Alexander Death (The Paranormals, Book 3) (30 page)

Four zombies turned and sprayed bullets at the breakaway pair, who then had to drop to the ground and return fire. The invaders' guns slowed the ragged row of zombies, gradually chipping away at them. The zombies, for their part, depended on Alexander for directions and so weren't the most precise shooters. They used a lot of long, wild bursts.

Then a series of booms echoed across the lawn, and the row of zombies were quickly sliced to pieces. A massive machine gun on a mount had swiveled out from within the helicopter, and now it provided cover for the eight men, pulverizing the zombies with hundreds of rounds. The invaders advanced.

“What a mess,” Alexander said. He lifted the lid on the green case and drew out what looked like a sawed-off shotgun. He broke it open and cocked the hammer at the back, then slid in a single round that looked like the Bluebird juice cans Jenny used to drink in elementary school. He snapped the gun closed.

“That's a big bullet,” Jenny said.

“That's because it's a grenade,” Alexander said. He flipped up the sight and took aim at the helicopter below. There was a hollow popping sound that reminded Jenny of blowing air across a glass Coke bottle. The grenade punched the ground in front of the helicopter and detonated, throwing up a huge cloud of dirt.

The invaders hit the ground at the explosion. Alexander broke the grenade launcher open and handed it to Jenny. “Reload.”

“Um...okay.” Jenny copied what he had done, taking one of the cylindrical grenades and feeding it in. She cocked the hammer back and closed the breech.

While she did this, Alexander pointed to the dilapidated building again. A second string of zombies grabbed up the AK-47s and fired at the invaders. The rest of the zombies, seven or eight of them, charged the helicopter, unarmed.

Alexander fired another grenade at the helicopter, and this one struck the whirling blades at the top. The helicopter blades shattered and shot out in every direction. One fragment sliced an approaching zombie in half. Another skewered one of the invading men.

Jenny watched as one big chunk of blade sped towards them. “Watch out!” she screamed, grabbing his arm. They dropped to the floor together. The helicopter blade skipped off the low outer wall of the terrace, then smashed through Alexander's bedroom window.

“That was pretty cool,” Jenny said.

Alexander reloaded the grenade launcher, and this time he aimed for a pair of black-armored men. The grenade struck the ground between them, blasting the two men away from each other. They landed heavily on the ground. The two zombie jaguars leaped out of the shadows, pounced on the two blasted men, and began ripping them to pieces.

“It's fun to be a grenadier,” Alexander said. He held out the launcher to her. “Want to try?”

“Sure.” Jenny reloaded the weapon, then got up on her knees and looked over the wall. She lined up the helicopter in her crosshairs.

The zombies swarmed the helicopter like ants on a rotten squirrel. They hauled out another black-armored man and chomped on his throat, which the bulletproof armor left bare.

“Get moving, Manuel,” Alexander said into his walkie-talkie. “Clean up.”

Below, Manuel and his men opened fire on the few remaining invaders, who found themselves under fire from two directions, the house and the lurching knot of armed zombies.

“Are you going to shoot?” he asked.

“If it's not Toscano, who the hell is it?” Jenny asked. “The government?”

“Does it matter right now?”

Manuel and his men walked among the fallen invaders, shooting the wounded.

“Manuel, the helicopter,” Alexander said. “See if we can get a prisoner or two. Find out who these people are.”

Manuel's team advanced on the helicopter. The zombies stumbled out, clearing the way for them, and then Manuel and two other men stepped inside.

They hauled out another man in a black helmet and matching armor. Manuel stripped off their captive's helmet, revealing a young man with strawberry blond hair. Manuel turned him to face Alexander and Jenny on the terrace.

It was Seth.

“The healer,” Alexander said. “He's the one behind the attack.”

“That asshole,” Jenny said.

Jenny followed Alexander down to an underground room below the main house. Seth was there, stripped of his helmet and gloves and armor, his face beaten but already healing. He wore only black fatigues now, and he was barefoot. His hands were bound by ropes, each of which was anchored in a hook in the wall, so that he had to remain standing.

A folding table had been set up in front of him. On its surface were several blades and a hacksaw.

Seth's head lifted when Jenny entered, and he managed to smile. “Jenny.”

Jenny looked at him coldly. Alexander had given her the task of dealing with Seth, and now he stood back with Manuel and two of the Tijuana gunmen, while Jenny approached the prisoner.

“What were you thinking, Seth?” Jenny asked. “That you could come and take me at gunpoint? You didn't think we would fight back?”

“I thought you were kidnapped,” Seth said.

Jenny laughed. “As if anybody could force me to act against my will.”

Seth gave her a puzzled look. “Are you feeling okay, Jenny?”

“I'm not feeling okay. I'm feeling great.” Jenny wiped her nose—she'd just snorted up two thick lines of coke to get herself ready. “Top of the fucking world, Seth. But, you know, I have just a few questions for you, before I kill you.”

“Before you do what?” Seth asked, and Alexander chuckled.

Jenny took a scalpel from the table. She prodded the tip into the hollow of Seth's throat. “First. Who was that girl in Charleston?”

“The girl? Jenny, that was a mistake. I'm sorry.”

“It was definitely a mistake. And then you decided to attack me here. That was a mistake, too.”

“I came to rescue you.”

“Rescue me?” Jenny smirked as she dragged the blade down across his chest, slicing open flesh and muscle.

“Jenny, stop!” Seth yelled. “What's wrong with you? What happened to you?” He looked at Alexander.

“There's nothing wrong with me,” Jenny said. “I remember so many past lives now. Alexander remembers all of his, too. He showed me how. I remember what I am, and what all of us are.”

“I know what I am,” Seth said. “I'm the person who loves you.”

Jenny snickered. “You're the charmer's tool. She sent you to seduce me.” Jenny slashed the blade diagonally across his stomach, and Seth gasped in pain. “You thought you could trick me.”

“What are you talking about, Jenny? I've always been honest with you. I'm not playing any trick.”

She scowled. “Maybe that's what you think, healer. But sometimes, you can hold such a strong intention when you incarnate that your little incarnated personality works to carry out your purpose, without really knowing why. So maybe you are still caught in the illusion of being Seth Barrett, as I was caught in the illusion of being Jenny Morton. But you are not him, and I am not her.” Jenny moved closer, lifting his chin with the tip of the blade. “Don't you remember anything?”

“I remember all the time we spent together,” Seth said. “I remember that we loved each other. You're the one who's forgotten.”

“That was only a game,” Jenny said. “The charmer wanted you to get close to me. That's why you think you love me. That was a plot etched deep in your soul. But our kind don't truly love, Seth. We don't have human souls. We are older than love itself.”

“That's not true!” Seth said. “We love each other. We're learning to be human.”

“We cannot learn to be what we are not. You are a serpent, trying to play monkey.”

“That's not true, either,” Seth said. “I don't know what you think you remember—”

“My memories are very clear,” Jenny said.

“And they tell you...what? That you belong with this guy?” Seth nodded to Alexander. “He's my great-grandfather. Did you know that? Jonathan Seth Barrett I. He made his first fortune with plantations worked by zombies. What are you doing with them this lifetime, Gramps?”

Alexander smirked.

“Is that true?” Jenny asked Alexander.

“Fallen Oak was my sandbox first,” Alexander said. “I left my mark.”

Jenny thought of the picture of the first Jonathan Seth Barrett shaking hands with Woodrow Wilson, his eyes like dark steel. The man who'd built the family graveyard and so obsessively laid out instructions for how he was to be remembered by succeeding generations, and how they were to act. It was a pathetic echo of how an Egyptian pharaoh created his own glorious funerary complex and priestly cult, all to maintain his memory and encourage people to worship him after death. All to avoid being forgotten.

“Cheap zombie labor,” Seth said to Alexander. “I'm guessing you have zombies growing drugs for this cartel you've joined. Cheap zombie labor. That's how you keep margins up on a plantation, am I right, Gramps? That's what you told my dad.”

Alexander answered with a short, cold laugh, and his dark eyes did not look amused.

“When you look at the big picture, you're just stuck doing the same thing, over and over again, one lifetime to the next, aren't you?” Seth asked. “Caught in the same loop. Can't do anything new.”

“You don't know what you're talking about, healer,” Alexander said.

“I think I do, zombie guy,” Seth said. “I was dead for a while. Maybe I don't remember everything, but I saw enough to realize the past isn't worth remembering. I don't want to go back and be who I was before. I'm alive now, I make my choices now. And leaving the past behind makes us better than what we were.”

“You can't leave it behind. Your past is what you are,” Jenny said.

“No, it isn't,” Seth said. “What you do right now, that's what you really are.”

“Just kill him, Jenny,” Alexander said. “I've had enough of this conversation.”

“You take orders from him now?” Seth asked.

“No one gives me orders,” Jenny said. “And I'm in no hurry to kill you. I want to watch you suffer first. Your punishment for tricking me into loving you.”

“It wasn't a trick!” Seth snapped. Jenny punched him in the mouth.

“Stop,” she hissed. “Stop lying. You've always served the love-charmer.”

“Even if that's true, I don't serve her anymore,” Seth said. “I'm not a prisoner of my past. Unlike zombie boy over there. And now you let him trick you into being his slave—”

“Quiet!” Jenny plunged the knife into his stomach.

“Ow, stop, Jenny!” Seth said. “That's going to take a minute to heal.”

“I know.”

Seth glanced at Alexander, then back at Jenny. “So that's it. You're going to kill me and run off with him.”

“Alexander and I have always been together,” Jenny said. “You belong with Ashleigh. That is how it has always been.”

“Always?” Seth asked. “I may not remember much, but I did see our last few lives together. You weren't with him then. You were with me.”

“I don't think so...” Jenny began, but the intense look in Seth's eyes triggered something inside her. She remembered when Alexander had opened up her past-life memories, there were a couple that he steered her right past without looking. Her most recent lives.

“Jenny, we need to hurry up and kill him,” Alexander said. “We have to dispose of all these bodies.”

“One second. I'm just trying to decide how I want to do it.” Jenny remembered herself in early industrial London, hurrying up a narrow, crowded street with an armload of books whose subjects ranged from scientific medical treatises to kabbalistic magic. She was going to meet Seth in the small, dusty loft where he lived. They were working together, trying to figure out the meaning of their powers. The anticipation of seeing him made her face flush.

Then another life, decades later. Jenny was part of a traveling circus in America in the early twentieth century. She was part of the freak show—people would pay pennies to see “The Most Diseased Woman in the World.” One week, the circus pitched its tents in a field alongside a tent revival, where she met a boy who, according to the preacher that he traveled with, could heal any ailment for a quarter. Once they met, they never parted again.

Now, the last piece of herself fell into place. Her relationship with the healer was no trick. She had chosen to pull away from the dead-raiser...just as the healer had chosen to pull away from the charmer.

“Jenny,” Alexander said.

“This is no good,” Jenny said. “I can cut him up all night, but he heals too fast. If you're really in a hurry, I need to burn him.”

“Jenny!” Seth said. “What's wrong with you?”

“Shut up, healer,” Jenny said. She turned to Manuel and the two gunmen, who were off to her right, near the door. “Someone bring me a pan of hot coals. And tongs.”

Manuel looked to Alexander, who was on Jenny's left. Alexander gave a quick nod, and Manuel gestured for his two gunmen to go. They both hurried out of the room.

“Seth, Seth, Seth...” Jenny traced her scalpel down along his rib cage, drawing a thin line of blood. “You really had me fooled for a while. I thought you loved me.”