Falling to Ash (25 page)

Jace had already pulled himself together and was up and running, heading for the van’s cab.

‘Where are you going?’ I yelled.

Jace didn’t reply, but I was pretty certain that after all the sappy sharing we’d done tonight it was unlikely he was running out on me. Even if he
would
consider leaving me alone to face the newly risen, there’s no way Jace would run from a fight. Especially not one that involved kicking undead butt.

Whatever he had planned, I wished that he’d hurry up. The zombie had focused its sickly white eyes on me and was sniffing the air in my direction. No matter how blind these things seemed, I couldn’t help wondering how true that really was.

I may not know too much about revenants, but I was a fast learner and this one looked hungry – extremely hungry.

I tried to remember that the monster stumbling
toward
me had, only recently, been a screwed-up kid. I backed away as it advanced on me, trying to figure out a smart plan of action that didn’t involve just running the hell away. I darted behind a nearby tree and peeked out as it shambled unsteadily across the uneven ground. I dived out from the sparse cover and was heading back toward the van when Jace shouted.

‘Duck!’ His voice carried across the little clearing and I didn’t need to be told twice.

I threw myself onto the hard ground, inwardly cursing as I felt something sharp dig into my left leg. The
whoosh
overhead, and then the
thunk
as a crossbow bolt hit the tree behind me, reminded me that there were more important things than ripped jeans and a scraped knee.

I raised my head and scowled. Amazingly, the zombie had gotten out of the way in time and managed to reverse direction. Either it wasn’t as slow as I’d first thought or Byron’s body was adapting to zombification a lot faster than I’d thought possible. He had certainly gone from dead body to walking zombie quicker than Rick had. Chalk up another reason to do more research. Not that I’d admit that to Jace, of course.

I could hear Jace cursing as he struggled to reload the crossbow. Wincing with pain, I climbed to my feet and rubbed my knee. It felt like something was still embedded in the flesh, but I didn’t have time to worry about
that
– not with the creature sniffing the air and turning slowly in Jace’s direction.

‘Moth, go to the back of the van – Dad’s sword is in there,’ he yelled. ‘Be careful – it’s silver.’

I resisted the temptation to comment.
Dad’s sword?
What kind of life had Jace Murdoch really led? I shook my head and jogged in a wide arc, careful to keep Zombie Boy in view, even though Jace seemed to be keeping the creature busy by taking aim and firing the crossbow again.

The zombie howled and I thought I could see the bolt protruding from its shoulder. And then I was at the van, leaping into the dark interior as my eyes already began scanning the piles of weapons.

Surely it couldn’t be too hard to find a freaking sword.

But just as I was lifting more heavily worn tarpaulin, hoping I’d find something useful underneath, there was a bone-jarring crash and the van shook.

I stumbled, but managed to stay on my feet. ‘What—’

Another shockwave cut me off and I found myself on my knees as I grabbed for something – anything – that might help keep me upright.

What was going on out there?

Struggling to stay on my feet, I wavered toward the doors. I couldn’t see anything. Whatever had been pounding on the side of the van had also caused the buckled doors to swing shut.

Gritting my teeth, I pushed my way back out into the graveyard—

And came face-to-face with the blank-faced Zombie Boy. Its hand shot out much faster than I expected, grabbing my throat and lifting me off my feet.

I gripped its wrist in both hands and kicked wildly with my legs, using every bit of my not inconsiderable strength to get free of the implacable creature dangling me like a puppet. The muscles of my neck and shoulders were killing me, but I still managed to look around desperately for Jace.

It didn’t take long for my eyes to focus on his prone body crumpled on the ground next to the van. The crossbow was snapped in half and Jace was face down on the hard earth. Kicking more violently, I refused to think about how badly he might be hurt. I tried to catch my breath as the revenant’s fingers dug into my windpipe. Panic began to claw at my chest when I realized I could no longer take in air.

I mentally gave myself a good slap. Much as I didn’t want to admit it, I didn’t really
need
to breathe anymore. At least, not all the time. It was just a habit. A bad one, according to Theo, but still nothing more than a necessity in human company – something that made vampires fit in when we hung out with mortals. Immediately, the pressure in my lungs eased and I felt more at peace than I could remember feeling in a long time. Sure, my throat was
being
crushed and it felt as though my head might come off at any moment, but this thing couldn’t kill me. Not really, and certainly not by strangling me.

Not that the revenant knew that
. My mind felt sharp and the cold air helped me to think straight. Getting free was going to be a lot easier than I might have thought.

I let my body go limp, making exaggerated choking sounds to keep things as convincing as possible. I had no idea how much awareness the Unmade had, but I was pretty certain it would recognize defeated prey if I made it convincing enough.

And, of course, I smelled dead anyway.

My supposedly lifeless form hung like a scarecrow, and the zombie gave me a final shake, almost as though it were making sure I was done for.

It threw me against the side of the van. The impact jarred all the way through to the roots of my teeth and I slid to the ground next to Jace’s still form. Playing dead in those next few moments was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. Those precious seconds when I could’ve been checking on Jace seemed to take a lifetime.

The monster reached down to us, prodding at me with the toe of a heavy boot and then crouching down next to me. My hair covered my face and I peeked out at the milky white eyes that swept over my body. It was almost as though it was deciding which part of me looked the tastiest.

Ugh
, that was possibly the grossest thing I’d ever thought.

As the zombie wrapped cold fingers around my wrist, I allowed myself to take a breath. OK, so it was going for the arm, just like Rick had done with Nurse Fox. Must be a zombie delicacy or something.

I let the monster get a firm grip and coiled my body, preparing to spring and use my fangs as a weapon—

And then Jace jumped to his feet, plunging his dagger into the creature’s neck until a fine spray of blood showered me with warm salty drops.

Zombie Boy staggered and released my arm as it clutched at its neck, trying to find the source of the attack. The knife didn’t seem to be causing it too much pain, although it did swipe at the hilt a few times with wildly uncoordinated hands. The gash in its throat gaped obscenely at us.

‘What were you
doing
?’ Jace yelled. ‘Waiting for it to snack on your goddamn arm?’

I rolled over and pushed up onto my feet. I ignored the hand that Jace held out to me. ‘I thought you were dead! Why didn’t you move sooner?’

Meanwhile Zombie Byron turned slow circles as it tried to see what was sticking out of its neck.

‘I was just
playing
dead.’ Jace had a cut on his forehead which was already blooming with a multi-colored bruise around it – he was building up quite a collection
of
injuries – but apart from that he seemed OK.

I flashed him a quick smile and held up two fingers. ‘How many fingers?’

‘Cute,’ he muttered. He watched the still-spinning revenant with something like fascination shining in his brown eyes. ‘Wow, this guy must’ve been particularly dumb as a human being.’

My stomach contracted and the smile slid from my face. ‘Don’t talk about him like that. He’s dead – long gone.’ I gestured at the shambling thing.

Jace shrugged and looked down at his destroyed crossbow. Regret flitted across his face. ‘Damn, that’s the second bow I’ve lost when you’ve been around.’

‘I couldn’t find your dad’s sword,’ I said. ‘How are we going to, you know . . .’ I made a cutting motion across my throat.

Jace raised an eyebrow. ‘We’ll burn it, like before.’

I dodged a flailing white arm. ‘With what, Einstein? The lighter’s long gone and I don’t have any matches.’ I fixed Jace with a hopeful expression. ‘Unless you used to be a Boy Scout? Maybe you could rub two sticks together and we could make a fire.’

Jace patted down his pockets, cursing as he came up with a box of matches that turned out to be empty.

I gazed at him for a moment, trying hard to focus on our predicament and not on how beautiful the angles of his cheekbones were.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I know!’

‘I know—’ he said.

‘
Dashboard lighter
,’ we shouted in unison.

I raised my hand. ‘High five!’

Jace shook his head and ignored me. ‘Keep it busy – I’ll be back in a minute.’

I watched Zombie Boy stagger in the direction of the tree line. There was something incredibly sad about the way it struggled to negotiate the terrain; I had to swallow a sudden dryness in my throat. Guilt hit me; how dare I see ending a kid’s life as a victory. That’s what this thing had been, once upon a time. Yeah, it had tried to kill me, but
he
hadn’t known what it was doing. It was sort of pathetic seeing him like this – seeing
it
like this, I reminded myself. It seemed like something crucial had short-circuited in its brain. The revenant was stuck in a loop of trying to figure out what was jammed into its neck, but no matter how hard it tried it couldn’t get its hands on the dagger’s hilt.

So it kept turning those slow circles, looking for an opponent that didn’t even exist. I didn’t have to do a thing to keep it occupied – it was managing just fine all by itself.

Jace ran back brandishing the lighter in one hand, and a beer bottle with a rag sticking out the top in the other. The shining tip of the dash lighter shone clear in the darkness that blanketed the cemetery. I let my attention
wander
, for a second almost hypnotized by the orange glow.

A gunshot rang out, echoing in the silence like a thunderclap.

Jace stopped in his tracks. ‘Get down!’ He hit the deck, and I spared a thought for the gear he was carrying. I hoped he didn’t set
himself
on fire.

I had already thrown myself onto the ground, instinct taking over.
Holy shit!
Another shot exploded into the night and I cringed.

I rolled beneath the van, feeling the warmth from the recently started engine. Crawling on my stomach to the back of the vehicle, I tried to pick out Jace lying on the ground, but it was difficult to spot him in his army jacket. I hoped that meant that the shooter would have trouble targeting him too.

That’s if we even
are
the targets, I thought. I could see the zombie’s feet shuffling left and then right in a bizarre sort of dance, and had a horrible suspicion about who – or what – the real target was.

Crap
. Who was out here taking pot shots at zombies? As if I couldn’t guess.

The explosive crack of another bullet made me grit my teeth. If Papa Murdoch had somehow followed us, he clearly didn’t care too much about drawing attention to what was going on out here.

Catching sight of movement in the overgrown patch
of
dying shrubs over to my right, I sighed with relief when I saw the pale glow of Jace’s hair. He really needed to wear a hat when he went out on night-time missions. I rolled my eyes. Here I was, grovelling in the dirt beneath a van in a graveyard, while some crazy person used a revenant for shooting practise, and I was worried about Jace’s lack of appropriate ‘special ops’ clothing?

Another shot and Zombie Byron jerked back a step. And then another and another, each sharp report of the gun causing the creature to shudder. Its long black coat jumped in multiple places, again and again, as though tiny creatures were burrowing beneath it.

But it wasn’t falling. It – the
revenant
– wasn’t falling down. I knew that silver bullets could cause the undead pain, but I didn’t know how much harm they would really do to a zombie. There’s no way they’d kill a vampire – not unless several rounds were pumped directly into the heart, anyway. Was the shooter even using silver bullets?

The creature finally collapsed and lay twitching – whatever he’d been hit with, it was enough to incapacitate if not ‘kill’.

Jace began crawling toward me, his eyes fixed intently on mine as he made for the underside of the van. I tried to read his expression, but he reached me before I could think about it for long enough.

‘Budge over,’ he grunted as he pulled himself alongside me and lay panting for a moment. He rolled onto his
back
and I was suddenly aware of how close we were. His hip was pressed firmly against mine as we lay beneath Thomas Murdoch’s Batmobile.

I was still lying on my front, my nose almost poking out of the precarious metal shelter. Jace was on his back, his head by my feet and his legs bent at an awkward angle to ensure all of him was tucked beneath the van’s chassis.