“Who?” I demand again.
“It shouldn’t matter who she is,” Kat says, and she’s peering up at me with a wealth of concern and dread. “She’s a human being and she needs help, so strap on your big-girl panties, get to Shady Elms and freaking help her! It’s almost too late.” A moment later, Kat is gone.
Cursing, I slam my fist into the wall. My knuckles scream in protest, but okay. All right. My girl is gone, but she won’t stay gone. Not this time. She’ll be back. I just have to help the mysterious “her.”
Shady Elms is roughly ten minutes away. Five if I break speed records. I race to my truck, only to stop once I’m behind the wheel. I’ve been drinking. There’s no way in hell driving will end well. Fine. I arm up with the weapons stored in the vehicle and shed my body, leaving it in the driver’s seat.
As I run at a speed no human can ever achieve, pedestrians amble along the sidewalk and unwittingly move into my path. I’m forced to plow through them or spin around them. I spin, otherwise my spirit would pass through their bodies and hit their spirits, and that wouldn’t do anyone any good. Dizziness plays chicken with my mind and nausea knocks on the door of my stomach, but I refuse to slow. The row of buildings eventually gives way to a long stretch of road, paved and smooth. I’m on constant alert for the telltale signs of the undead—grunts carried on the wind, the fetid stench of rot and the crimson glow of hunger in eyes that are windows to evil.
When the edge of the cemetery comes into view, I veer off into a patch of trees. As I pass a towering oak, a chorus of grunts assaults my ears. Then a feminine shout of frustration sounds and I pick up the pace. I leap over tombstones and shoot around a mausoleum...until finally I spot the horde. At least twenty zombies have zeroed in on a single meal while countless others writhe on the ground, cut up like pieces of old lunch meat.
The mysterious “her” is a slayer. Good. She can help me help her.
I palm my semiautomatics and push through the masses, putting a bullet in every rotting brain that moves into my way. Not a fix-all, but at least the enemy will be slowed down, impact sending the bodies to the ground.
As the creatures catch my scent, they face me. I whirl the guns in my hands to grip the barrels. With a press of my thumb against a hidden button, serrated axes pop out at the end of each handle. I start hacking, my arms remaining in a constant sate of motion. Rotting flesh tears and limbs detach.
Because spirits are not bound to the same physical laws as bodies, I’m able to fight at a speed the hunger-fogged zombies cannot track. By the time a creature reaches for me, I’ve already removed its hand...followed by its head. As more and more walking corpses are cut into parts, a sea of goo and gore spreads over the ground. But at least a path opens up, granting me a good look at the slayer’s backside. She’s a blonde.
She’s fluidly graceful, fighting with a ferocity and viciousness I admire, her short swords extensions of her arms as she slices and dices with perfect precision. Her body is lithe, displayed to perfection in pink camo, and I smile despite the situation. Kat might have worn something similar, had she been a slayer.
For once, I can think about my girl without praying I die, too.
The blonde takes down three Zs with a single swing but doesn’t see the last two getting to their feet...now sneaking up behind her. I whirl my guns and squeeze off two quick shots, the boom of gunfire echoing through the night, the creatures flying backward. I race forward, there when the two hit the ground, slamming my axes into their mouths to separate their jaws. They won’t be biting me or anyone else ever again.
Panting, covered in sweat and goo, I turn toward the girl. Our gazes meet—and suddenly I’m struck dumb. She must be, too. Her mouth drops open.
A shoulder-length cap of white-blond hair frames a face more delicate than a cameo, despite the silver hoops in her jet-black eyebrows. Her eyes are a dark golden brown, like honey, her bronzed skin tattooed heavily in black and white. She’s beautiful in a punk-rock Barbie kind of way. I’ve always thought so.
When we lived in the same twenty-thousand-square-foot mansion for several months, we never had a conversation; I never had time for her, never paid her more than a passing, admiring glance, my sights always on Kat or a mission, very little else worthy of my time. But there’s no doubt I’m standing before Camilla Marks. Milla to her friends.
I am not her friend.
She is River’s sister, and she was once second-in-command to a group of slayers who haven’t always seen eye-to-eye with Cole and me. She’s the one who betrayed her own crew, and mine, destroying an entire security system so that Anima could get to Ali, all in the name of saving her brother— offering Ali’s life in exchange for River’s.