Better Than Dead

By Eric Lahti

Ace Colton is a Lead Slinger, one of the last of a group of gun-toting modern-day Samurai who have dedicated their lives to shooting. On a routine job to find a bank robber, he finds the still-living severed head of a powerful wizard stuck on the end of a mop. It's just the latest in a crime spree that has the city reeling in disbelief as people who went missing suddenly turn up with larceny on their minds. As soon as the crime is done, the criminals fall over dead.
Worse: It's beginning to look like they were dead before they committed the crimes. And that leaves only one terrifying possibility.
Ace may be the best in the world with a gun, but what good are bullets against someone who can raise the dead? It's hot lead versus black magic in an epic thrillride.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eric Lahti
• Release date: Dec 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215594070

Eric Lahti

Eric Lahti grew up looking for UFOs and buried treasure in northwest New Mexico. Unfortunately, he never found either of them. Or maybe he did and he's just not telling. He did find some good stories to tell at parties about lights in the skies and gold in the ground, though. When he's not writing, he's programming and practicing his Kenpo. He's also an active blogger, waxing philosophical about a range of topics from writing, to martial arts, to politics and religion. Frankly, he fancies himself something of a Renaissance geek about a wide variety of things.

Book preview

Better Than Dead

Eric Lahti

Better Than Dead

© 2023 Eric Lahti

All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form without written permission from the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.  I love reviewers.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious.  Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The names of some historical figures have been used, but their characters and personalities in the book are not intended to resemble their real historical selves.

Also By Eric Lahti

Henchmen

Arise

Transmute

The Complete Saxton

The Clock Man and Other Stories

Greetings From Sunny Aluna

Roadside Attractions

All The Bad Things

Contents

1 - Bang, With A Side Of Horror

2 - Lair

3 - Sacred Places

4 - Jezebel

5 - Smoked Pork

6 - Gunslinger

7 - Not That Kind Of Monk

8 - Woke AF

9 - Underland

10 - The Stench of The Missing

11 - The Coffee Of The Damned

12 - Corpse Eaters

13 - Lingerie and Black Lights

14 - Grump

15 - Every Morning Is Monday Morning

16 - Blues and Reds

17 - Um, Run

18 - See Red

19 - Chinese Takeout

20 - The Fuckening

21 - The Gray Lady

22 - Le Petit Mort

23 - Death Sucks

24 - If You Want A Friend

25 - Resurrection Is Worse

26 - Ps and Qs

27 - Motel, Hotel, That Other Place

28 - Good Old-Fashioned Shootout

29 - Voter Registration

30 - Better Than Dead

About The Author

1 - Bang, With A Side Of Horror

I rolled out of the way as a pair of bullets shredded the air, crackling and popping and leaving dark dreams in their wake. One struck a concrete beam next to me and blew a chunk out of it in a cloud of dust. Black tendrils oozed down the remainder of the pillar, eating away at it like stone cancer. The sons of bitches were using black-magic tipped rounds, something no one this side of pure evil or too much money would even think about doing.

You guys suck! I yelled. You know that, right?

I ejected the magazine of my FNX and slid my thumb down the bullets. Fifteen, plus one in the pipe. Full load. I knew that already of course, but training taught me to use free time to verify. It wouldn’t do to have that perfect shot and find the gun hadn’t been reloaded after the last incident. Slide the magazine home, thumb the slide release, and wait.

A fist-sized chunk of wood exploded next to my ear. I quickly scampered behind a trash can and watched as the black magic slowly erased the box I’d been hiding behind. The bullets weren’t high quality, probably made by hobbyists downtown but that didn’t stop the ebon tendrils from cutting the box into large, smooth chunks. Black magic tipped bullets are the true bastard's choice for whacking targets. When a bullet like that hits a human, it slowly erases organs, bones, and whatever tissue it can find. Worse, it strips away parts of souls.

And, yes, it hurts even worse than you’d expect.

The warehouse was dark, probably because the McKenzie brothers have never been into paying for things. They probably threatened the warehouse’s original owner into giving it to them, but the electric company wouldn’t keep the lights on just because a pair of low-life thugs with delusions of grandeur threatened to fling some lead around. No one screwed with the electric company. In a city that lived and died on electric currents, the people providing the electricity were kings.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted movement. A big, lumbering shadow, stretched thin from the moonlight streaming in the windows, stalked silently across the back wall. That had to be Curtis. Neither of them was terribly bright, but Curtis McKenzie was by far the dumber of the pair. If that shadow was on the wall and the windows were on the ceiling…

I darted through the shadows seconds before the shadow could raise a rifle to its shoulder and blow holes in my hiding place. As the trash can disintegrated with a hiss, I took a moment to scan the warehouse floor. The place was a total disaster area – wooden crates smashed open, spilling their innards like a loser in a knife fight, were interspersed with barrels filled with goddess only knew what and more metal trash cans than anyone should ever need.

Chris McKenzie was nowhere to be found. If Curtis thought he was indestructible, Chris thought gunfights were beneath his skills. Chris thought of himself as the brains of the duo – Mr. Peabody to Curt’s Sherman. Or Brain to Pinkie. Chris liked to think he knew how to lay low and entice his victims to him. In truth, he usually tried hiding, failed at it, and wound up beating up his victims with a baseball bat. Which meant I had to keep an eye on the shadows for his massive frame and the bat he loved to call Mrs. Wilkins.

Guys, I yelled out, I just want to talk.

Talk? Everyone knows Ace Colton doesn’t talk, Curtis called out.

An empty pallet exploded right next to me. Curtis must have been practicing. A quick shoulder roll and I was back on my feet. I spun around and found Curtis hiding in the shadows at the top of the warehouse. He poked his head around a trash can. Rather than kill him outright, I decided it would be better if we did stuff together. Like talking stuff.

I was already drawing a bead on his position, the result of years of study under the tutelage of a man known only as The Teacher. He was the first Lead Slinger, a group dedicated entirely to understanding the gun as an artform. We were like Shaolin Monks with .45s.

My shot hit the trash can right on the edge. Fourteen left. The dum dum bullet shredded the side of the trash can and sprayed Curtis’s face with hot, sharp metal. With a bit of luck, some of that metal found his eye and made itself at home. The screams from above sounded about right for a pierced eyeball. Some tiny part of him must have realized he was still in danger and he ducked behind some cover, still whimpering.

While Curtis was hiding, I looked around for Chris. Toodaloo, youngest McKenzie, I called out, hoping to raise his ire. Your big brother is down. It’s just you and me and you’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do.

The McKenzie brothers were hired muscle for a local sorcerer. They had a reputation – well deserved, if you ask me – for being enthusiastic go-getters in the science of violence. Actual science might be something they knew nothing about, but the McKenzie brothers could teach advanced classes in violence, grift, and general thuggery. Personally, I didn’t care about them, but their boss disappeared with a jillion samolians and the bank wanted their money back.

When normal people rob a bank, the local constabulary gets called. When sorcerers rob banks, people like me get called in. The police have rules and procedures they have to adhere to. I don’t. Like most magic users, sorcerers teetered on the edge of being human. Within that tenuous position, they had the same rights as everyone else, but no one really trusted them and they couldn’t get along with each other well enough to form a lobby. They were better off legally than the vamps and wolves, but still verboten in the eyes of the people that held the power in the country. Sorcerers, like most of the paras, scared people. And scared people do brutal things to those that scare them. But your average sorcerer wasn’t a pushover and your average cop was ill-equipped to deal with the folks who looked into the darkness and smiled when it looked back.

Magic was brutal stuff and it took a brutal weapon to combat it. Used to be the cops would call in their own sorcerers and there’d be an epic magic battle. Politicians trying to score points with the rubes kiboshed all of that. Now, using tax money to hire paras – be they sorcerers, wolves, vamps, or pixies – was strictly verboten. Even private organizations like banks stayed away from paras. But a Lead Slinger like me? As long as I’m all human, it’s all good.

Chris didn’t take the bait. Either he’d gotten hold of some smart pills and learned to shut the hell up, or he was long gone. Either way, I was going to have to work for my supper. I knew with Curtis hurt, it would only be a matter of time before little brother Chris came to the rescue.

I stalked through the warehouse, darting from barrel to shelf to crate like a panther that really needed a nap. I’d long ago realized that running was never going to be my thing, so I focused on learning how to be quiet. It was no mean feat, but it was easier than running.

The moon lit up the warehouse in a stark contrast of dark and light colors, almost like someone had drawn the warehouse with nothing more than a black pen and some white paper. It made depth perception tricky and screwed with my peripheral vision. Not for the first time, I cursed myself for not springing for a pair of blessed eyes that would let me see in the dark.

Every shadow looked like it was moving. What little I could see out of the corner of my eye looked like a man with a bad moustache and a gun. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that death was seldom permanent in this town. Also, I’d signed a contract with a bank that was known for using dark magic to keep people alive under extremely unpleasant circumstance when they didn’t do what they said they’d do.

Anything was better than that.

A faint shuffling sound caught my attention. So far, aside from the gunfire and Curtis’s whining, the warehouse had been silent. That could mean there was a racoon family living there, but my money was on Chris McKenzie.

It came from the southeast corner of the warehouse, but I pretended not to notice it. If I could get Chris alive, that would be brilliant. Dead brains can still be read, but it’s expensive as all get out and you need a data services representative to help you find what you’re looking for. Alive and in pain would be best. People are always more pliable when they’re hurt.

My ruse worked. Another shuffling sound whispered through the dusty warehouse. This one was closer to me. Chris must have been sneaking around on his hands and knees, hoping to get close enough to take me out quietly. I had a few tricks up my sleeve, though.

With a slight grunt and pangs of my love/hate relationship with hooch, I boosted myself onto a barrel, squatted down, and watched the world unfold around me. I couldn’t see Chris, but he left a trail of slightly out-of-place barrels throughout the neatly stacked rows.

About halfway through the warehouse, the barrels evened out again. I had a brief bout of concern as I sighted down the barrel of my gun. It could have been transients or runaways or any number of other things that weren’t a threat to me, but chances were high it was Chris.

Last chance, McKenzie, I called out. Come out. I just want to talk.

Fuck him, Curt called out. He’s a lying bastard. Kill the fuck!

About twenty feet away from me, Chris popped up like a spring-loaded clown box with the biggest goddamned gun I’ve ever seen. Even from a distance, the barrel looked like staring into the abyss. I cursed myself. Chris McKenzie has never done a brave thing in his life, so I wasn’t expecting him to start now.

Teacher was good. Very good. The gun in my hand fired before I’d even consciously processed what I was seeing. By the time the rest of my brain joined up with the shooter part of my brain, Chris was sliding to the floor with most of his face missing. Thirteen left. I’d honestly hoped to talk. Chris was the smarter of the twins, and that meant I had to deal with Curt and dealing with Curt sucked.

Sorry, bud, I mumbled to Chris’s corpse as it crumbled in a heap on the cold concrete floor. I really did just want to talk.

Curt wailed behind me. Apparently, he still had one good eye, good enough at least to see his big brother on the ground under the black stain he left on a pillar. Curt! I yelled, Let’s talk this out. I just want your boss.

Fuck you!

I sighed. If I’d had a brother and just seen him shot, I might be peeved, too. Chris should have known better, though. There weren’t a lot of us Lead Slingers left, but our reputation was hardly unknown. Trained like the Shaolin monks of yore, only we used guns instead of fists. We were usually hired thugs, tasked with going into a bad situation and making it worse. I was nominally a private investigator, but my bread and butter was still working with whoever would pay me to put holes in people. And that meant working for the banking cartels. You gotta go with what you’re good at, right?

I rolled off to the left behind a concrete pillar and mentally calibrated myself. Chris was down and that put the mission in jeopardy. As the brains of the two, he was most likely the guy who could point me in the direction of his boss and that was the person the bank was looking for. Curt may or may not even know where he was at any given moment. He was a drug-addled nitwit, pumped up on whatever magical drugs he could find to keep his physique lean and mean. He was muscle, pure and simple. A guy you called in when you wanted to scare the shit out of the opposition or seduce the panties off some CEO. Unfortunately, he usually didn’t know shit except what Chris told him.

A loud, crashing sound pulled me out of my reverie. Curt was trying to find a way out and knocking over everything in his path. I closed my eyes and followed the sound. In the stark black and glowing silver-white of the warehouse, it was easier to hear him move that watch him. I was facing approximately due North. Curt was on the upper level. The memorized map filled my mind like a HUD in a video game. There was a door up there, but it was barred when I tested it earlier.

Fuck, I heard someone hiss.

He kicked the door, probably hoping to kick it open and stroll out of here like the cock of the walk. Doors are tough, though, far tougher than human legs. A vamp might be able to rip it straight off its hinges, but Curt and I were run-of-the-mill humans.

I heard him doubling back, muttering to himself. It’s amazing what you can hear when you close your eyes; the ticking of a clock in the back office, Curt’s labored breathing, a drop of liquid hitting the floor.

Stairs to his right led down and right into me. He was armed and hurt, a dangerous combination. People like to think we’re above the animals, but we’re primates through and through, and primates will fight to the death when they’re scared and hurt.

A barrel fell over and rolled off the second story edge. It hit with the force of angry god, reverberating off the walls and echoing around the warehouse. My ears were still echoing when Curt eased down the stairs like a wraith. I waited until he paused on the stairs and looked around the warehouse.

As soon as he started walking again, I memorized his gait: big guy, long legs, long steps. Moving slowly, two seconds between each step. Time between foot leaving the ground and hitting the ground: slightly over one second. The contract just said one of the McKenzie brothers had to provide answers about their benefactor; it didn’t mention which one or what shape he was in when he gave it. Information was all that mattered. In a world where things can go spectacularly wrong in a heartbeat, information was the most valuable currency.

If it was information they wanted, I knew how to get it. All I had to do was keep the muscled-up thug from running away. A little pain. A small, crippling injury.

My .45 caliber ACP rounds weighed in at 240 grains with a muzzle velocity of 380 feet per second. Taking into account drag and distance to target, that still yielded 3000 pounds of pressure per square inch right into the side of Curt’s knee over less than a 100th of a second. Other bullets were faster, but there was something magical about a slower, heavier round. Less through and through, too. When a small, fast round hits a human target it can go all the way through, taking a lot of its energy with it. Heavier, slower rounds like mine tended to get stuck in the body, imparting all their kinetic energy straight into whoever or whatever they hit. Just like with light, fast 9mm rounds on smaller targets like knees, a .45 round still go all the way through. Unlike a 9mm round, a .45 caliber round will take most of the target with it.

I was full of interesting but useless bits of trivia like that.

I watched Curt from the shadows. Even off the stairs, he took the exact same steps in the exact same way. Must be nice to be tall and move like that. The training took over and my hand twitched. The FNX-45 barked once. Curt’s knee exploded in mid stride. His foot landed and his leg folded backwards. He hit the ground face-first and stayed there, confused and looking around for what had tripped him.

Then the pain penetrated his confusion and he knew with absolute certainty that he’d never walk again. At least not without a cane and a lot of pills.

I didn’t feel too bad about that. Of the brothers, Curt was by far the worst. He had a sadistic streak in him a mile long. He joyfully raped women who knew too much and reminded them how it could happen again if they didn’t keep their mouths shut. He was into protection money and graft and practically every other financial crime imaginable. At least the crimes that didn’t take much thought. Anything where he could beat the shit out of someone and then warn them to not do it again was right up his alley.

He laid on the ground biting back tears and clutching his knee like a little hand pressure was going to fix the fact that his lower leg was hanging off his thigh. I kept him covered. Hurt animals are dangerous animals. He barely paid any attention to me as I relieved him of his guns and did a quick pat-down to see if he had anything else.

Curt’s normally pale complexion was waxy in the silver light of the moon. It made him look like he was already dead and had been brought back to life by dark magic. A cadaver that walked and talked and screamed. Thankfully, that kind of magic didn’t exist anymore. Not since the world wised up.

Surgery, pal, I said as I stood over to him. Tell me what I want to know and I’ll call an ambulance. They’ll be here in five minutes.

Fuck you, he spat from clenched teeth.

His eyes were jammed shut, fists clenching and unclenching, like crying out would be a sign of weakness. I wondered if that was what pushed him over the edge on his many murders. Did they start out as simple rough-up jobs or the odd shut-your-mouth-or-I’ll-rape-you-again gigs and go south when the victim lost their shit?

I’m not even here for you, asshole, I said. I want your boss. Banks don’t like it when their money walks out the safe and they find magical traces left behind. Whoever it was, it must have been someone new. There was no record of that magic in the database. Pure luck someone caught you and your dead brother on video driving a van down the alley right after the robbery. You really should be more careful in the future. Now I have to find your boss and take care of a problem. I don’t like problems.

Eat a dick, Curt hissed. Eat a dick and choke on it.

That’s not a very nice thing to say, Mr. McKenzie. You might hurt my feelings. In fact, I think I’m gonna cry now.

You think you’re so much better than us, he said. Like when you fuck someone up it’s for a good cause so that makes you innocent. The only difference between you and me is I don’t lie to myself about who I am and I get paid better.

I shook my head. He was right, of course, but not in the way he thought. I got paid way better than he did. I have no doubt I’m a monster. But there are monsters that do the right thing and there are monsters that do the wrong thing. Guess which you are.

I don’t give a fuck about your things, bitch, he said. I do what I do because I like it.

Last chance, asshole, I said. "Tell me who you work for or I’m going to blow your other leg off. Then I’ll move up to your arms. Ever see Robocop? That’s what your future looks like. Maybe after all your limbs are gone we can put you on someone’s doorstep and change your name to Matt."

You want answers, dick-face? Here’s one for you: You’re right, there’s a new player in town. A real beast, too. Check the closet down the hall on your way out, you’ll see what I’m talking about. I’ve worked for some powerful motherfuckers, but nothing like this. You and this city are fucked.

Faster than I would expect, he drew a tiny revolver out the crotch of his pants. It wasn’t much, maybe a .22, but any bullet hits the right spot and it’s gonna kill. Again, my hard-won shooter reflexes took over. Lead Slinger reflexes are the stuff of legend. We were trained over and over and over to react to sudden danger. Usually lethally. Some part of my brain picked up on the movement and decided it was worth tracking. The gun shape ratcheted up my response. Adrenaline flooded my body. The top of Curt’s head exploded before I even fully realized what was happening.

My brass casing hit the ground and bounced around before time sped back up. Shit. He was my last lead. Now I was going to have to work to solve this case. And do it before the bank called asking for updates.

On my way out, I walked past a row of empty offices and one locked door. Something Curt said stopped me in my tracks. Closet down the hall. My hand wavered over the doorknob, not certain it wasn’t some elaborate ruse to kill me with a booby-trapped shotgun or cursed bomb. Two things wrong with that line of thinking. One, Curt actively tried to shoot me. He wouldn’t have bothered if he thought I was going to get detonated if I opened the door. Two: Neither of the McKenzie brothers was smart enough to set a booby-trap.

I took a deep breath and flung the door open. Rather than a bomb or a gun, someone had decided to stuff a nightmare in the closet. A head with a mass of stringy hair and the long beard of a wizard was stuck on the end of a broomstick. It had to have been a gang hit; no one besides the gangs would be tacky enough to leave a severed head stuck on a pole.

I recognized his face. By wizard standards, he was young. Probably under a hundred. Petulant. Impudent. He was trying to make a name for himself so he could get in with one of the gangs. Magic may be potent stuff, but sniper bullet will kill you just as dead as the darkest of magic. Running with the gangs afforded some level of protection. It didn’t surprise me that he knocked off a bank. Hopefully his brain was still intact after having his head shoved on a pole.

If the bank could scan his brain and locate the loot, I’d be able to chalk up another job done.

Cygnus Jones, I said, shaking my head. You ran into the wrong people, didn’t you? Well, at least you avoided doing time in Helgaard.

His eyes popped open and his mouth started working. Panicked eyes darted around the room like he was looking for something he dragged back from whatever nightmare he’d been having. Those wizard eyes settled on me and pleaded like a starving, beaten dog. If I hadn’t known Cygnus’s history, I might have felt sorry for him. But it was hard to have much empathy for a man who loved chaos and pain as much as he did. Word on the street said he was responsible for using sorcery to lure in unsuspecting young women and burn out their brains when he was done with them.

I’d seen plenty of bad things in my life and done almost as many, but I’d never seen a severed head open its eyes and try to talk. Usually, dead is dead.

But that’s what the bank’s special groups were for. I picked up Cygnus’s head and held it in front of my face. He looked terrified and in pain. Back in the day, after someone paid a visit to the guillotine, folks used to try to get a reaction out of the severed head. For a couple of minutes, they could. Then the brain died from lack of oxygen and the head was tossed in a shallow grave with the rest of the body, probably still faintly aware of the dirt and pebbles being heaped on it.

A couple of minutes was a fair piece shorter than ol’ Cygnus looked like he’d been waiting around. His eyes focused on mine and his jaw jabbered away silently. Pleading for death, probably. After the bank interrogators were done with him, he’d be desperate for death.

At any rate, I had my man. I was gonna get paid and put this whole nonsense behind me. Maybe see what Jezebel was up to. Karma caught up with you, I said to Cygnus’s desperately blinking face. I hope your brain is intact, pal, because I have some friends who’d love to chat with you about financial concerns. If you’re lucky they’ll send you to Helgaard and you can do your time with other wizards gone bad. I doubt that, though. You’ve got an interview with bank security.

As for me, after I dropped off my hairy package, I thought it was time for a celebratory drink at Jezebel’s.

2 - Lair

Jezebel was an information broker, one of the best in the business. She was a blonde bombshell with curves that turned most men to pudding the second they saw her in a low-cut black dress. Rumor had it she’d been trained in sex by ancient Asian masters. Guys would call it sublime, mind-blowing, like seeing god, but I knew for a fact that she’d only ever had sex with two guys and neither of them were the ones talking about how great it was to fuck her. One was dead – at my hand, I might add. Call it professional courtesy, but when I saw that slime ball slap the shit out of her for the third time, I took him outside and graffiti-tagged the alley wall with his brains.

The other guy was me.

Jezebel’s greatest skill was keeping her head screwed on tight while titans of industry were losing their minds over her body. She could smile and light up a room, wink and bring men to tears, and don’t get me started on her walk.

But it was a game to her. It was easier to wink and get men to spill their guts than it was to get a day job working as a desk jockey in some law firm downtown. At the bar when people were ogling her and making clumsy attempts to brush up, she knew there was a payout in information at the end. If you’re going to get groped, she once told me, at least make a quick buck off it.

She took the guts they spilled and sold them to the highest bidder. Who would likely do something nefarious with them.

Her bar wasn’t really her bar, but everyone knew The Razzle Dazzle as Jezebel’s Bar. Even the owner referred to his joint as hers. She brought him business, he made sure her marks were well-lubricated and the cycle of social engineering continued merrily along.

Jezebel’s bar was about as average as a bar could get. It wasn’t run-down, but it wasn’t flashy, either. It was the kind of place where working-class stiffs could get a decent brew and watch the game without having to worry about how to pronounce the drinks or whether or not they’d need a second mortgage on their cracker-box homes. At some point in the distant past, mid-level management pukes had discovered it and decided to make it a home so they could feel connected to regular people.

Those were the guys Jezebel targeted: insecure enough to want to talk up their jobs, but with just enough knowledge to be useful. It used to be random. She’d pick some dude out of the crowd and see if he was useful. As she got better and better at, she started getting contracts to do what came naturally to her: seduce secrets out of idiots who should have known better.

Soon, her name got around, but no one wanted to screw with her because she was the best in the business and she worked for anyone who’d pay her. One guy who got taken by her recognized the real truth: She didn’t care who she worked for. He hired her to get some information from a competitor. Word got around and discrete deals were made. Next thing she knew, Jezebel was drowning in work, had developed a slight drinking problem, and had more money than she knew what to do with. But she knew as soon as she quit, it would mean a bullet in the back of her skull and even a gun-toting loon like me would have trouble protecting her from every angry CEO in the city.

It was early when I walked into her bar, far too early for anything other than professional drinkers and people waiting patiently for their wives let them back in. She was in her usual spot, nursing a drink and watching the room in the massive mirror behind the bar.

Want some company? I asked as I sat next to her.

Only if it’s rich and attractive, she replied, stirring her drink and staring off into space.

I shrugged my ass onto the seat and said, Then you’re in luck: I’m both. Total package.

She rolled her eyes so hard it was probably