Deadrise (Book 6): Blood Curse

by Siara Brandt

  “I don’t think so,” he hissed between clenched teeth. But there was something in his voice now that terrified her.

  She was free, however, and she headed for the door again, almost reaching it. But powerful arms snaked around her pulling her back against his chest and another wild struggle followed.

  Fearing he would draw the knife again, Emma twisted and kicked madly before he could do so. But the man was bigger than she was and his strength was far superior to hers. She almost sobbed with frustration and despair when she began to realize that she could probably struggle all night and she still wouldn’t be able to free herself, he was that strong.

  In desperation, she managed to ram an elbow into his midsection. He didn’t let go of her completely, but he did stumble back a step or two. Seeing her chance, the only one she would probably have, she spun around and sprang toward the doorway. Before she could even grab hold of the doorknob, she felt iron fingers close around her shoulder and drag her back.

  Reyne was through playing nice. He spun the wildcat around, pinning her between the wall and his body.

  “Stop fighting me,” he hissed, surprised that so slight a woman could get him so out of breath in such a short period of time.

  She wasn’t through fighting, either. She drew her fist back again and landed it solidly in the center of his stomach.

  Emma couldn’t believe the man’s strength. There had been a solid connection between her fist and his rock-hard abdomen, but it didn’t seem to have any effect at all. His grip didn’t lessen in the least. In fact, his arms tightened around her like a vise.

  As he leaned into her body, his breath was warm against ear as he whispered, “If you want to stay alive, you’d better be quiet. Now. Unless you want to draw every one of those things within earshot up here.”

  It wasn’t his words that made her suddenly go still. It was because she had simply run out of energy. His stamina obviously far surpassed hers.

  She felt him slowly loosen his grip, testing her, she knew, to see if she would try to escape again. When she didn’t move, he let go of her completely.

  But he was still standing so close that his body was touching hers. She felt his fingers close around her chin as he lifted her face and said softly, “I’m not going to hurt you. If you want to live, you’re going to have to trust me.”

  His voice was deep and masculine. Strong. His face was close to hers, but it was hidden by the darkness. Behind him, violent pulses of lightning gleamed silver in strands of hair that were black as midnight.

  Of course she wasn’t about to trust him. She wasn’t that stupid.

  “Are you all right?” she heard.

  “Yes,” she gasped.

  Liar, Reyne thought. She didn’t look or sound anywhere near all right.

  He stepped back, giving her more space. She was a dramatic vision as she stood there before him. Her breast was still heaving. Her face was stark white in the intermittent flashes of lightning. But she was putting up a brave front. He gave her that. He heard her draw a slow, deep breath as she stared upward, determined to face him even though he towered over her by a good foot.

  Lightning crackled nearby, making her jump. It startled him, too. He decided the best thing to do was to probably give her more space.

  Emma watched warily as the man moved around the room before her. Lightning was flashing constantly in the darkness beyond the window. When he turned, she could almost feel his eyes on her.

  “No need to be so skittish. In case you didn’t know it, I just saved your life.”

  “By holding a knife to my throat?” she challenged him, perhaps foolishly. But she couldn’t help it. A surplus of adrenaline was still coursing hotly through her veins.

  “I couldn’t tell what you were in the dark,” he said with a shrug of his powerful shoulders.

  Emma hadn’t known what she was facing, either. But just how did he think he had just saved her life?

  She heard a bang somewhere outside the room and knew something or someone was in the house with them.

  She watched the man walk over to the door, lock it and shove a dresser in front of it.

  She stared at the door. He had also just locked her inside with him. Without her permission.

  “We’ve got company,” he told her grimly. “Both downstairs and in one of the other bedrooms. I doubt if they can open doors or get up the stairs, but there’s no sense taking any chances. We should be safe enough here for the night.”

  “You mean- ” She swallowed hard. “You expect us to stay here together?”

  Outside the open window, she heard a whooshing sound in the distance. She realized it was rain steadily sweeping closer. The sound became louder and rain began to beat against the house.

  “Looks like we’re not going anywhere for a while,” she heard her unwanted roommate say. “Relax, honey,” he said, a trace of impatience now edging into his voice. “If I was going to do something, I’d have done it by now.”

  She didn’t like the fact that he had read her mind so accurately. And did he expect her to take his word about his intentions? A man she didn’t know. A man who had held a knife to her throat not five minutes ago. The only thing she knew about him for certain was that he was more than capable of overpowering her if he chose to do so. How was that supposed to reassure her?

  “You can think about it as long as you need to,” he said next. “But I’m going to lay down and get some sleep. I’m dead on my feet.”

  Before she could decide if he had meant that as some kind of dark, twisted humor, he stretched himself out on one of the two twin beds in the room. And apparently forgot all about her.

  But Reyne was far from forgetting about his unexpected co-tenant. He knew he had probably scared the hell out of the woman by holding that knife to her throat, but the whole area was crawling with the undead and he was so exhausted that even he was jumpy. And she had come upon him so unexpectedly, moving around like a Ninja in the darkness that he’d only had a second to react. In this world, you reacted to anything unexpected like it was a threat if you wanted to stay alive.

  He couldn’t tell what she was thinking right now. Didn’t know if she’d stay put. If she was smart, she would. And she had to be smart if she had survived on her own this long. But there wasn’t much he could do about it if she did decide to leave. That was her business. Right now, he needed sleep badly. He needed to be wide awake and alert in the morning and at the moment he could barely keep his eyes open.

  “I give you my word. I’ll keep my distance. Sorry about the knife,” he added as a peace offering, knowing that the apology probably wouldn’t go very far in easing her fears. “I gotta tell you, though, going out there tonight would be one stupid move.”

  While the bed creaked under the man’s weight, Emma walked over to the window and looked down into the yard below. Through the downpour, she saw several dark, shuffling figures moving around. As always, they were completely unaffected by the pouring rain. For all she knew, one of them had a knife sticking out of its chest. She also heard thumping noises downstairs and in the hallway right outside the door.

  Her adrenaline rush was wearing off and right now she could barely keep her eyes open. She sat down on the other bed and soon found herself nodding off while she was in a sitting position. Several times she would jerk awake suddenly and stare at the other bed in the darkness, or look at the window to see if it was still raining.

  He was right, she thought groggily as she finally collapsed on the bed in a state of complete exhaustion. It would be stupid to even think about going out there tonight. She could hear the man’s even breathing. She was pretty sure he was asleep. All she could do was to try and will her mind to wake up if he took so much as one step toward her, and hope that he was right. If he was going to do anything, he would have done it by now . . .

  That was her last thought before sleep finally claimed her and, like the man in the bed across the room, she slept like one who was dead to the world.
/>   Chapter 9

  She couldn’t see him very well, but just by hearing his voice Vayna had a bad feeling about the man. He had come out of nowhere and now, as her eyes adjusted to the degrees of darkness, she could see his dark silhouette blocking their path. He was a huge giant of a man who towered over Arlend by at least a foot.

  Ryland was nowhere in sight and, while Vayna hoped that her son would stay hidden and that the man had not already seen him in the darkness, Arlend foolishly looked around for his missing son.

  “Where’d he go?” he asked out loud.

  But Ryland didn’t answer, so the next thing that Arlend did was to address the man directly. “We don’t want any trouble. We just want to get out of the city.” And then, as always, Arlend offered too much information. “Before we run out of food.”

  “You got something to eat?” the man asked immediately.

  “Just an orange.”

  “Give it to me.” Arlend did what he was told and held the orange out to the man, who strode forward and snatched the orange out of Arlend’s hand. He turned to Vayna next. “What about you? You got any food on you?”

  Vayna silently shook her head.

  Arlend chuckled nervously and tried to make a joke out of it. “I guess that’s the price of a toll these days. An orange. Can we go now?”

  “You can go,” the man grunted. Then he jerked his head in Vayna’s direction. “She stays with me.”

  Arlend looked confused, as if he was wondering what the man could possibly want with her. The truth suddenly dawned on him. It was a far higher price to pay, and yet Arlend was tempted. Except he knew that Ryland was probably watching from the shadows. All he could do was to try reasoning with the man.

  “I have nothing,” Arlend repeated with another nervous laugh. “Unless you’re a smoker. I have a pack of cigarettes. You can have them.” Arlend was aware of Vayna’s head turning toward him in the darkness. He held out his hand - the one without the umbrella – and turned the palm up in a placating gesture.

  This time the faint gleam of a smile showed on the man’s face. Vayna could see it even in the darkness as he looked scornfully at Arlend’s umbrella, at Arlend himself. “You just keep your cigarettes. And your umbrella. Leave her with me and you won’t have to worry about her anymore. I’ll make sure she’s got food to eat. Which seems to be more than you were able to do.”

  Arlend didn’t say anything.

  “Go on,” the man suddenly snarled as if he had run out of patience. “Before I change my mind.”

  Arlend didn’t move. He wasn’t sure what to do.

  The man whipped out a knife. A big knife.

  Arlend stayed frozen. He stood there with his umbrella in one hand, afraid to raise it even an inch, knowing it would be useless against a knife. With a man like that, he didn’t want to make any moves that might be perceived as being aggressive or challenging.

  “Go on,” the man repeated threateningly. He even took a stomping step forward, the kind of move you might make to shoo away an unwanted cat. “Get out of here.”

  Arlend gripped the umbrella tighter. It was an instinctive reaction as he tried to find the courage to use it if it came to that. But all he could think of was that knife.

  In the end, it was Ryland who saved them. Out of the darkness, there came the sickening, reverberating sound of metal connecting with a human skull. The man didn’t utter a sound. His knees buckled and he immediately sank to the ground.

  “Ryland!” Vayna gasped as she saw her son holding a metal pipe.

  “Come on,” Ryland said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They ran until they were standing before another obstacle, one that was more of a challenge than the gates had been. A chain link fence.

  “Come on,” Ryland urged them. “We have to get to the other side. Climb. Climb!”

  After laboring greatly, they were able to reach the other side of the fence safely. The city park lay sprawled out before them.

  “We just have to get through the park and past the zoo,” Ryland told them as they paused to catch their breath.

  “The zoo?” Vayna echoed uncertainly. “You’re sure this is the best way?”

  The park covered a lot of ground and the woods were dense, almost impenetrable in some places.

  “I don’t know,” Ryland answered her honestly. “There’s only one way we’re going to find out.”

  After they had walked for a while in silence, Arlend asked again when he could have a cigarette.

  “There’s no time for that now,” Ryland told his father in a hushed voice. “We need to- We have to get through here as fast as possible.”

  Vayna did not miss the edge of worry in her son’s voice. “What aren’t you telling us, Ryland?” she asked.

  He hesitated, but, without slowing down, he finally said, “I’ve heard rumors that some of the animals have been let out of their cages.”

  Fully aware of the apprehension in his voice, Vayna almost stopped dead in her tracks. “What kind of animals?” she asked, dreading the answer.

  It was bad enough that there were zombies out there, but wild animals, too?

  “I don’t know.” And because Ryland avoided looking at her, she thought he did know.

  “Let’s just keep going,” he said as he walked faster.

  They came to the fountain at the center of the park. It was not running now. There used to be swans in the pond that the fountain ran into and she would take Ryland here to feed them when he was little. But without the fountain running, the pond had gone dry and the swans had left. The flower beds were nothing but weeds now and the grass was knee high all around them.

  That’s when Vayna heard a truly frightening sound. She had watched enough TV to know a lion’s roar when she heard one. Right away, she felt breathless with anxiety and she began to tremble with fear. She couldn’t help it. Of all the things that instilled fear in her, it was lions.

  “We’ll keep off the paths,” Ryland said in a low whisper as he held a low-lying branch aside for her. “This way. Hurry.”

  “If something happens and we get separated,” he went on. “If you should run into one of them, remember you hit them in the head. As hard as you can.”

  Vayna didn’t know if he was talking about zombies or lions.

  Finally they had to rest before they could take another step. They were exhausted.

  “What do we do next?” Arlend asked.

  A second later a lighter flared as he lit a cigarette. Before he could draw even one puff, Ryland knocked it violently out of his hand and stepped on it.

  “What the hell are you- ” Arlend began indignantly.

  But he never finished. Ryland spun around as another sound reached them from the darkness. Off to their left, brush rustled as something moved.

  “Down!” Ryland hissed.

  Crouched down low, Vayna looked all around her. She was breathing hard. Her skin was crawling in dread anticipation as she expected something to come rushing at them from out of the darkness. And then, over the pounding of her heart, she heard another sound. Footsteps running on the grass.

  “Run!” Ryland cried, dragging her to her feet.

  Arlend didn’t have to be told twice. He started to run. He never once looked back, not at Vayna, or his son for that matter.

  They kept running. They only stopped when they had reached a charred, skeletal pile of wood that was left from a burned-out building that had partially collapsed. They took shelter in the rubble, waiting until they could get their bearings before continuing on, waiting to see if there were any more threats out there.

  Thunder crashed and lightning flashed continuously around them now. The wind was beginning to rise in the tree tops. But they didn’t hear any other sounds, only those made by the approaching storm. As Ryland hurried them on, he kept staring anxiously into the darkness that surrounded them. Down below them, at the bottom of a steep hill, a greenhouse rose up out of the darkness like a great behemoth. It was a long, do
med structure where Ryland had gone on a field trip when he had been in fourth grade.

  “I don’t see anything- ” Arlend began, choking off his words as the first heavy raindrops hit the ground.

  The sky soon opened up and unleashed a torrent of cold, driving rain. Out through the grey curtain of rain, Vayna could see shuffling figures headed right for them, not in the least affected by the hammering rain. She heard their savage cries, too, even over the storm. They seemed unstoppable and relentless, like beings let loose from the gates of hell.

  Ryland grabbed his mother’s arm. “Keep up and don’t fall behind. We need to get out of this park.”

  Vayna ran, sliding repeatedly on the wet grass and mud. She tried hard to keep up, but there was a point when she did fall behind. She stumbled when her foot twisted in a hole in the ground. Pain shot up her leg. But as bad as the pain was, she tested her ankle and found that it was all right. Nothing was broken.

  She was lying on the wet ground with the tall grass all around her. Rain was pouring down, half blinding her. Using her hands as leverage, she pushed herself to her feet and looked to the last place she had seen Ryland. He was nowhere in sight. Neither was Arlend.

  She tried to take a step and felt intense pain in her twisted ankle, but she was certain she could still walk, although running might be a different matter altogether. Her eyes strained to see through the driving rain. She still couldn’t see Ryland or Arlend. She knew she had to move. No matter how much it hurt. She couldn’t let herself fall further behind. She was not going to die here.

  She looked behind her and was alarmed to see movement out of the corner of her eye. In fact, the wet blackness was alive with movement. The storm wind gusted harder against her. Even with the driving rain, the stench of death grew stronger.

  She was surprised to see Arlend rising up from the tall grass not far from her.

  She put her hand out. “Help me, Arlend!”

  But one look at Arlend’s face terrified her more than anything else. He didn’t reach for her. He just stood there like a statue looking at the horde of advancing zombies.