A Mad Zombie Party - Showalter Gena (читать лучшие читаемые книги TXT) 📗

“Sorry about this, my man, but you need it whether you agree or not,” Cole says, then flattens his palm against Frosty’s chest.

Frosty grunts and lurches backward, quickly severing contact.

“Hey,” I shout as I bound over. “You don’t get to touch him without his permission.”

“This isn’t any of your business,” Cole snaps at me. “Stay out of it.”

I open my mouth to reply—

“Stay out of it,” Frosty repeats. With less heat, but still. A rebuke is a rebuke.

Boys!

I look away, the hairs on the back of my neck practically dancing now, and spot a girl standing beside a tombstone. Her face is cast in shadows, but I can see her hair stretches all the way to her waist, where the light shines. The strands are so black they gleam blue. Is she a civilian?

When I take a step toward her, she scrambles backward. If she can see me, she’s not a civilian. One of Cole’s new recruits, here to observe the battle? To learn?

“Hey,” I call, and she bolts. Nope. Not a recruit. I give chase. Anima wouldn’t be stupid enough to send someone to observe us so openly. Right?

Right, because Anima no longer exists. I wonder how many years I’ll have to remind myself of that fact before it actually feels real.

Maybe the girl witnessed the fight but doesn’t know she’s a slayer. Maybe she’s freaked out. Or, maybe she’s a spy from my brother’s camp, because River still cares about me and wants to know I’m okay.

A pang of homesickness nearly slices me in two.

A zombie steps into my path and I twist to the side, nailing him in the eye with a dagger as I whiz past him. Only then do I realize I’ve moved out of the light. My heartbeat picks up speed. Am I headed into a trap?

At my right a shadow shifts, and I stop, turn. A sharp sting explodes in my neck...my arm...my neck again. Definitely a trap!

A wave of dizziness nearly topples me as I pull three darts out of my skin. Well, well. Two of my theories are now vapor in the wind. The girl doesn’t work for my brother and she knows she’s a slayer. For her weapon to affect me, she had to shoot it from the spirit realm, where I’m currently located. That’s not something civilians can do, even by accident.

The only other option that makes any sense is...Anima.

“Camilla!” Frosty’s voice echoes through the night, anger causing the “a” to vibrate.

The dizziness fades, and I breathe a sigh of relief as I stuff the darts in my pocket.

I step toward the girl, who hasn’t moved from the trees. She steps backward, into a higher beam of light, and I see that she’s pretty, with wide frightened eyes and skin covered in freckles; one moment she’s standing in place, frozen in terror, the next she’s running away.

I kick into gear, prepared to follow her again—

“Camilla!”

But I can’t leave Frosty behind. I just can’t. Cursing, I backtrack. He’s my first priority, not the girl.

Cole and Frosty are nose-to-nose, arguing.

“—like I told you,” Cole is saying. “I had to make sure you’d heal from a zombie bite without the antidote. That was the only way.”

“And I told you weeks ago I didn’t want the ‘save the bastards’ ability. Camilla!” he shouts a second later.

I haven’t been spotted, I guess. “Guys,” I say. And...did Cole just admit he shared the ability by using dynamis on Frosty?

Neither boy faces me. They just keep staring daggers at the other, but at least some of the tension has drained from Frosty.

Across the way, Ali is standing between Gavin and Jaclyn, pushing the two apart. “Enough!”

“I would slap you,” Jaclyn growls at the smirking man-boy, “but it would be considered animal abuse.”

“I’m sorry,” Gavin replies, “but I can’t hear you over the sound of your bitchiness.”

“Children.” Ali slaps Gavin’s shoulder before waving a finger at Jaclyn. “This is no place to continue your weird seduction of each other.”

“I’m not seducing. I’m punishing. She allowed too many zombies to bite her,” Gavin says. “I can still see the toxin under her skin.”

Jaclyn throws her arms into the air, clearly exasperated. “Don’t fight them, you told me yesterday. Fight them, you told me today. Why don’t you make up your stupid mind?”

“Guys!” I shout. “There’s a girl out there. She tried to sedate me.” I show them the darts. “We need to find her, like, now.” Before it’s too late. Hell, it’s probably too late already.

A twig snaps behind me, and my first thought is that she’s come back to finish what she started. I spin, a short sword palmed and raised. Not a girl, but a zombie on his hands and knees. He’s closer than I would have guessed, as if he just rose from the grave at my feet. He looks to be my age, maybe younger, a boy who never really had a chance to live. I hesitate—the younger ones always trip me up—and that single second of inactivity allows him to yank my feet out from underneath me.

I fall, landing with a thud, losing my breath. Having trained for this, I roll backward, into the light still shining from the car, and spring into a crouch while reaching out to swipe my sword across his neck.

His head tilts to the side before flopping onto a fresh mound of dirt. Frosty arrives on the scene, his entire arm already engulfed in flames. I blink, and his face, neck and chest are consumed, too. I gape at him. I think he gapes at himself. It’s hard to see his expression underneath all that fire.

“This is your fault,” he says as he turns to point an accusing finger at Cole, who spreads his arms, all I love you, so get used to it.

Oh, to be loved that way.

Frosty touches the zombie, just touches him—a brush of his fingertips against the creature’s head and body—and the pieces burst into black ash. The flames on Frosty’s arms die. He stares at the limbs as if he’s never seen them before.

“Thank you,” I say, only to remember he doesn’t want my thanks. But this time, he doesn’t reply. I guess he’s ignoring me again.

I push to shaky legs. Frosty’s shirt is unmarred by the flames but ripped at the collar, gaping all the way to his navel. You’d think I’d never seen a tanned, toned, tattooed guy before, because I suddenly can’t tear my gaze away, too star-struck by the beauty of him. An angel. A fallen angel. He’s my tormentor and my salvation—and what the hell is wrong with me? Did I hit my head when I fell?

“I could have saved that zombie.” Ali marches over to frown at me, as if I’m the problem. I hate how tall she is, and how tiny she makes me feel. “I could have turned him into a witness.”

“Could you really?” Gavin mentioned seeing toxin underneath Jaclyn’s skin, and I can see it underneath Ali’s, black lines branching from her eyes and mouth. “You were almost completely tapped before you started fighting. Now you’re telling me you’re good as gold?”

Up goes Ali’s chin—a defensive action I know well. “I’m not the problem here. You were supposed to stay by Frosty’s side, not run off to—”

“I told you. I saw someone. A girl. She watched the battle and bolted when I noticed her. I chased her. She shot me up with darts. We need to catch her and question her.”

“If there is a girl out there, and I’m not saying there is—we both know you could have brought those darts with you, intending to feed us this story—she probably doesn’t know she’s a slayer and that there’s a war waging all around her.”

I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste the copper tinge of blood. “She was in spirit form. She knows what she is.” Slayers can separate spirit from body naturally, but it’s something we have to learn. Anima long ago found a way to force the action through electronic pulses.

Ali gives me a once-over. “You don’t look like you’ve been tranqed.”

“That I can’t explain. Unless she shot me up with something else.” Like...what? The opposite of a tranq—happy juice? But I’m not exactly happy. Medication of some sort? Poison?