Read Sing for the Dead (London Undead) Online
Authors: PJ Schnyder
Chapter One
Sorcha ran.
Taking the Serpentine bridge helped speed her along, man-made though it was. Crossing running water posed no deterrent for her. Others of fae blood might have paused in the hunt, but the zombies shambling through the bare trees in these parks were not her quarry.
No. Pursuit was not her purpose. Rescue was.
The feeling of wrongness, the taint of spoiled magic, worsened as she crossed from Hyde Park into the Kensington Gardens. Perhaps the lake separating the two parks kept some of it from spreading. What humans called the Long Water remained relatively clean of the pall of death exuding from the land. The trees in Kensington Gardens were bare skeletons this deep into winter in London—sleeping, but restless, tugging at her heart. Would the trees be too sickened to bring forth new life after their roots had bathed in blood? Parks like these provided sanctuary for the lesser fae and Fair Folk living in cities such as London. Without them, the fae who’d made the city their home, braved cold iron, would fade. And for every city lost, the Under Hill shrank as well. Even if mortals ruled the world, the fae needed to maintain a presence in order to keep the balance of things or their world would fade from existence.
She’d been sent to investigate why the fae of London were disappearing, and she’d found death walking.
Stupid humans, coming in after dark, to hunt and be overwhelmed, to loot and be taken by surprise. Perhaps such short lives made for stunted memories. Though the zombies found prey too often in these gardens, the humans kept coming. She didn’t Sing for those, the ones who’d done humanity a favor by taking themselves out of the gene pool. No. Her Songs aided the passing of worthier souls.
A tortured cry rang out in the night, sending ripples through the magic saturating the land, tainted as it was.
She ran harder. Perhaps she could be savior this time, and not simply witness to death.
The zombies were gathering, called not only by the sounds of struggle, but also by the disturbance. Like sharks drawn to an injured fish in water, it was as if the zombies could sense easy prey. Unnatural as they were, she’d no doubt zombies were animated at least in part by magic of some kind.
The parks used to be the reservoirs of old magic in the city. They’d become death traps.
As she broke through the trees, a brownie stood atop a mound in the children’s playground, a curved dome with tunnels for children to crawl through in play. Good that he’d chosen higher ground, bad that he’d allowed himself to be surrounded away from any trees or route of escape. Maybe the mound had reminded him of a hollowed hill, the way the tunnels led beneath it. Gentle in nature, brownies like him tended places and buildings, their magic sympathetic to home and hearth. They weren’t bred to fighting, weren’t trained as soldiers the way she’d been. While he could turn boggart and create minor havoc, he wasn’t meant for true violence and was no match for the dead trying to eat him.
But she was.
Red haze encroached on her vision. Sorcha reached for her swords, drawing them free without slowing her pace, embracing the sweet song of savagery rising in her blood.
With an effort, she held back the rising tide and the red haze, binding it tightly with her will. There was an innocent on the field and she couldn’t afford to lose control, but she could harness a few drops of it to lend her strength.
Running past the mound, she’d sliced through two zombies before they realized another being was amongst them. Turning, she whipped her blades around and beheaded two more. The others moved toward her, distracted from their prey. Or perhaps they were excited by the scent of her living flesh.
She grinned. Excitement danced along her nerves. The red crept closer on her vision.
Not yet. After she’d saved the innocent, but not yet.
She planted a front kick into one zombie’s chest. The smell of rot clogged her nose and black blood streaked the sand. She spun, lunging forward and impaling another. Then she pulled back with a yank and brought her sword around in an arc to remove its head from its body. Always remove the head, slice through the skull or crush it. Otherwise, the blighted things would rise up and continue trying to feed.
The brownie cried out again, the horrible agony of the scream dousing the heady burn of combat from her mind like a bucket of ice water. Sorcha spotted a zombie sprawled across the mound, rotting hands wrapped around the brownie’s leg. Another sank its teeth in his shoulder.
“Bloody hell.”
She might not be in time. She fought harder, spilled more black blood and fouled brain matter onto the sand of the playground.
In a moment, she was up on the mound. One of the two zombies lifted its head—dead eyes fastening on her as it bared its teeth. The blood of the brownie stained its lips and chin red. The thing launched itself at her. Fast—too fast. She barely raised her swords in time to remove its head. But the force of its charge drove her off the mound. The others hadn’t had this...ferocity.
The second zombie charged her as soon as her back hit the hard-packed sand. It wrapped both hands around one of her swords, trapping the blade between them and bearing down with all its weight. Releasing her other sword, she groped for her combat knife. The shorter knife came free of her chest harness sheath just as the zombie snapped its teeth less than an inch from her face. Fetid breath choked her and black blood splattered cold across her face as she drove her knife into the side of its head. She rolled until the zombie lay on the ground and she could struggle to her feet.
On the mound, the brownie moaned.
No.
No.
Please
,
let me have come in time.
“Hush.” She hastily retrieved her knife and wiped her swords. Sheathing all of them, she freed her hands too late, too late. “Shhh. I am here. I will help, but you mustn’t cry out anymore. It will only call more to us.”
His mouth worked, but no words came. Fae blood pumped from his neck in time with his heartbeat. She clamped a hand over the wound, applying pressure and what minor touch of healing magic she had. A cold fist of despair tightened in her chest. She could slow the bleeding, but hadn’t the true power to save him. Her talent lay in the dying, not the living.
Tears sprang to her eyes. Her stomach lurched.
He was full fae—of the wee folk. And he’d valiantly kept the small playground taint-free until tonight. Every corner showed his care, from the upkeep of the huge wooden pirate ship to the clean white of the teepees nearby. The sensory trails were clear of ice and snow, leaf litter and most importantly, no hint of tainted magic lingered.
His breath caught, and he struggled in her grasp.
“Peace. No. ’Tis not the end. We will find help.”
Where, she did not know, but she sent out a silent plea to the magic around them.
Please
,
help him where I cannot.
But his struggles would draw more of the undead. She needed him calm. She could carry him, but they’d be vulnerable to more attacks with her hands full. And where would she take him? There were no strong fae nearby.
No, the Court of Light had sent
her
, a half blood, into London instead.
Bitterness flowed across her tongue but she clenched her jaw. No time for selfish distractions.
At a loss, a part of her magic reached out to the brownie, sensed his hold on life weaken, felt his fear shiver through her veins. She parted her lips and Sang the fear away.
If death was coming for him, that much was in her power to do.
* * *
Something had stirred up the zombies. Kayden’s nightly patrol took him along the borders of Kensington Gardens, checking the scents for signs of idiots headed into the park to loot the remains of other idiots.
It wasn’t just the stupidity of humans, nay. They were opportunists. And it spoke to their survival through the centuries. The walking dead in London, they brought out the darker side of human nature and somehow, the zombies’ numbers were increasing. Shape-shifters were finding themselves outnumbered.
Shape-shifters weren’t common anywhere, and as a were-leopard, Kayden was rare amongst the uncommon. Unlike the werewolves, were-leopards didn’t gather in packs or prides. The largest gathering was a small family unit and then, only long enough to raise young. Leopards were solitary as adults. And though he’d come to London and allied himself with the London wolf pack, he still ran his patrols solo.
Tonight, he’d managed to head off several bold street urchins and one so-called hunter before they’d made it too far into the park. It should have made him feel better, afforded him some relief from the ever-present guilt he carried.
It didn’t.
Kayden disarmed the man, more a scavenger than any hunter, and escorted him to one of Seth’s patrols. The werewolves wouldn’t tolerate those kinds of humans anymore, the ones who tempted starving kids into heading into the park as zombie bait. Lambs sacrificed to make it easier to steal from the dead.
What the hell was wrong with people?
The walking corpses all over the place suddenly seemed less horrific.
The winds changed direction, carrying with them information in sound and scent. A low sound tweaked his ears, below the range of human hearing. Odd. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it unsettled him. If he’d been in his animal form, he’d have tried to shake the feel from his coat.
Mournful, aye, a song to tug at the soul.
Who was daft enough to sing in a park full of monsters?
He shed his jacket and shirt, stowing them in the branches of a tree alongside one of the paths. His pants followed, then the rest of his clothing. Crouching down to make the change easier, he shifted to leopard form. Joints popped and muscles stretched.
No matter how quick or slow, the change still hurt.
He panted as he let the last bits of the shift settle into place. Ready to hunt, he padded through the shadows, following the song through the otherwise-silent trees.
It was as if the entire park had paused to listen.
He didn’t have far to search. The Princess Diana Children’s Playground was just within the bounds of the Kensington Gardens. He’d not been inside over the course of the winter—his hunts limited to forays amongst the denser stands of trees and the wide-open lawns where hunters chose to pick off zombies.
And yet, there was something...not right about the playground.
It was pristine.
All other part of the gardens had fallen into disrepair or gone wild with neglect. But the playground was swept clear of leaf litter and twigs. The walks were clean of ice and snow. Granted, this part of the isles saw little enough of either, but these pathways showed no sign of the cracks and holes the other walks had from being under a thin layer of ice all winter. The swings were in good working order, the hinges oiled and the chains free of rust. The great ship in the middle of the park was cleaner than it had probably been when children crawled all over it. Before the zombie infestation had changed the city of London.
The playground was as perfect and welcoming as the day it’d been built.
Well, and except for the pile of zombie parts littered around the wee mound to one end. He’d be guessing the woman was responsible. The swords strapped across her back gave him the first clue.
She hadn’t noticed him yet—cradling a tiny body in her arms and singing as she was. A child? Even in cat form his chest tightened. No. Maybe? Hard to tell.
He padded closer.
The sound of steel sliding free of a scabbard should have been alarming. Stranger still, the woman hadn’t stopped singing as she drew her blade. An odd calm hung over the entire playground, wrapped it in a soothing blanket and hushed away all fear.
Magic. And not of the human kind either. Human magic had a different scent to it. Aye, and a different feel to it as well. The power a human summoned for casting was drawn of sacrifice. No, this magic had a different flavor to it. It’d come of nature and the essence of living things. Harder to quantify, but then, the fae were uncanny in many ways.
The woman watched him, ghost-pale under the faint light cast by the crescent moon. A ponytail held back most of her long, shining hair but a few long locks fell loose to frame her face. The color of moonlight, such a pale shade of blond as he’d never seen before. Probably soft as silk, as well. Why did he want to touch it? Rub his scent into her hair? He didn’t halt his approach, only slowed so she had plenty of time to assess the danger. He’d bet it was her singing keeping more zombies from coming. Without such magic in the air, half the zombies in the city would have followed the rich scent of blood.
She’d done a fine accounting of herself, if he tallied the body count correctly. Body parts lay all around her, decomposing as he watched. It had been a pack of the undead she’d fought off. They’d not stood a chance against her, though it might have been too late for her friend.
A wheeze and the small chest rose once.
Perhaps not too late after all.
This woman had a chance to save her small companion, and he’d be damned if he didn’t help her do it. Kayden shifted back to human form. It left him vulnerable if she chose to attack, but he was fair certain she wouldn’t. Mayhap it was folly on his part, but he didn’t think she’d leave her fallen comrade. Nae. She’d wait for an opponent to make the first move, finish him before he began. The precious minutes it took to change to human form were worth it, if he could help her save the life in her arms. And for that, he needed speech.
His extremities were still finishing the change when he forced his vocal chords to shape human words. “Do ye need help, lass?”
The singing stopped. She blinked, her posture relaxing a fraction.
But her grip tightened around the pommel of her sword.
Blast. No time for niceties.
“I am Kayden.” He left out his full name. Giving your name to a fae was unwise. A true name had power over the bearer. Dangerous, especially in the hands of any fae old enough to know how to use it, some witches too. As young as she appeared, she could be centuries older than any of the shape-shifters in London. Old enough to have the knowledge of how and to have grown in power enough to bind him into doing her will with it. “I can lead you someplace where they can close his wounds, give him a chance of surviving. It’s not far.”