Magic and Decay (7 page)

I sucked in a fast breath and closed my eyes.
Sometimes I wanted nothing more than to put miles of space between us.

And sometimes when he was this close, when his touch
sent my stomach into a flurry and my mind emptied of all rational and coherent
thought, I just wanted to fall back into him and let him hold me forever.

His lips brushed the shell of my ear and he whispered,
“Stay by me, Reagan. Let’s get back to Haley and my brothers alive.”

“Good plan,” I managed to croak out.

Kiran
opened the door and I
instantly sobered. Get back to our group?
Alive?
Sure thing.
Just as soon as we killed the hordes of Feeders
that had surrounded us from every side.

No problem.

I should probably double check to make sure those
Magical bullets weren’t a real option.

Chapter Four

Eden

“
Kiran
!”

He shot me a panicked look over his shoulder but
pushed forward. We had to get out of this building! But the odds did not seem
to be in our favor.

Oh, wait.
Wrong series.

What I really meant
was,
good grief
!

There were so many of them.

This Siren call thing must be super strong because
there were Zombies
everywhere
. What
in the world.

My Magic flew around me. Like two swords that I had complete
mastery of, my energy pulsed through the air and decapitated everything in
sight.

Well, everything
Zombie
in sight.

I felt them press against my Magic and the stench
nearly overwhelmed me. My attention had to be split between the Zombies, my
husband and the people we were trying to protect.

I’d known this group for just a couple hours, but for
some reason they felt closer to me than that. They felt like old friends. And I
didn’t want to lose any of them to this Zombie war.

I thrust my hand out and another stream of electricity
poured from my palm. My blood bubbled and sizzled with hot energy beneath my
skin and my heart pounded inside my chest. The Magic was full and unleashed
inside of me and the power was a little dizzying. I controlled it almost always
these days, but I never stopped feeling awed at the sheer volume of it. I was
capable of so much.

Unfortunately, I was still as oblivious as ever. Just
as I took another Zombie head off, something swung out and grabbed at my feet.
The jagged fingernails caught my shin and dug straight into the bone. I let out
a harsh curse of frustration and tried to rebalance myself, but it was too
late.

I hit the ground with a smack. Dust and liquid, that I
had to guess was blood, splashed up around me, and my knees and palms stung
harshly for the few seconds it took me to send my Magic rushing through my body
again.

The Feeder tried to pull his body toward me, but I
pulled my other leg back and kicked him as hard as I could in the forehead. His
head reared back. Before he could bring it down again, I kicked him a second
time.

His head didn’t fall back down again. It detached from
his neck and rolled to the side.

Yuck.

Blood spurted forward, coating my jeans and shoes in
thick, blackish blood. I gagged but tried not to vomit. I really didn’t want to
add that to the blood covering my entire body.

Oh, gosh. That was so gross.

A hand waved in front of my face and I quickly grabbed
onto it.
Kiran
pulled me to my feet and held me to
his side while he effortlessly took care of Zombies with his other arm.

Of course, he would never fall down and get soaked in
Zombie blood. He was way too suave for that.

“Sometimes I forget how clumsy you can be,” he teased
me.

“I’m not clumsy! I got totally side-swiped.”

“I don’t have to remind you about the Magic, do I?”

“Don’t start with me.”

 
He turned to
face me. Those deep blue eyes of his hit me with all the love and affection he
was capable of and my heart thumped a stuttering beat. It amazed me how I could
fall deeper in love with him with one intense look or sweet gesture. This man
proved on a daily basis how perfect we were for each other.

There were times we didn’t see eye-to-eye and other
times when we didn’t want to see eye-to-eye. It was easier to fight, to disagree
and be stubborn about it. We’d always worked through any issues that came up,
but we were imperfect people in an imperfect relationship. Our road to eternity
was littered with issues and miscommunication and unintentional hurt.

That being said, this love we shared might be
misshapen and unconventional, but it was beautiful too. It had been forged in
fires strong enough to promise it would last as long as we did. It had been
strengthened, and reinforced and turned into gold so that we could fight and
disagree and tease each other endlessly, but never lose sight of whom the other
person was.

This love changed me. This love defined me. And now
this love would carry me through every day and every night.

I loved this man, with every single thing inside of
me. And that would never change. Not because it couldn’t change, but because I
would work every day for the rest of my exaggerated life to make sure it
didn’t. I chose
Kiran
once upon a time and it was the
hardest thing I had done up until that point. Out of everything, I had been
through, out of all the people I had lost, out of pain and suffering and an
uncertain future, letting myself love
Kiran
was the
hardest.

But it was also the best thing I ever did.

So I would make that decision, the decision to love
him every day, to only love him and to let him love me, until the world ended
completely, and the sky fell down. This was my choice. This was my manifesto.

“Are you all right, Love? Tell me the truth.”

I leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the corner of
his mouth. “I promise. I’m fine.”

He turned his mouth to capture mine in a hungry kiss.
His lips pressed against mine greedily, pulling me out of the Zombie battle,
out of this world, out of reality to remind me that I didn’t just love
Kiran
. I wanted him too.

“Hey! This is the wrong place and the very wrong
time!” Reagan shouted at us.

Oops. I’d forgotten where we were for a minute.

I pulled back from
Kiran
and
licked my lips. His sea-blue eyes darkened with desire and he watched my face
intently.

“I’m ready for date night to come to an end,” he
whispered huskily.

God, would his accent ever get old?

No.

Never.

“Me too.”

“They’ll be fine,” he whispered. His lips hovered over
mine. I felt the heat of his body and the hardness of his chest. I felt his
Magic pulse and jump with frenzied energy. I felt his desire and his intent.

I felt him and it was enough for me to give up
everything else to be with him.

He let out a long-suffering sigh. “I suppose we can
see this through. I can be patient.”

I smiled and let out a slow chuckle. “I’m proud of
you.”

Ivy’s scream pierced through our private moment,
followed by Reagan’s shout of, “For real! We could use a little bit of help
here!”

Kiran
groaned but turned
away from me. He went right back to work. The shield of Magic he’d put in place
dissolved so we could step back into the action. I hadn’t even noticed he’d
raised some protection.
Although, I had been a little
preoccupied with all my lusty thoughts and naughty intentions.

Apparently, I wasn’t the most observant person.

I looked around at the first floor of some kind of
office building. Zombies scrambled through broken windows and the door had been
ripped off the hinges. Beyond the melee inside, more undead filled the street and
fought to get to us.

How could such a tiny, helpless teenager bring such
chaos and destruction?

I hadn’t always loved my Magic, but after seeing what
Ivy was capable of, I was pretty damn grateful for what I had.

“Nice of you to join us.”

I looked over at Reagan. She was covered nearly head
to toe in thick, coagulated Zombie blood. We were all huddled together, but she
was closer to Hendrix than anyone else. She fought right next to him, directly
at his side. He didn’t seem very eager to let her out of his sight.

I didn’t know what to make of those two. Did they love
each other? Did they hate each other? Did they just want to jump each other’s
bones?

What was the deal?

Or maybe they were just friends. It didn’t always have
to be about love. Not every boy and girl standing next to each other made a
potential couple. I could have imagined all those longing looks and sly touches
between them.

Just kidding.

It was always about love.
Always.

I gave her a patient smile. “Sorry. Sometimes we
forget where we are.”

Her eyebrows shot into her hairline. “I can’t relate.”

“Maybe not right now.
But you
will someday.”

She tipped her head back and laughed. “You can’t
possibly know that.”

“Yes, I can,” I promised. “Didn’t you know? I’m the
last Oracle.”

She sobered immediately and the look of shock on her
face was absolutely priceless.

I went back to killing Zombies and she eventually went
back to shooting Zombies. A flash of panic flared through my gut. I knew that
Reagan and Hendrix would be out of bullets soon and we were no closer to
getting out of this building than we had been on the roof.

We needed to make a run for it.
Somehow.

“
Kiran
, we have to get out
of here!”

He shot me a “No kidding!” look. I pushed the gravity
of our situation into our Magic so he would for sure feel it. He got the
message this time. I wasn’t just stating the obvious. We really needed to get
out of here.

I’ll make a path
.
He told me telepathically.

“
Kiran’s
going to make a
path!” I shouted at them. “We need to run for it.”

Ivy looked up at me, terrified. But she nodded bravely
and steeled something inside of herself. She was ready. She might not be able
to fight Zombies like the rest of us, but she was a fighter.

She was a survivor.

Good.

Kiran
started killing
Zombies down the center of the building. It was fascinating how he did it. He
went after the Zombies closest to us and then worked his way toward the door.
They fell on either side, effectively clearing a way out.

I reinforced the path with a Magical force-field and we
started working our way toward the door.
Kiran
and I
led the way, Ivy and Ryder followed us and Hendrix and Reagan brought up the
rear. It was tight and we couldn’t move as fast as I wanted to because Zombie
limbs littered the way, but it seemed to be working.

Or I thought it was working… Until one of the dead
Zombies on the ground proved that he wasn’t so dead.

He wasn’t one of the monsters that
Kiran
killed. He still had his head attached. So obviously he’d been trampled in the crush
to get to us or he’d somehow come up with enough sense to play dead.

Either way, he lay in wait until just the right moment
and then reached out for Ivy.

His claws sunk into her calf and she let out a
horrified scream as he pulled her to the floor with him. I had just stepped
over his arm and had wrongly assumed he was one of the piled dead.

I spun around and didn’t think, just acted. I used
Magic to laser through his arm so that he couldn’t hold onto her anymore. Ryder
was on the ground with her, keeping the Zombie’s mouth away from Ivy with his
foot on the Zombie’s forehead.

The Zombie chomped and snapped and snarled at Ryder
and Ivy. His missing arm wasn’t even a blip on his radar. He didn’t notice
anything but the Siren in front of him and his insatiable hunger for human
flesh.

I hurried to use my Magic again on his neck. His head
didn’t roll anywhere, but his bloodied eyes became unseeing the second his neck
became two parts.

I let out a shaky breath and Ivy looked up at me with
a mixture of horror and gratitude.

I held out my hand and helped her to her feet.

Ryder dropped a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Thank
you,” he said.

His gratitude surprised me and I had to blink back
emotional tears. Could I blame those on post-pregnancy hormones?

No?

Shoot.

“Don’t mention it. “I’ve got cooler tricks than that.”

“I have no doubt.” He smiled at me but then
impatiently gestured toward the exit.

Oh, right. We needed to run for our lives.

So that’s exactly what we did.

We pushed through the room. The Magic kept the Zombies
from pressing too closely, but they let off their own negative aura that warred
with my inherent power.

I had never noticed it before, probably because I had
never been in a room with this many before. It wasn’t a force of energy they
could use against me. I could simply feel how angry,
how hungry
they were. They would do anything to get to Ivy. And the
rest of us would become casualties along the way.

I looked around at all of their faces, marveling at
the fact that they really were all men. They truly were drawn to her like she
claimed. It was hard to believe.

Not that I didn’t believe her. But the concept of a
Greek Siren pulled straight from the ocean was a hard one to wrap my head
around. The all-male room was enough evidence for me to believe her. I just
didn’t want to. I wanted the world to go back to the way things were, to the
familiar.

I wondered if human men reacted the same way towards
her as these Zombies. If they would fight and claw and kill each other in order
to get to her. I wondered if she suffered a lot where she came from.

Her power could easily be made a weapon in the wrong
hands. Men would do anything for her just because of what she was. She could
potentially make them do anything.

And they would be powerless against her.

She could even control a man like
Terletov
.
 

Too bad the Zombies couldn’t reason out her commands.
They needed their brains to understand her directives, but they were too busy
trying to eat ours.

A Zombie fell to the ground to the left of me,
trampled by hungrier, heavier, meaner Zombies. Limp feet landed on fragile bone
and flesh. The Zombie on the ground didn’t last long as others stomped on his
brittle body and tore him to pieces.