Free The Laughing Corpse by Laurell K. Hamilton Page A

It gleamed around her like darkness made liquid and touchable. The smiling old woman was gone. She was a creature of power.
    Manny stood off to one side. He was staring at her. He glanced at me. His eyes were showing a lot of white. The altar was directly behind Dominga’s straight back. Dead animals spilled off the top of it to form a pool on the floor. Chickens, dogs, a small pig, two goats. Lumps of fur and dried blood that I couldn’t identify. The altar looked like a fountain where dead things flowed out of the center, sluggish and thick.
    The sacrifices were fresh. No smell of decay. The glazed eyes of a goat stared at me. I hated killing goats. They always seemed so much more intelligent than chickens. Or maybe I just thought they were cuter.
    A tall woman stood to the right of the altar. Her skin gleamed nearly black in the candlelight as if she had been carved of some heavy, gleaming wood. Her hair was short and neat, falling to her shoulders. Wide cheekbones, full lips, expert makeup. She wore a long silky dress, the bright scarlet of fresh blood. It matched her lipstick.
    To the right of the altar stood a zombie. It had once been a woman. Long, pale brown hair fell nearly to her waist. Someone had brushed it until it gleamed. It was the only thing about the corpse that lookedalive. The skin had turned a greyish color. The flesh had narrowed down around the bones like shrink wrap. Muscles moved under the thin, rotting skin, stringy and shrunken. The nose was almost gone, giving it a half-finished look. A crimson gown hung loose and flapping on the skeletal remains.
    There was even an attempt at makeup. Lipstick had been abandoned when the lips shriveled up but a dusting of mauve eye shadow outlined the bulging eyes. I swallowed very hard and turned to stare at the first woman.
    She was a zombie. One of the best preserved and most lifelike I had ever seen, but no matter how luscious she looked, she was dead. The woman, the zombie, stared back at me. There was something in her perfect brown eyes that no zombie has for long. The memory of who and what they were fades within a few days, sometimes hours. But this zombie was afraid. The fear was like a shiny, bright pain in her eyes. Zombies didn’t have eyes like that.
    I turned back to the more decayed zombie and found her staring at me, too. The bulging eyes were staring at me. With most of the flesh holding the eyes in the socket gone, her facial expressions weren’t as good, but she managed. It managed to be afraid. Shit.
    Dominga nodded, and Enzo motioned me farther into the circle. I didn’t want to go.
    â€œWhat the hell is going on here, Dominga?”
    She smiled, almost a laugh. “I am not accustomed to such rudeness.”
    â€œGet used to it,” I said. Enzo sort of breathed down my back. I did my best to ignore him. My right hand was sort of casually near my gun, without looking like I was reaching for my gun. It wasn’t easy. Reaching for a gun usually looks like reaching for a gun. No one seemed to notice though. Goody for our side.
    â€œWhat have you done to the two zombies?”
    â€œInspect them yourself, chica . If you are as powerful as the stories say, you will answer your own question.”
    â€œAnd if I can’t figure it out?” I asked.
    She smiled, but her eyes were as flat and black as a shark’s. “Then you are not as powerful as the stories.”
    â€œIs this the test?”
    â€œPerhaps.”
    I sighed. The voodoo lady wanted to see how tough I really was. Why? Maybe there wasn’t a reason. Maybe she was just a sadistic power-hungry bitch. Yeah, I could believe that. Then again, maybe there was a purpose to the theatrics. If so, I still didn’t know what it was.
    I glanced at Manny. He gave a barely perceivable shrug. He didn’t know what was going on either. Great.
    I didn’t like playing Dominga’s games, especially when I didn’t know the rules. The