12
I really couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was like one of those out-of-body experiences where you’re right in the thick of the action, but outside it at the same time.
There were humans screaming and running, bumping into each other in their haste to get away from creatures that were the stuff of nightmares.
Rotted corpses moving at speeds that defied logic were jumping them, ripping into them, and swallowing chunks of flesh in their frenzied need to feed.
But it wasn’t just humans who were set upon. Zombies were not only mauling my brothers and sisters, they were inflicting grim damage. We’re not invincible—tougher to kill, sure—but you could definitely do it if you knew how.
Luc was at the head of the pack, a whirling dervish of grace and deadly skill as he slashed and hacked at a group of five that surrounded him like a pack of rabid dogs.
Apart from a few scratches on his bare neck and torso, he didn’t appear to be in any sort of imminent danger.
My gaze roved around the grounds and I spotted Bubba, Vyxen, Rhage, Cash, Claudette, and Stryker; all of them were out and fighting, some using crowbars and mallets, but most were using our God-given abilities of razor-sharp claws and super agility to strike while keeping out of the way of their hungry maws. Anyone working the carnival was clearly already in the fray and they were battling fiercely. Throw in the fact that Vyxen’s cat ears were nowhere to be seen and I’d never seen Envy so concentrated and terrifying-looking, I knew this was no one’s idea of a prank.
Sometimes when things are at their worst, life has a way of feeling like it slows to a complete stop. When your child dies in your arms, when your spouse looks you dead in the eye and tells you it’s over, those moments create an indelible mark, an imprint that never leaves. They stain you eternally.
I saw Stryker shove his fingers deep into the necks of two zombies, ripping their heads off. Vyxen rolled across the back of a lone female who was missing one arm and had her neck already half severed before kicking out her wedge-heeled boot and tripping the monster long enough that she could tackle it to the ground and gain the leverage she needed to finish the decapitation.
Luc moved like liquid silk, hitting the undead so fast they never even saw what was coming. Bubba had a giant mallet prop and was smashing in head after head after head, covering himself in gore and ichor. There were humans, not many of them left at this hour, but a few just huddled within whatever shadow they could find, trying in vain to turn themselves invisible. A child whimpered, turning his little face into his mother’s breast as she gazed on with horror that the impossible was real.
Blinking, I began to realize that I should do something, should move. But when the enemy descends on a camp that should be impenetrable, a certain level of shock keeps you rooted. This shouldn’t be happening. I saw it, but my brain was having a helluva time recognizing it as fact.
Until I spotted something that made my blood run cold.
I wasn’t sure who was on the ground, but it was one of mine being feasted on by a group of twenty, if not more, and a red haze of fury poured through me, snapping me instantly into action.
My demon screamed. There was no thought, no reason other than to kill and hurt and make that which hurt us bleed... bleed... bleed!
Pestilence filled me, stretched me. My claws became daggers, my teeth sickles. I embraced death and jumped the zombies, scattering them like bowling pins with the ferocity of my surprise attack.
Only one remained, the one straddling her, making a feast of the severed end of her neck, slurping at her veins like they were straws. Shoving my claws through its middle in punishing strokes, I hissed at it. Now aware of my presence, it turned. It was a woman with half her face ripped off, displaying the bone beneath. Her breath whistled through the exposed cartilage of her nose, and with a roar, she sprang at me.
We crashed on the ground, rolling over each other in our desire to gain top position. Around me I became aware of the movement of my brothers and sisters joining in this fight, helping to keep the horde at bay.
With a grunt, I flipped her over and when I had her pinned, I drove my hands through her neck. Her fingers clawed and scraped at me. She was chomping her teeth in a mindless mania to feed her habit.
“You will die.” My voice was guttural, full of fire and brimstone. I had my prey and I wanted to toy with her, kill her slowly, but there were too many. Already I felt the putrid breath of another over my shoulder.
Grabbing her head, I yanked it off her body. She convulsed and flopped like a chicken recently decapitated.
I didn’t have a moment to breathe or even relax as another zombie grabbed my wrist, and before I knew what was happening, its teeth were sinking in.
I screamed from the fiery pain of blunt teeth ripping through my flesh. Blood bubbled out as it chewed through an artery.
Grabbing it by the neck, I flipped it over my shoulder. Not easy to do from a squatting position, but fury lent my beast power. I fought so damn hard to contain Pestilence—he was screaming, shredding my soul with his claws to join in the fracas, but there were still humans present and until they were contained, I refused to let him play. My teeth clacked from the arctic cold building deep inside my bones as he slinked and slithered through me angrily.
The zombie still had its teeth in me. Grunting, I reached down my bra and yanked out the katana fan blade I always kept tucked there. It popped open with a zing and I drove it straight through the bloody bitch’s neck.
The head was still clamped on and I realized I was actually sweating. The novelty of it made my stomach churn with the first waves of anxiety. I didn’t feel right and it had nothing at all to do with my ravaged wrist.
Zombies aren’t at all like popular mythos would suggest. Even cutting off one’s head or driving a stake through its brain couldn’t kill it. Nothing could but fire. They were just easier to contain when the head and body weren’t attached.
Stumbling back into a tent, I braced myself against a support pole, then shoved the zombie head onto my knee so I could finally gain the leverage I need to pry its jaw open.
It hissed and growled, snapping with fury as it once again tried to get back at me. Panting, I tossed it to the ground and then hugged my lacerated wrist to my breast. The thick spread of blood coated the front of my dress and its warmth was oddly soothing. I was shivering now from the bone-deep cold and grimaced when I moved my arm and realized my ulna and radial bones were crushed. I could feel their sandpapery bits gouging at my muscle from the inside.
“Oh shit,” I murmured when I saw another zombie fast approaching. This body was definitely better preserved than the others; in fact, it looked fresh. As in just a few hours, no more than a day, fresh.
My fan was still on the ground. I never did that, was never so sloppy. But my head was spinning like a top and every breath was like icy flames licking at me with each ragged inhalation.
I wasn’t going to reach it in time. This was going to hurt like a mother.
But just before it barreled into me, a massive body shoved it to the ground. Red glowing eyes highlighted the rugged, frightening beauty of Bubba before he tore into the zombie’s back. Not with his hands, but his mouth.
I squeezed my eyes shut but was unable to block out the chilling sound of slurping and the slippery wet noise of ripping flesh. I didn’t want to know what he was doing, but I knew. I knew. He was using his demon. Bubba was eating the zombie, and then I was bending over, dry heaving and gagging. It seemed to go on forever, the sounds of his violence, and eventually I shuddered, gasping for a breath that didn’t hurt. Pestilence was violent and furious—he wanted out too. But it wasn’t just that demon making me sick; something was swimming through my bloodstream. Something toxic and vile, moving through me like a poison-tipped tentacle.
My head swam as I tried to rise, my arms shaking so violently that I ripped a section of tent off in my hands. I fell forward, unable to put my arms out to block the ground that was a second away from smacking me in the face. Strong hands yanked me up by the hair, making me cry out. Then I was hugged tight to a barrel chest that was covered in ichor.
“Dora,” Bubba huffed. “You okay?”
His twang was sharp and full-bodied. Bubba was a big blond-headed Norse throwback. If he was feeling exhausted from this battle then I knew it was bad.
I shook my head, the dizziness passing finally. Two gulps of air later, I managed to squeeze out, “I’m fine. Bubba, you gotta get these humans out of here. Round them up.”
I felt Pestilence smile.
Bubba’s eyes glowed like flame. Covered in blood and gore as he was, I almost felt like I was in the arms of the devil himself. I had to remind myself that he was my brother, my friend. Bubba would never hurt me, but his was the one deadly sin I’d always hated.
I had to keep reminding myself it wasn’t his fault—he didn’t do what he did because he liked it. But I still couldn’t keep myself from averting my eyes, even knowing the second I did it he’d read the thoughts going through my head. But there was no time to make him feel better about it.
Screwing up whatever dregs of courage I still had, I forced myself to look at him. “You have the best glamour of us all. Scrub their minds and get them the hell out of here before the Order figures out what happened tonight.”
The pain in his eyes was instant and squeezed my heart in a vise. Bubba was an outcast—he knew it, he’d always known it—but I was one of the few that tried never to let on to that fact. He swallowed hard. The jig was up; in his heart I was the same as the rest of them now. And I hated that, but I had no time to make this right.
“All right, Dora.” Dropping his arms, he made to leave, and I stumbled for a second at the loss of his strength.
“Where’s Luc?” I asked, needing to get to him so we could work out a solution together.
“Last I saw, he was at the dart booth.” Then without a backward glance, Bubba left me, grabbing up what few humans remained like they were nothing but ragdolls and tossing them over his shoulder.
I didn’t have another moment to breathe because suddenly a mass of zombies was headed my way. It would have been nicer to fight with Luc at my back, but if wishes were fishes...
My left wrist was useless, but I refused to go down without a fight. I’d been in worse scrapes in my life. Grabbing the long-handled knife from out of the sheath tucked into the garter at my thigh, I snarled.
“Come get me, bitches!”
And they came, God did they come. These zombies weren’t stupid either, they didn’t attack one at a time like a vampire would, they came at me like a wall of decay, drowning me in the stench of their disease-riddled flesh.
My blade swung with satisfying thunks, ripping into thigh and chest muscle. But as good of a fighter as I was, seven to one wasn’t great odds for anyone. I’d only managed to put two down before the remaining five had me pinned to the ground and their teeth were all over me.
Pestilence must have realized what was happening because he didn’t give me any more time to try to work my way out of it, he just possessed me.
Turned me into a ticking death bomb.
I didn’t even fight him—I was too exhausted to even try. My heartbeats were weak, fluttery things in my chest. I was outside myself, watching as I raked dripping claws through them, biting anything that came too close to my face.
Pestilence was zealous, sinking gallons of poison into them. I knew it wouldn’t work—his venom didn’t work on zombies, they were already dead.
But I was wrong.
Because the bodies before me were starting to moan and writhe. Their limbs, their torsos, and even their heads began to glow a murky green as their guts all started to bloat and expand.
And then there was a loud explosion that made my ears bleed. But unlike Lust where feeding her powers made her stronger, Pestilence had sunk all of himself into the act of blowing up the zombie horde around us.
He shoved me back to consciousness and I screamed as the pain that’d been blessedly numb before now barreled back into focus. My breaths were choppy, my body convulsing. Icy needles were stabbing through my brain and then I felt a pair of hands clamp onto my ankle, and without a word of warning something ripped a huge chunk out of me.
It was like being branded by lightning.
I had nothing left and there was so much blackness and I wouldn’t stop it because I couldn’t.
Flopping like a dead fish, I prepared myself for death’s blow; never in my life would I have imagined that my end would come at the usually docile hands of a zombie.
What a cliché.
But the zombie that’d ripped into my ankle turned and disappeared back into the thick of the crowd, clutching her fleshy prize in her hand.
I was far from safe. As two more descended on me, I smiled. Because death didn’t have to be terrifying; it was only scary if you let it be. Soon I’d be wherever Kemen was, and as long as he was with me, I’d be okay.
“See you soon, Sandman,” I whispered.
A roar rolled like thunder and then I saw not one but two figures punch their way through to me. Luc moved like a death god, delivering blows to anything that blocked his way to me.
And to his left was my death priest.
He was glorious, parting the dead like the Red Sea, moving so quickly that I couldn’t see his blows, only the aftermath of one zombie after another being sliced straight down the middle and convulsing violently.
The air was thick and dark and prickled with raw power, and I knew the Gray Man was battling too, and I wanted to tell them thank you, but I was cold. So damn cold.
Lust was a coward and useless. Pestilence too tired to be of any use. And I felt more human than I’d ever felt in my life.
There might have been more bites done to me before they got there, I don’t know. I was beyond pain; I was drifting on a sea of nothingness. Strong arms hugged me tight, and then feathered kisses whispered across my bloody brow before my priest’s deep voice told me, “Everything’s okay, little demon. You’re okay. You’re okay.”
I was rocked to sleep by that lullaby.
I came to later to find a pensive Luc sitting beside me and a warm body cradling me close. Frowning, still feeling horribly jittery, I turned to look and sighed when Asher’s arms squeezed just slightly.
Somehow I was back in Kemen’s trailer, on his bed and being held by two impossibly powerful, angry men. Luc refused to even look at me, but his hand kept rubbing gently through my hair.
Asher must have sensed the shift in my breathing; he cocked his head and then a slow smile spread across his pensive face. “You’re awake,” he murmured against my lips.
“I don’t feel good,” I reluctantly admitted, clutching my stomach, which was still rolling and topsy-turvy.
Luc growled, jerking his head in Asher’s direction. “She’d be a hell of a lot better if you’d just let me feed her!”
By feed her, he didn’t mean food. Asher narrowed his eyes because he clearly understood the implication as well. “Then she can take from me.”
“God, will you two just shut up?” I squeezed my eyes closed, fighting nausea. “Go mark circles outside if you need to. I don’t want to have sex with either of you right now. What I do want is a toilet though.” I moaned as the bile churned straight up my throat. I didn’t even get a moment to warn them.
But as if sensing what was a second away from happening, Asher rushed me to the bathroom just in time, holding my hair back as I upchucked green slime. It wasn’t pretty and I just wanted him to go. I kept swatting at his arm pitifully, but he insisted on staying.
By the time I was through, I was ingloriously hugging the porcelain and wishing I’d died instead.
“It’s okay, little demon,” Asher crooned, rubbing my back. “Just get it out.”
“Go away,” I moaned, hating how understanding and nice he was being. Why couldn’t he grasp the concept of personal space?
“You heard the lady,” Luc drawled, and I only just now realized he was blocking the door, his big arms crossed over his broad chest as he glared daggers at my priest.
“Ugh.” I turned my face aside as my stomach clamped down tight. “Both of you. Don’t watch this.” That was all I had time to say before another powerful surge of glop expelled from my body.
Tears crashed out the corners of my eyes as my entire body rebelled against me. I couldn’t remember feeling this bad, ever.
“She isn’t healing,” Asher growled in frustration. “Why isn’t she healing?”
I doubted he was asking me.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t fucking do this, Priest!” Luc snarled, his bulky body shoulder-bumping Asher hard enough to make him stumble back.
A vicious snarl ripped from my priest, and I couldn’t believe these assholes were doing this while I was practically dying in front of them. The humiliation and anger all blended and I found just enough strength to snap at them. “Get the hell out of my house, both of you, now!”
But my threat lost something when once again I was kissing the porcelain throne.
At least they actually listened. Both of them disappeared and I was free to throw up in peace.
I had no idea how long I was in there, but it seemed like my entire long life flashed in front of my eyes before I was done.
Pathetically weak and smelling of vile things, I dragged myself into the shower, bringing the toothpaste and toothbrush with me.
I screamed when the first drop of hot water washed over me, only just now noticing that Asher was right. I wasn’t healing at all. My wrist was useless, I had gouges (literally hunks of flesh) gone, exposing the red muscle beneath.
Remembering the zombie that’d made a snack of my ankle, I looked, and you’d think after everything else I’d just seen that a small, crescent-shaped bite wouldn’t be the tipping point. But it was. Frustrated, angry, confused, and scared, I tipped my head back and howled from the depths of my very soul.
My door was slammed open and the curtains torn off. Luc was there and the demon who didn’t care was wrapping me up in his arms, trying so hard not to cause me more pain. But there wasn’t a spot on me that wasn’t hurting.
For the longest time he didn’t say anything, and everything hurt so bad all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and let the blessed darkness take me. It would be nothing to pass out now. I could literally will myself down Alice’s rabbit hole if I wanted, I was that much of a mess.
But I’d always been weak for any shred of kindness he’d shown me.
Holding on to his head, I rubbed his hair and hummed under my breath, giving him whatever strength I had left in me. I could feel the trembles of his muscles jumping in his back like Mexican beans. He didn’t say anything, just buried his face in my neck and let me hold him, let himself become vulnerable for just a moment, and that more than anything lent me strength.
“Luc, what happened tonight?” I whispered after several silent minutes.
This time when he pulled back, I noticed that while he wasn’t as savaged as I was, he was covered in scrapes and cuts. But unlike mine, his were actively healing. I saw the skin sealing, saw the wounds closing up like some invisible Band-Aid had been stretched across them, turning the angry red flesh sun-kissed and golden once more.
Grabbing my palm, he splayed it open, playing with the webbing between each digit, eyes distracted and thoughtful.
“You know about as much as I do,” he finally said, turning frosty blue eyes my way. His demon was fully under control and I couldn’t help but breathe a relieved sigh.
“Well.” I chuckled weakly, skin tingling when he planted my palm against his heartbeat. “We’re screwed, because I don’t know crap.”
Squeezing his eyes shut as if reliving some horror, he moaned. “I have never in my life witnessed a zombie hive do what they did tonight.” Fingers feathering my hair behind my ear, he grabbed the back of my neck until our eyes locked. “They killed Lynx tonight.”
I sucked my bottom lip into my mouth, biting down on it hard. Lynx was a Wrath demon. She’d had a violent sense of justice, right and wrong, black and white. Unyielding and often unemotional, she saw the world with eyes that judged worthy or unworthy and felt no qualms about squashing out the darkness.
But regardless of her not always having been the easiest Nephilim to get along with, I’d liked the iron butterfly, named so because of how dichotomous her appearance versus her personality really was.
Lynx had often appeared fragile and delicate. She’d been a slip of a girl with long black hair and ivory-pale skin. Coming only to my chest, she’d been the shortest of us and was often disregarded by those we hunted down as not quite demon enough to be worth their time.
But she’d fought like a Valkyrie in battle.
I sniffed. “Our numbers are dropping like flies. Not like we have many to lose.” Our carnival was run by thirty-one Neph. Thirty now, I guess. A tall order for such a few.
Losing one was bad enough, but losing two in so many weeks was turning into a cluster of the highest order. You have to realize that Nephilim are much tougher than we might appear. Kemen had been over a thousand years old when he’d died, Lynx close to eight hundred. We weren’t young bucks fresh out of diapers who didn’t have a clue how to handle the darkness around us.
Luc stood then, his hands dropping to his zipper as he kicked off his expensive Italian loafers.
“What are you doing?” I hadn’t been lying when I’d said I didn’t want sex. I felt like shit and yeah, sex might make it all better. But Lust and I weren’t exactly chummy at the moment; I wanted nothing to do with her. That cowardly bitch had now twice abandoned me when I could have used her strength in battle.
Apparently Lust was more the make love, not war type.
Luc was as nude as the day he’d been born when he crawled into the tub with me, and I might have fought harder if I hadn’t wanted friendly arms around me so badly.
Maneuvering in the stupidly small tub until I was on his lap, he wrapped me up and rested his head against my chest.
And as that hot water soaked through me, I closed my eyes and wondered if he realized that even a year ago if he’d done this I would have belonged heart and soul to him only.
Running my fingers through his wet hair, I held as tightly to him as he held me. We didn’t say sorry for how things had gone down for us lately. That just wasn’t what we did. Well, it wasn’t what he did anyway.
The beat of his heart against mine, the way his breath shuddered in and out of him, this was Luc speaking as loudly as he ever would. I closed my eyes and was close to drifting off again when he finally said, “The priest and I killed the final surge of them—they’re all gone.”
“And the people?”
“Bubba wiped their memories. Most of them were injured, but we couldn’t fix that.” He pushed a wet strand of hair away from the corner of my mouth, his lips tight. “I made it right this time, Dora.”
I knew he was referencing the slaughter he’d committed in South Dakota after he’d thought me dead, a topic we had to at some point discuss.
I nodded.
“Kane and Bubba are burning the corpses.”
“You sure there aren’t any more?” I shuddered, wondering if the memory of the walking dead would ever truly leave me or become just another nightmare in the chapter of my life.
He nodded. “I may not like that priest of yours, but he’s deadly. I smelled no more of them around. Whether the queen sent them or the Order, this wasn’t meant to be anything other than a warning.”
I laughed. “Meanwhile, I look like maggot food and Lynx is dead. Why is the Order doing this to us?” Because I was almost one hundred percent positive that even if the queen was in on this, it wasn’t her doing only. The Order wanted me dead, the question was why? What was so damn valuable about one lust Nephilim?
Shaking his head, he cradled my own and it was such a tender gesture that I couldn’t help but respond. Closing my eyes, I took deep meditative breaths.
What we were doing wasn’t sex, but his touch was making my rioting insides at least feel halfway normal again. Sighing, I pressed my cheek to his shoulder, inhaling the crisp scent of absinthe and Luc, a smell unique only to him.
“A zombie tore my mark off,” I whispered, the second my missing mark came to mind. I didn’t say it to startle him or shock him, but I must have.
Pushing me back, he stared at my face with startled eyes. “What? Let me see.”
It took the disentangling of limbs to free my leg and show him.
His fingers were like moth’s wings as he brushed tenderly along the tear mark.
“Luc.” I stilled his hand because my body was beginning to tingle in response and regardless of how I felt for Luc, I’d made Asher a vow. “The zombie seem determined. Not like the rest of the killers around us. It took my leg and ripped, then it ran off.”
“What the hell is going on here, Dora?” His frustration mirrored my own and I shrugged helplessly.
“God, I wish I knew. I know the Order has their hands deep in this shit, but why? It’s killing me that I can’t figure it out!”
Feeling fatigued again, I pressed my hand to my forehead. “I need to clean up and get back to bed. I feel like crap.”
“Dora?” His voice was a whisper, a question. I knew immediately what he was asking and I shook my head.
“Not tonight.”
His jaw clamped shut, but he didn’t argue. Helping me to stand, he turned me directly into the spray and gently—dare I even think it... reverently... rubbed soap all over me. Cleaning me off.
I melted into his touch, wishing so many things were different, that we hadn’t gone beyond the point of fixing it, but we had. My heart, my soul, yearned for Asher.
Turning off the nozzle, he scooped me up and I knew I should walk. It would be painful, but I could. I just didn’t want to. I wanted to revel in his kindness, in the all-too-brief moments still left to our dying relationship.
Laying me on the bed, he pulled the covers up over me, tucking them beneath my chin like I was a child. “I’m going to go make sure Bubba and Kane are good. I’ll tell Vyxen to swing by.”
“Ugh,” I groaned. “You don’t have to. Anyone but her.”
“Dora, I trust her.”
And those words, the way his eyes stared at me so stoically and intensely, told me everything I needed to know. Luc and Vyxen were seeing each other. Maybe not seriously, it was probably just a casual affair, but it was a red-hot poker to my heart.
I chuckled and shrugged, because I knew I’d be a hypocrite if I cast stones about it. “Fine. Send her over, but tell her to stay the hell out of my bedroom.”
Nodding, he turned and walked into the bathroom, got dressed, and was just ready to trace out when I asked him the one question that’d been bothering me since he showed up in my room.
“Luc, where did Asher go?”
“Grace’s.” He cleared his throat, looked down at the carpet and then back at me with ice in his eyes. “Said he’d be back tonight.”