Bad Blood (Battle of the Undead Book 1) (14 page)

I turned and almost fell into him. I blushed.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

I pushed a blue tendril behind my ear. It wouldn’t be long till my blonde roots started to show again. I made a mental note to try to find suitable hair dye.

“Umm, we made a list of things we need.” He pushed the paper into my hand.

“Oh, okay.” The disappointment dripped off me, and I heard Nicholas snigger. I thought he was going to tell me to be careful or something equally romantic.

“Thanks,” he said, and patted my shoulder.

It’s all right
, I thought.
He doesn’t have the memories I do. I need to cut him some slack.
He might have been my true love’s reincarnation, but he didn’t know that, and if I told him, well, with my luck, the next words out of his mouth would have been a cruel echo of Mr. Armani’s, “I don’t do mentals.”

I slipped under the doors, and Nicholas followed.

“Don’t even say it.” I snarled at him.

He held his hands up then bit his bottom lip.

I shook my head and started to run. It took us five minutes to get back to the shopping center. I took out the list and read down it. It was pretty simple and, quite frankly, obvious: food, water, clothes, bags, toiletries. I then turned it over and saw the extra note Josh had written,
“Bring back one sexy blue-haired beauty, and a sarcastic, black-clad ass-hat—be careful, Brit—come back to me.”

Holy crap! He’d actually said “come back to
me,
” not to them.

“Let’s get this looting on the road!” I yelled at Nicholas.

I had to get back, not just for Danny, but also now to see Josh—I also had to pick out a new outfit so I’d look good. Maybe something dressy?

“Suddenly, your face looks less like thunder,” Nicholas said as he stared at me.

“Do you want to get pushed into a zombie mosh pit again?”

“It’s not top of my agenda,” he mumbled.

“Let’s go shopping, ass-hat.” I ran toward the shopping center’s back door, as it appeared less zombie-fied. I merrily cut down each slow-moving corpse, Nicholas taking out stragglers behind me. We got to the door, I kicked it in, and we threw ourselves inside, right into another, much more alert, zombie horde.

Chapter Thirteen

“Oh dear,” Nicholas whispered behind me.

“You take the fifty on the left, I’ll take the fifty on the right,” I said.

He leapt to his left, and I kicked out to my right. Undead hands reached out to me, fingernails broken and razor sharp. I felt the blood that trickled from the wounds they made on my bare arms. Too many were in front of me, so I dropped to the floor and swept my leg out. The nearest one toppled over, and the ones behind fell over him. I sprang up and began slicing limbs like I was cutting through a dense jungle.

When I thought I was done, I spared a glance at Nicholas who was just finishing his last kill. I wasn’t done, though. A zombie at my feet pulled at me. I lost my balance and fell into the mess of decaying body parts, my scythes falling out of my hands. I squealed as the zombie bit into my forearm. In the next second, its head was flying through the air, and Nicholas was standing over me, wielding my scythes. He collected both weapons into one hand then offered me the other. I remembered the first time he’d offered me his hand, and all the times after that in the twenty years he had held me captive.

I pushed him away and flipped myself upright.

He looked offended, but quickly shook it off.

“Hurts, don’t it?” He motioned to the bite.

I looked down at. It had already started to heal.
“I’ve endured worse,” I spat.

We walked into the shopping cent
er and found that the lion’s share of the inside zombies had been the ones to mob us at the door. The rest were still outside, trying to figure out how to get in. We first went to a luggage store and picked up six massive wheelie cases. We each took two of them and went shopping, Nicholas for the men and me for the women and children. I picked up some sensible clothes, underwear, running shoes, and hair bands. I threw in some deodorants and toothbrushes and paste. I even put in some cosmetics. I found my hair dye and picked out a nice, white, summer-lace dress along with some skinny jeans and various funny slogan T-shirts. I picked up some books and a few toys for the kids. We met back up at the food court where we sifted through canned goods and water bottles. We filled the remaining two cases with foodstuffs and drinks.

“Are we done?” Nicholas asked in that tone of voice men tend
ed to adopt on overly long shopping trips.

“Just a minute,” I said.

I left him with the bags and ran back through the shopping center toward a jewelry store. I picked up a silver cross necklace and slipped it into in my pocket.

“Now are we done?

“Yes, Nicholas. We can go now.”

We went back through the doors we came in. Unfortunately, the zombies from the front of the building had now made their way to the back car park and wer
e huddled together awaiting their dinner of blue-haired vampire with a side of ass-hat. As we noticed this, the door behind us clicked shut. We could have made a run for it, but we would have to abandon all six suitcases of loot, so we’d have had a completely wasted journey, and I didn’t fancy having to go back and tell everyone that they were going to bed stinky and hungry.

“There!” I pointed to the ten-foot tall ornate lampposts that lined the car park. We both threw our bags ahead of us, then each headed for a lamppost and scampered up like monkeys. Once out of the throng, we surveyed the car park. The zombies couldn’t reach us, although I have to give it to them—they tried. It was like they were all stuck in some undead Pilates class.

“Well, this is a fine mess you’ve gotten me into.” Nicholas looked over at me from his lamppost.

“This isn’t a mess,” I replied, trying not to look at him.

“Yes, of course. The zombies will get bored eventually. Tell me, what do you plan for us to do to pass the…years?”

“Will you just shut up
?”

“Why? For once, you’re a captive audience. I can say what I like, and you can neither walk away nor cause me grievous bodily harm.”

“Great. I think I might just throw myself into the zombies now.” I rolled my eyes.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me,” he muttered.

“Stop muttering! If you’re going to say something, commit to it, and say it loud.”

“We’re vampires. I don’t need to say anything loud—well, apart from one thing evidently.”

“And pray tell, what is that one thing?”

“The one thing that you so far refuse to hear.”

“This is a nightmare. You know I can deal with zombies, even vambies—”

“Zompires.”

“Vambies!”

“Whatever. You know, we could have really done with that other grenade about now.”

“Don’t start! Christ, having to consistently listen to your whining! It’s driving me mad!” I threw up my hands, momentarily lost my balance, and had to scramble back up the post.

“Then I won’t say another word. Would that make you happy, Brianna?”

“Britannia!”

“Will that make you happy,
Britannia
?”

“Deliriously so.”

“Then I’ll not speak.”

I breathed out
. Finally, a bit of peace and quiet. Even the zombies’ grabby, needful moans below were preferable to Nicholas’ incessant crap.

Twenty blissfully quiet seconds ticked by. Then I
realized that if something were to happen to me here, and Danny did rise, he’d be all alone. I hadn’t even considered the possibility of leaving a newbie alone with a group of worried humans. Shit. I started to form a plan. I began counting the zombies. I’d gotten to 127 when Nicholas broke his word.

“So, what is the plan? We can’t live in the lampposts like urban monkeys.”

I looked round at him. “One of us jumps over them and draws them off. The other grabs the suitcases and makes a run for it.”

“One can only guess as to which job you would like me to accomplish.”

“You’re such a tosser,” I muttered.

“Speak up, dear.”

He’d heard me. “Let’s rock, paper, scissors, okay?”

“No need. After all, you have a family to think of now.”
With that, he jumped off the lamppost and flung himself over the horde. All at once, they turned to him and started shuffling his way. I jumped down and grabbed all six bags. I knocked over a couple of slow movers then headed back to the factory. Nicholas was fast and angry—he’d make short work of the horde once he got some room to move.

I knocked on the steel shutters and was met by Henri. He looked concerned.

“What’s happened?” I asked.

I was then hit with the overwhelming scent of fresh blood.

“Tabitha is dead.”

I thought back. Yes, I had rescued her from the office block.

Tyler, who’d been her survivor mate, stormed up to me. “Danny killed her!”

“What?”

Danny was locked in the office and still had over an hour before he could do anything at all, let alone successfully kill someone.

“He’s the only one of us missing, and we can all guess what you’ve done to him.” Green had joined in with throwing the accusations around.

I looked around. “Where’s Josh?”

“He’s moving the body,” Henri replied.

I looked around at the grief-stricken faces. Odd, they hadn’t known her before the whole zombie thing, but losing her now was like the straw that had broken the post-apocalyptic camel’s back.

I dumped the cases and pushed past the people, following the scent of blood. I found Josh hovering over the fresh body. It was now covered with two industrial sacks.

He looked up at me. “Did he do it?”

“No.” I was certain. I pulled back the sack and was suddenly staring at the blank, black kohl-lined, dead eyes of Tabitha.

“Will she rise? Become a zombie?” Josh had an analytical mind.

“That I don’t know.”

I looked at the body. There were gashes across her neck, not bite marks.

“Someone else did this. If it were a
…well, if it was Danny, he’d have bitten her, not slashed her throat and wrists.”

Just to make sure, I ran to the office and found Danny still lying on the couch, just where I
’d left him, symbol still on his forehead—sound asleep or dead, depending on whether the magic was taking hold.

Nicholas emerged at the doorway.
“What’s going on?”

“Someone killed Tabitha,” I replied, anger starting to rise in my gullet like indigestion.

“Is Danny…?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Well.” Nicholas was staring at the body. “Who has a knife?”

John. “It’s John. Son of a
—”

Before anyone could stop me, I was flying at John. I pushed him to the floor and heard his shoulder crack under the pressure.

“Help!” he screamed, but everyone just looked on, or at one another.

“Why?” I
growled at him.

He squirmed, and I saw it in his eyes. He was just sick, paranoid about his only remaining work colleague, and he probably thought if he blamed Danny then he’d get rid of both of them in one go.

Nicholas spoke softly behind me. “Think, Britannia.”

I yanked John up. He screamed in pain as I flung him over my shoulder. Josh moved forward and patted him down. He found the knife lodged in John’s handmade Italian shoes. It was still stained with blood. Everyone gasped—the last thing they all needed was to even consider that one of them could kill another. They needed order to the supernatural chaos now around them, they needed to believe that zombies killed, and humans worked together. They
also needed to believe that, whatever they thought we were, we were there to protect them from every danger.

“Please.” Nicholas put his hands up and quieted them down.
“There are six suitcases of supplies over there.” He motioned to where Tracy was standing. “Please help to distribute them. We will remove this…murderer before he can harm another. We must all work together in the dark times ahead. Attacking one another will be considered a violation of our humanity and will not now, or ever, be tolerated.”

I must admit his speech was a good one. He all but got a round of applause from our wards.

I marched toward the office, the only part of the building that was not visible from the factory floor. John wriggled when I set him on the floor, so I head-butted him. He groaned and fell into unconsciousness. Nicholas followed me and closed the door behind us.

“Waste not, want not,” he said.
He leaned over the unconscious murderer and sank his teeth gently into his jugular. I left him to it and walked across to Danny on the couch. He had no heartbeat, which was neither a good nor bad sign. I pulled him into my arms and cradled him a moment. If he were to wake, it would be soon.