by J. C. Diem
“Zombies can’t stand sunlight, but they don’t burn up on contact like vampires do,” he continued. “Our predecessor knew where they could be found and she made sure every dark place was searched. They dragged the undead out into the sunlight and set them on fire.”
“I bet our establishment gained a few new members that day,” Flynn said. It was impossible to pretend that monsters didn’t exist once you became aware of them. I didn’t know how the average person reacted to the news, but I’d certainly prefer to be proactive and take them down than to hide under the bed. Then again, I was no longer average or even completely human. To be perfectly honest, I enjoyed the hunt and I was looking forward to tracking the bokor down.
Mulling over Flynn’s idea of setting up several circles during daylight hours, I wondered if the Zombie King would have the power to be able to resurrect his warriors in quick succession.
“He’d use up a lot of energy,” Reece said in response to what should have been a private thought. “If the bokor were to try to raise zombies from multiple locations,” he explained at the strange look Mark sent his way.
“He’ll gain more power with practice,” Mark said. “He’s most likely been practicing on animals for the past few months or possibly even years.”
Kala smirked. “It would have been a shock to his parents to see their pet cat or dog walking around after they’d been hit by a car.”
“If he was devious enough, he’d have used his neighbors’ pets to practice on,” Flynn said.
Kala and I exchanged a look then turned to him. “You almost sound as if you can identify with this guy,” I said.
He shrugged, not even trying to look contrite. “I know what it’s like to be young and cocky and to have abilities that few others have.”
“But you don’t bring things back from the dead,” I said. “You just turn into a half-man, half-snake every now and then.”
“Isn’t that freaky enough?” he asked.
“Only if you start eating people,” I responded. “Maybe then you could compare yourself to this guy.”
He smiled and nudged me with his elbow, presumably in thanks for the moral support. The four of us might be supernatural creatures, but we weren’t evil on the same level that our target was. We just lacked the ability to control our beasts when they rose, hence the thirty foot high fence that surrounded the entire compound.
A light drizzle settled in as we neared the city, making the road slick and hazardous and slowing traffic down. The sun disappeared behind the clouds and I wondered if that would have any effect on zombie raising. “Does it have to be full night before the bokor can raise his army?” I asked.
Mark inclined his head in response. “Even heavy cloud cover won’t change that. The death magic is tied to nightfall. It can’t be performed during daylight hours.”
With every fact that I learned, I realized there was so much more that I didn’t yet know. Agent Steel had been in this job since before my birth. I was beginning to think it would take me a very long time to learn enough to keep me alive.
We’d driven through and around New Orleans enough times by now for Reece to know the area well. He wended his way through the traffic to one of the cemeteries and we stepped out into the rain. The upside to the drizzle was that there were no tourists wandering around to interrupt us while we searched the boneyards.
We split up and I was paired with Kala while the others went their separate ways. We had the upper quadrant and kept our eyes out for symbols that had been drawn in blood. Kala spied something on the ground behind one of the larger crypts and we moved in for a closer look.
“Is that what I think it is?” I said incredulously when I saw the flat, square piece of bright blue tarpaulin. Four chunks of marble were holding it down.
“I hate it when Flynn’s right,” she muttered. “He has an uncanny knack for being able to get inside the target’s heads sometimes.”
We hunkered down and each lifted a corner of the plastic. Just as Flynn had predicted, the bokor had pre-drawn a circle in blood. It was slightly smeared from the tarp resting on it, but it was still intact.
“Did I just hear you say I was right?” Flynn asked, sounding pleased. We’d all switched on our earpieces after leaving the SUV so we could easily keep in touch.
“Yes,” Kala replied with a long-suffering sigh. “What do you want us to do, boss?”
“Remove the plastic and let the rain wash the circle away,” Mark said. “Once the diagram is broken, he’ll have to redraw it.”
I hadn’t been able to sense anything because the zombies hadn’t actually been called forth yet. This meant we’d have to search each cemetery for circles one by one. The sun would be down in an hour and we’d never get to them all in time.
Mark was already factoring this in and reached a decision. “We’re going to have to split up and search all of the graveyards. Kala and Lexi, you stay on foot and take the four closest cemeteries to this one. I’ll drop Reece and Flynn off on my way to search the others.”
A surge of rebellion came through the bond a moment before Reece voiced his protest. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave the girls alone, sir.”
“Excuse me?” Kala said in instant ire. “You think that our gender somehow makes us more vulnerable than you?” Her fists clenched and the veins in her forehead stood out. He’d pushed a button that had instantly enraged her.
“He means he doesn’t want me out of Mark’s sight,” I said. What I really meant was that Reece didn’t want me out of his sight. He trusted Kala with his life, but not with my safety.
“You think I can’t protect Lexi better than Mark?” she growled, un-mollified by my explanation. “Do I need to remind you that I can rip a man in half with my bare hands?”
“We don’t have time to argue about this,” our boss cut in before the argument could escalate. “Alexis, are you happy to stay with Kala?”
Surprised that I was being given a choice, I responded immediately. “Of course. I trust her completely.” That earned me a huge smile. Rain had plastered her tawny hair to her scalp and her mascara was running, but she still managed to look vivacious and pretty.
“You’d better keep her safe,” Reece said just loudly enough for us shifters to hear him. His unspoken threat was that she’d be very sorry if anything happened to me.
₪₪₪
Chapter Sixteen
Splitting up to search all of the cemeteries meant that we’d have to rely on our cell phones to keep in touch. I switched the tiny earpiece off and slipped it into my pocket. My white t-shirt and tan cargo pants were soaked all the way through from the steady rain. Normally, the extra weight of water would have slowed me down, but it did little to hamper my movements as I ran along the sidewalk beside Kala.
We left the graveyard, confident that the ritual circle had been rendered useless and headed for the next one that was only a few blocks away. The streets were largely deserted. Most people were smart enough to stay in out of the weather. Few cars passed us. We received strange stares from the occupants when they spied us jogging through the rain.
While we could have easily vaulted over the fence, we instead entered the next cemetery through the gate. Mark wasn’t here to disable the CCTV cameras and we had to pretend to be just a normal pair of girls visiting a boneyard in the rain.
“We should split up,” I said. “We’ll get this done a lot quicker if we do.”
“Garrett will kill me if he finds out I let you wander around alone.”
Kala’s tone was doubtful, but I could tell that she was in favor of the idea. “I’ll be fine,” I said and patted a bulging pocket on my pants. “I’m armed and I’m carrying enough ammo to kill half of the corpses in this place if they suddenly rise up and try to eat me.”
“You have a point,” she said with a grin and turned to search the left side while I made my way over to the other side.
We met at the top end of the cemetery when we’d finished scourin
g the place. My soggy companion lifted a brow in enquiry. “Did you find anything?”
I shook my head and water flew from the ends of my hair. The rain had picked up and had turned into a drenching downpour. “Nope. Let’s head to the next cemetery before we lose the light.” Not that nightfall would stop us, but even for us it would be more difficult to see the sheets of plastic in the dark.
Thankfully, she had a better sense of direction than I did and she knew exactly where the next stop on our list was. This boneyard was far larger and it was going to take us at least fifteen minutes to search it. We didn’t even discuss staying together this time. Again, I took the right side and she took the left.
I finished my search before Kala and waited for her beneath an overhanging tree that offered at least some relief from the rain. If I’d been human, I’d have been shivering from the cold by now. To me, this was like a lukewarm shower but without the soap or shampoo.
A familiar sensation of being watched came over me. I turned in a slow circle, searching for whoever or whatever it was. Again, I felt someone foreign probing at my mind. The sensation grew stronger and stronger until if felt as if they were rushing towards me. A form loomed out of the darkness and I gasped in alarm.
“I found another circle and had to disable it,” Kala said, not realizing that she’d come close to frightening the pants off me. The sensation of something dangerous approaching halted then receded.
We only had about half an hour left before true nightfall now and we still had two cemeteries left to search. We put on a burst of speed. “The last two graveyards are right across the street from each other,” Kala said, as if she shared Reece’s ability to read my mind. “You take the one on the right.”
“Okay,” I agreed and flicked a nervous glance upwards at the dark, cloudy sky. I couldn’t feel any zombies anywhere nearby, but the bokor could turn up at any moment and call them from their slumber.
“Yell if you run into any trouble,” she said before crossing the road. Our hearing was exceptional and we’d easily be able to hear each other if we shouted.
Tension seeped into my shoulders as I jogged up and down the rows of white marble crypts and dark gray mausoleums. I didn’t see any sheets of plastic covering up bloody ritual circles. Even with the rain, I’d have been able to smell the blood. I returned to the road and met up with her again. The rain had eased off a few minutes ago and now it was just drizzling lightly.
“I’m kind of glad we didn’t run into the Zombie King,” Kala admitted. “Garrett would’ve torn me a new one if I’d let anything happen to you.”
I was about to make a snide remark when my vision doubled and I was watching two different scenes at the same time. The alarm coming through the bond was a hint that the second image was coming from Reece. Closing my eyes to block out what was right in front of me, the bond showed me a young man with dark skin standing beside a freshly made circle of bloody symbols. He was dressed in black to better blend in with the shadows. His hands were raised and he was chanting in a foreign language.
“What’s wrong?” Kala asked when I opened my eyes again, took her by the arm and started dragging her along the street.
“Garrett’s in trouble,” I replied. It wasn’t easy concentrating on where I was going while I was seeing two overlapping images.
Kala fumbled for her cell phone as I led the way through the now dark streets. Even the streetlights weren’t doing much to combat the gloom. Part of me was watching where I was going, but the rest of my mind was with Reece. He lifted his gun to shoot, but we both knew he wasn’t quite skilled enough to kill the target. He pulled the trigger and I heard the shot ring out through ears that didn’t belong to me.
The Zombie King ducked as the bullet whizzed past him, missing him by only a few inches. He shouted a few last words to complete his spell and all hell broke loose. Zombies burst from their confinement and a green fog spread outwards with supernatural swiftness. It shrouded the cemetery and reduced visibility to only a few feet.
Reece felt compelled to rend and tear the walking corpses to pieces, but he was heavily outnumbered and common sense prevailed. I counted forty badly formed corpses shambling towards him before he turned and ran. It infuriated him to flee, but he was sensible enough to know that he couldn’t take them all on by himself.
“Mark, Reece is under attack,” Kala said when her call was answered.
“Why did he call you instead of me?” he asked, perturbed that he’d been left out of the loop.
“He, er, didn’t call, exactly.” She flicked a glance at me. “Lexi sensed that he was in trouble.” I knew the others would find out that the bond between Reece and myself went both ways sooner or later. I’d hoped it would be much later than this.
“Call Flynn and tell him I’ll pick him up. We’ll meet you two there.”
I was impressed with Kala’s ability to dial and keep sprinting flat out without running into anything. It helped that she dropped back behind me and followed in my footsteps. “Mark’s on his way to pick you up,” she said as soon as Flynn answered. “The bokor sent a bunch of zombies after Garrett.”
“You know this how?” he asked. I didn’t need to see him to know he was alarmed that one of us was in trouble. I could hear it in his voice.
“I’ll explain later,” she said and hung up.
I didn’t have time to feel guilty that I’d lied to the team about my ability to sense Reece. We were still several blocks away and the horde of undead was moving in to surround him. He’d managed to put a few of them down with headshots, but there were too many for him to kill on his own. The rain and eerie green fog weren’t helping with his visibility. It would take skill and a natural ability to shoot to be able to hit the moving, half-seen monsters.
“Make sure I don’t run into anything,” I said and closed my eyes again.
“I don’t know what you’re planning to do, but I hope it works,” she muttered as she slipped her arm through mine and guided me around the obstacles that I could no longer see.
Reece was momentarily startled when he felt me in his head far more strongly than ever before. This was the first time I’d actively tried to use the bond and it was disconcerting to us both. Let me do the shooting, I said directly into his mind.
Reluctant to relinquish control, he struggled with the idea of letting me take over. The decision was taken from him when two zombies lurched into view. Seizing control of a small part of his brain, I set his hands into motion. I sent four bullets into the first minion’s left eye socket before it went down. It took five to kill the second one.
Automatically reaching into his pockets to grab fresh ammo, I ejected the magazine and rammed a new one home. I swiveled in time to take down a third slowly moving creature. Watching their comrades being cut down made the others more cautious, which meant they had a rudimentary intelligence. None had fed so far and they weren’t really much of a threat yet. Once they tasted human flesh, they’d become far more of a danger.
Through the fog, I saw several more of the undead cautiously approaching. I blasted their heads apart before their milky eyes could latch onto Reece. Then the ground fell out from under me and my eyes snapped open.
“Sorry.” Kala sent me an apologetic glance. “I should have warned you about the drop.” We’d left the sidewalk to cross the street and I waited until we were back on the path before I closed my eyes again.
While I’d been distracted, Reece had moved to what he’d hoped would be a safer location. He’d chosen badly and he was now surrounded by the rotting carcasses of long dead people. His shots weren’t as precise as mine and he gratefully allowed me to take over again. By now, Kala and I were close enough to hear the shots as I fired using his hands. I had a moment of dizziness at being in two places at once then concentrated on the task at hand. Simply shooting out their eyes wasn’t enough. They could still sense fresh meat and feel their way blindly towards him. Their brains had to be shredded with bullets before they’d go
down and stay down.
“We’re almost there,” Kala told me. “Mark and Flynn just pulled up.” I didn’t open my eyes to see and trusted her to guide me into the cemetery. Twenty or so zombies were moving in, intent on feeding from Reece despite the number of fallen that surrounded him.
Opening my eyes when I was close enough to see the enemy, my gun was in my hand almost like magic and I blasted the skull of the closest zombie apart. Half of the malformed skeletons turned to face the new threat as we arrived, but the rest continued to lurch towards Reece. His expression was serene, but I felt his rage at being hunted by the disgusting abominations. I battled my instinctive fear and loathing as their slimy minds battered mine. I pumped round after round into them.
With five of us now blasting away at the minions, we quickly cut them all down then took stock. All forty zombies lay on the ground. Shell casings littered the grass and concrete alongside them. Crypt lids had been either pushed aside or had been flung off completely with the zombies’ escape. There was no sign of the bokor that had called the warriors from their graves. He’d wisely taken the opportunity to run.
“Does someone want to tell me what just happened?” Flynn asked. “How did you know Garrett was under attack?”
All eyes swung to me and I flushed beneath their scrutiny. “I lied when I said I couldn’t sense him,” I confessed.
“That went way beyond just sensing him,” Kala said. “You were in his head helping him shoot, weren’t you?”
Mark’s astonishment was almost comical as he gaped at me. His soaked suit clung to him and he was shivering from the cold. “Is that true?”
“Do you think I managed to take them all down myself?” Reece asked dryly. “I’m good, but not that good.”
Our boss examined the bodies and saw that most had died from bullets through their eye sockets. I was the only one in the team who was capable of that kind of precision. “We three need to have a long talk about this,” he decided.
