She moved her collar aside to show a perfect set of gentle bite marks.
Well, no hiding what we are now, I thought.
She must have seen the look on my face. “I won’t tell, I promised,” she said. “We thought you’d been… Well, anyway, I did it to keep him strong. We need him, but”—she grabbed me in a tight hug—“we need you more. Don’t leave without telling us again.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Please?” she added.
“Promise,” I said. It was odd that I meant it.
Satan nudged my hand and smelled me. I stroked him as he jumped up. He was then lured away by the smell of museum sweets and crisps.
Introductions aside, I couldn’t help the smugness slipping off my smile like icing off a cake as Nicholas recognized Rollins, whose first name turned out to be Josh. They shook hands, and Nicholas threw me a warning glance. I caught it and threw him back a satisfied grin.
“A word,” Nicholas said to me.
I followed him down into the red velvet underground room.
“Nice shirt.” He motioned to the Union Jack stretched across my bosom.
“You fed off the mother?”
“She seemed the most trustworthy.”
“I’m surprised half the children weren’t gone.”
“I’m surprised you left them with me then, seeing as how you don’t trust me.”
Damn his logical arguments.
“You wouldn’t have killed any of them,” I said it reluctantly. It was true, but annoying.
“I’m glad you realize that. In that vein, we need a plan to get them out of here.”
“Why? Here’s defendable.”
“But for how long? We need to get them to Scotland, like we were told to.”
“Okay. There’s also something else.”
“You mean apart from the spitting image of your dead love in the next room?”
“You touch him, and I’ll—”
Too quickly, he was on top of me, knocking me over and pinning me to the floor. He’d fed and was strong. “You’ll what?”
I wriggled uncomfortably. His breath still smelled of Tracy’s blood. I pushed and dislodged his body weight long enough to flip upright. He fell backward then regained his composure.
“I’m not your enemy. I never have been, Bria…Britannia.”
“Tell it to someone who gives a crap!” I waved my hands around in an over-exaggerated shrug
“What were you going to tell me?”
“What?” What had we been talking about? Oh, yeah. “Langdon says that he saw a zombie that looked like it was in charge.”
“Josh saw an alpha zombie?”
I chided myself again. “Yes, Josh did.”
“I’ll speak with him.”
I leapt forward and pinned Nicholas against the wall, my eyes radiating molten anger and my arm firmly across Nicholas’ throat.
“They’ll be nice words,” he added.
I let him go along with a breath. Stupid lungs and their unnecessary reflexes.
I stormed back up to the pub and sat by Danny. I could smell that he was getting worse. I saw the looks that all the other wards were giving him. If he couldn’t get the medicine he needed, then his life expectancy was short at best. At worst, he was a liability to the rest, yet another problem to lump into the undead cocktail of crap that my life was fast becoming. I put my arm around him and hugged him. For the first time in a long time, I felt that everything was spinning out of my control. Like I was some angry character in a supernatural novel lurching from one disaster to another—all at the whim of a twisted author out to titillate her readers at my expense.
“You okay?” Danny looked up at me.
“I should be asking you that,” I replied.
He strained to smile at me. He was exhausted. Being chased by ravenous animated corpses will do that to you. I was conscious that if I hugged him too tight I could break his bones, so I settled for resting my chin on the top of his smooth head.
“I know what you are,” he whispered.
“You do?” Here we go again.
“I won’t tell.”
“What do you think I am?”
He looked up at me, grinned, and then whispered, “You’re an angel.”
Thankfully, my hair was still loose, so I could cover my face and hide the stray tear that dribbled down my cheek.
We slept. Tracy kept guard over me and Nicholas. Although we stayed with everyone else, our sleep was more like a coma. We had to do our nine hours before we set off. It was a long time to leave them all to their own devices, but I trusted them. Well, not Green. He kept giving me sly looks of condemnation. But I trusted Langdon. He’d watch over me and mine.
Chapter Eight
Everyone was still asleep when I awoke, even Nicholas. I carefully laid Danny on his side. His breathing was shallow, and his sweat smelled faintly of rotten chemicals.
“What’s wrong with him?” Josh was still lying near me, his beautiful hazel eyes now open.
“Leukemia,” I replied.
“Green wants to put him out of his misery. He says he’ll slow us down.”
I looked over at the sleeping Green, who was now sporting a fresh black eye.
“I didn’t agree with him.” Josh sat up.
I wanted to crawl over to him, to push myself into his embrace, drag my lips across his neck, and kiss his thrumming pulse beneath. I didn’t. Instead, I moved to sit next to him. We were so close that the tiny hairs on our bare arms were standing up and dancing with each other. I looked down. His arms were strong, tanned, and with just enough muscle. Mine were thin and pale and could have crushed a block of marble.
“I thought Iraq was bad,” he said.
“Are there zombies in the US?”
“Don’t know. We came back to a base here. We were on leave, doing the tourist thing in London.”
“Saw more than you bargained for, eh?”
“Definitely.”
“Any contact with your unit? I mean, after the undead crap hit the fan?”
“No. Not before or after undead crap.” He smiled a little then turned to me. “The way you move, how fast you are.” He shook his head.
“I’m a friend. Can we leave it there?”
“Nicholas, he’s…?”
“Like me. He’s not as pretty as me, though,” I laughed.
Way to fish for a compliment, Brit!
“No, he isn’t.”
He smiled at me. Even the dimples were as I remembered. I wanted to kiss him, to spill every secret I’d ever known to him, make sure nothing could ever come between us again. But I didn’t. Josh had enough problems right now—a million miles from home, unsure whether his friends and family were in danger too. I glanced at his left hand—phew, no wedding ring!
“What’s the plan?” he asked.
“We need a vehicle to be able to transport everyone safely. There’s a more permanent safe house up north.”
“Double Decker bus?”
“Yeah, that could work. We could put all the wards on the top deck and Nicholas and me on the roof. Can you drive one?”
“I can drive tanks, I can manage a bus.” He winked at me.
We made a good team—again.
“You don’t like Nicholas.” He stated it rather than posing it as a question.
“Is it that obvious?”
“He watches you.”
“He doesn’t trust me.”
“Why?”
“I…”
I really wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence. Because I kill his children? No, too violently gross. Because I begrudge the fact he made me a vampire? No, too much information. Because he’s fugly and dresses like a bad mime? No, too childish.
“You dumped his ass,” Josh said through a lopsided smile.
I didn’t want to lie to him, but it was kind of true, so I nodded. I might have even managed to blush too.
“I’m not exactly on the same page as Green either
,” he said.
“You dumped him too?” I laughed.
He rolled his eyes at me, and his lopsided smile became more even. “We were in the same unit in Iraq, and, you know, some people you just don’t take to, and some”—he turned to look at me—“some you just take to right away, regardless of their supernatural shenanigans.”
“Like you’ve met them before?” I prompted.
“Maybe, something like that.”
I fluttered my eyelashes like an idiot and looked away. Somehow, in the last five minutes, I’d reverted back to a sixteenth-century merchant’s daughter. The last four hundred odd years were red water under the bridge, a violent, lonely blur tumbling joyfully into the middle distance.
A retching sound broke the moment. I turned to see Danny bent over puking into a box of crisps. It woke everyone.
“He’s infected!” yelled Green, reaching for his gun.
Nicholas, now awake, deftly flicked Green’s gun’s ammo switch, allowing the bar of bullets to drop to the floor. Green blushed like it was his trousers that had fallen down.
“He’s not infected, he’s just sick,” Tracy said, moving to rub his back.
“Don’t you touch Danny!” yelled Rose. She stomped her little foot and marched up to Green. “Or Britannia will bite you!”
“Amongst other things.” I finished her train of thought and moved to stand on the opposite side of Danny.
The smell of puke was almost overpowering, but I forced my senses to ignore it. Me up-chucking a couple pints of blood wouldn’t help the situation.
“Back off, Green,” Josh said, getting up.
“So, what? We just sit here waiting for him to zombie-up and maul us all?”
Dr. Watts finally slunk from the shadows to defend her patient.
“He has leukemia. He has not been bitten. I’ve been with him the whole time.”
“She’s right,” Henri chimed in.
Green put his hands up in mock surrender, and the tension seemed to ebb.
I put my hand to Danny’s forehead. It was clammy and hot. “He has a fever,” I said.
“He’s dying.” Dr. Watts didn’t even move any closer. Instead, she raised an eyebrow. “He was on chemo, and with no access to the right medications and equipment, well, he has a few days at most.”
I could have ripped her throat out. Not only had she told Danny, but also now everyone knew for sure—he was a liability.
Chapter Nine
We formed a plan. We were to go out and find a suitable bus, bring it back to the pub, load up, and make our way north. Josh had been a vigilant sight-seer and had remembered seeing a decent-sized Double-Decker outside the planetarium. It was designed for tourist rides through the city and could hold a large amount of people. We would drive across the country picking up as many survivors as we could. Tracy was in charge of getting everyone packed up and ready to move for when we pulled up. Five of us were going out—me, Nicholas, Josh, Green, and Satan—he really needed a walk to do his business, and there’d be no time for it later.
It was an unsettling atmosphere between the five of us. Satan was the type of dog who didn’t take well to other adult males—too much testosterone maybe? Whatever the reason, he trotted out glued to my leg. Josh was within grabbing distance, and the other two were up front where I could keep an eye on them.
“Were the streets this quiet before, Brianna?” Nicholas shot a quizzical look back at me.
I ignored him.
“Britannia, were the streets like this before?” he asked again.
“Kind of, but before there were at least some zombies around,” I replied.
“Are they nocturnal or something?” asked Green.
It was dusk, but I’d seen zombies out during the day. “I don’t think so.”
“Alpha zombie?” Josh kept his eye on the sight through his gun. He was scanning rooftops as if zombie snipers might be lying in wait for us.
“It could be the alpha. Perhaps it has the power to call them to him?”
Damn Nicholas and his good ideas! It was possible, certainly not improbable, that in their instinctual brains, zombies had an imprint of a power hierarchy. They felt a pull when they needed to build up a horde. The question was, if they weren’t here, where was the horde? Even the moans in the distance were silent. Had all the zombies packed up and gone on holiday?
We ran toward the Planetarium. Once there, Josh and Green broke onto the locked bus. I’d like to meet the driver who thought that his time was best spent locking his bus rather than gaining a couple of feet between him and a hungry undead throng.
The two soldiers then set about hot wiring the bus with their ill-gotten skills.
“Useful, aren’t they?” Nicholas watched as they twisted wires and worked in unison.
“Don’t be such a patronizing git,” I replied, not looking at him.
“I was only remarking. It’s good how they can work so efficiently together, yet—”
“Hate one another’s guts?”
“You finished my sentence. That’s what old married couples do.” Nicholas looked wistful, so I punched him in the face.
He reeled for a second then smiled. “It’s wrong to show love with violence.”
“Violence is how I show stomach-wrenching disgust.”
It was then that we both heard a sort of crying noise behind us. Nicholas turned and walked toward the buildings. I followed, my hands dancing on the hilts of my scythes.
“What was that?” Nicholas stared at the Planetarium.
Satan trotted behind us then barked. I followed his line of sight to Madame Tussauds, the building next door.
“Someone is in there,” I said.
“An alive someone, perhaps?”
“Hard to say until we push you into them. If they bite you, we’ll know they’re zombies.” I smiled at Nicholas, and he grunted.
“Everything okay?” Josh called from the bus.
“I need to check out the building.” I motioned to where Satan was all but pointing.
“We need more gas,” Green yelled.
“I beg your pardon?” Nicholas turned to him.
“Petrol, Nicholas, they need more petrol for the bus. We should—” I heard the noise again. This time, it was a muffled yet louder cry.
“We should fill up while it’s quiet,” Josh said as he walked over to stand by us.
“Agreed,” Nicholas replied.
“While you guys do that, I’m going to check out the waxworks.” I patted Satan’s head and turned to walk away.
“Hey, wait. You’re not going in there alone, are you?” Josh put his hand on my arm, and I instantly felt like I’d drunk a pint from an alcoholic.
“I’m not. Satan’s coming with me.”
Satan barked and jogged ahead of me.
“You’re going to let her go in there with just a dog?” Josh looked at Nicholas.
With an apathetic shrug, he replied, “I don’t let her do anything. She’s quite good at killing, you know. I doubt there’s anything interesting in there anyway.” He then turned to me and handed me his mobile. “If you find the Kylie Minogue waxwork, do take a picture on my phone for me. I doubt now that I’ll ever see her pert little behind again.”
“Fill up in the bus, and I’ll be back in a jiffy.” I stroked Josh’s hand, and he let me go.
I ran toward the building, Satan beside me. As we got to the entrance, he lifted his leg and pissed up the red velvet rope barriers, then began sniffing. I edged in, unsure of what was in there. I didn’t hear masses of noise, and the one thing that zombies did well was announce their presence with those ear-cracking, starving moans. I still heard the muffled something, though, so I followed it in. I walked past celebrities, movie stars, and royals. I found the waxwork of Jason Donavon and took a picture of his butt on Nicholas’ phone. It really was the little things that made life enjoyable.
Waxworks were an odd creation. You always felt like their eyes were on you, and I could swea
r that, at times, they would move, an inch here, an inch there. They were always just outside my peripheral version. It had been a long time since I’d felt disturbed by something, but to have so many dull glass eyes dotted about me and no smell—not even their clothes had be worn by living beings—it was weird. I was definitely starting to feel the feather-like touch of the heebie jeebies as they formed a conga line over my nerves. Although I couldn’t smell anything human, I could still hear something, and so I continued toward the sound, which of course was coming from the Chamber of Horrors.
Dark, damp, cold air almost slapped my face as I went in. If the other waxworks were creepy, these—the ones that were meant to be horrific—were downright unnerving. Scattered torture devices lined the deliberately narrow passages—the wheel, the rack, and the mutilated corpse of Guy Fawkes after he was hung, drawn, and quartered. Pale faces carved with agony drenched in bright red painted blood now replaced the vapid grins of mediocre celebrities. I remembered the use of such tortures. Their very presence in a place of entertainment was a testament to how numb humanity had become.
Satan nudged my leg. Even he felt it—the deliberately oppressive atmosphere clawing at our instincts. I heard the noise again, and we moved further in. I stopped by the French Revolution tableau, and my memory instantly zapped me like a cattle prod—Philippe, we couldn’t leave without him. Maybe he was trapped somewhere with a pocket of survivors. Maybe he was a pile of half-eaten blood and bone. I remembered when we first met. It was just before the French Revolution, and King Charles had sent me to France to broker safe passage back to England for a few semi-royals. The man I was to negotiate with turned out to be Philippe. Neither of us had expected another vampire. We were somewhat of a rarity—me, as a female, even more so. We instantly bonded, and suddenly, I had a friend.
Satan growled, and his hackles sprang up.
“What is it?” Like he was going to answer me!
I scanned the area around us, but saw nothing but waxwork body parts piled up—part of Madame Tussauds own display. Reputedly, she had sorted through discarded leftovers from executions during the French Revolution to find the heads to use as models for her waxworks. Executions that had been carried out with the guillotine, which, was itself, missing from the display. I had a brief moment to think it strange before Satan bolted forward. I followed him to the next part of the dungeon. He stood staring at the prisoner in the electric chair. The unfortunate waxwork strapped into it was masked with a hood to cover his face. There was a switch that ran off the display so bored school children and ghoulish tourists could flick it and electrocute him for their amusement. The crying noise had stopped. It hadn’t been human. Maybe a rat or cat had gotten in?
Bad Blood (Battle of the Undead Book 1) Page 7
