The Sacrifice

         James stood at the crime scene, his light blue eyes stretched out over the bloody mess before him.  The body lay in shambles.  He could not have imagined anything more gruesome.  He walked to the body slowly, his footsteps heavy in the tall grass that was still wet with the morning dew.  In the dark it was hard to tell where the dew ended and where the grisly lake of blood began - and that was something he was very thankful for.  It would have been so much more difficult to see this in daylight.  The night dulled the image before him; made it less readable.  In the daylight hours he may have seen it and vomited.  Even now, he was having a hard time not doing just that.
         Her body was only a foot before him now, spread out on the ground, arms twisted in impossible ways, legs broken backward, head tilted at a strange angle.  The moon glinted off the white of the sharp edges of bone that had ripped through her skin like a branch through paper. Yet, her face, despite the horror of the scene, was still that of an angel.  Her soft, liquid blue eyes wide and dull, but he remembered the brightness that they had held only the day before when they had spoken last.  Her voice was silky and warm and rubbed over him like fur forcing him to relax even in the most intense situations.  Her angelic blonde hair was tumbled around her delicate face and blotted with dark spots.  Blood, he assumed
         He had never loved her, but he had cared for her.  Now he stood before her about to betray her in the worst of ways.
         “Well?” a man’s voice boomed from behind.  It cracked with old age and quivered slightly.  Maybe from the cold?  James doubted it.  Somehow the man seemed infinitely  old, like the vampires that James was forced to hunt ironically by this very man.
         The voice called out again, “Can you fix it?”
         The words made James cringe. “Fix it” made it seem as if she were simply a doll.  She was a toy.  Something for him to play with and use to fulfill things that he himself could not accomplish.  James paused for a moment, collecting his thoughts, his eyes were still locked intensely on her body.  Finally he responded.
         “Yes.”  It had been a simple enough response, and seemed to please his superior.  He watched the elderly man’s face brighten, and for a moment, just a single moment, he found himself taking a quick step forward to beat the smug grin off this man’s face.  He replaced the aggressive step with a slower pace as he made his way to gather his tools.
         The night was cool around him.  A soft clucking from the chickens in the wooden crate nearby was the only sound in that dense, dark night.  He light a few candles at the edges of the circle, muttering a prayer at each.  He had lit the night with a soft, orange glow.  Now he would avoid looking at her body. 
         The wind rushed through his short, well kept hair, as dark as the night itself.  His light eyes were framed by dark eyelashes.  A few times, he had been accused of being a vampire himself.  He met the stereotype.  Of course, it was ridiculous.  He could not have been farther from that accusation.  James was a re-animator.  A voodoo shaman or sorts.  His natural talent for raising the dead had gained him quite a reputation among the community of vampire hunters.  A reputation he wished that he had never earned.  Especially now, when he was about to bring back a friend who had finally been put to rest.  Her life of hunting vampires, of fighting, of a daily beating had finally ended and he was to bring her back and throw her back into that life.  Goody.
         James walked to the chickens, grabbing one and pulling it out of the crate.  He drew up a blade, the silver blade glinting in the light of the full moon.  He slit the chicken’s throat quickly as it squealed one last breath and the blood splattered.  Deep crimson speckles covered James’s hands, neck, chest and face.  When the initial splatter had slowed he began to walk in a circle around his tools and the body, encasing them all in the now sacred area.  He dabbed his fingers in the blood at the base of the chicken’s throat and smeared it gingerly across his forehead, down his nose, and over his cheeks, then dropped the chicken’s body to the ground.  A light ‘thud’ reached James’s ears as the body fell into the grass.  He was no longer sure of what soaked the grass.  Again, he was not sure if he wanted to know.  Being squeamish and a reanimator just did not go hand in hand.
         He raised the blade of the knife into the air, both hands around the dark leather hilt.  Blood had covered it - there was no longer a gleam to the blade.  He looked to the sky, then closed his eyes.  He began the incantation.  Something the elderly man behind him could not understand.  Before he had the chance to ask what James was doing the boy shoved the blade into the ground.
         “A life for a death, a death for a life,” he began to chant softly, then his voice rose until he was screaming it at the girl’s body.  “A life for a death!  A death for a life!  Anne Williams, I beckon you!  Rise from death and obey me!”
         The girl’s body twisted in unusual ways as it began to rise, the bones cracking back into place, but the skin not healing.  It would take a healer to mend her completely, but at least the undead were hard to kill.  The injuries were no longer life threatening - if that was really the word for it.  Suddenly James took a quick step back.  In his thoughts he had forgotten about the hunger of the recently dead.  As the girl crawled madly toward him he beat the crate open, releasing the second chicken inside.  It clucked and scrambled, but was too slow.  The sudden movements had distracted the corpse. 
         Feathers flew.  So did chunks of flesh and bone.  James looked back to the elderly man, it was the first time this man had seen a real zombie raising.  He watched the color fade from the man’s face as the girl sat back, her eyes wide and innocent as if she had not remembered what had happened.  Her expression was blank.
         “W-What’s wrong with her?” the man asked, stuttering.  There was an undertone of fear in his normally neutral expression. 
         “Nothing,” James shrugged as he took a step out of the circle, breaking the barrier.  “It takes a while for the undead to regain any sort of memory.  Feed it, let it rest or put it to work.  As long as there isn’t any sort of trauma to it’s brain - this includes extreme mental stress - she’ll be fine and her memory will return.”  He glanced back at the thing that was once his friend. “She won’t be Anne anymore, but she’ll have Anne’s memories.  She’ll be able to go through the motions you want her to.”  Fight.  That was what this man wanted her to do. Continue to fight vampires even after her own death.  Her soul was trapped in the body, but not aware.  It was a fate worse than Hell, or so James had always thought.
         “Are we through?” the boy finally asked.  The energy he had used to raise her had exhausted him.  He pulled the charms from around his neck, they were drenched in blood as well.  The gris-gris that had protected him during the casting of the circle was as well.  He tried to wipe the feathers free of blood, but there was no point. 

         The elderly man nodded, a smug smirk on his face.  This was the beginning of something horrible, James knew. But what could he say now?  He did not even know what this man was planning - yet.