Not Dead Enough: Zombie Paranormal Romance (Project Rebellion: SARA Book 1) Read online

  “Through there.” She frowned and closed her eyes. Without sight, she could filter the different scents more easily. “But the scents are weird. It’s like they—”

  “Fuck!” Brett yelled, and her eyes snapped open to see shadows all around them in the darkness. “We got incoming!”

  *

  The Bloods rushed them en-masse, emerging from the darkness like avenging angels bent on death and destruction. Brett snarled, dropping into a defensive crouch. With no need for concealment now, he kicked his heart into action, using the sudden blood flow to shove adrenaline around his system, increasing his strength and speed. Not that he needed it. Since he’d been changed into what he was, he could play chicken with a tank and come out the winner. But these were Bloods and he had something—someone—to protect now.

  Time slowed, dilating, and he used the time to study their enemy. The Bloods were wraiths in the darkness, only the occasional flash of white fangs to mark their movements. They could freeze at a moment’s notice, utterly and unnaturally still to avoid detection, or burst into movement within a heartbeat to catch their prey. The perfect nocturnal predator.

  To most, that was already too late. By the time a Blood’s prey saw the fangs, the trap was already closed, and they were dead. It would take super-human strength to get away from a Blood once it had its fangs dug in. Superhuman, or not human at all. Brett knew…he’d been bitten before. Many times. The only way to get the bastards off was to break the jaw, which was best done after the head was removed from the body.

  But he wasn’t human, and even though the clouds concealed the moon overhead, he didn’t need to see to hunt. He never had. Closing his eyes, he extended his senses like a spider in her web. He’d been a soldier, yes, and a damn good one, but unlike others, being one of the elite had never bothered him. He’d just wanted to do his bit and go home alive.

  The Project had changed all that. They’d put something in him, injected god knows what into his veins, and changed what he was inside. Now, it was like he was wired into the world. He could feel everything. Every little vibration in the fabric of the world. The rumble as a puppy ran, the scrape of a chair leg across the floor a dozen rooms away, Dom farting in his sleep, although he’d give anything to block that particular bit of knowledge out.

  They’d all quickly learned to block out the mass input of information. Otherwise it would have driven them mad. Had driven some of the others mad. The ones they’d been forced to put down before they’d left the base.

  He opened his eyes and smiled as a Blood rushed him. With his enhanced senses, he could feel the vibrations of a fly on the wing, so he could certainly feel over two hundred pounds of vampire hurtling toward him like a rampaging elephant.

  He reached out and shoved Julia behind him. His brothers closed ranks, surrounding her on all sides. Pride flowed through him. He’d not been sure how they’d react around her, not with her being a Blood now, and not with Kelwood’s earlier reaction, but they had his back. He’d made it clear that Julia was his, so they’d protect her as they would him. Better actually, since she could be hurt in ways he couldn’t. That none of them could.

  Before that notion had filled him with sadness. Now it filled him with a sense of pride and self-worth. He could protect her and the other women the Bloods had taken. He had a purpose again, and it wasn’t the one the Project had decided for him. It was one he had chosen.

  The Blood snarled in his face, breath warm across his skin and triumph shining in its eyes as it reached for him with claw-tipped fingers. He struck upward with a flat hand. His fingers pierced its skin just under the jaw and tore upward into the mouth. It screamed as black blood splattered down, coating Brett’s arm. He looked into its black-on-black eyes and grinned.

  Then he ripped its lower jaw clean from its face.

  The scream became a terrible gurgle as the Blood reached up, his hands fluttering around the ruin of his face.

  “Heads up,” Brett quipped, and threw the bloody jawbone, teeth and beard attached, in the air. It turned end over end, reaching the top of its arc and beginning to descend. Brett’s opponent keened, reaching for the grisly souvenir. Not that it would do him much good if he caught it. Unlike a SARA, Bloods couldn’t regenerate that quickly.

  He didn’t catch it. Instead, Brett lashed out, catching the creature around the back of his neck and spinning him into a deadly embrace. Hands cradling his victim’s skull, he gave a quick jerk. The dreadful keening cut off as bone snapped and gave, the sudden looseness all Brett needed to tear the head clean from the neck.

  He kicked the body away from underfoot and hurled the decapitated head at the next Blood to rush him. Almost as big as Dom, the guy looked like he’d spent most of his life in the gym. Bloods didn’t pile on muscle after infection like the SARAs did. Instead, the change froze them exactly as they were. So this guy had been built like a gym-bunny before he’d become a Blood.

  Automatically the Blood caught the head, then looked down at it. His steps paused for a second as horror flitted across his features, then rage replaced it. It was already too late. He looked up to find Brett’s fist already en-route to his face. His nose gave, the bones pulverized as Brett hammered three or four jabs into it. He wasn’t sure how many; he moved so fast he often lost count. Black blood flowed as the creature staggered back, but there was no escape. Brett followed him, skittering sideways fast. Curling his fingers into claws, he struck again and tore out the bloods throat.

  A roar sounded. Dom.

  He turned, casting a glance over his shoulder to see the big man pick up a Blood and spin it in the air. No mean feat given the Blood had to be well over six feet and built like a linebacker. Dom was bigger though. Faster. Stronger.

  The Blood cartwheeled through the air, his arms and legs flailing, and Dom stepped in like he had all the time in the world. He reached up and caught the falling man by his ankle. Twisting, he spun the creature around in an arc, using it as a living hammer to batter the enemy around them. The Blood was dead with the first hit, but the big SARA carried on using it to lay about himself. Brett turned back to the fight.

  Vibration warned him and he stepped back a second before a Blood dropped from the branches overhead. It unfolded from its crouch to snarl at him.

  “I’m gonna make you wish you’d never been born, asshole,” it snarled around a mouthful of fangs.

  “I was hoping you’d say that.” Brett grinned and launched into action. Within seconds he was covered in black blood with another body at his feet. Over twenty Blood’s against four of them? Now that his team was at full strength, it hardly seemed fair.

  Chapter Nine

  There were bodies everywhere. Julia stood, frozen in place. She’d never seen such carnage before. She’d watched horror movies of course, and Buddy had been fond of the torture porn movies that had been popular in the last couple of years. She hadn’t been. The over-the-top gore and blood with no plot had bored the daylights out of her.

  This though, was different. She’d never seen people killed for real before, and certainly not right in front of her eyes. There was something primitive about being in the thick of the action. Smelling blood in the air as it splattered up tree trunks and across the ground. Hearing a scream at the same moment light died from the victim’s eyes. Seeing bits of bodies lying next to the corpses they’d been attached too only moments before. Seeing the stark glint of bone and the sheen of tissue not meant to be exposed to the air.

  Her stomach rebelled, bile rising, and she was forced to lift a hand to her throat. Taking a deep breath didn’t help; it just pushed the smell of death and raw meat further down into her lungs. The worst bit about that was the part of her soul that leapt at the smell, that wanted to roll in the death and destruction the SARAs had wrought about them.

  The few remaining Bloods had fled for their lives, the sound of their retreat through the trees loud to her enhanced hearing. To her left, Dom dropped the leg he was holding, all that remained of the Bloo
d he’d been using as a club, and made to go after them. Fredericks held up his hand, stopping the bigger man in his tracks, and shook his head.

  “Let them go. They won’t get far.” His deep voice rumbled almost on the edge of hearing, and he twitched his head to the side. She was getting used to that, and the weird sideways scuttle almost too fast for her to see. They were scary as hell, that was for sure. “We’ll check the barn. Never know, we might get lucky and that asshole McCoy is still around.”

  Brett snorted as he turned, casting her a quick look. His chest and arms were covered in black blood, none of it his, and she breathed a sigh of relief. The battle had happened too fast for her to do anything but cower in the middle of the four men. Not one of their attackers had come anywhere close to getting to her.

  “We can hope,” Brett said, stepping over a ribcage to reach her side. Thankfully, he wiped his hands on the back of his already grubby jeans before reaching for hers. He nudged a slumped body with his foot. It rolled over, looking up at the trees above with a sightless eye. The other, along with half its skull, was missing. She shuddered and moved closer to him as he spoke again. “McCoy’s too canny. He’ll be long gone by now.”

  Frederick’s lips thinned. “Agreed. Okay, let’s check out the barn. I don’t see any women in this lot, or in the ones that ran. Chances are they’re still down there.”

  Julia nodded and led the way toward the barn. It loomed above her, emerging out of the darkness and growing impossibly larger as they approached. Fear wound its way through her veins, trying to get its hooks into her, but she ignored it and forged on. A part of her mind wanted to put her bravado down to the men walking around her.

  But as scary as hell as they were, she knew deep down that it wasn’t that. She’d been here before and lived to tell the tale. No, the difference was the darkness inside her. The craving to find the two men who had done this to her, Captain Double-A and his douche-bag accomplice. She hadn’t seen or smelled either of them during the fight, which meant they were still out there somewhere. She grit her teeth so hard she was surprised they didn’t break. One way or another, she’d track both those bastards down and make them sorry.

  “In here,” she murmured, leading them through the barn door and to the steps leading down into the cellar below.

  “Let me.” Brett pushed in front of her. He took the steps so quietly that if she couldn’t see him right there in front of her, she wouldn’t have believed he was moving. They crept onwards in the darkness, the other three fanning out around her. From their movements, it was easy to see that they had been soldiers. Ignoring the tic they all seemed to have, more so when keyed up, their movements were smooth. Natural. Aware of everything around them.

  She stepped off the last step, and her bare feet touched down on the dirt of the corridor. The cells that lined it were all empty. The doors stood open, but even with them shut she’d have known they were empty. There were no heartbeats. At all. One door hung off its hinges, tracks in the dirt of the floor showing that a struggle had taken place. A darkening streak of blood decorated the wall. Julia’s lips quirked in approval. The woman in the cell hadn’t gone easily. Instead, even against a superior foe, she’d put up a hell of a fight.

  Her gaze focused on one door. The cell she’d escaped from. Holding up her hand for a halt, she lifted her head to scent the air. Smells exploded in the back of her nose, filling her head with information. Women. Lots of women. And blood. Rich, hot, fresh blood with an irresistible tang that the black blood her companions were covered with just didn’t have. She wavered on her feet, a moan welling up in the back of her throat. Instantly, Brett was there, wrapping his arms around her to keep her upright. The others crowded around, concern in their pale eyes.

  “I told you we shouldn’t have brought her here,” Brett growled, throwing a glare at Fredericks. “She’s only just out of conversion. She’s not e—” He cut off, sliding her a quick glance, but he’d looked away before she could isolate the expression in his eyes. “She’s not strong enough yet.”

  “No, no,” she argued, pushing at his hold until it was loose enough for her to stand on her own two feet. “I’m good. The smell just took me by surprise. It’s overwhelming.”

  Dom nodded. “It will be for a while. You’ll learn to filter it out.”

  She nodded, and sucked in a breath. Her stomach rolled and she couldn’t work out if it was hunger or nausea. No time to figure it out now. “These are the cells. That one was mine. They’re empty now….” She frowned, turning around, and spotted the turn in the corridor. “The other room was down here.”

  As she spoke, a slight breeze wafted along the corridor, bringing new scents. The Captain they’d named as McCoy, his asshole buddy and another scent. Fainter, and more delicate. The crazy woman.

  Kelwood’s head snapped up just as she was looking at him, and blackness swarmed over his eyes, obliterating the little color there was. His lips curled away from his teeth, then he dropped his head back and howled.

  “Katttttthhy!”

  *

  Oh. Fuck.

  The instant Kelwood opened his mouth to scream, Brett knew the situation had gone to hell in a hand basket. He’d hoped to God that Julia’s story of a woman talking about an ‘Alice’ had been a horrible coincidence, but Kelwood’s reaction to the new scents wafting down the corridor—female human and blood combined—ground that hope into dust.

  He hauled Julia back and into his arms just in the nick of time, as Kelwood launched himself down the corridor, his movements entirely inhuman. His run was fast and almost sideways, then he took a sidestep and bounced off the wall, running a few steps along the perpendicular surface as though gravity were an optional extra.

  “Holy shit!” Even Brett blinked in surprise. Although all of them had been fairly acrobatic when fighting in the cages, he didn’t realize they could do that. The two others looked as shocked as he felt, then as one they took off after Kelwood with Fredericks in the lead. They swarmed down the corridor, leaving Brett and Julia to catch up.

  He grabbed her hand and ran, hauling her after him. The tunnel passed in a blur of wood and dirt walls until they reached a small room. The hitch of her breath behind him and the sudden increase in her pulse told him she’d been here before.

  “Shhh, it’s okay. No one here,” he reassured her, wrapping an arm around her waist.

  He was almost right. A woman’s body sprawled over the couch, her throat ripped open, and the ruined red mass of tissue was like a fancy silk scarf around her neck. Her dead eyes seemed to be fixed on them, the hard stare condemning them for not getting to her in time.

  “Human.” Fredericks crouched by the body, his hand hovering over her chest. Not touching her, just…feeling. Of all of them, he could always sense how far away death was in a body. Said it was the echoes of the heart’s vibration or something, still lingering in the tissues. Brett had no clue; he wasn’t that sensitive. “Been dead a while. Too far gone.”

  With the last three words, Brett relaxed. Dom caught his eye from across the room, and the two shared a smile. Too far gone meant they wouldn’t register the body as food, and wouldn’t feel the drive to eat. Julia might have accepted the truth of what he was, but he didn’t want her to see that side of him. Hell, even he didn’t want to think about that side.

  “She was here,” Kelwood ranted, eyes wild as he looked around the little room. “Kathy was here. Where have they taken her?”

  He turned in a circle, his gaze skittering past Julia, then doubling back.

  “You!” His eyes narrowed and he stalked forward, menace in his every movement. “You led us around in circles, gave them time to escape. Didn’t you?”

  The snarl slipped from Brett’s lips before he could stop it, the deep sound rolling around the small room. Too deep. Then Dom stepped up next to him, teeth bared and a deeper growl emanating from his big chest. But Kelwood wasn’t deterred.

  “It’s her, I tell you!” he railed, gesturing at the
woman behind Brett and Dom. “She was leading us in circles so her lover could escape. Tell me,” he spat. “How many of them did you fuck?”

  One second Brett was looking at Kelwood’s snarling face, the next the guy staggered back, clutching at his nose as blood seeped from his nostril. Brett didn’t give him time to recover; instead, he shoved him into the wall and jammed his forearm into Kelwood’s throat.

  Surprise filtered through the madness in the other man’s eyes, quickly followed by panic and fear. Emotions to be relearned. For months they’d been invincible, in the ring and out of it. In fact, there was only one creature that could kill a SARA.

  Another SARA.

  “Never. Ever. Talk to her that way again,” he said in a low voice full of threat. He didn’t growl. He didn’t need to. His body shook with the primal need to tear apart the threat to his woman. A need so great, so overwhelming that it almost obliterated everything else.

  Dom’s arm snaked around him, under his arm to over his shoulder, to haul him off Kelwood. He fought, but Dom was stronger. Staggering backward, he reached for Julia only to realize the room had fallen silent and they were all looking at him.

  “Shit, man….” Dom breathed. “What the fuck did you do to your eyes?”

  Brett shook his head, wrapping an arm around Julia’s waist to tuck her into his side protectively. All he wanted to do was drag her off somewhere and keep her safe. “What’s wrong with my eyes?”

  “They’re white,” said Dom. “Completely whited out. Like a cue ball in a blizzard type of white.”

  Brett blinked, his anger receding. Julia touched his cheek and he looked down at her.

  “The color is coming back, slowly. Look.” She hooked a delicate finger under his chin and turned his face so that Dom and Fredericks could see. Kelwood, sensibly, kept his distance. “Perhaps it’s emotion linked?”