A Secret to Die For (Secret McQueen)

by Sierra Dean

  We’d gone about a mile when we saw the first sign of the dead.

  I lifted my hand, bringing the whole party to a stop. We were outside a row of apartment complexes, and at the end of the block, near a purple VW bug turned on its side, was a cluster of about six people.

  At first I assumed they were looters, checking the car for valuables. But the more they jostled and bumped against each other, I quickly reconsidered my initial assessment. The longer I watched them, more signs of their wrongness became apparent.

  All their clothes were tattered and stained with dirt. Their limbs hung loose like they were puppets with no master to guide their movements. In a lot of ways, the movies got it right. They certainly looked like zombies.

  But there were things pop culture got terribly wrong.

  These corpses had gone through an extensive embalming routine—as a majority of the dead in the city would—leaving their skin waxy and pale. Their eyes were not the eerie milk white I’d seen in dozens of horror movies. In most cases their eyelids had been glued shut, as had their mouths. This gave them the impression of being a group of ghoulish sleepwalkers, rather than flesh-starved zombies.

  It was still creepy as hell to see the dead walking around like this.

  The only walking dead I was used to was of the vampire variety, and they tended to be a slightly livelier bunch.

  A disturbing hum emanated from the mass, and it took me a minute to realize the corpses were groaning, but since most had their mouths sealed shut, the groans were caught in their throats.

  It sounded for all the world like a group of chanting monks.

  I shoved my sister backwards, ducking us all down the steps of a nearby apartment and keeping hidden next to a garbage can. I had no idea how long it would take for the dead to pass us by, but I wasn’t in any mood to engage with them. Since we had no idea what they were, or what was causing them to move around on their own, I didn’t want to tempt fate by fighting with them.

  No matter what I’d said about their bites not transferring some sort of zombie condition, I didn’t know that with a hundred percent certainty. I’d never dealt with anything like this before, which was ninety percent of the reason I wanted to get to Keaty. If anyone would know what the hell was happening, he would. He knew everything.

  Genie’s breath hitched up, bordering on hyperventilation. I clapped my hand over her mouth and hugged her against my side, hoping the closeness could give her comfort since I couldn’t provide any with words.

  We waited for what seemed like an eternity until finally the throng of dead slowly moved on to the next block, leaving us alone on this one. Keaty’s place was only about another mile away, but I had a feeling things were going to get more difficult for us from this point onward.

  “No such thing as zombies, huh?” Desmond grumbled.

  “I don’t know what those were, but they weren’t zombies.” I was adamant. In spite of every kind of supernatural being I’d encountered in my life, a handful of myths were just myths. Leprechauns. Unicorns. Zombies. That shit simply did not exist.

  Banshees and mermaids—totally legit. I even knew a male siren, a landlocked merman of sorts. There was a lot of stuff I was willing to believe in, but zombies didn’t make the list.

  We were back on the main street when my cell began to buzz. I’d assumed I’d have no service within the city, yet somehow it was ringing.

  “Hello?”

  “Secret, oh my God, you’re okay. Tell me you got my messages. Where are you?” Detective Tyler Nowakowski, also secretly my FBI supervisor, sounded frantic.

  “I’m on 57th and 8th.”

  “You’re in the city?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you stay out? I called you. Didn’t you get my messages?”

  “Yeah, I got them.” I glanced to Holden and Desmond, who both seemed to think I was a maniac for having a chat on the phone right then. “Tyler, what the hell is going on?”

  “We’re not a hundred percent sure. Emilio is out in Jersey setting up a task force, but the origin of the event is still unclear. No one is taking credit for it yet, so we think there’s a chance it’s a supernatural phenomenon rather than a malicious assault.”

  “Wait, you think there’s a chance someone planned this?” I’d assumed right away something hinky had occurred and the dead had risen accidentally as a result. I hadn’t yet considered someone might have sent the walking dead into New York as a way to attack the city.

  “No, I just said we don’t think that right now.”

  “But there’s a possibility.”

  “Sure. At this point anything is possible. I’ve got corpses littering the Brooklyn Bridge, Secret. I’m not counting anything out right now, y’know?”

  “What about the fires? I don’t think these guys can even clap their hands, from what I’ve seen, let alone turn buildings into bonfires.”

  “We’re not so sure how those started. Could be vandals. Things are kind of going to hell in a handbasket.” The line crackled, and I feared I’d lost him. “You okay?”

  “Right now, yes.”

  “You protected?”

  I smirked, because I wasn’t sure if he was worried about my personal safety or about the possibility he might lose one of his best assets for the government’s work with the supernatural.

  “I’ve got a vampire, a werewolf and a witch. And a heck of a lot of spare bullets. I’ll be okay for a while.”

  “Get yourself somewhere safe. When things clear up, I’ll call you again, see if I can’t get someone out there to pick you up.”

  “Tyler,” I said quickly, before he could disconnect. “Where are you? Do you know where Mercedes is?”

  “We’re both at the precinct. Things are okay right now with a couple other cops, but this building wasn’t designed to withstand a siege. I don’t know what’s going to happen if things get any worse.”

  I looked around the street, the sidewalk littered in broken glass, glowing orange from the light of the fires.

  “How much worse can it get?”

  Chapter Three

  Stupid question.

  A block later we ran into the kind of trouble that still had a pulse.

  Dressed in black and white, with red bandanas around their necks or mouths, a group of about twenty men was blocking our access to the next street. They had turned the sidewalks into a bottleneck, so any unlucky pedestrians were force-fed into the middle of 9th Avenue, where the gang had moved a group of cars into the center of the street as a makeshift fort. They milled around the perimeter, and there was no way to escape their attention when we stepped off 57th to cross.

  “Hey. Hey, hey. What we got here?” A big dude with bulky arms hopped down from a nearby car, holding a huge hunting knife with the unnerving comfort of someone who got to use the weapon a lot.

  “Secret…” Genie whispered.

  “It’s okay.”

  I don’t know what it was about our current situation, but I felt a sense of focus and control I’d been sorely missing for months. Ever since my return from California and my horrific torture at the hands of The Doctor, I’d been suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. Everything from flashbacks, to nightmares, to panic attacks. You name it, I’d been dealing with it.

  But the moment I’d stepped out of the car, I felt…whole. I knew a point would come when my ghosts came back, and I would need to deal with my problems again. For the time being, though, I was grateful my brain was running on instinct rather than emotion. When I told Genie things would be okay, I meant it.

  I wasn’t going to let a gang of street toughs touch my sister.

  I would break every bone in each of their bodies before they did anything to me or my friends.

  And I wouldn’t think twice about killing them if I had to.

  I’d spilled a lot of blood in the last week. A little more wasn’t going to bother me.

  “Gots us some pretty girls.” The man licked his teeth lasci
viously, showing off a mouthful of silver grills.

  “We’re going to walk by. And you’re going to let us.” Up until now I hadn’t reached for my guns or touched my sword. I didn’t want to draw a weapon too soon and set off an explosive chain reaction.

  “Hey? You think so, girlie? Then by all means.” He did a mock bow and pointed his knife in the direction of the street opposite us.

  Littered on the pavement around the cars were a dozen purses, suitcases opened and their contents strewn across the pavement. No wonder we’d seen so few people headed towards the Lincoln Tunnel on foot. It looked like these guys had set up a highway robbery operation to cut them off at the pass.

  What worried me was how few signs of violence or struggle I was seeing. Were they just taking people’s goods and letting them go back the way they came? Or was it possible the empty cars were holding the bodies for them?

  Either way I didn’t trust this guy to let us go by without a fight.

  “I want you to listen to me very carefully.” I made sure he was looking at me. “And I’ll say it loud enough so I don’t need to repeat myself for your buddies.” At least a dozen other men were placed in various positions around the street, some perched up on cars, others pacing the road and watching for any other newcomers.

  “You gots something to say, you go ahead and say it, yeah?”

  “How many people have you killed? Big tough gangbanger like you? You must keep track, right? Get a new tat every time you ice someone?” Still I didn’t reach for a weapon. I stayed perfectly still and watched him. “How many?”

  He gave a half shrug, then smirked. “Twenty-one. Why, you wanna make it twenty-two? You keep asking me these personal-type questions, I might get real tired of you real fast.”

  “Twenty-one. Good number. It’s almost impressive.”

  He snorted and pointed the knife back at me. Instinct told me to grab my gun, but I held off. “Fuck, bitch, what do you know about impressive, huh?” He gave his crotch a showy tug with his spare hand and sneered. “How many people have you killed, princess?”

  It was my turn to smile. “Three hundred and forty-seven.”

  “Say what?”

  “Three hundred and—”

  “Damn, girl, I heard you the first time. Crazy bitch. You think I’m gonna believe you killed three hundred people?”

  “And forty-seven.” I had been an officially sanctioned council assassin since I was sixteen years old. I’d killed a lot of vampires and other unpleasant supernatural beasties in my time. Not people, per se. But I had made hundreds of kills in my life. He didn’t need to know the nitty-gritty species details.

  For the first time since he’d stopped us, the thug’s bravado faded. He glanced at Holden, probably assuming the fancy suit made him some kind of authority figure. “She’s crazy.”

  “She is.” Holden sounded bored, bless him. It was a rare situation indeed that would make him stressed out or even angry. He obviously didn’t think our human friends here were any more of a threat than I did.

  “Three hundred?” the guy muttered.

  I could hear Holden’s shrug in the tone of his voice when he spoke again. “I don’t know. I lost count around a hundred. She’s hard to keep up with.”

  I felt a pang of guilt at his words. Not from the implication that I’d killed enough people he got bored of counting, but rather because I felt his last words were a backhanded commentary on our relationship.

  “Come on, Mick, quit fucking around and get their shit,” one of the other guys called. He was holding a freaking machine gun, but he looked uncomfortable with it. His stance told me he was using a cache of video game and movie knowledge to hold the gun like a commando, rather than someone who actually knew how to use one. I was betting the first time he fired a round the kickback would knock him flat on his ass.

  As funny as that would be to stick around for, I wanted to get to Keaty’s.

  “What do you say, Mick? You want to add to my numbers, or are you going to let us go?”

  The guy with the machine gun, seeing that Mick was still gawking at us, strode over with all the swagger of a rap star. He got within three feet of me and lifted the gun, pointing it at my face.

  “Bitch, give us your shit.”

  Genie made a small noise of alarm, but the boys both remained where they were standing, suggesting they didn’t think this was something I needed any help with.

  They were right.

  “Your safety is on,” I lied smoothly, never looking away.

  “What?” He shifted his attention from me to the gun. I grabbed the muzzle and thrust backwards hard, smashing the butt of the weapon into his face. Blood spurted from his nose, and I shoved the barrel up in case he started shooting. Instead he released the weapon, both hands going to his broken nose. I was fairly certain he was swearing at me, but all I could hear was wet gurgling noises as his blood flooded down his throat.

  With the weapon now free, I spun it around, holding it like the trained professional I was, and aimed it at Mick, the guy with the knife.

  “Still want to tussle?”

  He dropped the knife and took two big steps backwards. “You crazy.”

  “Told you,” Holden muttered.

  “Doesn’t matter if you warn them,” Desmond added, a surprisingly cheerful tone in his voice. “They never see her coming.”

  I angled the gun between the two men in front of me and looked to the others who’d begun gathering around the cluster of cars. I’d have loved to get rid of them entirely so they’d stop harassing people trying to escape. But the only way I could stop them would be by killing them all. Spooking them wouldn’t help; they’d just set up shop on another block.

  Unless they attacked us, I wasn’t prepared to kill a bunch of humans. Even if they were the shitty sort.

  “We’re going to go now.” I lowered the gun but didn’t shoulder it, prepared to use it if need be. I didn’t like firing heavy artillery. I might be strong but I was also small, and big guns packed a lot of kick. I liked lightweight weapons I could control. “And when I come back, I don’t want to see any of you, understood? Get your asses out of the city.” They most likely wouldn’t listen, but I had to try.

  The guy on the pavement was still muttering aquatic profanities, but Mick nodded, and none of the other guys appeared to be interested in intervening.

  “Let’s go.” I stepped around the fallen gang member, and the rest of my group followed suit. Desmond and Genie stayed behind me, but Holden edged up to my side as we skirted the clearing. If anyone were to make a sudden move, he was by far the strongest and fastest among us.

  I didn’t relax until we were on the opposite side of the street and the cars were out of view. There was still a chance they’d regroup and come after us, but I didn’t think they were interested in further confrontation. Getting beaten up by a girl tended to have one of two outcomes. The first was retaliation. They’d fight to regain their macho status by beating me down. The second was pretending it had never happened. The latter was usually the more popular option, because in spite of a desire for revenge, no man wanted his ass kicked by a chick twice in one day.

  I was hoping these dudes would go with option B.

  “I got us a shiny new toy.” I shouldered the gun. Now that I had a better look at the thing, I saw it was a semiauto M60. There was no way a street kid could afford such a gun, even black market. They must have robbed a pretty well-stocked weapon store. The only guy I knew in town who could get his hands on something like this was Leary Fallon, and I sincerely doubted a human gang could have penetrated his shop.

  “Do you know how to use that thing?” Holden asked.

  I gave him a look that questioned whether he’d like to see me demonstrate. Instead, I said, “We’re only a few blocks off, now.”

  “Provided he’s there.” Holden was still walking beside me, and I couldn’t tell if he was being surly because of the situation or because he was annoyed with me. In all likel
ihood it was a bit of both.

  “He’ll be there.” I was assuring myself as much as any of them.

  We encountered one more walking corpse on the way, but nothing more serious. I was going to need to think of something easier to call them, and I refused to consider zombie an option. Before I wasted too much time coming up with something clever though, I needed to find out if there was any precedence for something like this, and that was knowledge Keaty would most certainly have.

  Rather than destroying the ambling remains of a middle-aged woman, we waited her out in another stairwell. She might have been outnumbered, but I had no idea how many others were around, nor did I know if they were attracted to noise. It seemed like a smart bet to play things safe for the time being rather than bringing unnecessary attention onto ourselves.

  Secret McQueen being patient and low key.

  There was a first time for everything.

  And a last.

  I tried not to think too much about what our current situation meant on a broader scale. If a city like New York could be overpowered in mere hours, what was the endgame? And what hope did the rest of the continent have?

  This was bad, though how bad I couldn’t fully comprehend just yet. It might well be the actual end of days, but if this was meant to be the apocalypse, I sure as hell wasn’t going to sit around and wait to die. It didn’t matter how morose I’d been lately, at the core I was a fighter, and I’d always be a fighter.

  If something had come to destroy the city I loved and the people I cared about most, I would go down swinging with my last breath.

  But first I needed something to hit.

  Once the dead woman had passed us, my motley crew of supernaturals made the rest of the trip to Keaty’s brownstone without incident. Given how dark the streets were with the lights off, the house gave the impression of being empty. But I didn’t believe Keaty would go anywhere in this situation when his house was the safest, smartest place to be.

  I hadn’t brought my keys along, so I jogged up the stairs and knocked, as if I were here on a social call.