by Lori Devoti
She was a strange mix, polite and angry, scared and fearless. She hadn’t been shocked when she had first seen the zombies in the alley. She had been shaken, not completely prepared perhaps, but not shocked. And despite the quiver he’d seen run through her, she’d pulled out her little gun and shot. Then later when he was sure she would realize she was in over her head, she had not only shot the zombies with his gun, but she’d followed his instructions and destroyed them. Pulled off a shot very few could, blasting through their brain stem with a single bullet.
He had to admire a woman like that. He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t help himself.
Which meant he needed to get away from her and fast, and that was exactly what he was going to do. Right now.
Damn the man. He didn’t stop.
Samantha watched as the elusive Caleb Locke strode from the alley without so much as a “thank you very kindly.” With a gun strapped to his hip and a shotgun at his side, he looked like a character from some old Western. She had never met anyone as confident of their power as Caleb Locke, never realized someone like him could really exist.
He was every action hero of every movie she had ever seen, ever secretly fantasized of meeting. And now she had and he had just walked away, left her standing in an alley filled with decomposing corpses.
What did she do now? She needed a hero. She needed Caleb Locke. Fighting a sense of failure and loss, she walked to her revolver.
The stench of death intensified. Gagging, she retrieved the weapon and turned.
A shadow darker than the growing night loomed before her. She looked up, into the face of a six-foot-tall black man or what had at one time been a six-foot-tall black man. Now he was the walking dead.
Cold wrapped around her. She’d thought this stage of her nightmare was over, but as she stared at the zombie dressed all in black—black suit, shirt and tie—she couldn’t deny it wasn’t. Not by a long shot.
Funny, she’d made a joke. Long shot, just like her odds of surviving this alone.
The zombie slung his body sideways, using inertia to move his arm, to send it swinging toward her. He was old, older and more decayed than the others, even the last four. But that just made looking at him, realizing what he was and what he used to be, all the more horrifying.
Her brain shut down. She was done, couldn’t think, didn’t want to think.
Operating on pure gut reflex, she lifted the gun and fired. The bullet hit the creature right between his sunken eyes. He stared back at her stupidly, didn’t fall or bleed or—
She remembered Caleb’s words.
Shooting a zombie anywhere but the brain stem didn’t stop them. It just made them angry.
And she’d just used her last bullet.
Caleb smelled the zombie seconds before the gun fired. He’d already turned and was racing back to where he’d left the woman in the body-hugging outfit and space-worthy silver coat when it did.
She stood in the alley surrounded by the fallen zombies, her body perfectly still. For a moment he thought the zombie had already struck, that he was seeing the poison of its bite work its way through her system. Then her fingers opened and the pistol fell to the ground.
He realized then she was out of bullets. Realized then he couldn’t reach her, not before the zombie did.
But his gun could.
He jerked the heavy pistol from its holster and slid it across the icy pavement like an Olympic curling champion. It knocked into her foot. She blinked, then dropped to a squat, grabbed the hefty revolver as if she’d practiced the move for a lifetime and fired again.
The bullet hit the zombie lurking over her in the base of the throat.
Despite Caleb’s annoyance with her and his resolve that he wouldn’t engage her in any way, a sliver of pride sliced through him. She’d stayed cool, picked up his gun and fired. And she’d aimed. Come damn close to hitting the target, too.
But the bullet had missed its mark.
The zombie jerked so his right arm flung up and out, deadweight like a man flinging a fifty-pound sack of flour. And like that sack of flour it hit the woman hard…knocked her in the head with a thud.
She fell backward, the gun tumbling out of her fingers and discharging wildly as the grips bounced off the asphalt. Then she landed, too, unconscious from the zombie’s blow before her skull collided with the ground. Her head bounced up and landed again; she didn’t wince. She didn’t move at all.
Caleb cursed, running and sliding now. He still held his shotgun, but instinct had taken over. He couldn’t stop the urge to rush toward the monster, just like he couldn’t stop his own monster, his wolf, from jumping forward, forcing his body to shift.
Even filled with adrenaline, he felt the pain as his body morphed. Bones bent; skin stretched. The change was always excruciating, his punishment for the choice he had made, but he couldn’t stop running, had to leap actually, grit his teeth and push himself through the pain. He left the ground human, but landed on the creature’s back one hundred percent wolf.
One hundred percent pissed-off, hungry-for-revenge wolf.
The hunger and the drive to kill were always intense, too intense, when he attacked in wolf form. All logic left him for a while. Like the old tales of lore, he would go berserk, tear into the walking dead’s necks and sever their heads from their spines in a few ravaging snaps.
This time was no different. The zombie stumbled, an accidental move that proved defensive. Caleb fell onto the pavement, but immediately hopped back onto his feet. Facing the zombie, he growled. The creature was old; it had been dead for years. It smelled of mold and rot.
The zombie bent and swung its arm toward Caleb in the same erratic motion it had used to down the woman. Caleb jumped back and the monster’s fingers brushed his fur. He bristled and the wolf in him took over.
He leaped and hit the zombie square in the chest, forcing it backward. Then he lunged upward to grab ahold of the decaying flesh of the zombie’s neck. The creature flailed at him, but it was a hideously unfair fight. The zombie was too old; it had long lost any real use of its arms. They hung at its sides lifeless unless the creature used the entirety of its body weight to fling them haphazardly at its chosen target.
Somewhere buried, Caleb the man processed this, but on the surface, in control of his body, Caleb the wolf didn’t care. The wolf only wanted to destroy.
And he did. He tore and pulled. Chomped into the zombie’s neck again and again, through dried flesh and decayed muscle and finally through bone.
In seconds the zombie was nothing but a quivering corpse, just enough of his brain stem left to allow him to twitch and jerk like a snake with its head removed.
Caleb padded around the remains, sniffing, his lip curled. He was coming down from the animalistic high, waiting for his human half to regain control. It took four rounds, four circular trips.
With each pass, more gore found its way onto his fur and feet, until his pads were caked with it.
The wolf didn’t mind, but the man hated it.
Still a wolf, but finally under control, Caleb sat. He needed to leave. He should have left before. There had been gunshots. The neighborhood might be deserted, but someone had to have heard. At some point someone would come to investigate.
He glanced at the woman lying five feet away. Her coat was open, revealing a lithe, toned body. Her outfit was fully visible now, some kind of workout pants and top, not the kick-ass jumpsuit he’d first imagined.
Despite knowing that time was running out, he trotted toward her; he couldn’t resist running his nose over her face.
Somehow as a wolf this felt safer, less personal than it would have been as a human. Her perfume reached out to him again. Jasmine. As a teen, before his world had collapsed, he’d had a girlfriend who used jasmine-scented soaps. The smell brought back memories, made him long for something he could never have.
His ears slipped low against his head. He took three steps back.
The woman was okay. She was
breathing. She would come to and be fine. Yes, she’d wake to the massacred zombies, but that couldn’t be helped. He couldn’t hang around to clean up; he couldn’t risk being caught when the police inevitably arrived.
Deciding to leave his clothing and escape as a wolf, he loped ten feet down the alley.
The woman moaned, rolled over and threw up again.
He paused, closed his eyes and willed himself not to weaken.
She wasn’t his problem…would be nothing but a problem.
A siren wailed in the distance. His head jerked toward the sound. It was time to run.
He lifted one paw…he had to go.
He stopped and turned back. Her wet hair blended with the rain-dampened asphalt, but he knew it was red. Knew she was strong, too. And he knew she needed him.
Why else would she have come to this alley? Why else would she have stayed and fought the zombies when she could have run?
He sighed.
And he knew, damn everything, he couldn’t leave her.
The siren wailed again, closer but not here yet.
Already moving toward her, he shifted form. He paused briefly to gather his boots and clothing. Still naked, he scooped her up and flung her over his shoulder.
Then as the sirens grew louder, he did what he should have done before. He disappeared into the shadows.
Chapter 3
S amantha stretched out her arm to slap at her alarm clock. Her hand hit a phone and sent it tumbling onto the ground. With a moan she rolled over, wondering when she’d moved the clock. Maybe Allison—
Her eyes flying open, she stiffened. No, not Allison. Her best friend and roommate had moved away over two months ago, taken a new job out of state and then disappeared altogether.
It was why Samantha had traveled north, why she had been looking for… Her mind latched on to something. Caleb Locke.
The events of the previous day flooded back to her. Caleb, strong and confident, with a sense of power that made her forget exploding guns and screeching zombies. Zombies.
A cold sweat sprang from her pores.
She rolled onto her stomach and pressed her face into the pillow. Then she remembered where she was…or wasn’t. She wasn’t at home. She was in Wisconsin…cold, dreary Wisconsin.
Which meant she wasn’t in her snug little house, safe in her room. Her fingers dug into the pillow. And she wasn’t in the damp alley she remembered from last night.
So, where was she and who had brought her here? Caleb Locke? Her heart fluttered.
No, she remembered him walking away, leaving her. The disappointment she’d felt in the alley returned.
She only knew one other person in Wisconsin, and he wasn’t someone she wanted to be with.
She jerked to a sitting position and gathered the thin blankets around her. The room was small and dingy. The furnishings consisted of the double bed she sat on, a small round laminate-topped table, a TV and two shelves that were mounted to the wall on either side of the bed, forming side tables.
By the looks and smell of the place, she knew immediately she was in a cheap motel, closely reminiscent of Norman Bates’s, and she was alone.
Her gaze crawled to the two visible doors, one flanked by heavily curtained windows, and one off a tiny alcove. The bathroom, she guessed.
The sound of water running emanated from behind the closed door. A shower. Images of plastic curtains, giant knives and zombies laying in wait zipped through her brain. She rose on her knees to run but was stopped by the surprising realization that she wore only her bra and panties.
She hadn’t stripped down to her underwear, not recently and not here. Which meant someone had done it for her.
Her heart battered against her ribs as if intent on escaping her body. Blood roared through her veins. She patted the covers, searching for her gun, her clothes, something to make her feel safe and in control.
Coming up empty, she leaped from the bed and raced to the door. A padlock hung from a hasp, making it impossible to open. She flung open the curtains, but bars covered the windows on her side, making even just breaking the glass a more difficult task.
But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t try. She spun and searched the small space for something to jam through the metal grid. Her gaze lit on the table. She surged forward and jerked at it. The top cut into her hands, but the table didn’t budge. It was bolted to the floor.
For a second she stared stupidly at its base, wondering why anyone would bolt down a table.
No reason, except this, to keep someone from using it to escape or fight.
Serial killers did things like that.
She hurried back to the windows and the open curtains. The world outside was dark, with not even the cliché Vacancy sign all such motels should have. There were no sounds, either, no people coming and going, and no TVs blaring.
Absolutely no sign of life.
She realized then she wasn’t in a motel, not a working one anyway. Whatever this place was, it had been deserted. There was no one here, except her and whoever stood behind that bathroom door.
The door suddenly looked bigger, ominous.
She grabbed the lone lamp from one of the makeshift side tables and jerked its cord from the wall. Then with it held against her chest, she crept toward the bathroom door.
When whoever—or whatever—was inside came out, she would have one chance, one brief moment, to smash the lamp onto his head.
That was it.
It would have to do.
Hours had gone by, or what felt like hours. Samantha’s arm ached from the intensity of her grip on the lamp. Her thighs and back ached, too. Her body was taut, ready to spring, but the person or thing moving around on the other side of the cheap motel door refused to reveal himself.
She had started feeling silly ten minutes earlier.
Zombies didn’t shower, or she couldn’t imagine they did, but that didn’t mean whoever was in the bathroom was safe, either. Safe people didn’t take your clothing and padlock you into a room.
She mumbled that truth to herself, reminding herself that manners had no place in survival. Back home in Tennessee, while Allison had been teaching meditation and deep breathing at her yoga classes next door, Samantha had been pounding the basics of self-defense into her students.
If Allison had listened to her and been a little less trusting, maybe neither of them would be in the situations they were in now. But no, despite Allison’s past, she had been trusting, had been the perfect Zen yoga instructor.
And truthfully, Samantha had envied her friend’s balance, her ability to put aside the wrongs done to her before and still look at others with trust and faith.
She had since Allison’s disappearance tried to capture just a bit of that Zen for herself.
She definitely could use some now.
Keeping her eyes open, she lowered her arms and pulled in one smooth continuous breath. Holding the air in her lungs, she paused to do as Allison had taught her, to appreciate it. Already feeling calmer, she exhaled in the same smooth continuous manner she had inhaled. Then she paused again.
With a smile she realized it was working. Feeling stronger, she repeated the process four more times, and relaxed more with each repetition.
At the end of her fifth breath, the bathroom door flew open, and every particle of Zen she’d accumulated dissolved like sugar in sweet tea.
The knob knocked into the wall and a man, one-hundred-percent naked, stepped out of the steam-filled space.
Samantha opened her mouth to scream, then snapped her jaws shut. She was locked into the small room with her captor; the time for screaming was past. Now was the time to fight.
As he stepped into the main room, Caleb’s gaze shot to the bed. He’d left the mysterious female there before going into the bathroom to shower. If she didn’t come to on her own, he knew he would have to get her to a doctor. He would have taken her before showering, but showing up at an emergency room coated in blood tended to complicate an alre
ady complicated life.
And the female hadn’t looked any better.
He had peeled off both of their clothes with plans of washing them along with his body in the shower.
As he’d pulled the tight material from her lean, but muscular form, images of her standing under the shower’s stream with him, of water beading on her breasts, running down her cleavage, across her flat belly and finally getting lost in the thatch of curls that would hide her sex had almost overwhelmed him.
And he’d come close to taking not only her clothing, but her into the shower with him, as well.
But he didn’t know her. Didn’t know if she was the type to consider a no-commitment, no-previous-introduction hookup. So, he’d pushed aside his imaginings and left her lying in her undergarments on the motel bed’s stained comforter.
He hadn’t, however, stopped thinking of her, and hoping he would turn around in the tiny shower to find she had joined him under the pounding water.
She hadn’t, of course, but as he stepped into the room, his gaze still shot to the bed.
Because, despite the certainty that extending their time together would be foolhardy, his body ached for her.
The bed was empty.
Immediately, he tensed. Alert, but not quickly enough. Something flashed in the darkness beside him—the downward movement of a weapon racing toward his skull.
Cursing his preoccupation with the female, he dropped to a crouch.
An object crashed onto the floor beside him. He leaped, rushing who or whatever had attacked. Sharp shards of pottery bit into his bare feet. He growled and kept going.
His shoulder collided with a body. He drove his assailant backward six feet into the main room, stopping only after both of them had landed on the bed. Fists pummeled the side of his head and his back. A knee jammed into his thigh, aiming, he knew, for a much more sensitive part. He growled again and grappled for control. One wrist contained in his hand, he stared down into the raging hazel eyes of the woman he’d fantasized about while standing alone in the shower.
