Blood Slave: A Realm Walker Novel

Blood Slave

Kathleen Collins

This book is a work of fiction. All names, places and characters are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any way whatsoever without the written permission of the author, except as brief quotations.

Edited by Julie Gwin

Cover design by Yocla Designs

Copyright © 2015 Kathleen D. Collins

All rights reserved.

This one is for my readers. Thank you for every review, every email and comment. It means so much that you’ve found joy in my work.

Without you this book wouldn’t exist.

Chapter One

Juliana Norris lay in the dirt at the top of a hill, tracking the necromancer through the scope of her rifle as rocks dug into her belly. Dry, dead grass scratched at her arms and a brisk breeze carried the scent of smoke from the herbs the death wrangler burned below her. Shifting her weight for the hundredth time in an effort to get comfortable, she watched the old man pace and place bundles of smoking herbs in a pattern she was certain wasn’t as random as it looked. An oversized suit hung on his thin frame making him look emaciated. The tattered cuffs spoke to many long nights spent in cemeteries with the dead. But tonight they weren’t in a graveyard; they were in the Dead Zone.

The Dead Zone was the result of an accident at a germ research facility that some dumbass politicians decided should be relocated to America’s heartland about a decade ago. Less than five years after they opened the doors, the outbreak occurred. A quick response from the government kept the epidemic from becoming global, but every mammal within fifty miles succumbed to the plague, humans included. The Altered hadn’t been affected regardless of their species. All the reasons for this were unclear but the most obvious answer would be their magic made them immune. Affected or not, the Altered had cleared the area just like everyone else. Recently a few Altered stragglers had begun to move back into the area and with them came rumors of zombies rising in the night.

Every now and then, the Agency or local law enforcement would someone out to investigate the claims, but it usually led to nothing. Lately, the rumors had been more rampant than usual and a scouting group had been sent through the area. They had reported in the day before with an actual sighting. So here she was, playing guard duty to a necromancer. She’d tried to convince her boss it was a waste of time and resources to send the death wrangler. She could have just put them to sleep her way. One quick shot to the head and the zombies would cease to be a problem. Even the undead needed a brain to function. Apparently, however, it was bad PR to kill them for good without giving the mage a chance to put them down humanely.

As soon as the necromancer finished preparing, he would cast a spell to summon all the undead in the area. The zombies would come straight to them. She supposed that was one bonus of him being here, at least. They wouldn’t have to spend the whole night tracking down the undead. Once they’d gathered, he’d perform an incantation and lay them all to rest at once. That was the plan anyway. Unfortunately, things so very seldom went according to plan.

The badly sung chorus of a song about a man with a big gun came over her earpiece and she smiled. Correction, that’s why she and Nathaniel were here. Nathaniel West—werewolf, Realm Walker, and general pain in her ass—was singing the song in a voice low enough it was barely audible.

“Cute,” she said and located him with the scope of her rifle.

“Fitting,” he corrected. He lay on the hill across from her in much the same position as her own, his rifle scanning the area in a mirror to hers. As his scope found her and he raised two fingers in a half-hearted salute.

As the sun disappeared behind the horizon, flashes of light near Juliana’s position caught her attention. She turned on her gift so she could see the signature of anything creeping around. Several blobs of chartreuse lit her vision. Pixies. She hated pixies.

She glanced at the scene below to gage the mage’s readiness. The magic rose in a circle around him. The hair on her arms stood on end, but the spell had yet to build the strength needed to summon the undead. One of the green blobs nearby flitted closer. Juliana narrowed her eyes and watched it until it hovered beside her rifle.

“You bite me, you little shit, and you’re going to regret it.”

A tinkling laugh with an undercurrent of mania filled the air. The pixie darted forward and sharp pain radiated from the back of Juliana’s hand. A tiny, perfectly formed bite mark appeared on her skin. Cursed pixie. The laughter gave way to high-pitched shrieks as she snatched it from the air. Juliana didn’t speak pixie, but she had a feeling it was something along the lines of, “How dare you? Unhand me at once.”

Pixies had a bad habit of going invisible and biting people. You couldn’t punish something you couldn’t find. They could hide from sight all they wanted, but they couldn’t hide their signatures. Maybe since she’d caught this one, the rest of the cursed creatures would leave her in peace.

Chanting rose from below as the necromancer began to call the undead. “Get lost, pixie,” she said and opened her hand to release it. It hovered in front of her a moment more, still shrieking and then darted off into the growing darkness. She looked through her scope to find the area below now bathed in a sheen of red magic. Juliana opted to keep her gift up rather than switching to the night scope.  After a few minutes, gray signatures appeared at the edge of her vision, moving across the fields to the necromancer.

There weren’t many of them and they were tightly grouped together which made keeping them in sight easier. She resisted the urge to look over her shoulder to reassure herself nothing was creeping up behind her. Nathaniel would warn her if something was. Keeping her scope trained on the corpses as they shuffled along, she occasionally glanced in her partner’s direction to make sure his back was safe. There were six signatures all together. No seven. A small signature hovered close to the ground. What was that? A baby? That would make the night perfect. A baby zombie. Why did she always pull the shit assignments?

“They got a freaking dog with them,” Nathaniel’s voice hummed over her earpiece. “I think it’s a Pomeranian.”

She huffed out a laugh in relief. A dog, not a baby. She’d seen weirder things than a zombie Pomeranian. Nothing she could think of off the top of her head, but she was sure there was something. The figures shuffled along, arms in front of them making them look like some Hollywood throwback rather than any natural zombie she’d ever seen. “Gods, could they get any slower?”

“Remember, they’re all science. No magic.”

Juliana tilted her head from side to side in an effort to stretch her neck muscles. The scientists that worked in the research facility had been, among other things, trying to recreate the Altered with pure science. The result was vampires that caught fire in the sun and zombies that moved at roughly the speed of a turtle in molasses. If they’d bothered to consult any actual Altered, they could have learned magic can’t be duplicated with science. It simply couldn’t be done, as the abominations below her demonstrated. Or maybe the scientists had been told and they just didn’t care. And look how well that had worked out for them.

“How’s our wrangler holding up?” she asked. His signature told her little of how the man was faring.

“Stone cold and chanting.”

Her attention shifted back to the zombies and their pet. They stopped at the edge of the circle of the mage’s power and twisted their heads jerkily from side to side as if examining the air in front of them. Cold fingers of unease ran up Juliana’s spine and she frowned. They shouldn’t have been able to detect the circle. “Nathaniel?”

“Yeah, I see it.”

The pitch and tone of the chanting changed as the necromancer began trying to lay the abominations to rest. A dry raspy laugh drifted on the air.

Tension coiled in her belly. “Curse it. I knew this wasn’t going to work.”

“Just hold on, hotshot. The boss will be pissed if we start putting holes in heads without proof the wrangler isn’t doing his job.”

She clenched her teeth and a muscle worked in her jaw. Every instinct screamed at her to argue, but Nathaniel was point on this assignment. If he said wait, they waited. But she didn’t have to like it. And if things went to shit, it was going in her report. Otherwise, Ben, their boss, would probably find a way to blame her and write her up for it.

Theoretically, if the zombies stepped into the circle, the magic there, along with whatever spell the necromancer was weaving, should put them down permanently. But they hadn’t crossed the perimeter. A gravelly yip came from the dog as it hopped over the line. And then it just kept barking. The spell didn’t work. That raspy laugh came again and the zombies followed the mutt into the circle.

“What’s your wrangler look like now?” she asked, rifle trained on the head of the zombie closest to the necromancer.

“Not good. It’s not working. Put them down.”

She squeezed the trigger a half-second later, immediately moving from one target to the next. Once all the zombies were down, she turned off her gift and checked on the necromancer. He continued to back away, a look of horror on his face as he stared at the pile of corpses. That was odd. Surely in his line of work, he’d been in a similar situation before. Shifting her scope back to the pile, she thought she saw it twitch. “What the hell?”

One by one, the zombies pushed themselves to their feet, gaping holes in their heads. Well, this was new. Everyone knew if you destroyed the brain, the zombies ceased functioning as their synapses were no longer firing. Of course, all the undead she’d dealt with before were magic-born. These creations of science were new territory for her. “Curse it.” She dropped her hand from the gun and pushed herself to her feet before snatching her sword up from where it lay on the ground beside her. “Time to get up close and personal, Nathaniel.”

“Way ahead of you.” The voice was little more than a growl and she looked across to Nathaniel to see he had partially shifted to take advantage of his claws. Thick, brown fur covered his arms up to his elbows.

As she reached the bottom of the hill, she tossed the sheath to the side and inserted herself between the zombies and the death wrangler. “Get out of here,” she said over her shoulder. She didn’t wait to see if he complied. As the first atrocity stumbled forward, she sliced her blade through the air, severing the head in one clean motion.

Already dead. Already dead. They’re already dead.
She repeated the mantra to herself as she stepped forward and separated another head from its body. Shutting out the blond hair and young face, she focused instead on those lifeless eyes. Two more steps, another swing and a third zombie fell at her feet. She spun in a circle, sword at the ready, to find Nathaniel had dispatched the other three with equal ease, though his decapitations weren’t as clean as hers. Claws tended to make more of a mess than a finely honed blade. On the plus side, since the zombies were already dead, there was very little blood.

The zombie Pomeranian yipped at Nathaniel in between growling and tugging at the leg of his jeans. Juliana pulled her foot back to kick the creature away from her friend and made ready to bring her sword down on it as soon as it was clear.

“Don’t,” Nathaniel protested as he held up a still-clawed hand. “You might hurt it.”

Her brows arched up into her hairline. “That would be the general idea.” The thing growled again and she looked down at it where it was doing its utmost to gnaw a hole through Nathaniel’s jeans. And she wasn’t entirely sure it would stop when it got to skin. I realize you have a particular kinship with all things canine, but it’s gnawing on your leg.”

“Just my jeans.” Now back in fully human form, he bent and disengaged the dog from the denim. “Easy there, boy. Good dog.” When the Pomeranian continued to express its displeasure with the situation in general and Nathaniel in particular, he lifted the beast above his head, looked at it nose to nose and growled back. Evidently recognizing an alpha even in its altered state, the dog curled in on itself and whimpered before darting its tongue out to lick Nathaniel’s nose. Juliana grimaced. Zombie breath couldn’t be pretty.

“See, he doesn’t mean any harm,” her friend said as he tucked the abomination under one arm. Their scruffy brown hair made them look surprisingly similar.

She blinked at him in disbelief before taking another look at the creature in question. When she bent closer, it growled and she straightened with a huff. “She.”

“What?”

“She. Name tag says Fifi. Last time I checked that was a girl’s name.”

Nathaniel snorted in derision. “Fifi. What a prissy name.”

“Hate to break it to you, partner, but that is a prissy dog. And it smells like mold.”

It growled at her again and Nathaniel pouted. Rolling her eyes, she waved a hand through the air dismissing them both and walked over to retrieve the sheath for her sword. “Whatever, West. Just keep your zombie mutt away from me.” The thing creeped her out. At least she didn’t have to worry about contagion.

Besides the virus not working on Altered, it also was only transmitted by direct exposure to the virus. The lab rats had really patted themselves on the back for the lack of global destruction, but, as it was, they’d made enough of the strain to contaminate fifty square miles. Yet they adamantly denied any weapons research had ever take place in the facility.

The land was still tainted, as evidenced by their little adventure this evening. No humans were allowed within a hundred miles of the facility and dead of any persuasion weren’t allowed to be buried there, just in case it affected the Altered once the magic left their bodies. But here were six humans and one yappy mutt, right in the middle of the Dead Zone. How had they gotten here? She walked over and looked at the remains again. Six women, she corrected herself. A tendril of unease lodged itself in her brain.

Six women wearing skimpy clothing or none at all. Odds were they hadn’t come out here voluntarily dressed like that. So had they been forced out here while they were still alive or dumped here after they were dead? She shook her head. Not her problem. Her job was to make sure the zombies were laid to rest one way or another and she’d done that.