"Cassie, what are you doing?" Herbert asked firmly, not at all pleased with her hovering behind him nor with her close proximity.
"Oh, I dunno," she purred against his ear, nipping it. "Trying to have sex with you maybe?"
"Not what I called you here for," he replied.
She sighed. "And here I thought there was a reason for calling me when I was almost halfway across the country!" she said dryly, coming around to his side. "What did you call me for?"
"I needed your help again," said Herbert, nodding towards the cadaver lying on the table.
"You couldn't have called Dan?" she asked.
"Dan and I aren't speaking at the moment," said Herbert. "And that's why it had to be you. Have you sent Vlad off for the night?"
"Yeah," she said skeptically. "Why aren't you and Dan speaking again?"
"It's not important," he said quickly. "But this is good – it'll give me time to assess the subject without any interference from Vlad."
"He didn't mean to get in the way last time, you know" Cassie defended. "He thought you were hurting me."
"I do hurt you," Herbert said matter-of-factly as he filled a syringe with re-agent. "Only when you ask."
"Ooh, look at you, cracking the sex joke," she chided, taking up her bat and readying herself for the reanimated chaos that would ensue. "I'm impressed. So…what are you gonna do with this guy?"
"I haven't perfected it yet, but if my theories are correct, then I will be able to restore life with the re-agent, and then conscious thought through nano-plasmic energy," he said.
"NPE?" Cassie asked, hoping he would go for the abbreviation so she didn't have to remember the actual word. "You mean you figured out how to hold onto something like that?"
"Precisely. However, your assistance in the matter will be greatly appreciated if anything goes wrong," said Herbert. "Even though it took you long enough to get back here."
"Hm," Cassie said distantly, examining the body as she walked around the table. "It looks like nothing's gonna be able to assist him; his jaw's been ripped off. How did that happen?"
"Again, not important," said Herbert, positioning the needle at the base of the corpse's neck and injecting it carefully. "I'm going to need you to hold him down while I prepare the electro-shock equipment, so keep the bat close by, but…"
"I'm not holding that thing down!" said Cassie. "You shouldn't even be bringing him back in the first place – if he everything works out like you say it will, how's he gonna survive?"
"He will more or less have to adapt to it. Re-animates are surprisingly durable in that sense," said Herbert, pulling the needle out and glancing down at the body. "Now if you don't mind…!"
Before he got a chance to finish, the corpse sat up, tongue waggling and struck Cassie across the face with its flailing fist, knocking her to the ground. Not wasting any time, he turned around and decided that he should keep his gun in a place where he could find it, because it didn't seem to be hanging anywhere on the coat rack.
Not that it mattered much when the re-animate had a firm grip on his throat.
Cassie peeled herself up off the floor and smashed it in the back of the head with her bat, but all that seemed to do was anger the creature further and caused it to grab her by the throat as well and lift her up.
Herbert had always known Cassie had a hard head – that was a given, but never had he wanted to experience it first hand in the form of having his own skull cracked against hers.
He didn't know how long he'd been out when he found himself being shaken awake by a rather nervous-looking Cassie. His head was killing him and looking at her, he knew hers must have been hurting too, since it was bleeding a little more than his.
"Where's the subject?" he asked, trying to feign consciousness.
"I don't know, I just woke up too," said Cassie. "You okay?"
"We have to find it," he said, standing up. "Can you walk?"
Cassie pulled herself up as well and took up the bat again. "More like run," she said. "Let's go."
Finding the front door open and broken out once they got to the top of the stairs wasn't a good sign. He exchanged a glance with Cassie and to his surprise, she was the first one out the door, ready to attack anything that moved. He decided he liked that violent quality in her at the moment.
What he found he didn't like on the other hand was not being able to find her about an hour later while wandering through the graveyard and realizing that she was his only means of protection since he hadn't remembered to bring a weapon of his own. He had an extra hypo of re-agent – that was it.
Calling out for her was his first inclination, but that would draw unwanted attention to him from either the new neighbors with the irritating kids a little ways off or from the re-animate itself. Neither of which seemed very attractive, so he was reduced to hissing out her name as loudly as he could, looking around desperately for her, but to no avail. She was off hunting and probably wouldn't remember him until she'd killed the prey in question. He tried to think of what Dan might tell him in this situation, but then he realized Dan wouldn't put himself in this situation by getting involved with a woman like Cassie. Herbert was on his own.
Not that it mattered when screaming echoed from the neighbor's house. Wherever the screaming was, the re-animate was, and that probably meant Cassie too.
But before he'd even arrived there, he was being seized up by police – not for murder or for the presence of a jawless man in someone's house, but for wandering a graveyard while slightly bloody. And there was nothing he could do about it.
As his arms were being forced behind his back, he looked over and noticed Cassie ducking behind a gravestone, moving to come out with her bat in hand. He shot her a quick glare and shook his head, knowing they'd seize her up too if they saw her at all, let alone with a deadly weapon. They'd probably charge her with wandering a graveyard while wearing too much makeup, he thought grimly, just as they steered him away.
In retrospect, if he'd have known that was the last time he was going to see her for a while, he would have acquiesced to her advances earlier.