Magic and Decay
A Rachel Higginson Mash-Up
By Rachel Higginson
[email protected] Rachel Higginson 2014
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Copy Editing by Carolyn Moon
Cover Design by Caedus Design Co.
Other Books Now Available by Rachel Higginson
Love and Decay, Season One, Episodes One-Twelve
Love and Decay, Season Two, Episodes One-Twelve
Love and Decay, Volume One (Episodes One-Six, Season One)
Love and Decay, Volume Two (Episodes Seven-Twelve, Season One)
Love and Decay, Volume Three (Episodes One-Four, Season Two)
Love and Decay, Volume Four (Episodes Five-Eight, Season Two)
Love and Decay, Volume Five (Episodes Nine-Twelve, Season Two)
Reckless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 1)
Hopeless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 2)
Fearless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 3)
Endless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 4)
The Reluctant King (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 5)
The Relentless Warrior (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 6)
Breathless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 6.5)
Fateful Magic (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 6.75)
The Redeemable Prince (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 7)
Heir of Skies (The Starbright Series, Book 1)
Heir of Darkness (The Starbright Series, Book 2)
Heir of Secrets (The Starbright Series, Book 3)
The Rush (The Siren Series, Book 1)
The Fall (The Siren Series, Book 2)
Bet on Us (An NA Contemporary Romance)
Striking (The Forged in Fire Series) This is a co-authored Contemporary NA
Brazing (The Forged in Fire Series) This is a co-authored Contemporary NA
To my Heroines.
I would give you all the worlds if I could.
Chapter One
Eden
I stepped carefully over broken glass from a window that looked like a body had been tossed through it. Blood mingled with the jagged shards and painted the harsh wood floor a sticky black. I glanced back at my husband as he picked his way through the mess with me. He raised one eyebrow and his lips twisted in that subtle smirk he had been wearing since the day I met him.
I held in a sigh.
“I told you,” he goaded me. “We should have gone to the tropics. This is not exactly romantic.”
“I don’t need romance.” I pushed an upturned table out of the way with my Magic.
Kiran snorted behind me. “What if I’m the one that needs romance?”
It was my turn to raise my eyebrows. “Do you?”
He looked like a petulant child as he glared at me. “No.”
“Sure you don’t,” I laughed.
“I don’t!” he insisted. “I just imagined our time away from the children to be a little less… gory.”
Blood spray smeared the once white-washed walls, and the rank smell that drifted through the old restaurant made my nose wrinkle.
I read somewhere once that the smell was the worst, the absolute worst. And I definitely agreed.
Kiran was right. This wasn’t exactly the most ideal way to spend our alone-time. But, to be fair, we didn’t have many other options. Ever since the Zombie Apocalypse turned our world upside down, we had been forced to close the doors to the Citadel and protect our Kingdom from the suddenly-very-dangerous human population roaming the Earth and searching for brains to snack on.
The great news about all this was that my people were united in one place, and our community had never been stronger. The bad news… well obviously all the Zombies.
And the fact that I couldn’t catch a freaking break.
First Lucan. Then Terletov. Now this? Zombies?
There wasn’t exactly an easy solution to this one.
So until one could be found or created or whatever, we stayed behind the walled gates of our protected, isolated Citadel and only ventured out in small groups to see what there was to be done for the remaining, non-Zombified population.
With Magic, we still had access to many of the modern conveniences we once enjoyed. For instance, transportation wasn’t really an issue. We could still fly planes, drive cars and commandeer trains- not that we commandeered a whole lot of trains.
Or any.
But the point was, it was possible.
And that was how Kiran and I found ourselves all the way across the world, away from our children and picking our way through small-town Texas.
We were on the lookout for survivors. And people that needed help. We were also searching for supplies that could be loaded up and dropped off at any of our safe settlements that had been created over the past two years.
We did our best to protect the remnants of humanity that still fought to survive through the end of the world, but we had our own people to protect and rule, too.
Besides, there were so many Zombies.
I couldn’t see how humanity would survive this. I couldn’t feel the hope that I wore like a badge over my heart and preached like it was salvation. Especially as I noted the amount of death that happened in just this one place.
And lately I had noticed an uptick in deaths, but not necessarily from Zombies. Humans fought other humans these days. Cruel, evil men had taken up the leadership roles that had been vacated by death or disease. They grabbed the flailing helm of humanity’s sinking ship and took control.
Knowing we had to protect ourselves from humans and Zombies alike made our trips out of the Citadel fewer and farther between. But Kiran was stir-crazy trapped behind those tall stone walls and surrounded by an entire people group that generally drove him crazy.
Not to mention the twins were… a little much.
We called these out of town trips “dates,” but really they were sanity-savers.
We were stuck with immortality from now until the end of it, the end of all of it. If we lost our minds now, we had a long way to suffer through. But man, those kids of ours. They had to be the cutest things ever born and the most ornery.
I blamed the Kendrick genes.
They probably lay in bed at night whispering about world domination to each other and the best way to force their parents into submission.
Whatever they came up with seemed to be working.
Those babies were spoiled rotten.
“I’m not sure there’s anything here, Love.”
I stopped fighting my way through a tangle of overturned metal chairs and small tables. “You might be right. We probably should have headed up to the east coast. We haven’t been over there in a few months.”
Kiran sighed a long weary sound that made me think he agreed with me. “But the
last living Oracle demanded Texas. So Texas is where we came.”
I made a sound in the back of my throat. “The last living Oracle isn’t infallible. Sometimes she’s tired and cranky and wants a cold Dr. Pepper.”
Kiran gave me a sidelong glance. “Did we come to Texas for Dr. Pepper?”
I tried to smile. “I swear I saw people that needed our help. This had nothing to do with my shameless addiction.”
He squinted his cerulean blue eyes at me. “I don’t believe you.”
I turned away from him and moved toward an emergency exit that needed to read “normal exit.” It seemed everything was an emergency these days. I threw an “I’m your wife! You have to believe me!” over my shoulder and stepped out onto a wrap-around porch that looked out at the Gulf of Mexico.
This would have been a lovely restaurant once upon a time. The cool ocean breeze washed over my face and tickled my forearms. The sun sat low over the horizon and turned the sky a rainbow of colors.
Hot pink wrapped around the shimmering orb of light and purple stretched its fingers in puffy clouds as it reached high for the sky. Blue, orange and white mingled together in a tapestry of beauty and serenity.
The ocean waves crested white in the distance before plummeting back to the never-ending pool of salt and sea. The giant waves pushed up the sandy shore and whooshed against rock and landed in a lulling melody that tugged at my soul.
Meanwhile, behind me, an entire town had been upended by destruction. Buildings had been set on fire and burned to the ground. Ash drifted through the air and settled on my hair and skin.
The dead roamed freely while humans cowered in fear of being eaten or turned. Homes were destroyed; lives were changed and loved ones murdered.
All in front of this breathtaking view of perfection.
A solid hand landed on my waist, and pulled me back against a wall of safety and comfort. Kiran kissed the top of my head and then nuzzled his nose in the crook of my neck.
“Hell of a view,” he murmured. “I can almost forgive you for the Dr. Pepper.”
“It’s not my fault Europe never caught the Dr. Pepper trend. It’s not like I can loot the nearby villages for it. I told you we should have set up camp in Omaha.”
I could feel Kiran roll his eyes. “Omaha has no secured facilities. And don’t bring up the club. It’s not nearly big enough. I’m not raising our children underground like vampires. That’s the one mythical creature I draw the line on. No vampires.”
He had a point.
“Plus, Romania has Fanta Shokata. Beats Dr. Pepper all day, every day.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but the low, guttural moaning sound in the distance beat me to it. Kiran’s hold tightened around my waist and his arms became bands of fierce protection instead of the gentle caress of a man trying to get laid later tonight.
I smiled despite the Zombie barreling our way.
“Let me take this one,” Kiran growled in warning.
I jerked. “And why should you have all the fun?”
“Does it mean nothing to you that I want to protect you? That I want to keep the mother of my children alive and not- Zombied? That I want to be able to kiss you for the next thousand years instead of watching your face rot?”
I shuddered. What a horrific image.
“Babe, I can’t be turned into a Zombie, remember? Super Magic powers.”
He released me and mumbled something not entirely pleasant about all my “super Magic powers.” “Eden, this theory of yours has not been tested. And I’m in no hurry to make your super Magic powers hard facts.”
I felt the blood rush to my hands and crackle and pop with the Magic bursting through me. Adrenaline and purpose surged inside my veins, and my heartbeat accelerated as I anticipated the fight ahead. I hadn’t stretched my Magic in a while. I hadn’t let it loose and made something explode in far too long.
And everybody knew what happened when I went without blowing something up for too long.
Really, taking off a couple Zombie heads was a service to the Kingdom.
I was just a lowly servant that wanted what was best for my people.
I also got a weird thrill out of wasting Zombies.
So there was that, too.
“How about we find some gender equality here and fight this horde together?”
I glanced over my shoulder at a man who was perfectly comfortable with gender equality and hated when I pointed out some of his rather dated expectations for marriage.
Unfortunately for him, I was not his meek and mild mother. And he was not his father.
We fought through this life, through parenting, through our marriage together, on equal footing with equal partnership. And he rarely forgot that.
Except when he slipped into big-bad-protector mode. But who could blame him? I was pretty precious if I did say so myself.
“I can do that.” I felt his Magic spike with adrenaline. He needed to stretch his Magic as much as I did. He moved from behind me to stand next to me.
We watched the wide street in front of the dilapidated restaurant flood with Zombies, so many more than I had expected. Where did they all come from?
They limped, hobbled, crawled and sprinted at us. It was like a marathon of dead people. They brought their noxious stench with them and oozed black mucous and puss onto the smooth blacktop beneath them.
The road separated the small business area of whatever town we’d stumbled upon from the beach that led directly to those beautiful waves. The attacking Zombies didn’t seem to have a preference for paved road over kicking sand. They filled every space they could in their pursuit.
That’s when I realized their pursuit was not us.
I gave Kiran a what-the-hell look and stepped down onto rickety steps. “It’s like they don’t even know we’re here.”
Kiran stepped beside me. “They’re focused on something. Something they want more than us.”
“What? Since when can they decipher what they want and what’s right in front of them? They’re brain-dead robots!”
“Whatever it is must have seriously caught their attention.” Kiran reached out his hand that was void of Magic for the time being. A Zombie sprinted right by him without noticing the dangling appendage for even a second. “This is spooky.”
“You’re telling me! I don’t get why he didn’t take a bite right out of your fingers!”
“You sound disappointed.”
“Hard facts, Kiran. I’m looking for the hard facts.”
Kiran took another step down and ignored me. Probably wise.
“We should probably keep them from getting to their target, yeah?”
“Definitely.” Kiran looked back at me. “I love you. Whatever happens, remember that.”
I smiled adoringly at him. “I love you, too. Now let’s finish what death started.” I smacked my husband on the arse as hard as I could and jumped directly into the fray.
I heard his sharp intake of breath and muttered a curse before he followed after me.
The truth was, neither Kiran nor I had ever been bitten by a Zombie. Nor did we know any Immortals that had ever been bitten either.
We believed that between our Immortality and my healing blue smoke, we had the potential to be immune from the disease.
But we weren’t positive.
And with two babies at home and a Kingdom that would fall to ruins without us, it just wasn’t worth the risk to be careless.
Okay, maybe it wouldn’t fall to ruins… But probably we shouldn’t test that theory.
My Magic built in my body with tension and intention and so much power my heart had to beat furiously in order to keep up. I felt like a slingshot pulled tight. My Magic stood at the precipice between attention and destruction. It was ready.
I was ready.
And so like a dam broken by a rushing river, my energy exploded out of me in a sweeping wave of blue electricity.
Zombies toppled in every direction. They hit the ground where th
ey stood while their heads bounced in opposite directions.
Ick.
That was the worst part of these creatures. I couldn’t just knock them out and rehabilitate them. Or lock them up until they came to their senses. This disease destroyed any part of who they used to be and took away their control and any lingering humanity.
They had been turned into animals, pure and simple. They were animals with the driving addiction to consume human flesh.
So in order to make sure they wouldn’t get back up again, I kind of had to remove their heads from their bodies.
That usually did the trick.
Once in a while I could get a shot of Magic straight through the skull, and that would also do the trick. But in a group this large, quantity won over quality every day of the week.
I heard Kiran behind me equally as engaged. His Magic was as strong as mine these days, except he still hadn’t received the gift of premonition like I had. Not that mine was something to brag about, but it kept us globetrotting as we followed my intuition to every place it led us.
Including the gulf coast of Texas.
The weird thing about this mission was all the Zombies. I couldn’t figure it out, and I honestly had to think back over my motives and make sure that it really wasn’t Dr. Pepper that had brought us here.
I worried for more than a minute that my subconscious had pulled strings with my meta-conscience and tricked me into this particular area of the world.
It didn’t take long for me to dismiss the idea. I had been awake when the vision hit and engaged with my babies. It had to be a very serious mission for me to want to leave them. And this vision had been enough to make me move.
No, there was something here.
We just had to find it.
I lunged to my right and sent more Magic pulsing through my body and exploding out of my hands. Magic fizzled in the air and ate up the space between where I stood and my enemies’ necks.
Zombies continued to fall with little effort on my part. Their heads made gory heaps all over the road, and their wretched stench permeated the air with distracting potency. I used Magic to help me breathe lest I start puking in between my waves of killing.