Raven Moon (28 page)

He laughed. “I’ve gotten used to cold beer but thanks for making me feel at home.”

Ravens flying around the Tower of London flashed in her head. A dark cloud engulfed the tower and the ravens dropped to the ground. Rave stiffened as the cold chill of raven foresight engulfed her. Danger. The need to fly, replaced by the need to protect her nest, her mate.

He set his bottle down. “Ravenna, what’s wrong?”

“We need to leave!” She grabbed her crossbow and peered between the curtains.

“I don’t hear or smell anything.” His eyes widened. “Bloody hell. Now I hear them. The Kindred.” He hastily removed his clothing and shifted into large bipedal werewolf form. His lupine head nearly hit the ceiling and he emitted a low growl.

Rave’s adrenalin spiked. Five men, wearing longhorn and buffalo hides emerged from the grassy area where the longhorns had grazed. “Shit.”

Maddox grabbed her with his massive claws and her leather coat tore as he pulled her from the window.

“Hey, watch the jacket.”
Well, it’s not like I’m going to return it to the mansion’s owner.

He silently snarled at her, displaying his dagger-sized fangs.

“I think I can take them out.” Rave wished she had shared the info about the cure from silver poisoning. The vial rested in the bottom of her satchel. Untested. Would the anecdote work? She would not risk using her mate as a guinea pig.

Maddox shook his massive wolf head, no.

A sniper bullet whizzed through the window, shattering the glass and missing the huge wolf target by a hair. Her oaf of a werewolf mate shielded her with his furred back as an array of silver bullets sprayed the tiny saloon.

Rave hissed, “Maddox, let me protect you, damn it!”

He roared and leapt out the window. Bullets riddled holes through the saloon. The sound of rapid gunfire changed direction as they targeted the massive werewolf. He was fast, but not faster than a speeding silver bullet. Ugh!

Rave grabbed her crossbow and chased the men stalking him as Maddox drew them away from her.
No way am I going to let you sacrifice yourself to save me, you stupid surly bad wolf!

They approached a livestock feed store. Inside he howled. She loaded her arrow and fired at the closest werewolf hunter, striking him at the base of his neck. He slammed to the ground, dead. Another swore and the men turned to look. She aimed and her arrow sang through the air as it struck and dropped another.
That’s right I’m badass.
Before she retrieved another arrow, the other hunter fired and she dove behind a car.
Yep, zombies are so much easier to kill.
Without time to reload, she ran inside a small beauty parlor.

Heaving heavily, she crouched behind a salon chair and waited for return fire. None. Damn Kindred were after Maddox. She slowly rose and scanned the beauty store; a good shampoo after this shit was over would be her reward. Most of the hair products were gone, except for a few bottles of hair dye. Yuck, they still used ammonia-based products.

The air stilled. Stale. Low moans grew. Rave peeked out the window. A horde of migrating zombies. On flight sorties, she seen this phenomena of thousands of zombies moving like a slow heard of wildebeests. Once out of San Diego, she’d estimated a million heading south toward Mexico. No leader or pattern but an instinct to follow the subtle scent of the living. Normally a bad thing but for now a good thing. Their parade through town would be a distraction that might just save their lives from the Kindred.

From above in the haymow, Maddox struck. He jumped from the window, landed on the street and swiped off one of the hunter’s head off. The other three men still alive fired but Maddox was too fast and dove behind a building. She suppressed her instinct to mob them with her beak to protect her mate.
I miss flight!

Raven rage nonetheless set in and she dashed out. She drew back the string of the bow to her anchor point. “Did anyone ever tell you, cowhide is a bad fashion statement?”

The men turned. Rave shot the arrow, burying it into the first one’s heart. Another aimed his rifle, but she shot him through the neck. His hands gripped his throat, his eyes glazed over in death and he fell back. Maddox howled in glee and approached her.

More men sped in on a land rover with a gunner on top. Shit. Reinforcements!

“Maddox, run!”

He cocked his head, then turned as she waved him over to the beauty parlor.

A man got out of the vehicle, aimed his rifle at Maddox and shot him in the shoulder. A bullet from another shooter got him in the neck.

He howled and stumbled toward her as she held the door open. He dragged himself inside. His white fur was covered in blood and he heaved rasping breaths. He was dying. She drew her arrow and finished off the man who shot him. She slammed the door shut and rushed back to Maddox. He twisted onto his back. Sounding more wolf, he garbled, “RRR…ave…” His tongue lolled as he heaved labored breaths. “G…go.”

“Shh. I’m going to save you.”

A man shouted, “He’s been shot twice with silver but he’s not alone.”

A second swore, “Fuck! A horde!” A new round of gunfire ensued.

“Fuck, where’s backup?” asked another.

Rave set her satchel down and took out the blue vial and syringe. Ten ccs as Dora had explained. “Hang on.” She knelt beside him and plunged the needle directly into his heart. “Stay with me!”

The roar of several more massive trucks screeched to a stop. “Maddox is in there, sir. With a woman.”

Rave hastily put away the vial and tucked it back into her satchel.

The man in charge barked, “Go. I’ll confirm the kill and catch up.”

Maddox gasped and stared at her as if she’d betrayed him. His face, a soft shade of blue fur shifted to human as he hissed, “Wolfsbane.” He shifted back to werewolf and his eyes rolled back. He reached out a claw, and then it stiffened. She took his pulse. None. Dora said the wolfsbane part of the potion would put him in a temporary coma, but she had been wrong, he was stiff and cold as a corpse.

“No!” Rave shook him and was too distraught to fight off the Kindred hunter who walked in.

A man with a long white ponytail and a Colonel Sander’s beard and mustache walked to her mate’s dead body. “He died fast.” He spit. “Too bad.” He dragged her up. “I don’t know who the hell you are but you need to come with us.”

She darted a fierce glance at Maddox. “No!”

He grabbed her and aimed a small camera like device at her eyes. She covered her face. “You’re not werewolf. Let’s go before we end up in the middle of a feeding frenzy.”

Rave twisted and stared at Maddox as he lay dead. The cure had not worked and he died believing she inflicted the final stroke. She had. Too numb to feel anger, sorrow or regret, the man dragged her toward a monster truck parked in the middle of the town square. Two other monster trucks were hi-tailing it out of town as the first zombies began eating their recently killed men, still fresh enough to eat. They only stopped eating when the dead body reached a detectable level of rigor mortis. At least nothing would be left of those men to turn into zombies.

The tall bulky ponytailed man lifted her and shoved her into the backseat. “Get in!” He turned to the driver. “Go!”

As the driver drove off, Rave looked out the window to where she had possibly helped finish off her mate. The zombies ignored the salon where Maddox lay in werewolf form, following the engine noise of the trucks. Their moaning crescendo nearly drowned out the vehicle noise. The driver burned rubber as he drove off from thousands of undead stumbling toward them.

Her gaze returned to the beauty parlor. Movement. Maddox opened the door in werewolf form. She gaped. He stared at her and she pressed her hand on the window. Her heart soared. The formula had worked. Blessed Morrigu, he lived. The wolfsbane portion of the drug knocked him out, making him appear dead.

Maddox gave her a nod. For now, it would be impossible for him to get through the traffic jam of zombies as they blocked his path to her. Though, she imagined him walking over their heads in his zeal to retrieve his mate, but for now it was better he pretended he was dead.

Rave blinked back tears. He would come for her. But how would he find her? Her window was halfway opened. She glanced at her good arm and allowed it to shift into a wing out of sight of the men. With her human hand, she plucked a feather and let it fly out.
Follow my scent
. That is, until they noticed, but for now, their only concern was getting the hell out of Dodge. Good thing she had left the satchel. Dora said the vaccine would offer permanent protection. Rave could not let the cure get in the wrong hands. Better their enemies did not know of its existence.

The big man with the white ponytail turned around and leaned in. “Ma’am, I’m Tony Savoy, Kindred Militia.” More like Colonel Sanders killing werewolves instead of chickens persona. “And you are…?”

Speak. What? Tongue-tied, Rave needed an alias and quick. Lexi. She thought of her human roommate from her study abroad program. Was Lexi even alive? Doubtful. She lived in the SoHo neighborhood in Lower Manhattan. Over the din of the monster engine she shouted, “Lexi Brennan.”

“How did you end up friending a vicious werewolf?”

“Where else? Facebook,” Rave snarked.

He shot her a creepy smile. “Not friending, I mean with your looks, I bet fucking a werewolf?”

The Kindred were keen on the werewolves’ oversexed reputation, but Maddox was not like that. Actually, he was. Rave shook her head. “He turned into a werewolf and saved me from a swarm. Turns out he was still capable of rational thought.” She glared. “Why did you kill him?”

Savoy snorted. “I hunt werewolves and we had a contract to kill this one.”

Contract? The Kindred had always hunted werewolves for monetary rewards, and these days in exchange for ammo and silver, but a Kindred hunter like Maddox was marked for elimination, reward or no reward. “Who paid you to kill a creature that can fight off zombies?”

“None of your concern.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “You killed my men.”

“They shot first.”

“Don’t worry, you won’t stand trial. It’s all about survival of the fittest.”

“So where are you taking me?”

As the sun set over the horizon, he smiled. “To our temporary compound.”

Earlier, she’d memorized a map of Texas and her bird sense noted they drove north. By the patterns and long plains, somewhere in the Texas Panhandle. The monster trucks drove off road to an abandoned military base. The temporary buildings were long neglected, maybe ignored even before the zombie apocalypse. Rather than shift and jump out of the fast moving vehicle and risk breaking her bones, again, she would bide her time and escape later. She could also stick around long enough to get intel on where they kept the chimpanzombies. “Trailer Park. Geez, what do you guys do for entertainment? Let me guess. It’s probably gross.”

“Keep your pretty mouth shut, ma’am,” he drawled like a Southern gentlemen.

An overgrown landing strip held a small twin engine Cessna jet and one helicopter. Commercial crafts since all military craft had mysteriously disappeared early during the zombie apocalypse.

Wherever they were, it was isolated enough to be free of zombies. Probably their main facility was underground. She stepped down and addressed Savoy. “No hard feelings but can I leave?”

“Miss Lexi, do you really want to go off by yourself? Out there are millions of the hungry undead.”

“No offence but I’m not into these digs.”

“Don’t worry, ma’am, we’ll find you better accommodations.”

Better than Yosemite with my hot werewolf mate, doubtful.

They escorted Rave into the third silver trailer as a new helicopter hovered for a landing. Despite the dust whirling around, she saw the insignia of the wolf paw and cross. It belonged to the Benandanti. They must have killed the pilot, or not. She quoted Princess Leia; “I have a bad feeling about this.
”

****

Maddox closed the door of the salon as a sea of zombies shuffled by. They would lose the scent of the humans long before he did. Clever. Ravenna had deliberately plucked one of her black feathers. If she could pluck more, he’d have an easy time trailing her.

He sank his bulk to the floor and felt the wound on his neck from the silver bullet. The lethal bullet hole healed quickly as did the three other bullet wounds on his back. No trace of silver poisoning in his system. A miracle. Whatever Rave injected him with had saved him from a quick and painful death. At first, when he succumbed to the numbing effects of wolfsbane, he’d feared she had betrayed him. Despite her betrayal, he would not have killed her, she was his mate, but he wanted to know why. Too soon, he’d slipped into a deep catatonic sleep. Just as quickly, he’d recovered only to watch her being hauled off by Jaeger’s henchman, and second in command, Savoy. At least she’d seen him and appeared relieved he was alive. His eyes moistened as he stood. How could he have doubted her?

Maddox grabbed her satchel and took out the small vial with the blue solution. An antidote. This is why Rave carried her satchel at all times and why she left it with him. Why had she not mentioned it? Didn’t she trust him? She had good reason to doubt him, but not after their mating.
Right, she didn’t have enough time to tell me.
He kept the vial capped, since whatever cured him had wolfsbane and he didn’t want to risk being accidently knocked out. He returned the vial to the satchel and hung it about his neck. Would the antidote need to be administered every time he was poisoned or was it a permanent cure?

A zombie sniffed against the windowsill and barked a hideous moan, attracted by the residual human scent. He growled. More zombies slammed against the windows and walls. No back door but a small-spiraled stairwell led to a second floor. Escape. He shifted to his totem wolf form and dashed up just as a bunch of zombies crashed in. They wouldn’t eat a wolf or werewolf but their numbers alone could crush him.

The second floor was more like an attic with foul smelling ammonia solutions and other beauty supplies. A small window stood at the end of the crawlspace. The sound of the stairwell crumbling underneath the weight of the zombies gave him no choice. He crashed out the window and onto a mass of the undead ghouls, breaking his fall.