“I have heard of a few other people having a spirit that is toxic to zombies.”

One of them was my great-great-great-grandfather, I would bet.

“Justin reacted as he did because he was bitten by zombies Anima had experimented on and released. Their toxin is stronger, works faster.”

“But Justin went back to normal and I didn’t.”

“Justin isn’t allergic to himself.” He lifted a small, dark case from the floor and popped open the lid, revealing stacks of prefilled, plastic syringes. “I created different types of the antidote for all the different reactions I had heard about.”

“How many different kinds are there?”

“Eight. I took the formulas with me when I left Anima, and I’ve made several batches of each. Let’s give you a dose of the antihistamine antidote now and see what happens.”

I should say no. I shouldn’t let a strange man inject me with a strange substance.

Common Sense Ali screamed it was foolish. And yet Survivalist Ali shouted it was currently my best chance of winning this.

“Okay,” I said and nodded.

He selected a vial from the case. I shrugged my coat off my shoulder and tugged my shirt collar out of the way. He pushed the needle into the upper part of my arm. There was a sting, and a cool river moved through the muscle and spread.

For the first time in weeks, the double heartbeat seemed to vanish. The pressure eased from my chest, and the darkness thinned from my mind.

A burst of relief had me grinning. Suck it, Common Sense!

I wasn’t out of the game. The new antidote bought me what I needed most. Time.

“I’ll send all I’ve got with you,” he said. “Whenever you start to feel zombielike urges, give yourself a dose. It’s not a cure, but it’s a start. You’ll also be safer to be around.”

“Thank you.”

He removed fifteen of the vials and handed them to me, and I stuffed them in my pack. “I’ll make more. But I should warn you... I’m sorry, Miss Bell, but there will come a point when your body will no longer respond to this antidote or any other. The more you use it, the faster you will develop an immunity to it.”

Yeah, I knew that. “I was told there actually is a cure, that the essence of the zombie is darkness, and that the light chases that darkness away.”

He frowned. “The light from a slayer’s hand?”

“Exactly.” I told him what I’d done, how my spirit had left my body, how I’d summoned the flames and touched my chest, but nothing had happened.

“I’m surprised you didn’t kill yourself.”

Dying is the only way to truly live.

Maybe that was the point. Maybe I needed to die.

Disappointment rose. Before, I might have been willing to risk death. Now I knew I wasn’t ready for the end.

“This will require further study and thought,” he said.

“Uh, sir. I hate to break up the party,” the driver interjected, “but we’ve got a tail.”

Dr. Bendari stiffened, looked back. “Can you lose it?”

“We’re on a deserted road. There’s nowhere—”

Crunch!

Metal slammed against metal. Our car swerved and then flipped. I screamed, mentally returning to the night my family died. Tires squealed as we hit the ground; metal crumpled as we flipped again, and glass shattered. I was jostled forward and back, forward and back, my brain banging against my skull.

Then everything stopped. Everything but me. Dizzy...

“Dr. Bendari.” We were hanging upside down. Blood was rushing to my head. “Are you okay?”

He moaned.

I struggled to unlatch my belt. The moment it was free, I dropped, hitting the roof of the car—now the floor—my backpack slapping me in the face. I grunted as a lance of pain tore through me. No time to check for injuries.

“Help,” he gurgled. His chest was covered in blood—blood dripping onto his face, filling his mouth. His shirt was ripped, and a jagged edge of his collarbone peeked past his skin.

Can’t panic. “I can’t release you. You’ll drop.” As wounded as he was, he might not survive the landing.

As I anchored my backpack in place, trying to decide what to do with the doctor, a pair of leather boots appeared. A shadow moved, and then a man was crouched in front of the shattered window. I was too disoriented to make out his features. “Help us,” I pleaded.

“Dr. Bendari,” he said, and a sense of self-preservation sent me scrambling as far from him as possible. “I was told to bring you back to Anima—unless you were sharing our secrets with the very people seeking to destroy us. Guess what you were doing?” He pointed a gun, fired a shot.

Pop.

Something warm and wet splattered over me, and Dr. Bendari went lax. His blood...everywhere, all around, all over me. I screamed, too shocked to react any other way.

The shooter grabbed the scattered files, then me, and dragged me out of the vehicle.

Chapter 20

Blood Is the New Black

Dr. Bendari was dead. Shot and killed in front of me.

Pain and panic threatened to overwhelm me as I scanned my surroundings. We were on an abandoned road, just as the doctor’s driver had said, thick patches of trees on either side. There was another car behind ours—and the shooter was dragging me toward it.

If I could get to the trees, I could hide.

I was as good as dead if Shooter managed to stuff me inside that car.

Time for a new to-do list: Get the guy to release me, race to the trees, hide. Use my phone to call Cole.

I jerked against his hold, adrenaline giving me strength—just not enough to be effective. “Let go!”

“You want to die, sweetness?” he asked casually, making his words that much more frightening. “They’ve got plans for you, but if you continue to give me problems, you won’t arrive in one piece.”

They, he’d said. The people at Anima.

I fought that much harder, kicking out my leg, tripping the guy. Down he went, crashing into the gravel road. His hold on me loosened, and the photos he held scattered in the wind.

Shooter reached out to catch one, leaving himself wide open; I sucker punched him in the kidney, a very sensitive area. Grunting, he curled into himself. I grabbed as many files and pictures as I could before jolting to my feet.

I meant to run, I did, but a door slammed, and the driver of Shooter’s car raced around the area, trying to gather up the rest of the photos while keeping a gun trained on me.

“Don’t even think about it,” he growled. He had bright red hair, a shade I’d never before seen. “I’ll shoot you in the back without a moment’s pause.”

He’d shoot me anyway.

I spun and ran, moving in a zigzag to make myself less of a target, my backpack slamming against me again and again. Soon I was huffing and puffing, my lungs burning.

Pop!

I cringed, expecting an explosion of pain. But...I felt nothing and looked back. The driver of Dr. Bendari’s car had crawled out from the rubble to shoot Red.

I slowed down and tried to catch my breath.

My only remaining ally faced me, shouting, “Keep running, more will come,” before limping forward and pointing his weapon at the first guy, Shooter.

Pop!

Pop!

Dr. Bendari’s driver collapsed, and my eyes went wide. Why... How... Then I watched as Shooter fought to get vertical; despite his obvious pain, his focus was sharp as it landed on me. That was why. That was how. One pop had come from Shooter, and the other had come from Dr. Bendari’s driver.

Shooter stumbled forward, taking something small, round and black out of his pocket, biting something off it and throwing it at Dr. Bendari’s car. Grenade!

I spun and ran—

Boom!

The world went eerily quiet as a violent gust of white-hot air picked me up and threw me into a tree. I bounced backward, losing what little breath I had, shaking my head to clear the fresh surge of dizziness. Smoke filled the air, choking me, turning my line of sight to a hazy black and white.

A slight ringing erupted in my ears, growing louder, louder still, until it stopped as quickly as it had begun, and the world around me came back into focus.

I stood, almost fell. From the corner of my eye, I could see flames engulfing both cars—and Shooter still standing. Swallowing bile, I rushed into the forest.

Rearrange list: call Cole, then hide.

I stuffed the photos into my backpack and grabbed my phone. I was careful to alternate between watching the path ahead of me and looking at the names in my contact list. Around a thick tree trunk. The Cs. Over a rock. COs. Ragged breath scraped my nose and lungs.

I almost shouted with relief when I found COLE.

“Answer,” I muttered when I heard the first ring. “Please answer.”

“Ali,” he said a moment later.

A sob left me. “Cole.”

His concern came immediately. “Baby, what’s wrong?”

“There was a car crash. They shot him. Shot him. He’s dead. A bomb. Now they’re after me, and I don’t know what to do.”

I could hear the static over the line, knew he was running as quickly as I was. “Where are you?”

“What’s going on?” I heard Veronica ask in the background. “Where are we going?”

He was with her.

“I don’t know,” I said, too numb from the shock of everything that had happened to react. “I didn’t watch.”

“What’s around you?”

“An abandoned road. A forest. I’m in the forest.”

“Where were you before? What direction were you headed before the crash?”

“Nana’s house.” The words left me, barely audible as I panted. “Walked out of neighborhood. South, toward coffee shop. Picked me up. Farther south. Followed. Crash. Smoke. There’s so much smoke.”

“I’ll find you,” he vowed. An engine roared to life. Tires squealed.

“Cole,” Veronica called.

That was the last thing I heard. I tripped over a limb and hit the ground with all the grace of a china shop bull, my cell skidding out of my grip. Frantic, I threw a glance over my shoulder for Shooter. No sign. Maybe he’d passed out from blood loss. Maybe he’d died. Fingers crossed.