by PJ Schnyder
He chuckled, rich and warm enough to send shivers of a completely different nature down her spine. “Scientists in this age don’t believe enough in magic to tie it to any genetic origin.”
“Doesn’t mean it isn’t.”
“Ah. But magic has this way of being unpredictable. Sometimes it has a will of its own.”
She nodded. “Where have you seen witchcraft?”
“You’ll not find it in this city. Not anymore.” The corners of his mouth turned downward. “And for good reason. Seth’s lover was a witch, though she didn’t belong to any coven. A rogue, you call it? Learned on her own. Back then, we were stretched too thin, trying to get the initial outbreak under control. She wanted to help, wanted so badly to show Seth she could contribute, protect the pack. She tried to cast a spell to send the zombies to a specific location, where they could be controlled and put down. It backfired on her, best we can tell. A large number of zombies were drawn to her instead. She thought she had the power to keep herself safe, but she didn’t. And good wolves died trying to protect her too. If Seth’d been there, he’d have died himself. As it is, he’s not forgiven himself...or her.”
Oh no. “I’m sorry.”
Danny lifted one shoulder and let it drop. “It wasn’t you. But you need to respect Seth’s word as law on the subject. There will be no witchcraft until the zombie threat is neutralized.”
“But you, you don’t have the same hard line.” Might not be safe to fish for it, but she had a hunch. And she’d never ignored those.
His mouth twisted. “Magic isn’t much different from weaponry. It’s not in and of itself an evil. What Seth is afraid of is ever seeing someone die again because they relied on magic. Same could be said of a weapon. The minute a warrior relies too much on the quality or strength of their weapon and not enough on their given presence of mind, they are lost.”
Very true. Too many people looked to magic as the one-stop shop solution to all their troubles. Too often, it only complicated things.
She searched for safer topics and couldn’t think of any. Maybe a different direction on the current one would be better. “But you’ve encountered witches in your life, before this epidemic?”
He made a rude noise. “I’ve traveled several continents and encountered more practitioners of magic than I’d have liked to. The ones who truly are harmless never did anything to attract anyone’s notice. Those doing harm to themselves or others, whether by accident or design, those are the ones I remember.”
Anyone would. The desire to protest, to explain to him the witch’s promise. She’d long since given up the argument out of practicality. Those who didn’t know generally weren’t open to being educated. And too often, the purity of the promise had been tainted in any case.
“Some of us still follow the old ways, the traditional promise.”
“Primum non nocere. Do no harm.” Danny raised one eyebrow. “And it almost got you killed. Tells me a lot about you, the way you hold to your beliefs even in the face of a sickness worse than death. And so I’ll ask you now to promise. If I am to help you find out more about your sister, you won’t practice witchcraft here.”
No one knew where the oath originated or how. Only that it began among healers. And Danny must be old to be a traditional healer. Why else would a werewolf, of all beings, state the very core of medical ethics, the precursor to the Hippocratic Oath? And witches had been healers too, once upon a time. Some of them still were...or hoped to be.
She bit her lip. He’d said so himself. He wouldn’t have gotten to her in time.
He reached out then, placing his hand over the auto-injector case for a moment before lifting higher. His fingertips tracing her collarbone until they hooked on the cord holding the leather pouch around her neck, lifting it free of her shirt. “Only these, and only to save your life. Nothing more.”
On an intellectual level, she was certain she could find the clues she needed to learn what had happened to her sister. She could search in daylight, avoid the walking dead where her group of scientists had attracted them. But her gut told her she needed this man. Not only because he’d rescued her, but because their meeting had changed the course of their lives and such things weren’t always coincidence. He’d met her and he’d saved her.
And would again and again, if need be. Another hunch. A scary one, if she thought on it too hard. She’d never been as good at foretelling as her sister had been. Never had faith in her own predictions. She’d always believed she could change her fate...if she wanted to.
“I promise.”
He nodded in acceptance and withdrew his hand, letting the leather pouch drop back against her sternum. His touch had been featherlight but it lingered, tingled. “You won’t need to use it, though.”
“No?” She licked her bottom lip as she pushed naughty thoughts to the back of her mind. Not thinking straight. Must remember.
“I’ll be protecting you now.”
His kiss caught her by surprise. She gasped as the heat of his lips pressed against her own. His tongue swept in, gently tasting, and she answered back in kind. His hands slid over her forearms and glided up to grip her shoulders as he deepened their kiss, sent her drowning. She grasped his wrists, anchoring herself and trying to make sure he didn’t let her go. This. She needed this.
He let them both up for air and he let loose a quiet growl. “I meant what I said earlier, but you tempt me beyond reason.”
She tightened her hold on him. “Don’t leave.”
He leaned forward, pressed a kiss against her forehead. “I won’t. But you need rest tonight and in the morning we’ll talk more on what we’ll actually be doing. Let’s both work on the thinking part of our brains, shall we?”
Rational thought was highly overrated.
He stood then, and slipped around her on the bed until his back was braced against the wall and his legs bracketed her on either side. Gathering her in his arms, he settled her against his chest.
“Tell me about this sister you’re so determined to track down.”
“Helen.” Sadness washed through her, breaking past the dam she had built to compartmentalize her emotions, to function.
“How did you know where to find her?” Danny’s arms tightened around her and she leaned her head against his chest.
“She was here before the zombie outbreak happened, on a trip to do some soul searching. We’d had a fairly strict childhood. She’d been keeping in touch with an email a day, and sometimes funny postcards she found from the tourist attractions. The last one she sent me was this building in the shape of an upside down purple cow.” She laughed despite the painful memories.
“It was a bit of a circus and comedy festival. Brilliant, really, back when it was still running.” He began rubbing her arm up and down in long, soothing strokes.
“In her last email, she said she was going to find her fate.” Deanna chewed on the inside of her cheek. “I didn’t know what she meant by that, but she said she’d left something for me in ‘the place she always wanted to show me.’”
“You’ve never visited London before this?” His chin rested on the back of her head, tucked as she was against him.
“No. I always wanted to though, and always talked about exploring Hyde Park. It’d always been a place of natural magic nestled in the midst of an old, old city in my mind.” Still was. But the magic was twisted now, tainted. And the horror there...she gritted her teeth, summoned back the old reasons she’d be interested in the location. “Just walking the paths in there and letting the feel of the place soak into my bones was something I dreamed of.”
And now she’d remember running down those paths afraid for her life.
“What kept you?” He’d made the question light, but there was something else there.
And then the guilt crashed over her. “I was finishing my
thesis on cellular permissiveness to prion infectivity.”
“Prions. Like mad cow disease or transmissible spongiform encephalopathy?”
“Yes to both, though I focused on TSE. I’d wanted to pursue science in conjunction with my witchcraft, where Helen poured everything she was into her Craft. My studies took longer.”
Danny tensed under her at the mention of witchcraft, but he’d asked to know more about her sister. “Our Craft tied us together, made our bond as twins much more tangible... It’s how I know she died.”
A moment of silence. “I wondered why you didn’t ask Seth to search and see if there’d been a chance she survived. You already knew.”
“Yes.” She had to force the word out past the grief closing her throat. “And it wasn’t a bite. It wasn’t any damage to her body. I’d have the scar somewhere on mine. I’d have felt it, lived it with her. Happiness and hope, frustration and pain, we shared them across our bond.”
And other, intimate things. Deanna blushed. Her sister had enjoyed life, including many lovers. It’d been a part of her more adventurous nature.
“What I got from her instead was fear, and a slow aching pain in every limb. I dreamed of my arms and legs being too heavy to lift and my vision clouding over.” She sat up so she could look him in the eye. “Our bond was strongest when we were asleep. I drugged myself to stay asleep longer in the last days, trying to let her know she wasn’t alone and that I was coming. But then the quarantine went up and I couldn’t book any kind of travel to the UK at all, much less London.”
He met her gaze and held it. The strength beneath those dark eyes rose up and buoyed her. “If you manifest the physical damage your twin suffered, it’s a wonder you aren’t a zombie yourself.”
She’d thought the same.
“I needed to know what the zombies were. Prions were theorized as a possible causation, so I got myself a position on the research team. They could hardly refuse me, considering my contribution to the efficacy of the vaccine.” Even though the team had known she was a witch, she hadn’t ever explained her true interest in the research to anyone, not even to Professor Reyes. Telling Danny was more than giving him the information he needed to know to help her, it was opening a flood gate, finally allowing everything to flow out of her. It wasn’t just the worry for her sister or the desire to find out what had become of her. It was the desperate need, her need, to discover what had caused the prolonged suffering and understand it, so that Helen could finally rest. “And now I’m here, and I have to go and find what she left behind for me.”
“Where is this place in Hyde Park, the one she always wanted to show you?” Suspicion tinged his question. He already had an idea.
No use dragging it out. Besides, she had a hunch honesty, and nothing but, would be a necessity to earning Danny’s help and trust. “The huntress statue, in the rose garden.”
“Oy. You two didn’t make this easy, did you.” He pulled her close again, firmly tucking her head under his chin. “Do you think you can go back so soon? That’s very near where I found you.”
“We set up camp nearby.” She swallowed hard. Could only get the confirmation out in a whisper.
His arms tightened around her. “I can’t take you back there if you’ll go barmy on me.” A pause. “I won’t take you back if it will hurt you.”
“You won’t be able to retrieve it without me.” She definitely didn’t want to go back there. But the need to know overrode the terror of the night.
“Then we go.” Simple. No doubt of success. How was he so confident?
Chapter Five
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Danny studied the line of trees edging Rotten Row. It used to be a broad expanse of dirt for horseback riders. Now, the name had taken on a whole new meaning.
Staring at the line of trees and the park beyond, Deanna nodded. “Sure I am. You getting cold feet?”
Her bravado fell a wee bit flat, given her almost imperceptible trembling. Her face was pale and her heart rate accelerated, but she’d also set her jaw and her breathing was steady. Not a full twenty-four hours since her close call and she was facing the terror with the kind of courage people wrote books about.
“If a zombie approaches, let me dispatch it. Keep quiet. Noise will only attract more.” He frowned as she kept nodding. “Oy, I need a verbal from you. Let me know you’re understanding.”
She shot him a sharp glance. “Yes.”
He grinned. Good. She had a better chance of keeping it together if she was a touch riled up.
“This isn’t the way our team came in.” She jerked her chin to the right, in the direction of Queen Elizabeth Gate. “We didn’t see any at all as we entered from the corner gate.”
He wondered, briefly, if all humans thought in terms of entrances and gates, roads and paved footpaths. Made sense, he supposed. They’d built them. But he preferred game trails and lesser used paths.
“Perhaps not. There are a lot of wide open spaces there. But this is closer to the rose garden you said your sister described.” And this route gave him the best chance of getting her in and out in one piece.
“We didn’t realize the zombies were active during the day.” Her comment had been muttered under her breath, an observation.
Most likely she’d meant it for herself and not for him, but he responded anyway. “They are, but they’re slower. Sluggish. And tend to stay to the shadier tree areas. You can walk a good way into the park sometimes without seeing one. It’s why I made us wait until the noon hour. This time of day, you can outrun a corpse easily if there’s only the one. Don’t be daft and run right into the path of others. Keep your eyes open and stay near me.”
“But not too near.” She’d not sounded irritated, the way someone else might. She was taking his instructions seriously. A good thing. Otherwise, he’d not risk taking her in at all, not after he’d put so much effort into getting her out the previous night.
“Give me room to fight, but be aware of your surroundings while I’m engaged. Stay in the clear, downwind if you can.”
“Zombies hunt by smell too?” There might be a faint tremor to her voice. She still held steady in every other way.
“Not as well as shape-shifters.” In this, he could be reassuring. “They do seem attracted first by noise and excited by the scent of blood and fresh meat. If they see you, they’ll come to investigate, but their vision is poor. Worse the older they get and the brighter the daylight.”
“So stay silent and don’t bleed. Got it.”
He grinned, and his wolf aspect stirred with the anticipation of a dangerous run. He made the shift to his phase-form. Bones lengthened, tendons stretched and realigned. Muscles grew and bulked. He embraced the burning pain of it and let it stoke the readiness inside him. Alone, he could have crossed the length of Hyde Park into Kensington Gardens and come out the other side in either form. He was fast enough, stronger than half a dozen of the blighters at a time. Here, now, he had someone to protect. He was better equipped in his phase-form.
When he finished, he looked down at Deanna. She returned his gaze, and there was no disgust or rejection there. Only faith and trust. Another thing he had to give the little witch, she had no trouble accepting the supernatural. Tourists came in to see zombies, but weren’t prepared for how real the buggers were, or how real the werewolves were either.
“Right, then. In we go.” He led her across the street and onto an easy pathway through the widely spaced trees. There were zombies scattered throughout, but all of them were a distance away. Not one turned toward him and Deanna.
He moved on to the dirt of Rotten Row. She kept up with him, slightly behind and to one side. Harder to stay downwind in the open, and virtually impossible to remain unseen. One or two of the undead changed their shambling course and began heading toward them. Danny crossed the road hur
riedly. No sense in waiting for more to notice them. He’d take care of the ones on their trail when they caught up.
He motioned for Deanna to duck under the rail lining the road and then he stepped over it. At his height, it was easy enough, but the rail would slow the blighters down.
Across the asphalt path was the rose garden.
He studied the archways, looking for more of the things in the shade of the trellises. One or two, far down and not paying attention yet. Leading Deanna past those, they stepped into what had become an overgrown maze.
“They’re waking up.” But Deanna wasn’t staring at any approaching corpse. Instead, she was reaching out to lightly touch a thorned rose bush.
The roses had begun sprouting despite the lingering cold. They’d run riot in the nearly two years since the city had been overcome. No longer were they contained in neat beds. Thorned canes reached out across the pathways and upward, as if the roses were creating a fortress of their own.
“Careful.” He eyed the plants with suspicion. Sorcha had let the pack know lesser fae might begin taking back parts of the gardens. Perhaps the overgrowth was to protect more than the roses. Something about the feel of this place, the quiet and the way the roses were growing to form a sanctuary made him wonder if one had taken up residence. He’d have to talk to Seth about changing the patrols to ensure this area had what additional protection the pack could provide. Both because of their alliance with Sorcha and because they didn’t want zombies tasting any more fae blood.
“Can you feel it?” Her question came in a hushed whisper. “A guardian is here.”
“You can sense the fae?” And that had his interest.
“Mmm. Maybe? Not with any certainty. Not here. But there was one back at the clinic, wasn’t there? Call it a hunch supported by logic. Who else would have warmed the towels this morning?” She stepped carefully through the brambles, headed toward the center of the garden. “I wondered why the boys were allowed to stay on their own in the flats above the clinic. At first I thought it was Brian seeing to breakfast and cleaning up. Wish I’d had a bit of milk and honey to leave for the fae.”
