by Stacey Jay
“Dude’s a zombie?” Cruz asked, sounding surprised but not hostile. “What kind of zombie? I’ve never seen—”
“It’s not going to matter what kind of zombie if we don’t get down there,” Cliff said, pointing toward a bunch of flickering lights about a half mile away. “They’re starting the spell—can’t you feel it?”
And I could, like a hundred little needles scraping against my skin, promising pain and pleasure all at the same time. I closed my eyes and shuddered, not liking the churning deep in my bones one bit. I could feel the black magic calling to me, calling to the dark part of my power I’d finally set free up on the roof. It wanted to be free again, wanted to join in the—
“Then let’s go,” Monica said, snapping me out of my daze. God, I had to focus. And keep a tight rein on my power. No matter what Cliff said, I knew letting the “other” part of me out to play would be a very bad idea. “Where’s the rest of our backup?”
“Cruz is it.” Ethan stepped away from Cliff, but the angry buzz of energy between the two remained. “With the crisis in Carol, SA refused to send anyone until a disturbance down here is confirmed. Barker and Smythe are waiting for a call from Cruz.”
“I’ve got my cell,” Cruz said, his friendly face offering reassurance I wished I could cling to. “As soon as I see a circle or an Out-of-Grave Phenomenon, I’ll be on the horn. You’ve got my word.”
“By then it will be too late,” I said, despair blooming in my chest.
“What about Kitty?” Monica asked, the anxiety clear in her voice as well. “Surely she’d be able to see that—”
“I couldn’t get Kitty on the phone. We’re it,” Ethan said with a note of finality that put an end to any further discussion.
“Okay then,” Monica said, getting her all-business face on. “Then let’s get moving.” She headed off the trail and down the snow-dusted hill, taking a straight shot toward a circle of candles burning beneath the bridge. “Megan and her zombie can come in from the south and the three of us take the north?”
“Sounds good,” Ethan said. “Wait for a signal, Megan. With only four of us, we’ll be better off if we surprise them and attack all at once.”
“Okay, be careful.”
“Yeah, you too,” Ethan said before he, Cruz, and Monica veered north and Cliff and I veered south. His chilly tone made it pretty clear he hated my guts and didn’t care if I was careful.
Still, I turned to look over my shoulder as Cliff and I hurried toward the riverbank, unable to keep from trying to catch Ethan’s eye one last time. My heart did a celebratory touchdown dance when he turned around at the exact same moment, a worried look on his face.
He cared! He still cared!
Ethan turned back around fast, but I’d already learned what I needed to know. We still had a chance. If we could make it through tonight, maybe I could make him understand, and he’d forgive me and we’d—
“Get down!” Cliff tackled me to the ground, pressing his hand over my mouth as we rolled. Thank God my shoulder was feeling the tiniest bit better, or there was no way I would have been able to keep from screaming and we would have been spotted for sure.
Or maybe not. The girls huddled in the darkness a few feet away sounded pretty freaked out. They might not have noticed if we’d walked right into the middle of their circle and set up a picnic.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Aaron?” Lee Chin’s voice was shaking, but at least she wasn’t crying, not like several of the others. Poor cheerleaders. Apparently evil witchery just wasn’t as much fun as they’d thought it would be.
“Just shut up and light the altar. Hurry.” Aaron sounded . . . so not right, kind of like a cross between a tracheotomy patient and a gargling donkey.
“Aaron, I think you should go to the doctor. There’s so much blood and your head looks—” Dana’s words ended in a strangled sound as Aaron’s hand reached out and latched around her throat.
“Don’t think. Light. The altar. Now.”
“I’m out of here,” Felicity said, backing away from the clutch of shadows. “This isn’t what—”
“Leave and you die,” Aaron said, the chilling note in his voice enough to freeze Felicity in her tracks. “Get in position and light the altar. There are Settlers on the way. They’ll escape the binding spell under the bridge sooner or later. We have to be ready.”
Crap! The candles under the bridge were a trap. Anyone who got close to them would be stuck there. I started to get up, to try to warn Ethan and Monica and Cruz before it was too late, but Cliff grabbed my hand and shook his head, pointing back toward the coven. Reluctantly, I relaxed back onto the ground. He was right. Shutting down this spell was my first priority.
“So what’s the plan?” Cliff whispered, so close to my ear it felt like he was speaking directly into my mind.
The plan. Okay, we needed a plan. Too bad it was so hard to think with the smell wafting from the altar. It wasn’t even lit yet, but already I could feel the dark power of the herbs sliding across my skin, calling to me, making me want to join the circle and dance until the dead beneath us rose from their mass grave.
I shook my head, forcing away the seductive voice in my head, praying Cliff wouldn’t feel my weakness. “Wait until the altar’s lit and they step back, then rush the center and grab the ingredients and scatter them in the river. I’ll take care of Aaron,” I whispered.
“You’re going to have to use your power on him again, your full power, I’m not sure how, but I know it’s the only way to avoid using that spell I—”
“Right,” I said, still unwilling to even think about that just yet, but knowing better than to argue with Cliff. He’d been right too many times for me to doubt him. If he said I needed to use my full power, I would, but only as a very last resort. “But we’ll both have to be fast. We can’t let them start chanting or we’ll be trapped outside the circle.”
“Everyone take your blade and cut your right hand.” Aaron took a long, liquid breath as Felicity flicked her lighter open and touched it to the altar, sending the herbs flaring to life. “Now repeat after me.”
Crap! They were starting the chant. We had to move. “Come on, hurry.”
“No, wait,” Cliff said. “Something’s not right, something’s—”
“There’s no time.” I was on my feet and running toward the circle before Cliff could mutter another word of protest.
“Drop the knives,” I yelled as I breached the edge of the circle, knocking Dana to the ground as I rushed toward Aaron, only stopping when I saw the size of the huge knife in his hands. Yikes. Severely wrecked by his fall from the roof or not, he could still do some damage with a weapon like that.
“Oh. My. God. This is so precious.” Blood bubbled from a hole in the side of Aaron’s neck as he made a sound that vaguely resembled laughter.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the grossest thing about the dude. Now that the fire was lit, I could see that the back of his head was smashed flat, and shiny gray stuff was dripping down his neck into the collar of his shirt. His eyes, once a gorgeous shade of blue, were now cloudy and shot through with red, and his mouth was filled with blood that leaked down the sides of his lips every time he spoke. He was, in short, one of the scariest freaking things I’d ever seen, especially when he smiled.
“You’re here to save the day.” His grin faded a watt or two. “I can’t believe you figured out where we were so quickly. I’d be impressed if I didn’t hate you.”
“The feeling’s mutual.” I gave him my full attention when it became clear the rest of the girls weren’t making any move toward me or the altar.
The altar that Cliff was supposed to be dismantling even as I spoke. Gah! Where was he? It was like he’d just disappeared, which did not give me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside or lend me much confidence about telling Aaron to surrender. Still, I tried to make my voice as scary as possible when I issued my ultimatum. “You’ve got one chance to stop this. Put the knife down and turn yourself in t
o SA custody.”
“Or what?” Aaron took a menacing step forward, but I didn’t flinch.
“Or you’re going to die for real this time,” I said.
“Because you’re going to kill me? You, Megan Berry, Miss ‘I can’t kill these bugs for science class, will you please do it for me’?” He laughed again, but this time the giggle sounded way too familiar, sending a chill down my spine. “I’m impressed. You’ve become so dark. Guess that witch blood is working for you. If you’d discovered it sooner, maybe we could have been friends for real.”
It was crazy, but the look in Aaron’s eyes, the sound of his laugh, the way his voice floated up at the end of his sentences—he just didn’t seem like Aaron anymore. He seemed like—I mean, I’d rationally known he could be channeling Jess’s spirit and her magic, but I hadn’t expected . . . I hadn’t really thought . . .
“Jess?” I asked, my freaked-outed-ness clear in my high, thin voice.
“Jess? Oh no! Jess, is that you in Aaron’s body?” Aaron’s hands flew to his ravaged face and his eyes grew wide with fake shock before narrowing in hatred. “Yes, it is. I got stuck here when you killed him, you bitch. He was channeling my spirit to raise the living Undead. When you pushed him off the roof, I was trapped inside his body! A freaking dead body! And, unlike you, I don’t get off on dead guys.”
“But I—”
“You pushed Aaron off the roof?” Lee Chin asked, horror clear in her voice.
“You killed Aaron?” Kate and Kimberly breathed at the exact same time.
The tide was turning, and not in my favor. I had to talk fast.
“No, I didn’t. Aaron was trying to kill me. I was only defending myself. He’s the one responsible for his own death.” I turned back to Jess/Aaron. “Just like your mother would have been responsible for her death, if she had even died,” I said, gambling that what Aaron had said about Jess’s mother not being dead was the truth.
“Shut up. Don’t you dare say a word about my mother.”
“How does that feel, Jess? To know you dedicated your life to avenging some woman who couldn’t even be bothered to let you know she wasn’t dead?”
“Shut up! My mother loves me. She would be here if she could.” Jess in Aaron’s body took another step forward and gripped her machete even more tightly. “I know she’ll wish she was here to watch the person who sent her daughter to prison finally get what she deserves.”
“That’s what I don’t get,” I said, praying Cliff was working on that whole getting-into-the-circle-to-clear-the-altar thing. “Why do you still want to kill me when you know I didn’t kill your mother?”
“You ruined my life, and now you killed my fiancé!”
“I did not ruin your life, and I thought you were gay!”
“You killed him and trapped me in his dead body,” Jess yelled, ignoring my very logical arguments. “Have you noticed that, Megan? That my head is leaking brains?” Jess/Aaron swiped a hand across the back of Aaron’s head and hurled a bit of the sticky mess in my direction, getting close enough to make me flinch.
“Okay, fine!” I yelled, matching her volume. “Then what the heck is with the army of the dead and the zombie epidemic and—”
“The Settlers were never going to let me out of prison, so I figured I’d get rid of the Settlers.” Jess grinned as she traced a few runes in the air. I tried to back away, but it was like moving through molasses. It was suddenly impossible to force my muscles to function. Jess had evidently learned a few new tricks while she was supposed to be rotting in prison. “As soon as the borders close, I’ve got it on very good authority that no one is ever going to mess with me again. I’ll walk free and be princess of the very scary land of quarantined Arkansas.”
“Megan, don’t look at her hands!” Cliff yelled from somewhere behind me.
“Grab him, girls!” Jess ordered, not stopping her mesmerizing little finger dance for a second. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to look away. “You remember how we wanted to be princesses when we were little, Megs? How we’d dress up in all my old Halloween costumes and steal Clara’s jewelry from the safe in Dad’s room? Now I’m really going to be one. Isn’t that awesome?”
She was nuts. Completely nuts. I mean, she’d obviously never been all there, but now black magic had truly rotted what was left of her brain. There would be no reasoning with her. Which meant I was probably going to have to kill Aaron a second time.
The realization simultaneously turned my stomach and made the darkness within me do the happy dance. Which made me even sicker.
“What do we do with him?” Lee Chin asked from behind me, where I could hear her and several of the other girls grunting as they fought to hold on to a struggling Cliff.
“Throw him on the fire. Dead virgin blood will probably work as good as the living stuff. Did you know your little lover zombie was a virgin, Megan? That he died without—”
“Fight her, Megan!” Cliff cried, very real fear in his voice for the first time.
“No!” I screamed, fighting to move as my heart raced with fear. “Lee, Jessica can’t make you young and beautiful forever. She’s been lying to you just to—”
“They’ll never believe you, Megs,” Jess/Aaron said. “They’ve seen what I can do. They’re too afraid to doubt me. You should be afraid too.”
“Put him in the ground!” Cliff yelled. “Hurry, before—”
The machete flew at me before I could think to move. It was simply clenched in Aaron/Jess’s hands one second and hurtling toward me the next. If Cliff hadn’t twisted free from the cheerleaders and thrown himself between me and the knife at that exact second, I would have taken the blade right in the chest.
“Cliff!” I fell down beside him, the sight of the knife buried to the hilt in his neck finally breaking the hold Jess had on me.
“Don’t! Just watch yourself,” he said, his eyes pleading with me from his pale face. He was so badly hurt he could barely move his lips, but his first thought was still for my safety. He was just so good. Too good. “Put him in the ground, Megan. Put them both in the ground.”
I surged to my feet, facing Jess/Aaron across what was left of Cliff, my rage so thick I could feel it crawling across my skin.
She’d destroyed him. Even a dead guy couldn’t survive the kind of wound Cliff had sustained. The blade had almost completely severed his head from his body, and decapitation was one of the only ways to take down a zombie without magic.
That meant a wonderful person wasn’t going to be around anymore because of this evil freak. This wicked waste of flesh who was already responsible for the deaths of an innocent Settler, and a poor man whose only mistake had been being in a coma at a hospital with lousy security.
Jessica Thompson was a disease, a pestilence that deserved to be wiped off the face of the earth. And it looked like I was the one who was going to do the wiping.
“Drag the dead guy onto the altar, girls. We’ve got some zombies to raise,” Jess said.
“Move a muscle and I’ll make you bleed,” I said, freezing Lee Chin and Felicity where they stood.
“Get back in position or I’ll make sure that the river barge leaves without you. Then you can stay here with the dead people instead of being young and beautiful forever,” Jess countered, sending the girls scurrying to do her bidding. The smug look on her/Aaron’s face as she turned back to me sent my anger spiraling impossibly higher. “Looks like I win. Again.”
“You’ve never won shit, Jessica. And you’re not going to win now.”
“Oooo, cussing. Aren’t you a bad, bad girl?”
“You have no idea,” I said, and then I was running straight for her, dropping every wall I’d ever used to control my Settler power, hurling every ounce of rage in my body straight at the witch in front of me.
CHAPTER 23
I didn’t know any witch-type spells—I dealt with magic for the dead, not the living—and I didn’t want to call upon the darker power within me unless th
ere was no other option. Settler power was what I knew, what I was best at. So I did the only thing I could think of in the ten seconds it took me to reach Aaron/Jess. I invoked the “return to earth” command, determined to put them in the ground just like Cliff had told me to.
“Reverto terra!” I hit Aaron’s chest with both fists, shoving with all my physical strength and every ounce of my power.
Still, I never expected him to fly ten feet into the air, or for the earth beneath him to open like some toothless mouth and suck him beneath the soil. It all happened so fast, I barely had time to recover my balance before Aaron/Jess had disappeared.
“Oh my God. She killed Aaron again.” Kimberly brilliantly stated the obvious while Dana ran to the place where Aaron had vanished.
“Good, let’s get out of here while we still can,” Felicity said. “I don’t care if I’m going to be fat anymore!”
“No,” Dana shouted. “Get back in position.”
“But we—”
“Now!” Dana screamed, turning to run back to her place between Kimberly and Kate as the earth beneath us began to rumble.
Looked like Aaron/Jess wasn’t quite ready to lie down and die. Fine with me—I had plenty more kick-ass in my arsenal. I wasn’t feeling the least bit drained. In fact, I was practically itching to invoke the exuro command and give Jess a taste of what it was like to be burned alive.
“Megan, you’ve got to—” Cliff’s words ended in a groan of agony as the ground beneath him buckled and a very angry living-inhabited corpse burst from the earth.
“Tergum!” Before Aaron/Jess had even finished speaking the word, I was flying backwards on a collision course with the stone altar.
I cried out as my lower back connected with the rock, making what I guessed was my right kidney explode in a supernova of pain. The sensation was so intense, I was practically blinded by it for a few seconds. By the time I pulled myself together enough to even think about standing up, the circle had closed and Aaron/Jess was halfway through the spell to raise the dead. The cheerleaders didn’t seem to be helping much—most of them were bawling their eyes out, in fact—but it didn’t seem to matter.
