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“Don’t make us wait very long,”
the blue eyes had said.
“You know how easily bored we can become.”

But he didn’t hurry. He knew they would wait for him. That was, after all, the whole point of last night. Capturing his friends. Danny and Gaby. And the boy.

What was his name again?

It would come to him, eventually. It always did.

H
E SLEPT
, and like all the other nights, he dreamt of her. The crystal blue of her eyes, the golden strands of her hair, the sweet taste of her lips, and most of all, the feel of her skin against his. She would cringe if she could see him now, he was sure of it. He wasn’t the man he once was. He wasn’t even a man
at all.

Lara.

She was out there somewhere, waiting for Danny and Gaby. Maybe even waiting for him. No, not him. She would have given him up for dead long ago. Days ago. Weeks ago. Months
(?)
ago.

How long had it been since he died?

He couldn’t remember. The nights were a blur. Not that it mattered, anyway. The past was the past; he had to concentrate on the future. The here and now.

Mabry.

Out there, vulnerable. So, so vulnerable.

He had spent days in the city poking at their defenses, looking for ways in. A small sliver of access, a forgotten point of entry. Anything that would allow him to get close and do what he had to do.

Mabry.

He should have stuck to the plan and not left to come here. But it was Danny. And Gaby. And if he wanted to retain an ounce of his humanity (it was already so difficult; he could feel it slipping every night, every time he had to rest, to heal his wounds), he couldn’t leave them in the blue eyes’ hands.

“Don’t make us wait very long.”

He opened his eyes to gunfire in the distance, followed shortly by the very distinctive taste of blood in the air, carried to his position by the wind. He licked his lips, and every inch of him yearned to taste it. How many days had it been since he satiated himself on the raccoon? Too long ago, and it had been such a small creature; he’d been forced to spend so much of his energy on recovering from his wounds.

The gunfire rolled across the world like thunder. Close, but beyond his reach. He could feel the siren of daylight calling to him. He longed to embrace its warmth. It had been so, so long. It wouldn’t have taken much, and there was nothing to stop him.

Except her. And the future.

Not for him, no. The future was for her. Everything he did now was for her.

Lara.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on the blue of her eyes, the yellow of her hair, the sweetness of her lips…even as the
pop-pop-pop
echoed, then faded, only to start all over again…

G
ALLANT
, Texas.

A nothing city in a nothing part of the state. It was close enough to the ocean that the breeze teased at his skin. He ignored it—easy to do this far from the
(killing)
water—and pressed on through the darkness, moving toward the center of town.

The business district. Shops and glass storefronts. Car dealerships.

They were here somewhere. Danny and Gaby. Like mice, held against their will to draw him closer.

So he went.

There were nests in the bigger buildings around him. Fresh ones. They had only come here recently and were staying off the streets, though he spied a few of them on the rooftops leaning over the edges, watching and waiting to report in. The black eyes were always smarter when the blue eyes were around to command them.

“He’s here,”
a voice said inside his head.

“Close,”
another added.

Had they seen him? No. He was too careful, and he wasn’t “him” at the moment. Maybe they had sensed him. It was always a challenge to hide from the blue eyes when he was in close proximity, and “close” was a matter of perception. Distance, when connected to the consciousness the way he was right now, was not always easy to pinpoint.

“He’s wearing one of them.”

“The black eyes.”

“Clever boy.”

“Not clever enough…”

They knew.
No.

No, no,
no.

Hands reached out and grabbed him by the shoulders, and his arms snapped, the
clacking
of bones against loose skin as they converged, coming out of the shadows around him. Fingers groped at his face, slipping into his mouth and eyes for a foothold.

He abandoned the black-eyed ghoul he had been wearing, letting go of the creature’s mind and slipping back into the river that all the ghouls were connected to. He floated, spying visions and sounds and smells.

There, another one. It was alone, perched on a rooftop overlooking the center of Gallant. A lookout. He seized its mind, pushing it to the edge of its own existence and assuming command. It resisted, but not for long. Never for long. The black eyes were mere husks, as weak mentally as they were physically.

A horde stormed down the street below him, passing him by. They were searching for him, trying to locate the creature he had jumped into, unaware he was above them, watching—

Hands grabbed both his arms from behind, turned him against his will, and a fist punched through his chest.

Twin blue orbs pulsed in the darkness, surrounded by other blue eyes.

“There you are,”
the creature said, its voice dripping with triumphant glee. It leaned forward while others held him in place.
“Tell me, where are you hiding?”

Razor thin lips formed snakelike smiles.

“You’re close!”

He pulled back, back…

H
E OPENED HIS EYES
. His real eyes.

“There you are,”
the voices said inside his head. More than one, a dozen echoes overlapping, and as loud as if they were standing right next to him.
“You didn’t think you could hide forever, did you?”

Footsteps converging on his location. Dozens? Hundreds?

“Take him!”
the voices shouted.
“Take him now!”

They poured in through the windows and doors, and some battered their way through the thin walls. He abandoned the darkened corner, legs that had been still for hours coming alive and pistoning under him. There was no hiding now. They knew where he was. They
all
knew where he was.

The black eyes were weak, slow things, and he snatched up a piece of metal from the floor and smashed his way through them, and when the floor turned into a writhing black tide of pruned flesh, he went into the air. Hands groped at him, fingers scraped against his arms and legs and sought out desperate pieces of the trench coat that fluttered behind him.

He crashed through the window and into the street. The gray concrete highway gleamed to his left, the city of Gallant to his right. He was close enough that he could smell the rest of the ghoul population moving toward him as one, coming out of the buildings.
All
the buildings.

Hundreds.
Thousands.

He flung himself onto a car and used it to grab a windowsill and crawled up the side of a bakery. He hadn’t had the chance to swing up onto the ledge before there were three—four—
five—
throwing themselves at him.

“He’s ours!”
the voices echoed inside his head.
“There’s no escape for him! Not tonight!”

He shattered a ghoul’s skull with his fist and threw two more off the rooftop. The fourth and fifth attempted to wrestle him to the gravel floor by diving at his legs, but he caved in one’s chest with his foot, then twisted and decapitated the other one with the edge of his hand.

And he was free again, but not for long. The structure trembled as they raced up the stairs below him while more crawled up all four sides of the building, just as many plummeting back down to the street below when they lost their grip.

The wind whipped at his face as he ran, then leaped, across two rooftops. He sprung back up to his feet as they pulled themselves over the ledges around him. He raced past them and sailed into the air again—

Pop-pop-pop.

The sound of gunfire coming from nearby forced him to twist his body in mid jump until he was moving in that direction.

“Something’s wrong,”
the blue eyes said inside his head.

Was it a trick? Another trap? No, not this time. There was no need because they had him where they wanted him. Here, now, within their grasp.

Pop-pop-pop.

He tasted blood in the air. Not tainted blood like the kind that flowed through his veins. No, fresh blood.
Human
blood.

Pop-pop-pop.

He leaped across rooftops and raced toward the source of gunfire even as they surged around him, clamoring against one another to be the first to reach him. But he was faster and he leaped when he had to, dodged when he could, and bashed a path through flesh and bones when it was the only way left to him.

The night was thick with their number. Ghouls. Black eyes. They had secured all the rooftops as far as he could see, and he was forced to go down. He plummeted, grabbed a windowsill, swung left, then right, and finally caved in the roof of a parked vehicle on the sidewalk.

And they were on him almost immediately. A wave of black flesh slamming into his body from all sides, bony fingers grabbing at the fabric of the trench coat while dead black eyes pooled around him. Jagged yellow and white and brown teeth bit into his arms and legs and neck in an attempt to slow him down, but still he fought.

He couldn’t let them stop him. Not here, not now. He fought, for Danny and Gaby. For Lara. For her future.

But there were so many, and they forced him to the cold, hard pavement. Blood gushed from fresh wounds and his legs weakened as they climbed over him, then over each other, their weight doubling, then tripling. And still they grew, until it became impossible to throw them off with mere physical strength.

Then something new and unexpected rippled across the sky, sending a ferocious gust of wind across him and the swarm that blanketed him. It froze them in place for a split second—which turned into a full second, then a full two seconds—as the noise grew and grew until it became unmistakable.

“No!”
the voices screamed inside his head.

He managed to look up through a small sliver in the forest of wrinkled flesh just as the belly of the mechanical beast flashed overhead and its roar filled the world, shaking him—and the creatures around him—to the bones.

“No, no, no!”

As he watched it pass overhead, he was reminded that there were still things out there to fear that didn’t sleep in the shadows and hide from the sunlight.

Then the beast bellowed, and he might have smiled.

Brooooooooooorrrrttttttttt!

BOOK TWO

ON A PALE HORSE

10

LARA

“
I
DON’T WANT BLOODSHED
,” the man said. Lara detected what might have been a Southern accent, but those things were tricky over the radio, so she couldn’t be absolutely sure. “We can resolve this in a way that avoids that. No one’s been hurt yet, and I’d rather keep it that way. ”

You should have thought of that before you sent them over here,
she wanted to say, but resisted.

“Bottom line,” the man continued, “we can still come to an arrangement. Nothing’s happened yet that makes that impossible.”

“What if we had opened fire on your men?” she asked.

“But you didn’t.”

“I
could
have.”

“But you
didn’t
,” the man insisted. “That’s all that matters, and all I want to focus on right now.”

She exchanged a look with Carly, who was standing next to her with her hands on her hips, and then with Blaine at his usual spot behind the helm. Morning sunlight slowly filled up the bridge of the
Trident
, pushing away last night’s chill. Unlike the last time she was in the room, all three of them were armed and rifles leaned against the walls within easy reach.

It had taken her all of last night to decide whether to take Hart up on his offer. She was still too wary of a possible trick in case Hart and his CO had a backup plan if their boarding went awry and had ordered Blaine to keep moving all night, with a full guard rotation inside and outside the yacht.

“Mighty generous of him,” Carly was saying.

“You don’t believe him?” she asked.

“If being with Danny’s taught me anything, it’s that you can’t trust anyone who tries to sneak up on you in the middle of the night. It always ends badly—and painfully.”

Lara looked to Blaine. “What do you think?”

The big man shook his head. “I guess it depends on what he can offer us in return for sending his guys back. What did Hart say they had over there, wherever there is?”

“Supplies and fuel.”

“Like he knew exactly what we needed,” Carly said.

“He knew about the fueling stations and marinas being manned by collaborators,” Lara said. “They’ve been out there. They know what’s happening back on land.”

The bridge’s speakers squawked, and they heard the man’s voice again: “Are you still there?”

Lara held the microphone up to her lips and
clicked
the transmit button. “I’m still here.”

“You’re thinking about my offer.”

“We’re talking about it.”

“You’re in charge?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Riley, by the way,” the man said.

“Lara.”

“Nice to meet you, Lara. Wish it was under better circumstances.”

“The man’s a master of understatement,” Carly said. “First he spies on us, then tries to board us, and now he’s acting all ‘Golly gee, I just wanna be friends.’” She rolled her eyes. “Goes to show you guys are as trustworthy as a knife in the back.”