Keeper of the Dawn

“Charlaine! Where is she?”

The woman blinked in fear. “The wind... The wind carried her away. I have to go. I have to go. Don’t you see? He’s back. Sebastian is back! Oh, my God, when he finds me... And Alan. I’ve lost Alan.”

“Charlaine, get into the church!” Alessande said.

But it was no good; the woman was in a panic and raced away toward the parked cars.

A hand gripped hers. “Alessande, get into the church!” It was Mark, and she drank in his handsome face, his burning golden eyes, and felt his love, his concern—and his determination. “Go, please. You’ll be safe in there.”

“I have to fight, too.”

“Not now, because it’s you they’re after. Please!”

He drew her to him, kissed her lips passionately but briefly. “Please, go. For me.”

She winced and knew that he was right; this was one time when she would be a distraction and a danger rather than an asset.

But she couldn’t reach the church.

So many people were running toward her that she was nearly trampled. She lost sight of Mark in the inky darkness surrounding them, swirling as if a twister had suddenly sprung to life. Despite her strength, she felt herself being carried by the wall of people running toward the parking lot.

Finally she fought free and forced her way through the crowd toward the steps. She could hear Mark shouting to everyone to get into the church, but no one was listening.

At last she reached the door. But when she tried to open it, she realized that it had been bolted shut.

Someone had slid the massive bolt that locked the front door.

She pressed herself against the building and tried to make her way around to the side door, but she knew in her heart that every entrance had been bolted just as the front door had been.

So be it.

She was forced away from the building by the crowd, and once again she was nearly trampled. People were screaming and shouting in raw panic.

“Zombies!” someone cried.

Zombies? It wasn’t that they didn’t exist—but they weren’t the same as werewolves, Elven, vampires, shifters, gnomes and the rest of the Other races. They were reanimated; they had no minds. They were the dead brought back by magicians and illusionists, or those poisoned into a kind of limbo by voodoo priests and priestesses. They had no real life. They lumbered through the world with only one goal: to eat the flesh and drink the blood of the living.

They had to be stopped, and the vicious puppeteer pulling their strings had to be stopped, as well.

Someone fell in front of her; she bent down, helping the woman to rise. It was one of the hostesses from the Snake Pit.

“Help me!” she screamed.

Alessande took her by the arm and led her through the crowd, guiding the woman into her car.

She was suddenly buffeted against another vehicle. The door was open, and someone was rummaging inside. “Hugh!” she cried, recognizing the werewolf Keeper.

“Here!” He tossed something to her. She caught it quickly, without thinking, and realized it was a sword.

“Cut the heads off,” he told her. “Nothing—no creature out there—can live without a head.”

Before she knew it, he’d turned and was racing into the darkness. Half the cars were headed downhill but, judging by the crashing sounds she heard, they were plowing into each other rather than actually escaping.

Alone, she tossed away the remnants of her veil and fought against the wind to reach the rear of the church. As she came around the corner of the building, she paused, amazed by the sight before her, just visible in the darkness and swirling dust.

It was as if she had stumbled onto the set of a horror movie. Whoever was pulling these strings had raised every person who had committed suicide since the church had been built—and whatever other dead creatures had stumbled into the graveyard. She saw Declan standing on a tombstone, wielding a gun. As she watched, he tossed the gun aside and morphed from a man into a tiger, and ripped out the throat of the nearest walking corpse, then kept ripping until the head was torn from the body.

Brodie was walking into the fray, using his Elven strength to rip them to pieces. She saw that Mick and Barrie were fighting back-to-back. Rhiannon had become a wolf and, like Declan, was tearing the undead apart with her teeth. Hugh walked past her, swinging a sword identical to the one he’d given her.

“Alessande! Oh, my God, Alessande!”

She felt trembling fingers on her arm and turned to see the costume designer, Katrina Manville, huddling behind her, her eyes wide-open with terror. “I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it,” she repeated through chattering teeth. “It can’t be real.”

A corpse lunged at Katrina, who screamed in terror.

Alessande shot out a fist, knocking the thing down but not rendering it harmless. “Come on—I’ll get you to a car,” she told Katrina, then dragged her to the relative safety of the recessed side door.

“Can they get into the church? Are they zombies? Oh, God, this can’t be real.” Katrina practically sobbed.

“We can’t get into the church—the doors are locked,” Alessande said.

But Katrina ignored her and clawed at the door. To Alessande’s astonishment, it opened.

“Get inside—quickly,” Alessande commanded.

The terrified woman was still clinging to her, so she stepped in as well, trying to gently escape Katrina’s hold. But even as she freed herself, she saw a length of fabric—a crimson cowl—flying at her. She lifted her arms to ward it off just as Katrina swung around and slammed her in the ribs with all her might.

The robe fell over Alessande’s head, and she inhaled a sickly sweet scent as it draped itself over her face like something living.

Transymil.

She held her breath and fell to the floor, pretending that the drug had worked but staging her fall so that the cowl didn’t completely cover her face, giving her a few sweet breaths of clean air.

Then she waited.

* * *

They’d brought guns loaded with silver bullets. Mark had never figured that they were going to need swords.

He cursed his lack of foresight but was glad to see that Hugh Drummond had been smart and carried an entire arsenal—swords included—in his car.

Mark was forced to transform, becoming a wolf and tearing into the lumbering dead intent on killing everything living. One after another, they came after him, but he didn’t fight alone. Barney had settled in the old oak tree to rip off the zombies’ heads as they passed beneath him. He saw his fellow policemen—including Lieutenant Edwards—fighting all-out against the monsters. As he watched, Edwards became a different sort of wolf, bigger, fiercer, able to stand on his hind legs and use his huge forepaws like hands, dealing death to the dead.

As Mark ripped another throat from one of the zombies he thought, We will win this. There are enough of us, and we are stronger, smarter and better equipped to tear things to shreds.

Then it struck him: they were meant to win.

But they were meant to fight a long battle.

And suddenly he knew why.

“Brodie!” he called.

Brodie looked his way.

“The church!” Mark roared, and ran for the building.

* * *

Alessande lay on the altar, pretending to be drugged but in actuality able to open her eyes just a slit and see what was going on.