Hungry for Your Love: An Anthology of Zombie Romance (22 page)

“I promise not to sprain my ankle. Two, you’ve got someone with you who knows hand-to-hand combat. And three…” She paused, peering through the windshield. Her smile faltered. “Perhaps I
should
have packed my gun.”

“I don’t think you can shoot ghosts,” he said. Swerving to avoid yet another pothole in the middle of the dirt path, he cursed. “Then again.” He parked the car and opened the door.

Rounding and opening hers, he added, “Probably not a bad idea.”

Taking her arm, Griffin led her up the stone steps. He was surprised to notice they weren’t cracking, rotting, or completely gone.

“If it weren’t so far from everything,” Rebecca said as he struggled with the key the lawyer had given them, “we could make it into a hotel.”

“And serve what?” he asked. “Damn it!”

The key slipped against whatever covered the hole, and he banged his knuckles. No blood; he probably wouldn’t need a tetanus shot, which was just as well. If he left now, Griffin damn sure wasn’t returning to this place anytime soon.

“Serve?” Rebecca asked as she took his hand and examined the knuckles.

Griffin forgot the tongue-in-cheek comment he’d been about to make as Rebecca’s lips brushed each knuckle individually. “Serve breakfast and ectoplasm?” he managed.

“Exactly,” she whispered, her dark eyes looking up at him from beneath thick lashes. “If you survive your first night, the second’s on the ghost.”

“Not a bad marketing campaign,” he agreed. She let go of his hand, and he tried the key 204

again. “If we can get the ghost to cooperate.”

More cursing, another clash between his knuckles and the door, and Griffin finally opened it. He was beginning to suspect there was a reason, other than what the lawyer implied, for him not joining them on this journey.

“I wouldn’t even know how to go about paying them.” Rebecca said.

Just then, the door opened with a creek. Griffin pushed it as wide as it’d go and stepped through. The lawyer said the electricity was still connected, so he felt against the wall for a light switch. Finding one, he flipped it up.

Light flooded the foyer. Dust danced in the breeze from the doorway, but otherwise it wasn’t the house of horrors he’d expected.

“The place doesn’t look as bad inside as it does from the out.”

“I was just thinking that,” he commented, stepping through to the interior.

It wasn’t well kept, and a thick layer of dust clung to everything, but the electricity worked, and they’d also been assured by the lawyer that the water was still on.

“Maybe,” he said, turning to her, “we won’t need our camping gear.”

Rebecca laughed, an easy sound, as she joined him in the foyer.

“Definitely looks like something out of a flick.” Her voice echoed throughout the empty mansion. “An old Hollywood period piece,” she amended, “not a horror movie.”

Griffin shrugged. “Did the lawyer, what’s his name, Mr. Desmarais, say anything about the owners?”

“Not to me.” She walked in a circle, looking up the staircase. He wondered if she always did that—part of her FBI training—or if she just couldn’t stay still.

“But I did some digging.” Rebecca stopped moving and turned to face him. “I meant to 205

share with you.”

“Not that we had time when we first arrived.” Griffin smirked as if she needed a reminder, but the heat in her dark eyes told him she didn’t. She remembered well enough what they’d done the moment they’d checked into the hotel.

“Not that we had time,” she agreed in a husky voice. Clearing her throat, she said, “Basic stuff—sugar plantation founded in the late 1830s, my family lived here, yours lived in Fort-de-France, this and that happened, and it was a joint venture up through the early twentieth century.”

“And the last relation died three years ago,” he added. His own lawyer had told him that.

Repeatedly.

“Exactly,” she said and nodded, stepping closer. “Took Mr. Desmarais this long to find us.”

Spreading his arms wide he said, “And now we have this palace.”

“Come on, Brad Pitt,” Rebecca grinned. She grabbed his hand and tugged. “Let’s check out all the rooms. Maybe there’s treasure under the floorboards.”

* * * *

Three shrunken voodoo heads, a single gold doubloon, an ancient German Luger, and one and a half wooden legs later, they gave up. The rest of the house was as dusty as the entryway, so they opened the shutters, unpacked their camping gear and set up camp before the unused fireplace.

Before Rebecca knew what was happening, Griffin’s lips were on hers and they made love in an abandoned mansion in the middle of Martinique. It was the most pleasurable day she could remember spending in a long while.

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“No pirate treasure,” she sighed, propping her head on one hand and looking at him.

“No, but lots of dust.”

Rebecca frowned at his frown and traced the line of his jaw. “What do you expect?” she asked. “The place has been closed up for years.”

She swept her arm out to encompass the end tables, coffee table, piano, and old-style chairs—some wicker, some old enough to be certifiable antiques. Not that she had any real notion of what a certifiable antique looked like.

“Dust is created by human skin,” he mumbled. Shaking his head, he grasped her hips and pulled her atop him. “Are you sure you want to stay here for the night? Or do you want to drive back?”

“Nah.” She kissed his lips. “Let’s just stay here. We haven’t explored a fraction of the place. Plus…” Her lips trailed along his jaw, and Rebecca wondered when she’d become so fascinated with a man’s jaw line. “Plus we’ll just have to drive back out tomorrow. What’s the point?”

“Definitely not an ordinary woman,” he said against her mouth. “Most I know would rather head back to the hotel than stay here. In the middle of nowhere.”

“Hey,” she said, smiling, “at least we have electricity.”

* * * *

The night was warm, and Griffin found himself dozing as they sat on the back porch, Rebecca next to him as they watched the stars. Having grown up in Northern Virginia, he never really had the chance to appreciate such a view.

“What’s that?” Rebecca asked, breaking the comfortable silence.

Griffin looked to where she pointed, far to the left, but could only make out lights from a 207

neighboring house. “Neighbors. How unfortunate.”

She chuckled, but didn’t take her eyes off the lights blazing in the darkness. Griffin watched her for a few minutes, then shrugged and went back to looking up at the stars.

“It’s weird.”

Looking back down at her, he laughed. “The fact we have neighbors?”

“No.” She shook her head and looked up at him, dark eyes nearly impossible to see in the night. “The lights weren’t on beforel I couldn’t even tell there was a house over there until they blazed to life.”

“And how is that weird?”

“It’s two in the morning.”

“Maybe they’re vampires,” he suggested with a grin. He didn’t know her well enough to say anything beyond that. Didn’t know how suspicious she was, what her job at the FBI entailed, so kept to horror movie references.

Instead, he settled back against the newel post on the steps. There hadn’t been any chairs for them, or any he deemed sturdy enough, to hold his weight.

“It’s still weird.”

“Maybe they also inherited the mansion, finally found the place with the condition of the roads here, and are now exploring.” He didn’t believe it any more than her look indicated she did, but Griffin had no other explanation.

“Maybe.”

He couldn’t tell how much more time passed before a scream broke the stillness of the island night.

“Did you hear that?” he demanded, suddenly wide awake.

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Tearing his gaze from the suddenly not-so-beautiful night, he watched Rebecca slowly nod. “Yeah. It’s the scream from every horror movie ever produced in history.”

“Exactly. Little
Halloween
with some Freddy Krueger thrown in.” His words belied the pounding of his heart.

“I was always partial to Jason from
Friday the Thirteenth
,” she said. But Griffin noticed she wasn’t as relaxed as she sounded. Her hand blindly groped at her side—for the gun, he surmised, that she wasn’t wearing. “Sure, he had like a hundred and eighty-two sequels, but…damn it!”

She glanced at her hip, confirmed what she already knew, and locked eyes with him.

Another sound, a scream-screech sound, cut through the night.

“Could’ve been an owl,” he offered.

“Could’ve been.” She nodded, already standing. “Where was that antique gun we found?”

Moments later, they were back in the attic. Rebecca tore through boxes as he angled the bare bulb in her direction as much as possible without burning his fingers.

“Got it!” she called, holding up the German Luger as evidence. “No cleaning kit, but I did find several bullets.”

“Good enough,” Griffin said as they went back downstairs to the veranda. They were being ridiculous. Talking about horror movies, scaring themselves like a bunch of kids around a campfire. Nonetheless, he detoured into the front room where they’d left their camping stuff for a flashlight.

“You know,” he said, “it was probably just an owl or some other indigenous creature.”

“Agreed.” She gave a short nod. He could see the federal agent in her now: the practiced 209

movements, the clean motions. She loaded the Luger with ease, though it didn’t look like it’d been cleaned since World War II.

“I doubt that’ll even shoot,” he said. They were now on the veranda, the night once more silent around them. “It’s a movie prop.”

Rebecca chuckled, but gripped the gun firmly.

This time, the scream sounded definitely human. And it didn’t stop. The sound echoed around them, continuing long after human lungs should fail from lack of oxygen.

“We have to investigate that, don’t we.” It wasn’t a question. The scream continued on, sending chills up his spine. Griffin spent time in a downtown D.C. hospital emergency room.

This was worse than anything he’d ever heard there.

“Yup.” Rebecca glanced over her shoulder. Even in the darkness, he could see the steel in her eyes.

“Let me find a shovel or something,” he conceded.

There was nothing lying in the yard or around the sides of the house, so Griffin raced back inside and into the basement, doing his best not to think of the
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
.

Horror was a favorite genre, but after this, he wasn’t so sure he’d look at them the same way.

Gripping the shovel, he met her at the back door. Rebecca stood with her back to the house, her gaze on the building across the fields, gun held firmly in both hands. When she saw him, she laughed, shrugged, and nodded to the house. “Let’s go.”

Holding the flashlight before them, he walked beside Rebecca as they traipsed across the uneven ground. The other house was further away than it had seemed from the veranda.

Griffin pulled up short. There was a man in front of them. He hadn’t been there before, Griffin was certain of that. The flashlight was pretty strong and yet the man loomed out of 210

nowhere. The screaming stopped, and an eerie silence descended on the field. He had a feeling it wouldn’t last.

“Excuse me,” Rebecca said in an even voice. No answer. “Excuse me!” she said more forcibly. Turning to him, she asked, “Know any French?”

“
Parlez-vous
English?” Griffin offered. “
Merci beaucoup
? I took Spanish in high school, Latin in college and medical school. Never French.”

“Sir, we heard…”

The man never moved. In fact, Griffin wasn’t certain he even heard Rebecca.

There was another scream, a short burst of sound that barely registered given the complete lack of reaction from the man before them.

He had a bad feeling when she put her hand on the other man’s arm, and he wished it was jealousy. Not usually one to fear the night, something about this night on this island creeped him out. About to step forward and stop Rebecca from touching the other man—though he couldn’t voice his reasons for such an act—Griffin halted midstride when the man finally turned.

His eyes were sunken in his pale, pale face, devoid of all emotion. His limp hair, which looked like it could fall out in a stiff wind, hung about his face in strings, and his mouth stayed half-open, slack. In short, he looked like no living thing Griffin had ever seen.

“If I didn’t know better,” Griffin whispered as Rebecca took a sharp step backwards, bumping into his chest, “I’d say he was a corpse. But since it’s medically impossible…”

“So you are seeing what I’m seeing.” Rebecca glanced at him, then back to the man who hadn’t moved before them. “
Night of the Living Dead
?”

She didn’t move, raised her gun slightly, but he wasn’t surprised to see her gamely try again. “Excuse me,” she said, voice a little less sure, “but do you know…um…”

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“The pivotal question,” he quipped, praying the Luger fired. “What
do
you say to a zombie?”

Apparently not that. The zombie, or whatever it was, lunged at them. Griffin reacted. He kicked the zombie—or whatever—in the groin and pushed him backwards. Trying not to grimace like a girl that he’d just touched a zombie, he moved to the side. Rebecca had raised her gun, and he didn’t want to be in the line of fire.

“I’m a United States federal agent!” Rebecca shouted.

“Are you serious?” he asked her, but took another step back. Just in case.

“I’m supposed to say that,” she defended, but hadn’t taken her eyes off the prone, er, man.

In a move far too fluid for the, ah, undead, the zombie was on his—its?—feet and clawing at Rebecca. Griffin moved, his only thought to protect her.

“Move away!” Rebecca shouted.

The Luger fired. Surprised that it did, he shook his head. The shot echoed in the clearing, sharply contrasting with the screams still coming from the house. The zombie fell backwards, lying still in the high grass.

“No silver bullet? Beheading? Stake? How do you kill a zombie?”

Griffin cautiously walked a step forward. The zombie hadn’t moved. He took another step. “Apparently,” he said, “a special World War II bullet.”