Zombies Sold Separately

by Cheyenne McCray

  The way he said it made my stomach twist. A combination of anger and pain, and matter-of-factness.

  I place my fingers on his arm. They looked so pale against the blue of his skin. “It’s not only about my brother.” Pain flashed in my father’s eyes. “I need to speak with you about them, the Zom—”

  “Enough.” I don’t think my father had intended to speak so loudly or harshly, but he captured everyone’s attention at the table.

  I felt warmth in my face and met my mother’s eyes. She looked apologetic.

  He cleared his throat and in Drow said, “I am finished here. I have work to attend to.” He looked to Simon and Garf. “Come, we have business to discuss.”

  We all stood as my father did. My stomach hurt as I set my napkin in my plate and my father left with Simon and Garf. Mother came to me and we walked out of the chamber together. I had to think of a way to get my father to listen to me.

  “Talking about Tristan brings great pain to your father,” Mother said as we reached the archway leading from the banquet chamber.

  “Why won’t he talk about it?” I asked, then suddenly knew the reason before she gave it. For much the same reason my five-year-old mind blocked the memories away.

  My mother and I entered the great hall. It was circular with several archways leading from it. “Your father blamed himself for the loss of his son.” She looked toward the throne room which also served as a high-level conference room for my father. “He has never forgiven himself.”

  “That’s why I couldn’t talk about Tristan, too.” I met my mother’s gaze. “I felt so helpless when I saw it happen. If only I’d been older, stronger.”

  “You couldn’t have done anything to save your brother.” My mother had the kind of concern on her face that a parent has for a child she almost lost. She came to a stop and hugged me. “You could have died or vanished too, Nyx. That is more pain than any parent should have to bear.”

  I returned her hug and felt her warm tears on my shoulder, through the material of my gown.

  She touched my face and her tears glistened in her eyes that were the same sapphire blue as my own. “It is what your father faced and probably why he is so protective over you. If he lost you … If I lost you…”

  “You won’t.” I kissed her cheek. “Don’t worry. Please.”

  She tried to guide us diagonally from the banquet room to the hallway that led to our chambers, but I wouldn’t let her.

  “Whatever we need to do to get Father’s attention,” I said, “we have to do it.”

  “What’s wrong?” She brushed away a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand.

  I took a deep breath. “What happened here … what happened to Tristan … it’s happening in the Earth Otherworld now.”

  Mother grasped me by my upper arms. Her eyes were wide. “Are you serious?”

  I nodded. “The same as here, at least what I can remember since I was so young.” I started to pull away to go find my father.

  “Ciar needs to know this at once.” She looked toward the throne room. She brought her gaze back to me. “But I need to get his attention. I’m the only one who can get away with interrupting him without him losing face in front of his men.”

  I stared toward the throne room. “You’re right, of course.”

  She released my upper arms, patted her eyes dry, and straightened her spine. “Go to our chambers and wait for us in the sitting room.”

  “Okay.” I kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you.”

  Mother kissed me back. “Go on now. Your father and I will be there in a few moments.”

  I had no doubt that my mother would succeed in getting my father’s attention. I should have gone through her to begin with.

  While I waited our conversation haunted me. I’d thought I couldn’t talk about my brother because of the pain of his disappearance and probable death. But it had been more than that. I had blamed myself from the beginning.

  Not more than three minutes had passed when my father came charging into the sitting room where I waited for him. I stood at the center of the room and he nearly knocked me over, he came in so fast.

  “I will not lose my daughter to those beasts.” His cheeks were dark blue, his silvery-gray eyes flashing dangerous white like mine did when I was angry.

  “Then help me,” I said. “Tell me everything you know. Tell me how you got rid of them.”

  “You cannot go back.” Father spoke in Drow, his voice a huge bellow. I was thankful the stone walls were too thick for him to be heard by anyone outside the room. “I will not lose my daughter.”

  “I am going back.” I spoke in Drow as I put my hands on my hips, but I kept my tone even. It wouldn’t do me any good to lose my temper. “Norms and paranorms are being slaughtered and some are disappearing. One of my friends, a Tracker, is missing.”

  He shoved his large hand through his hair, knocking his crown to the stone floor. It clanged, then rolled around in a big circle before it came to a stop with a rattle.

  “I need to know, Father.” I returned to English again. “There seems to be so many similarities to what I remember happened here. We can’t let the same thing continue to happen in the Earth Otherworld.”

  “You must explain everything to me.” Father began pacing the floor. “From the beginning.”

  I told him all I could think of from what had occurred so far. I explained the research Olivia and I had done that made us believe it actually started weeks before, just in smaller attacks.

  My father said some very scary Drow curse words. No one in any language can curse like the Dark Elves, and my father had an exceptional knack for using them.

  “That is how it began here, with Light and Dark Elves.” He continued pacing, much like I had done the other day in my office. “Small attacks, with one or more of our people vanishing here and there.

  “We did not understand what was happening,” he went on. “Then Light and Dark Elves counseled together. We drew on our separate experiences and came to the conclusion that not only were Elves under attack, but so was our entire Otherworld.

  “Fighting parties were sent out,” he said. “The attacks only worsened and more of our people died or disappeared.”

  As my father spoke my skin prickled. If Elves had had difficulty fighting this threat, then did we even have a chance?

  “They were a ruthless people,” Father said. “Our Seer visioned their leader. A Sorcerer of great power whose intent was to invade Otherworld, destroy our people, and take it for his own. We tried to find this Sorcerer, but we could never locate him.”

  Father’s voice sounded hoarse. “Others were disappearing. Then when your brother vanished—” he met my gaze “—when you saw him taken, I went after the beasts with every warrior I had.”

  He looked away from me. “We were too late. They never came back.”

  “Why?” I had to remind myself to breathe. “How did you defeat them?”

  “We did not.” Father shook his head. “They simply stopped coming. We never saw them again.”

  “There must have been some reason.” I looked from my father to my mother. “Why would they just stop?”

  Father shook his head, then pushed his long hair from his face. No matter he was over two thousand years old, he continued to look like he was in his thirties.

  “That remains a mystery,” he said. “They never came back and all we could do was prepare for the chance that they might return, and to pray that they never would.”

  “So no clues, nothing?” I asked.

  Father gave a frown. “When we killed some of their people we found stones. The stones are odd. They have a smooth face on them that make it appear that one is looking into another world. But nothing is there.”

  My father spoke in the present tense and a little bit of excitement curled in my belly. What if they were a clue? “Where do you keep the stones?”

  Father looked surprised at my question. “The Seer has them.”


  “May I have a look?” I asked. “Maybe it will offer up a hint of some sort that could help us in the Earth Otherworld.”

  He looked as if he wanted to argue again that I was to stay here in the Drow Realm, but instead he turned and said, “Come.”

  Mother and I followed him across the round great hall to an archway I hadn’t been allowed through as a child. It always held a hint of mystery for me and little Faeries bounced in my stomach at the realization I was actually going to be permitted to go there.

  The hallway was dark with only one torch at the entrance. Open geodes with dark purple and black crystal glittered from the walls as we made our way further down. Three doors fashioned of a dark Dryad wood were along the hallway, one on the right, one on the left, and one dead ahead. We went to the one at the end of the tunnel.

  “Oren.” My father’s voice boomed as he knocked on the door.

  I had never met the Seer before—my father had always said when I was old enough, he would allow me to. Once I became of age I’d left the realm, so I’d never had a chance to meet Oren.

  Earth Otherworld television and movies must have influenced me because for some reason I expected to see a male who looked old and wise. Which was a dumb thought considering Elves don’t show age beyond twenty or thirty human years.

  When the Seer opened the door I blinked. Oren was not a male, Oren was a female. She was truly what one could call mousy. Elves tend to be tall, but Oren was petite. She wore plain gray robes and she had dishwater-gray hair, light gray skin, and pale pink lips.

  Her eyes were amazing, though. A strange greenish-yellow, like the color of the antifreeze that Olivia put into her GTO.

  Oren bowed to my father, then to my mother and me before she gestured for us to come inside.

  The chamber was neat and orderly. Obsessively so. I’d never seen any of the Dark Elves with such a tidy streak. Niches were carved into all four walls, and in each cubby were books or objects. Books were not common in Otherworld, and I wondered if she had spent time writing some of them herself.

  “A stone,” my father said in his commanding voice.

  He didn’t have to specify what stones he was talking about. The Seer went to one niche in one of the huge walls, picked up a stone, and brought it to him. He inclined his head toward me and the Seer bowed as she handed it to me. She was careful not to let her fingers brush mine.

  An odd sensation prickled through me. At first I thought I might be ready to shift into Drow, but then I realized it was the stone.

  I looked it over, examining it while I felt the prickles, primarily where I touched the stone. It was egg-shaped and like a geode the way one side appeared sliced off. Smooth gray stone everywhere but on the side, which was like shiny, flat black glass.

  When I looked at that side, I could tell what my father meant at once. But rather than looking into an empty painting, I thought it was more like looking into a TV, but nothing was there. It felt like something should be there, but wasn’t. Of course my father wouldn’t think to reference it as looking into a TV.

  “Can I take this with me back to the Earth Otherworld?” I asked my father. “I want to see if Rodán has seen anything like it.”

  Father narrowed his brows and frowned at the mention of Rodán’s name. Dark Elves aren’t crazy about Light Elves to begin with and he’d never gotten past the fact that Rodán had recruited me as a Tracker.

  It was a really good thing my father never knew Rodán and I had been lovers for a time. I’m not sure which one of them would have made it out alive if he had found out.

  Father looked at the Seer. “Is it safe for my daughter to take?”

  The Seer gave a low bow of her head in acknowledgment.

  My father turned to me. “You may take it.”

  I held the stone tight in my hand and wondered why it suddenly felt so wrong.

  SIXTEEN

  Amory’s dress tunic scratched his skin as he pulled it over his head and tugged it down. He would need his seamstress to make him something more comfortable than what she had put together to fit his new form.

  The Sorcerer’s old body had been thin and frail, his joints aching with pain. His clothing had hung on him like sails without wind drooping from their riggings. His once long, vibrant red hair had turned mostly gray and brittle many, many years ago.

  Now what he dressed in fit him well and showed the physical power of his new form. Magic remained in his gaze, even though his eyes were now the color of ironwood. The eyes of his old body had been the shade of the early morning sky, somewhere between gray and blue.

  A low murmur of countless voices was like an oncoming storm. Amory strode from his bedroom suite in the manor and up the sweeping staircase. The sound of a mass number of voices grew louder.

  He and his people had left Kerra behind over twenty years ago to take over this Doran Otherworld. No matter its beauty, Doran had turned out to be as cruel to them as their homeworld.

  As he took the steps at a jog, Amory felt a confidence and power within him that he had not felt since the old days when Kerra was still home and his rule encompassed millions.

  When Kerra started to die, so did his people. He had been forced to search for options. Ways to save and preserve his people while at the same time looking for a new homeworld.

  He’d started with the original Otherworld. The one that fathered all of the others.

  It did not take Amory and his advisors long to discover that it was not the place for him or his people. Doran had seemed the better choice at the time so they’d abandoned their assault.

  He’d been wrong though. Doran ultimately was not compatible for them.

  Amory gritted his teeth as he took the third flight of stairs. Twenty-two years—twenty-two years—and he had finally found the right place for himself and his people. The perfect environment, the perfect Hosts.

  Earth Otherworld.

  The bodies from the Earth Otherworld were strong, healthy, the world hospitable to his people.

  Amory reached the highest floor of the manor. Thousands and thousands of voices were louder now. A low roar of people gathered together.

  To see him. To hear his voice. To know that they were saved.

  Amory cloaked himself with magic as he strode from the stairs. He crossed the open room toward the glass-paned, arched double doors that were between him and the balcony, and his people.

  He didn’t pause. He gave a slight flick of his fingers and the doors swung open, thumping hard against the walls to either side of the archway. Loud, expectant gasps came from those who waited.

  The gloriously almost clear sky was blue with a hint of lavender. It was the element that created the lavender in the atmosphere that was so deadly to his people. Faint clouds streaked the sky like a brush had painted a few opaque strokes of white.

  He looked from the sky endlessly stretched out above to the thousands of his people below.

  The Sorcerer dropped his cloak of magic.

  More gasps and murmurs. Most had not seen him since he had traded his old body for this one. But even with this different face, they would know it was him.

  The Sorcerer raised his hands and shouted out great words of magic, strong words, powerful words, words that no one but he and other Sorcerers could understand.

  Once-clear lavender-streaked skies turned dark and black thunderheads rolled in, forming from what had been misty threads of white. The smell of rain and sulfur rode the winds that now pressed his tunic against his body, outlining every muscle from his broad chest to his tapered waist and strong thighs and legs.

  His people gave cries of shock and fear as lightning crashed to the ground from the clouds. Thunder pounded the air, the sound as loud as if the shafts of lightning were living stakes being driven by great hammers into the ground.

  Men and women, their bodies in different stages of deterioration, cowed as he lowered his hands.

  “It is I, the Sorcerer Amory, Lord of the Kerra and Doran Otherworlds.” Th
e roar of his voice carried over the sound of thunder. “You do not recognize this body as it is new, but you recognize me.”

  When he felt he had adequately proven himself to be the Sorcerer Amory, he let the clouds drift away, allowing the sky to lighten to its deadly lavender tint as it had been.

  Every person in the crowd was quiet and he nodded his approval. “Good. You have come as expected. Those who continue to follow my rule will be rewarded well.”

  Silence continued to reign when he was not speaking. “As I told you the last time we gathered, we have discovered an Otherworld that suits our needs and more.

  “We sent in our reconnaissance teams, then began our experiments.” His gaze roved over the throng of people. “It is working.” He let his words ring out so that they could be heard by every male and female standing before him.

  Hope lit their features at his statement, but still they made no sound.

  “I alone know what must be done,” Amory continued. “I have perfected it.

  “Each of you must now begin your preparation as you did when we left Kerra for Doran.” The Sorcerer let urgency fill his command. “We must speed up the exchange, must step up more quickly.”

  Men and women looked from one to another and a slow murmur began to travel throughout the crowd. A murmur of excitement filled with hope for better days to come.

  “Our plan is coming together.” The Sorcerer leaned forward and gripped the rough stone surface of the balcony. “The people of the Earth Otherworld will not understand until it is too late for them. It will no longer be their world … it will be ours.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Monday, December 27

  Cold sunlight and crisp air felt good on my face as I arrived via the transference to Central Park. The chill helped keep my mind off the queasiness that I always felt when I traveled that way.

  My head swam a little and my eyes unfocused and focused again. Even when my father handled the transference, I wasn’t crazy about it. As I traveled, my head had felt like the pressure would make it pop and my stomach curdled and cramped. But when he did it, I didn’t throw up or pass out.