by Stacey Jay
“It’s cool,” Kimberly said. “She’s not going to be around to tell anyone about it.”
Well, there went any doubt about whether or not they planned to kill me. This just kept getting better and better.
“But we weren’t supposed to have to do this. One of the zombies was supposed to—”
“It’s not too late,” Aaron said. “Everything will be fine.”
“Oh yeah? We’re supposed to raise the army at ten and it’s already eight. How are—”
“I’ll take care of it,” Aaron snapped. “I’ve made plans.”
“How? You’re not going to be able to make it to a hospital and—”
“Shut up!” Aaron screamed so loud half the girls in the car jumped. “I told you. I’ve. Made. Plans.”
“Aaron will take care of it, Felicity,” Dana said, her words seeming to calm the entire van. She was a natural leader, that one. Too bad she had to use her talent for evil.
I still wasn’t sure what these freaks were up to, but there was no doubt it was bad news. That part about the “army” rising at ten o’clock sounded especially nasty. Jess had a history of big, violent gestures when it came to wielding her black magic, and it sounded like her time in prison hadn’t mellowed her out a bit.
Geez, how had this happened? How had she managed to organize a coven of evil cheerleaders while she was supposed to be rotting behind bars? Settlers’ Affairs had some major explaining to do.
“He’d better take care of it,” Felicity said.
“If I were you, I’d start watching my mouth.” Aaron squeezed me so tight I couldn’t help but whimper. “Unless you want your ass left on shore tonight.”
“You wouldn’t dare, you—”
“Stop it,” Dana said, raising her voice to be heard. “Lee, take the next exit.”
Lee Chin nodded and turned off just after we crossed the bridge. Now we were driving right along the river, which was entirely too much of a coincidence. Whatever the cheerleaders were up to, this must have been what Cliff was trying to warn me about.
“This is not the time to turn on each other,” Dana continued. “We’re a team, and if we keep acting like one, everything is going to work out just like we planned.”
“But it’s so hard,” Kate whispered. “It wasn’t supposed to be this hard.”
“Isn’t being young and beautiful forever worth a little effort?” Dana asked, barely concealing her frustration. “I mean, we didn’t win state last year sitting on our bottoms. We practiced every day and made sacrifices.”
The van was quiet for a moment before Lee Chin piped up from the driver’s seat. “But no one had to die for us to win state.”
Dana’s head snapped around to the front. “Fine, Lee, if you want out, pull over.”
“I don’t want out,” Lee said hastily. “It’s just that no one said we were going to kill her.”
“And you don’t have to,” I said, seeing what might be my only chance to inject some sanity into this situation. “I know black magic can really mess with your head. Believe me, I understand. But you guys don’t have to go through with this. We can stop it all right now. Let me call SA and we can talk to them, explain what Jess was trying to make you do and—”
“She isn’t making us do anything. We went looking for her and said we were willing to do whatever it took to work the spell.”
“Aaron’s right,” Dana said. “This was what we all wanted. The vote was unanimous.”
“Besides, we knew people were going to die,” Aaron said, not bothering to conceal his contempt for the naysayers in the vehicle.
“What does it matter if one of the dead people happens to be someone we know? It’s not like any of you are friends with Megan.”
There was much nodding of heads as this was generally agreed to by everyone in the van. Gah! What assholes they were.
“But what about Tabitha?” I asked. “I’m sure she wasn’t supposed to—”
“Tabitha screwed up,” Dana said. “She should have vacated the woods as soon as she dropped the zombies. I mean, there are snakes and stuff in the swamp. And those big rats they say aren’t rats but totally are. What are those called?”
“Nutria,” Nina, the new girl, said. So far she’d been sitting pretty quietly in the corner near the back, and I’d been hoping she might prove to be a bit more sane than the others. No such luck. “They are so gross.”
“Totally!” Dana smiled. “Which just proves Nina is a way better choice to be young and beautiful forever. I mean, at least she’s smart.”
More mutters of agreement and nodding of heads ensued. Nina beamed.
“This is crazy—you all realize that, don’t you?” I asked, struggling to keep the hysteria from my tone. “Whatever Jess has told you she can do, it’s a lie. She can’t make you young and beautiful forever. She’s just using you to get to me. She’s crazy! You know that, right? She’s been after me ever since we were ten years old and—”
“Shut her up, Aaron,” Dana said.
“Gladly.” Aaron’s hand slammed down over my mouth. “Slow down, Lee. I’m getting out in two blocks.”
“What?” Felicity asked. “But we’re already set up—”
“I told you I’ve made plans. I’ve got a special date waiting for Megan and me at the old hospital. I figured if bringing the living Undead to her wasn’t working, I’d bring her to the living Undead.”
“Awesome!” Dana beamed at Aaron as Lee Chin pulled over to the side of the road. “So you’re going to—”
“Take care of Megan’s part in this, get the blood of the living Undead after he’s bitten her, and then meet you all at the site.”
“Are you sure?” Lee asked. “We can wait for you here.”
“Yeah, Aaron. You don’t want to be late,” Dana said. “We can’t work the summoning or the youth and beauty incantation without that blood.”
“Don’t worry.” Aaron pulled me to my feet and dragged me toward the back of the van. “It’s only a couple of blocks. I’ll be there in plenty of time. This is something I think I should do alone. If I get caught, I wouldn’t want any of you to go down for murder.”
As we dropped to the pavement, I caught looks of complete freaked-outed-ness on the faces of a few of the girls. Crazy or not, there were definitely those who thought this was wrong.
It would have made me hopeful . . . if any of them had stayed behind. Instead, Nina and Felicity slammed the doors shut and the van pulled away, disappearing down the deserted street.
Now it was only Aaron and I, headed toward a very creepy abandoned building that was crumbling into the river a few feet away.
The river. Just like Cliff said. If I’d listened to him, maybe he and I would be nipping this army-of-the-dead thing in the bud, and I wouldn’t be locked in a psycho cheerleader’s arms on my way to die in a fashion I was sure wasn’t going to be fun.
CHAPTER 20
“This used to be a children’s hospital. For kids with tuberculosis. They closed it in the fifties,” Aaron said, his hand still clamped over my mouth. Guess he didn’t want me to interrupt his amateur tour guide routine. “You’re not going to believe the view from the roof. It’s gorgeous.”
He kissed my head, close enough to my ear to make me stumble on the stupid skates I was still wearing. If he tried to take this kissy-kissy crap any further, I was going to puke.
“Come on, let’s get a closer look.” Aaron dragged me toward the entrance, a great mass of gray stone with sharp angles and vertical lines.
It also made me think of teeth—big, scary teeth pocked with cavities protecting a black hole of a mouth that hadn’t been fed in a long time. The building was hungry, and no measly chain-link fence across the doorway was going to keep it from sucking me inside and picking my bones clean. Call me crazy, but it seemed like a good time to fight for my life, before Aaron managed to get us inside to meet up with my living Undead “mystery date.”
I moaned, then let my entire body go limp,
faking a girlish swoon.
“Hey now, we’re not there yet.” When Aaron bent to adjust his grip, I struck.
Kicking with my feet, I hurled myself at his legs, knocking us both to the ground. My shoulder exploded with pain, but I ignored it and the little black and white spots pricking at the edges of my vision. I rolled over, slamming my good fist into Aaron’s stomach as I went.
“Bitch!” He grunted and reached for me, but I kicked him upside the head with my skate, sending him back to the ground with a groan.
My hands shook as I tore at my laces, loosening them just enough to slip the skates off my feet, knowing my trusty weapons would have to go if I was going to have any chance of outdistancing Aaron.
“Megan! Get back here!” Aaron surged back into a seated position—blood dripping down his face—but I was already on my feet and running for it.
If I hadn’t been injured, I might have stayed to fight even though Aaron was six inches taller and outweighed me by fifty pounds. Barker and Smythe had taught me ways to take down bigger opponents, but not when I had a throbbing, gaping wound and only limited use of one arm.
So I ran, sprinting down the dark street in my sock feet toward the lights of a liquor store a few blocks away. This area of downtown was all but deserted except for gangs, crack addicts, and bums, and was hardly the place for a sixteen-year-old girl to be walking the streets, but I would have been relieved to see anyone at all. Even getting robbed to support someone’s coke habit sounded great compared to death by insane male cheerleader.
“Megan! Come back here!” Aaron roared, obviously not concerned about being overheard. “Come! Back! Here!”
My heart raced even faster and a frightened sound escaped my lips. The boy behind me was crazy. Totally out of his mind. If he caught me, he was going to feed me to a zombie. And it was going to be unthinkably awful, far worse than anything the Undead could ever have done on their own.
Zombies—real zombies or these poor coma victims Aaron had been raising—were only vessels, after all, and couldn’t hold a candle to the pure evil of the people who raised them to do their dirty work. A zombie would munch on your flesh, but it wouldn’t derive pleasure from watching you suffer.
But Aaron would. I knew that, and it scared me more than any OOGP.
“Help! Help me!” I screamed as I got close to the liquor store. I was quick, but Aaron had longer legs and the speed of the crazy. He was catching up fast. I had to run harder, had to get to the freaking door before—
“No!” I half sobbed, half screamed the word as I finally reached the door and jerked on the handle, only to find it locked and the lit store deserted. It was a Friday night, for God’s sake! Why was a liquor store closed at eight o’clock?
Oh God. The locked door from Cliff’s vision. I had to get away from this place. Fast.
But I didn’t even have time to release the handle, let alone try to run, before Aaron was on me, slamming my body against the glass door.
“Do not run from me! Do you hear me?” he screamed directly into my face, holding me captive with hands fisted in my hair. I winced and gritted my teeth as fresh agony bloomed in my shoulder and now in my scalp. “There isn’t time.”
“Okay, okay,” I whispered, silent tears rolling down my face as I struggled to breathe. I felt like I was going to pass out. If only I’d slept more than a few hours last night, maybe I wouldn’t feel so weak—maybe I could have run faster or fought harder and wouldn’t feel so trapped and helpless.
“No, it’s not okay.” Aaron’s eyes grew even flatter as he wrapped his hands around my throat, apparently deciding that me having trouble breathing was working for him. It looked like Cliff’s vision was coming true, every horrible detail. “But it’s going to be okay. We’re going to make it okay.” Then, he smiled like we were BFFs again.
God, he was crazy. So crazy. I wanted my mom and dad, I wanted Ethan, someone who could take all this bad, scary stuff away.
Why had Ethan and I fought? Why had I kissed another guy when I loved Ethan more than anything? And why did I have to get close to dying to realize it wasn’t the physical stuff that had me freaked, but realizing I would fall even harder if Ethan and I took things to the next level? That was what scared me, to think I could need him any more than I already did.
And that was why Cliff was safe. I didn’t love Cliff, and by pure virtue of the fact that he was a dead guy bound for the grave, I knew I never would. I wouldn’t get the chance, and so Cliff would never get the chance to hurt me.
It all made sense now. If only I could have told Ethan, maybe he would have understood.
“Please.” My voice wasn’t much more than a whisper, a beaten thing drifting in the bruised cotton of my oxygen-starved mind.
“Just go to sleep,” Aaron said.
I tried to resume struggling, but couldn’t manage more than a twitch or two, even though my inner voice was screaming that I couldn’t let this happen. I couldn’t black out. There was a serious chance I wouldn’t wake up again. I had to fight . . . had to . . .
“When you wake up everything will be better. I promise.”
Aaron bent his head, as if he would kiss me on the lips this time, but everything went dark before I could know for certain. As I lost consciousness, I tried to be thankful for the little things.
When I woke up, I kept my eyes shut while I did a quick mental check in on my situation to see if it was still Extremely Dire or I’d been downgraded to threat-level Majorly Awful. Unfortunately, Extremely Dire still seemed the rule of the day.
My head hurt like nobody’s business, my hands were bound behind my back, and I was very thirsty and very cold. Wherever Aaron had taken me, I was still outside. The cold wind whipping across my chapped lips and the soft prick of snow as it hit my cheeks and melted confirmed that much. My face was numb and stiff and probably in danger of frostbite, but I was alive.
Alive was good. Staying that way, however, would be even better. So I didn’t open my eyes right away. Better to try to figure out where Aaron was and what he was up to before I—
“I know you’re awake. I saw your eyelids move.”
God! I hated this guy. Hated him with the white-hot intensity of a billion Boy Scout campfires. “I bet you were a Boy Scout, weren’t you, Aaron? You look like you were a Boy Scout,” I croaked as I slowly opened my eyes. It sounded like I’d taken up a pack-a-day smoking habit . . . or nearly been strangled to death. Take your pick.
“Yep, for five years. My dad was scout leader.” We were indeed outside—on the roof of the old hospital, if I had to guess—and Aaron was sitting a few feet away, black and red candles burning in a semicircle around him and what looked like a dead body wrapped in a sleeping bag. The living Undead he’d mentioned, I supposed? Some poor coma victim he’d appropriated for his own evil purposes? “One of the perks of being an only child. My parents had a lot of time to devote. If you’d taken the time to do your research, you’d know that.”
Okay. He was even crazier than I’d thought. Which was pretty freaking crazy. “My research? Why should I have been researching you, Aaron? I thought you were a friend.”
“You thought I was a creep,” he said, proving he wasn’t as oblivious as I’d thought. Nuttier than your average granola bar, yes, but not oblivious. “You’d get this little curl in your lip every time I touched you.”
“You had no business touching me.”
“You have no business being alive,” he snapped. “Not anymore.”
“Aaron, please,” I said, sensing reasoning with him was futile, but knowing I had to try. Lying on my side with my arms tied behind my back didn’t leave me many other options. At least not until I could get my hands free. Slowly I wiggled my fingers, willing the rope to stretch. “You don’t want to do this. That person needs to be in the hospital.”
“The entire Veterans’ Hospital smells like piss. He’ll be better off dead.” Aaron waved away my concern with a little smile. “And maybe losing a patient will
teach the staff a lesson. Getting him out was way too easy. I just walked in, stuck him in a wheelchair, and walked out. Their security blows. Shows how much we care about the brave men and women who served our country.”
Okay, so much for pleading for mystery dude’s life. I was going to have to change tactics. “Fine, but you’re wasting his life and mine. I swear Jess can’t do what she’s told you she can do. She can’t make you and the rest of the cheerleaders young and beautiful forever. There’s no spell capable of—”
“I know she can’t. That’s just what we told the others to get them to cooperate.” Aaron pulled a small bag from behind him and began to unpack bunches of herbs. “Jess needed a coven of thirteen to raise the army. I knew I’d never get Dana or the others to agree to do that just to help Jess, so I thought of something else they’d want and offered them that instead.”
“And they just believed you? Didn’t they—”
“After they saw how powerful Jess and I are together, they were ready to believe just about anything. Plus, we worked a little spell to show them what they’d look like in twenty-five years.” He laughed.
“Most of them were so fat it was easy to convince them to sell a little piece of their soul to keep away those pesky middle-aged pounds.”
“But Jess has been in prison, maximum-security prison. How did you—”
“I can channel her spirit. She can inhabit my body and give me the power I need,” he said, this dreamy look on his face that revealed how pleasurable he found this alleged experience, though I’d never known anyone who successfully “channeled” another person, at least not a living person. That was pure legend as far as I knew. “That’s how I raised the zombies tonight and the patients from the hospital.”
“Aaron, I don’t know what you think—”
“That’s because you’re not asking the right questions,” he snapped impatiently. “After seeing you escape the living Undead without a bite on you, I expected more. But I guess you’re all brawn and no brain.”
“So what should I be asking?”
