Resurrected (Resurrected Series Book 1) Read online

  “Nice meeting you, David,” I piped in, partly just to be an asshole and partly because I just wanted to see what he’d do. David nodded at me and mumbled something that sounded like, “You too,” but I think he meant it as much as I had. We watched them leave and I waited until I could no longer hear their footsteps outside on the walkway before turning to Eric and slipping into Russian. “Follow them.” Eric just nodded in agreement and offered a quick excuse for leaving; I handed him my keys as he tried to convince Lydia, again, that he really had to leave.

  Lottie was silent, still sitting on the sofa, watching Eric and me with an intense curiosity mingled with apprehension and fear. Nothing this morning had gone the way she had expected; her former – or current? – boyfriend speaking a language she didn’t recognize, Eric’s sudden departure, why should any of this play out any better? Lydia was unfazed though, cheerful as ever and even comfortable around me. Perhaps, somehow, I had slain the Jabberwocky. She chatted happily as she picked up water glasses, wiping away the wet circles they had left behind, then, perhaps sensing Lottie and I didn’t share her enthusiasm, she announced she really should start getting ready for work. Her shift didn’t start for another two hours.

  As soon as Lydia’s bedroom door closed, Lottie turned to me. “What was that all about?” I assumed she meant with Eric, but I had no intention of telling her what that was all about. So I played dumb.

  “I don’t have a clue. That guy’s a real prick, though.”

  “Dietrich,” she sighed, rolling her eyes at the same time in that how-can-anyone-try-my-patience-and-still-be-loved-as-much-as-you way of hers.

  “Hey, don’t blame me. He’s one of yours.”

  “What did you tell Eric?”

  “When?” I was being obnoxious. If she kicked me out, I was going to have to walk back to the hotel.

  Lottie played absentmindedly with her fingers, and I watched them gliding over each other, thin, delicate, soft. I could so vividly remember the way those fingers felt on me, the way they stroked my face or curled through my hair or clenched into my back as we were making love, how they traced lightly across my arm as she lay nestled against me on the sofa watching television. Those fingers were the only woman’s fingers that had ever touched me. I had never even kissed a girl before Lottie.

  We were both virgins when we met, but she was far less naïve than me, and I knew that, which made me even more self-conscious with every touch, every kiss, so that I often found myself in the unusual position of being the one to pull away, to step back from the threshold of exploration. By then, Lottie knew about my past, she knew the demons that had followed me across the Atlantic, and she would sit back from me on my bed in my dorm room, giving me my space to feel so completely mixed up, impossibly horny and eager but uncertain and awkward. God, I had loved her so much even then.

  I think I had loved her since the night I met her at that party I most certainly did not want to be at, but had somehow gotten talked into by my roommate, mostly because he had needed a designated driver, and I had finally conceded because even though I didn’t particularly like him, I didn’t want him dead. I spotted her immediately, my entire body suddenly burning with a fire that was so intense, so physical, so real, that I was glad the lights were subdued. I was positive that I was blushing. Fucking German complexion.

  She was talking to someone, a friend, a girl who blended into the other faces and bodies packed into the small room, and she caught me staring at her. I should have looked away – Jesus, I must have seemed like such a pervert – but I couldn’t. I probably just blushed a deeper shade of crimson and she smiled at me but never stopped her conversation with her friend.

  She laughed. That little bell laugh – hadn’t Edgar Allen Poe coined a term for that sound? Tintinnabulation? Such an ugly word for something so beautiful – and I smiled. She peeked over at me again, saw that I was still watching her and was smiling now, and I thought, “Dietrich, for God’s sake, look away, get out of here, fake a seizure, just do something!” But I couldn’t. I was transfixed, and I didn’t know what I could do anyway; I hadn’t been raised with the social skills to navigate normal interpersonal exchanges, let alone this, whatever this was. I was saved though. Lottie leaned over to her friend, whispered something in her ear, then crossed the room to me. Lottie had come to me. She saved me that night: from that horribly embarrassing moment, from being stuck at a party I hadn’t wanted to go to, from a life of being alone, unloved and not loving, from a life not being lived.

  I reached out now and took her left hand, turning it over so that I could trace the Bermuda triangle across the back of her hand. I heard her swallow as she watched my face, those goosebumps breaking out across her arms even though it was warm in her apartment. “Where’s your ring?” I asked, lifting her fingers so they extended, so slender, so elegant in the way they could move while she was cooking or reading or building sandcastles on the beach; how could anyone look so fragile and yet be so strong?

  “It’s here. I still have it,” she whispered, and I lifted my eyes to meet hers. There were a thousand words that passed between us in that look: this longing and desire, the aching pain of permanent loss, the pervasive sense of otherness that kept this physical distance between us.

  “Do you really not hate me, Dietrich, not even a little?” she asked, her voice still barely above a whisper.

  “No,” I didn’t need to think about it. “I hate what’s happened to you, but I could never hate you.”

  “Is there much of a difference?” she teased, throwing my exact words from a few days ago back at me.

  “Yes,” I answered, “a huge difference.” And I kissed her. Her lips, Lottie’s lips, were surprised and she gasped as my mouth gently pushed hers open, my tongue probing for hers, but then she was kissing me, too, her hand reaching around the back of my neck to pull me closer to her, so close, the scent of pears and honey strong and sweet, intoxicating. I wrapped a hand around the back of her head, tangling my fingers in that long, wavy hair that stubbornly refused to ever stay neatly in a bun or ponytail, and as my other hand lightly grazed the skin of her back under the hem of her shirt, she shivered: pleasure, nervousness, excitement, hesitancy. Her other hand had found the edge of my shirt and pushed it up, slipping underneath, her fingers teasing the small of my back, and I responded, pushing her shirt higher so I could access more of her skin as that kiss, oh God how I missed kissing her, spoke of the lust we’d both been containing. Her hand slipped, hesitated, and she faltered with recognition.

  This was Lottie and not-Lottie, after all, and she finally broke the kiss, panting, breathless, still holding onto me tightly but no longer sure of herself. “Dietrich,” she exhaled, “I’ve never …” She stopped, closed her mouth tightly and chewed on her lower lip again. Part of her knew how it must sound, especially to me, this almost-declaration that human intimacy was something completely foreign to her, because she also knew how familiar it was, how familiar I was. Those dual lives, always competing, always bewildering to her.

  I stroked the side of her face and smiled at her, “It’s all right, Lottie,” I assured her, “I understand.” That wasn’t entirely true. How could anyone possibly understand? But I wanted to, and more importantly, I wanted her to be happy, to feel safe and loved and at peace again. She was going to protest; Lottie – and even Kyrieana – would tell me how unfair this was to me, which I was ready to argue about, but the sound of footsteps outside on the walkway forced us to pull away from each other, snapping us out of whatever memories and sexual tension we had fallen into. Eric had returned.

  I got up to let him in, immediately falling back into Russian as soon as he stepped inside. “They’re at the Holiday Inn on Siegen,” Eric told me, also in Russian, “we need them out of the room though. We both need to get out there, wait for them to go somewhere. They’ll have to leave for lunch.” I nodded in agreement.

  “Did you request a track on their cell phones?” I asked.

  “Yeah,
but I don’t know. Do you think this ‘expert’ can be reached on a cell phone?”

  “No,” I agreed, “but we can’t trace those kinds of calls. We’re kind of limited by our shitty human technology.”

  Lydia had come out of her bedroom, her sandy blonde hair swept up into a neat French twist, and her face lit up when she saw Eric had returned. My life had turned into a fucking sci-fi soap opera. “Eric!” she beamed. Even Lottie noticed the difference in her friend this time. Eric raised an eyebrow at me, shooting me a look that insisted, “This is not my fault.” Or maybe “This is not my fault, now get me the fuck out of here.” At least, the latter is how I wanted to interpret it.

  “We should go,” I glanced between Lydia and Lottie, speaking English again, and for once, I was actually anxious to leave her. Not because I wanted to be separated, but I wanted to get inside that motel room. As clichéd as it may have been, I had been right when I told Lottie that they were in my world now. For the first time in weeks, I felt fully in control, confident, invincible. And they were going to find out just how badly these human bodies could hurt if they fucked with her again.

  Chapter 9

  We didn’t have to wait long for them to leave. Eric followed them to a nearby restaurant – a Twin Peaks: I suppressed a disgusted groan – and I let myself into their room. These magnetic card readers were the best thing to happen to guys like me in a long time; getting into hotel rooms was one of the easiest things I ever did anymore. I had thought it was telling that they were sharing a room, but the room was scattered and disorganized with the look of two men who were keeping their distance from one another. This arrangement had been one of expediency, not sexual attraction. I placed my bag at the foot of one of the beds. In the middle of the bed, someone’s suitcase was open and I quickly looked through it; nothing but clothes, some cash, a carefully hidden tin of Copenhagen. Judging by the labels on the clothes, this was David’s secret addiction.

  Jackson’s suitcase was on the floor, propped open against the wall. It was no more revealing than David’s, except he didn’t seem to harbor the same predilection for repulsive tobacco habits. With so little to look through, I went back to my bag. It was relatively easy to spy on someone who didn’t realize they were being spied on; I placed a camera behind the vent on one wall, then a second on the opposing wall so that we could see the entire room. The cameras could move, could zoom in on print so small that if they pulled a business card out of their pocket, we would be able to read it. A few microphones throughout the room, in the bathroom, their phone, would let us hear everything they said. We could hear the bed springs when they rolled over at night if we wanted to.

  I had just placed a third camera in the exhaust fan of the bathroom when Eric told me he was coming back for me. I grabbed my bag and left their room, walking to the other side of the motel where Eric would pick me up. It had taken less than thirty minutes. Jackson and David were still at Twin Peaks, ogling the poor girls who were desperate enough to work there but pretending to appreciate the thinly veiled sexual advances, the inability of men to keep their eyes off their breasts as they placed their orders.

  There was nothing left to do now except return to my hotel room, set up our computers, and wait. For the second time that day, they didn’t keep us waiting long. Jackson and David came into their room soon after Eric and I had settled onto different beds, our laptops propped open beside us. We were going to start flipping through the sports channels, hoping to catch a baseball game, when the opening motel room door on our monitors caught our attention. Eric muted the TV but left it on. If they were just going to sit there and do the exact same thing we were doing, there wouldn’t be much point in not watching at least some of the game.

  Jackson must have had the same idea, because he flopped onto his bed, grabbed the remote and started flipping through channels. David disappeared into the bathroom, then reappeared in the corner screen of my monitor where the third camera was looking straight down at him. David was visibly aroused. Apparently, spending his entire lunch staring at the cleavage of a girl in a tight tank top had that effect on him. I groaned. We both knew what was coming. “Sometimes, I hate my job,” I muttered.

  Eric grimaced as David pulled down his pants, then turned his monitor toward me even though we were looking at the exact same images. “I knew he was overcompensating. Who says size isn’t important?”

  “Jesus, Eric,” but he had started it. I couldn’t help but look now. David started furiously pumping and we both grimaced this time. “Do you think they know what penises are used for when they claim these bodies? Talk about buyer’s remorse.”

  Eric snickered, egged on now by my willingness to joke about something. “Maybe his doctor friend can … do something for that. I’ll bet he’s a virgin.”

  “I’ll bet his girlfriend wouldn’t know if she weren’t anymore.”

  Eric actually laughed this time, and we both groaned as David muffled his orgasm, trying to be discreet, and flushed the remnants of his lunchtime fantasies down the toilet. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I think I’ve got a sure fire way to increase my stamina by at least 78% now.”

  And just like that, I realized I had forgiven him. All of my attempts to remain professional, distant, aloof were gone; this was Eric, my best friend, the only person in the world who had cared enough to save my life day after day when all I had wanted was death, an escape from this afterlife I was trapped in. The man who wouldn’t abandon me even when he knew I had wanted to hurt him, and I was suddenly ashamed for it. We were men. We didn’t talk about friendship or affection or love. But in our juvenile bantering about one man’s unfortunate penis size, I realized Lottie wasn’t the only person who had ever loved me. “Eric?”

  “Dude, if you tell me you’re horny now, I’m leaving.”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  Eric just smiled and looked up at me. David had thrown himself on his own bed, contented and drowsy, relaxed and lazy as the baseball game – the same one we had on – played out on their television. I had to tell him. I had to do something decent for him for once in my life. “It’s ok. I just … wanted you to know.”

  Eric nodded at me, surprise only partially hidden in his expression and voice. “Thank you.” He looked back at his monitor, embarrassed maybe, but grateful. I knew the awkward silence that followed wouldn’t last long. We were ok. We would soon be joking again about David’s poor decision making, or the way Jackson’s mouth hung open, a thin sliver of drool pooling at the corner, as he drifted off to sleep during the 6th inning. Or we would watch the game itself – cursing at the umpires, yelling at the runners on base, occasionally becoming mesmerized by a particularly compelling commercial for the Abita brewery or the promise that college football season was only two months away.

  The next two hours passed that way and by the time anything significant caught our attention on the monitors again, it was just Eric and me, the easiness and comfort of our friendship banishing the anger and betrayal I had clung to since finding out about that kiss. I would never forget it, but I realized I didn’t have to. The belief that a person had to be perfect in order to be loved, which I’d kept wrapped so tightly around me like a security blanket since I was five years old, was slowly unwinding.

  A ringtone that sounded like marimba broke off Jackson’s snoring. Eric and I immediately sat up, as if better posture would allow us to better hear or see what was about to happen. Jackson’s eyes shot open and he grabbed his phone. We had no way of accessing the other side of his conversation right now. Somewhere, it was being recorded. A transcript would be sent to us soon; my reticence to have anyone else know about what we were doing in Baton Rouge had dissipated with the suspicion that Lottie wasn’t safe here. For now, Eric and I listened as Jackson supplicated himself to the speaker on the other end.

  “Yes, Sir … I’m sorry, Sir, she just … it was reported correctly, I am certain … No, Sir, I didn’t … Yes, I would be happy to … You would like for me to
tell her in person? … When? … Of course. I will do it tomorrow then… Yes, Sir, I understand … Sir? … Are you sure we should tell her? … Ok, yes, I will. … Goodb…” He was cut off. Apparently, his caller had worse social skills than I did.

  Jackson tossed the phone beside him on the bed. David, as usual, looked only mildly interested. “We need to call her, ask to see her again tomorrow morning so I can tell her about these memories.”

  David actually yawned. “Tell her what?” Huh. Muscle-Man-With-Little-Penis could talk.

  “What I’ve been told to tell her,” Jackson snapped.

  “Why not today? Right now? I’m ready to get the fuck out of here.” He stifled another yawn and I couldn’t help hoping Jackson wasn’t quite the spineless prick I was pretty sure he was.

  “Because she’s at work, idiot. We’ll do it tomorrow, then we can leave. They’re going to send someone to evaluate her.”

  “No,” I said aloud. Eric glanced over at me but he was trying to keep his attention on the conversation in the motel room a few miles east of us.

  “Fine. It would be easier to just get it over with now though.” David was bored.

  “I’m going to kill him. I’m going to fucking kill him.” I knew I should be keeping my mouth shut but the words kept rushing out.

  “There are others involved already, David. It’s … complicated now. If we had known about this sooner …”

  David just shrugged. “So you tell them she has to go away somewhere. What can they do about it?”

  “Fucking kill you, that’s what,” but this time, Eric actually shushed me. I had never been shushed before. I glanced over at him, surprised – ok, kind of shocked actually - but bit my lip and tried to concentrate on shushing.