Every Other Day

Where we come from, there isn’t much of a sun. The more like us you become, the less tolerance you’ll have for direct sunlight—but you’ll survive.

I didn’t know which part of that statement was the most disturbing—the idea that whatever I was, whatever I was becoming, the transformation wasn’t complete yet, or the suggestion that people like us came from somewhere else.

I could tell you all about it, Zev suggested.

I saw the ploy for what it was: he wanted me to forget about Chimera, forget about Bethany, forget about anything that might spur me into action. In his ideal world, I probably would have completely ignored the fact that he was caged, lying in wait for the moment he could tear off all of their heads.

Nice try, I said. But no.

I told you I could handle this, Kali, and I meant it.

For a split second, there was something else there, something he wasn’t telling me. I could almost see it, almost pinpoint the reason he wanted me to stay away, but a second later, it was gone.

Frustrated, I replied to his silent sentence out loud. “Yeah, well, you also spent the first twenty-four hours of our acquaintance appearing to me in shadows and stalking my dreams. Forgive me if I’m skeptical.”

His response came in images, not words, and I got the distinct sense that up until I’d shifted from my human form, he hadn’t been able to make himself heard more clearly—which meant there was a good chance that as soon as I shifted back, I’d lose the connection. Lose this.

I’d lose the boost that being bitten had given my already unnatural abilities—and the thirst.

I was used to watching my abilities slip away, leaving me vulnerable and human and raw. I was used to missing things, people, having a purpose, but this time, it would be worse.

Because this time, when I shifted, I’d lose Zev and the ability to save him.

Eighteen hours and twenty-four minutes.

I was on the clock—but I still couldn’t make myself focus only on Zev, not with Bethany’s mother’s words echoing in the recesses of my mind.

It’s not safe in that house. It’s never safe.

It was probably nothing. The woman had lost a child—how could any place feel safe after something like that? Bethany was probably fine—or, at least, as fine as she’d been when I’d left her—but given that she was almost as embroiled in this mess as I was, I couldn’t ignore the possibility that she might not be.

If her mother was here, Bethany was home alone—and I’d already had firsthand experience with the way the men in suits handled loose ends.

She’s fine, I told myself. If they were going to hurt her, they would have done it already.

In my head, Zev sighed. You’re going back there, aren’t you?

I chewed lightly on my bottom lip. Maybe.

That was the problem with caring about people—you had too much to lose.

I glanced down at my watch again, more out of habit than anything else, and then made a split-second decision. Bethany’s house was a good ten miles away, but there was nothing saying I had to run there on foot. I’d go by, eyeball the house, make sure that Chimera hadn’t sent anyone to pay Beth a visit—and then I’d find a way to get what I needed out of the mangled remains of Paul Davis’s phone.

Scanning the cars in the parking lot, my eyes came to rest on my father’s.

Hey, Zev? I said, sounding—to me, at least—oddly like Skylar. Any chance you know how to hot-wire a car?

I might have felt bad about stealing my father’s car, had he ever acknowledged the fact that I was old enough to drive—and had been for over a year. But sixteen and seventeen were just numbers to him, and we’d never been much for celebrating birthdays. Given that, I figured that just this once, he could rely on public transportation—or walk the five miles separating the university from our house.

All’s fair in love and war—and black ops.

Ignoring the quiet trill of guilt trying to sound off in my brain, I parked the car a couple of blocks away from Bethany’s house, figuring that if Chimera hadn’t figured out who I was yet, the last thing I needed to do was hand them my father’s license plate number on a silver platter. Closing the car door behind me, I started jogging toward Bethany’s house, making an effort at slowing the unnaturally fast pace my body wanted to take.

I wasn’t used to having to hold back, and it took the strain of pretending to be human to an all-new level.

My body wanted to run.

It wanted to blur.

It wanted to feed—

But I most emphatically wasn’t going to think about that. The last thing I needed was for the neighbors to see me running by at an inhuman blur.

So I held back. I paced myself. And then I heard the scream.

Go. Quickly.

I stopped holding back, stopped thinking. One second, I was running, and the next I was there, and everything in between was fuzzy and indefinite in my mind. This time, when I heard the scream, I recognized its owner.

Not Bethany. Skylar.

That, more than the whisper of Zev’s own hunt-lust in the corners of my mind, pushed me forward. I didn’t have many friends—I wasn’t entirely sure I had any—but Skylar was the closest thing I’d had to one in a very long time.

She was screaming.

I catapulted my way over the gate, lost myself to the blur of the motion, hit the front porch, and breathed in through my nose.

Death, I thought, the word oddly dull in my mind. The dead and the dying had a smell—a bit like rusted metal, a bit like rotting food. The scent of it set the hairs on the back of my neck on end.

Walkers, Zev said. Lots of them.

It took me a moment to translate, to know that by Walkers, he meant the walking dead.

Homo mortis.

Zombies.

I had my knife in hand before I realized I’d reached for it, and I had kicked open the Davises’ front door before it ever occurred to me that it might have been unlocked.

“Kali?” A familiar voice—tight with panic, tinged with disbelief—caught me off guard. The only thing that kept me from putting my knife straight through the top of Elliot’s spine was a surge of interest from the chupacabra inside me.

A realization that Elliot smelled human.

He smelled good.

“Where are they?” I asked. My voice sounded different—gravelly and low, humming with power and need and want.

“Beth’s down the hall, barricaded in. I can’t find Skylar—”

“No,” I said sharply. “The zombies. Where are they?”

On cue, one of the living dead dropped down from the stairway overhead. Its bones crunched as it landed, and when it stood, I realized that it was like me—it couldn’t feel pain, couldn’t tell that its legs were broken, the bones protruding through dead and rotting flesh.

Its mouth—or what was left of it—opened, revealing a cavernous hole. No tongue. I caught the faint whiff of sulfur in its blood and wondered how anyone could have ever thought that zombies started out human.

“Kali, look out!”

Elliot’s words were lost on me, his presence a distraction I didn’t need.

Kill it, I thought. Kill it now.

I flung the knife and a second later, I heard the sound it made cutting through flesh, lodging itself in rock-hard bone. I leapt forward, a wild thing, slamming the heel of my hand into the hilt of the blade. The creature’s spine gave way; its head detached, and a second later, my knife was back in my hand.

“Kali?” Every muscle in Elliot’s body was tense. His face was pale, but his eyes were hard.

I said nothing. Somewhere below us, Skylar screamed.

“Weapons,” I said, my voice a foreign thing in a throat that wanted nothing more than to be coated in the blood of the thing I’d just slayed. “Whatever you have, give it to me and get out.”

Elliot didn’t seem any more inclined to follow my instructions than I’d been to follow most of Zev’s.

“Beth’s dad collects guns,” he said. “They’re in the basement. That’s where I was headed.”

I didn’t have time for this. Not with Skylar screaming, not with the hunt-lust exploding inside of me, like there were a hundred zombies in this house, a thousand.