Sing for the Dead (London Undead) (6 page)

Chapter Four

He’d not meant it, really. Well and maybe he did, a wee bit, but he’d barely known the lass a scant few hours and she’d already gone toe-to-toe with the biggest, baddest supernaturals in the city. Kayden wasn’t about to take her to bed without a thorough weapons check.

Luckily, the alpha of the London pack was a man with patience and a sense of humor. They could both sense the bloodlust upon her, so much like a young shape-shifter out of control. Anger and aggression clung to her like a perfume and her struggle to keep herself under control had been obvious. Shape-shifters were good with body language and he was particularly fascinated with hers.

“Where are we going?” She trailed him by a few steps. Safer for her there than for him to stalk behind her. Her shapely bum presented too much of a temptation.

He glanced over his shoulder. “We’re headed toward my flat, just as we told Seth. Going to make a bit of a stop along the way.”

The wind whipped a few platinum strands around her cheeks. She reached up to tuck them back behind one slightly pointed ear. “Why are we stopping?”

“As much as I’d love to help you take the edge off your temper, lass, I’ve got a liking for my own hide. And since you’re still itching for a goodly portion of violence, I figured I’d be a quality friend and show you where you can find it.”

Her delicately arched brows drew together. “Not one for following orders, are you?”

“Not to the letter, no. Might be more accurate to say I’m not always the best team player. I tend to go a bit rogue now and then.” He gave her a wide grin before continuing on down the street. They had just another block or two to go.

“I suppose I made a fool of myself in front of the alpha.” The words had been spoken quietly, but his sensitive ears caught them before the wind could steal them away.

“Nah. Don’t fret yourself. Seth only took himself out of reach before the temptation to have a scrap with you got too strong.” Not the only temptation where she was concerned, but Seth was immune to that most likely. Mated as he was, Seth’s bond with Maisie was solid and a pretty fae wouldn’t turn his head.

An unmated male like himself though... Oh aye, she was a monumental distraction.

Best to redirect her before her bloodlust rose up again or they very well might engage in a struggle of some sort. When he reached his goal, he stood at the top of the steps and waited for her to join him.

“This isn’t your home.” She’d made the statement as if she hoped it wouldn’t be and his grin widened. She probably didn’t fancy sleeping in the London Underground.

“Nay. This is my favor to you, to help take the edge off that wee problem of yours before we try to settle for the night.” He started down the steps and dropped his voice to a low whisper. Normally, only another shape-shifter would have been able to hear him but the old stories indicated fae had heightened senses as well. “Seth’s pack doesn’t patrol here. No chance of an accidental run-in with one of his.”

“But there
is
hunting to be had.” Excitement lent a sexy lilt to her return whisper and she reached for the grip of one of her short swords.

“Aye. Even the Underground has electricity here and there where the wiring is still intact.” He waved to the few flickering lights in the dimly lit stairwell. Most were broken, but there was enough light for a supernatural to see by. “There’s few enough humans left in London, let alone brave enough to risk the Tube if they can help it. Too many accidents when an infected got on the train and spread the blight to everyone else trapped in the car with them. The werewolves don’t have enough numbers to waste time keeping the trains running.”

“So they focus on making the city above livable.” The way she’d said it, she was no stranger to difficult decisions.

Kayden nodded. Since she didn’t seem to have problems following his lead in the darkness, he assumed she could see him just fine. “Once they get the infestation above sorted or at least under control, the plan is to clear out the tunnels below systematically, but until then, the dead walk the tunnels in larger numbers than the rats.”

“Is that what they feed on down here?” She paused, reached out to touch a sign with a tiny fingertip. She traced the red circle and then the blue line through it, even the lettering: Notting Hill Gate.

“The cold will drive more than rats down here in the wintertime.” The old anger simmered and his chest tightened. He grit his teeth against the bitterness flooding his mouth. “With a few drops of electricity and water pipes that aren’t frozen, there’re some poor souls cold enough and desperate enough to risk living in the subsurface level.”

She watched him, and he was fascinated by the way her eyes shone in the darkness. They didn’t reflect the ambient light the way his did. Her irises glowed faintly with magic, as if a bit of moonlight lit them from within. “Are we here to avenge a death or to make it safer for the living?”

“A little of both.” He shifted to his phase-form then. The familiar pain burned along his extremities and his bones rearranged until he stood a bit taller, his chest expanded farther to take in more air and his jaw extended to accommodate his fangs. He flexed stronger hands, fingertips ending in claws. He forced words through his changed vocal chords, pitching them loud enough for humans to hear. “Come, fae, hunt with me.”

The invitation, and the warning, echoed down the corridors followed by the ringing sound of steel pulled free of sheathes. He’d have to ask later whether her half-berserker ancestry protected her from the effects of cold iron. The folktales claimed it as a protection from the fae. She hadn’t touched the wrought-iron railing on the way down, but she carried steel blades, not silver. The contradiction presented a mystery for later. For now, the walking dead drew near.

He stalked through the corridors, headed for the subsurface Circle and District lines first. There was more room to maneuver on those.

The platforms were beautiful in the last of the night. Huge brick walls rose up to support an arching roof of alternating glass and wood panels. Some of the glass had broken and the rest had been covered in dust and soot from the weather. Here and there, moonlight flooded through broken panels pooling on the platform below. The shadows hid from the human eye what he and Sorcha could see.

Bones.

Shattered skeletons lay scattered at across the floor, piled higher in each of the archways set into the far wall.

“Why so many here?” Sorcha’s voice was pitched to echo through the room and down the train tunnels. The sound would attract their prey.

Why, indeed.

Kayden studied the shadows, searching for memories, and shrugged. “With more light from the glass windows overhead this was the first place the homeless came. Easy to see around them, easy to huddle in the archways and hide from the cold. They could still get daylight here.”

A scrapping sound, a shuffling step and then another. Kayden moved to an open space, appreciating the distance Sorcha gave him as she chose her own spot. Not too far, but enough for her to have a clear field of battle.

She made a frustrated sound. “Would be faster if I opened up a vein.”

“Don’t.” Why? She wanted to attract more, destroy more. He’d even spilled a drop or two as bait in the past. He had no idea why the image of her ivory skin marred could bother him so much. He reached for a sensible reason. “Some of the new ones, the faster ones, will be unpredictable. Fight them first if they come and gauge how many you want to take at a time.”

With two of them, hot and breathing, they’d attract every zombie in the nearby corridors. It’d be more than enough for the both of them to get their fill of killing.

The trick was to be sure they could get out again without being overwhelmed. There could always be too much of what they were asking for.

“Kayden.”

He glanced at her, then stared. Her eyes had gone bloodred, still softly glowing. “Yes?”

“It’s very important that you stay clear, out of my line of sight. I will not know you for a friend when the bloodlust takes me.” A pause. “And...thank you.” There were tears behind those words. And ecstasy. The odd mix of emotions tore at his chest.

And then she was running, charging to meet the pack of shambling prey as it emerged from the train tunnel.

“Careful of the tracks! The electricity goes on and off with them!” No time to check and see if she heeded the warning. He had incoming zombies from the central ticketing area.

Pickings must have been pure slim for the zombies in the last month. These were slow, but they were more voracious if it was possible. He ripped into the first, literally tearing its head from shoulders. Rotting flesh gave way under his claws and the scent of death clogged his nostrils. Emerging from hallways and corridors, they came in an almost steady stream. Hungry.

Don’t ever look into their faces.

It didn’t matter who they used to be.

Bitter anger rose up inside him, fueling his need to destroy them all and he gave himself over to his leopard aspect. His animal instinct pitted against the zombies’ mindless hunger. Fight, kill and live.

One after another fell to his claw-tipped fingers as he slashed back and forth. His guilt and rage ripped free with every corpse he put to rest. He leaped free of the mob as it threatened to surround him, landed in another open spot and began to rend and tear anew. No matter how many he took apart, he couldn’t sate the need to kill more. Two of the monsters managed to lay their hands on him, forced him to use tooth and claw to fight his way free. He coughed at the disgusting taste of rotting flesh in his mouth.

He glanced in Sorcha’s direction to see how the lass faired.

“Bloody hell.”

He needn’t have worried about the fae woman.

Enough of the shambling dead had come through the tunnels to press her back, but only far enough for her to take the high ground on the station platform. Bodies littered the tracks and ground around her, some twitching and others limp with the finality of death. Still she wielded her short swords in fatal arcs, the moonlight catching the blades in flashes of silver as she parted limbs from torsos and heads from shoulders.

Someone had trained the lass to kill, and they’d had an eye for beauty when they’d done it.

Sorcha made combat a killing dance. She kept to her own center and dealt damage in all directions, rarely leaving her back open to attack as she constantly pivoted and moved. Her peripheral awareness must have been exceptional. He’d never seen such carnage and considered it...elegant. Aye, Sorcha gave each of those poor wankers a final rest with elegance and a cold sort of mercy.

He made his way toward her in between his own batches of action, careful to stay out of her range but close enough to come to her aid if need be. The zombies were arriving at a slow trickle now, a few each moment, rather than the steady stream he and Sorcha had attracted initially. The rage he’d come to burn off faded to a bearable smolder. Killing zombies brought him no joy, no satisfaction.

They charged him. He tore them apart. Over and over again, the cycle.

This was a hunt, but no meat and no feeding at the end. His inner cat derived scant satisfaction. Such battles resulted in scarce triumph. When every corpse lay still, there was only a weary surcease.

He was empty.

Changing from his phase-form to his human, he retained only his clawed hands. And the guilt whispering through the back of his mind fell silent. For now.

He paused as the fae woman took down her last opponent. No match, really—a single straggling zombie against a cold killing beauty like her. And when she stood victorious, she was so
alive
.

“What are you about?” She could growl as well as any female shape-shifter. And if her eyes’d remained red, he’d have kept his distance, remained cautious.

But they were clear and dark, pools of calm after the fighting had drained the rage from her. Her chest rose and fell as she regained her breath. A fine sheen of sweat shone on the creamy skin that peeked from between her shrug and the snug tank top she wore.

He stepped closer, noted her hands tightened on her swords, but she didn’t raise them. Nor did she give ground.

Oh, he liked that.

He caught her gaze in his, delighted in the stubborn challenge he saw there mixed with confusion. “Are you afraid?”

She lifted her chin. “Of course not. Look around us, cat, we stand amidst...”

He kissed her. Tasted her words of victory. Her lips were the sweeter for them. When she gasped in surprise, he settled his mouth over hers and teased her tongue until she tangled with him, returned his kiss. She was the one to grab at his belt and pull him closer. He took hold of her upper arms, crushed her to his chest.

Heat rushed through him, desire. He wanted. It’d been a long time and he didn’t just want, he
needed
this woman. And to all accounts, she hungered for him at least as much.

She arched against him and he released one of her arms to slide his own across the small of her back.

Teeth sunk into his forearm.

“Argh!” He flung the creature away, yanking Sorcha behind him as he did, and it hit the far wall. Too small, too light. It hadn’t been an adult human before it’d succumbed to the zombie virus. No. What picked itself up and shambled toward them, arms outstretched, was a child.

“Aw, lad, I looked for you. All of you.” Devastation spilled ice into Kayden’s veins.

The thing moaned—its lips stained red with his blood.

“Kayden,” Sorcha snapped. “What are you doing?”

“I owe him this.” Kayden couldn’t take his gaze from the approaching zombie child. “He and his friends. Each of them. I owe them a pound of flesh.”

“He’s already had that from you...and maybe more.” She strode forward.

“He deserves a clean death.” Too wrapped up in chains of guilt to stop her, Kayden stared at the approaching child. In his mind’s eye, Kayden saw a nonstop grin and heard unfettered laughter. But it was a memory, not what the boy had become, only what should have been.

The metallic tang of fresh blood filled the air. Kayden blinked and snarled, ripped his gaze off the child to see Sorcha, not a foot away it, tempting him with her own freshly cut forearm.