Through the Zombie Glass - Showalter Gena. Страница 61

She stood beside me, and she was still grinning.

Looked like our showdown was today.

Heart slamming against my ribs, I pushed my spirit out of my body without any hindrance; chilly air enveloped me. As I shivered, I reached for her, but she giggled and darted behind the couch.

“You’re gonna get it now,” I said.

“Ali?” Gavin said.

“Do you see her?” I pointed.

“See who?”

Cole thought she could shield herself, and maybe she could. “Stay here. You can’t see or hear the zombie in the room. She cloaks herself, and I don’t want her to hurt you.”

“Can’t catch me,” she sang.

“I can’t wait to prove you wrong.” I dived for her, and slammed into the top of the couch. Had we not doused all of our furniture with the Blood Lines, I would have ghosted through. But we had, and now everything was as solid to my spirit was it was to my body. Couldn’t forget again.

As I threw my legs over the edge of the couch, I summoned the fire. Small red flames began to crackle at the ends of my fingers. Red? Why red? Z.A. was no longer inside my body.

Maybe her toxin was still there. Maybe—

The cushions beneath my palms burned to ash. What the heck?

Z.A. zoomed past me, and I reached for her. I missed, popped to my feet and gave chase. In the kitchen, she circled the granite-topped island. I threw myself on top, sliding...falling...the entire structure crashed into the floor, taking me with it.

“Stop,” Gavin shouted. “Ali, you have to stop this.”

Laughing, Z.A. raced down the hall, into Nana’s bedroom. She jumped on the bed. Again I dived for her. When I hit the pillows, the bed disintegrated, and I toppled to the floor.

Dang her!

She slipped out of Nana’s room and into mine. I was right behind her. She knocked a chair into my path. I picked it up and threw it across the room, aiming for her head.

The chair burned midway, ash drifting through the air.

Can’t blow this chance.

“Nah, nah, nah, nah, you can’t catch me.”

“—happening?” I heard Nana say. “How? Her body is in the kitchen. She can’t be doing this! No one can! There’s no one in here.”

Her voice penetrated the dark determination urging me on. I blinked, forcing myself to focus on the natural world. Nana stood in the doorway, pale and trembling, gazing around the room I’d destroyed. Gavin and Cole stood beside her.

I took a step toward her.

The boys moved in front of her, blocking her from my path.

“Get her grandmother out of here,” Cole said to Gavin.

Gavin took Nana by the arm and drew her back. I reached for her again, realized my hands were still ablaze with the red flames and froze with horror.

Had contact been made, I would have reached past flesh and burned her spirit—and what happened in the spirit always manifested in the flesh. She would have died.

I would have killed her.

Exactly what Z.A. must have wanted. She’d failed to kill me, so she’d gone after my loved one through me. And I’d let her. I hadn’t stopped to think about the wisdom of my actions.

“You’re worse, Ali,” Cole said, holding out his hands in the most nonthreatening gesture he could manage, approaching me. “I’m afraid we won’t be able to control you if something like this happens again.”

“Cole.”

“Don’t agree with me,” he interjected. “Don’t say anything. Just think about what you’re doing right now, all right?”

But I had to tell him—no, I couldn’t. He was right. If I believed it, I would receive whatever I said.

I looked behind me, unsure what to do about Z.A.

She wasn’t there.

My gaze darted to the mirror. There. She was there.

Back inside me. Scowling.

“Put the fire out for me, okay?” Cole said gently.

I tried, I really did, but the flames only grew hotter, only spread faster.

“I’m sorry, Ali,” Cole said, and reached for the minicrossbow he kept stashed at his ankle. Rather than load it with an arrow, he loaded it with a syringe. Then he stepped out of his body, so that we were spirit to spirit.

He paused, then said, “I thought about the vision, and stopped carrying arrows. Realized I might need antidote instead.” A second later, a sharp pain hit my neck.

In a blink, he had another syringe loaded and flying at me. I experienced another sharp sting. Warmth rushed through me, and yet the flames began to wane...finally vanished.

He loaded a third. “This is a sedative.”

I felt a third sting, and whatever the sedative was, it worked quickly. Darkness fell over me, and my knees collapsed. I knew nothing more.

* * *

My head pounded as I blinked open my eyes. I lay on...my bed? No, the mattress beneath me was too narrow to be mine. Gingerly I sat up. Dizziness struck me, and I moaned.

“Hey, Ali-gator.”

Cole’s voice. I breathed deep in an effort to clear my head, saw the haunting beauty of his face. I hated to look away, but curiosity got to me. We...were in a small bedroom I didn’t recognize, with log walls and planked floors.

“You’re in a secluded home Ankh owns. It’s twenty miles from my house,” he said, “but they aren’t highway miles, so it takes me forty minutes to get here.”

I’d been banished.

My expression must have fallen to reflect my dismay, even though I knew this was for the best, because he added, “You’re too dangerous to be around others right now, sweetheart.”

Acid eroded my throat, and I choked. “I know, and I probably should have been sent here weeks ago. But, um, how long will I be allowed to stay?”

“As long as it takes.”

To heal...or to die, whichever came first. “Cole...”

“You have to quit your job, I’m sorry. Your grandmother is going to call your boss. And when school starts back up, she plans on speaking to the principal about allowing us to set up a computer so that you can remotely attend your classes. If they won’t let you, you’ll have to quit the district for a home school program.”

“Cole,” I said, trying again. What did I want to say to him? I wasn’t sure.

He shook his head, dark hair falling and hanging in his eyes. “I took your journal,” he continued. “I’ll go through every page, every passage. Emma told me the key to saving you is in there.”

“When did you talk to her?”

“This morning. She came to see me, and I think I freaked out my dad. He wanted to know why I was talking to air.”

I smiled.

Cole pushed out a breath. “Better.”

“What?”

He cupped my cheek. I reached up, wrapped my fingers around his wrists. “I hate that you’ve been hurt by all of this, I needed to see you smile.”

No wonder I was drawn to this boy. “How can you still like me after everything I’ve done?”

His thumb brushed away a tear that had seeped from the corner of my eye. “It isn’t that I like you, Ali, it’s that I can’t stop liking you. And I don’t want to stop. Besides, you were trying to end a zombie. That’s admirable.”

“You saw her?”

“I did. Her shield slipped for just a second when Gavin and I stepped in front of your grandmother. She was so angry her eyes glowed bright red. When I met her gaze I think it scared her, because she raced back into you.”

“We haven’t seen the end of her.” I could still feel her, a presence in the back of my mind. A heartbeat I had failed to stop.

“We’ll find a way to beat her,” he said, and I nodded despite my fears.

Emma had said the same.

Nana had said the same.

Heck, I had said the same.

Now...I wasn’t so sure.

“You know,” Cole said, “my mom once told me a boy would know he’d become a man when he stopped putting himself first. She said a girl would come along and I wouldn’t be able to get her out of my mind. She said this girl would frustrate me, confuse me and challenge me, but she would also make me do whatever was necessary to be a better man—the man she needed. With you, I want to be better. I want to be what you need. Tell me what you need.”