Magic and Decay (6 page)

His words felt like a punch in the gut and I
momentarily lost my words. I watched him battle these crazed Zombies out of the
corner of my eye and felt mesmerized.

He was so precise with his shots and capable with each
kill. I wanted to be like that. I wanted to be cool and collected and accurate
as often as I could be.

He had this gift for killing things that under any
other circumstances would have gotten him locked away for the entirety of his
life.

But in this day and age, he was
not
an anomaly nor
a hot psychopath.

He was a hero.

And I wanted to be just as good.

“You’re making me self-conscious,” he grumbled. “Focus
on the Feeders at hand and stop staring at me.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re so vain. I
am
focused.”

“I probably think this song is about me.”

“Don’t you. Don’t you.”
 

Of course, all our conversation had to be shouted. The
screaming, shrieking, moaning Feeders nearly drowned every other sound. They
didn’t stop making noise. They just went on and on and on without one break.

They could climb this building because the brick
façade gave them a foothold they couldn’t find with the uninterrupted style of
stucco. They obviously didn’t fight the fear of heights that bothered me up
here. Or have issues with tossing those that got in their way over the side.

Ivy’s scream pierced through my killing spree and I
jerked a look over my shoulder to find her on her knees as a Feeder went flying
at Ryder.

He stood bravely in front of her, with not one weapon
in his hands. My stomach clenched and my heart dropped to my stomach.
No
, I shouted even though no actual
sound came out of my mouth.
No!

In my head, I watched the Zombie attack and get to
Ryder and then to Ivy. He tore at their flesh with his grotesque teeth and left
unrecognizable corpses in his wake. I saw the horrible fate play out in front
of my eyes. I felt panic surge in my blood and hysteria bubble in my throat.

But just before I could scream, Hendrix’s quick
thinking saved the day. He took a step forward and got a shot off through the
Feeder’s temple.

I let out a shaky breath and went back to fighting the
other Feeders. I tried not to pay attention to Eden or
Kiran
at all. Their perfection really got to me.

Or maybe it wasn’t the ease with which they could
kill. Maybe it was the seemingly perfect relationship they shared.

They had their happily ever after. That much was
obvious. Maybe they went through some crap before. Love triangles… whatever.
But they were happy now.

They had it figured out.

I wanted to figure it out!

Or I didn’t.

My heart still broke every time I thought of Kane. And
then it would break all over again when I thought about Hendrix.

Love sucked.

Maybe I didn’t want the relationship Eden and
Kiran
had… I wasn’t ready for anything like that. But I
wanted that kind of peace.

I wanted to be completely comfortable in my own skin
and know that I was in the exact place I was supposed to be in.

So maybe it was the boys in my life. Or maybe it was
the freaking Zombies. Because no matter how hard I tried to accept my new
circumstances, killing Zombies for a living felt like the exact opposite of how
I was supposed to spend my twenties.

“Reagan, behind you!”
Ivy
shouted.

I spun around and ducked. I allowed myself the half
second I needed to make sure that I wasn’t shooting someone I knew before I
pulled the trigger and hit the middle-aged, balding Zombie straight in the
chest.

Missed.
Damn.

He stumbled back with flailing arms and let out a
guttural screech that echoed through the night. His head tipped back as he
lifted his voice to the sky, but that was his mistake. As soon as his chin
dropped back down and his crimson eyes found mine, I was ready.

Bam.
Bam.
Bam.
Three shots to the center of his forehead before
the momentum of death could finally pull him down.

His body hit the flat roof just in time to trip
another. I shot at that one, dancing on my tiptoes to avoid swinging arms and
sharp fingernails.

“We have to get off this roof!” I shouted at my new
friends.

“There! There’s a door.” Even Eden sounded out of
breath. I took encouragement in that and continued to take out Feeders. “We’ll
slip into the stairwell and fortify the door with Magic. We’ll figure out what
to do once we get inside.”

“They’re just going to follow us into the building,” I
hollered back.

“I’ll take any other suggestions,” Eden shouted back.

Okay, was that sarcasm? I wasn’t exactly sure how to
take that.

I glanced at Hendrix. He smiled at me and then made a
feminine cat hand. When he swiped the air and meowed, I decided it was time to
shoot him in the foot.

But then I got distracted by a Zombie. Maybe Eden was
right.

“Fine.
Inside the building,
we go.” Hendrix seemed to find my cooperation extra funny. “Ivy, stay next to
me!”

“Hey!” Hendrix protested. “That’s my line!”

“With Ivy?”

He shrugged. “She
is
a Siren. She lures men in with her natural charm.”

“I’ll show you natural charm,” I grumbled.

“What was that?”

I glared at him and thought about shooting him again.
Just maybe a slight graze to his ass or something.
I heard
somewhere that the butt is mostly fat. I doubt he’d be in any real pain. He’d
probably recover in no time.

Not that there was much of any fat to Hendrix.
But…
I did really want to shoot him.

“Don’t be jealous, Reagan. I think you’re cute too.”

I gasped loudly and turned to attack him. His eyes
twinkled with cocky delight while my head flashed with a hundred ways to hurt
him.

“Do you want me to add you to my body count?
Because I will.
Nothing would make me happier.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “Definitely sounds
like a little jealousy to me. And you know what? I don’t feel bad at all. In
fact, I kind of like it. It’s nice to be on the other side of this for once.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that. I felt the
immediate guilt mixed with some righteous indignation. But this was neither the
time nor the place to open such an ugly can of worms.

We fought a bloody battle to get to the door. Hendrix
and I used our guns in a steady stream of flying bullets. Eden and
Kiran
used their Magic as meticulous swords, cutting
through Zombie flesh with ease. Ryder kept Ivy firmly tucked to his side and
protected from everything that tried to get to her.

Zombies fell at our feet. Gunky, sticky blood splashed
on our clothes and hair and exposed skin. The god-awful smell that permeated
the air made my stomach roil and my eyes water.

I hated Zombies. I hated them so much the feeling had
become a lump in my stomach that stayed with me day and night. I couldn’t shake
it. I couldn’t ignore it. The lump had gotten so heavy that my body felt
weighed down by it, my soul felt tainted and my heart turned black.

I hated them. I hated them more than anything.

Well, maybe there was one thing I hated more than
Zombies.

Matthias.

But I was pretty sure that feeling was mutual.

At the door,
Kiran
turned
the handle and opened it for us. I paused to examine his casual, nonchalant
approach and tried not to shake him. That door was heavy. And I bet it was
locked before. Every one of my instincts told me that door had been locked.

“It must be so nice to have unlimited Magic at your
disposal.” I hadn’t meant to sound so bitchy… but… well… I couldn’t help but be
jealous! My life revolved around ammo-counts and making sure my mouth was
always closed when I pulled the trigger, lest I get Zombie-goo in my mouth.

Kiran
and Eden walked around
with twenty-feet of personal space and clean clothing. They could open doors.
They could jump over large buildings. They could start cars and fly jets without
fuel or running engines or anything else that normal people needed.

“It is,”
Kiran
agreed.

I glared at him. “I bet people just hate you.”

He chuckled at my anger. “They do. Well, they do at
first, but I grow on them over time.”

“And Eden?”

“Everybody loves Eden. She’s their favorite.” He
smirked at me. Smirked! “In you go.”

I felt his Magic push me inside the dark stairwell and
I nearly toppled down it. Ryder was there to catch me with two steady hands.

“Whoa,” he rasped out in his rumbly voice. “You okay?”

“Peachy.”

I felt his smile through the darkness. “Thanks for
keeping us alive.”

“So you’re not,
er
,
Immortal?”

“I’m not even Greek. I’m just a regular human that got
caught in the middle of a war between gods.”

“That sucks.”

“No kidding.”

“But you got the girl, right? That has to be worth
it.”

He made some kind of sound with his lips pressed
together. “Ivy and I are not together.”

“Oh.” I took a step back and bumped into Hendrix. I
ignored him. And I ignored the heat of his body pressed into my back. And the
hardness of his abs and the way his hand automatically went to my waist to
steady me.
And the butterflies in my stomach.
And him.
I ignored him completely. I cleared my throat. “You
just seem to, um, really care for each other.”

“We’re not together,” he repeated.

Okay.

Before I could make this conversation any more
awkward, we got caught in the flow of foot traffic to the basement.

Eden and
Kiran
did something
Magical to the door because I could hear the barrage of hungry fists against
the steel door, but they weren’t able to break through.

I took a deep breath. Compared to outside, the quite
of the dark stairwell and the musty, metallic scent of concrete steps and
rusted railings was an absolute relief.

Eden built a blue ball of something that let out
enough light for us to see where we were going and what could be meeting us
here.

We moved silently and slowly down, carefully quiet and
always on alert.

I could hear the distant sounds of glass breaking and
the shrieking, moaning Zombies that wanted to get to us, but couldn’t.

“It’s so weird how they can smell you,” I whispered to
Ivy. “I can’t smell anything different about you.”

She shot a glare over her shoulder at me. “You don’t
smell anything because
I don’t smell
!”

“What about the whole Siren thing?”

Her eyes narrowed further. “It’s not a scent. It’s an
innate attraction. They
feel
a
pull
. They don’t
smell anything
.”

“Oh. Sure.”

“I don’t smell! You smell!”

“Red,” Ryder warned her.

“It’s all right. I do smell.” And not just because of
Zombie gore and blood splatter. I smelled because it had been three days since
I’d had any kind of cleansing ritual. We had been extra low on supplies these
days and forced into a deeper hiding than usual. No water for bathing. No
shampoo for washing. And no clean clothes. There probably wasn’t much of a
difference between Zombie-rot and me. But since everyone I traveled with
smelled just as badly, I had started to become immune to it.

What an awful realization.

“I shouldn’t have said that.” Ivy sounded remorseful.

I watched her pick her way through the dark stairwell.
Her pale skin glowed under Eden’s blue-tinted light and her red hair had dried
into bouncy curls. Her big green eyes shimmered with apology. It was hard not
to like her.

“It’s fine,” I told her.
“And also
true.
We’ve been pretty isolated recently. And our supplies are really
low. At least I’ve been able to brush my teeth.”

“It’s all perspective, isn’t it? I think I have it
bad. But you guys… I mean, I can’t imagine not being able to take hot showers
or walk outside my house without a weapon. You live in a seriously crazy
world.”

“It’s not all roses and butterflies for you either,
Ivy,” Ryder said quickly. “You have your own version of hell.”

“Yeah?”
I paused on the stair
so I could see her reaction.

“Yeah,” she whispered.

“Someone upstairs must hate us,” I tried to joke.

“It’s like they just love to torture us!”

“Exactly!
And what did we
ever do to them? I’ve been nothing but nice.”

“A little homicidal,” Hendrix murmured.
“But nice, too. “

We started walking down the stairs again, quicker this
time so we could catch up with Eden and
Kiran
.

“We sealed all the doors to the stairwell,” Eden
explained once we’d reached the ground floor. “But once we open this door,
there’s no telling how many Zombies will be waiting for us.”

I checked my weapons and adjusted my backpack. This
wasn’t anything new to me. “Let’s fight our way out and get to that car. We can
drive in circles with your Magical gas for all I care. I just want to get away
from these Feeders. Unless you can come up with some Magical bullets as well,
I’m going to run out eventually.”

Eden and
Kiran
did that
look-sharing thing again. Okay, I guess Magical bullets were off the table. It
was nice to know they had some limitations.

Kiran
put his hand on the
door handle again. “Ready?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Sure,” Hendrix answered casually. His hand landed on
my shoulder before
Kiran
could follow through. He
gave me a long squeeze, his fingers pressing into my collarbone.