Magic and Decay (3 page)

“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.”

“Sure,”
Kiran
parroted.
“Makes perfect sense.”

“Do you feel any attraction?” Eden asked
Kiran
. She was calm while she waited for his answer.
Too calm.
I wanted to laugh except they were both wearing
wedding rings and clearly had a solid relationship. If I got between them and
ruined something real and lasting, I would never forgive myself.

“Nope,” he said honestly.
“None at
all.”
Then he looked at me. “No offense.”

“Nothing at all?”
Eden
narrowed her eyes on her husband.

“Nothing, Love.”

“I wonder why that is?” Her scrutinizing gaze swung to
me.

“Well, they are from different worlds,” Ryder put in.
“Whoever created us probably didn’t expect our paths to cross.”

That was true. We were definitely from different
worlds. I thought the whole Greek mythology thing was weird. I couldn’t even
begin to wrap my head around Magic.

Let alone Zombies.

I cleared my throat. “Sometimes when there’s real love
between a couple, the guy is immune. And sometimes I can shut it off.”

“Is it shut off right now?” Eden asked.

I shifted uncomfortably and avoided any kind of eye
contact with Ryder. “Well, no. I can’t really choose when it shuts off. I
probably shouldn’t have said anything. It doesn’t shut off very often.
Although, believe me,” I looked at the door that separated us from way too many
Zombies trying to get to me, “I wish more than anything I could control it.”

“I’ve had that before,” Eden said sympathetically. I
quirked a brow at her and she waved a hand in front of her body.
“Powers you can’t control or that won’t cooperate.
I’ve been
there.”

“Really?”

She nodded.
“For sure.
I used
to cause all kinds of problems. I would blow things up.
Flood
things.
There was this incident with insects… that one was not pretty. I
was out of control.”

“So out of control,”
Kiran
commiserated.

I found myself smiling despite these insane
circumstances. “Ever make boys fall in love with you?”

“Just the one,” Eden laughed.

Kiran’s
eyes lit with
laughter when he said, “Actually there were two of us.”

“What happened to the other guy?” Ryder sounded truly
concerned.

Eden glared at
Kiran
for a
second before explaining, “He moved on. He wasn’t under a spell or anything. He
just had a thing for me for a short while. He’s happily in love now.
With someone else.”

“Love triangle,”
Kiran
reiterated.

“Ah.” I felt a wave of relief. “I’ve never been in a
love triangle before. They seem awful though; I’m not going to lie.”

“My one saving grace,” Ryder muttered.

“Count yourself lucky, Mate.”

Eden and I shared a look and a mutual feeling of “oh,
brother,” for the men in our lives. Not that I had claim to Ryder like she did
to
Kiran
. But, still. They were so helplessly
pathetic when it came to us. That much was obvious.

Something smashed into the door next to us. I jumped
out of my skin and my heart exited my body through my mouth. Or that was what
it felt like. I screamed at the top of my lungs and then had to remind myself
I’d been thrust into a horror movie.

Eden gave the door a wary glance and then surveyed the
dark room where we had found sanctuary. “
Kiran
and I
infused the door with some Magic to keep the Zombies at bay, but I’m not sure
if it will last. These aren’t our usual enemies.”

“What should we do?”

“I say we go up,”
Kiran
suggested. “They won’t be able to scale the building and they’re not smart
enough to understand they could break inside and use the staircase.”

This seemed like a terrible idea. Had he never watched
a scary movie before? Going up the stairs was always the best way to get
killed.

“I’m not sure that’s the best idea…”

“Okay,” Ryder said slowly. “It might not be a good
idea. But do you have a better idea? I agree with him, Red. If we stand here,
they’ll just pound away on that door until they get to you. At least on the roof
we’ll be further out of their reach.”

“Okay, up it is.”

Eden shot me a reassuring smile and led the way
through the small
laundromat
. She held an orb of
light in her hand that seemed to come directly out of her palm.

Weird.

The blue light helped us find a path through the
square building to the back hall that led us to a staircase.

I jumped every time something smashed into the outside
of the building. And there was plenty of that. I had no doubt that the entire
structure was surrounded with Zombies and that they were beating the stucco
walls to get in.

Could the building hold them out there indefinitely?
Was there a scenario in which enough Zombies could bring something like this
down?

I didn’t know anything about buildings or how safe we
really were.

For not the first time, I really wished being a
mythological creature with intense powers would translate into something
tangible and useful.
This
stupid curse
.
If it wasn’t one problem, it was another.

Only this thing, with the Zombies, seemed larger than
most of my other problems.

I had to admit, though, there was this small part of
me that entertained the idea of getting bit. I mean… I didn’t want to be a
Zombie.
At all.
But, how pissed
would Nix and my mom be if I ruined all their precious plans by joining the
undead?

So
pissed.

It would be pretty awesome.

I could hear the Zombies screaming and groaning. Their
guttural moaning pierced through the thick walls of the building and coated the
air inside. It was both low and high-pitched, both screeching sound and an ugly
growl. It was the worst sound I had ever heard.

It crawled along my skin and scratched at my bones. I
hated it. And I hated a lot of things in this life, but that awful sound had to
be one of the things I hated most.

In the stairwell, I pressed closer to Ryder and
avoided the look he shot over his shoulder. I wasn’t equipped to deal with
Zombies or end of the world craziness or really my own craziness. I needed
something familiar.

Someone familiar.

Even if the last time I’d seen him, he had begged me
not to leave him. And I had anyway. I’d left him and everyone I knew behind.

“You okay, Red?”

His words shook me out of my dark memories and jolted
through my system. I looked up at his face shrouded in shadows and tried to see
him, like really see him. I wanted to know what was going on in his head. I
wanted to know what he thought about me.

Or, really… how he
felt
about me.

“I don’t know,” I whispered back honestly. “This is
scary, Ryder.”

He stopped walking unexpectedly and we ended up on the
same step. I didn’t know what else to do other than stand there and stare at
him. Ever since our relationship ended, I had become decidedly less smooth
around the opposite sex.