Zombies Sold Separately (36 page)

“Guards aren’t good enough.” The doors opened and we exited the elevator. “I’d like a couple of Trackers on watch, too.”

“You might want to settle for some PTF agents,” Desmond said. “We’re going to need all of the Tracker help we can get, sooner rather than later.”

I groaned. This was not going to be my all-time favorite assignment, I knew that right now. “So I won’t be able to use any of my abilities when I’m in Candace’s body … What about fighting skills?”

“Magic, no.” Desmond looked apologetic. “But fighting skills, yes you’ll still have those. The body might not be yours, but your will replaces the experience and will of the Host. It’s rare for the Host body’s remaining essence to have any ability to act on its own.”

“Rare … meaning it has happened.” The nervousness in my belly threatened to climb up my throat, making me want to puke.

“Rare.” Desmond repeated in a tone meant to reassure me, although I wondered if he really believed what he was telling me. “Very rare. Your will is much too strong to be overridden anyway.”

“I sure hope so.” I glanced over my shoulder in the direction of the elevator doors to the hospital. “I’d say that one has a pretty strong will of her own.”

The A train arrived and we stepped into the almost empty car before it took off again. Desmond and I sat near the doors, side by side.

I studied him. “I get the impression you’re a lot older than you look.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “I am.”

“How old?” I asked as the train came to a stop to let on more passengers.

Desmond ran his hand over his stubbled cheeks. “Doran time versus Earth time. Two very different things.”

I shifted in the uncomfortable orange plastic seat. “How about a guess?”

“Hmmm…” Desmond tipped his head. “Somewhere over a century, I think.”

“Eh, still a baby, as my father would say.” I grinned and flopped back in my seat. “Although no matter how old I get, I’ll always be a baby as far as my father is concerned.”

“My father died during Amory’s first wave of attacks.” Desmond turned his gaze for a moment, looking outside the train at the concrete and metal and lights that went flashing by.

“Your father was a Sorcerer, too?” I asked.

Desmond looked back at me. “He was a blacksmith.”

“We’ll take care of Amory.” I laid my hand on Desmond’s. “I promise.”

“As do I,” Desmond said. “He won’t take over this world. I won’t allow it.”

“So big Sorcerers don’t have baby Sorcerers?” I said with a teasing smile.

He gave a little smile in return. “Those of us showing talents of any kind are put into apprenticeship as soon as the gift is recognized.”

I rested my arms on my purse in my lap. “What did you do that gave them a clue you were Sorcerer material?”

“I blew up the stables when I was quite young, just a few years old.” Desmond shook his head. “Fortunately all of the livestock was out when I did it.”

The train jerked and I saw that we had reached our stop at Seventy-Second Street and Central Park West. It was the station closest to the Paranorm Center beneath the Alice in Wonderland unbirthday party sculpture.

“How did you blow up the stables?” I stood and Desmond followed me out of the subway car.

He held up his hands as he walked beside me. Currents of green ran up and down and between his fingers. “One day I was angry with the owner of the stables. I wanted to play there and the owner told me to get out.

“My anger simply manifested itself,” he continued, “and I was too young to control it. To even know what was happening. I had no intention of doing damage to him or his possessions. I had to learn to control and contain my emotions and my newfound power.”

We jogged up the subway steps and made our way to the snowy wonderland of Central Park.

“So you were whisked away to live with a Sorcerer who taught you all you know?” I said.

“Something like that.” Snow crunched beneath his shoes. Being Elvin I couldn’t have made a sound when I walked if I tried. “Sorceress, and she was already ancient when she took me in. I was the first Sorcerer to be born in decades.”

I pushed the strap of my purse up on my shoulder. “It’s not a hereditary thing?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Completely random.”

“Interesting.” I looked ahead of us and saw the unbirthday party sculpture as we walked on the northern end of Conservatory Water. “So when the Sorceress passed away, Doran rule was turned over to you.”

Desmond seemed a little more subdued and I wondered if the subject bothered him. I really couldn’t tell, though. “I was trained to rule from the moment I was taken in as the Sorceress’s apprentice.”

Of course, Desmond had never been in the Paranorm Center. Very few were allowed there, so it took me a bit to convince the Dryads to let Desmond go to the detention center with me.

When they finally let us pass, Desmond seemed impressed by the Dryad and Shadow Shifter security as well as the immensity of the place. We walked past the closed doors of the Paranorm Council where Leticia and the other council members were likely making rulings on things that really didn’t matter. I wondered if Rodán had filled them in on anything regarding the Sorcerer Amory yet.

The Sentients locked up in the paranorm detention center gave me the creeps, just like the first Sentient I had seen in Starbucks just a little over a week ago. It seemed so much longer.

Thinking about that day made me think about Adam again. I didn’t want to think about him and the pain it caused in my chest.

“Nine Sentients captured and arrested,” I said as I looked down at a sheet of paper. “And one Host.” I felt like I’d been punched in the belly. “Olivia.”

Desmond took the sheet from my hands and there was understanding in his tone when he said, “Let’s start with the Sentients.”

The PTF was used to magical things that caused all kinds of good and bad to happen. Per Rodán’s instructions, the PTF had used warded leather pouches to save the stones and had them put into a vault.

The first Sentient was a female. The Kerrans looked human but they had a few differences, all subtle enough that it didn’t really seem to matter. All of the Kerrans had small ears, small noses, and long, delicate fingers.

But their bodies were also starting to rot.

“It’s why they’re looking for Host bodies,” Desmond said close to my ear while we waited in front of the cages. “The Doran Otherworld is rejecting them just as Kerran did. They need to put their essences into new Hosts or they will die.”

“So that’s why most of the Zombies are so disgusting?” I asked. “They’re discarded, rotting bodies?”

“More or less. When the essence leaves the body, the deterioration of the body is then accelerated,” Desmond said, then followed the PTF agent through the gate into the first cell.

A female Kerran sat passively on the low cot in the cell. She was almost bald, barely a few long wisps of hair remaining, and her eyes were almost milky white.

No matter what we asked her or how we asked her, she refused to talk. She didn’t even give a sign that she’d heard us speaking. Short of being aggressive, I didn’t know how to get information out of the female.

“Your stone.” Desmond knelt in front of her. “If you don’t tell us what we need to know, then your stone will be destroyed.”

The female startled and looked at Desmond. “No. You can’t.”

He gave a slow nod. “I can, and I will if you don’t start cooperating.”

“He will kill me.” She reduced her voice to a whisper. “Lord Amory will kill me if I tell you anything.”

I folded my arms across my chest and leaned back against the bars of her cell. “Lord Amory isn’t here right now.”

“It doesn’t matter.” The female looked from me to Desmond. The wisps of her hair floated over her head. “He will question me because he knows I have been captured. He will know the truth of it because I cannot lie to him.”

“So you’re in a pretty bad place, aren’t you?” I said. “We destroy the stone and you have no way of getting into a Host. You tell us what we need to know and you go back to Amory and he’ll discover what you did.”

A sad look was on her once pretty face that was now pocked with whatever disease was eating these people alive. I would have felt sorry for the Kerrans if they didn’t steal bodies and murder beings just so that they could live.

“What’s your name?” I asked her for the tenth time.

“It doesn’t matter.” She looked away from us. “Do whatever you will. I’m already dead.”

Desmond and I moved away from the female, cattycorner from her. “She’s right,” I said in a low voice. “She’s a female with nothing to live for if she can’t have a Host body, and we won’t let her have one. So why should she talk? She has no incentive.”

“Let me try,” Desmond said.

I extended my arm, my palm up in a “do whatever you want with her” gesture.

Desmond squatted in front of her again. This time he took her head between his palms. She looked surprised yet didn’t move as green sparks moved from Desmond’s fingers, across her forehead and over the top of her head.

He closed his eyes and she did the same. His eyes moved beneath his eyelids as if he were watching a movie.

When he finished he removed his hands from her head. She sucked in a breath and gasped as they both opened their eyes.

“Thank you,” he said to the female.

“What?” She looked confused. “I didn’t tell you anything.”

Desmond just smiled and rose to his feet. We left the cell and it closed with a hard clang behind us.

“I saw bits and pieces of what might be Amory’s plan,” Desmond said. “And a lot about Doran and how it’s changed that is good information to have.”

“Why didn’t you just do that sooner?” I asked.

“I wanted to see how they react to questioning,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “Think we can skip all of the other steps and go straight to the one where you’re doing the mind-thing and getting answers that way?”

“Yes.” Desmond smiled. “I’ll do the same with the other Kerran prisoners. I can put together more pieces that will help us get you safely to Doran and back.”

“Do it,” I said as I looked in the direction of Olivia’s cell, at the far end of the corridor.
And no rush
, I thought, dreading seeing Olivia—seeing her body that was now a Host for a Sentient, a Kerran.

After about five minutes alone with each remaining Sentient, I asked Desmond what he had learned.

He looked up at the low stone ceiling of the corridor between cells. “A lot.”

I rolled my eyes. “That tells me so much.”

His expression was distracted. “I need to work it all out and then I’ll be able to tell you more.”

“Let’s see her then.” My voice was low and rough with emotion as we went to the cell.

“What the hell is going on, Nyx?” Her tone and the expression on her face were so classic Olivia that it just wouldn’t register that it wasn’t my friend in that cell.

She came up to the bars and gripped them with her hands. Hands that were still lethal weapons if what Desmond said was true about keeping one’s skills as long as it wasn’t magic.

“Where’s Olivia?” I asked. “Her stone, wherever you put her.”

“What are you talking about?” Olivia—her Host body—was looking seriously pissed. “I’m right here, and I am so damn tired of this. Someone is going to get hurt when I break out of here.”

“We’re not going to get anywhere with her,” I said to Desmond who was standing beside me, observing the Olivia/Host in front of us. “Let’s just get out of here.”

“I can go in with her,” Desmond said and a fire sparked in the dark eyes of the Host in front of us.

Because that’s what I needed to think of her as right now. A Host. Not Olivia, but a Host.

We’d find Olivia’s stone and make things right. That’s all we could do.

“No.” I shook my head. “I’m making the call on this one and I think we have enough.”

Desmond looked like he was going to say something but stopped himself and nodded.

“Get me out of here, Nyx,” the Host was saying.
“Get me out of here.”

I felt sick as we walked away and I heard Olivia’s voice screaming at me. That was the body of my best friend and partner, but it wasn’t her.

Where was Olivia’s essence now? The stone she was locked inside of?

We didn’t speak until we were out of the Paranorm Center and walking back toward the subway so that he could take the train back to Greenwich Village.

“At my place I can get to work preparing for tomorrow.” He looked at me.

I held my hand to my belly as I said, “When I become Bryna and go to Doran to meet the Sorcerer Amory himself.”

THIRTY-ONE

After seeing the Host, I didn’t want to go back home. I didn’t want to think about Olivia like that. I needed some time and space and fresh air.

A mindless break from thinking about Olivia, Adam, Angel, Lawan, Sorcerers, Sentients, Hosts, and Zombies. And the fact that my body was going to become a Zombie in just a few short hours.