The Night Beat

one hand on a dead hooker’s head, thumb and forefinger on the temples, with the other on the heart. He was concentrating.
    “What’s he doing?” Jack whispered to me.
    “Seeing if they’re worth reviving.” Ken had a perfect track record so far -- he’d never brought back a potential minion.
    “But they’re dead.”
    “Yeah, well, there are ways. I mean, they won’t come back as human, but being a zombie’s not as bad as it’s cracked up to be. And there are other options. Hookers usually come back as succubae. It’s typecasting, but it works.”
    “What do the junkies and bums come back as?”
    “Bums usually opt for zombie. Junkies…well, junkies rarely come back.”
    “Why so?”
    “They’re already too close to the Prince.” This was true. There were so many sins out there, and everyone indulged in at least one of them, even if they thought they didn’t. But junkies were among the most willful, more so than alcoholics, adulterers, or murderers. Pedophiles, rapists and junkies rarely got a second shot at life from us. We had standards and we also had history to back up our decisions.
    “Who’s the Prince?” Jack asked as Ken shook his head and moved on to the next body.
    “The Prince of Darkness.”
    “Oh. The Devil. Or is that Count Dracula?”
    “Neither.” I struggled to put the right words around what the Prince really was.
    “Count Dracula gets a bad rap for no good reason,” Ken offered. “He’s one of the main reasons the Prince hasn’t taken over.”
    “And the Devil’s really Yahweh’s servant,” Maurice added as he joined us.
    “Yahweh?” Jack sounded confused.
    “The entity most humans call God’s real name.” I was very fond of Yahweh, some because he was strong and righteous, mostly because he was the strongest god fighting against the Prince and it paid to support your boss.
    “God has a lot of names, but --”
    Ken interrupted Jack. “Yes, he does. But there are also more gods out there than you can count. And they all have a variety of names. But each prefers the name he or she feels is truly theirs. The one you’re talking about is named Yahweh. He likes his name used, by the way, though not in vain.”
    “So, what does he do when someone says ‘God damn it’?” Jack sounded ready to sign up for H.P.’s Gods and Monsters for Beginners class at Necropolis U. I was getting worried.
    “He laughs,” Maurice replied. “If he even hears it. ‘God’ is a general term. Now, if you cursed using his real name, then he’d be taking an interest. But when someone goes, ‘Oh God, oh God’ and then orgasms, it’s just a general statement, sort of like ‘the sky is blue’ or ‘demon kind are scary’.”
    “So, the Prince isn’t Count Dracula and he isn’t the Devil,” Jack said. “So, what is he?”
    My wrist-com came to life as the Count calmly answered. “Evil incarnate.”

Chapter 7
     
    Jack looked around. “You know, supposedly, all of you are evil.” He didn’t sound accusatory or even fazed.
    “Those are stories,” the Count explained. “Started by the Prince.”
    “But you’re undeads.”
    “Yes? What’s your point?” The Count sounded polite and mildly offended.
    I decided to rejoin the conversation. After all, Jack was my partner. “We have souls. Unless we give our souls to the Prince, we’re like humans, and we have free will. And, yes, we’re undead. But we’re also alive -- we call it being unalive. What we don’t want to become is dusted. Dusted means unlikely to come back.” We didn’t want to become turned, either, to come back as a minion, but some things I didn’t like to talk about, ever.
    “But I thought you lost your soul when you became a vampire or a werewolf.”
    “No. You lose your soul when you give it to the Prince. Otherwise, it’s yours. Well, yours and your god’s.”
    “Which god is yours?”
    “I’m a Yahweh girl, but there are plenty of other gods out there just as worthy.”
    “So, like, Zeus is still around?”
    “Around and kicking. And still on the side of good, so to speak. The Greek and Roman gods were all about partying like it was the end of the universe. One of the reasons Yahweh could get stronger -- it’s hard to keep your faith in a god who’s more interested in screwing your wife, sister and daughter, all at the same time. Especially when you had a god right nearby who was doing his best to kick evil in the butt on a daily basis.”
    I felt a little better and went