The Torn World: The Harvesting Series Book 5

by Melanie Karsak

  “No,” I said, crossing the room toward her.

  “One of her people, right?” I heard Elle whisper to Kellimore.

  He must have nodded since I didn’t hear him respond.

  I knelt beside Ethel.

  “Ethel?” I whispered, knowing already that she was gone. Whatever Jamie and Elizabeth and the others were, Ethel was not one. I pulled out my boot dagger with the doe on the pommel. I closed my eyes, bracing myself, then put her out of her misery.

  A soft hand touched my shoulder. “You okay?” Kellimore asked.

  I nodded, inhaling deeply, then rose. Anger swelled in me once more. The next time I saw a fox, I was going to make a scarf out of its hide.

  Another flashlight clicked on behind me. Logan and Beatrice were looking through the notes on the doctor’s lab table. I stood looking down at the bodies of the ones I loved. I knew they would be here, but I hadn’t been prepared for the grief and anger. My body shook with rage. I’d loved them like they were my own family, and I had failed them.

  “This is amazing,” Beatrice whispered. “I can see what she was doing.”

  I panned the flashlight around. The beam of light caught the doctor’s white lab coat on the floor. While the edge of the coat was still white, the rest was stained with blood. Elizabeth had taken massive bites out of the doctor’s face and body. But she had not devoured her. There was a scalpel sticking out of her eye. Had Elizabeth killed her or someone else?

  “Jamie? James?”

  “The doc,” Kellimore said.

  I nodded. How much I hated her. She had killed the man I loved. Perhaps she had a plan, but it wasn’t one she’d shared with Jamie or anyone else. She’d used Jamie, made him her guinea pig without his permission. She deserved to die like this. Now I could only hope that what she’d learned, what she knew, wouldn’t die with her.

  “What’s that?” Kellimore said, reaching out to take my hand gently, moving the beam of light toward the doctor’s lab coat. There, inside the fabric, something glimmered.

  Moving closer, I knelt and pulled the bloody coat away from the body to investigate. Inside the coat pocket, I found three syringes and a tiny notepad filled with the doctor’s handwriting.

  “Beatrice?” I called.

  When she joined us, I passed her the notepad.

  Kellimore studied the syringes closely. “The doc wanted to give me a shot for my headache.”

  I shook my head. “No, she wanted to infect you, just like she did to Jamie.”

  “Infect me?” he said, frowning. He stared at the syringes then back at the doctor’s corpse.

  “She infected Jamie on purpose. But I think…I think she did it because she believed she had a cure. A human trial,” I said, shaking my head. “We got overrun before she could give him the antidote,” I said then handed the syringes to Beatrice.

  Beatrice looked closely at them. “They aren’t the same. The liquid inside this one is different. We’ll need to grab a microscope,” she told Logan.

  “Of course,” Logan said.

  “I didn’t know she’d done that to Jamie,” Kellimore said.

  “Me either,” Elle chimed in. “She was always a bitch, but I didn’t think she could do something like that.”

  I cast a glance down at her body. Weird science. I shook my head and tried not to think too much, to feel too much. Jamie had trusted her, and he’d paid for it with his life.

  “Jamie? James?”

  Nothing.

  “I…I need a minute,” I said. “I’ll go scout around a little. I’ll be back.”

  “You sure?” Kellimore asked, a worried expression crossing his face. “The undead are in the building.”

  Elle set her hand on his shoulder, passing him a knowing glance. Kellimore nodded and didn’t say another word.

  I turned and left the lab, careful to close the door behind me. My mind felt like it was crashing in on itself. After all we had survived, how could I just lose Jamie like this?

  “Jamie? Where are you?”

  Stepping back out onto the campus green, I looked all around. One undead man, who I suddenly realized had once been among the college survivors—until the kitsune came—shambled aimlessly across the lawn. His leg broken, he dragged it behind him as he moved slowly.

  “Jamie? Can you hear me?”

  There was no reply. I wasn’t going to have enough time. Tristan would, no doubt, rush us back with the materials as quickly as he could. Before then, I needed to find Jamie. I decided to make a quick perimeter sweep.

  Moving quickly and being as covert as possible, I ran across the campus green. My eyes searching everywhere, I passed through the grotto toward the picnic pavilions. I met with two of the shuffling undead who were easy pickings. But I didn’t see Jamie anywhere.

  “Jamie! Jamie, where are you?”

  From under a pavilion, I looked across the campus lawn toward the large oak tree. If Jamie had seen us go through the portal, he would have known we were long gone. He wouldn’t have stayed here waiting. But where would he go?

  “Jamie?”

  Dammit. He wasn’t anywhere.

  Frustrated, I turned and headed toward the front door of the college. If I was Jamie, where would I go? Back to the familiar? Back to some place where I could easily be found. Maybe the library, somewhere where he could keep an eye out for us?

  I adjusted Buddie’s bow and took a firmer grip on the shashka. The front door of the college was shattered. Glass littered the ground, glittering iridescently like diamonds. Bodies of the college people lay everywhere. One undead man lying just inside the building groaned. I thrust the blade of my shashka into his eye, silencing him.

  The hallways were dimly lit. Had we missed anyone? Were there still any survivors left?

  I passed by the student union. Many undead were still clustered inside. They rocked as they stood, but otherwise didn’t move.

  Stimulus. Response. At times, it seemed like the undead did nothing without some tantalizing stimulus in front of them. Perhaps the living and the dead weren’t that different. After all, how many of us had mindlessly chased the rat race, not thinking, just moving forward. Stimulus. Response.

  I moved toward the stairwell and headed slowly upward. The gates that blocked off the hallways were all down. Lying in the corner of the stairwell lay an undead woman whose leg was clearly broken. She hissed and bit at me. I made quick work of her before she grabbed the attention of the others.

  Pausing at the second floor, I bent my ear to listen. There were more undead there. I could smell and hear them. Moving quickly and quietly, I wound my way up to the third floor. Just days before Cricket had led me down this very passageway. The photographs that had been hanging on the walls were now knocked off.

  “Jamie? Are you here? Please come out. We’ve come back. We’re going to find a cure. Jamie? James, I need you.”

  I was met with silence. Sadness swept over me. What if he was gone? What was I going to do then? If we found a cure, but I couldn’t find him, what then?

  But what if he was here?

  And what if he wasn’t safe?

  Jamie would never hurt me, would he?

  “Jamie?”

  The third floor was completely silent save the sound of my heart thundering in my chest and the soft crunch of glass under my feet. The hallway was dark, but I didn’t risk using the flashlight. My ears were tuned in to every sound. I got the shivering sensation that I was not alone. Somewhere in the shadows, someone or something was watching.

  It was okay.

  It was daytime.

  It couldn’t be vampires.

  “Jamie?”

  I moved slowly down the hallway to the library. The door was ajar, some fallen books haphazardly propping the door open. I slipped inside.

  I scanned the wide, empty space.

  “Hello?” I called softly, still overcome with the sense that someone was watching me. “Jamie? Jamie, are you here?”

  Keeping my sword poi
sed at the ready, I moved down the hallway toward the room where Jamie and I had shared our special night, where he had proposed to me. As I moved past each study room, I went slowly, carefully. There was nothing, no one.

  But if there was nothing, why did I feel like there were eyes on me?

  I finally came to the corner room.

  My small heap of old clothing, and Jamie’s, lay in the corner.

  From back in the library, a stack of books slid to the ground with a thump. My heart slammed in my chest.

  I stepped back into the hallway.

  “Jamie? Is that you?”

  Nothing.

  “Who’s there? Show yourself,” I called as I moved down the hallway, my sword drawn.

  As I rounded the bookshelves, the library door closed. Someone had moved the pile of books holding it open.

  “Dammit,” I whispered.

  I paused for a moment.

  I could see everywhere from here.

  Just one last look.

  I raced to the window and looked outside. I saw two of the shambling undead. I also saw Tristan racing in his shifted form across the lawn. He looked up at me. His ears were flat on his head, and he was moving fast. That did not look good.

  I quickly scanned around. Nothing. No Jamie. He wasn’t here anymore.

  But someone was.

  Moving quickly, I turned and headed back down the hallway. That awful sense of being watched was gone, and in its place, I felt a massive sense of urgency. I needed to get out of that building and fast. As I raced down the hallway, I heard something crash on the second floor below me.

  And then I heard them.

  I ran down the steps, pausing at the second floor. In the stained glass window, I saw someone’s reflection. There was a flash of red hair and then I saw the undead moving toward me.

  Dammit.

  The kitsune were still here, and they had seen us.

  I ran down to the first floor just as the undead began pouring out of the Student Union. My boots skidded to a stop. No. No. No.

  When they spotted me, they groaned loudly and moved toward me. I turned and rushed out the front door. From Tristan’s expression, I knew I wasn’t the only one who realized we were compromised.

  Moving quickly, I ran back toward the doctor’s lab.

  Then I heard them. Fox barks. A lot of them.

  I was headed down the sidewalk when Tristan and the others came rushing out.

  “Layla,” Tristan called. “I saw—”

  “I know. Me too. Listen.”

  A chorus of barks arose from the forest and inside the building.

  “Shit,” Elle said, “that sounds like…all of them.”

  “There’s still a chance they don’t know we came through at the stone. We need to try to make it back,” Tristan said.

  “Go, let’s go,” Logan said, taking Beatrice’s hand.

  We rushed out the front gate. The undead had started moving back toward the college.

  “This way,” Kellimore called, leading us a different route from where we’d come.

  “Where are we going?” Tristan called.

  “Come on,” Kellimore yelled as we raced toward a large blue building a block or so away from the college. Fumbling in his pocket, Kellimore pulled out a ring of keys as he ran toward the building.

  “What’s this?” Tristan asked.

  “My house,” Kellimore replied.

  He stuck a key into the garage door and heaved it open. There was a truck inside.

  “In, in,” Kellimore called, waving us toward the back of the truck. Moving fast, the others jumped in the back as I slid into the passenger seat. “Come on, Broomhilda,” he said then clicked over the ignition.

  The engine turned over, the truck coming to life.

  “Yes!” Kellimore said. “Hold on.”

  Gunning the gas, he pulled the truck out onto the road and took off across town.

  I shot him a bewildered glance.

  “What?” he asked with a laugh. “I was prepared, just in case. And I was right.”

  “And apparently Tristan—”

  “Need to know basis,” Kellimore replied then pulled onto Main Street, the truck skidding as he turned sharply.

  I slid the back window open. “What did you see?” I called to Tristan.

  “The unseelie.”

  “They saw you?” Elle asked.

  “Yes,” Tristan replied. I could see he was clearly upset.

  “They were in the building. They were waiting,” I added.

  “Hold on,” Kellimore said then turned the truck across a baseball field toward the ridge. “There,” he said, pointing toward a path in the woods not too far away.

  I held on tight, watching in the back mirror. There was no sign of them.

  “Jamie?” I called hopelessly once more.

  Nothing.

  Kellimore shoved the gears into four-wheel drive then set off down the path through the forest, dodging trees and bumping over rocks and fallen logs. Had my heart not been beating so hard in my chest, had I not been running for my life, I would have sworn I was back in Hamletville with Ian. As much refinement as life in the city had given me, wandering down the hallways of the Smithsonian museums, going to the symphony, and eating high-end food, I still secretly loved Hamletville’s delights.

  Kellimore turned the truck, guiding it through a low stream, and up a bank where it connected with a muddy dirt road. We whipped past a sign for the “Sons of Red Branch Campground.” Moments later, pushing through ferns and overgrown brush, we arrived where we started.

  But this time, we were not alone.

  Three hawkish looking people surrounded the standing stone.

  They were already there.

  “Go easy,” Tristan whispered as we slowly got out of the truck.

  “Tristan,” a tall, red-haired man called.

  “And Logan,” a red-haired woman, who looked much like the woman who’d led us into the trap at the Harpwind, purred.

  “Oh yes, even the whelp is out,” the man said with a laugh.

  I cast a glance toward Logan whose expression was stormy.

  Shaking, Beatrice crowded close to Elle who was clutching her knife and gun. Kellimore got out slowly, his weapon raised.

  “Stand aside,” Tristan said.

  “No,” said a very petite but stern-looking woman with deep red hair.

  The kitsune man took a step forward.

  I gave my shashka a spin then stepped between him and Tristan.

  “And you must be Layla,” the man said then, grinning wickedly at me.

  In the woods behind us, I heard the barks of foxes.

  “You will move aside,” I said to him.

  “And why would I do that?”

  “Because I told you to,” I answered. “And because, even though your reinforcements are on their way, I can take your head before they get here. And my people have guns on you.”

  “Oh, yes. Humans and your weapons. You’re no different than you were five hundred years ago, ready to chop the world apart,” he said then walked toward me.

  Arrogantly, he reached out as if he was going to brush my blade dismissively away.

  Moving quickly, I circled the blade around his hand then slid it down his cheek, slicing open his flesh just a little, then let the blade come to rest on his neck.

  The look of surprise on his face was priceless. He touched his cheek then looked at his bloody fingers.

  “Kill her,” the red-haired woman said.

  “Go ahead,” I taunted them. “Let’s see you try.” The image of Ethel’s mangled body bubbled up in my mind, anger seething along with it. It was all I could do to keep from taking the kitsune’s head right then.

  “Lors,” Tristan said then, intervening in the growing tension. “Enough of this. Mankind has died, and in their wake you have left the living dead. These humans have nothing to do with you. They are innocents. Leave them be. Your work is done.”

  The man l
ooked at his bloody hand once more then glared at me. “We will not rest until they’re all gone.”

  “Then you will have to fight through us to get to them,” Logan answered.

  “Well,” Lors said, “then it will be as the humans used to say: two birds, one stone.”

  “And what will you do when the night fiends come? And the living undead? You sought to save this world, but instead you’ve turned it into a living grave,” Tristan said.

  “In time, all will come to right,” the small woman said.

  “And then what?” Tristan asked them.

  “We’ll take our place where we belong. Rulers of this realm. We’ll come out of the mists and shadows.”

  “The mists and shadows are our world,” Tristan said.

  “You’ve chosen the wrong side, Tristan. When they are gone, we can all return,” Lors said.

  In a way, I knew the kitsune was right. If Tristan’s people had been living in hiding all this time, our death would permit their return as well as the kitsune’s.

  “No,” Logan told him. “Now tell your people to step aside.”

  “I can’t do that,” Lors answered.

  The sound of barking was getting closer. One way or another, we needed to get through.

  “You need to move,” I said then. “This is your last warning.”

  “Layla,” Tristan said, and I heard the cautioning in his voice.

  “If she kills me, you know what will happen,” Lors warned Tristan.

  “Yes, we do,” Logan answered. “The unseelie will lose their dread king, and the humans will have taken some vengeance.”

  “I’ve already broken you,” Lors said then, looking down at me with his yellow eyes. “Why won’t you just die?”

  “It’s not over yet,” I whispered.

  “Okay. Enough of this,” the petite red-haired woman said, then moving quickly, she pulled a knife from her inner coat pocket and lobbed it at me.

  “No!” Lors shouted.

  I grabbed Lors, pulling him between me and the blade. The knife hit him in the shoulder.

  Kellimore took aim at the petite red-haired woman and fired.

  Startled, as if she couldn’t believe such a thing could happen, her face froze, and then she crumpled dead onto the ground.

  “No,” the other woman screamed, and with a jerking movement, she shifted into a large fox and lunged at Elle. She bit Elle hard on the arm. With a scream, Elle dropped her gun.