe will do everything it can to restore that balance. You can’t bring someone back from the dead without ramifications.” An image of Professor Flanagan’s zombie cat came to mind, and she shivered.

“I’ll deal with the ramifications,” Adam snarled. “You want your intel? Put me in my body.”

“Put Adam in his body and let’s be done with this,” Marcus commanded, his impatience stirring her ire.

“Very well,” she said through gritted teeth. “But answers first. Resurrection second.”

“And how do I know I can trust you?” Adam asked.

“Seriously, dude?” Dove mustered her best poker face. “What do you have to lose at this point? Time to get on board or I’m pulling the plug on this conversation.”

He scowled at her, huffing, “Fine.”

“What can you tell us about Helen’s location?”

He shrugged. “Not much. We never met at her place since we were forced to hide our relationship. If she used some sort of mysterious Zion lair, I wasn’t in the know.”

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