Raising Innocence (24 page)

“Light,” I said, keeping my voice low.

She lifted her hand and a soft pink glow lit up around her fingers.

“Perfect,” I said, getting a good look at the room. Indeed, this was an attic. Across from us was an old steamer trunk, its lid flung open, contents pouring out of it like someone had been looking for something. I looked inside of it, the smell of age whispering up around me.

A name was etched into the underside of the lid. Brittany Mariana Tolvay. This was the daughter’s trunk. I bent and picked up a skirt, far too small for an adult. These were her things.

An idea began to form as I thought about what had brought Anne Tolvay to this point. Giselle had been mad at the end, totally and completely mad. But did that make her a bad person? Was it her fault that the madness had taken over and made her do things that she otherwise never would have?

“Pamela, I think we can end this without anyone getting hurt.”

Her blue eyes flicked up to mine, far too perceptive for her age. “You want me to wear her clothes, don’t you?”

I pawed through the trunk, finding a drab black dress. “You wearing her clothes will do two things. It’ll be a distraction for the Necromancer, and it’ll help to keep you safe. If she thinks you are her long dead daughter . . . .” Bunching up the starchy material I pulled it down over Pamela’s head as I finished my thought. “. . .you will be able to get close to her. Or at least, she won’t bugger off using the Veil as a jump point. If it looks like she’s going to make a run for it, call out to her.”

Pamela wiggled, straightening the dress out. The black old school dress was the right length but it was loose around the slight girl. “What should I say?”

I thought for a moment. “Mother or mama. With you here, if she believes you’re her daughter, I don’t think she’ll jump the veil. Are you ready?”

“Yup, I got it.”

As ready as we could be, I led the way to the door leading out of the attic. Cracking it open a sliver, I could just see the narrow stairwell leading down to the next floor.

“Stay behind me,” I said. Crossbow up and ready to fire, I crept slowly down the stairs.

The air around us seemed to tense the further down we went, or perhaps it was just my nerves. This Anne Tolvay had fucked off on me once; I couldn’t let it happen again. My gut was telling me it was now or never.

On the first landing we came to, there was only one zombie. I pulled the trigger on the crossbow and the mechanism fired with a soft twang, the bolt taking the zombie between the eyes and pinning it to the wall. It convulsed once and then sagged, what was left of its life leaking out of it and down the paisley wallpaper.

A quick check of the rooms on that level showed nothing. I Tracked the kids; they were still here, all bunched together. Dread slid through my heart, the sick knowledge that we were about to see twenty-plus kids in a state of half decay and worse. Fuck. I tried to shake it off, but the feeling clung to me.

The next stairwell down was empty, and then we were on the landing of the second floor. The kids were across the landing behind the second door on the left.

Of course, that’s when that bitch of a Necromancer sprung her little trap.

And we’d walked right the fuck into it.

Z
ombies poured out from the other three doors, climbed the stairs from below us, and forced us back the way we’d come.

I shot three in the head in quick succession, but it was too tight of quarters for the crossbow to be as effective as it could be. Booting the closest zombie in the chest, I slung my crossbow over my shoulder and pulled my two swords.

“Stay on the stairs,” I yelled, catching Pamela out the corner of my eye doing as I told her. At least she listened.

Then it was all limbs and bodies being hacked, and I wondered if the flood of rotters would ever end. There were too many for me to take on, more even than had been at the police station.

“Rylee, let me help,” Pamela said, the terror in her voice obvious.

“Not yet,” I grunted.

Three more decapitations and I’d made a little room around me, though with the pile up of bodies, it wasn’t much.

Time to bring out the big guns.

“Anne Tolvay,” I shouted as I spun, taking the arm off a zombie reaching past me to Pamela. “I have your daughter, Brittany!”

An unearthly howl rent the air and the zombies shuffled to a stop, their mouths hanging open, eyes vacant.

“Quick, Pamela. Get behind me so she can only see the dress. Keep your face hidden.”

Pamela leapt toward me, grabbing my belt for balance. I jabbed one sword into the body of the nearest zombie so I could reach back and hang onto Pamela. Just in case.

The door opened and Anne Tolvay stepped out, her cheeks streaked with tears. Her bun was in complete disarray, and her clothing looked like she’d been wearing it for weeks, maybe longer.

She leaned to see around me, gasping at the glimpse of her daughter’s dress. Her hands flew to her mouth. “My precious Brittany,” she sobbed. “Come, come to mama.” She had a heavy Russian accent, but her English was perfect. I might as well have not been there, as she reached out to Pamela.

“Anne,” I said, keeping my voice low. She didn’t respond. “Anne!”

Her eyes jerked to mine. “Who are you? And why do you keep me from my child?”

The zombies came back to life and started toward us. “They will kill Brittany,” I said, slashing, taking a zombie off at the waist, viscera spilling out and causing other zombies to topple like a macabre game of dominos.

“They will never harm my daughter.”

Shit, this was not going as I planned. I had to get her to stop.

“Then I’ll kill her myself!”

Anne screeched and Pamela clung to me. I gave her a squeeze and she relaxed.

“Do not harm my daughter, please. I’ve been looking for her. I will reward you greatly if you give her back to me.”

The madness had completely taken Anne’s mind, and if I hadn’t experienced the loss of Giselle’s own lucidity, I might not have felt as I did. As it was, I didn’t want to hurt Anne, even though she’d hurt so many people.

“Send the zombies away. Then we can talk.”

Anne clapped her hands and shouted something in Russian, and the zombies shuffled down the steps one at a time like perfect soldiers. The thought that she, Anne, could unleash the undead on a city gave me a shiver. There was no way the humans would survive if that ever happened; it would be just like all their movies depicting the end of the world, one full of rotters.

Anne stood across from me, worry lines etched in her forehead. “Please, I just want to see her, to make sure she’s okay.”

Oh boy, time to throw the dice. Very slowly I pulled Pamela out beside me as I whispered, “Keep your head down and if you have to talk, keep it short and sweet.”

Pamela gave the slightest tremor of her head acknowledging me, and then I lifted my eyes to see the Necromancer’s reaction.

Her hands were palms together in front of her lips. “My sweet babushka.” She lowered her hands and her faded blue eyes lifted to mine. “What do you want of me?”

“You have other children here.”

She nodded, lowered her eyes. “I could not bear to be alone. But they . . . they didn’t need their families anymore. Death stalked them. I gave them life.” Her voice grew in intensity as she spouted her beliefs.

Shifting my weight to my heels, I tensed, expecting an attack. “It’s time for them to go back to their families.”

Nodding, her hair floated out around her face. “Yes, now that Brittany is here.” She smiled, her lips trembling as she reached for Pamela, who I could see was fighting her natural inclination to shrink away from the crazy woman in front of us.

“You and I are going to take those kids back to the hospital,” I said. “Brittany.” I squeezed Pamela’s shoulder. “Will wait here for us.”

Anne put her hands over her heart. “Of course, of course. What you say, it makes perfect sense. These babies don’t need me.”

She turned her back and stepped into the room she’d come from.

I spoke quickly. “Just wait here, go up to the roof and hide.”

“You think she’ll try to come back without you?”

“Yes, I’m almost sure of it.”

“What if she—”

“If she takes you, I can find you no matter where you go. I won’t leave you with her if it comes to that.” I touched the side of her face. “Trust me.”

Pamela nodded, and I left her standing there in a dead girl’s dress, trusting that I wouldn’t let her down.

As I crossed through the open door, I couldn’t stop myself from recoiling, almost falling backwards.

What lay on the floor and in the cribs spread about the room was worse than any adult zombie I’d seen. Little limbs, little teeth, ears half-falling off, flesh peeling away from miniature ribcages, the stench of death and rotting flesh. A hint of baby powder and lilacs, as if someone had tried to cover the smell. Fingers reaching toward me, eyes missing and glazed over, clumps of hair caught in teeth and fingers. I gagged, biting my tongue to keep the puke in, bile coating my throat. This was the stuff of nightmares.

“Come along, babies, time to go!” Anne called cheerfully—as if this was normal, which for her it was, of course, but FUCK—and the babies did just as the adult zombies did. They lined up and toddled, crawled, walked and wormed their way to Anne. She made a slash with her hand and the air parted in front of her. I could see the hospital furnace room, the first place I’d Tracked her to.

“Holy fuck,” I whispered. She could
make
entryways into the Veil. That’s how she’d been jumping around so easily!

Anne gave me a dirty look. “Please, no bad language in front of the children. Hurry babies, time to go.” She directed them and they crossed the Veil easily, disappearing one by one.

I drew closer, seeing the children spread out on the floor. “You have to release them.”

Anne drew herself up, breathing in deep. “I love them all so much. You don’t have a child; I can see it in you. You can’t possibly understand the grief of losing a child so young.”

I hated that I felt compassion for her, that my heart understood all too well. “I think you’d be surprised by what I know.”

She turned to face me, denim blue eyes piercing into mine as if she searched me for the truth. “Perhaps you are right.”

A flick of her hand and the babies stiffened as a unit, slowly slumping to the concrete floor. “Sleep well, my sweet darlings. Your love carried me through so many years.”

Creepy as hell? Yes. But again, I saw too much of Giselle in Anne, the same kind of madness that made them say and do things that were so—

She shoved me, catching the edge of my shoulder as she tried to force me to cross the Veil.

“And I felt sorry for your half-rotted ass,” I said as I used her momentum, grabbed her arm and pulled her with me, through the Veil and into the furnace room. She screeched and reached back the way we’d come, the threshold still open. Pamela ran to peer in.

“Go,” I yelled as I wrestled with Anne. She had almost no muscle strength I could feel and so it wasn’t much of a contest, but when she raised her hand and the babies twitched I knew I had to get the hell out of there. Like now.

A swift twist of my arm and I was free of Anne’s grip. Leaping through the Veil back to the house, I crashed onto the floor on the other side and spun on my knees, sword raised. The slash in the air was gone. The thump of feet going up the stairs told me Pamela was on the move.

The stomps coming up the stairs told me Anne was pissed. Of course, the bottleneck of the lower stairway worked to my advantage. Stepping up, I starting removing heads as they came into range. One after another, the zombies kept lurching and struggling forward over their dead comrades.

After only a few minutes, I stepped back. I didn’t like leaving Pamela on her own, even if she was a powerful witch in her own right.

Leaping and lunging up the stairs to the third floor, I kept a sharp ear for the zombies below me. Upside? They were slow, no fleet-footed runners in the bunch. Downside? They were still coming and wouldn’t stop until they’d been killed or Anne turned them off—which I was betting wouldn’t be anytime soon.

I hit the trapdoor with my shoulder, shoving it open onto the roof, climbing up and through.

Anne had beat me there.

Scrambling, I spun out on the tiles as I slammed the trapdoor shut, my eyes never leaving the scene in front of me. Pamela was backed against the far edge of the roof, and Anne was advancing on her, crooning in Russian.

I lifted the crossbow without a thought. Feeling sorry for Anne didn’t mean I’d let her hurt, or take, Pamela.

The bolt fired seamlessly and slammed into Anne’s spine, right between her shoulder blades. She screeched and spun, her hands curling into hooked claws they twisted so much.

“You would keep me from my child?”

“She’s not yours to take,” I said. This had gone far enough. The kids were returned home and as much as I didn’t want to kill Anne, it had to be done.

“Your mentor would be disappointed in you. Her spirit hovers close, disapproving.” Anne said and the grip on my crossbow faltered.

“She is not here.” My voice, though, was not steady. Fuck, was Giselle really here? If anyone would know, it would be a Necromancer.

Anne shook her head. “You have lost more than I realized. I see the bodies around you now, the death that clings to your shoulders. Those who love you, they die. But you live. I know this pain better than any other.”

I shook, hard—hard enough that I knew I’d never get a good shot off. Dropping the crossbow, I pulled a sword from its sheath. “Life’s a bitch.” I took three running steps. “And then you die.” Before I could slam my sword home, she was yanked into the air away from me, her arms pinned to her sides, a surprised look etched into her face.

Pamela stood across from me. “I don’t think you should kill her. She isn’t really bad. Is she? We can put the amulet on her now.”

I closed my eyes, feeling the weight of what I’d almost done and why. I’d been ready to kill Anne to shut her up, to keep her from saying the things I already knew and avoided thinking about at all costs. And in the past it would have been fine, but with Pamela watching, well, I was going to have to curb my innate tendency to kill first and ask later. Maybe I was going to have to learn to do some growing up of my own.