Magic and Decay

  “Yeah.” I nearly choked on the word. “Okay.”

  He jumped before I could take a second to prepare myself. But just like Eden promised, they caught us with their Magic and helped our feet land in the middle of the neighboring roof.

  Ryder’s arms dropped from my body and I nearly collapsed with relief.

  Eden was in my face before I could breakdown though. “Only seven more roofs to go. Ready for more?”

  “And if I say no?”

  “You are so cute, Ivy! Has anyone ever told you that?”

  “I don’t appreciate your sarcasm,” I teased her.

  “Mphm. I know it’s rough, but we’ve got a ways to go, and I’m starting to feel a little uneasy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Kiran came to stand by her side as soon as he’d made the leap. His arm went around her waist and he pressed a kiss to her temple. “Eden?”

  “I think there’s more for us here. I don’t think we’re just supposed to help Ivy and Ryder.”

  “You mean more humans?”

  Eden nodded. “I feel it.”

  “Magic gives you great insight?” I guessed.

  “Premonitions,” Kiran explained. “Eden’s an Oracle. She can see into the future a bit. It’s the reason we came here in the first place.”

  “Premonitions? Magic? Jumping tall buildings and running faster than a speeding bullet? Is there anything you guys can’t do?”

  Kiran just shrugged. I wanted to punch him.

  “Apparently you guys get all the cool stuff.”

  “And you get all the decidedly uncool stuff,” Kiran lamented.

  Eden sounded optimistic when she said, “At least none of us have to deal with Zombies on a regular basis.”

  The sounds of clicking metal and footsteps drew our attention to the corner of the roof where a dark-haired version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer stepped from behind the giant fan unit, followed by a shaggy blonde-haired guy that made my knees go a little weak.

  Wow. I really hoped that guy wasn’t a Zombie.

  “I resent that,” the dark-haired girl announced. “And I want to know what kind of place you guys are from where you don’t deal with Feeders every day.”

  “Feeders?”

  “Zombies. The undead. Those cannibals beneath us that want to feed on your delicious faces.”

  Ah. Feeders. It made perfect sense now.

  The guy moved out of the shadows and into some stretching sunlight. He was ridiculously tall and definitely not hard on the eyes.

  Wow. Was this her Angel? Not bad, Buffy, not bad.

  “Can you put the gun down? It can’t kill us anyway,” Eden sighed.

  “Hey! Speak for yourself!”

  She couldn’t be killed by a bullet? What? How was that fair?

  Kiran cleared his throat. “We’re friends,” he said calmly. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

  The two newcomers shared a look. “That’s a lovely sentiment, but we have this thing about not trusting strangers.”

  “It’s a relatively new thing,” the guy grunted at us.

  The girl shot him a look but didn’t add an explanation. “Who are you?” She dragged her words out as slowly as possible; they grated through the air with a husky, fierce tone to them.

  I envied her spunk. She was clearly a bad ass. The casualness with which she held her weapon, her scuffed up boots and the hard look in her eyes testified to some serious tenacity. Not to mention she fought these hideous creatures on a daily basis.

  Eden, too, was like this hardened, female warrior. She didn’t show any fear or panic. The entire time I’d known her, she’d tackled each problem as it came and kept an upbeat, hopeful attitude.

  These were the kind of women that sneered at death and threw caution to the wind.

  I wanted to throw caution to the wind! I wanted to sneer!

  And maybe I still would. The rest of my story wasn’t written yet. I still had time to grow into Xena, Warrior Princess. I just needed a little bit more time.

  “I’m Ivy,” I volunteered. “I came with Ryder.”

  “And I’m Kiran. This is my wife Eden.”

  “Let me get this straight,” the girl went on. “Like this town? Or this state?”

  “We’ve got a base,” Eden explained immediately. “It’s secured enough that we don’t have to fight through Zombies to kill our next meal or anything like that.”

  The girl seemed to consider that closely before turning to me. “And you? Where are you from?”

  I looked out at the ocean and decided how to answer her. “I’ve… we’ve been away for a while. We had no idea this happened.”

  “So how did you get here? If you walked or drove, you would have seen Feeders everywhere you went.”

  The ocean beat against the shore and blended with the silhouetted sun on the horizon. I tugged at the hem to my stiff shirt, ruined by salt water. My skin felt tight and gritty, and my hair was a wet mop on top of my head. “We swam here.”

  The girl looked like she wanted more from me, but, really, that was the best explanation I could give her.

  “Well, wherever you’re from, welcome to the Apocalypse,” the guy said.

  “Do we get to know your names?” Eden asked sweetly.

  They shared another look. This one was full of pursed lips and scowling eyes.

  “Depends.” The girl shrugged. “Do you happen to run an alternate government that’s intent on taking over North America?”

  I snorted. She couldn’t be serious. An alternate government? Those didn’t exist.

  “Does it count if we’re King and Queen of a small kingdom?”

  All of us gaped at Eden. “You’re not serious,” I whispered.

  “Completely,” Kiran promised. “But don’t worry, we’re not interested in any new recruits. We’ve got enough problems of our own.”

  “King and Queen?” the girl laughed. “That is maybe the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Eden smiled. “Not any weirder than Zombies.”

  The girl smiled too. “Truth. Alright, fine. You can have our names. I’m Reagan. This is Hendrix.”

  “Let me guess,” I mumbled. “Your super powers include killing Zombies and not dying?”

  Reagan took an aggressive step forward. “We don’t have super powers, little girl. We have to not die the hard way. By actually not dying.”

  I felt some indignation on her behalf. “Wait. You don’t have super powers? You have to live with Zombies on a daily basis and fight them with your bare hands?”

  Reagan threw her arm my direction. “She gets it.”

  “That sucks. Whoever thought that was a good idea is a cruel, sadistic person.”

  “I’ve often thought that myself,” Hendrix muttered.

  “The only thing that could make this worse for you two is a love triangle!” I laughed at my own joke, but Reagan and Hendrix didn’t seem to think it was funny. At all.

  Oops.

  I cleared my throat to fill in some of the awkward silence. “Well, I don’t have superpowers either. I’m more of a creator of problems, than a problem solver.”

  “That’s too bad,” Hendrix lamented. “We seem to have a major problem on our hands.” He peeked over the edge of the building but quickly drew back.

  “Er, that’s my fault too.”

  Hendrix and Reagan returned their attention to me. Together they walked over and with guns drawn made a slow circle around my body.

  “Are you hurt?” Reagan asked in a low voice.

  “Bitten?” Hendrix pressed.

  I shook my head. “Nope. Just your average, every day, Siren problems.”

  “Siren?” Reagan sounded beyond confused.

  “As in Greek.”

  Eden jumped in to add, “Ivy brings all the boys to the yard apparently.”

  “For real?” Reagan sounded truly shocked.

  “For real,” I promised.

  “All the boys?”

  “All
the boys. Even the Zombie ones. I attract them, pull them in with my Siren call.”

  “That explains a lot,” she mumbled. She circled her finger around the rooftop. “What about these boys?”

  I shifted uncomfortably. “Uh, Kiran and Ryder are immune. I wouldn’t know about… Hendrix.”

  Reagan spun around on her heel and raised her eyebrows. “Notice anything?”

  “She’s pretty.” He lifted one shoulder with a casual shrug. “But I’m not drawn to her or anything.”

  Reagan was quick to reassure him, “It’s okay if you are. I mean, I won’t care.”

  Hendrix’s expression darkened and his eyebrows slammed together over hard eyes. “I know it’s okay, Reagan.”

  She backed up a step. “I didn’t mean… I was just saying. I didn’t want you to feel weird about it.”

  “Don’t worry. I don’t.”

  “Good.”

  “Good.”

  “Good,” Ryder echoed. “Should we keep talking about Ivy’s powers as if they aren’t a real issue here, or should we deal with the real problem at hand? Like the Zombies that are trying to eat us.”

  As if to accentuate his point, a first-floor window shattered beneath us. We all flew to the ledge just in time to watch Zombies fight and claw to dive through the opening.

  “I’m all for making new friends,” Eden told us. “But let’s continue this conversation on a different rooftop.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Reagan agreed. “I suppose you’re offering up your mojo to get us there?”

  Eden grinned. “My mojo is at your disposal.”

  Chapter Three

  Reagan

  She wasn’t kidding.

  By the time my feet touched the roof of the next building over, I was inwardly freaking out.

  This feeling wasn’t entirely foreign. The first time I watched the news with my parents where Zombies headlined the show, I remembered feeling this struggle inside my mind to accept this new reality.

  I had an idea of what was real and true and based in my physical world. Then Zombies happened and it seemed like my entire existence shifted into the crazed, horror-fiction genre. And now it was happening again.

  Eden explained that she was an Immortal Queen, a witch, to be exact. She had real Magic that lifted me from building to building and made her live forever.

  That didn’t fit in nicely with my constant reality of death and gore.

  And Ivy? The Siren?

  That was even weirder.

  She hadn’t been very specific about where she came from. At least Eden knew Zombies existed. Ivy seemed completely ignorant to the new world order.

  Lucky girl.

  We continued on like that, moving from building to building via Magic. By the time we ran out of Main Street, we had made it to a three-story building that sat on the edge of town.

  The moon hovered low in the sky. It had switched places with the sun and bathed the desolate, little town in ethereal light. The stars were bright out this way. The sky blinked down at us, bragging about the safety up there.

  I felt a twinge of jealousy. Nothing bad ever happened in the stars. They got to sit it out while we battled the ultimate evil down here.

  “We ran out of road,” Hendrix grunted.

  As usual the sound of his voice put me instantly on edge. Not in a bad way… Just like a hyper-aware kind of way. When Hendrix spoke, all of my senses tuned in. And without meaning to, I would zone in on everything and anything he did. I knew exactly where he was, where he would move to and who he was talking to.

  So maybe I did have a superpower after all.

  Radioactive Hendrix-senses.

  I needed a theme song and a cape.

  Actually, no. I wasn’t that cool. It was actually pretty pathetic how I couldn’t seem to let him go. He’d moved on. I’d moved on. Why couldn’t my heart figure that out?

  “You alright?” his rumbly voice skittered over my skin and tickled my spine. A year ago, those feelings would have made me jumpy and flighty.

  Today they made me sick.

  They weren’t exciting. They were sad. And they weren’t mysterious. They were regretful.

  “I don’t know what we’re going to do next. We have weapons, but not enough for everybody.” I turned around and addressed the group. “We came to town on a supply run. We usually travel with more, but one of the girls in our group is, er, sick.”

  Hendrix snorted. “Only you would refer to Haley as sick.”

  I elbowed him in the ribs, but he caught my bicep and tugged on it teasingly. I stumbled off balance and decided to ignore him.

  “Anyway, we don’t have enough ammo to defend all of us. Besides, there’s no place to go. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

  “We don’t need weapons,” Kiran explained. “We come prepackaged with them.”

  “How nice for you,” Hendrix drawled. It was still up in the air whether we trusted these people or not. We’d learned the hard way that humans could be just as deadly, if not more so, than the Feeders.

  And now I felt sick for another reason.

  Kane.

  Would I ever get over his death?

  Over him?

  “There’s a car just over there,” Eden pointed out.

  I followed her finger and saw an abandoned sedan half on the road, half in the ditch. The doors were still open. It was clear someone had abandoned the vehicle after crashing it into the ditch.

  “Maybe.” It wasn’t like me to give false hope, but I honestly didn’t know what else to do. “But the chances of it being gassed up and ready to go are slim to none.”

  “No worries!” Eden sounded obnoxiously chipper. “We’re Magic remember? Gas is not a problem for us.”

  “What if the previous owners took the keys?” The guy named Ryder asked incredulously. “They’re probably buried in one of those pockets down there.” He gestured at the slavering Feeders beating their decaying fists against the brick building.

  “We don’t need keys either,” Eden grinned.

  I cleared my throat and forced my mind to accept her explanation as truth. It didn’t make sense. Her reality didn’t fit the world I knew. I didn’t get to Magically start cars or float across buildings. I killed things with my bare hands and learned to run fast out of necessity.

  Some people got all the good stuff.

  Wasn’t there someone I could write a letter to and complain? Maybe I could write a bad review and let them know how I really feel?

  People loved to write bad reviews. I could be one of those people.

  “So leave this building? Then what? What’s our game plan?” Ryder asked. “We’ll still have to fight through a horde of Zombies to get to the car. And where are we going to go once we’re there?”

  “We have a jet,” Kiran explained.

  A jet? This time my mind just flat refused to comprehend that. I hadn’t seen a plane overhead in more than two years.

  Where exactly was their Kingdom located.

  “We don’t want to go too far,” Ivy explained meekly. She had seemed rather reluctant to speak. I didn’t know if she was shy or if Hendrix intimidated her. She kept shooting him wary looks and watching him when she didn’t think he was paying attention. “Hermes can technically find us anywhere, but he didn’t even bother to take us all the way to shore. I’m thinking if he comes back for us, he isn’t going to want to put much effort into it.”

  “Hermes?” Hendrix asked without any inflection. “The Greek god?”

  “Of course, the philosophy major would know who Hermes is.”

  He shot me a dirty look.

  Ivy cleared her throat and said, “Yep. The Greek god.”

  “Okay, this is getting weirder and weirder.” I took a few deep breaths and worked hard not to panic. Greek gods? Witches? Sirens? Real, true, never-going-to-die Immortals?

  “This isn’t real, is it?” I asked in a quiet voice. “I’ve finally lost my mind. I’m crazy now. The Zombies made me cra
zy.”

  “If that’s true, then we went crazy together,” Hendrix said softly.

  I looked up at him and met his deep blue eyes. I couldn’t make out their color in the darkness, but I knew it anyway. I memorized it. I could close my eyes and picture it perfectly. I would always remember it. I would always be able to tell the difference between Hendrix’s eyes and any other shade of blue.

  “At least I’m not alone.” I smiled shakily at him.

  “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather be crazy with.” His words were teasing, but it was almost like he didn’t realize what he said until after he said it. He sucked in a sharp breath and looked away, breaking the tunnel vision we’d momentarily found in each other.

  BANG!

  I jumped back and my heart exploded into a rapid beat. The Zombie clamor down below had faded into background music while we hung out in the relative safety of the rooftop. But I should have known better than to believe anything could be safe at the end of the world.

  I ran to the ledge where a mangled Zombie lay flat on his back. His friends and cohorts jumped on him as if he were the best kind of feast. His rotting face disappeared underneath the deluge of hungry Feeders.

  Sick.

  I wondered what had put him flat on his back until I noticed the bony, raw fingers just inches from my face. I let out a shriek and jumped back.

  Before I could think about it, I pulled my gun, lunged forward and discharged my weapon.

  The Feeder that had managed to climb the entire way to the top of this building dropped to the ground, another pile of mangled flesh and bones for the crowd on the ground to munch on.

  “Okay, so we head to the car. But how are we going to get to the ground? It’s still thirty yards off once we’re down below. And there are no less than a hundred Feeders trying to scale this building.”

  Ryder had a good point. I looked to Hendrix for an answer.

  Before he could come up with an answer, Eden spoke up, “We jump. Kiran and I will get everyone to the ground safely. We can probably land right in front of the car. It will be easy.”

  “That’s not going to work,” Hendrix disagreed.

  Eden sounded mildly outraged when she asked, “Why not?”

  “Because this is the Zombie Apocalypse! This is the end of the world! Nothing is that simple. And things never work out like you want them to.”