Gena Showalter - The Queen Of Zombie Hearts

I bounded forward. “Nana!”

“Ali?” she responded.

Light brightened around the corner, and I quickened my pace, soon entering a spacious room loaded with gurneys, medical equipment and weapons. Nana, dressed in her favorite nightgown, headed straight for me. I gathered her in my arms and hugged her tight, doing my best not to snot-cry all over her.

“Thank God! You’re alive.” She was the only family I had left, and I would rather die than lose her. “You’re really alive.”

“I’m telling you, I had to be surrounded by angels tonight. There’s no other explanation for my survival.”

“I’m so sorry I wasn’t with you.”

“I was glad you weren’t. I would have hated knowing you witnessed the violence we did. You’ve seen too much already.” A shudder rocked her small frame, and I couldn’t bring myself to admit I had witnessed more than my fair share tonight, too. “I took comfort knowing you were out there and safe.”

Behind me, I caught the soft sound of shambling footsteps and pulled from Nana’s embrace. “I’ll be right back.” Cole had just passed the threshold, and I raced to his side.

His features were pinched, his skin pallid. He managed a small smile when I reached him. At this point, I think he was running on pure adrenaline. “Told you...she’d be...all right.”

“Gloat all you want.” Just live! I shoved the backpack from his shoulder, the heavy weight thumping against the floor. “Let’s get you to a gurney.”

“Ali, you have to know...not afraid...to die.”

Jolt! And not the good kind. “I know that.” A person afraid of dying could never really live, and Cole Holland definitely lived. “Why are you telling me this now? You made a promise to me and I expect you to keep it.”

He leaned against me in an effort to remain on his feet.

I wound my arm snug around his waist. “Mr. Ankh,” I called. “Help.”

The male stalked around a curtain. He was shirtless and stacked with as much muscle as the slayers; it looked like he’d been in the process of sewing his own wound back together, because a needle and thread hung from a thick, seeping gash on his clavicle. His usually dark skin was almost as pallid as Cole’s and was now marked with cuts and bruises.

He spotted us, quickened his pace. Together, we hefted Cole onto a gurney. Which was a big-time struggle. He passed out halfway up, becoming a dead weight. Mr. Ankh shouldered me out of the way to clean him up and patch the wound on his shoulder.

Mr. Ankh is a surgeon, I reminded myself. He knows what to do.

“He’s going to be okay, right?” I asked.

A tic below Mr. Ankh’s eye. He remained silent.

I pressed my lips together.

Compartmentalize.

Yes, but how much more could the compartments take?

Nana came up beside me, squeezed my hand.

“How did you get here?” I asked.

“One of the tunnels in Mr. Ankh’s house leads straight here.”

“Where are the others?” I scanned the room and answered my own question. Kat reclined on one of the gurneys, her dark hair tangled around her pale face, her expression...odd. Blank.

I frowned. Something—more than the obvious—was wrong with her.

Reeve sprawled on the gurney beside her, her hair just as tangled. Her eyes were closed, and she was so still she could only be...

No! “Tell me she’s okay.”

“She is. She had to be sedated.” Nana released a shuddering breath. “So did Kat.”

Okay. Okay. I could guess the reason. Reeve had probably tried to leave to find Bronx, and Kat had probably screamed bloody murder, desperate to get to Frosty.

“I have something to tell you, dear,” Nana said, sorrow practically dripping from her.

I stiffened. “No.” I could guess what was coming.

“You need to know. Two of the...” She sniffled. “Two slayers were...are...”

“No,” I repeated.

“Lucas and Trina. Beautiful Trina. They...”

I shook my head violently. Don’t want to hear this.

“Lucas called. Trina was with him. They were being chased. Ankh told them where to go. Then he and I... We left the girls here, sleeping in a safe room, and went to get the others.”

I focused on that—that Mr. Ankh had taken my grandmother from safety and placed her in danger—and not the words to come. Not... Don’t say it. Please, don’t say it.

“He suspected he would need my help. That he’d have to tend to their wounds while I drove. I wish he’d been right. It would have been—” She cleared her throat. “We arrived first. The two came running around the corner.”

She was. She was going to say it. “Nana, stop. Just don’t.” If she didn’t say it, and I didn’t hear it, it wouldn’t be real.

More sniffles, before she added, “Ankh tried. He tried so hard to kill their pursuers. And he did. But not before both kids were gunned down. They never made it to the car. I’m so sorry, dear. So very sorry.”

Not prepared.

Lucas and Trina. Dead.

Dead!

Two friends. Gone. Because Anima had decided to stop watching us, stop threatening us, and act. Because we’d become so caught up in our own little world, we hadn’t realized someone was about to unleash a maelstrom of pain.

I hadn’t gotten to say goodbye.

Just like that, the compartments burst at the seams and every emotion I’d managed to stave off came rising to the surface. Regret, worry and guilt, now mixed with grief, anguish and fury, created a tidal wave and flooded me.

Drowning...

I fell to my knees and sobbed.

Chapter 4

BRAINS ARE OVERRATED

(AND SALTY)

I had the strangest dream. A little girl, probably three, maybe four, was strapped to a chair, a plain but elegant woman sitting at her side, holding her hand. The woman had such a slender bone structure she looked like some kind of fairy princess from a storybook. She had wavy, shoulder-length hair the color of wheat and eyes so pale they were freaky.

I’d seen those eyes before. Many times before.

Like, every time I’d looked in a mirror.

They were rare. And yet, the little girl had those eyes, too.

Were they mother and daughter? Relatives I’d never met?

It was possible, I supposed. But why was I dreaming about them?

And why was I assuming this was real, just because it felt that way? Dreams were just that. Dreams. They weren’t fact.

“Don’t worry,” the woman said with a quaver. “Once they finish, I’ll take you home and make your favorite cookies.”

“I want to go home now. I don’t care about cookies.”

“I know you want to go, sweetie, I know. But you can’t. Not yet. This is necessary.”

“Why?” Tears fell in earnest. “They hurt me, Momma.”

The mother began to cry, as well. “You’re such a special little girl. You can do things no one else can. Through you, they can help other people. Save other people.”

They? Who were they?

“—not leaving her.” Nana’s voice registered, as did her concern.

The dream vanished in a puff of smoke.

I tried to open my eyes, didn’t have the strength. Lethargy made my skull feel as if it had been hollowed out and stuffed with boulders.

“You are.”

Mr. Holland’s voice now. He said something else, but a high-pitched ring invaded my ears, distorting the rest of the conversation. “—bry mand take see.”

“Moo bought I cast soon loo.”

I bit the side of my tongue, tasted the copper tang of blood. The ensuing pain must have set off a chemical reaction, releasing all kinds of goodies, because I received the boost I needed. The ringing faded, and tendrils of strength wound through me.

“—at war right now, and that makes you a target. Ali won’t be the fighter I know she can be, needs to be, if she’s worried about you.” Mr. Holland possessed the same iron-hard determination as his son, making the words sound as though they’d been chiseled from ice. “You’re going and that’s final.”