Dead Rising (3 page)

No way. If he got that door open, he’d have me out with a quick shove. I thought of my gold keychain, but that was more for temporarily stalling a vampire while fleeing. I didn’t want to flee, I wanted to stay safely in the car while Dario drove me home. Or to
my
car. Either one.

Since my seatbelt was off, I shifted, blocking the door handle with my body. “You can’t just leave me here! Can’t someone else handle it?”

“No. You need to get out. Now.”

I didn’t like the tone of his voice, or his fingers digging into my arms as he tried to move me aside. I wedged myself in place and braced my feet against the middle console, not bothered by the rather intimate position that put us both in. He pulled, I pushed, but ultimately his strength was greater than mine, even with the force of my weight in play. I felt the handle jab between my shoulder blades. The door flew open, and I fell backward onto the curb.

It wasn’t an easy landing. The SUV was up higher than a regular car would have been, and I was launched backward from the way I’d had myself braced against the door. My tailbone hit and I rolled, not wanting to bounce the back of my head against the broken concrete of the sidewalk.

It gave Dario just enough time to slam the door, lock it, and take off. Asshole. He’d dumped me in a less-than-desirable neighborhood with twenty-five hundred dollars in my purse and nothing to defend myself with besides a can of mace and a gold keychain. Yes, I was a Templar. Yes, I’d been trained to fight, but the majority of that had been with a sword—a big hand-and-a-half sword. It’s not a modern weapon. People don’t go walking around cities with huge swords strapped to their backs. People don’t even go walking around the countryside with huge swords strapped to their backs. Why couldn’t the Templar weapon of choice be a Glock? We weren’t in the Middle Ages anymore.

I had a sword, one I’d named Trusty, back in my apartment hidden under the mattress and secured by several magical spells. Why I’d bothered to bring it to Baltimore, I’ll never know. It’s not like I could use the thing for more than a Halloween accessory. The sword was too big to lug around. I might not have a concealed carry permit for a pistol, but I could at least stash a knife in my purse. It would come in handy the next time I got shoved out of a car in a bad area.

I was wishing I’d had a knife now. Even the ones I used to chop vegetables or cut steak would have been welcome. Dario’s and my little scuffle hadn’t gone unnoticed, and the group on the corner was eyeing me with amusement. Trying to preserve my dignity, I stood and brushed off my ass, giving the small crowd a quick nod as I turned to leave.

I started walking with false confidence while getting my bearings. It was important to at least look like I knew where I was going. My car was in Mount Vernon. My apartment was in Fells Point. Leonora’s place had been somewhere in north Baltimore. I listened for the sound of traffic as I walked and checked the street signs, hoping to find a major intersection. I’d been here six months, but I hadn’t spent my time roaming the far reaches of the city.

There were some side streets that looked like residential neighborhoods, but I decided I should stay to the main roads. Sketchy as they might be, streets with loiterers and some traffic were better than quiet neighborhoods where residents were probably used to sleeping through gunshots and fights. I paused at an intersection and made a quick decision, feeling a mixture of relief and anxiety as I saw a sign for Johns Hopkins University—ahead five miles. At least I knew roughly where I was. And I
wasn’t
in the best neighborhood for after midnight on a Wednesday.

I headed south, trying for the quickest route south and east. Row houses gave way to shops and stores, small pockets of gentrification nestled among distressed properties and abandoned homes. I turned a corner and saw a church, barely indistinguishable from the shops and houses beside it. The sign above the doorway was worn, but clearly proclaimed that services at Saint Mark’s Evangelical were held Sundays at eight and eleven.

Pilgrims on the path. One of our three founding principles was to safeguard the journey of pilgrims on the path. Traditionally that had meant Christian pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem or other holy sites. For the last century our elders had debated what this meant in a modern era. What defined a pilgrim? And should we expand the definition of “path” beyond one of Christianity?

Whatever the elders might eventually agree on, I doubted it included that guy beating the shit out of a hooker in the narrow space between the church and the building next to it.

I shouldn’t care. I wasn’t a Knight, and even if I was, I doubted any Templar would consider a hooker to be a “pilgrim on the path.” Highway to hell maybe, but not on the path.

She might not be a pilgrim, and she might not be on a righteous path, but I just couldn’t turn my back and walk away from someone getting the crap beat out of them, especially against the wall of a church. I dug in my purse, thinking that if I was going to be a hero, I wasn’t going to be a stupid one.

It was times like this I could use that really big sword—the one I’d left home under my mattress. Luckily I’d spent the last five years pursuing non Templar-sanctioned extracurricular activities.

“
Lume creo
.” Blue fire launched from my fingertips, speeding in a line toward the pair grappling against the wall. Before either could react, the flames licked up their pants and consumed them.

Illusion. No one was harmed in the making of this rescue, but unfortunately my little spell didn’t allow me to differentiate between victim and attacker. Instead of running, the woman did the stop-drop-and-roll right beside the guy. I was hoping to keep this whole thing impersonal, but clearly that wasn’t the way it was going to go down.

I ran into the alley and grabbed the woman, pulling her away from the man. “
Foi
.”

The fire vanished. It took the man about two seconds longer than the woman to realize that he had no physical injury. By that point I had her out into the street. Thank you Mom for insisting I spend all that time in the gym lifting weights.

“Run,” I told her. She took off one way, her skirt still up around her waist, shoes left behind. I hesitated a second too long and felt the impact of a body tackling me from the side. My shoulder hit the ground with a sharp stab of pain, and in my sideways vision, I saw the hooker still running.
Go, baby, go
.

I rolled, feeling the gravel digging into my skin and catching my breath at the horrible stench of old sweat and garlic. Man, this guy stunk. His smell was the least of my worries as his fist punched my already bruised shoulder with the force of a Mack truck.

The woman was home free as long as she hauled ass. And the longer the guy who had knocked me to the ground kept his attention on me, the better her chances of getting away. I took a few blows to the stomach, curling in to lessen the impact and struggling to keep my dinner on the inside of my stomach.

“Bitch. What the fuck was that? I’ll make you pay, bitch.”

I caught my breath at the amount of garlic in the man’s words, then let it out in a whoosh as his fist hit my stomach once again. I couldn’t take much more of this. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the hooker round the corner, far enough away for me to finally defend myself. I rolled, unloading the can of expired mace in the guy’s face.

He screamed with the pitch and volume of a pissed-off banshee and jumped away from me. Evidently that expiration date was just a marketing ploy to convince consumers to buy more frequently, because that stuff was far from ineffective.

I scrambled to my feet, running in the opposite direction from the woman, of course. Making sure that the guy was more likely to follow me, I stumbled on purpose a few times, slowing down to look back and double check that he was after me as opposed to her. It would really suck if this asshole managed to go back for the prostitute after all I’d done to free her.

His breathing sounded like a tornado as he narrowed the distance between us. Block after block of row houses ended and I ran beside a brick fence line surrounding a park. I heard the footsteps behind me. My lungs burned along with the muscles in my legs as I hauled ass as fast as I could alongside the fence. My poor diet the past month had taken its toll, as had the lack of regular, regimented exercise I’d done up until I’d left my Templar training. And the shoes. Yes, I was blaming the shoes, too. Either way, I was one sorry Templar if I couldn’t outrun a John on the straight.

Maybe that mace wasn’t full strength after all. He was gaining and I could practically feel his garlic-laden breath on my neck. I was fast, but out of shape compared to him. There was no way I could outrun a guy with longer legs and some serious adrenaline. I needed to use my agility to an advantage. Reaching out my right hand I jumped, grabbing the top edge of the brick fence as I vaulted over it.

The ground was soft on the other side. I tucked and rolled, springing to my feet in what looked to be a park. Glancing around quickly to orient myself, I saw the shadows of tall trees and geometrically shaped bushes, all vague lumps of gray sheltered by the wall from the streetlights. Behind me my pursuer grunted and scrabbled as he tried to get over the brick fence. With any luck he’d give up.

Nope. I ran and heard the thud of the man’s body against the ground the same moment my foot stubbed against something hard and solid, pitching me onto my face. Luckily the ground was soft and velvety grass cushioned the impact of my body against the sod. Stupid sandals. I was never wearing heels again. Only hiking shoes and joggers, just in case a vampire ditched me north of town and I needed to run from some dude who’d been assaulting a prostitute. I wasted a precious second to cradle my bruised toes and saw what I’d tripped over. It wasn’t a rock, it was a grave stone.

The moon came out from behind a cloud, illuminating the “park” around me in a rolling ocean of white. Neatly placed rows of green were bisected by rectangles of marble. Ahead the markers rose several feet tall, headstones gleaming in the silvery moonlight.

The call of the moon wasn’t the only thing I felt. Magic bit sharply through the air, tingling along my skin like an electric pulse. There were a lot of spells that required a full moon and a graveyard, but none smelled like rotted flesh and mothballs, none felt like a thousand maggots moving along the ground. Shit. The ground really was moving, and it
was
maggots. Grass vanished, dirt shifted like sand parting around me. I rolled, desperately trying to find some portion of the ground that wasn’t turning into a silt-like form of quicksand.

Solid ground. I panted, my hair spilling around my face as I struggled to my feet, no longer worried about the man who’d been chasing me. Flesh and blood I could deal with, this I couldn’t—at least not without some serious preparation.

Brushing the hair from my eyes I saw them. White smoke rolled up from five graves, swirling in columns. Limbs extended, features formed, and before me were five specters.

I heard a gasp from behind me. “Holy shit. What…who are you?”

Correction, five specters and one bulky man. He was smeared with dirt, his clothing torn from rolling in an alley and falling over a brick fence, but he still was intimidating. Well, he would have been intimidating if I hadn’t been pretty sure he was pissing his pants right now.

“Magic fire. Ghosts.” The man took a few steps back, his eyes huge as they darted between me and the shadowy ghosts. “You’re a fucking witch. A fucking witch.” He barely got the last word out before running and nearly throwing himself back over the fence. I should have been glad. That was one last threat I needed to face. Instead I was feeling a spike of fear at being left alone with five newly risen spirits.

Templar instruction on ghostly spirits was only geared to clearing a path for pilgrims and Knights to pass safely, and my extracurricular magical studies didn’t lean toward the necromantic. I didn’t know
anyone
who delved into that sort of thing. Evidently someone did, and that someone was nearby.

I touched my heart, and went down on one knee. The specters were fully coalesced and beginning to gather their power. My skin prickled with the chill of their presence. My heartbeat jumped, but I didn’t have time for a panic attack or an adrenaline freak-out. I was trained for this. I may have spent my life in privilege, my only experience academic, but these rites had been drilled into me from the moment my Knight training began.

My heart rate normalized. I made the sign of the cross. “
Jesu, luys im chanaparhy
.”

A tunnel of light appeared, reaching from my feet to the end of the cemetery. The specters shrieked, floating backward to give the glowing path a wide breadth. I rose and walked carefully forward, aware that the light closed behind me as I passed. The spirits didn’t give up, following me at a safe distance, howling. I still felt the chill of their presence, the malevolence of their intent. Who had brought them from the grave? And for what purpose?

A thousand years ago a necromancer would summon hundreds of spirits to march before an army, to strike fear into the hearts of the opposing forces. Many fled. If the necromancer was highly skilled, the specters could even kill. But that was history. In modern times, spirits were only called for the purpose of communing with loved ones—séances and that sort of thing.

Someone’s surviving relative had a lot of money, and some pretty pissed off dead family judging from the specters following me.

The locked gates of the cemetery were in sight. Darn, I’d need to climb over them, too. I wasn’t dressed for this sort of thing, and my shoes sure as heck weren’t ideal either. I paused, gritting my teeth at the wave of cold that surrounded me from the spirits. I took off my cute sandals, looping the straps over my wrist. Then I began to climb.

The protective tunnel of light held until I was over the fence, then it vanished plunging me into a world of darkness. I jumped back a few steps from the gate, my heart pounding until I realized that the spirits weren’t rushing to attack. As my eyes adjusted I saw the specters safely inside the graveyard. Interesting. I paced the gates a few moments, watching them as they bounced against invisible barriers. Were they unable to leave the cemetery boundaries? Could they only go a certain distance from the resting place of their physical bodies? Or could they only wander so far from their summoner?