Magic and Decay

by Rachel Higginson

  I sucked in a fast breath and closed my eyes. Sometimes I wanted nothing more than to put miles of space between us.

  And sometimes when he was this close, when his touch sent my stomach into a flurry and my mind emptied of all rational and coherent thought, I just wanted to fall back into him and let him hold me forever.

  His lips brushed the shell of my ear and he whispered, “Stay by me, Reagan. Let’s get back to Haley and my brothers alive.”

  “Good plan,” I managed to croak out.

  Kiran opened the door and I instantly sobered. Get back to our group? Alive? Sure thing. Just as soon as we killed the hordes of Feeders that had surrounded us from every side.

  No problem.

  I should probably double check to make sure those Magical bullets weren’t a real option.

  Chapter Four

  Eden

  “Kiran!”

  He shot me a panicked look over his shoulder but pushed forward. We had to get out of this building! But the odds did not seem to be in our favor.

  Oh, wait. Wrong series.

  What I really meant was, good grief!

  There were so many of them.

  This Siren call thing must be super strong because there were Zombies everywhere. What in the world.

  My Magic flew around me. Like two swords that I had complete mastery of, my energy pulsed through the air and decapitated everything in sight.

  Well, everything Zombie in sight.

  I felt them press against my Magic and the stench nearly overwhelmed me. My attention had to be split between the Zombies, my husband and the people we were trying to protect.

  I’d known this group for just a couple hours, but for some reason they felt closer to me than that. They felt like old friends. And I didn’t want to lose any of them to this Zombie war.

  I thrust my hand out and another stream of electricity poured from my palm. My blood bubbled and sizzled with hot energy beneath my skin and my heart pounded inside my chest. The Magic was full and unleashed inside of me and the power was a little dizzying. I controlled it almost always these days, but I never stopped feeling awed at the sheer volume of it. I was capable of so much.

  Unfortunately, I was still as oblivious as ever. Just as I took another Zombie head off, something swung out and grabbed at my feet. The jagged fingernails caught my shin and dug straight into the bone. I let out a harsh curse of frustration and tried to rebalance myself, but it was too late.

  I hit the ground with a smack. Dust and liquid, that I had to guess was blood, splashed up around me, and my knees and palms stung harshly for the few seconds it took me to send my Magic rushing through my body again.

  The Feeder tried to pull his body toward me, but I pulled my other leg back and kicked him as hard as I could in the forehead. His head reared back. Before he could bring it down again, I kicked him a second time.

  His head didn’t fall back down again. It detached from his neck and rolled to the side.

  Yuck.

  Blood spurted forward, coating my jeans and shoes in thick, blackish blood. I gagged but tried not to vomit. I really didn’t want to add that to the blood covering my entire body.

  Oh, gosh. That was so gross.

  A hand waved in front of my face and I quickly grabbed onto it. Kiran pulled me to my feet and held me to his side while he effortlessly took care of Zombies with his other arm.

  Of course, he would never fall down and get soaked in Zombie blood. He was way too suave for that.

  “Sometimes I forget how clumsy you can be,” he teased me.

  “I’m not clumsy! I got totally side-swiped.”

  “I don’t have to remind you about the Magic, do I?”

  “Don’t start with me.”

  He turned to face me. Those deep blue eyes of his hit me with all the love and affection he was capable of and my heart thumped a stuttering beat. It amazed me how I could fall deeper in love with him with one intense look or sweet gesture. This man proved on a daily basis how perfect we were for each other.

  There were times we didn’t see eye-to-eye and other times when we didn’t want to see eye-to-eye. It was easier to fight, to disagree and be stubborn about it. We’d always worked through any issues that came up, but we were imperfect people in an imperfect relationship. Our road to eternity was littered with issues and miscommunication and unintentional hurt.

  That being said, this love we shared might be misshapen and unconventional, but it was beautiful too. It had been forged in fires strong enough to promise it would last as long as we did. It had been strengthened, and reinforced and turned into gold so that we could fight and disagree and tease each other endlessly, but never lose sight of whom the other person was.

  This love changed me. This love defined me. And now this love would carry me through every day and every night.

  I loved this man, with every single thing inside of me. And that would never change. Not because it couldn’t change, but because I would work every day for the rest of my exaggerated life to make sure it didn’t. I chose Kiran once upon a time and it was the hardest thing I had done up until that point. Out of everything, I had been through, out of all the people I had lost, out of pain and suffering and an uncertain future, letting myself love Kiran was the hardest.

  But it was also the best thing I ever did.

  So I would make that decision, the decision to love him every day, to only love him and to let him love me, until the world ended completely, and the sky fell down. This was my choice. This was my manifesto.

  “Are you all right, Love? Tell me the truth.”

  I leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “I promise. I’m fine.”

  He turned his mouth to capture mine in a hungry kiss. His lips pressed against mine greedily, pulling me out of the Zombie battle, out of this world, out of reality to remind me that I didn’t just love Kiran. I wanted him too.

  “Hey! This is the wrong place and the very wrong time!” Reagan shouted at us.

  Oops. I’d forgotten where we were for a minute.

  I pulled back from Kiran and licked my lips. His sea-blue eyes darkened with desire and he watched my face intently.

  “I’m ready for date night to come to an end,” he whispered huskily.

  God, would his accent ever get old?

  No.

  Never.

  “Me too.”

  “They’ll be fine,” he whispered. His lips hovered over mine. I felt the heat of his body and the hardness of his chest. I felt his Magic pulse and jump with frenzied energy. I felt his desire and his intent.

  I felt him and it was enough for me to give up everything else to be with him.

  He let out a long-suffering sigh. “I suppose we can see this through. I can be patient.”

  I smiled and let out a slow chuckle. “I’m proud of you.”

  Ivy’s scream pierced through our private moment, followed by Reagan’s shout of, “For real! We could use a little bit of help here!”

  Kiran groaned but turned away from me. He went right back to work. The shield of Magic he’d put in place dissolved so we could step back into the action. I hadn’t even noticed he’d raised some protection. Although, I had been a little preoccupied with all my lusty thoughts and naughty intentions.

  Apparently, I wasn’t the most observant person.

  I looked around at the first floor of some kind of office building. Zombies scrambled through broken windows and the door had been ripped off the hinges. Beyond the melee inside, more undead filled the street and fought to get to us.

  How could such a tiny, helpless teenager bring such chaos and destruction?

  I hadn’t always loved my Magic, but after seeing what Ivy was capable of, I was pretty damn grateful for what I had.

  “Nice of you to join us.”

  I looked over at Reagan. She was covered nearly head to toe in thick, coagulated Zombie blood. We were all huddled together, but she was closer to Hendrix than anyone else. She fou
ght right next to him, directly at his side. He didn’t seem very eager to let her out of his sight.

  I didn’t know what to make of those two. Did they love each other? Did they hate each other? Did they just want to jump each other’s bones?

  What was the deal?

  Or maybe they were just friends. It didn’t always have to be about love. Not every boy and girl standing next to each other made a potential couple. I could have imagined all those longing looks and sly touches between them.

  Just kidding.

  It was always about love. Always.

  I gave her a patient smile. “Sorry. Sometimes we forget where we are.”

  Her eyebrows shot into her hairline. “I can’t relate.”

  “Maybe not right now. But you will someday.”

  She tipped her head back and laughed. “You can’t possibly know that.”

  “Yes, I can,” I promised. “Didn’t you know? I’m the last Oracle.”

  She sobered immediately and the look of shock on her face was absolutely priceless.

  I went back to killing Zombies and she eventually went back to shooting Zombies. A flash of panic flared through my gut. I knew that Reagan and Hendrix would be out of bullets soon and we were no closer to getting out of this building than we had been on the roof.

  We needed to make a run for it. Somehow.

  “Kiran, we have to get out of here!”

  He shot me a “No kidding!” look. I pushed the gravity of our situation into our Magic so he would for sure feel it. He got the message this time. I wasn’t just stating the obvious. We really needed to get out of here.

  I’ll make a path. He told me telepathically.

  “Kiran’s going to make a path!” I shouted at them. “We need to run for it.”

  Ivy looked up at me, terrified. But she nodded bravely and steeled something inside of herself. She was ready. She might not be able to fight Zombies like the rest of us, but she was a fighter.

  She was a survivor.

  Good.

  Kiran started killing Zombies down the center of the building. It was fascinating how he did it. He went after the Zombies closest to us and then worked his way toward the door. They fell on either side, effectively clearing a way out.

  I reinforced the path with a Magical force-field and we started working our way toward the door. Kiran and I led the way, Ivy and Ryder followed us and Hendrix and Reagan brought up the rear. It was tight and we couldn’t move as fast as I wanted to because Zombie limbs littered the way, but it seemed to be working.

  Or I thought it was working… Until one of the dead Zombies on the ground proved that he wasn’t so dead.

  He wasn’t one of the monsters that Kiran killed. He still had his head attached. So obviously he’d been trampled in the crush to get to us or he’d somehow come up with enough sense to play dead.

  Either way, he lay in wait until just the right moment and then reached out for Ivy.

  His claws sunk into her calf and she let out a horrified scream as he pulled her to the floor with him. I had just stepped over his arm and had wrongly assumed he was one of the piled dead.

  I spun around and didn’t think, just acted. I used Magic to laser through his arm so that he couldn’t hold onto her anymore. Ryder was on the ground with her, keeping the Zombie’s mouth away from Ivy with his foot on the Zombie’s forehead.

  The Zombie chomped and snapped and snarled at Ryder and Ivy. His missing arm wasn’t even a blip on his radar. He didn’t notice anything but the Siren in front of him and his insatiable hunger for human flesh.

  I hurried to use my Magic again on his neck. His head didn’t roll anywhere, but his bloodied eyes became unseeing the second his neck became two parts.

  I let out a shaky breath and Ivy looked up at me with a mixture of horror and gratitude.

  I held out my hand and helped her to her feet.

  Ryder dropped a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Thank you,” he said.

  His gratitude surprised me and I had to blink back emotional tears. Could I blame those on post-pregnancy hormones?

  No?

  Shoot.

  “Don’t mention it. “I’ve got cooler tricks than that.”

  “I have no doubt.” He smiled at me but then impatiently gestured toward the exit.

  Oh, right. We needed to run for our lives.

  So that’s exactly what we did.

  We pushed through the room. The Magic kept the Zombies from pressing too closely, but they let off their own negative aura that warred with my inherent power.

  I had never noticed it before, probably because I had never been in a room with this many before. It wasn’t a force of energy they could use against me. I could simply feel how angry, how hungry they were. They would do anything to get to Ivy. And the rest of us would become casualties along the way.

  I looked around at all of their faces, marveling at the fact that they really were all men. They truly were drawn to her like she claimed. It was hard to believe.

  Not that I didn’t believe her. But the concept of a Greek Siren pulled straight from the ocean was a hard one to wrap my head around. The all-male room was enough evidence for me to believe her. I just didn’t want to. I wanted the world to go back to the way things were, to the familiar.

  I wondered if human men reacted the same way towards her as these Zombies. If they would fight and claw and kill each other in order to get to her. I wondered if she suffered a lot where she came from.

  Her power could easily be made a weapon in the wrong hands. Men would do anything for her just because of what she was. She could potentially make them do anything.

  And they would be powerless against her.

  She could even control a man like Terletov.

  Too bad the Zombies couldn’t reason out her commands. They needed their brains to understand her directives, but they were too busy trying to eat ours.

  A Zombie fell to the ground to the left of me, trampled by hungrier, heavier, meaner Zombies. Limp feet landed on fragile bone and flesh. The Zombie on the ground didn’t last long as others stomped on his brittle body and tore him to pieces.

  His bloodied, ripped-apart appendages and torso drew the attention of some of the Zombies standing by and they threw themselves on him, immediately devouring whatever parts of him they could sink their teeth into.

  My stomach turned and I tried not to watch, but I was morbidly fascinated. Kiran took my hand and tugged me toward the door. Just a few more feet and we would be clear of the building.

  And then to the car.

  Ivy’s ride would have to show up sooner or later, no matter how crazy it sounded to me. And then Kiran and I would take care of Reagan and Hendrix. We would find their friends, too and help them all get to safety. Maybe they would want to come back to the Citadel with us and trade in their Evil Dead lifestyle for a mountain-view and Zombie-less existence.

  We pushed through the door as a group with elbows ramming into ribs and feet on top of feet. The Zombies were at our backs in seconds, but Kiran and I pushed back with our Magic.

  Now we just had to make it to the safe haven of the car.

  I took a step forward and came face-to-face with a nasty beast of a man. His face had been completely disfigured by Zombie rot. His crimson eyes bugged out from eaten-away flesh. The muscles of his face flashed burgundy and gory. His nose had been smashed flat to his face and his blackened teeth chomped and chattered behind bloodied lips. His smell permeated the air with a noxious toxicity. My stomach flipped and roiled, but I did my best to hold it together.

  He towered over me. Mucous dripped from his bony chin and pooled on tattered overalls. His club-like hands swiped at the air in front of him, trying to push past the Magic that he could not comprehend. His focus stayed firmly on Ivy.

  I stepped closer to her and prayed my Magic would be enough to keep her safe.

  It should have been enough. It should have been enough to keep all of us safe. Except I forgot one small detail.


  I’d built the Magic up around us, making a tall force-field that kept the Zombies at bay. But I’d forgotten overhead.

  And apparently Kiran had too. It never occurred to us to make a roof of Magic. Or maybe we didn’t have time to think through all the finer details of the moment.

  Zombies had scaled the building to reach us on the roof, but we’d evaded them through the rooftop door. Now that we were out in the open again, they jumped without warning.

  I heard their screeching cries as they leapt from the building. I didn’t realize what was happening until my body slammed to the hard ground and the wind rushed from my lungs.

  I wheezed and sent Magic rushing through me while the heaviness on my back pierced through my confusion.

  Someone kicked out a foot and connected with my forehead. My head snapped back and bright white dots danced behind my closed eyes.

  The smell of the Zombie lying on top of me hit me like a ton of bricks, and I felt slime and sickening ooze seep over my exposed arms and soak through my t-shirt.

  I gagged and tried to flip over before I realized the Zombie that landed on me had hit his head on impact and killed himself. My face was pressed into the ground and I suddenly registered the wet stickiness trickling over my cheek and tangling in my hair.

  Oh. No.

  Not okay.

  This time I used Magic to shove the asshole off me. I jumped to my feet and did my best not to freak the hell out.

  I quickly focused again when I saw my husband beneath a kicking, screaming Zombie that had survived the fall. I became aware that our entire group had been attacked, but Kiran would always be my first priority.

  I couldn’t just slice the Zombie’s head off though since his snapping teeth were so close to Kiran’s face.

  I had no doubt Kiran could survive almost anything on this earth. Almost anything.

  Except his head getting cut off with my Magic.

  That one probably wasn’t on the list of things he could come back from.

  Kiran used his superhuman strength to push the Feeder back by his shoulders, but his hand lost grip when the Feeder’s bones crushed beneath his pressure. His left arm flailed and the Feeder’s face dropped right at Kiran.