[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

nothing she could do to stop it.
Or maybe there was something. She had seen Silvanus raise the dead, felt him
do it. Could she do it now?
Elaine reached out and touched his face. The skin was still warm. He was
barely dead, so close to being alive. Could she bring him back? Jonathan had
told stories of sorcerers that raised zombies. If she did it wrong, would
Blaine come back as a walking corpse? That was worse than death, but Elaine
had to try.
She would wonder forever if she didn't.
She gazed at Elaine's wide, staring eyes, looking at the sky but seeing
nothing. Snowflakes fell on his upturned face. They melted on his eyelashes,
making tiny dots of moisture on his cheeks, like tears.
Elaine took a deep breath and tried to gather what she had learned from
Silvanus, tried to imagine how to raise her brother back to life. It wasn't
like healing a wound, was it?
A sound behind her made her whirl, half-falling into the snow. Two zombies
stood at the mouth of the nearest cross street. One wove back and forth as if
drunk. It took a step forward and legs collapsed.
When it tried to stand, one leg slid out of its tunic and lay twitching on the
ground. The zombie balanced on the remaining leg as if this had happened
before.
A puff of snow fell from the opposite roof. She looked up and found a
man-shape silhouetted against the moonlight. It leapt downward, almost seeming
to float, hands and legs wide as if for balance. It landed with a thump on the
snow and scuttled backward into the deeper shadows that hugged the houses.
The thing seemed almost to glow with a white leprous light, the tint of
night-growing fungi. It crouched in the shadows. It looked like a naked man,
but wasn't. It raised its face and looked at her. Its eyes glowed like black
fire, sparking with an eternal flame that had nothing to do with moonlight.
It opened its mouth and hissed.
Elaine rose slowly to her feet. At the end of the street, the dead were
gathering, but just as the other zombies had given way before the man that had
killed Blaine, so they waited on this crouching thing.
Elaine gripped the key in her hand. Would it let her get to the door? She
glanced down at Blaine. He was dead. He'd died to save her. She couldn't leave
him like this. She couldn't.
The thing gave a bounding leap and landed on the other side of Elaine's body.
Elaine froze, staring down at it. It had been a man once, a man of medium
height with brown hair. An ordinary man. It wasn't ordinary anymore; it was
bestial.
It grabbed Elaine's arm. Elaine stomped her foot at it as you would at a bad
dog. It growled low in its throat and leapt straight at her. She had time to
put her arms up to protect her face and neck, but then it was on top of her.
Teeth tore into her sleeve, worrying it like a dog with a bone. Elaine
screamed.
There was a last tug at her sleeve, and the thing sat back. She could feel its
weight shift as it settled on its haunches. The weight pinned her legs, but
nothing else happened.
Elaine lay there, waiting for the teeth to tear into her flesh, but they
didn't. Minutes passed with her lying on the frozen ground. Snow fell in soft,
downy flakes, and that was all. Finally, she lowered her arms just enough to
peek at the monster.
Page 107
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
She found herself staring into a pair of black eyes. Those eyes looked at her
not as a man but as an intelligent dog would. It was not the blank stare of
the undead, or at least no sort of undead she knew of.
She almost asked it what it wanted, as she had the woman, but there was no one
behind those eyes to answer the question. At least, not in words.
But it wanted something or it would have killed her by now. The zombie that
had killed Blaine had wanted her blood. What did this one want?
It crept off of her, slowly, moving down her legs hand over hand. It scuttled
backward to Elaine's body, grabbed his tunic, and began to lift the corpse
over its shoulder.
She sat up, hand reaching outward. "No."
It growled at her, low and deep. Lips curled back from teeth too sharp to be
human.
Elaine froze, unsure what to do. It was warning her off. It wanted Elaine's
body, but that it could not have. If she could find Silvanus, he could tell
her how to raise Blaine to life. If she lost the body, Blaine was truly gone.
"You can't have him." She forced her voice to be gentle, soft, as if she
talked to a wild animal. "Please, don't take him."
It gave a growling shout. The dead at the end of the street began shuffling
toward them. Whatever power had held them at bay was gone. The creature had
called them.
It flung Blaine over its shoulder in one quick movement. Elaine crawled
forward, hand outstretched, not sure what she was reaching for, the body, or
the monster.
"Please, don't."
It rose to a crouch. Elaine's hands trailed the ground, his hair a golden
swash over the creature's back. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]