Magic and Decay Read online

  There had been a time when I felt sorry for these guys. I couldn’t separate killing so many of them when I had a hard time forgetting that they had once been perfectly human and normal.

  Maybe even rational.

  And for sure, at least not cannibal.

  But now I couldn’t say that guilt robbed me of any sleep. Whatever humanity had been there before was officially gone. They were no longer animals or savages or charity cases.

  They were the enemy. And if we didn’t kill them, then they would kill us.

  A burst of electricity pulsed from my hand and connected with the drooling Feeder in front of me. His teeth had turned black and dripped with a gooey substance that looked like a mixture of blood, saliva and rubber cement. His face drooped from his skull, bloodied and scabbed over. His hands reached out in stiff claws that batted at the air in front of him, hoping to catch a piece of me.

  My Magic cut like a laser through his neck, hot and cauterizing. His body dropped to his knees and then to the ground while his head bounced away in a different direction. His comrades didn’t even pause to move his body out of the way. They trampled over the remains of their dead friend without a second thought.

  Or any thought.

  They seemed devoid of any kind of ability to think or reason. This disease made them solely focused on finding food by any means necessary.

  My heart squeezed, but I pushed the sentiment away. One quick glance at my husband reinforced my focus. We were at war with the undead and if we didn’t do our small part, they would take over everything and everyone.

  I fought for my life, but more so for my family. For Kiran. For my children.

  “Eden!” Kiran called from a few feet away. “Do you notice anything strange about these Zombies?”

  “They smell worse than usual?”

  He made a sound of agreement. “I was thinking their same-sexedness.”

  “What?” I looked around. He was right. All of the Zombies surrounding us in carnal hunger or dead on the ground were men.

  Not one woman interrupted their uniformity.

  Weird.

  “Maybe they were an Elks club or something? Masons? Interrupted in the middle of a meeting?”

  “What is an Elks club?”

  At least he understood the Masons.

  “Like an all men’s club. Shriners. The mob. I don’t know! It’s weird. Where are the women?”

  “Maybe they ate the women.”

  I shuddered. Could that be possible? Men turning on the women and banding together to form some kind of Zombie army? Stranger things had happened.

  Such as Zombies in the first place.

  There were rumors of Zombie armies further south, but we had not been brave enough to explore those areas.

  Like I said earlier, being a Zombie for the rest of eternity sounded like the opposite of fun.

  “We should have brought a team with us,” I lamented.

  “I thought this was your idea of romance? I thought you wanted alone time?”

  Now he was just rubbing it in. “Next time you can take me to the cabin.”

  “Mmm,” Kiran murmured in approval. “I like taking you to the cabin.”

  I felt the slow burn in my stomach as if he’d suggested something deliciously wicked. It quickly fizzled out with the next Zombie that tried to bite my face off.

  “What the hell?”

  I whipped my head around, convinced Kiran was practicing his American accent again… here… in the middle of Zombiefest.

  “Was that you?” I used another punch of Magic to take out two more Zombies that had gotten dangerously close to dripping their mucousy-puss on me.

  “No,” Kiran answered immediately. In that one word, I heard his suspicion and alarm. I felt it surge through our combined Magic and zing through my blood.

  I spun around, searching for the voice that had pierced through the groaning and guttural cries of the multitude of Zombies around us.

  The sound of fifty Zombies clamoring for flesh and blood would have been deafening to regular ears, but our Immortal senses were superior in every way to normal humanity. Which was why we diligently fought their battle, picked up their mess and gave them a chance to resurrect a world that didn’t have to fight tooth and nail to survive on a daily basis.

  There was a human nearby now, and as the numbers of hungry undead grew with alarming speed, I felt the press of purpose to find him. They wouldn’t survive this many Zombies. There was no way they had enough ammunition or weaponry to hold off against a horde of this size.

  Even I felt staggered by the sheer number of Zombies that filled this street. They came in waves. More and more and more filed around the corner while Kiran and I did our best to keep them contained. If a human joined our fight now, he wouldn’t last a minute.

  “There!” Kiran pointed to the beach. Two humans stood side by side at the edge of the ocean. They seemed to be contemplating their chances with the endless rush of waves and water against the Zombie horde that battled to get to them.

  And that was when I realized the Zombies around Kiran and me were not interested in us. Not really. They snapped and clawed at us, but their focus had honed in on those two people like they were ambrosia in a land of gods.

  “What the hell?” Kiran murmured the human’s sentiment. “Do you think they’ve figured out we’re not exactly human?”

  I looked at Kiran and then at the two people standing fifty yards away. A guy and a girl huddled closely together, dripping with saltwater and looking altogether terrified.

  “I have no idea. I don’t remember them ever caring before that we were more than human.”

  “Do you think this is what your vision was about?”

  Yes. I did. And I didn’t need to voice that thought for Kiran to understand it. Our shared Magic gave us direct access to each other’s emotions and general thoughts. While we could hide some of that from each other when we needed space, I wasn’t interested in hiding anything right now.

  The Zombies shifted their steps to move around us and charge those two uncertain humans. I had watched hysteria and confusion flash across their terrified expressions before they started sprinting down the beach, sand kicking up in gritty sprays with every step.

  “Let’s go help them.” Kiran sounded exasperatedly resigned and I tried not to smile. Helping people had really always been my thing.

  We used Magic to clear a path in front of us and help speed us along. Zombies could be ridiculously fast when they had food in their sights, much faster than me without Magic.

  We caught up to the couple a little ways down the beach. They were shouting unintelligible words at each other and searching wildly for weapons or a place to hide out.

  The girl’s wild red hair hung to her chin and whipped about her face while the guy pressed a hand to her back and pushed her along. They were quite a bit younger than us. I thought they might be teenagers, but they looked even younger dripping wet.

  Just as Kiran and I approached, the girl tripped and fell, bringing the boy down with her.

  They sprawled in the sand, a panicked heap of tangled limbs. We stopped just in front of them. Kiran spun around and created a force-field of Magic to keep the ravening Zombies at bay while I tried to make sense of the couple on the ground.

  “Eden, we need to go!” Kiran shouted at me.

  I looked down at the couple sharing equally horrified looks while their attention bounced back and forth between the Zombies pounding against Kiran’s force-field and my face.

  “Are you two all right?”

  The boy looked at the girl next to him, and something settled over him, something deeper than fear and panic, something I recognized, but didn’t understand. “What the hell is going on?” he demanded.

  “The Zombies seem to really like the way you two smell.” I held my hand out to the girl and she took it warily.

  “Zombies?” the boy choked.

  Wait… how could he not know about Zombies? And wher
e exactly had they come from? I would have noticed earlier if two humans had been wandering around town.

  “Zombies,” I repeated. “You don’t know about the Zombies?”

  They shared another look and I heard them both gulp down some additional panic.

  “They’re all men,” the girl whispered.

  This seemed to alarm the boy even more. He took an aggressive step forward and steeled some of his wavering nerves. “Damn it, Ivy,” he growled.

  I glanced over my shoulder. “Does that mean something to you?”

  The girl, Ivy, nodded. Her chin trembled and her big green eyes seemed to widen with some kind of insight into our current predicament.

  “This is going to sound crazy…” she started.

  I didn’t have time to drag answers out of her. “Crazier than Zombies?”

  She cleared her throat and took that in stride. “I’m a Siren,” she explained. “Of the Greek variety. I attract, er, men.”

  I nearly laughed. “And apparently it doesn’t matter if they’re living or dead.”

  “Apparently not,” the guy grunted.

  “You believe me?”

  This time I did laugh. “My husband is keeping Zombies at bay with a Magical force-field. There’s not much I don’t believe in.”

  “Right,” the guy said. “So that makes you…?”

  “A witch.”

  “Right,” he repeated. “Ryder.”

  “Eden. And that’s my husband, Kiran.”

  “Got any idea how to get out of here, Eden?” Ryder asked.

  “We’ve been using our Magic to chop heads off. That seems to work great for us.”

  “And if we don’t have Magic?”

  “Then you should probably run. Fast.”

  “To where?” Ivy wailed.

  I looked over her shoulder and saw that the Zombies had found a way around Kiran’s loophole and were now coming at us from every available angle.

  Yikes!

  “Okay, stick with us! We’ll get you someplace safe.

  “Kiran, we have to get these two out of the open! We need someplace to go.”

  He glanced in the direction of the small jet we’d taken across the ocean, but ruled that out almost instantly. There were too many Zombies between us and the plane.

  We could easily protect ourselves, and we didn’t have to worry about the bite as much as humans did. I didn’t know how a Greek Siren would be affected, but the guy with her hadn’t claimed to be anything but human.

  We couldn’t be reckless with these lives.

  “Up!” Kiran shouted at me over the rising din of Zombies’ screams.

  I looked back to the restaurant we had just been exploring. There were too many ledges and places for a Feeder to get a foothold and climb to the top. They would overpower us in no time.

  I followed Kiran’s focus down the small strip of downtown. Directly next to the restaurant was a perfect square of a two-story building with smooth stucco siding and no window ledges until the second story. From here, I could only make out one door and no windows on the first floor.

  It would be perfect.

  If we could just get there.

  I pointed it out to Ivy and Ryder. “We’re going to run there. We’ll put up a force-field around us and hopefully keep you from getting eaten on the journey. These guys are really aggressive though, so we’ll have to hurry.”

  “You think we can keep them out of there?”

  I shared a look with Kiran. “It’s a start. Unless you have a better plan?”

  Ivy struggled to swallow and gave a longing look at the ocean. “What are the chances Zombies can swim?”

  “Ivy,” Ryder growled. “You’re not giving into it. Stop thinking about it.”

  I didn’t understand their cryptic speak, but Ivy seemed to. She let out a long sigh and nodded slowly. “Alright, let’s go. We’ll keep up. No matter what.”

  I nodded and began to move. I liked that they were determined to stay with us. I just hoped they could.

  Chapter Two

  Ivy

  What. The. Hell.

  That’s all I could think as I ran after our new friends toward the illusion of safety.

  Zombies?

  For real?

  My confused thoughts raced around my head. They constantly slammed into each other and bounced off the walls of my mind.

  This could not be happening.

  Freaking Hermes.

  “Freaking Hermes,” I growled to Ryder. “I’m going to eviscerate the bastard when we get back.”

  Ryder shot me a slightly amused look. He was still harboring ill feelings from before… when I, um, abandoned him.

  I couldn’t blame him. But… I wanted him to get over it already!

  “Did you say Hermes?” The guy, Kiran, asked. “As in the messenger god?”

  “Mmm,” I agreed. “More like the god of douche bags. I think he wanted to teach me a lesson. Or, us a lesson.”

  “By?”

  “By dropping us in the middle of the ocean and forcing us to swim to shore.”

  “Also, the Zombies,” Ryder put in. “He didn’t warn us about the Zombies.”

  Eden and Kiran shared a poignant look. They were older than us but somewhere in their mid-twenties. She was probably one of the most beautiful women I had ever been face to face with before. I was jealous of her naturally tanned skin and dark, thick lashes set over black eyes. Her hair was annoyingly full and long.

  Like mine had been once upon a time.

  Before I chopped it off.

  I had hoped that the butch look would dissuade unwanted suitors. The Zombies didn’t seem to care what my hair looked like.

  The Zombies. The Zombies that were real and hungry and still attracted to all my Greek mojo.

  Shit.

  This Magical force-field seemed to do the trick though and keep us out of the reach of the jagged, blackened claws that swiped the air in hopes of grabbing me. The Zombies were forced back when they hit an iridescent wall of energy.

  With each hit, Kiran and Eden would flinch and jerk as if they felt the assault. The Magical shield would shimmer and waver as if it were on the verge of collapse.

  The thought spurred on my effort and I moved with more speed.

  In fact, I was sprinting so hard, I slammed into the harsh stucco to stop. The rough wall imbedded into my palms and stomach and pulled at my sticky, wet tank top. I held my face back so I wouldn’t draw blood, but the wall cut into the tender skin of my hands and stomach.

  I didn’t have time to reminisce over every Zombie movie I’d ever seen and whether or not my blood would spawn an increased bloodlust in them. Kiran yanked the steel door open and shoved me inside. I tripped over the doorframe and flailed forward before Ryder caught my bicep.

  He swung me up, using his other hand to steady me at my waist. His splayed palm burned hotly against my waist and my mind went blank.

  He hadn’t touched me intimately in a while. My chest constricted tightly as I waited for more from him.

  I had been determined to get close enough to him so that we could talk through our… issues. But he had become somewhat of an expert at keeping me at bay.

  Now it was just the two of us though.

  Well, the two of us and two complete strangers that were apparently Magical.

  How weird was that?

  Weirder than gods and goddesses going to war over the souls of men?

  Possibly not.

  Weirder than real-life Zombies?

  Um, no.

  What happened to the world?

  The door slammed shut and I immediately felt the zing of electricity rush through the room. All the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood up and my skin felt uncomfortably charged, like I had hold of a live wire. I waited for it to shock me.

  The waiting was the worst.

  Ryder stepped away from me and dropped his hands with determination. His fists clenched into tight balls at his sides and he refused to
look at me.

  My chest unwound slowly but it hurt the entire time. Sometimes I would think about Ryder and not be able to breathe. Sometimes I would look at him and just know my heart was going to splinter, to crack straight down the middle.

  Eden’s voice pulled me from my personal heartbreak. “How is it that you had no idea Zombies existed?”

  Ryder’s gray gaze flicked up to meet mine for just a second before he said, “We’ve been… away.”

  “Away as in a different country? Or…?”

  Ryder’s full mouth pressed into a frown. “Just away.”

  “Right,” Kiran clipped out.

  I sighed. “We haven’t exactly been up on our current events. Obviously. We’ve got our own Apocalypse to deal with.”

  Eden laughed gently. “Tell me about it. You are not alone.”

  I didn’t know what she meant by that and she didn’t appear in a hurry to explain. I had my own secrets, so to demand more from her seemed unfair. I changed the subject.

  “So Zombies? They’re real? Obviously deadly. What else?”

  Kiran jumped in to explain. “Some things about them are like you would expect, only they didn’t rise from the dead. This started as an experimental cure for a disease that turned into something deadly. The disease spreads quickly, faster than anything else. You have to be bitten in order to get the disease. Once you’ve been infected, you turn almost immediately. Your brain stops processing rational thought, your body begins to decay and you become addicted to human flesh. So addicted that you think of nothing else, do nothing else. The only way to kill them is to stop all brain activity, either a fatal head wound or by removing the head completely. Otherwise, they don’t feel pain enough to stop their pursuit.”

  I nodded slowly, not able to comprehend the info dump he’d just laid out there.

  “Sure,” I croaked. “Makes perfect sense.”

  “Just so I understand this.” Eden looked at me with a sharp, intelligent gaze. “You attract men to you because you’re a Siren? The shipwreck, drown the sailors kind of Siren?”

  I nodded meekly. “Yes. Although I’ve never personally wrecked a ship or drowned a sailor. But I do attract men. All men.”