Love Charms (131 page)

The odor came from the rows of people
standing at military attention. From the smell and the black void where their
auras should’ve been, I knew they weren’t alive, but zombies. And not the fancy
ones like Mark, they were classic horror version of zombies. There must have
been dozens of them, wedged against each other like rotting sardines. Utterly
still, except for the smallest of movements. Even zombies, well beyond the
reach of pain and discomfort, couldn’t hold one position for hours on end
without some fidgeting. One of them lurched forward, the head coming up, eyes
settling on me.

With a gasp, I shut the door, holding
onto the knob in case they tried to come after me, but nothing happened. No one
tried to pull the door open or raised any alarm that I could hear. Something
held them inactive, keeping them from responding to my presence. I imagined
Kristoff had something to do with that. He liked to keep dead people on a short
leash.

For several tense moments, I waited for
the zombie hordes to come stumbling after me just on the off chance I was wrong
and they were just slow. When nothing happened, I continued down the hallway,
keeping an eye out behind me. I checked the other rooms by placing my hand on
the door and letting my second sight tell me what lay on the other side. Every
room had zombies, all standing at attention, all unnaturally still.

I had always intended to do my best to
save myself and Vera, but now I knew the stakes were much, much higher. The
army of zombies down here and others like it would be set lose on Boston to
bring about a new world order, one where the renegades were in charge, and
dragons larger than a football field commandeered air space for their
reproductive cycle. The threat was real to me now, more real than it had been
before. Not that I hadn’t believed Athena, but it had been difficult to
envision such a drastic change to the world I knew.

Governments were stable, at least in the
US. There hadn’t been a coup d’etat since the American Revolution. Strange to
think such an odd alliance would bring it to its knees now. And I had no doubt
between the zombies, the renegades, and the dragons that they would succeed.
The dragons alone were just too big to stop. What was the army going to do?
Blow them up? The biological ‘shrapnel’ of that alone would kill more people
than it saved and the zombies couldn’t be killed at all.

Not so long as Kristoff was alive.

The faint sound of a door opening in the
distance and the tap-tap-tap of footsteps on stairs broke my train of thought.
Someone was coming and the only place I had to hide was a room full of zombies.
Great.

I ran to a room at the far end of the
hall, one of the few I hadn’t checked yet. Yanking the door open, I slipped
inside and came face-to-face with Mark whose eyes widened in happy surprise at
my appearance. He was alone, but I wasn’t sure if one was better than a dozen
zombies, especially considering Mark’s undying love for me. Either way, it was
too late to back out, not without being discovered.

 I put a finger to my mouth and pointed
behind me as I shut the door. Mark nodded his understanding as the footsteps
came closer. Once they passed us, I cracked open the door to see who it was and
caught a glimpse of Kristoff turning down the hallway at the end of the
corridor. A murmur of voices reached my ears then, followed by the screech of a
metal door being dragged open.

I moved to go back out into the hall,
thinking I would peek around the corner and see what Kristoff was up to. But
Mark, who was behind me, put a hand on the door, preventing me from leaving.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice
more of a hiss than a whisper. “Let me out.”

“No. That hallway is a dead end, the only
exit is the way you came. You don’t want Kristoff to see you. Wait until he leaves.”

“Oh.” I released the doorknob. Damn, why
did he have to be right?

“What are you doing down here anyway?
Julia said you were confined to the top floor.”

I shrugged. “I was just looking around.”
I wasn’t about to tell Mark about deactivating my collar. Not when I knew he
wanted to ‘live’ more than he wanted to help me. To get him off the subject, I
asked, “Is Vera down here?”

Mark nodded. “That’s where Kristoff is
now. He keeps her in a room around the corner.”

“Did you know Kristoff’s been chopping
off her fingers?”

 “Yes. I heard the screams.”  To his
credit, Mark looked shamefaced.

“And you did nothing.”

“I…things didn’t quite work out the way I
planned. He was only supposed to threaten her, not actually do anything.”

“What? Did you guys pinkie swear or
something?” Mark flushed at the question. “Did you think Kristoff was going to
play nice? The guy kills people to rob banks. Not exactly a philanthropist,
Mark.”

“I realize that now. That’s why I’m going
to help you get rid of him once you learn how to make zombies.”

I shook my head and bit the inside of my
cheek to keep from saying anything. I’d never realized Mark was so
self-centered. Clearly, he didn’t think there was anything more important than
keeping his soul in a body. This was a side of him I’d never seen before and I
didn’t like it. It made me question our relationship even when he’d been alive.
Maybe I’d been blind to his true nature. It wasn’t a comfortable thought.
Worse, could I trust him now?

Footsteps sounded again and voices grew
louder as they moved toward us. “I can’t wait for her to wake up any longer.
There’s no more time. Bring her outside, the car is waiting," Kristoff
said, an imperious ring to his voice.

I sucked in a breath. The only her I
could think of was Vera. Was I too late? Was he moving her? I wanted to crack
the door open and see for myself, but couldn’t take the risk of being spotted.

More shuffling and footsteps and then
Kristoff spoke again just outside the door. “Careful. Don’t drop her.”

“Yes boss,” answered a deep voice.

My stomach dropped. If he took Vera, how
would I save her? I swore under my breath as they passed Mark’s room and
continued down the hall. When I heard the door to the stairwell shut, I stepped
back out into the hallway, Mark right behind me.

“Where did they take her?” I headed for
the general direction of Vera’s room. She probably wasn’t there, I knew that,
but I had to check.

“I don’t know. Kristoff doesn’t talk to
me very much.”

I shook my head in disgust and walked
faster.

Mark grabbed my elbow, slowing me down.
“Her room is here.” He pointed to a door on my right.

I opened the door and stepped inside.
Vera’s room was smaller than mine with only a sagging cot for a bed. Restraints
at the head of the cot were covered in dry blood. Blood also smeared the wall
and spotted the dingy bed sheets.

I closed my eyes against sudden tears.
What Vera must have gone through...I couldn’t bear to even think of it, but
made myself read her cot. If there was
any
chance I could learn
something that would help us both, I had to take it. Not surprisingly, pain was
the first impression I had and then I was in the past, looking at it through
Vera’s eyes. Kristoff was there, standing over her and threatening her.

“You’ll fail. All your plans will fail,”
Vera said with a defiant jut of her chin. She had all her fingers in this scene
and was unbound.

Kristoff was on her in one step, hand
coming down hard and fast across her face. “Tell me what you see. Now.”

Vera pulled herself up off the floor
where she had landed from the force of Kristoff’s slap. “The universe is
against you, necromancer. You have broken natural law too many times. The
backlash is inevitable. I can’t see anything more than that, because it doesn’t
matter, your fate has been set. You’ve reached critical mass, where all actions
lead to one outcome. You can’t stop your future. The only variable now is the
mechanism of action.”

Kristoff put a hand on the nape of Vera’s
neck, lacing his fingers through her hair in a cruel grip. “I could kill you
now. Or make you watch while I take your friend’s soul and shove it in a
rotting zombie. I could put you both in zombies and force you to amuse me.” He
leaned in closer and whispered, “I can reward you or punish you, seer. It is
your choice.”

“I have nothing more to tell you,” Vera
said, her voice firm. She stared straight ahead, refusing to meet Kristoff’s
eyes. I’d never seen her so full of…spunk. It was a jarring change from her
usual cheer.

“So be it.” He motioned to the guard
behind him with his free hand. “The clippers please.” A pair of shiny steel
clippers were placed in his hand. Vera whimpered as Kristoff sliced through her
finger, and she screamed when he released her. Collapsing onto the cot, she
huddled there, hand pressed against her chest doing her best to stop the
bleeding.

“Think on the price you’ve just paid,
seer. Think hard, because that is just a taste of what I will do to you.” With
that, Kristoff turned on his heel and left the room

Vera just lay there, a glassy look in her
eyes, blood spreading slowly across her shirt. She didn’t even move when a
short, balding man came in and gave her hand a proper dressing followed by a
shot that sent her to sleep. Beyond that initial confrontation, there was
nothing to see other than Vera leaving and returning to her cell. If Kristoff
continued to question her, he didn’t do it down here.

Having seen everything I could, I shook
myself and allowed my consciousness to swim back from the past and surface in
the present. Kristoff, the bastard, had lied. There had been some comfort in
thinking Vera hadn’t felt any pain. I should’ve known better.

In the distance, a car roared off.
Probably with Vera inside. She was beyond my help now. Not to mention, I wasn’t
doing so well helping myself. But listening in on her conversation with
Kristoff, had given me something to think about.

It didn’t matter what happened, Kristoff
was going down one way or another, which meant I had a choice. If I didn’t take
him out of the game, something or someone else would, that was guaranteed. I could
walk away. It didn’t have to be me that dealt with Kristoff.

I actually considered it. Considered just
walking out the door and into the horizon. Let the police and the F.I.B deal
with Kristoff and his cronies. I’d suffered enough, but, looking down at my
hands, all ten fingers intact, I couldn’t do it. There were others suffering
too, Vera just to name one. The universe might have it in for Kristoff, but as
far as I could tell, I was the only mechanism of action in the vicinity with
any chance of stopping him sooner rather than later. Damn my sense of
responsibility. Why did it always involve someone dying?

Mark put an arm around my shoulder. “Are
you okay?”

I shrugged his arm off and stepped out of
reach. “No.” I pointed to the blood on the wall. “Look what you helped do.”  My
voice shook I was so angry. Not just at what Mark had done, but that it made me
love him less. Made me question whether or not our love had ever been real.

“Kristoff would’ve done it anyway,” came
a woman’s voice from the doorway.

I turned to see who it was, but I already
recognized the voice as belonging to Julia.

She came into the room, arms crossed as
if to ward off a chill. “Even without Mark, Kristoff would’ve found Vera and
used her to get to you. He knew about you and was already watching you.”

I moved behind Mark, putting him between
me and Julia. Maybe his new muscle-bound body would come in handy. Mark,
apparently thinking along the same lines, widened his stance and flexed his
hands.

She waved a hand. “You have nothing to
fear from me, Sofia. I knew the second you left the top floor. The collar
wasn’t the only thing keeping tabs on you. My Sidhe ancestry gives me my own
claim to magic...when Kristoff lets me use it.” Bitterness soured her voice.

I remained silent, unsure of what was
happening. Did this mean Julia was on my side? Was that a good thing? I didn’t
know. I couldn’t tell good from bad any more.

“Kristoff thinks because he made me, that
he controls me.” She paced the floor. “He thought that because I agreed with
him once, that I would never change.”

I cleared my throat. “What exactly are
you trying to say?”

She stopped mid-step and looked at me,
her gaze piercing. “I am…was his wife. We have a daughter, Grace.”

“Grace is your daughter?” I couldn’t keep
the shock out of my voice. What an interesting family Kristoff had. A zombie
wife and a child whose favorite playmates were dead animals. Nice.

She nodded. “Kristoff mastered his
necromancy just before I died. Grace’s birth killed me. I hemorrhaged.”

“He raised you,” I said.

“Yes. I was the first zombie he made with
a soul. This,” she gestured to herself, “is not my real body.”

I nodded encouraging her to continue and
edged out from behind Mark as she spoke.

“Nor is our relationship real anymore.
I’m not a wife, I’m a soul stuffed into a dead shell,” she said with obvious
disgust. “Death isn’t the only thing that can kill a relationship.” She gave me
a pointed look as she spoke and I nodded. I knew exactly how she felt. She took
a deep breath. “So, you don’t have to worry about me. It’s only this body that
belongs to Kristoff, my heart left him a long time ago.”