Bad Blood (Battle of the Undead Book 1) (16 page)

Nicholas hid his smile behind an eye roll.

“You’re not going out there with us,” I said to Jack.

“What? I can help!”

“We need a second line of
defense. That’s you.” It wasn’t the truth, but it was close enough.

“Ah, come on! I want to kill some more zombies. You’re ruining it!” Jack whined.

“Don’t sass your mother,” Nicholas said through a smirk.

I felt my scythes heavy in my hands, but raised an eyebrow at him rather than a blade.

“Please stay with us, Jack.” Rose was by his side, threading her delicate hand into his. He looked down at his little steadfast protector and melted.

“I’d never leave you,
Rosy.” He picked her up like she was made of cotton wool. “What do you need me to do, Brit?”

“Keep everyone back from the door, and if they break through, take out as many as you can to give our wards the chance to run for the bus.”

He nodded.

“What about us?” Green and Josh had put their army issue jackets on and had their guns in their hands.

I didn’t care what Green did, but I couldn’t lose Josh. I almost hugged him he was so close. Safe in my arms, nothing would touch him. I bit down on my impulse.

“Get back up the skylights, and give us some cover fire,” I ordered.

“How much ammo do you have?” Nicholas asked.

Green and Josh looked at one another.

“Not enough.” Josh tried to smile.

“Just try not to shoot me,” I said.
I nodded over at Nicholas. “Feel free to shoot him, though.”

They both smiled. Green turned to head up to the skylight, but Josh lingered. He moved with almost vampire speed, and suddenly
, I was in his arms.

“Don’t be a hero, Britannia,” he said
, then dipped me like a Hollywood actress. Our lips barely touched before I was yanked from his arms by Nicholas.

“We’re not heroes, we’re villains. Isn’t that right, Brianna?”
he seethed.

I was too flustered to even think of a witty comeback. So I punched Nicholas in the gut.

“That’s my girl,” Josh whispered. He turned and followed Green up through the skylight and onto the roof.

My girl
. Two words that would get me safely through an almost impossible fight.

Henri and Taylor took positions by the shutters
. They readied themselves to open them for us.

“Be strong. Be fast. Be deadly,” Nicholas whispered.

I wasn’t sure if he was saying it to himself or to me. Either way, it was good advice.

The doors opened, and I saw hundreds of pairs of zombie feet turn our way. We both slid beneath the shutter and kept low. I spun around with my leg outstretched, knocking over every zombie around me. They fell over one another. Packed in tight, they were a like a conveyor belt of grabby hands and razor sharp teeth, but they were also too close to one another to not knock the next zombie over if they fell. I forward rolled through them and then, when I found a space, I flipped myself upright. I couldn’t see Nicholas.

A zombie behind me took a bullet in the eye and dropped to the floor. I round-housed the next one and used my blades to cleave off its head. The rest then began to close in on me. I needed room to move. If they mobbed me, I’d be dead—

Well
, deader.

I went to put my scythes in my belt and
realized I was still wearing my pretty white dress. Crap. I settled for lopping them through my bra straps—a sharp, dangerous push-up bra. I took a step back then began to cartwheel into the zombies. They might be dead, but they moved when something was coming at them. I back flipped up and found I was meters from the bus. We couldn’t kill them all. The best plan would be to make a safe path and get everyone on the bus and run.

I booted back a zombie encroaching on my personal space then pulled out my blades. I cut a path through to the driver side and wiggled in. I started the bus up and plo
wed into the gathering zombies. It was hard to see through all the bad blood on the windshield, and the bodies were like a constant barrage of speed bumps, but I got the bus to the doors, backed it up, and honked the horn. I felt the impact of two bodies hitting the top of the bus, and suddenly, Josh and Green were pushing themselves through the top windows. They barreled down the bus stairs, and Green took the wheel for me. I saw Jack in the rear-view mirror, pushing people up and out of the skylight. Josh then helped them get onto the roof of the bus and in through the windows.

I jumped onto the bonnet of the bus and began kicking off climbing zombies. It was then that I saw Nicholas. He was fighting with Philippe. I only caught glimpses of it as they were fast and I was pre-occupied by the last of the die-hard zombies. I saw Nicholas go down. Philippe was over him, laughing. I pulled up one scythe and threw it back
-handed with as much strength as I could muster. It sliced through the heads of about twenty zombies then embedded itself in Philippe’s chest. He looked down at it and then across at me. He narrowed his eyes and pointed at me. It was odd and menacing at the same time, but the distraction gave Nicholas the opportunity to pull himself up. He grabbed my scythe from Philippe’s chest then kicked him over. I didn’t need to watch him as he made his way back to the bus. I could hear his string of profanities as he came closer.

Jack had thrown all the supplies we had left into the bus, and he was by my side. He was fast, perhaps even faster than me.

Nicholas leapt onto the roof of the bus, and I propelled myself up to join him. I knocked on it when I did, the engine came alive, and Green started knocking down stray zombies as we got back on the road, leaving only the body of John behind to be devoured by the random zombie survivors.

Chapter Fifteen

“Tate, are you there?”

The radio crackled and clicked. “Brit!”

“Thank God. Listen. Philippe has an army of zombies, and I’m betting he’s still following us. Get your survivors away now. Don’t wait for us.”

Dead air.

“Are you there Tate?” The panic in my voice was foreign to both me and him.

“I’m here. And I’ll still be here when you reach the docks. We’re not leaving without you and your people.”

Secretly, I sighed with relief. It was one thing to play the hero, but quite another to survive your noble choices.

“Love you
, Brit,” Tate almost sang over the radio.

“You’re meant to say over and out.”

“Well, you’re meant to say it back.”

“Shut it, and put the kettle on.”

“Over and out.” Tate clicked off.

The docks were more than two hundred miles from the factory. We stopped only to fill up the petrol tank when we heard screams. Our little blood caravan, as Nicholas so crudely nicknamed it, was growing with every stop.

Both Nicholas and I needed to sleep soon, although we couldn’t do nine hours with Philippe and his ever growing army on our trail and Tate waiting for us, endangering him and his people’s lives in the process. I was tired. I was getting hungry again. I’d only had a small amount of John’s blood, and I could feel the inevitable pang clawing at my chest. I morphed the feeling to battle lust. Every zombie I met was decapitated with swift, ruthless precision.

Nicholas’ quips and snide comments were also lagging. He’d taken to just staring at me, a confused yet sated look that made me feel like gravity had cranked itself up a notch. I’d saved him. I could have easily, and justly, let him die at Philippe’s hands, but I didn’t. My logical mind told me that he was a good fighter and could be trusted with our wards. He might have been an enemy in the past, but he was an ally now—an annoying and incredibly sarcastic ally. My instinctual side
, though, my lizard brain, the thing that still whispered demands of blood and death in my ear—well, it now whispered something else that I really didn’t want to face.

“You need to rest,” Josh said as we filled up at another random service station.

My eyes were searching the surrounding buildings for signs of the undead. Jack was seated with the kids, reading them the book I’d stolen from the museum.

“Did you hear me?”

“Yes, Langdon, I heard you,” I replied.

“Langdon?”

“Oh, sorry, Josh.”

“Who’s Langdon?”

“Who was Langdon?” Nicholas asked from behind us.

“Not now,” I
yelled back at him.

“No, who was Langdon?” Josh pressed.

“You look just like him, Josh. He was Brianna’s first and only love.”

“Shut up!”
I spun round, and he caught my fist in mid-air.

“She thinks that you are Langdon reincarnated. Are you?”
Nicholas’ lips were turned up in a cruel smile.

“I don’t believe in reincarnation,” Josh said
, trying to step between us.

“Do you love her, Josh?”
Nicholas had thrown me to the floor, and was squaring off as best he could with Josh, who had a couple of inches of height on him. “Do you love a woman so tangled in her own convictions and vengeance that she has killed thousands to avenge a man who forgot her the moment she left his sight?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Josh
said as he leaned down and put a hand out to me.

I took it, and he pulled me to my feet. I felt his arm around my shoulders, warm, protective
…

“I think you need to walk it off, friend,” Josh
continued.

Nicholas snorted. “I don’t believe in reincarnation either. It’s why I went against the rules of the Elders and created Brianna. If she had remained human, I would have lost her when she died. What a fool I was to think she could ever love me.”
His eyes dropped and a tear fell to the concrete floor. “I settled for your hate, Britannia. I encouraged it. I don’t believe in soul mates reborn, but I do believe in fate. The one chance I had to prove myself to you, and he shows up.” He pointed at Josh. Nicholas wobbled a little as he said it. The lack of sleep had pushed him into an almost drunken state.

Josh pulled me to his chest, and I felt his heartbeat quicken. Adrenaline was pumping through his veins, making his blood smell that much sweeter. I wriggled from his embrace.
“Please go check on the others, Josh,” I said.

“I’m not leaving you alone with him.”

“It’s okay. I’ll explain everything later, okay?”

He lean
ed and kissed my cheek. “Sure.” He then walked off to join the group of wards on look-out.

“What a lovely couple you make,” Nicholas spat out
, and bowed.

“Really, Nicholas, is now the time to have this argument?”

“I kept this for you,” Nicholas said as he reached into his jacket pocket.

“You better not pull out anything gross, Nicholas. I’ve had it up to here”—I motioned over my head, above both our heights—“with gross things this week.”

“It’s not gross, it’s proof.”

“Proof of what?”

“Here.” He handed me a folded piece of old brown paper.

I raised an eyebrow.

“Proof that I didn’t kill Langdon. Proof that he lived.”

What? I opened the paper and was suddenly staring at the obituary of the man I had loved for four hundred years. It read:

Captain Langdon Price died yesterday, aged 76. After retiring from the army, Captain Price ran a successful accounting firm. Beloved husband of Jayne. He will be missed dearly.

One word stuck out. “Husband.” Not only had he lived, but he’d gotten married. Our eternal, gut-wrenching love had been forgotten. He hadn’t looked for me after my disappearance
. Out of sight, out of mind. He’d easily replaced me with a woman called Jayne.

“I’m sorry, Brianna. It seemed better not to press the argument with you, for you to think him dead by my hand than to know the truth.” Nicholas took the paper back from me. He neatly folded it and put it back into his jacket.

“Why now?” I pushed out a sob that seemed stuck in my throat.

“The world seems to be somewhat
…ending. I thought you should know. Josh is probably a relative from somewhere down the Price family tree. He’s not a magical reincarnation of Langdon. Reincarnation doesn’t exist.”

“Leave me alone,” I whispered.

Nicholas went to say something else, but fortunately, stopped himself. He bowed. “As you wish.”

And he left.

Husband. One word had obliterated my ancient dream. He had asked
me
to marry him. The night that Nicholas had taken me. Had he known Jayne then? Thinking back, I had heard the name mentioned, but it was a popular name. My Langdon would never have hedged his bets like that. It was dishonorable. Although, in truth, he had never really been “my Langdon.” Had he asked me to marry him purely for my money? Had he loved me at all? Had I put his ghost on a pedestal when he deserved to be six feet under? If I’d have known back then, would I have slit his throat and watched him bleed out, him and his precious Jayne? Yes was the answer. I probably would have, and then I’d have spent several lifetimes riddled with guilt, or worse, transformed into one of the vampires that I had hunted, the ones without regard for any human life. Nicholas had borne that guilt and my hatred all those centuries. Damn him.