Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  And that’s when I hit pay dirt: a cell phone, presumably Professor Davis’s, was wedged in the crack between the cushions and the back of the sofa. I pried it loose and started scrolling through the recent calls.

  BETHANY.

  BETHANY.

  BETHANY.

  I tried not to feel guilty, seeing Beth’s name, and forced myself onward.

  ADELAIDE.

  HOME.

  And then, finally, a number that wasn’t in his contacts. Two numbers. A third.

  There had to be a way to trace the phone numbers to a location—and if I was lucky, that location might give me something: if not the actual lab where they were holding Zev, at least another name, another person whose office I could rifle through, more laws to break.

  This time, the sound of footsteps treading through the exterior hallway was crisp and pert, and it stopped right outside the door. Pocketing the cell phone, I leapt for the door to the lab space, squeezing back through it and shutting it behind me an instant before the door to the hallway opened.

  “Honestly, Paul, that’s the third phone this month. You can hardly complain about Bethany’s overage fees when you can’t keep track of a BlackBerry to save your life.”

  In the time it took me to recognize that voice as belonging to Bethany’s mother, her father was already speaking in reply. “What our daughter doesn’t know won’t hurt her—and the phone isn’t lost. It’s in here somewhere. Here, give me your phone.”

  It took me a second too long to realize why a person trying to locate their phone would ask to borrow one from someone else—and in that second, Paul Davis called his own cell.

  It lit up a second before it rang. I didn’t have time to figure out how to silence it, how to turn it off. Moving on instinct, I did the only thing a person like me knew how to do.

  I killed it.

  Snapped it in half like a twig, held my breath, waited.

  “Did you hear something?” Through the thick metal door, Paul Davis’s voice was muted, but I had no way of knowing how soft it would have sounded to a human. Maybe they wouldn’t have been able to make out the words at all; maybe, on the other side of that metal door, the Davises wouldn’t have heard that half of a ring, the crunching of plastic and metal, at all.

  Or maybe this time, I’d get caught.

  I thought of all the laws I’d ever broken: the trespassing, the slaughter, obstruction of justice, cruelty to creatures who’d died choking on my blood. I thought of Zev, caged in concrete, and of my father, lecturing in the building next door.

  And then the door to the lab space opened, and a familiar woman with strawberry blonde hair peeked in. She met my eyes, and for a moment, hers glossed over, and I wondered if Bethany’s mother was seeing things again: the boy her son had been, ghosts of everything he wouldn’t ever be. For a moment, that faraway glint in her eye gave way to focus, clarity.

  She saw me.

  And then she closed the door. “Not so much as a ring,” she said. “Are you sure you didn’t leave it in the lecture hall?”

  This time, I couldn’t make out her husband’s response, but a second later, it was punctuated with the sound of another door opening, closing. I started breathing again, a tightness in my chest reminding me that I’d stopped. I should have headed for the other exit—the one I’d entered through in the first place, but I didn’t. Instead, I waited, and after a long moment, the door to Davis’s office opened again.

  “I know you,” Bethany’s mother said in a tone that would have been more appropriate if we’d run into each other at some kind of country club soiree. “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t remember your name. I’m afraid I’m not much of a morning person.”

  I tried to form a connection between this polite woman, put together from head to toe and fully coherent, and the woman I’d met that morning, but came up blank. The difference was night and day, like there were two people occupying the same body—neither of whom was 100 percent there.

  “And when I say I’m not a morning person, what I mean is that I don’t know what you saw this morning. I can guess what you must think of me, but I love my children, and I love my husband, and I think it would be best if we both agreed that whatever you saw this morning never happened, and whatever I saw—here, with you—well, that never happened, either.”

  I had no response, no words. She was supposed to be crazy. She wasn’t supposed to be bargaining with me.

  “You learn,” she said. “After a while, you learn how to pretend—to see what you want to see, and ignore everything else.”

  Listening to her speak, her cadence and tone an exact match for Bethany at her oh-so-popular iciest, I wondered which Adelaide Davis was the real one, and which was pretend. Was she crazy? Sane? Did she know her son was gone? Was what I’d seen this morning just an elaborate game? Or was this Adelaide—calm and cool, negotiating with me to keep her secret—just a cover, a mask constructed to hide the broken, jagged mind that lurked underneath?

  “You’re a very pretty girl,” the woman in question said, tilting her head to the side. “Did you know that? Once upon a time, I had a pretty, pretty boy.” She reached forward and touched my cheek with one manicured hand.

  And just like that, it was like I wasn’t even standing there anymore. She took her own cell phone out of her purse and started tapping impatiently on its keys.

  “Mrs. Davis?” I said her name, unsure if I should leave her here, if I should call Bethany to bring her home.

  She looked up. “Don’t slouch, Kali. It’s unbecoming.”

  Her use of my given name nailed me to the floor. She turned her attention back to the phone, and finally, I coerced my feet into moving, made my way to the door.

  “Don’t let them hurt her.” This time, Adelaide Davis’s voice was quiet, steady. “It’s not safe in that house. It’s never safe.”

  She might as well have been rattling off a cookie recipe, for all the emphasis she placed on those words. I waited to see if she’d say anything else, but she didn’t.

  I opened the door.

  I slipped back into the hallway.

  And as the door closed behind me, I heard a light and airy sigh.

  I’d come here with a lead, and I was leaving with a broken cell phone and a ball of nausea expanding in my stomach. Leaving Bethany’s mother there, with her father, felt wrong—and it made me wonder. If Adelaide was here—alone—where was Bethany?

  Why had Bethany just placed three calls to her father’s cell phone?

  And what did Adelaide mean about it never being safe in their house?

  It’s not safe in that house. It’s never safe.

  I couldn’t shake those words, no matter how hard I tried, so instead of slipping back into my father’s classroom and returning his ID card, I dropped it in the hallway outside his class—someone would find it, and I had bigger fish to fry. Ducking out of the building, it took my eyes a moment to adjust to the sudden change in brightness. The sunlight felt like a pinprick in the center of each of my eyes, but I was only vaguely aware of the discomfort as it spread outward, leaving them bloodshot and dry.

  Where we come from, there isn’t much of a sun. The more like us you become, the less tolerance you’ll have for direct sunlight—but you’ll survive.

  I didn’t know which part of that statement was the most disturbing—the idea that whatever I was, whatever I was becoming, the transformation wasn’t complete yet, or the suggestion that people like us came from somewhere else.

  I could tell you all about it, Zev suggested.

  I saw the ploy for what it was: he wanted me to forget about Chimera, forget about Bethany, forget about anything that might spur me into action. In his ideal world, I probably would have completely ignored the fact that he was caged, lying in wait for the moment he could tear off all of their heads.

  Nice try, I said. But no.

  I told you I could handle this, Kali, and I meant it.

  For a split second, there was some
thing else there, something he wasn’t telling me. I could almost see it, almost pinpoint the reason he wanted me to stay away, but a second later, it was gone.

  Frustrated, I replied to his silent sentence out loud. “Yeah, well, you also spent the first twenty-four hours of our acquaintance appearing to me in shadows and stalking my dreams. Forgive me if I’m skeptical.”

  His response came in images, not words, and I got the distinct sense that up until I’d shifted from my human form, he hadn’t been able to make himself heard more clearly—which meant there was a good chance that as soon as I shifted back, I’d lose the connection. Lose this.

  I’d lose the boost that being bitten had given my already unnatural abilities—and the thirst.

  I was used to watching my abilities slip away, leaving me vulnerable and human and raw. I was used to missing things, people, having a purpose, but this time, it would be worse.

  Because this time, when I shifted, I’d lose Zev and the ability to save him.

  Eighteen hours and twenty-four minutes.

  I was on the clock—but I still couldn’t make myself focus only on Zev, not with Bethany’s mother’s words echoing in the recesses of my mind.

  It’s not safe in that house. It’s never safe.

  It was probably nothing. The woman had lost a child—how could any place feel safe after something like that? Bethany was probably fine—or, at least, as fine as she’d been when I’d left her—but given that she was almost as embroiled in this mess as I was, I couldn’t ignore the possibility that she might not be.

  If her mother was here, Bethany was home alone—and I’d already had firsthand experience with the way the men in suits handled loose ends.

  She’s fine, I told myself. If they were going to hurt her, they would have done it already.

  In my head, Zev sighed. You’re going back there, aren’t you?

  I chewed lightly on my bottom lip. Maybe.

  That was the problem with caring about people—you had too much to lose.

  I glanced down at my watch again, more out of habit than anything else, and then made a split-second decision. Bethany’s house was a good ten miles away, but there was nothing saying I had to run there on foot. I’d go by, eyeball the house, make sure that Chimera hadn’t sent anyone to pay Beth a visit—and then I’d find a way to get what I needed out of the mangled remains of Paul Davis’s phone.

  Scanning the cars in the parking lot, my eyes came to rest on my father’s.

  Hey, Zev? I said, sounding—to me, at least—oddly like Skylar. Any chance you know how to hot-wire a car?

  I might have felt bad about stealing my father’s car, had he ever acknowledged the fact that I was old enough to drive—and had been for over a year. But sixteen and seventeen were just numbers to him, and we’d never been much for celebrating birthdays. Given that, I figured that just this once, he could rely on public transportation—or walk the five miles separating the university from our house.

  All’s fair in love and war—and black ops.

  Ignoring the quiet trill of guilt trying to sound off in my brain, I parked the car a couple of blocks away from Bethany’s house, figuring that if Chimera hadn’t figured out who I was yet, the last thing I needed to do was hand them my father’s license plate number on a silver platter. Closing the car door behind me, I started jogging toward Bethany’s house, making an effort at slowing the unnaturally fast pace my body wanted to take.

  I wasn’t used to having to hold back, and it took the strain of pretending to be human to an all-new level.

  My body wanted to run.

  It wanted to blur.

  It wanted to feed—

  But I most emphatically wasn’t going to think about that. The last thing I needed was for the neighbors to see me running by at an inhuman blur.

  So I held back. I paced myself. And then I heard the scream.

  Go. Quickly.

  I stopped holding back, stopped thinking. One second, I was running, and the next I was there, and everything in between was fuzzy and indefinite in my mind. This time, when I heard the scream, I recognized its owner.

  Not Bethany. Skylar.

  That, more than the whisper of Zev’s own hunt-lust in the corners of my mind, pushed me forward. I didn’t have many friends—I wasn’t entirely sure I had any—but Skylar was the closest thing I’d had to one in a very long time.

  She was screaming.

  I catapulted my way over the gate, lost myself to the blur of the motion, hit the front porch, and breathed in through my nose.

  Death, I thought, the word oddly dull in my mind. The dead and the dying had a smell—a bit like rusted metal, a bit like rotting food. The scent of it set the hairs on the back of my neck on end.

  Walkers, Zev said. Lots of them.

  It took me a moment to translate, to know that by Walkers, he meant the walking dead.

  Homo mortis.

  Zombies.

  I had my knife in hand before I realized I’d reached for it, and I had kicked open the Davises’ front door before it ever occurred to me that it might have been unlocked.

  “Kali?” A familiar voice—tight with panic, tinged with disbelief—caught me off guard. The only thing that kept me from putting my knife straight through the top of Elliot’s spine was a surge of interest from the chupacabra inside me.

  A realization that Elliot smelled human.

  He smelled good.

  “Where are they?” I asked. My voice sounded different—gravelly and low, humming with power and need and want.

  “Beth’s down the hall, barricaded in. I can’t find Skylar—”

  “No,” I said sharply. “The zombies. Where are they?”

  On cue, one of the living dead dropped down from the stairway overhead. Its bones crunched as it landed, and when it stood, I realized that it was like me—it couldn’t feel pain, couldn’t tell that its legs were broken, the bones protruding through dead and rotting flesh.

  Its mouth—or what was left of it—opened, revealing a cavernous hole. No tongue. I caught the faint whiff of sulfur in its blood and wondered how anyone could have ever thought that zombies started out human.

  “Kali, look out!”

  Elliot’s words were lost on me, his presence a distraction I didn’t need.

  Kill it, I thought. Kill it now.

  I flung the knife and a second later, I heard the sound it made cutting through flesh, lodging itself in rock-hard bone. I leapt forward, a wild thing, slamming the heel of my hand into the hilt of the blade. The creature’s spine gave way; its head detached, and a second later, my knife was back in my hand.

  “Kali?” Every muscle in Elliot’s body was tense. His face was pale, but his eyes were hard.

  I said nothing. Somewhere below us, Skylar screamed.

  “Weapons,” I said, my voice a foreign thing in a throat that wanted nothing more than to be coated in the blood of the thing I’d just slayed. “Whatever you have, give it to me and get out.”

  Elliot didn’t seem any more inclined to follow my instructions than I’d been to follow most of Zev’s.

  “Beth’s dad collects guns,” he said. “They’re in the basement. That’s where I was headed.”

  I didn’t have time for this. Not with Skylar screaming, not with the hunt-lust exploding inside of me, like there were a hundred zombies in this house, a thousand.

  I left Elliot—left him standing there, light blue eyes, cheekbones sharp as any knife. Either he’d survive or he wouldn’t. Either way, I knew without asking that if it came down to a choice, he would have sent me after Skylar, told me to save her, protect her—

  Kill them. Kill them now.

  I didn’t know the halls of this house as well as the layout of the biology building, but this time, I didn’t have to rely on memory or a mental map or anything other than an unerring sense of where they were.

  The things I needed to kill.

  The closer I got to the sound of Skylar’s screaming, the more o
f them there were. I felt like I was swimming in corpses, cutting my way through one after another after another in my pursuit. Around number ten, I lost my knife, left it buried in a corpse still twitching with what was left of its mockery of life. Then all I had was my hands, nails as sharp as blades, and my blood.

  I fought my way toward Skylar, my flesh shredded and bleeding, and when I found her, she was still screaming, but she didn’t look scared. She didn’t look hurt. She’d managed to crawl on top of what looked to be a very large safe—easily one and a half times her size—and she’d squished herself back against the wall, just out of range of the yellowed fingernails and white-gray hands groping for her body.

  For her blood.

  “You okay?” I asked her.

  She nodded, then screamed again, the sound piercing the air like a siren—and for a moment, the horde of monsters in between us shrank back.

  “Little Sisters’ Survival Guide, rule number thirty-seven,” Skylar said. “Scream before they hit you.”

  And then she screamed again.

  I didn’t have time to question her logic—or the existence of the little sisters’ survival guide. “Close your eyes,” I shouted, over her shrieks and the wet, gargling moans of the things that stood between us.

  Skylar didn’t question the command, and I didn’t have time to think about why I’d given it. She closed her eyes, and I dragged one jagged fingernail across the length of my neck, drawing blood, waiting.

  One by one, the horde turned their attention from Skylar to me. One by one, they stopped scrambling for her blood. One by one, their eyes—pupil-less and without color—focused in on the line of blood I’d drawn.

  I noticed the red, blinking collars on their necks a second before they lunged—each moving in tandem with the one next to it, with coordination the walking dead should never have.

  Zombies were stupid and slow and incapable of anything but eating—their own bodies, others’—but this set moved with purpose, like rats through a maze.