“When are you going to leave?” she asked.
“I’d rather stay the night.”
“Doing that would be a mistake. The villagers will only grow more bold with you among them. Familiarity breeds contempt.”
Personally, Warren felt certain the zombies bred contempt even faster.
“Finish what you need to do there,” Lilith said, “then I’ll join you outside the village.” Her image disappeared from the tea.
Warren finished his drink, then sat and waited.
Less than an hour later, with only a few hours left before nightfall, Warren changed into the fresh clothes Naomi asked for and received. He shouldered one of the packs Naomi gave him. She kept the other for herself.
No brass band waited to see him off. The armed villagers stood and watched without saying a word. Warren didn’t speak, either. They blamed him for bringing the demons to them, and maybe they were right.
But what he was about to do next would cause them to hate him forever. And fear him.
The dead had been laid out in the street. Some of the men worked across the street to dig a mass grave for those that had fallen in battle against the zombies. The imps had rated only a petrol-soaked pyre at the end of town, and only then to keep away the predators.
Warren stopped before the dead. He counted twenty-three whole bodies. It was twice as many zombies as he currently had.
“What are you doing?” Naomi asked.
Warren didn’t answer. She knew what he planned to do.
“You can’t do this.” Naomi came and stood at his side. “This is wrong.”
Gazing into her eyes, Warren asked, “Do you want to wander around out there without protection?”
Naomi cursed, but she didn’t tell him to stop. However, she did step away from him.
Summoning his power, surprised at how quickly his strength had come back, Warren held his metal hand out toward the corpses.
“Rise,” he commanded them.
Immediately, the corpses twitched and jerked. A wave of horrified cries and curses sounded behind Warren. He ignored them because working the spell took all of his concentration, and he hoped that no one decided to shoot him in the back of the head.
“Kill him!” someone shouted.
“Don’t let him do this!” a woman cried out. “Merciful God, don’t let him turn my son into a soulless monster!”
From the corner of his eye, Warren saw a man taking aim at him with a rifle.
“Don’t,” Naomi said, holding a hand out to the man.
He ignored her and set himself. Before he pulled the trigger, Naomi waved her arm at him. An invisible wall of force struck the man and knocked him backward nearly thirty feet. When he came to a rest, he was unconscious or dead.
None of the other villagers tried anything.
Warren watched the zombies stand and turn toward him. He didn’t know how many zombies he’d raised in the past four years, but the number had to be staggering. Yet, no matter how many times he’d done it, he’d never lost his fascination with what he was able to do.
He looked at the zombies. Covered in garish wounds and their eyes glazed over, they were walking nightmares. Most of the zombies Warren had left London with were in stages of advanced rot and decay. Many of them carried the dead husks of maggots that had hatched inside them in the warmer area of London and frozen in the winter cold.
“Come,” he told them, and he led them out of town without a backward look. The pained cries of the villagers followed him into the snowy outlands.
SEVENTEEN
Are you in pain?”
Leah gritted her teeth against the violent agony that twisted through her thoughts. She tried to open her eyes and couldn’t.
“No,” she answered. She tried to raise her arms and couldn’t. After a moment, she felt the straps around her wrist, elbow, and across her chest that kept her secured to the bed.
She was in a hospital. She knew that from the medicinal smells and the chronic beeping of the machines around her. The last thing she remembered was passing out in the river.
“You’re in pain,” a man’s voice said.
“I can handle it. Why can’t I move my arm? What’s wrong with my arm?”
“You need to calm down,” the man said. “It will only make the pain worse.”
“The pain is nothing,” Leah lied. “Help me out of this bed.” She tried to open her eyes and couldn’t. “Is something wrong with my eyes?”
The machines beeped into the ensuing silence.
“Did you hear me?” Leah demanded.
“She has a high pain threshold,” the calm man’s voice stated. “But as you can see from this readout, she’s in indescribable pain.”
“I see that, Doctor,” a woman’s voice replied. “Thank you.”
Leah thought she recognized the voice, but with the noisy machines and the agony she was in, she couldn’t be certain.
“Can you increase the Demerol?”
Demerol? No wonder Leah’s nose itched. She always had that reaction to that particular anesthetic.
“If we increase the drugs in her system, she’s going to be unconscious or so out of it that she may not understand you.”
“That won’t do,” the woman said. “Can’t you give her something that will keep her awake?”
“And pain-free? No.”
The woman sighed. “Then put her back out.”
“No.” Leah struggled against her bonds. She deserved some control. She wasn’t a child. Panic filled her. She desperately wanted to see what kind of shape she was in. One of her greatest fears was that she might not come back whole from one of her missions. “Talk to me. Let me decide—”
Warmth flooded her arm and she knew they’d injected more anesthetic. She fought against it, cursing and willing herself not to surrender to the effects.
Blackness closed over her.
When Leah came awake again, the dark room waited for her. Her head was clearer and most of the pain was gone, but a fierce throbbing continued to reside in her skull. She tried to lift her arm and couldn’t.
She turned her head to look at her arm and
