Broken Angel: A Zombie Love Story (2 page)

I was not surprised when the Most Honored
Upper Governor Robert Vandom Witherspoon III came to this tiny
bridge in a forgotten park deep in the dingy slums. He would always
come for what was his, of course, even to Cheapside. What was his,
no one else could have.

Vigor pulsed in my veins, power and vitality
restored by Dr. Kade’s miraculous drug. I could feel. Oh, yes,
indeed. Burning hatred ate at the corners of my mind like rats in
the alleys I’d wandered until I found my way home.

To this bridge.

“Come with me, dear.” Robert was carefully
polite but firm. “It’s time to go back.”

He wasn’t surprised to find Kade with me. He
even inclined his head slightly, the most civility the Upper
Governor should give a lowly doctor, even a brilliant researcher
who’d made him a billionaire a million times over.

Even a doctor who’d returned me to life, not
once but twice.

“I remember.”

He flinched and shot an accusatory look at
Kade over my shoulder. “That’s good. Maybe the nightmares will
cease.”

“Is that all you have to say to me?” My skin
blazed, hot and tight instead of frozen and numb. Even though
Robert stood a dozen feet away, I could hear his heart beating,
skipping faster and faster. Sweat glistened on his forehead, and I
smelled the bitter sharpness of fear radiating from him.

“It’s time to go home.” He reached into his
pocket and glanced absent-mindedly at the fancy gold watch. How I
hated that damned thing. How I hated him. “I have a very important
meeting that I was forced to reschedule because I had to come fetch
you. You belong with me, Angelina.”

“No, I belong
to
you. Isn’t that what
you mean?”

“Angel…”

“No.” I rounded on Kade. Surprised by my
fury, he drew back, lifting a hand to calm me. “Stay out of this.”
I turned back to my husband. “Are you going to kill me again?”

His guilty gaze flickered wildly between me
and Kade. “What has he been telling you?”

Kade’s forehead creased. “What do you
mean?”

“He killed me. He paid someone to murder me.
I remember!”

“Never!” Robert took a step closer,
emboldened by Kade’s confusion. My husband had always suspected
Kade of cajoling me into leaving him, but he really knew nothing at
all about the day I’d left my wealthy, powerful husband and swore
never to come back. “This is ridiculous. You’re sick and confused.
Let’s go home and take your medicine. You know how you get when you
miss a shot.”

“I turn into a zombie. Unfortunately, I’m
not much better when I do get those shots, because then I become
the perfect doll you march out to show to your business partners.
I’m not your doll anymore, Robert.”

“Those shots saved your life at great
expense. I’ve spent a fortune on your health, Angelina. Dr. Kade
healed your blood condition. He even healed you after the accident.
You’ve cost me quite enough and now I must insist—”

I smiled and my husband paled. I sauntered
toward him, swaying with each step like the well-bred doll he’d
married, dressed in the beautiful clothes and jewels of Upper. “It
was no accident, Robert.”

He recoiled, cowering against the stone
railing.

“You followed me after I left you. You’d had
me followed for months and knew exactly whom I met and where. It
was nothing for you to have one of your friends delay Dr. Kade at
the facility. Then you slipped one of the street thugs a few coins
and ordered him to attack me. You’d rather see me dead than free.
Isn’t that right?”

“No, no, I don’t know what you’re talking
about!”

“I never would have suspected you except for
one little thing.” I slipped my hand into his coat pocket and
retrieved his watch. “Your murdering thief took a shine to your
antique watch. I saw him with it. I even grabbed it as he
bludgeoned me to death. I’m surprised you were able to get all of
my blood out of the engraving.”

“You… you left him? For me?” Kade touched my
shoulder, his voice trembling with rising anger as he glared at my
husband. “Then you had her killed?”

“She’s obviously delusional. You need to
adjust her medication again, Doctor.”

Kade stepped closer to me, a subtle
allegiance that warmed my heart and brought tears to my eyes. All
through our affair, he’d been reluctant to push me into a decision.
He’d sworn to never ask me to give up my life in Upper to be a
doctor’s wife. I’d done so willingly, even though it had ultimately
cost me my life.

“I found her in the water. Her skull had
been cracked open, her face beaten until she was practically
unrecognizable. I dragged her to the bridge and tried to revive
her, but she was gone.” His voice cracked with grief. “You begged
me to save her, even when I cautioned you it’d been too long. I
couldn’t guarantee she’d ever recover or live normally again. All
that time, you wept and wrung your hands, blubbering it had all
been a mistake, and I felt sorry for you. You killed her!”

Eyes wide and frantic, Robert jumped back
and whipped out a gun. “Angelina, come with me. I have what you
want, Dr. Kade. I know all your secrets, yes? You’ll do nothing,
absolutely nothing.”

Gathering all my strength, I launched at
Robert. His arm jerked toward me, his eyes rolling in his sweaty
face. I was already dead, so what did it matter if he shot me?
Would I roam the city with a bullet hole in me and that macabre
doll smile plastered to my shattered face?

Kade slammed into me just as the gun fired.
He fell to the stone walkway, his face slack with shock. Red
bloomed on his shirt, his chest a fountain of blood. Clenching my
hands into fists, I screamed with rage, agony, love. Such senseless
love. It didn’t matter if Robert shot me, so why had Kade stopped
the bullet himself?

I couldn’t save him. I didn’t know how.

I clamped my mouth shut to silence the feral
moans coming out of my throat. Slowly, I turned to my husband. His
gaze darted left and right, seeking escape, but I had my quarry in
sight. Murderous fury gave me even more strength. When he turned to
run, I jumped on him. My fingers slid into his flesh effortlessly.
I rode him to the ground, not numb this time but viciously
alive.

“You’ve taken everything away from me that I
ever cared about. You took away my love. You took away my life,
turning me into a mindless, shattered doll. Never again, Robert. I
will never be your doll again!”

I grabbed a handful of hair on either side
of his ear and slammed his face down into the stone. I banged his
head repeatedly, shattering him like he’d shattered me. Until his
skull fell apart in my hands, a mass of gray brains and bits of
bone splattered with blood.

Crawling aside, I retched bitter acid onto
the stones. My heart pounded, my pulse a jackhammer in my head. Why
was I still alive? I could feel the breeze in my hair even while my
hands oozed brains and sticky blood. I could smell the stench of
Robert’s bodily fluids, yet lilacs also perfumed the air.

I don’t deserve to live.

Standing, I gripped the stone railing of the
bridge and looked down into the dark waters. No moon tonight. I’d
let the waters close over my head and suck me away. Terror rattled
inside my mind, though. Would I rise and walk again? Like the doll,
drooling water from my mouth and useless lungs, my skin pasty white
and stone-cold dead…

What would become of my body that didn’t
seem to know its life was over?

Hands closed about my shoulders. A scream of
terror built in my throat. I stiffened, until I recognized Kade’s
spicy scent that soothed the panic ravaging my mind. “I thought you
were dead.”

“I was.” He slipped his arms around me and
drew me back against the shelter of his chest. His heart beat
steady against my back. “Rather, I would have died nearly a decade
ago from an inoperable brain tumor. I used proof of my experiments
to gain Robert’s initial investment, but then he threatened to
expose me to his Upper peers if I didn’t give him a considerable
ownership in my research facilities. I would have lost everything
without his funding, so I went along with him. Then I met you. You
were never my first human trial, Angel.”

“Of course.” I let out a harsh laugh but
tears spilled from my eyes. “I always wondered how he’d come to own
such a large percentage of your research.”

Silently, he waited for it all to add up in
my head. I’d fallen in love with someone who was technically dead.
Without my consent, he’d given me the same drugs. Yet without
him…

“I killed Robert.” Guilt choked me and I
whirled in his arms to bury my face against his chest. “I’m a
monster, Kade.”

“How can you be a monster when you’re my
Angel?” He tilted my face up to his and smiled with such love that
even my drug-enhanced heart skipped a beat. “You’re a little out of
control right now because of withdrawal symptoms and the mini-death
your body went through again. Some of your cells died because you
didn’t get my drugs, but those cells are regenerating even as we
speak. You’re alive, Angel, and Robert deserved to die. He had you
killed, remember? He shot me, too. It’s over, and we’re together.
That’s all that matters.”

“What will happen to us?”

“As long as we take regular shots, our lives
will continue as normal. The people down here know what he did to
you. They still talk about the broken angel found in the water, so
perfect and beautiful she could only come from Upper City. Robert
failed to eliminate his hired killer before the man bragged of his
newfound wealth at every bar in Cheapside.”

The grim slash of Kade’s mouth and the
dangerous gleam of his narrowed eyes told me he’d eliminated the
man who’d beaten me to death. I couldn’t find it in myself to be
sorry or to accuse him of murder, not when my hands were covered
with my husband’s blood.

“They’ll find Robert’s body and the
aristocracy will roar at the injustice, but nobody will ever think
to question his beautiful Upper wife. We can continue our lives as
we wish.” Leaning down, Kade brushed his lips tenderly against
mine, his breath sweet on my face. “But if you don’t want to go on
living like this, then we’ll sit right here on this bridge and wait
for the drugs to wear off. Our cells will die, our hearts will
cease beating, and we’ll be as dead as Robert. We’ll go together,
Angel, I promise. I won’t leave your side until our last
breath.”

The night was alive with the music of
crickets. A nightingale sang in the willow trailing over the
water.

Alive. We’re alive.

I pulled gently out of his arms and forced
myself back to Robert’s body. Bending down, I searched for the gold
watch he’d worn so proudly.
They don’t make watches like this
any longer
, he’d bragged to his business acquaintances. Then
he’d looked over at me and winked, as though to say they don’t make
women like me, either.

Not unless you have a few million to spare
for the drugs that can remake genetics and regenerate life.

He clutched the watch in his hand, exactly
like they’d found it on my dead body when they pulled me from the
water. I tore it free of his grasp and returned to Kade’s side.
Gold glinted in the starlight as I tossed the watch over the
railing. It sank into the water with a gentle plop to gleam faintly
in the darkness.

“Let’s go home.”

“They’ll never accept me in Upper City, even
though my bank account rivals our deceased Governor’s.”

The Upper aristocrats had barely claimed me
because my great-grandmother had a cousin who’d made his living in
Cheapside. If they’d found out about my illness, they would have
reviled me no matter how rich and powerful my husband. “I don’t
care.”

“As long as you don’t mind living in
Cheapside, we’ll give away shots to anybody who wants them.”

A faint throb outlined the cracks in my
skull and the web of knitted fractures across my cheekbones.
Turning to Kade, I smiled. “As long as you don’t mind a porcelain
doll with a broken face.”

He took my bloody hand in his. “I love my
broken Angel.”

If you
enjoyed this story, you may also like

THE ZOMBIE BILLIONAIRE’S

VIRGIN WITCH

A Zombie Category Romance

Because even zombies deserve a happily ever
after.

Yiorgos Michelopoulos strode into the steamy
kitchen of his most recently acquired restaurant and everyone began
disappearing. Wait staff scurried out the swinging doors,
presumably to attend to
Remy’s
guests, but since the dining
room was empty—and had been every night for months—they had no
cause for haste.

Other than escape.

The sous-chef backed away, finding a hiding
place in the large refrigerator. Yiorgos hoped the man froze to
death.

The only employees brave enough to remain in
his presence were Paul, the acclaimed executive chef he’d sent here
two weeks ago to turn things around, and Dmitri, the manager of the
restaurant and one of his closest friends. Dmitri had left his
prestigious job at a premiere New York hotel and moved his wife and
kids to Missouri in order to help him.

Despite its remote location,
Remy’s
was proving to be the most formidable nightmare they’d ever
faced.

Without saying a word to either of them,
Yiorgos picked up a spoon and sampled the sauce bubbling on the
grimy stove—which had been immaculate this morning when the staff
had arrived. The rich béchamel curdled on his tongue like spoiled
cream.

Furious, he threw the spoon into the
stainless steel sink. “Disgusting.”

“I know.” Paul moaned, wringing his hands in
his stained apron. “I don’t understand it, Mr. Michelopoulos. I
cook my most treasured dishes and everything turns out bad, very
bad. This whole place is cursed.”