As usual, Caleb looked like he’d just stepped off the pages of GQ. Cale only stole this season’s finest fashions, so even at the end of the world he was dressed in a thousand dollar button down. The only difference between today’s outfit and his usual sartorial masterpieces was the Mac-10 looped over his shoulder.
Zeke got to his feet. “What did you do to her?”
“Kim?” He squinted down at the magazine. “Nothing. I’d never hurt a girl with an ass like that.”
“Scotlyn.”
“Ohhhhhh, right.” Caleb arched a brow. “Your secretary amscrayed.”
Zeke’s stomach sank. “She’s gone?”
Caleb eyed him with something like pity. “I remember when Brewer robbed that Blockbuster when we were kids and we had ten thousand videotapes piled up to the ceiling. I figure you watched all of them that summer.”
Zeke had no idea what Cale was getting at. It didn’t matter. “Where is she?”
“New movies and old movies and funny movies and sad movies… And in every single one of them, you wanted to fuck the good girl.” Caleb sighed. “All the rest of us lusted after the hot villain or the trampy one, but you wanted Mary Pickford and Debbie Reynolds and Meg goddamn Ryan.” He shook his head. “You should have just nailed the prom queen back in high school and gotten this perversion out of your system, Z. It isn’t healthy.”
“I did nail the prom queen in high school.”
Caleb arched a brow. “And did she go to the dance with you?”
No. Zeke had slept with Heather Ganache in the boys’ locker room, but she’d laughed at the idea of going with him to the actual prom. She’d been dating the basketball team’s star player. Nice girls didn’t date men like Zeke. Not in public.
They wanted someone special.
Caleb knew it, too. “So, obviously, you didn’t learn anything from your experiences, if you’re hung-up on another human cheerleader. Why don’t you just let her go and save us all the trouble?”
Zeke eyed Caleb, trying to figure out what he needed to say in order to find out what happened. It was hard to think through the panic. “Scotlyn works for me. I don’t sleep with her.”
Caleb swiveled around so his legs were dangling over the edge of the counter. “Oh, I know you haven’t nailed her, yet. You must be losing your touch, Z. Human or not, she’s cute as a button. If she was my secretary, her dictation skills would be getting a lot of practice…”
Alright, enough with being patient. Zeke seized his pack-mate by the shirtfront and slammed him backwards into the mirror behind the sink. “Tell me where she is!”
“I don’t know.” Caleb met his eyes, not bothering to fight back. “She was here when I showed up an hour ago. She said, ‘Can you help him?’ and I said, ‘Yeah.’ and she said, ‘Good. Do it.’ Then she took off.” He held up his palms in a gesture of peace and innocence. “Wherever she is now, she’s not our problem anymore.”
She’d left him.
There were a thousand reasons why Zeke should be glad he was free of the girl.
Needing people just led to pain and disappointment. Changing to protect her proved that Zeke was too attached. It wasn’t normal. He’d known it wasn’t normal, even before the zombies showed up. Christ, he’d been obsessed with her from the very beginning and thinking about her in danger out there sent his mind into complete meltdown. Scotlyn was his weakness and shifters shouldn’t have weaknesses.
Especially, not very breakable ones.
Maybe her vanishing was actually a good thing. He hadn’t technically mated with her. He wasn’t even sure he could mate with her under pack law. Not that the law mattered to him. At all. But the point was that she was a human. No shifter had gone through the ritual with a human. Ever. Maybe Scotlyn leaving would prove all his misfiring instincts wrong. He didn’t need her.
…Except, he did.
Zeke let out a shaky breath and released his hold on Caleb. His rambling, half-formed thought led him to one inevitable conclusion. “I have to find Scotlyn.”
“Take a hint, Z. The girl’s gone. She’ll find another sucker to take her in.”
Zeke shook his head. “You don’t understand. Scotlyn and I are a team.”
“A team?”
“Yeah. She said so herself.”
“Before or after you shape shifted? Jesus! You’ve never been on a team in your life. You can’t even stay in the pack!”
“I left the pack because I don’t fit in. I’ve never fit in.”
“That’s because you’re weird! You wanna research your weird stories and dream your weird Raiders of the Lost Ark dreams…”
“There’s truth behind most legends. I’m telling you.” Zeke snapped. “And I’m also telling you, what I feel for Scotlyn is beyond my control. She goes… deep.”
Caleb’s jaw clenched. “How deep?”
Zeke stared at him silently.
“She left you!”
Zeke lifted a shoulder. “I know.” He still had to protect her. It was a biological imperative.
Caleb slowly shook his head. “She’s probably the last human in the city. She’ll be a magnet for every Omega Man wannabe and hungry vampire from here to Canada. Unless you’re planning to sell her for fuel, she’s gonna be a liability to us.”
“I know. But, I can’t go anywhere without her.” He couldn’t explain the pull he felt towards her, but there was no way he could fight it. From the minute he’d seen her, it had been Zeke and Scotlyn in his mind. An indivisible pair. He couldn’t survive without that lecturing, straitlaced, bossy human.
He needed her.
“If you two are such a great team, where is she? Why’d she leave you?
Zeke grabbed the duffle bag and headed for the door. “Good-bye, Cale.”
Caleb didn’t take the hint. “Damn it, I know you want her, but be logical for once.”
“You know nothing about…”
Caleb cut him off. “Of course, I know.” He hopped down off the counter to follow him. “When I found out you’d won that stupid golf course at cards, I wondered why you bothered. I mean, what kind of shape shifter mini-golfs? Then, I saw the “assistant” that came with the deal and the light was shed.”
Zeke couldn’t dispute that. Once he’d realized that winning Topless Golf World meant winning Scotlyn, he’d been very fucking interested in that hand of poker. He would’ve done anything to claim the pot. How else was someone like him ever going to get close to a girl who wanted a guy to be “special?
Wait a second…
Scotlyn had kissed him. Granted, that was a huge way from sex, but the principle remained the same. She never would’ve have kissed him like that and then walked away without a word. Not Scotlyn. The girl made Pollyanna look like a nymphomaniac.
Zeke turned to glower at Caleb. “She wouldn’t have just abandoned me unconscious on the ground. Not without even a good-bye. What did you tell her?”
“I didn’t have to tell her anything. You Changed in front of her, dick for brains.” Caleb seemed greatly amused by that. “From what I understand, you wolfed out, collapsed, and she dragged you into the ladies’ room.” He grinned. “That story will never not be awesome, by the way. If we weren’t in the middle of the zompocalypse, I’d be telling everyone I know.” Caleb paused. “Huh, do you like ‘zompocalypse’ or ‘zombageddon’ better?”
Zeke rubbed at his forehead. When he Changed without the full moon, it messed with his memory. He remembered being with Scotlyn in the Wal-Mart and the kiss that convinced him that --with a tiny bit of encouragement-- the goody-est good girl in Vegas could be wonderfully bad. Then, the zombie grabbed her and terror filled him… and he’d woken up here with Cale.
Shit!
Scotlyn knew he was a shape shifter. No wonder she’d left. It wasn’t fucking safe out there, though. Zeke wrenched open the bathroom door and stalked out into the destroyed store. Mangled bodies and debris were everywhere, but there didn’t seem to be any zombies moving around. “I take it from
the fact you’re not wearing a mask that the pink shit is gone?”
“Dissipated yesterday. I’m not sure it would infect us, anyway. Haven’t seen any zombie shifters, yet. I’m betting it was just meant for the humans.”
“How long was I out?”
“Thirty-six hours, give or take.” Caleb strolled out after him. “If you’re determined to waste our time finding your secretary, you’d better put these on.” He grabbed pair of sweatpants from a sale rack and tossed them to Zeke. “No sense in disappointing the girl before you have to.”
Zeke snagged them and slanted his pack-mate a glare. “Did I invite you along?” And of course Caleb would pick the ugliest color of neon purple ever invented. He yanked the pants on, anyway. “I cannot believe you. Scotlyn’s tiny little human and you let her wander off into a city full of monsters! If she gets hurt, I swear to Christ I will kill you myself.”
“What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t watch over your unconscious ass and follow her. I had to choose.”
“Well, you chose fucking wrong.” Zeke scowled and headed into the shoe department to shoplift himself a pair of shoes. “I can take care of myself. Since when are we so damn close that you can’t bear to leave my side, huh?”
Caleb gave a snort. “Since you became everyone I know, jerkoff.”
Zeke hesitated. “You really don’t know where the others are?”
“Nope.” The word was flat.
“Not even Darcy?”
“We’ll find her.”
“And the rest of those idiots?”
Caleb shrugged. “We’ll find them, too. A pack should be together. That’s the entire purpose.”
“Kinda depends on the pack.” Zeke retorted. Except for Darcy, he didn’t give a damn about the others and neither should Caleb. In fact, the rules of the pack said you left behind anyone who couldn’t keep up. In times of crisis, all shifters looked after themselves. None of the other Macreadys would help him, that was for damn sure.
…Except Caleb had.
“It took me forever just to get a signal on the phone when things went to shit.” Caleb continued. “Even that was spotty. I finally got through to your secretary and convinced her to let me help you, and that was it. The others could already be dead.”
Caleb had looked for him before the others?
Zeke slanted him a frown. He could understand Caleb forgetting about the “every man for himself” rule, since his entire purpose in life was the pack. Cale had been born to be the next Alpha, so it was hardwired into his brain. Too bad for him, the rest of the Vegas shape shifters were a gaggle of idiots. Caleb was always trying to fish them out of danger, track their asses down, or mediate their squabbles.
It didn’t make any sense for Caleb to be with Zeke when he could be looking for someone who hadn’t walked away from all the bullshit to live amongst the humans. Caleb had never made a secret of the fact that he considered Zeke a colossal disappointment. Rather than follow the pack, Zeke had gone his own way. He spent his life researching supernatural legends, and buying a golf course, and trying his damnedest to ignore Caleb’s nagging.
Why would Cale come for him first?
“The pack is too mean to die.” Zeke assured him, because it seemed like the only thing to say. “Besides you said yourself that the pink stuff wasn’t meant for us.” Zeke quickly laced up a pair of sneakers. “And I seriously doubt it was a natural phenomenon. I think someone supernatural released it to attack the humans.”
“My first suspect would be Joseff, but I’m not sure why he’d want the humans dead.”
Zeke didn’t even pretend to understand how the vampire’s mind worked, but he wasn’t so sure Joseff was behind this. Without human blood, there’d be a lot of hungry vamps. Besides, Joseff would never do anything that would endanger Darcy.
Who else had the brains and power to pull it off, though? Zeke knew more than anyone about the obscure recesses of the supernatural world and he was drawing a blank.
“It doesn’t matter who did it.” He decided. “It matters that it happened and the humans are the targets. Scotlyn is a human. You see the problem here?” Zeke had to find her. “What else did she say to you?”
“Not much. I showed up here about an hour ago and she clearly didn’t like me, so the conversation wasn’t real stimulating.”
“She’s got taste.” Zeke headed off again.
“Girl’s a pain-in-the-ass, Z. It wasn’t until I showed her we had the same marking that she let me near you and even then she watched me like a hawk until she was satisfied I wasn’t going to molest you in your sleep.” He held up his wrist to display the pack designation they’d both been born with. To the humans, it looked like a tattoo. For supernatural beings, it was like an ID card declaring them Macreadys.
“She had to have said something else.”
Caleb trailed along after him. “Well, right before she left, she talked real fast about a dog, and how she had to go, and how I should wait here. Then, she threatened to hunt me down if I hurt you and she took off with the shotgun. So, I gave you some salt to wake you up and I waited. That’s it.”
“She thinks I’m a dog?” Wonderful.
“No, not you. Something about a pooch. I don’t know. I was kinda annoyed that the chick kept edging away from me like I had the plague so…”
Zeke’s eyes widened as he suddenly put the pieces together. “Pucci?”
“Yeah, that sounds right.”
“Pucci’s her cat.”
Caleb’s face creased in distaste. “A cat?”
Zeke ignored that. He took off towards the emergency exit, grabbing a random shirt from its hanger as he raced by. It had a glittery image of the Welcome to Las Vegas sign on the front. Zeke didn’t care. “Scotlyn went back to her apartment to get that goddamn cat.”
“Jesus.” Caleb lamented. “It’s bad enough that the world ended. Worse that the survivors are going to see me with you wearing that. But, now we have to go look for a human and her cat?” He sighed like a martyr. “You are really pushing it.”
“My human and her cat.” Zeke shoved open the same emergency exit he and Scotlyn had stood at during the attack. It was daylight, now. Somewhere around nine in the morning. Nothing was moving in the decimated parking lot. “Understand me, Cale.” He turned to meet his pack-mate’s eyes and carefully spaced the words. “My. Human.”
“Oh, I heard you. You’re a team.” Caleb gave him a tight smile. “That’s great. You always were a dreamer, Ezekiel.” He brooded for a moment. “And Darcy’s just like you. She’s in love with that megalomaniacal vampire. I don’t get it. You both think with your hearts and not your brains. It’s a miracle you’ve survived this long.”
“Right, because you showing up here was so logical.”
“More than anything you’ve done lately.”
“Bullshit.”
“Really? Remind me why you’re running a golf course, Arnold Palmer? Cause that was such thinking-with-your-brain decision-making, right?”
“Hey, owning TGW makes a lot of sense. We’re in the black.”
That was all Scotlyn’s doing. He liked to tease her, but the woman was brilliant. She could’ve run ten golf courses and Microsoft without breaking a sweat. He had no idea what she was doing most of the time and that was for the best. Zeke’s utter lack of business savvy was an open secret to everyone who knew him. It was part of being an illogical, irresponsible dreamer. He made his living writing about legends, not doing math.
“If you’ve made a dime, it’s thanks to your girl Friday.” Caleb scoffed. “That place could be selling used tampons and you would’ve bankrolled it to get your hands on her.” He rolled his eyes. “I seriously don’t get it. You can’t stand anyone in the pack, but you ally yourself with fake showgirl who abandoned you.”
“She’s not a fake anything.”
“I know showgirls, Z. Your secretary wasn’t a showgirl. She was a glorified daycare teacher for all the tykes whose mommies and daddies wer
e gambling away their college funds. She put on little shows about fairytales. And they fired her from even that.”
Zeke’s mouth curved. “To hear her tell it, she was downsized.” Although, given her singing “talents” and the countless outrageous lies on her resume, he certainly didn’t rule out firing. He’d found one of Scotlyn’s performances on some tourist’s YouTube video and had watched her sing Little Mermaid songs. Many, many times. The woman was a constant delight.
“My point is, what do you think the odds are of Mary Poppins wanting forever-after with the shape shifter?” Caleb arched a brow. “I doubt they’ll have a Powerball drawing this week, but I betcha your chances of winning it are still higher than you bedding your pretty little princess.”
“Is there a reason you’re still talking?”
“I’m trying to look out for you, Z. As usual.”
Zeke snorted and headed across the eerily silent parking lot. It looked like the entire place had been leveled with a bomb, with burned out cars and charred corpses everywhere.
“Thanks for saving me, Cale.” Caleb mocked. “I would’ve been in deep shit if you hadn’t shown up. You always were the best shape shifter in the world.” He shifted the Mac-10 into his hand, casually scanning around. “Don’t mention it, bro. I was happy to risk my neck for you. And I just loooove being at Wal-Mart.”
“I’m not your bro.” Zeke said automatically. The Macreadys didn’t recognize or keep track of familial ties. Zeke had no idea who his parents were or if he had any siblings. He wasn’t special to anyone. Certainly not to Cale, the pack’s next Alpha and all around White Hat.
…Except Caleb had come looking for him.
The thought kept repeating itself in Zeke’s head.
Caleb’s mouth twisted. “Well, whatever we are to each other, we’re stuck together, now, so we might as well make the best of it.” His eyes narrowed. “This place seem a little quiet to you?”
“The humans here are all dead here. Maybe the zombies moved on to better hunting grounds.” Zeke glanced over at him. “This has gotta be happening in more than just Vegas. Otherwise, someone in charge would have nuked this whole place by now, rather than let it spread. Whatever’s going on with the rest of the world, we’re on our own.”
Love in the Time of Zombies Page 6