Brutal Read online

  Until her, Leiv had no tribe. He was bitten, but nobody was there for him when he rose. There was no one to explain what he was or why he couldn’t remember anything. No one to explain why he was so hungry and why he couldn’t keep any food down. And if he hadn’t figured out the connection between his baths and suddenly feeling better, he might not have made it through that first week.

  It had taken a month for the Reapers to track him down. But it wasn’t to take him in and show him the ropes. It wasn’t so they could help him. Oh, no. They just shoved a reference-sized book in his hands and left him on his own.

  The smart-mouthed Reaper had said, “You’re a zombie now. Less Frankenstein and more…well, just read the book. You’ll figure things out.”

  And read the book, he had. He’d studied it until his eyes practically bled, until he knew the history of zombies inside and out. Backward and forward. He learned everything there was to know about them, about himself.

  But one thing always bothered him. He was completely alone. Other zombies had tribes, families. Some as large as ten to fifteen members strong. He had no one, and since he couldn’t remember who he was, he had no human family either. He waited for someone to visit his tiny apartment. A friend, an acquaintance, anyone who could fill in the gaps. But no one came. No one except the blasted Reapers.

  The day he read about Saves was the day hope blossomed in his chest for the first time. He would have one. All zombies did. He just had to wait, to be patient. He would have his own tribe someday, and it would be the most special thing in his life.

  Patience.

  It hadn’t been easy. He’d spent his days working hard to provide the lifestyle his mate would deserve. According to the book, Zombies held money in high regard. So he made sure she would never be looked down upon. A short stint bootlegging during Prohibition had given him a healthy chunk of cash, which he invested in the stock market. He’d been one of the few lucky enough to cash out before the big crash in ’29. Talk about close calls.

  Nighttime was the hardest. While he lay in his too quiet bed in his too quiet house, Leiv spent his nights dreaming of what she would look like, feel like, smell like.

  He found out nearly fifty years later.

  Fifty years of patience. Fifty years alone before she bounded into his life smelling just like cinnamon and honey.

  And, of course, the bacon grease.

  He squeezed her limp body closer, wishing her chest would move with a breath.

  The cinnamon was what he smelled now. Faintly. But the night they’d met, it had filled up the small interior of the ambulance…

  Leiv smiled to himself as he stood at the nurse’s desk filling out paperwork. His Save smelled like cinnamon rolls. Iraina. He loved her name already. He couldn’t wait to show her his home. Their home. She would love it. It was shades better than the rickety old place she lived in now.

  His smile slipped and his pen paused. What if she didn’t want to have anything to do with him? What if she didn’t like him at all? Leiv wasn’t much for conversation. He only chatted with a few people at work and his cat. Heathcliff always seemed interested in what Leiv had to say, but his coworkers? Not so much.

  Leiv swallowed the familiar pain in the back of his throat. Loneliness.

  She would like him. Iraina would like him. After all, there was the pull. It would help things along until Leiv could prove he was worth her time. And he was definitely worth her time. No one would treat her better than he would. He’d treat her like a princess. She would have anything she ever wanted. No more working late at the greasy diner.

  He finished signing off on the call and handed the clipboard to the lead nurse, thankful that his shift was over. A trip through the ER told him that Ms. Lukin had most likely been taken back to surgery. Which meant Iraina would be in the waiting room.

  How to approach her? Surely she’d be upset. She wouldn’t want to talk to a perfect stranger. Not now, while her grandmother was having her broken bones fixed. What if she told him to scram?

  Leiv’s shoulders slumped as he stood in the corridor, contemplating his options. He breathed deeply and focused on the intangible thread that tied him and his Save together. The pull, it was the sweetest sensation. It was cool summer night stargazing. It was rollercoaster ride excitement. It was a long, leisurely walk and a race to the finish line. Thrilling. Yet it calmed him. He’d found her. Now it was just a matter of time. His chest grew warmer at the thought of their future together.

  Coffee. He should bring her coffee. She was probably exhausted after a night at work. And it would give him a chance to hydrate. His nerves were making his water levels go haywire.

  After stopping by the cafeteria and guzzling several giant glasses of water, Leiv made his way to the waiting area, coffee in hand. Iraina was sitting on the very edge of one of the padded chairs, her knee bouncing up and down in a nervous patter. Her concerned gaze roamed the nurse’s desk but quickly went back to the swinging doors that led farther into the hospital where her grandmother was.

  Leiv crossed the room and eased into the seat next to her before he spoke. “Coffee?” was all he said. He’d meant to say more, something else, but it was all that came out.

  “Coffee?” She gave him an incredulous look. “No. And you, where did you go? You just left.” Her voice rose at the end, panicked.

  Leiv’s jaw dropped, but before he could come up with an answer, her eyes narrowed accusingly. “You said she’d be okay. You said no internal bleeding. You said—” Her voice broke off in a whimper.

  He was speechless. Were Ms. Lukin’s injuries worse than he’d thought? He swallowed back his nerves.

  “What did the doctor say?”

  Iraina threw her hands up. “I don’t know. I can’t recall. And he talks in some language only doctors speak. I have no idea what’s going on, and that nurse over there, the rude one, she won’t give me any information. She told me to wait. Wait. Like that will help anything.”

  He resisted the urge to take her hand and offer comfort. Mostly because he wasn’t sure if she would find it comforting. He wasn’t sure about anything and he hated that helpless feeling.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” he said. “If you take this coffee off my hands, I’ll go have a talk with Nurse Brenda and see what I can find out.”

  Iraina’s eyes got so big he could see the blue streaks in her irises. “You will?”

  Leiv nodded, passing the coffee over. In her rush to grab it, she sloshed some of the liquid onto her hand. “Ow!”

  Gravy, this woman was a wreck.

  “Let me see.”

  “It’s fine,” she said, shaking it off. “Please, go see about my Grams.”

  He hesitated, concerned that she’d burned herself, but then he remembered the cafeteria didn’t serve the hottest coffee anyway. She’d be okay.

  Getting the information out of Brenda wasn’t easy. Especially since Leiv wasn’t the type of guy who was considered cool, and making her laugh was pretty much impossible. Not to mention the fact that he could feel Iraina’s gaze on his back. He went with a direct approach, appealing to Brenda’s all business attitude. When he told her the patient was one he’d brought in, she offered a few specifics.

  “Everything’s going to be fine,” he told Iraina when he returned. “Your grandmother is in surgery to set her hip. They wanted to put her under so she’d be in less pain.” He left out that the recovery would be more difficult than the simple procedure to fix the break.

  The tension leaked from Iraina’s shoulders like air leaking from a balloon. “Less pain. Yes, okay. That’s good.”

  A tremor rocked her hands and Leiv feared she might spill the coffee again, so he wrapped his fingers around hers and the cup. She stilled. Letting out a huge puff of breath, she met his eyes. “She’s all I have.” Iraina’s voice was thinner than a thread, yet it threatened to break him.

  He needed to tell her that wasn’t true. She had him now, and he would never leave her. Not until he turn
ed rotter, and that was so far away, he couldn’t even imagine it. But he had to slow down. He’d been waiting half a lifetime for her, but it didn’t go both ways. To her they were merely strangers. Her grandmother, that’s who was most important to her right this very moment.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” he suggested.

  Her head shook. Tiny tendrils of raven hair danced around her temples. “No, I can’t leave. I need to stay here and wait for the doctor.”

  Leiv took the cup from her hands and set it on the table. “We’ll go just outside those doors. Not far.”

  Her eyes traveled from his, to the door, to the nurse’s desk, and back to him while she considered it. “Okay, yeah. But not too long.”

  Leiv nodded.

  Outside, they followed the tiny walkway that took them past the front of the hospital. It would end at the stone fountain, which Leiv desperately needed right about now. He was so nervous, his stomach felt like some sailor’s extravagant knot. He was several degrees too hot.

  “Thank you,” Iraina said, her voice small. Her chin was tucked to her chest, her hands jammed deeply into the pockets of her jacket. “For…for helping her.”

  “It’s my job.”

  She glanced at him and then back to the sidewalk before nodding. “Do you like it?”

  He took a deep breath, trying to relax. “I love it. It can be hard at times, but I like helping people.” They passed a shrub cut in the shape of a cross. “Do you like your job?”

  “At the diner?” She seemed to consider it. “Most days, yeah. It’s good honest work. It pays the bills. I have no complaints, really.”

  “Hard work, I’d guess.”

  “I’m on my feet a lot, but I’m not afraid of hard work.” There was a grit to her voice that made him want to grin. Made him feel proud. His Save was no delicate flower. “Grams always says, ‘Hard work makes soft beds and soft hands make soft minds.’”

  “Your Grams sounds like a very smart woman.”

  Leiv glanced up in time to see her tiny grin. “She is. She really is. But stubborn too, you know.”

  The fountain was in sight. As they’d walked, the simple back and forth talking had done much to calm him. He still needed the water, but his stomach was a fraction less knotted.

  “What about you?” Raina mused. “Do you have someone like Grams?”

  The question felt like a punch, even after all the time he’d had to get used to having no one. He chalked it up to the fact that he hadn’t expected her to ask.

  “No.”

  “No one old and wise to tell you what to do?”

  No one at all, but he shook his head.

  “Tell me about your family.”

  Leiv swallowed. “Uh, there is none.”

  Iraina’s step faltered a little but he kept walking like he didn’t notice.

  “No family? Not a distant uncle from Europe or a cousin, twice-removed?”

  He shook his head again. “Not that I know of.”

  Silence.

  “Okay, then. Tell me about your friends.”

  They both sat at the edge of the fountain. He turned slightly, and placed his palm against the top of the water, relishing the cold. The liquid rushed into his skin like a hundred mini waterfalls.

  “What are you doing? Isn’t that freezing?”

  The corner of his mouth turned up. “Yeah, it is. But I like it.”

  From the corner of his eye, he saw her shiver. She didn’t like the cold. It was still dark so the night was as cold as it could be. She had a scarf and hat and her wool jacket but maybe being outside right now wasn’t the best idea.

  “So…your friends?”

  Leiv stared at the pale yellow light at the bottom of the fountain. It shone through the ripples of water, casting odd stripe-like shadows. “Well, there’s…um, Andy, my partner.”

  He only ever spoke to Leiv when they were on calls, but he supposed that counted.

  Iraina wrinkled her nose. “You two hang out?”

  “Uh, well, at work.” He tore his eyes away from the water and found hers. They were raking his face as if they meant to scrape off the first layer and find what hid underneath.

  “And outside of work, who do you do things with?”

  She wasn’t going to stop until she dragged it all out of him. He wanted to talk to her, he did. But he didn’t want to tell her all these things. What if she thought something was wrong with him? Everybody had a friend. He wracked his brain for anybody outside of work, even the most abstract connection. “Uh…”

  Iraina tilted her head to the side, staring at him with squinting eyes. A flutter of panic rippled from the top of his head to his toes. She was going to find him lacking. She was going to think he was strange. He had to say something, quick.

  “There’s…there’s…” Damn it.

  She stood abruptly. “We should go inside. I don’t want to miss the doctor.”

  “Yeah, sure. Absolutely.”

  They walked back to the hospital entrance in silence. He held the door open for her and followed her to the nurse’s desk where Brenda told her to take a seat and wait. Iraina glared at her before huffing to a nearby chair. Leiv wasn’t sure if he should stay. He didn’t want to leave her, especially since she was all by herself. But then again, she wasn’t giving him any sign that she wanted him there.

  What to do, what to do?

  “So, uh…you hungry? I can get you something to eat.”

  “You don’t have to do that, really. It’s late and you’re probably tired.”

  “I don’t mind.” His voice was quiet. If she wanted him to leave, he would.

  At that moment, her stomach rumbled. Iraina’s lips slowly inched into an embarrassed smile.

  Leiv’s mouth echoed hers. “I’ll be back in a jiff.”

  Chapter 3

  IT WAS STILL TWO HOURS until breakfast was served so the cafeteria had little to offer. Leiv had no idea what his Save liked to eat. By the time he made it back to the waiting room, his arms were laden with a combination of pastries and packaged sandwiches. His offerings were in vain, though, because when he approached, he found Iraina fast asleep.

  Leiv unloaded his goods on the nearby table and removed his leather jacket. Carefully, he covered her legs. She didn’t stir at all. Exhausted.

  He sat in the chair next to her, letting his eyes roam over her face. She had lashes that went on for days. They rested like snowflakes on her high cheekbones. And lips that were full. They looked softer than his high dollar pillows at home.

  Just seeing how peaceful she slept in the hospital chair did a lot to ease his tension. One hour at a time, that’s how Leiv would take it. He’d do his best to be there for her, and maybe when this ordeal with her Grams was over, they could talk about the future.

  Yes. Just one hour at a time.

  His breath caught as Iraina shifted, her head coming to land on Leiv’s shoulder. It didn’t matter that she was asleep, the fact that she’d laid her head on his shoulder had his heart pounding and his stomach flopping. He fumbled back and forth between feeling like a gold medal winner and feeling like scum. She didn’t know she snuggled with a perfect stranger.

  “Leiv,” she mumbled, almost incoherent. “Don’t go, okay?”

  Just like that, it was gold medal winner to the infinity power. She did know it was him. And she wanted him to stay. “You got it.”

  A movement in his arms pulled him violently out of his memories. He stared hard at Raina but there was no sign of life. No breath. No flickering eyes. Nothing. He loosened his grip to examine her and that’s when it happened again. The fingers of her left hand fluttered. For some reason the only thing that went through his mind at that very moment was that her hand looked different without her wedding ring.

  Then she was still again. Not even a fluttering eyelash.

  Leiv took a deep breath, noting that her cinnamon was so faint, it was almost a memory. He didn’t deserve it, but he wanted to feel the softness of her skin agains
t his lips one last time. He chose her cheek which had always been so rosy. It was dull and pale now but still just as soft. Brushing his lips across her cheekbone and down to her jaw, he had to stop when a sob caught in his throat.

  “Come back to me.” His trembling whisper sounded like glass breaking. “Wake up so I know you’re okay. Wake up, my Raina.”

  Nothing.

  He rested his forehead at her temple, taking in deep breaths to quell his shaking. He was no good like this, a whimpering guilt ridden fool. No good at all. There were things he could be doing to help her.

  Leiv lifted his head and glanced around the room. Their dresser was laden with bottles of perfume and lotions. If—when—Raina woke up, she would be a zombie. With its absorptive qualities, her skin wouldn’t be like every other human’s. The contents of those fancy bottles would make her sick.

  Carefully, he released Raina and pulled the cover up to her chin. He plucked the wastebasket from where it was left by the bed. As he stalked to the dresser, his eyes caught on the discarded syringes and that’s what made him do it…

  With a growl that would’ve woken the neighbors if they’d had any, he swiped his arm viciously across the dark polished wood, sending the delicate glass vials tumbling. They crashed and clattered, some shattering, their potent substances seeping through the varnish like a stain of blood.

  Leiv was aware of the animalistic sounds coming from deep within his chest, but he just didn’t care. He wanted to hurt something and if it couldn’t be himself, it was going to be these bottles of poison.

  Again, he smashed his fist into the pile of glass, the sound reminding him of a falling chandelier. He would’ve kept going until it was nothing more than shards or until his hand was shredded, whichever came first. It was the smell that broke through his fit. The scent of the product spilling onto the floor. Though it wasn’t what he immediately thought of when he imagined Raina—it wasn’t cinnamon—it still reminded him of her. She had used these things. Before bed, the creams. In the morning, the perfume. At random times, the lotion.