by Multiple
It appeared that hadn’t occurred to him.
“Aren’t you happy to see me?” He scowled when I didn’t respond right away. “I thought you wanted this. We can be together, like nothing ever happened.”
I shook my head. “You can’t erase the past.” Or the present. Had Mark spied on me for Kristoff? Shown him where Vera lived? Suggested using her to get to me? When exactly had he made his deal, before or after I met Jacob? I was afraid to ask, not sure I wanted to know.
He came to me and took my hand in his cold, dead one. “I’d like to try.”
I pulled away, trying to hide the disgust I felt at his touch. Mark put a hand on the wall, preventing me from ducking away. “I’m not a ghost any more, I’m here in the flesh. You said that’s how you wanted me. I came back from the dead for you. You can’t reject me now.”
I just blinked at him, appalled and speechless.
He leaned in closer to me, nuzzling my neck. “I’d almost forgotten how you smelled.” His other hand crept around my waist.
And for just a moment, because of the way his deep voice vibrated on my skin, I wanted him. Wanted to yield to him, let him peel off my clothes and throw me on the bed and pretend none of the bad things had ever happened, that we were as we had always been. But the faint scent of death on his skin reminded me it was an illusion.
Mark was nothing more than a body snatcher. There was no going back for us. I pushed him away and moved back to stand by my bed. “Mark, this is a lot to absorb,” I said diplomatically. “And we have bigger problems than the status of our relationship.”
“What do you mean?”
“The renegades and the dragons are planning to invade and take over.”
“So? I have you. That’s all I care about.” He came toward me again, but I put a hand up to stop him.
“Well, it’ll be awfully hard to have a relationship with me while I’m a renegade slave.” I pointed to the collar around my neck.
Mark looked at me, eyes narrowed. “You’re not a renegade slave, you’re mine.”
I winced at the possessive tone in his voice, but didn’t argue. Truth be told, I’d rather deal with a lovesick zombie than the renegades. “That won’t happen so long as I wear their collar. We’ve got to stop them, then we can…,” I paused and licked my lips, “talk about us.”
He considered it for a second and then gave an abrupt nod. “Tell me what you want me to do.”
“I need to take Kristoff out of the picture. He’s raising a zombie army to assist the renegades with their revolution.”
Mark nodded. “I’ve seen them, although I didn’t know what their purpose was.”
“Where are they?”
“There are probably a couple hundred in the basement and several hundred more scattered throughout the city.”
My eyes went wide. “Wow. And are they like you?” When he raised an eyebrow, I clarified, “Non rotting with souls.”
Mark raised one shoulder in a half shrug. “They’re not rotting but I don’t think they have souls like I do.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand. I thought zombies decomposed.” Granted, there hadn’t been one in over a hundred years. It’s possible the magic improved or the accounts that survived weren’t accurate. It also wasn’t an area I’d ever researched heavily.
“Kristoff is powerful,” Mark said simply.
I sighed. “Well, I’ve got to stop him, take away that power or else it’ll be a bloodbath.”
“There’s one problem.” Mark held up one finger.
“What?”
“Stop Kristoff and I go back to being a ghost. It’s his power that lets me be like this.”
I had a hard time hiding the relief I felt at the news and ducked my head so he couldn’t see my face. “Oh. We’ll work something out.”
“Hey, I know.” His eyes gleamed with excitement. “You can learn how to do it. He’s going to teach you, he told me so himself. Once he does, I won’t need him anymore. You can be the one to keep me alive.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. What had happened to Mark? He’d never been pro-murder. Was his new body too tight on his soul? Why was me murdering innocent people the answer to our problems?
Mark picked up on my lack of enthusiasm and frowned. “Listen, Sofia. I’ll help you only if you promise me two things.”
“What?”
“That you’ll let me kiss you and you’ll put me in a body once we’ve gotten rid of Kristoff.”
I thought it over. “Okay, deal.” Mark didn’t need to know that I had no intention of honoring my promise. By the time he realized I had lied, it would be too late and he’d be little more than ether. Ether that I would force into the afterlife if it was the last thing I did.
“You mean it?”
“Yes.” I did my best to look sincere in order to sell the lie. It sucked having to mislead him, but Mark had gone down a path I would not walk.
He smiled, bright and big at me until I almost felt bad for lying. “Come here.”
“Why?”
“I’m collecting on the kiss you owe me.”
I gulped. I hadn’t realized he meant now.
He beckoned. “Come here, Sofia.” There was an undertone of steel in his voice that spoke of controlled anger, an anger I didn’t want to see unleashed. This wasn’t the same Mark I had known and loved. I took a step forward, then another until I stood in front of him. When Mark had been alive, we’d been roughly the same height and we’d been able to see eye to eye. Now, I only came up to the new Mark’s chest. Nervous, I kept my eyes level, staring at his newly inherited pecs, which looked tight enough to bounce quarters on, afraid to meet Mark’s eyes.
Gently, he took my chin in his hand and raised it until our eyes met. “Don’t be afraid.”
“I’m not,” I said even though it was a bald lie. His eyes glittered at me like emeralds. I didn’t know how to read his expression. I could always read Mark’s stormy sea eyes, but not the hard green stones now looking at me. Death had changed him beyond the fact his spirit was now trapped in another body.
“I love you, Sofia and I’m never going to let you go.” He lowered his head and pressed his cold, rubbery lips against mine, completely missing the disgust that filled my eyes.
*
Mark left after we kissed, saying he didn’t want to be caught by Julia. Still speechless from our kiss, I merely nodded and waved as he walked out the door. For once, I was thankful for my captivity, it meant Mark couldn’t have his way with me.
Besides, I did not have time to tango with a stalker beyond the grave. I needed to deactivate the collar and I had a necromancer to kill. Plus the crystals Kristoff had given me needed to be charged and I intended to start the task sooner rather than later to be sure they were ready. I wasn’t so sure about my necromancer fighting skills and I didn’t want Vera to lose another finger or worse.
Not wasting any time, I set about trying to pop out the stone in my collar. There was no way to know if Fred had told me the truth about how to deactivate it. For all I knew, I was about to commit suicide, but I had to take the risk. Even if the dragons and renegades weren’t poised to strike in the next few days, my life and Vera’s were certainly in danger. I had to do something.
To start, I tried to pry the stone out with my fingers, but it was pretty tightly wedged into the collar. I increased the force until my thumb throbbed under the pressure with no luck. Realizing it was going to take more than my fingers, I went to the kitchen in search of a bread knife to pry into the small crack between the metal and the stone. With a few false starts, I managed to pop the stone out. It clattered and skipped across the floor to disappear under my bed. I left it there, figuring that was probably the best place to hide it for now.
I hoped Kristoff wouldn’t realize it was gone. If he was like most men, he probably never knew there had been a stone in the center in the first place. Although a woman would notice. I frowned and thought of Julie. She might realize the stone was gone,
but would she understand what it meant? It was a risk I had to take.
The collar deactivated (or at least I hoped it was), I worked on charging the crystals, It wouldn’t be good if Kristoff became suspicious and figured out things had changed. Now that I knew how to do it, charging them didn’t take long, but it did leave me hungry and tired. I took the time to grab a quick sandwich, but skipped a nap. Instead, I began a methodical search of the building. I wanted to locate Vera if I could as well as the zombie army, and identify any exits. In a very short time I was going to make a run for it. I had to be ready.
Staying close to the walls, I slunk down hallway after hallway, all empty. The nice thing about the collar, no one felt the need for guards, which meant no one challenged my movement through the building. Not once did my collar spark to life. It seemed Zrayus had told the truth.
I scanned my floor quickly. I knew the layout well and knew I wouldn’t find Vera, but I double-checked making sure I hadn’t missed any entrances or exits. I had the time now to be thorough, time I might not have later and luck favored the prepared. I hoped.
Confirming the only entrance or exit for my floor was through Kristoff’s office, I started on the rest of the building. There was one flight of stairs that connected all the floors and I had the choice of going up or down. Based on what Mark had said, I decided to go down first and headed for the basement.
At the bottom of the stairs, I went through yet another door and found a long corridor lined with doors. With a soft touch, I slowly opened one of the doors, and looked inside. The smell of something sour hit me first. A cross between mold and rotting fruit coated my nostrils and the inside of my mouth until I gagged.
The odor came from the rows of people standing at military attention. From the smell and the black void where their auras should’ve been, I knew they weren’t alive, but zombies. And not the fancy ones like Mark, they were classic horror version of zombies. There must have been dozens of them, wedged against each other like rotting sardines. Utterly still, except for the smallest of movements. Even zombies, well beyond the reach of pain and discomfort, couldn’t hold one position for hours on end without some fidgeting. One of them lurched forward, the head coming up, eyes settling on me.
With a gasp, I shut the door, holding onto the knob in case they tried to come after me, but nothing happened. No one tried to pull the door open or raised any alarm that I could hear. Something held them inactive, keeping them from responding to my presence. I imagined Kristoff had something to do with that. He liked to keep dead people on a short leash.
For several tense moments, I waited for the zombie hordes to come stumbling after me just on the off chance I was wrong and they were just slow. When nothing happened, I continued down the hallway, keeping an eye out behind me. I checked the other rooms by placing my hand on the door and letting my second sight tell me what lay on the other side. Every room had zombies, all standing at attention, all unnaturally still.
I had always intended to do my best to save myself and Vera, but now I knew the stakes were much, much higher. The army of zombies down here and others like it would be set lose on Boston to bring about a new world order, one where the renegades were in charge, and dragons larger than a football field commandeered air space for their reproductive cycle. The threat was real to me now, more real than it had been before. Not that I hadn’t believed Athena, but it had been difficult to envision such a drastic change to the world I knew.
Governments were stable, at least in the US. There hadn’t been a coup d’etat since the American Revolution. Strange to think such an odd alliance would bring it to its knees now. And I had no doubt between the zombies, the renegades, and the dragons that they would succeed. The dragons alone were just too big to stop. What was the army going to do? Blow them up? The biological ‘shrapnel’ of that alone would kill more people than it saved and the zombies couldn’t be killed at all.
Not so long as Kristoff was alive.
The faint sound of a door opening in the distance and the tap-tap-tap of footsteps on stairs broke my train of thought. Someone was coming and the only place I had to hide was a room full of zombies. Great.
I ran to a room at the far end of the hall, one of the few I hadn’t checked yet. Yanking the door open, I slipped inside and came face-to-face with Mark whose eyes widened in happy surprise at my appearance. He was alone, but I wasn’t sure if one was better than a dozen zombies, especially considering Mark’s undying love for me. Either way, it was too late to back out, not without being discovered.
I put a finger to my mouth and pointed behind me as I shut the door. Mark nodded his understanding as the footsteps came closer. Once they passed us, I cracked open the door to see who it was and caught a glimpse of Kristoff turning down the hallway at the end of the corridor. A murmur of voices reached my ears then, followed by the screech of a metal door being dragged open.
I moved to go back out into the hall, thinking I would peek around the corner and see what Kristoff was up to. But Mark, who was behind me, put a hand on the door, preventing me from leaving.
“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice more of a hiss than a whisper. “Let me out.”
“No. That hallway is a dead end, the only exit is the way you came. You don’t want Kristoff to see you. Wait until he leaves.”
“Oh.” I released the doorknob. Damn, why did he have to be right?
“What are you doing down here anyway? Julia said you were confined to the top floor.”
I shrugged. “I was just looking around.” I wasn’t about to tell Mark about deactivating my collar. Not when I knew he wanted to ‘live’ more than he wanted to help me. To get him off the subject, I asked, “Is Vera down here?”
Mark nodded. “That’s where Kristoff is now. He keeps her in a room around the corner.”
“Did you know Kristoff’s been chopping off her fingers?”
“Yes. I heard the screams.” To his credit, Mark looked shamefaced.
“And you did nothing.”
“I…things didn’t quite work out the way I planned. He was only supposed to threaten her, not actually do anything.”
“What? Did you guys pinkie swear or something?” Mark flushed at the question. “Did you think Kristoff was going to play nice? The guy kills people to rob banks. Not exactly a philanthropist, Mark.”
“I realize that now. That’s why I’m going to help you get rid of him once you learn how to make zombies.”
I shook my head and bit the inside of my cheek to keep from saying anything. I’d never realized Mark was so self-centered. Clearly, he didn’t think there was anything more important than keeping his soul in a body. This was a side of him I’d never seen before and I didn’t like it. It made me question our relationship even when he’d been alive. Maybe I’d been blind to his true nature. It wasn’t a comfortable thought. Worse, could I trust him now?
Footsteps sounded again and voices grew louder as they moved toward us. “I can’t wait for her to wake up any longer. There’s no more time. Bring her outside, the car is waiting,” Kristoff said, an imperious ring to his voice.
I sucked in a breath. The only her I could think of was Vera. Was I too late? Was he moving her? I wanted to crack the door open and see for myself, but couldn’t take the risk of being spotted.
More shuffling and footsteps and then Kristoff spoke again just outside the door. “Careful. Don’t drop her.”
“Yes boss,” answered a deep voice.
My stomach dropped. If he took Vera, how would I save her? I swore under my breath as they passed Mark’s room and continued down the hall. When I heard the door to the stairwell shut, I stepped back out into the hallway, Mark right behind me.
“Where did they take her?” I headed for the general direction of Vera’s room. She probably wasn’t there, I knew that, but I had to check.
“I don’t know. Kristoff doesn’t talk to me very much.”
I shook my head in disgust and walked faster.
Mark grabbed my elbow, slowing me down. “Her room is here.” He pointed to a door on my right.
I opened the door and stepped inside. Vera’s room was smaller than mine with only a sagging cot for a bed. Restraints at the head of the cot were covered in dry blood. Blood also smeared the wall and spotted the dingy bed sheets.
I closed my eyes against sudden tears. What Vera must have gone through…I couldn’t bear to even think of it, but made myself read her cot. If there was any chance I could learn something that would help us both, I had to take it. Not surprisingly, pain was the first impression I had and then I was in the past, looking at it through Vera’s eyes. Kristoff was there, standing over her and threatening her.
“You’ll fail. All your plans will fail,” Vera said with a defiant jut of her chin. She had all her fingers in this scene and was unbound.
Kristoff was on her in one step, hand coming down hard and fast across her face. “Tell me what you see. Now.”
Vera pulled herself up off the floor where she had landed from the force of Kristoff’s slap. “The universe is against you, necromancer. You have broken natural law too many times. The backlash is inevitable. I can’t see anything more than that, because it doesn’t matter, your fate has been set. You’ve reached critical mass, where all actions lead to one outcome. You can’t stop your future. The only variable now is the mechanism of action.”
Kristoff put a hand on the nape of Vera’s neck, lacing his fingers through her hair in a cruel grip. “I could kill you now. Or make you watch while I take your friend’s soul and shove it in a rotting zombie. I could put you both in zombies and force you to amuse me.” He leaned in closer and whispered, “I can reward you or punish you, seer. It is your choice.”
“I have nothing more to tell you,” Vera said, her voice firm. She stared straight ahead, refusing to meet Kristoff’s eyes. I’d never seen her so full of…spunk. It was a jarring change from her usual cheer.
“So be it.” He motioned to the guard behind him with his free hand. “The clippers please.” A pair of shiny steel clippers were placed in his hand. Vera whimpered as Kristoff sliced through her finger, and she screamed when he released her. Collapsing onto the cot, she huddled there, hand pressed against her chest doing her best to stop the bleeding.