Dead Ice

He was looking at me now with tears still wet on his face. “Your silence speaks volumes, Ms. Blake. I understand your disgust with me.”

“It’s not that, Mr. Warrington; I’m just thinking about other things a little too hard.”

“You do not have to save my feelings, Ms. Blake. I deserve whatever you think of me.”

“It’s not my job to judge your ethics, Mr. Warrington. I have too many skeletons in my own past to be high and mighty about anyone. I’ve never been that hungry in my life; who am I to judge you?”

“You are very understanding, Ms. Blake. I am most grateful.”

I shrugged. “I do my best.”

“I believe that you do.”

I smiled. “You described yourself as ravenous right now, Mr. Warrington. How does that compare to the hunger you experienced in the mountains that awful winter?”

He thought seriously before answering, which I appreciated. “I feel empty. My stomach is beginning to hurt, with that ache you get when you’ve gone too long without eating. It’s early stages, but I shouldn’t be feeling this way with everything I ate tonight.”

“You threw all of it up,” I said.

He shook his head. “It’s not the same thing as going hungry, Ms. Blake. My body should know it ate tonight, and it doesn’t seem to have counted any of that good grub I just had.”

“I’m afraid that there may only be one kind of food that fills the needs of your body now, Mr. Warrington.”

“You mean human flesh,” he said, voice serious and low.

I nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

He frowned just enough to wrinkle the skin between his eyes. “Do you think it’s because I ate it in life that I’ve risen like this?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure, but I think so.”

He smiled at me, the tears still drying on his face. “Thank you for admitting that you don’t know for certain. I do appreciate that level of honesty.”

I shrugged again. “I think you deserve it.”

“You feel guilty about me for some reason.”

I nodded, not even arguing that he was right. “I think I shouldn’t have slaughtered the cow to raise you. I think it helped boost my power too much and here you are so very . . . alive-ish.”

“I feel alive.”

“I know.”

“If I had been able to keep my food down and eat like a man, would you still have to put me back in the ground?”

“I don’t know; technically yes, but honestly, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now.”

“Because I can’t eat food like a man and I’m still hungry, so very hungry.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“You have to put me back before I try to hurt anyone, Ms. Blake.”

“Yeah, I do.”

He nodded, then straightened his spine all the way up, so his posture was military straight. He tugged the T-shirt down as if it were a suit coat. “Do I need my old clothes before we do this?”

“Again, honestly I don’t know.”

“Better safe than sorry,” he said.

“Yeah, let’s get your clothes.”

“They put them through a dry . . . cleaner.”

“I’ll have MacDougal call and see if we can pick them up.”

“If they aren’t ready to go?”

“One problem at a time.”

“Very true, very true.” He looked down, gave that little frown again, and then gave me very direct eye contact from those hazel eyes of his. “I never found the right girl when I was alive, but I believe Justine would be that girl. What does it mean that I had to die and come back to find someone that I loved?”

This question was soooo above my pay grade. “I don’t know what to tell you, Mr. Warrington, except that we don’t plan who we fall in love with, it just happens.”

“Justine has spent her life studying the past. She feels more at home with it than current reality.”

I nodded. “I figured something like that, and here you are a true blast from the past.”

“Blast from the past?”

“It’s a saying, just something old, like a song you haven’t heard in a long time, or a trend in clothing.”

“Ah,” he said. “Well, then I am truly a blast from the past.”

I smiled at him; I just couldn’t help it. He seemed like a nice guy. I really didn’t want to see what would happen when the hunger gnawing at his gut overrode all that niceness. “I can give you a few minutes with Justine.”

“Would it be safe to have some true privacy with her?”

I debated and then went for truth. “I don’t know; maybe. How much privacy were you wanting, and for how long?”

“I’d love to have all night, but you have to put me back in my grave before dawn.”

I nodded. “I do.”

“Would it be possible to have an hour?”

“I’m going to have to be blunt here, Mr. Warrington, and I’m sorry for that.”

“You raised me from the grave, Ms. Blake; surely we can be blunt with each other.”

“Are you just planning to talk for an hour, or have sex?”

He blushed. Zombies didn’t blush. Fuck. “Well, that is indeed blunt, Ms. Blake. I think I am shocked.”

“Sorry, but I feel responsible for you, and that means whatever you do with Justine is kinda my responsibility, too.”