He shook his mouth like a dog with a bone, and I swallowed a scream. It wasn't just that it hurt. That was way too much enthusiasm for a zombie. "Edwin, stop feeding." My voice was clear, and he ignored me. Shit. I licked suddenly dry lips. "He's had enough. Help me pry him loose," I said, voice low. Mustn't scare the clients. Mustn't let them know that everything had gone wrong tonight.
Richard fell again, slid in the damp autumn leaves, slid until a tree stopped him, sudden, and abrupt and bruising. He looked up, and I saw those wide brown eyes, saw what he was running from. He wanted to be there on his knees, he wanted to lick my wound, taste my blood, maybe widen that wound with sharp teeth. The thought didn't just excite him. The thought did it for him, just flat did it for him. What he wanted to do in the deepest, darkest, places in his soul gave a whole new meaning to o**l s*x.
He waited for me to be horrified, but I wasn't. If there was anyone who could resist doing the great bad thing, it was Richard. I trusted his control, not always his temper, but his control--that I trusted without doubt or reservation. I whispered, "Just because you want to do something, doesn't mean you will do it, or even that you have to do it. You're human, Richard, you have a mind and willpower. You aren't just your beast."
"You don't understand," he said, and the moment he said it, I knew what he'd done, by accident.
"You can feel what the zombie is doing?" I said.
He hid his face from me and scrambled to his feet, and ran. He ran out of the trees, and hit a paved road, and was across it before the headlights could be sure what they'd seen. Fast, faster, run, run. Run, but what he was running from, he couldn't outrun, because no matter how fast, or how far, he would still be there. How do you outrun the monster, when you are the monster?
"Richard, make the zombie stop feeding on me."
"I don't know how," and he was gone, crashing through the trees, but it wasn't friendly now, or joyous.
The zombie bit me, hard, and damn it, it hurt. "Requiem, get him off of me."
The vampire moved around so he could touch the zombie's face and hands, but nothing holds on like a zombie. I'd had to help clean up other people's zombies that had gone wrong, and sometimes you had to cut them apart a finger at a time to get them to let go of someone. Human teeth could still bite deep enough to sever a vein or artery. I wanted him off of me.
Requiem tried to pry him off, but he finally looked up at me. "I can pull him apart in pieces, but I cannot pull him off of you."
I looked at the very bodyguarding werewolf and called him over. He came, face serious, hands behind his back, as if he didn't exactly trust himself not to touch me again. Did I smell of wolf and forest, or was it the fresh blood? Don't ask unless you want to know. I didn't want to know.
The zombie plunged his tongue into the wound, as if he were trying to get the blood to flow faster. It hurt, and it surprised me, and I screamed, a little scream, but enough that one of the lawyers called, "Are you alright, Ms. Blake?"
"Fine," I called back, "fine." Mustn't let the clients know that the zombie you raised for them is beginning to eat you. Fuck!
Using every ounce of strength he had, Graham was able to pry one finger off of my wrist, but he had to hold on to that finger, or it curled right back into place. "He shouldn't be this strong."
"You've never tried to fight zombies, have you?" I said.
He gave me wide eyes. "If they're this strong, I don't want to."
"They're not just strong, they don't feel pain."
"Anita, I can tear his fingers off," Requiem said, "or break his jaw, but other than those extremities, I have no other suggestions."
The bad part was, neither did I. The zombie bit me harder, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he hit something major. He was digging his teeth in deeper by the tiniest of increments, but eventually it was going to get bad, and I was no longer sure what would happen if a gush of fresh blood hit its mouth. I'd seen what flesh-eating zombies could do to people. I wasn't exactly human, but I wouldn't grow back a hand if you ripped it off.
We could burn him up, but he wouldn't let go, and I'd burn with him. Shit.
Richard was sitting in a clearing under a tangle of na**d limbs. "I have to shut the link between us, Anita. I have to. I can't separate myself from the zombie. I keep feeling what he's doing. Keep wanting him to find more blood." He cradled his face in his hands, and he'd lost his shirt somewhere, so that his back was bowed and na**d as the trees overhead. "I'm sorry, Anita, I tried, I really tried."
"It's okay, Richard, we'll do what we can from here. Go take care of yourself."
He looked up, and there were tears shining in the starlight. "I'm supposed to take care of you."
"It's a partnership, Richard, we're supposed to take turns helping each other."
He shook his head. "I f**ked this up, Anita, I'm sorry." I wasn't sure I'd ever heard him say f**k when he wasn't referring to sex.
"Go, Richard, go back to your folks' house. They'll be worried."
The zombie bit hard enough that I screamed, and Richard was suddenly gone. He cut the tie so abruptly that it staggered me, and only Requiem's and Graham's hands kept me from falling.
"Anita!" Graham said, and he lost his grip on the zombie, trying to keep me standing. But the hands on my wrists eased.
I looked down at the kneeling zombie, and the eyes were filling up. There was personality there, someone home. I'd been stupid. Richard had accidentally tied the zombie to him, and when he broke the link to me, the zombie was mine again. Good news, but I felt stupid that I hadn't thought of it sooner. The dead are supposed to be my specialty. I wasn't feeling very special tonight.
The zombie blinked up at me, drawing its mouth back from my wrist. His big mustache was stained with my blood. He frowned up at me. "I'm sorry, I don't know what I'm doing here." He let me go and stumbled to his feet, staring at his hands and my bloody wrist, horror showing on his face. "I beg your pardon, miss, I don't know what I was doing to you. I do apologize most sincerely, it's monstrous, monstrous." He was staring at the blood on his hands and wiping at his mouth.
Shit, he didn't know he was dead. I hated when they didn't know they were dead. And as if on cue he backed up enough to bump into his own monument. He gazed up at that uncompromising stone angel, and then he had the Ebenezer Scrooge moment. He saw his own name on the tomb, complete with a date. Even by starlight, all the color drained from his face.
"Hear me, Edwin, by right of the blood you have tasted, hear me."
He turned huge, stricken eyes to me. "Where am I? What's happened to me?"
"Don't be afraid, Edwin, be calm."
The panic began to slide away from his face, his eyes began to fill with that artificial calm, because I willed it, and because I'd been the one to call him from the grave, and it was my blood on his lips. I'd earned the right to order him around.
I told him to be calm. I told him to be clear and concise and answer the questions from the nice lawyers. He informed me that he was always clear and concise thank you very much, and I knew he'd do what the lawyers and his descendants wanted him to do. This group of lawyers and clients had decided ahead of time that they didn't want me asking the questions. Something about not trusting that I couldn't control the zombie enough to get the answers that certain people wanted. The implication had been that some of the clients feared that other clients would bribe me. At the time they'd set the guidelines down, I'd been a little offended, tonight I was glad. It meant that I could go back to the Jeep while they questioned the zombie. I had a first aid kit in the Jeep, and I needed it.
The zombie hadn't exactly reopened the wound, he'd made the old wound bloodier, and put new teeth marks into my wrist. So it was like a new wound around the old one. Some nights it feels like I have a target on my left arm. If I take a major hit, that's usually where it lands.
"You've lost more blood," Requiem said.
"No shit," I said.
He gave a small frown. "What I am saying is, could you not allow them to take the zombie home for the night and put him back tomorrow?"
I shook my head and winced as Graham raised the gauze to see if the bleeding had stopped. "He bit me, he actually injured me, zombies aren't supposed to do that. They take blood from an open wound or animal that's already dead, but they don't make a wound. They don't feed that actively."