Grim Rising (Aisling Grimlock Book 7)

by Amanda M. Lee

  I looked to Dad as he watched, something unsaid passing between us. I knew this was the perfect way for him to escape. I also felt as if Mom was really interested in the process, although I couldn’t help but wonder if that was wishful thinking. It was hard to wrap my head around.

  Dad’s smile was small, something meant only for me. He offered me a small wave and then stepped back into the dining room. He had a chore to complete – a gross one – but I knew we’d talk about this eventually.

  “Where should we start?” I asked, leaning into Griffin as he got comfortable at my side.

  “Colors,” Mom answered automatically. “What colors do you want?”

  “Oh, well … I have no idea.”

  “Then that’s where we’ll start.”

  TWO HOURS LATER, what seemed like an innocent diversion had turned into a potential bloodbath.

  “I don’t want live music,” I argued.

  “Why not?” Jerry was petulant.

  “Because a DJ is easier,” I replied. “You can enjoy more than one type of music with a DJ.”

  “Yes, but a swing band is classy,” Jerry pressed.

  “No, a swing band is pretentious.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  I glared at him. “Listen … .”

  “Don’t argue,” Mom ordered. She sat between Jerry and me, a glass of wine in hand, and honestly seemed to be having a good time. “There’s no need to argue. This is a wedding. It’s supposed to be a happy time.”

  “No offense, Mrs. Grimlock, but you need to stuff it,” Jerry snapped. “I want a swing band.”

  Mom’s eyes flashed with mirth rather than mayhem. “It’s not your wedding, Jerry.”

  “It might as well be,” Jerry said. “Aisling is my best friend. We’ve been dreaming about weddings since we were kids. This is a big deal.”

  Griffin traced his fingers over the palm of my hand as he listened. “Is that true? Have you been dreaming about your wedding since you were a kid?”

  I shrugged, noncommittal. “I guess. In theory. Of course, that’s when I thought I’d marry George Clooney.”

  “I’m better than George Clooney.”

  “You’re a very handsome man with a face like an angel,” I countered. “But you’re not George Clooney.”

  Griffin poked my side. “I’ll show you how much better I am than George Clooney later. As for music, I agree with Aisling. I don’t want a swing band.”

  Jerry folded his arms over his chest and huffed. “Why?”

  “Because my guest list is going to be made up of cops, and they won’t find a swing band entertaining.”

  “I didn’t even think of that,” I mused. “You’re going to have a lot of cops there. I wonder if that will make all the reapers Dad invites uncomfortable.”

  “Why would it?”

  “Because nobody likes cops, man,” Jerry replied. “Even when you’re not doing something, cops make you feel uncomfortable. It’s the way of the world. You can’t fight it.”

  “Whatever.” Griffin moved his finger to my ring. “I won’t invite everyone at the precinct, but I have to include a few captains and lieutenants.”

  “You can invite whoever you want. Dad is paying.”

  “Yes, and I think he’s actually looking forward to it,” Mom said, flipping through a magazine. She seemed engrossed with the glossy pages. “I know you’ve been considering having a dress made, but do you know what kind of dress you want?”

  “A wedding dress.”

  “I know that.” Mom scorched me with an impatient look. “What kind of wedding dress?”

  “Oh, well, a white one. But not too white. It makes me uncomfortable.” The expression on Mom’s face did not reflect motherly love when I risked a glance in her direction. “What?”

  “I mean style,” Mom barked. “Do you want strapless? Full arms? A bow in the back?”

  “Oh.” Realization dawned. “I definitely don’t want a bow in the back. I also don’t want full arms. I think I’d feel as if a cloud was trying to strangle me.”

  “It’s nice that your head is in a good place, baby,” Griffin teased, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “That’s only going to make this process easier.”

  “Ha, ha,” I intoned, rolling my eyes. “My head is in a good place. I need a simple dress. I will completely freak out if someone tries to get me into one of those dresses that make me look like a cotton ball.”

  “That’s completely understandable,” Mom conceded. “I’m sure we can find something you mostly like in one of these magazines and take the photo to the dress designer for a starting point. When do you want to get married?”

  “Oh, well … .” I exchanged a look with Griffin. “We both want to get married in the summer so we can have an outdoor wedding.”

  “That’s a charming idea.” Mom beamed. “So next summer, right? That gives us seventeen months.”

  “This summer,” Griffin corrected, catching Mom off guard.

  “This summer?”

  Griffin nodded. “I’m not waiting seventeen months. We’re getting married this summer.”

  “That’s like four or five months?” Mom wasn’t happy with the truncated timetable. “You’re not pregnant, are you? That will kill your father.”

  I didn’t bother to hide my scowl. “I’m not pregnant,” I barked. “I know how birth control works.”

  “Yes, and you also knew how the parking brake on your father’s Jaguar worked when you were a teenager and we all know how that ended. He spent months rebuilding that thing, and now he has an aneurysm if you even think of looking at it.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “I maintain that parking brake was defective and the fact that the car rolled down the hill and into the Dumpster was not my fault.”

  “If that’s your story.”

  Griffin chuckled as the doorbell rang. “Do you want me to get that?”

  “I will,” I said, pushing myself to a standing position. “I need to run to the bathroom anyway. Don’t let Jerry pick out anything frilly while I’m gone.”

  “I’ll see if I can restrain him,” Griffin said dryly.

  I was in a good mood as I slid my sock-covered feet over the ceramic tile in the foyer, humming to myself as I considered the fact that I’d spent two hours with my mother and she hadn’t said one passive-aggressive thing – or tried to eat the help. That’s progress, right?

  I opened the door, mildly curious about who would be visiting. Just about everyone I knew was essentially living here at present. My mouth dropped open when I saw the figures on the porch.

  There had to be at least thirty of them, three or four already on the porch, and they were all shuffling toward the front of the house making a hissing that made me think of the world’s biggest balloon springing a leak. I could only make out the features on the ones closest to the door, but the milky eyes were evident. I knew exactly what I was dealing with before the nearest one – a woman dressed in a sable coat with pearls draped around her neck – reached for me.

  I reacted instinctively, slamming shut the door and flicking the lock before I cried out. Then, because it seemed like the thing to do, I slid the chain lock in place for added security before scurrying back to the parlor. When I slid through the door, Mom, Griffin and Jerry were exactly where I’d left them, all focused on a magazine.

  “I think the napkins should be baby pink,” Jerry said. “I’ve always loved that color.”

  “I don’t like the idea of pink,” Griffin argued.

  “You need something soft,” Jerry said. “Aisling is a girl. Girls like pink.”

  “I don’t disagree that we need a soft color,” Griffin challenged. “I merely think that we should go with a purple – something that matches Aisling’s eyes. I think that would be pretty.”

  Mom smiled, amused. “Actually, I think the purple is nice. I … .” She broke off when she saw the look on my face. “You don’t want purple?”

  I waved off the
question. Wedding preparations were clearly done for the night. “Purple sounds great. We have another problem.”

  “What?” Griffin asked. “Did something happen? Did your father and brothers get in an accident?”

  “I have no idea, but I’m assuming they’re fine.”

  “Okay … what’s the issue?”

  “The front yard is full of zombies.”

  Griffin stilled, his brown eyes searching my face as if trying to find a hint of amusement. “I’m sorry?”

  “I’m not kidding,” I said. “There are zombies all over the front yard. One rang the doorbell. Oh, and one of them is wearing pearls and a sable coat.”

  “That seems like a terrible waste,” Jerry said, struggling to his feet. “What are we going to do?”

  That was a very good question. “We need to check all of the doors and windows and lock this place down.”

  “Then what?” Mom asked, striding through the doorway and heading toward the foyer so she could look through the window panes. She leaned down, peering through, and jerked back when a pasty face appeared and hissed at her through the glass. “There really are zombies out there.”

  I was incensed. “Did you think I was making it up?”

  “I’m not sure what I thought, but there really are zombies out there.” Mom rubbed her chin as though considering a math problem. “They go down pretty easily, right?”

  I nodded. “I don’t think that means we should raid Dad’s sword collection and start stabbing heads, though.”

  “I think that’s exactly what we should do,” Griffin said, heading for the stairs. “We need to arm ourselves.”

  Mom nodded as she followed. “He’s right. Whatever we decide, arming ourselves is the most important thing.”

  I had my doubts. “But … .”

  “Aisling, we’re about to be overrun by zombies,” Mom said. “Pick a weapon now, argue later.”

  Ugh. If I had a nickel for every time I’d heard that sentence. I followed Griffin to the game room where Dad kept his sword collection, grabbing a light one, not overly long or broad, with a comfortable grip before heading back downstairs. Griffin, Mom and Jerry spent more time on weapon selection, but I didn’t care what I stabbed our visitors with as much as I worried about what would happen when Dad and the others returned.

  Griffin was the first to join me, a large broadsword in his hand. He almost looked happy as he swung the sword, testing its weight and feel. “Your father has a great collection.”

  “Yeah. It’s not at all weird to have a sword collection,” I shot back. “It’s not phallic or anything.”

  Griffin spared me a look. “It’s going to be okay, baby. I won’t let anything hurt you.”

  “I’m not particularly worried about us right now,” I said. “We’re relatively safe. I mean … as safe as you can be when zombies are ringing the freaking doorbell. What’s that about? Zombies aren’t supposed to ring doorbells.”

  “Maybe they wanted to distract you,” Griffin suggested.

  “Maybe … but this whole thing is unbelievable.”

  “Oh, what was your first clue?” Griffin shrank back when I murdered him with a dark look. I love sarcasm as much as the next person, but now was so not the time. “Sorry. That was uncalled for.” He leaned in and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “It’s okay.”

  “I’m not afraid of the zombies, Griffin,” I supplied. “They move slow and seem easy to take out. Sure, there’s a bunch of them out there, but we’ll deal. That’s not what I’m worried about.”

  “Okay, what are you worried about?”

  “Dad and my brothers,” I replied. “They’re going to pull in the driveway and not notice the zombies until it’s too late. I don’t think bites really do anything, but we don’t know that nothing bad will happen if one of them is bitten.”

  Griffin dug in his pocket for his phone. “I’ll call your father and tell him what’s going on. Then he’ll be ready for when they return.”

  “That sounds like a plan.” I kept one eye on Griffin as Mom stared out the window, her face expressionless. “What do you think?”

  “I think these things don’t look overly difficult, but there has to be a reason someone sent them here, and I don’t like not knowing what that reason is.”

  “That’s the story of my life,” I muttered, earning a smirk from Mom. I turned at the sound of footsteps, finding the butler scurrying in our direction. Oh, well, this would be easy to explain. “Everything will be okay.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”

  I didn’t recognize the new voice right away, but when I tilted my head and stared at the doorway behind the butler I realized he wasn’t alone. He had two people with him – and one of them was Detective Mark Green.

  “Oh, well, this is just perfect.” I briefly pressed my eyes shut. “And I thought the hardest thing we were going to do tonight was pick out a color palette for the wedding.”

  Jerry patted my shoulder. “Live and learn, Bug. Live and learn. Nothing ever goes as planned in this family.”

  He wasn’t wrong.

  27

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “What’s going on?” Green was positively apoplectic.

  I fixed him with a dark look. “Do you knock?”

  “He knocked at the back door,” the butler volunteered. He was generally unflappable, but looked a bit unsettled. “I wasn’t going to answer, but he was rather insistent. There appear to be … people … surrounding the house.”

  “Yes, I noticed that.” I flashed a smile that I’m sure came off as more deranged than comforting. “Are you the only staff member left in the house?”

  “One member of the kitchen staff remains. Annalise.”

  “Then take her upstairs and lock yourselves in the second-floor library,” I ordered. “Barricade the door. I don’t think they’ll go after you, but it’s better to be safe.”

  The butler nodded. “Fine.” He disappeared through the doorway.

  I ran my tongue over my teeth as I did my best to ignore Green and looked to Griffin for guidance. “Do you think we should stay or go?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” Griffin replied. “This house is a virtual fortress, but there are a lot of windows. If those things want in, they can get in. We could try to close off the tops of the two stairwells and wait it out on the second floor, but that makes escape difficult if they overrun the barricades. We’d be trapped.”

  “We can get out from a few of the second-floor windows if we have to,” I countered. “Some of them open close to trees. I did it all of the time when I was a teenager and rarely got caught.”

  “Well, that’s comforting.” Griffin snaked his hand around my waist and kissed my cheek, offering intimacy and solace as his mind worked at a terrific pace.

  Green wasn’t nearly as calm. “Does someone want to tell me what’s going on?”

  I flicked my eyes to him, annoyance bubbling up. “Not really.”

  “Your house is about to be overrun by something that looks a lot like people, but I’m going to guess they’re not really people.”

  “Oh, you’re just coming to that realization now? How slow are you?” I growled as I shifted closer to Mom and glanced out the window. “What’s the news?”

  “The horde doesn’t seem to be growing,” Mom replied. “They also don’t appear to be dispersing. They’re gathering toward the front door.”

  “Maybe they can’t understand complex orders,” I suggested. “Maybe it’s impossible for the person controlling them to force a proper fight plan.”

  “That would be to our benefit.”

  The police officer with Green, a younger man who looked to be twenty-five, wiped a hand across his brow as he widened his eyes. “What are they?”

  I sent him a pitying look – this wasn’t his fault, after all – and forced a smile for his benefit. “What’s your name?”

  “Dennis Langstrom.”

  “Well, Dennis, it seems we’re under attack
from zombies.” I grinned as Green’s face went slack. “Now, I know that’s hard for you to wrap your head around, but there’s no other word to describe what’s happening. It’s going to be difficult for a bit, but you’ll have a great story to tell your buddies when you’re done.”

  “The good news is that you don’t turn into a zombie if they bite you,” Jerry offered. He looked nervous, which wasn’t surprising, but he remained on his feet and didn’t cause a scene by melting down. I considered that a win.

  “We haven’t tested that theory, so be careful,” Griffin cautioned. “I still think we need to call your father.”

  I swallowed hard as I locked gazes with him. “We can try. The thing is … um … they might not hear their phones.”

  “I know they’re in the theater, but they have to be leaving soon,” Griffin argued. “They’ll check their messages and know what’s going on before getting here, which means that we only have to hold out for a little longer.”

  “Well … .”

  “They’re not at the theater,” Green scoffed. “We tried to follow them, but they blew past at least two theaters. They were heading toward Detroit when the detail I assigned to them lost their vehicle on Woodward.”

  Griffin appeared calm at the news, but I didn’t miss the almost imperceptible straightening of his shoulders. “I see.”

  I lowered my voice. “It’s not what you think.”

  “Really? I think you and your mother conspired to hide whatever it is your father and brothers are doing.” Griffin’s tone was icy. “You made me think you wanted to talk about the wedding when really you didn’t want me asking questions.”

  “Um … .”

  “Oh, don’t go all martyr,” Mom ordered, turning to face us. “Aisling didn’t want to lie to you. I offered to help. It’s not the end of the world.”

  “Really? Then what are they doing?” Green asked.

  “Yeah, what are they doing?” Griffin echoed.

  I grabbed Griffin’s arm and dragged him away, making sure to scare off Green with a warning look before whispering, “They’re at Eternal Sunshine Cemetery. Cillian found some stuff on this guy – Oscar Santiago – who thought he could live forever. Apparently he was stealing life forces from his kids, which is not important right now, but still gross.