A Mad Zombie Party

“Like to like, remember?” Frosty says.
Our gazes meet...hold. I shiver.
“What do our witnesses say about all this?” Bronx asks.
“Ask them yourself,” Ali says as both Kat and Emma appear. “They’ve ensured everyone will be able to see them.”
The room grows quiet.
Beside me, River stiffens. “Her.” He grits the word, leaving me confused. Her...who? Kat?
Frosty, I notice, turns his head, as if he can’t bear to look at either girl.
“We’ve petitioned for answers,” Emma says.
“Meanwhile, Camilla is the one who felt Tiffany’s blade across her throat.” Kat scans the room. “She’s the one dealing with thanatos now. Let her decide what to do with the girl.”
Every eye lands on me, but I focus on Frosty again and—
—in the blink of an eye, the walls of the room vanish. I’m suddenly surrounded by Anima agents. Each has a gun aimed at my chest. My attempt to break into the warehouse to save my brother has clearly failed. These guys were waiting for me all along. They knew I’d be coming, as if the bread crumbs I’d followed were purposely left. They probably were.
I’ve been beaten to hell and back, my jaw is on fire and the friends I convinced to join me are lying dead at my feet. All but one. Bettina. Like me, she’s restrained by two agents.
We should be dead like the others, but for some reason, we were spared, punches pulled, no one shooting or stabbing us.
A pale-skinned brunette smiles and walks a circle around me. “Do you know who I am?”
Oh, yes. I’ve seen pictures. She’s the epitome of evil, greed and everything wrong with the world. Her name is Rebecca Smith.
I spit at her feet.
She nods at the agents holding Bettina. Both men lift daggers and stab, stab, stab her in the chest and sides. She screams and screams.
I scream. “Stop! Please, stop.” I struggle for freedom. My wrists are twisted behind my back, the backs of my knees kicked. My knees hit the floor.
And the guards...they just keep stabbing Bettina, blood spraying and pouring and dripping—blood and now other things. I want to look away, but I hold her gaze until the end—I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. She goes quiet, slumping in their arms. They let her go when her bowels empty. She drops with an unceremonious thump.
“Now you know I’m serious,” Rebecca says. “Your brother, like your friend, is currently in my care. I would hate for something so tragic to happen to him.”
I almost panic. I want to panic. This is my worst nightmare. I would rather die a thousand deaths than let my brother suffer a single moment of agony. He saved me, so many times he saved me. Now it’s my turn to save him. I can’t fail.
“You want something from me or I’d be dead too,” I say. “What is it?”
“Ali Bell.”
“I don’t know an Ali Bell.”
“You will. I’ll make sure of it.”
“But—”
“From now on, you will do what I say, when I say it. In return, your brother will walk away tonight. He won’t know we met, and you won’t tell him.”
I nod. What else can I do?
“If you disobey me even once, I’ll turn my sights to your brother once again, and we both know what will happen if I do.” She motions to Bettina.
“Touch him and I’ll—”
“What? You’ll watch?” She smiles at me. “You’re outmanned and outskilled, Miss Marks, and you know it. But if you need more incentive...” She holds out her hand. A guard gives her a small black remote. When she presses a button, a blind opens on the window behind her, revealing a small room.
Chains hang from the ceiling—River is attached to them, his arms trapped over his head. A blindfold covers his eyes, and a ball-gag fills his mouth. He’s shirtless, and strips of flesh are already messing.
“You’ll have to excuse his condition,” Rebecca says. “He’s one of the strongest slayers I’ve ever had in my lab, and I’d like to know just how much pain he can withstand before his mind breaks.” She pushes another button, and River’s body begins to shake and jerk, his limbs attempting to curl into his torso. “Right now, volts of electricity are shooting through him. It’s excruciating, he could die any second—”
“Stop!” I shout. “Just stop! I’ll do what you—”
—River is patting me on the back. “Milla! Can you hear me? Are you okay?”
I shake myself from the past. I’m trembling. I can’t stop. And it’s okay, I’ll be okay, because Frosty strides across the room and throws his arms around me, offering comfort and support. I can feel his heart racing just as quickly as my own.
“What happened?” River demands.
“Nothing you need to concern yourself with.” Frosty combs his fingers through my hair. “Whatever you decide, Milla, I’ll back.”
Black and white. Right and wrong.
My voice is soft, and it trembles like the rest of me as I announce, “We can’t let Tiffany go. She tried to murder me, and she would have succeeded if you guys hadn’t intervened. A girl like that can’t be loosed on the general public.”
Cole nods. “It’s settled, then. We gear up and let Rebecca come to us.”
* * *
One day passes. Two, then three, but nothing happens. Not from Rebecca’s end.
I and the other blonde females in the house dye our hair brown. That way, Rebecca and her men might hesitate to take a shot, mistaking us for Tiffany.
The first time Frosty got a glimpse of my new hairstyle...well. I still haven’t come down from the high.
“What the hell did you do to yourself?” he barked. “Change it back. Now.”
He should be happy. Now I look more like the girls he picked up at the club. “No,” I finally said.
“No? That’s it? Just no?”
“Oh, good. Your ears are working.”
“You were perfect the way you were, Mills.”
Perfect? Me?
So why has he stopped sleeping in our room?
And if he doesn’t want me, why does he watch me? In fact, his gaze is never far from me. He tracks me like he’s a starving and I’m on the menu. But if I glance in his direction, he hastily looks away.
I have hope again.
Only one other time has he spoken to me, though, and only to ask about the visions. He wanted to know why the last one revealed my encounter with Rebecca. With a little Q and A, we came to the conclusion our thoughts direct the visions. He’d wondered about my meeting with Rebecca right before it happened. Just like I’d wondered about his name before the previous one.
These visions...they may be the complete opposite of Ali’s, but they’re helping us get to know each other better than any conversation. Which is why I love them almost as much as I dread them.
“An-n-nd...yes! We’re done!” Love’s excited announcement draws me from my thoughts. She pushes out of her chair. “I’m gonna spend the morning with Ali and just, I don’t know, be a girl for a bit.”
“Sounds nice.” We’ve been monitoring the security cameras in twelve-hour shifts and last night Love and I were paired.
“Want to come?” she asks me.
I’m floored by the invite. And warmed. “Yes, actually, I do. But I missed dinner, and I’m starved. Let me grab a sandwich first.”
“Okay, see you in a bit.”
I make my way to the kitchen, where I find Chance pouring orange juice.
I swipe the glass and drain half the contents. “Thanks.”
He snorts. “Anytime, apparently. Where’s Love?”
“Headed to Ali’s room.”
He confiscates the juice and drinks the rest. “Well then, to Ali’s room I go.”
“First, bad Chance. Bad. She wants a girls’ night, and you most definitely aren’t a girl. Second, you are sooo whipped.” I make a tsking sound.
“You mean I’m so happy.”
“Wow. Way to rub it in.” I lightly punch him in the stomach, just hard enough to make him lose his breath. “What about now? Still happy?”
He laughs, bends down and rams his shoulders into my midsection, then straightens with me draped over his shoulder. “Just for that, I’m taking you to Love. You damaged her property, and you’ll have to pay her fine.”