Forsaken by the Others (17 page)

“Tiny, why don’t you take Sara somewhere safe—” I started to say, but Sara cut me
off.

“No. I’m coming with you guys.” That didn’t sound like a good idea. She looked like
a stiff wind would knock her on her ass. She lifted her fist, giving me a fierce glare
in return for my dubious look. “You can’t keep me out of this fight. If the necromancer
has been following us through me, then it doesn’t matter where I go. He’ll find me
again, and I’ll end up leading him right into one of the White Hats’ hideouts.”

Devon rubbed his temples. “This is too complicated. So we need to help the necromancer
kill Clyde, but then we have to wait just long enough for one of you two to ask him
for help removing those runes—and then we have to try to kill him? How are we supposed
to know the right time to get involved? It’s not like he’s going to be an easy kill,
even after he’s worn down from the fight with Clyde. Not if the mess up there is anything
to go by.” He gestured at the freeway, encompassing the sounds of gunfire and screams,
punctuated by the occasional roar from the shifted werewolf, only a few hundred feet
away.

That gave me an idea. I could have kissed him if it wouldn’t have sent the wrong message
about my intentions.

“Follow me!”

Devon helped support Sara. Tiny wasn’t too quick on his feet, but he was able to follow
without much trouble.

I led them around the fence and up the freeway off-ramp, thrusting the gun into Devon’s
outstretched hand. Better not to face the Were while armed. Didn’t want an unspoken
threat to piss off our one shot at turning the tables on the necromancer and both
vampires right off the bat. Werewolves were so touchy about those visual cues.

The Goliath was still rampaging across the freeway, gallumphing its way from one clump
of zombies to the next. Most of the people who had stayed in their cars were watching
with their hands and faces pressed to their windows, only withdrawing when a zombie
came too close.

Earlier, I hadn’t noticed, but the Goliath was making a sincere effort not to damage
any of the vehicles around it. It moved its great body gracefully considering all
of the many places its skin was torn and bleeding, chunks taken out in human-sized
bites. Every now and again it bumped into one of the stopped cars, but it never knocked
any over or even scratched the paint. It had developed a system for killing the zombies
still coming after it, getting up on its hind legs to grab a torso with one paw, and
using a foreclaw from the other to pop the head off.

What was left of each zombie flopped bonelessly to the ground once the Goliath let
it go. It was a pretty efficient, if disgusting, system.

There weren’t too many left. I scrambled on top of one of the nearby cars, some expensive
luxury sedan with a long, low-slung front end, ignoring the owner’s indignant shouts
as I got up on the roof. Sara, Tiny, and Devon crouched behind it, all three of them
hissing variants of “Get down! Are you crazy?”

Why, yes, I was feeling a bit on edge at the moment.

A quick glance farther along the freeway gave me a glimpse of flashing red and blue
police lights, and a better view of the helicopters hovering overhead. One had “LAPD”
on it and seemed to be more focused on the jam ahead, but it looked like the rest
were from news stations. A handful of them were closer to this end of the jam, probably
videoing the Goliath melting zombie faces.

“Hey! Hey, you . . . werewolf!” I waved my arms over my head, shouting at the Were.
It growled as one of the walking dead grabbed at its hind leg, shaking the cadaver
off and then pinning it with that foot, before looking at me. “I need to talk to you!”

The Were lifted its lip, turning its attention back to the remaining zombies. I stomped
my foot, making the roof of the car make a hollow sound that didn’t do anything to
get the Were’s attention, other than making it flick its ears back. The guy inside
yelled again, but I ignored him.

“C’mon, you asshole! I haven’t got all day!”

This time it looked at me over its shoulder, hackles raised and pearlescent fangs
gleaming as it turned narrowed, golden eyes on me. Finally. A hand was grabbing at
my ankle—Devon or Tiny, I was sure—tugging at my pants leg for attention. I couldn’t
listen to them right then. I had hundreds of pounds of pissed off werewolf leaning
meaningfully in my direction.

“Listen to me, and listen good,” I said, adopting as dangerous a tone as I could muster.
It must have worked, because the Were was paying attention, even if it was still bristling
at me, meeting my challenging stare. There was something to be said for the lessons
Chaz had imparted about what kind of dominant behavior a Were deferred to. My asshole
ex hadn’t been good for much, but the lessons I’d learned, I’d taken to heart. “You
want to stop what’s controlling all of these things? Find your alpha and tell him
to bring the rest of his pack to Clyde Seabreeze’s place. Help me, and I’ll help you.
Santa Monica. Midnight. Tonight. Got it?”

It flicked its ears in my direction, then went back to tearing apart the few remaining
walking dead. I hoped that meant yes. If not, I had no idea how we were going to stop
the necromancer. That was assuming Gideon could destroy Clyde’s retinue and heal Sara
before then.

Maybe it made me a cold, heartless bitch—too much like the vampires I hated, calculating
and cruel like Max, Fabian, and Clyde—but I wasn’t going to leave any loose ends.
If Gideon could remove Sara’s curse, I’d find some way to distract the Goliath werewolves
once they showed up until he was done. Possibly by setting them after Fabian. If Gideon
couldn’t deactivate the runes, heaven help him, because I would do everything in my
power and use every resource at my disposal to see that he was hunted to the ends
of the earth for hurting her like he had.

In many ways, it might have made me as monstrous as the thing I had feared turning
into, but there wasn’t even the slightest twinge of my conscience when I saw the way
Sara’s skin was stretched tight over the bones of her hands and face as she looked
up from her crouched position behind the car. The dark circles under her eyes had
worsened, and if I hadn’t known better, I might have thought she’d been bitten by
a vampire given how weak and parchment pale she’d become.

Hopping down from on top of the car, I shrugged off Tiny and Devon’s hands, flexing
and then clenching my fingers until my knuckles gave a satisfying crack.

“Let’s get back to the car.”

It would take a little while for the gridlock to clear up, but we still had a couple
of hours before sundown. If we couldn’t use the freeway, hopefully there would be
another way to get across town in time to reach Clyde’s place before Fabian and Gideon
attacked. Perhaps Gideon would be too distracted by the fight and the number of zombies
he had to control to notice we were coming.

“Shia, this is crazy. What the heck are you trying to do?”

I paused so Sara could catch up, hooking an arm through hers and slowing my pace to
help her the rest of the way back to the car. “Trust me. I’ve got a plan.”

Devon’s hand was heavy on my shoulder as he fell into step on my other side. “We deserve
to know. Especially if you expect the rest of the White Hats to help.”

“Fine. First, we’re going to help Fabian and Gideon take down Clyde.”

All three of the others shot me horrified looks.

“Then we’re going to let Gideon fix those marks on Sara. If he can’t fix it before
the Goliaths arrive, we’ll set them after Fabian. If he does fix it, once he’s done,
we’ll let the werewolves mop up what’s left of the vampires and get rid of Gideon.”

“Shia.” Sara’s voice was hushed, strained. “Shia, no. You can’t—”

“Can’t what? Can’t fix this?”

“Can’t treat them like pawns. This isn’t your fight, and it’s not like you can fix
what’s been done to me.”

Hissing a breath between my teeth, I shrugged his hand off my shoulder and stomped
forward, half-dragging Sara with me. The sound of mixed fear and pain she made was
enough to jolt me out of my anger.

I stopped, setting my hands on her upper arms, both to keep her on her feet and from
pulling away. It gave me a good view of the engorged, blackened veins pulsing under
my skin, further drawing me out of my rage and reminding me that I needed to stay
calm. Something was trying to break its way free of this flimsy cage of flesh. If
I couldn’t stay focused, couldn’t keep my emotions under control, who knew what kind
of monster I might turn into.

“Listen,” I said, noting that my voice was unnaturally deep—still wasn’t totally in
control yet, had to focus. “Listen. I’m not going to let you suffer the consequences
for my mistakes. We’re going to make that damned necromancer try to fix this. You
hear me? I’m not leaving this goddamned town until I know for sure if he can make
this right. And I’m not going to abandon Devon and Tiny and Analie’s family to deal
with him by themselves when it’s over. Give me a chance. This can work. We just have
to time it right.”

“But what if it doesn’t?”

I turned a flat stare on Devon. He didn’t give an inch.

“What’s plan B? What if Clyde wins? What if the werewolves decide to attack before
midnight, or don’t show at all?”

Fear as much as rage threatened to overwhelm my better sense. I wanted to do something
physically violent to make the questions stop—which meant there was far more wrong
with me than I had originally thought.

Closing my eyes and counting to ten didn’t do much to help, but I gave it a shot anyway.
The others were looking at me expectantly when I opened my eyes again, as were a few
of the nearby people who had remained in their cars.

The sense of something dark and hungry compelling me to lash out was new, but not
entirely unfamiliar. It bore an uncanny resemblance to the desire for vampire blood
that had coursed through me when I was bound by blood to Royce and Max. The unnatural
hunger to absorb some part of them and keep myself in their power at one point had
had me literally begging Royce to keep me bound to him. Anything to stop the pain.

Whatever this was, it bore the same flavor of compulsion. I wasn’t going to give in
to the need to lash out or act irrationally. No matter what. I wasn’t a monster. Not
in that sense, anyway. I was stronger than this. Had to be stronger than it. Whatever
it was.

The words came slowly, thick, like there was cotton stuffing in my mouth.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said.

Devon arched a brow, and I pulled away from Sara to face him. He wore an expression
of wary concern. Whatever signs of change I was exhibiting, he hadn’t quite caught
on to them yet. Good.

“Maybe Clyde will win. If he does, you still want him taken out, right? So the werewolves
can take care of that. Same thing with Fabian. No matter what, the vampires need to
be destroyed. Gideon is dangerous, but without Fabian driving him to go after Clyde,
or if both vampires are dead, he has no reason to stay here. This isn’t his city or
his fight. If he chooses to stay, there’s no way the Goliath pack will tolerate it.
Even if you can’t set them after him, isn’t there a local mage coven? You can set
the local magi after him, too.”

Tiny spoke up, his deep voice threaded with apprehension. “We’ll never be able to
get there before the fighting starts. Not without a car. Not in this mess.”

Good. They were starting to see things my way. “That’s fine. We don’t have to be there
when the fight starts. We just have to get there before it’s over. If I can find Gideon
after, I can get him to see to Sara, and we can take it from there.”

“Are you sure he’ll fix it?”

“No.” I bit my lower lip, glancing at Sara as a tingle of foreboding squeezed around
my heart with cold fingers. “We can’t trust him—but he’s the closest thing we have
to a shot at disabling whatever that sorcerer did to her.”

Privately, I vowed to myself that I would make the time to study the different branches
of magework and learn enough to protect us both against something like this ever happening
again once this mess was behind us.

“I don’t think this is going to work, Shia. If Arnold couldn’t fix it, what makes
you think that Gideon can?”

I gave Sara’s arm a reassuring squeeze, though I was nowhere near as confident as
I forced myself to sound. “Arnold doesn’t deal in the dark arts. This guy does. What
he knows is closer to what David was doing than the magic Arnold uses. Gideon’s the
best chance we’ve got.”

And damn whatever fates were responsible for making that the sorry truth.

It was long past nightfall before we were able to make it across town to Santa Monica.

Tiny had taken the wheel. Not that there was anywhere for us to go for a while—not
with the mess in front of us.

Gideon had planned his diversionary tactics well. There were just enough zombies still
stumbling around to keep the cops and local news stations frantic with activity, drawing
everything from the National Guard to the CDC. Not only did the mess keep us locked
in place for hours, unable to chase after him, but it also meant that any rapid response
teams that might have come after him at Clyde’s place would be delayed and unable
to stop whatever plans Fabian and Gideon had in mind for the master of Los Angeles.

We had to get the hell out of this trap, but there wasn’t anywhere to go. Cars were
stopped bumper-to-bumper in both directions.

The anthill of activity centered on the worst of the jam was disrupted when a few
people figured out they were about to be detained by the government for “testing;”
they then drove over curbs and bumped other cars out of their way to escape.

It wasn’t a bad idea. We took off with some of the initial rush, maneuvering around
the abandoned cars, before any barricades could be set up to keep us from hightailing
it. We’d lost a couple of precious hours, but it had given us the time to work together
to come up with a stronger plan than just “show up and melt faces.” Once we got off
the freeway and away from the cemetery, there was little traffic on the surface streets.

Devon had been on his cell phone nonstop. Making arrangements with other White Hats
to bring weapons and meet us not far from Clyde’s place. We were going to need to
try for stealth sneaking into the gated community, which meant we needed a back way
in. A half dozen or more cars and trucks carrying vigilante hunters bristling with
weapons wasn’t going to fly with the security guards.

Neither were the zombies, I was sure, but Gideon had the advantages of an insider
who might clear a path for him and a lack of moral compunctions preventing him from
messing with the minds of people who might try to stop him on the way in.

Plus, none of us were magi, so we didn’t have that power. Damn it.

We would have to hope that we arrived either shortly before or after Gideon and Fabian
attacked. My assumption, based upon what little experience I had in Other-to-Other
wars, was that Gideon would be responsible for handling the remainder of Clyde’s bodyguards,
while Fabian would be the one to attack Clyde. Most likely, Gideon would stop somewhere
to pick up a few extra zombies on the way and attack shortly after sunset.

There was a slim chance we were wrong. He might be waiting for sunrise, when Clyde
would be at his most vulnerable, but I had to hope that Fabian was too cocky and impatient
to wait that long. They wouldn’t want to give up the advantage of the mess Gideon
had created on the freeway.

If I was wrong, we were all screwed.

Either way, both vampires had to die tonight. The thought of Fabian being killed didn’t
give me so much as a twinge. On the other hand, as much as I didn’t like Clyde, I
was sorry he was caught in the middle of this. He was a prick, but that wasn’t enough
to merit his death.

Still, I wasn’t sorry enough to stop it.

Even if I had a last minute attack of conscience—ha!—it was far too late to stop the
gears that had been set in motion. Everything was about to come to a head.

Some of the other White Hats were held up on the freeway, and a few others were caught
up in other activities Devon didn’t choose to explain. By the time we arrived at the
rendezvous point on a service road that ran around the perimeter of the community,
the sun had set about half an hour ago, and there were maybe thirty White Hats in
a variety of tactical gear waiting for us, hovering in the shadows just outside the
cones of illumination from nearby street lamps.

It surprised me to see so many hunters out here. The New York chapter boasted maybe
half this number. Probably even fewer now that Jack was out of the picture.

Some of them gave deferential nods to Devon as he walked down the line, exchanging
a word here and there.

The guy from the White Hat bar we’d visited on our first night out on the town—Jesus—was
passing out weapons to some of the other hunters. Tonight he was wearing a vest, combat
boots, and cargo pants—no shirt, no jacket—and carrying a long, heavy duffel. He put
what had to be an illegal assault rifle into my hands. It was so unexpected and heavy
that I almost dropped the stupid thing before I got a good grip on it.

He didn’t bother to see if I was okay. He kept moving at a good clip, pulling a sawed-off
shotgun out of the bag and thrusting it at Tiny, and following up by tossing Sara
an Uzi. Thank God she didn’t drop the damned thing, or accidentally flick the safety
off in the process. She looked at the weapon in her hands like she’d never seen a
gun before, though we’d both spent time at the range together.

After the initial surprise wore off, we both gave the guy death glares, but he didn’t
appear to notice, continuing down the line to toss weapons at the few White Hats who
didn’t have their own. No one else seemed ruffled by his actions.

Someone had disabled the alarm and security camera by a recessed gate in the thick
stucco wall surrounding the property, and the door was being held open for the White
Hats to slip through. Most of them were wearing dark colors: grays, browns, greens,
and slashes of black, blending into the deep shadows of the towering bushes and trees
that had been grown close to the wall for an extra layer of privacy from prying eyes.

As the White Hats filed inside, I examined the rifle that the walking arms dealer
had put in my hands.

Damn. The guy meant business. It was an AK-47, matte black, and a magazine was already
attached. I wasn’t used to anything bigger than a handgun, and it took me a moment
to figure out how to check if a bullet was chambered.

Once I figured out the bolt action and barrel extension, I could see that, yes indeed,
this gun was ready to go. If I weren’t already in so much trouble, I would have been
having a minor panic attack at holding a gun that wasn’t registered to me and that
I wasn’t technically trained to use. Dim recollections of the information the sentient
hunter’s belt had given me about the use of various guns would be enough for me to
get by, but if the gun jammed or anything else went wrong, I was screwed.

I couldn’t be sure if the magazine was full, but hopefully whatever was in there would
be many times more bullets than I would need to use tonight.

When I looked up, Sara was still examining her gun. She was running the thumb of her
free hand over the safety, frowning down at the weapon. The knot between her eyebrows
didn’t ease away when she tilted her head up to look at me. She must not have been
pleased at this turn of events either.

Hefting my rifle up so the barrel was to the sky, resting against my shoulder, I sidled
closer to her and nodded at her gun. “Bet that thing will cut right through a zombie.”

“Maybe,” she said, lifting it one-handed to give it a more critical eye. “I hear they
have a tendency to jam, though. Hope the White Hats aren’t planning on putting me
in the front lines. I’m not sure I’m going to be much of a shot with this thing.”

“I’m sure we’re going to be the last line of defense. If Devon or anyone else thinks
we’re front lines material, we’re all screwed.”

That prompted a hollow laugh out of Sara. We shared weak grins and followed the trickle
of remaining hunters through the door and into the private domain of the obscenely
rich and most likely famous.

The homes in the community had bigger lots than most of the others I’d seen so far
in my time in California, even counting Sara’s sister’s place in Malibu. Many were
large, imposing structures, but none of them matched Clyde’s for casual intimidation.
A few had lights burning, cars in the drives, and the sounds of the occasional radio
or TV drifting through windows, but I didn’t see any people moving around except for
White Hats skulking through the bushes like the bad guys in a cheesy action flick.

The enormity of what we were doing didn’t sink in until I saw the moving vans. A half
dozen of the big haulers, the kind you used to move an entire household, were lined
up on the street in front of a house around the corner from Clyde’s mansion.

Maybe it was the way the wind was blowing, but the stink of them didn’t hit me until
we skirted around the side of a house down the hill from Clyde’s. Gideon must have
been hauling zombies from all over the county in those things, maybe raising them
by the dozens from other cemeteries and using Forest Lawn in Hollywood Hills as a
distraction or cover of some sort. One of the trucks was the telltale U-Haul with
the Golden Gate Bridge decal on the side the lady we’d interviewed at the Laundromat
had told us about.

There was nothing in the trucks now; the cabs and cargo doors stood open, the loading
ramps still down. Small gobbets of unidentified people-bits, a few bugs, and that
unmistakable stench were all that remained.

It was a wonder none of the neighbors had noticed or complained. This was not the
kind of neighborhood where you could haul in zombies by the truckload and have them
go unnoticed. Someone, somewhere, had to have noticed the smell. Even a couple blocks
away, even though I was covered in long-dried dead people juice, the concentrated
stink of decomposing bodies left to rot in a hot truck all day (or maybe days) was
making my eyes water.

Some of the other White Hats were muttering about it, one of them retching in the
bushes nearby. On a hunch, I tugged Sara’s arm to get her to stop, and I edged closer
to one of the windows of the house we were using for cover. Peering inside, I spotted
what I was looking for. When Sara tapped my shoulder, I answered her puzzled look
by pointing to the prone body on the kitchen floor, only the designer jeans-clad legs
and part of the torso visible from our angle.

Gideon must have done something to put the people in the neighborhood—or the ones
closest to Clyde’s home, anyway—to sleep while he did his dirty work. Since he had
so casually sent Sara and me into unconsciousness outside of Thrane’s hideout, it
didn’t surprise me. Though I was glad none of the White Hats had shown up early enough
to be caught in the spell, I wasn’t too concerned about the neighbors. He hadn’t added
them into his army of undead. They’d be fine, if a bit groggy, once the spell wore
off.

The question was, where was Gideon now? And Fabian, for that matter.

“
Madre de Dios
. . . . That monster will pay.” Jesus’s voice startled me, though he spoke in a low
growl. He must have crept behind Sara and me when we were looking in the window.

“They’re sleeping,” Sara explained, “not dead. They’ll be fine.”

“You know what did this?”

We both nodded. “A mage. A bad one who doesn’t follow the rules.”

Frown lines appeared between his eyes, but he didn’t say anything. We followed him
as he moved from shadow to shadow, bringing us ever closer to Clyde’s property.

It was so quiet—no dogs were barking, no early evening birds rustling in the trees,
no bugs chirping, no nothing—that I couldn’t help but worry. There was no sign of
security, no vampires wandering around watching for intruders, and no sign of movement
in the windows of Clyde’s house. The other shoe was overdue to drop.

We kept going, though, moving with more stealth than I would have thought a bunch
of dudes carrying tons of weapons and acting like Navy SEAL rejects would have been
capable of managing. Nobody made any effort to stop us or investigate, which didn’t
make me feel any better, no matter how good these guys were at this. Vampires had
senses far superior to those of humans, so even if Gideon didn’t have some magical
radar that would tell him Sara was here, someone from Clyde’s household should have
detected us by now.

This had to be a trap of some kind, but I didn’t know where Devon was, and it was
too late to tell him we needed to back out and rethink this plan.

Then the first gunshot rang out, and it was too late to do more than regret ever coming
to this godforsaken town.