Kelley Armstrong - Broken

“Or twenty,” Clay muttered.

“Be glad I didn’t say Starbucks. Upshot is, if you don’t know your way, it all starts to look the same. Of course, the logical solution is to stop and ask for directions.”

Clay snorted.

“So what happened next was entirely his own fault.”

“Dare I ask?” Jeremy said as we stepped off the escalator.

“Lunch hour. For thousands of office workers. With sub-subzero temperatures outside.”

“One minute I was just wandering around, the place practically empty, and then-” Clay shuddered.

“Traumatic, I know,” I said, patting him on the back. “But-” I swept a hand around “-much different now.”

We stood at the end of a hall stretching a few hundred feet, flanked with coffee shops, bookstores, drugstores and everything else an office worker might need between nine and five. But it was summertime, when no one cared to work later than necessary. The stores had been closed for hours. The walkways were left open only as a convenience for pedestrians.

“Not bad,” Clay said as he looked around.

“If our zombie pal wants to make his move, he’ll have plenty of opportunities. We just need to watch out for security guards and cameras. There’s an even quieter place a block over. We’ll head that way.”

Before we’d passed three storefronts, hesitant footsteps sounded behind us. Bait taken.

We made sure to turn lots of corners and avoid long straightaways, letting our pursuer stay close but hidden, watching us from behind the last corner until we turned the next. As we walked, I counted the number of attack opportunities we’d given him. When I reached five, I paused at a storefront and pointed to a display of baby sundresses.

“What’s he waiting for?” I whispered.

“Same thing his bowler-hatted friend waited for,” Jeremy said. “The doe to separate from the herd.”

He was right. Unlike Hollywood ’s brain-dead, brain-munching zombies, these guys weren’t stupid.

Before I could even open my mouth, Clay said, “No.”

“I-”

“Remember your promise? At my side. At all times.”

“I’m not suggesting I lure him away and finish him off myself. Just the luring away part.”

“Elena’s right,” Jeremy said. “We’ll be close behind. It’s safe enough.”

“Good,” I said. “Then it’s time for me to use the bathroom.” I raised my voice. “There’s a food court just around the corner. You two can sit and eat while I find a washroom.”

When we reached the food court, I put my sandwich bag on a table, then looked around.

“Oh, the bathroom’s over there,” I said loudly. “We walked right past it. I’ll be back in a minute.”

I took one last hit of chocolate milk, giving the zombie time to get out of sight.

The bathrooms were down a service hall. As I walked, I tracked the distant pad of footsteps behind me, ready to turn if they got too close before Clay arrived.

I reached the end, only to realize the hall dog-legged. At least this would give Clay a chance to attack the zombie out of sight of anyone passing in the main thoroughfare.

As I rounded the corner, I looked around for security cameras. None. Good. The footsteps behind me sped up…and Clay’s joined them. I smiled. Easy as-

A shadow leapt from a recessed doorway. I wheeled, but too slow, and a body hit my shoulder, knocking me into the far wall. I kicked. As my foot went up, I mentally slapped myself. Again, the sudden move threw me off balance. As I stumbled, the figure rushed me, hands out, going for my throat. I swung and caught my attacker in the jaw. He flew back with a shriek…a very unmasculine shriek.

I leapt onto the falling figure. A face turned to mine-a woman’s face, pocked and red. Rose.

“Thought you were done with Rose, didn’t you?” she cackled.

My surprise threw me off. She lunged at me, fingers hooked into claws, aiming for my eyes. An uppercut stopped her hands before they got within a foot of my face. As she fell back, I grabbed her by the throat and slammed her into the wall. Her face twisted, then went slack, and when I let her go, her body slid to the floor and started to crumble.

“Easy to kill,” I muttered. “Problem is keeping them that way.”

At a noise from the corner, I whirled, hands going up. Clay raced around.

“I heard-”

“Got her,” I said. “Again. It was Rose. I could have sworn it was a man-”

“It was.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me back toward the main hall. “The same guy I killed at the truck stop.”

“Did you-?”

“Started to,” he said, now moving at a jog and pulling me along. “Then I heard you and mine got away. Jeremy went after him.”

“Let’s go,” I said, and we started off.

The bowler-hatted man had taken the first exit. We crested the top of the escalator just as Jeremy was stepping onto the down side. He backed off it and led us outside before speaking.

“He crossed the road and I lost the scent in traffic,” he said. “Are you both all right?”

“Just another encounter with not-so-sweet-smelling Rose,” I said.

Jeremy tensed. “Rose?”

“The zombie we-”

“Yes, I know. You didn’t-Did you touch her?”

“Sure,” I said. “I had to. She attacked me. But if you’re worried about the syphilis, I swear I didn’t have sex with her.”

Jeremy didn’t smile. “Did you touch her lips or any of the sores near her mouth?”

“I don’t think so, but-”

His fingers clamped around my elbow. “There’s a coffee shop across the road. You need to go into the bathroom and scrub your hands and arms.”

He didn’t even wait for the light to change, just led me across between cars.

“Jer?” Clay said, jogging up beside us. “I thought you said syphilis was easily treated.”

“It is. But it’s particularly dangerous to pregnant mothers.”

He caught my look and slowed, grip relaxing on my arm. “You’ll be fine.” A small smile. “I’m overreacting, as usual. The only danger is if you came in contact with the sores around her mouth and ingest the bacterium or transfer it through broken skin. A thorough scrubbing will do the trick. I should have mentioned something last night but…”

“Rose was already dead, or so we thought. So what’s happening-”

“First, scrub up,” he said, stopping outside the coffee shop doors. “Then we can discuss it.”

I scrubbed my hands and arms until my skin was red, then washed my face and neck, cleaning off every bit of exposed skin, even parts I knew hadn’t touched Rose.

When I went outside, we returned to the escalator leading down to the PATH walkways, and I found the bowler-hatted man’s scent there, but lost it at the street. Between the exhaust fumes and the smog and the stink of a thousand daily passersby, our target’s scent had disappeared.

I watched the steady stream of traffic going by. “If we wait a few hours and I Change, it would probably be safe.”

Jeremy shook his head. “It’s not worth the risk. Killing them doesn’t seem to help.”

“Either we have an army of zombie clones, or the undead aren’t staying dead. Remember yesterday, when Robert was talking about the difference between controlled zombies raised by a necromancer and those created by a sorcerer’s portal? He said both kinds are tough to kill. Necromancer ones just won’t die, but dimensional ones…” I frowned. “Did he say what happened with them?”

“No,” Jeremy said. “Because that shouldn’t have been relevant. This portal was created over a hundred years ago, meaning any ‘controller’ should be dead.”

“Should be,” Clay muttered. “But there’s always a catch.”

Jeremy nodded. “Time to talk to Jaime and Robert again. And let’s see if we can contact that vampire thief tonight. I’ll go back to the hotel to make the calls while you two track down Zoe Takano.”