“We won’t know until I experiment,” he said. “But even so, the information offers avenues I haven’t explored.”
“Right. So, this got me thinking. Allen told Kang about this stuff, too. And we’ve been scratching our heads trying to figure out what was in Kang’s system that made him re-grow while the others stayed in stasis.” I took a deep breath. “What if Kang spent a couple of years experimenting with those ingredients? Maybe it changed his cells or his parasite, and that’s why he has an extra boost for re-growing. Like he’s been pickled in zombie steroids.”
Dr. Nikas let out a laugh. “Pickled zombie. Angel, not only are you a ray of light in an often dreary world, but you may well be correct.”
With a parting promise to keep me in the loop, he hung up. I had a feeling he was already filling a whiteboard with scribbled notes.
Still grinning, I exited the morgue with a light step and headed to my car. There was still plenty of time for me to make it to the Fest. I’d picked the loose skin off the rotten patch and taped a patch of gauze over it—one that I’d smeared with eyeliner to make it look like it was part of my “costume.” For good measure, I taped smudged gauze pads onto my collarbone and forearm to complete the look.
I stopped dead as a muffled scream of rage and frustration reached me from the only other car in the lot. Nick’s, parked at the far end of the first row. He sat in the driver’s seat, head thrown back and face contorted. I stood rooted to the spot in shock as his long scream trailed off to a guttural howl and finally shuddering silence.
Instinct and worry urged me to rush to him, but I found myself hesitating. Maybe he didn’t want help. Maybe he just wanted to be left alone. I had no desire to go through a repeat of the scene at the restaurant, but I also couldn’t go on my merry way without checking on him. I approached his car, only to see him violently ripping a sheet of paper into smaller and smaller pieces. At the sight of me, he froze, then quickly slipped on his I-don’t-give-a-shit expression and flung the door open.
“Hey, Nick. You cool?” I sauntered up to his door and snuck a casual peek inside the car. Paper bits littered the interior like confetti. On the seat was a torn envelope with LSU School of Medicine in the corner, and beneath it I spied the butt of a gun. What the shit? Sure, his dad owned a gun shop, but I’d never known Nick to carry a gun before.
“Everything’s great,” Nick said, “if you don’t count all the detours for the stupid parade.” He grabbed his messenger bag, got out and slammed the door. “I need to finish a report, and it took me twice as long as usual to get here.”
I suspected his temper had more to do with the confetti-fied contents of that envelope than traffic. My heart sank. It had to be a rejection of his med school application. Damn. I glanced at the gun. But why did he need that? Protection? Murder? Suicide?
No. Not Nick.
I hoped.
I cocked my head at him. “You sure nothing else is bugging you?”
“I’m fine, okay?” He stalked toward the building, but not before I got a good look at his right eye—red and puffy, and promising a nice shiner.
“Nick!” I dogged his steps. “I’m not going away this time. Did your dad do this?”
His shoulders jerked with tension, but he didn’t stop. “No! I clocked myself with the lat pulldown bar at the gym earlier.”
Right. And I only ate brains on holidays. “Talk to me. Five minutes. If you still want me to go away after that, I will.”
He key-swiped his ID and yanked the door open. “What do you want, Angel? I said I’m fine. I have work to do, and the last thing I need is you hanging around.”
I ducked in after him. He kept his face turned away so I couldn’t see his swollen eye. “Fuck it!” He threw his hands up. “Since your idea of a good time is to screw with me today, go for it. Just don’t expect me to help you.” He strode off through the morgue toward the front offices.
I followed like a lioness waiting for her prey to wear out so she could pounce. “Did I ever tell you about my mom?”
Nick headed up the stairs. “No. But I’m sure you’re about to bombard me with the story.”
I took the stairs two at a time right along with him. “She went to jail when I was eleven. For child abuse.”
He glanced at me, but didn’t give a smart ass remark this time.
“She was mentally ill, but that didn’t change or excuse what she did to me. My dad didn’t see it, or didn’t want to see it. Not until she broke my arm. That’s when he finally called the cops.”
Nick stepped into his office and plunked his messenger bag onto the desk. “I’m sorry you had a rough time, but I don’t get why you feel the need to tell me about it now.”
“Because when I was seventeen, I started getting it from my dad.”
He flinched as if poised to either bolt or punch me. I’d struck a nerve. “I was acting out and being a little shit,” I continued. “And he was an alcoholic who didn’t know how the hell to deal with my screwups.” I paused, chest tight. “I figured I deserved it.”
His face stayed blank, but a multitude of emotions boiled behind the thin facade. He yanked papers from his bag and slammed them onto the desk. “You were a fucked up loser. I bet you deserved every bit of it.”
My composure cracked as if he’d taken a sledgehammer to it. “Takes one to know one,” I shot back. “You can’t even get into med school after all your bragging about pre-med this and pre-med that. Who’s the loser now?”
I fled the office before he could respond to my stupid and nasty comeback. I knew damn well that Nick was in lashing-out mode and projecting all of his shit onto me. So why did his words hurt so damn much?
“Angel!”
I kept going toward the stairwell. He didn’t want to talk, and neither did I anymore.
“Angel. I’m sorry.” Misery filled his voice.
Sighing, I turned to see Nick in the hall outside his office, looking utterly bereft.
“I’m sorry, too,” I said, returning to him and the office. “I shouldn’t have said that about med school. That was low. I know how much it meant to you and how hard you worked.”
Nick collapsed into his chair. “I’m going,” he said. “I’m fucking going to fucking med school.”
Frowning, I struggled to process that. “Okay, I’m lost. I thought you got rejected. What were you ripping up in your car?”
“You saw that?” He grimaced and turned beet red. “It was my acceptance. I got it last month.”
Baffled, I sank into the other chair. “But that’s good, isn’t it? Being a doctor is your dream.”
“Yeah,” he said morosely. “Classes start in August.”
“Dude, you make it sound as if you’re going to your execution.”
He looked away. “I can’t help it if I’ve considered other options.”
I mentally backtracked to reassess everything I’d seen and learned about him in the past year and a half. His pompous attitude about academics and being pre-med. His flurry of med school applications and exams and interviews. And his current look of defeat. “You really don’t want to be a doctor?”
Slumped shoulders twitched. “It’s the smartest thing.”
“That’s not what I asked.” I leaned forward and fixed him with a penetrating look. “Nick, do you want to go to med school?”
“I’d be stupid not to after all the work and money that’s gone into it.” He wadded a piece of paper and hurled it at the trashcan. “I guess I’m stupid.”
“You’re not stupid, and you know it.” A picture began to form of an ugly family dynamic. “It’s your dad who wants you to be a doctor.” I paused as more pieces clarified. “When I saw you outside Crawfish Joe’s, that was when you told him you didn’t want to go through with it.”
Nick pounded a fist into his thigh. “I like being a death investigator here. Righ
t now, all I want to do is work and get back into theater and volunteer with Allen on medical relief missions and keep my friends. I don’t want to bury myself in stress for the next decade. Even if I did, I’d specialize in forensic pathology. I sure as hell don’t want to be a fucking trauma surgeon so Bear’s survivalists can have a goddamn medic for the apocalypse!”
I leapt to my feet and slammed my hands on the desk. “Then do all that shit you want to do! Get back into theater, and volunteer with Allen on medical relief missions, and for fuck’s sake don’t be a trauma surgeon unless that’s what you want. Don’t kill yourself for someone else’s dream. Fuck that noise!”
“I wish I could just say fuck it.” The flicker of fire had left his voice. “But I can’t.”
“You can’t be your own person?”
“I made a deal.”
I grabbed his chin and turned his face to get a good view of his bruised eye. “Is this part of the deal? How many times has he hit you?”
He jerked away. “It’s not like that. This med school thing blindsided him, that’s all. He yells a lot, but he’s never hit me before.”
“But he made sure you committed yourself to his vision of what your life should be.” I shoved a hand through my hair, frustrated and aching for Nick. Bear was brawny and a good foot taller than Nick. Not to mention, charismatic and intimidating as hell. I had little doubt Nick grew up walking a line of fear and respect with him. “Look, I get it,” I said. “He’s your dad. And now he’s pissed off because, god forbid, you dared to have a speck of free will.”
“You don’t understand what—”
“Nick. I swear to God, I’ve been there, on the receiving end of verbal and physical abuse.” I straightened and gathered my thoughts, gentled my voice. “I get that it’s easier to stay silent and take it. When you’ve been beaten down so hard for so long, the last thing you want to do is push back and make it worse.”
He shot to his feet and turned away, sending his chair skittering into the wall with a bang.
I moved in and put my hand on his shoulder, felt the stress vibrating through him. “The problem with keeping your mouth shut is that you die by inches,” I said softly, willing my words to reach the core of him. “Your own hopes and dreams keep slipping farther away, until one day you realize you never got the chance to live the life you wanted.”
“Angel.” His voice shook as if every pent up emotion wanted to spew out all at once. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Yeah, you do. But the thought of doing it is terrifying.” I gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Do you want to live your own life? Or die crushed beneath someone else’s dream? You’re in control of that, whether you like it or not.”
He went still beneath my hand for several seconds before turning to face me. “I want to stay here.” He forced a crooked smile. “Someone needs to keep your butt in line.”
“Ain’t that the truth!” I grinned then poked him in the sternum. “So don’t you dare let your dad bully you.” I poked him again. “You don’t have to take that crap.” I waggled my finger to ready for a third poke.
Whisper-faint amusement touched his eyes as he swatted my hand. “Yeah, I don’t have to put up with bullies.” He let out a long sigh, but looked as if he’d dropped a billion pounds of burden. “I’m such a chickenshit. I couldn’t even tell him to keep his stupid tranquilizer gun and shove it up his ass.”
Relief washed through me. A tranq gun. From his dad. “First off, you’re not a chickenshit. Standing up to a parent is the hardest thing ever. Second off, why the heck did he give you a tranquilizer gun? Bears? Cougars? Raging nutria?”
Nick rolled his eyes. “Don’t ask. You’ll be sorry.”
“Aw, c’mon. Spill.” I lifted my poking finger in mock threat.
He snorted, shook his head. “Fine. You asked for it. My dad gave it to me so I could defend myself against . . . zombies.”
“Zombies?” The word squeaked out.
“Hand to god. Toldya you’d be sorry.” A smile lifted his mouth. “It’s completely insane. But, just for absurdity’s sake, why would anyone think a tranquilizer would work faster on a zombie than a regular gun? Or a baseball bat?”
“A tranq for zombies.” I managed a laugh and hoped it didn’t sound strangled. “Oh, man. That’s crazypants. Where’d he come up with a wild idea like that?”
Nick threw his hands in the air. “He must’ve been talking to some seriously whackdoodle people over the weekend. He’s never bought into the woowoo crap before.”
Whackdoodle or not, who had given Bear the idea of a tranq gun? Regular tranquilizer drugs didn’t do shit to zombies unless it was enough to stop ten elephants, but Saberton had a special formula that took zombies down in seconds. Could it have been one of Andrew’s security people? Or Dante Rosario? He’d sure been palsy-walsy with Bear in the gun shop on Friday. I needed to find a way to check the darts in Nick’s tranq gun. If they were zombie-grade, that put an ugly spin on everything.
“Well, if Bigfoot attacks, you’re set,” I said then winced as I caught sight of the clock. “Crap. I’m heading out to the Zombie Fest and need to get going before I get blocked in by the parade.”
Nick grinned. “By the way, nice makeup. How’d you get the skin tone so smoo—”
“I really gotta run! We’ll chat later. Promise you’ll call me if you need anything?”
“Yeah. Sure.” He paused and met my eyes. “I’m going to do it. Tomorrow, I’ll have it out with Bear.”
“I’m behind you all the way. We’ll celebrate after Mardi Gras.” I gave him a sly look. “I’ll even let you help me study for midterms.”
Nick smiled, genuine and relaxed, then swept in and hugged me.
I hugged him right back then rested my head on his shoulder as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Thank god the V12 pre-rot didn’t come with Eau de Decay. “You’re my best friend. You know that, right?”
“I’m not so sure,” he said, voice light with humor. “Remember the Nick the Prick doodle you did last month?”
“Which one? I mean, god, there’ve been so many.”
He laughed and released me, then caught my hands in his. “That does it. I’m truly offended.”
I grinned and squeezed his hands. The next thing I knew, I had him backed against the desk with my lips firmly planted on his. I hadn’t even thought before moving. Oh god, what the hell did I just do?!
Nick seemed damn near frozen in surprise—not exactly kissing me back, but not resisting, either. A small and crazy part of me hoped he’d return the kiss, but the rest wanted to run.
Majority rules. I scrambled back and gave a shaky laugh. “That’ll teach you to be offended.” I knew my statement didn’t make any sense, but neither did me kissing him.
His eyes were wide with bewildered shock, but he recovered enough to give me a mischievous smile. “I think I should be offended more often.”
A snicker escaped me. I needed to leave before I did something stupid. Stupider. “Gotta go. Call me if you need support with your dad. I got your back.”
I didn’t wait for a response, and hit the stairwell at a run.
Chapter 28
What the hell, Angel?
Outside, I waited for my pulse to return to a normal rhythm and struggled to make sense of what just happened. The obvious suspect was the V12. With it, the slightest emotion or impulse could turn into action. Annoyance could become rage. A craving might result in me trying to pry someone’s skull open. But what would prompt me to kiss Nick?
Glancing back at the building, I spied him in the window—for the split second before he jerked back as though he hadn’t been watching me. Despite everything, I grinned. I’d have done the exact same thing.
On the street, a car blared twangy country music from open windows as it cruised past. A dog barked in complaint then set
tled as the ballad about the singer’s guitar faded into the distance. Farther away, sirens and the uneven strains of a marching band heralded the start of the parade. Crap. Time to get my ass moving. The Tucker Point PD was great about waiting until the first float was within spitting distance before barricading cross streets, but if I missed the window I’d have to wait over an hour for the parade to pass or backtrack halfway across town.
As I hurried to my car, a man wearing a plastic half-mask and a green satin Krewe of Chiron shirt wandered unsteadily into the parking lot. Drunk as a skunk, I decided. Dude must’ve missed getting on his float in time, and now he was trying to cut across the block to intercept the parade. Too bad the idiot was going the wrong way to catch it.
My this-ain’t-right senses tingled, and though the man was still a good twenty feet from me, I angled to give him an even wider berth. Why did he have his mask on when he wasn’t on a float?
Alarm bells sounded in my head. The barking dog. I shot a quick look toward the street, saw a silver Ford Explorer parked so that the corner of the building shielded it from the view of anyone exiting the morgue. In the back seat, Marla glared at me through the open window.
And it was Dante Rosario behind the mask, a Taser in his hand.
My heart slammed against my ribs. He wanted to capture me for Saberton and would likely succeed unless I came up with a brilliant plan real damn fast. No way could I beat him to my car or the morgue door. If I tried to flee in any other direction, Marla would be out that window and after me in a heartbeat. I was hungry enough that my parasite probably wouldn’t be much help against his Taser. At least he didn’t have a zombie-tranq gun. I’d have no chance against—