Claiming Her Beasts Book One Page 11

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  Ignoring me, he opened the door.

  Trying not to admire how amazing he looked with his jeans riding low on his hips, I followed him into the hallway. He slipped into his bedroom and reemerged a few seconds later with a baseball bat.

  I rolled my eyes. “Is that really necessary?”

  Another crash sounded from the front room.

  “Motherfuckers.” I pushed past Reed and rushed down the hallway.

  “Lee, wait!” Reed shouted, following close on my heels.

  We skidded to a stop at the entryway to the living room.

  The vertical blinds were open and the floor-to-ceiling windows bathed the space in bright light. It took several seconds for my eyes to adjust and even longer for my brain to make sense of the chaos in front of me.

  Gran’s antique floor lamp had been knocked over. The glass coffee table was shattered. The recliner was lying on its side. And blood… blood was everywhere.

  Reed tightened his grip on the bat. “Jesus. What happened here?”

  Wide-eyed, all I could do was take a hesitant step into the room.

  The scent of blood was so strong that I tasted it in the back of my throat. A river of it flowed from behind the couch.

  With my heart in my throat, I peered around the armrest.

  Cami, naked as the day she was born, was crouched over an equally naked Ronnie. Her mouth was latched around his throat. She was making soft slurping sounds.

  “Cami, what are you doing?”

  She glanced up. Blood dripped down her mouth and chin, giving her a creepy clown-like appearance.

  I stumbled back, my mouth dropping open in horror.

  She was abnormally pale and covered with dark black veins. They spiderwebbed across every inch of her skin from the roots of her blonde hair to the pads of her bare feet. Her pearlescent eyes fixed on my face, but there was no recognition there.

  Oh, crap. She looks just like Jess.

  I struggled to breathe.

  Cami shambled to her feet and swayed from side to side.

  Catching sight of her, Reed inhaled sharply. “What the—”

  Cami growled and sniffed the air like an animal tracking prey. Seeming to lock in on us, she gnashed her teeth together.

  The clicking noise brought me straight back to the alley the night before.

  Not a prank. Not a prank.

  The room spun around me as I gasped for air.

  Jess had been a zombie. And now so was Cami.

  Cami stumbled into the back of the couch. Seeming confused, she clawed the air in front of her, trying to reach us.

  Struck dumb, all I could do was stare at what had become of my best friend.

  Reed pushed me out of the way. “Ronnie.”

  I grabbed his arm. “Reed, no. He’s… dead.”

  Ronnie’s body twitched and spasmed on the floor.

  Reed tore out of my grasp. “He’s still alive.” He rushed around the couch and confronted Cami. “What did you do to him?”

  Cami lunged for his throat.

  “Reed,” I screamed.

  Reed hit her with his bat.

  She flew into the side of the TV stand. The ancient 36-inch tube TV wobbled and fell on top of her in a thunderous crunch of glass and bone.

  Seemingly oblivious to the two-hundred-pound weight on her chest, Cami thrashed and kicked her feet.

  “No, freakin’ way,” Reed murmured as we watched Cami try to free herself.

  How can she survive being crushed by that weight?

  She can’t, answered an insidious voice in my head.

  A rustling noise had Reed and I spinning around.

  Ronnie stood at the end of the couch. The blood still pouring down his hairy chest contrasted vividly with his cadaver-white skin. Portions of his trachea were visible through the tattered flesh of his throat.

  His eyes snapped open.

  “Ronnie?” Reed gasped.

  Ronnie’s milky gaze swiveled in our direction. He let out a moan and lurched forward.

  “He’s one too,” I shouted.

  Reed shook his head as if in denial. “Get back, man. Get back.” He pushed me behind him protectively.

  Together we backed toward the hallway.

  “We can get you help, man,” Reed pleaded.

  Ronnie followed us, growling and gnashing his teeth.

  “Reed! Hit him.”

  Cursing under his breath, Reed swung his bat at Ronnie’s face.

  There was a wet crunch and Ronnie’s brains splattered against the wood-paneled wall.

  Holy crap. I’d forgotten what a hard hitter Reed was.

  Ronnie slid down to the floor, the side of his head completely bashed in.

  Reed dropped the bat, his entire body shaking. “I killed him. I killed him.”

  “No, you didn’t,” I said, wrapping my arms around him. “You saved us.”

  He pulled me against his chest, seemingly unaware that all his scars were on display.

  I took a shuddering breath. How did things go so off the rails? Just minutes ago, I’d thought nothing could be worse than finding Reed in my bed. And now, both our best friends lay bloody on the ground.

  Cami gnashed her teeth, drawing my attention back to her.

  I pulled away from Reed and walked over to her. The screen had crushed her flat. Portions of her broken ribs peeked through her torn flesh. Still, she tossed her head from side to side and beat at the television set.

  “Cami,” I whispered, tears burning my eyes.

  As she caught sight of me, her thrashing grew more frantic.

  I took a step back. My brain had already accepted what my heart refused to believe. My best friend was gone, and this… mindless creature was all that remained.

  She's dead.

  Cami, who took me under her wing when I first started at the club. Cami, whose blasé attitude about sex never failed to shock me. Cami, who was more than a little crackpot crazy. Cami, who’d cut off her left arm for her family and me…

  My legs gave out. I sank to the floor next to her.

  “What is she, Lee?”

  I looked up at Reed through my tears.

  “I don’t know.”

  Reed studied her with wide eyes. “She’s not breathing. How can she move without breathing?”

  I wiped my tears with the back of my shaking hand. “They are both dead.”

  Shaking his head, Reed looked at Ronnie. “I killed him.”

  The self-loathing in his voice had me grabbing his hand. “No. He was already dead. They’re zombies.” It was insane. But no other theory explained what we’d just seen. I remembered the news segment from the night before. “There have been reports of this happening to other people. We have to check the news.”

  “My phone is drained and…” Reed waved his hand over the smashed television. “The TV is toast.”

  “Eden’s got a set in her room.” Hoping to find some answers, I stumbled to my feet and dragged him down the hallway.

  15

  Reed

  A million conflicting thoughts and emotions assaulted me as Lee pulled me toward Eden's room. Chief among them was denial.

  This isn’t possible. Ronnie and Cami didn’t turn into undead monsters and attack us. I didn’t just splatter my best friend’s brains all over the wall.

  As I stumbled past Lee’s room, I spied the rumpled covers on her bed. The bed she and I shared last night.

  I didn’t recall any details, but given the chaffing on my dick, we'd done the deed several times.

  How could I forget having sex with Lee? Since puberty, it was all I’d fantasized about. What I remembered instead was a monstrous demon-looking creature standing in the back of her room.

  “You’re under my control,” the demon had shouted in a guttural voice.

  I shuddered.

  Lee squeezed my hand as she pushed into Eden’s room. She hadn’t held my hand since we were kids, and now she was clingin
g to me as if she feared I'd wander off into traffic. It didn’t make sense.

  None of this made sense. Not me seeing a demon. Not Lee and I having sex. Not Cami and Ronnie turning into zombies.

  “What a mess!” Lee exclaimed.

  My gaze tripped over the dirty clothes on Eden’s floor before fixing on the colorful psychedelic posters on her wall.

  A wave of relief hit me. Jesus. I get it now. I’m totally tripping.

  Ronnie must’ve put acid or GHB into that drink he had Aubry give me last night. It wouldn’t have been the first or even the second time he’d drugged me. Just a few weeks ago, he slipped shrooms into my Subway sandwich. I’d tripped hard for the next fourteen hours.

  Ronnie had laughed hysterically while recording me rolling around in the front yard screaming, “I’m the universe and the universe is me.” He’d even uploaded the video to YouTube.

  Fucking Ronnie.

  Lee dropped my hand. “There’s the TV.” She pointed at the small television on Eden’s cluttered desk. “Now where’s the damn remote?”

  I watched my flannel shirt climb her toned thighs as she searched through Eden’s wrinkled pink comforter. Damn. I wished I could remember what happened last night. Even if it was only a hallucination, I wanted to remember every detail of the time we’d spent together.

  Lee found the remote and pointed it at the TV.

  Black-and-white dots danced on the screen.

  Lee strode over to the TV and played with the antennas until a fuzzy image of lions resting on a grassy savanna appeared.

  “Being mainly nocturnal animals, lions do most of their hunting at night,” narrated a man with a crisp British accent.

  Lee pounded on the remote, and the channel changed.

  An image of people running out of a Chinese shopping mall appeared. It was followed by footage of people rioting in front of L.A. storefronts. The next images showed German police officers firing on a crowd gathered around a hospital. The shambling people had an all-too-familiar vacant white gaze.

  It was eerily reminiscent of those zombie movies I’d binged-watched last weekend. I laughed. Of course. My subconscious must’ve cued up a zombie apocalypse trip. Damn. Why couldn’t I have hallucinated a tropical island fantasy?

  I made a sound of appreciation as I imagined Lee in a bikini.

  Lee turned and gave me a questioning look before glancing back at the TV.

  A tired-looking local reporter appeared on the screen. “As you can see, disturbing images are coming in from all parts of the world. Just a few hours ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention along with the World Health Organization issued a joint statement alerting Americans to the discovery of a deadly new virus. This so-called Z-virus reportedly has no relation to the canine flu.”

  “Z-virus,” I scoffed. “That’s not even original.”

  “Shh,” Lee hissed.

  The screen flashed to a national press conference in Washington, where a silver-haired woman dressed in a navy suit with shoulder pads as big as her fists stood at a podium.

  “At this time, we have not yet determined the origins of the Z-virus. What we do know is that it is a fatal, highly communicable, blood-borne virus. Signs of infection include the presence of dark purple or black veins that spread across the body. Current antiviral medications are proving ineffective in stopping the virus. However, our scientists are already working on a cure.”

  “How do you address reports that the Z-virus turns people into zombies?” shouted one of the reporters in the audience.

  “Preposterous,” replied the woman with a sneer. “In rare incidents, the Z-virus can cause brain damage leading to abnormal behaviors like we see with rabies.”

  I rolled my eyes. Typical. In every zombie movie, the people in charge never admitted the truth until it chewed their faces off.

  Lee clenched her hands into fists. “Rabies, my ass.”

  Another reporter asked, “What about the purported link between the canine flu vaccination and the Z-virus?”

  The woman held up her perfectly manicured hands. “Let me be clear, there’s no known link between the vaccine and the Z-virus. We encourage everyone to continue receiving their vaccines. We do, however, ask that those who’ve already had a documented case of the canine flu hold off on getting vaccinated for now.”

  Lee turned to look at me. “Did you get the vaccine?”

  I shook my head. Hmm. I thought I might have imagined a more creative origin story for the zombie apocalypse. Like maybe a genetically engineered strain of mutant mosquito or a whacked out new food additive.

  She let out a relieved breath. “Good. Cami got her vaccination yesterday…”

  The television screen switched back to the local reporter. “Health officials are advising residents to stay in their homes until more information becomes available. Saguaro Valley police will be enforcing curfew—”

  “We have to get Eden,” Lee blurted out. Her gaze flickered to the clock on Eden’s nightstand. “Her arraignment starts at eight thirty. That’s in fifteen minutes.”

  I yawned. “Have fun with that. I’m going to get some shuteye.” I walked back to my room.

  “What the hell?” Lee scrambled after me. “We have to get Eden.”

  “You get her. I’m tripping and need to sleep it off.”

  She grabbed my arm. “You’re not tripping. This is really happening.”

  “Sure,” I scoffed, pulling away.

  She followed me into my room. “Our friends are dead.”

  “No. They aren’t.” Ronnie was probably still passed out on the living room floor with Cami. Assuming I didn’t hallucinate them getting together. Actually, the more I thought about it, the more I was sure I only imagined them hooking up. No way would Cami slum it with Ronnie.

  Lee shook her head, sending waves of her dark hair tumbling over her shoulders. “I don’t believe this.”

  “That makes two of us.” I sat down a little too hard on my waterbed. “If I wasn’t tripping, I’d never tell you I’ve been in love with you for years.”

  She took a step back. “Reed, I—”

  “I know, I know. You love me like a brother. Even my hallucination has to beat me over the head with the truth.”

  “This isn’t a hallucination, and it isn’t a joke. I thought it was a joke yesterday.”

  I scrubbed my face with my hands. “You expect me to believe that you let me go down on you last night.” I did remember that part.

  “Yes,” she said, flushing.

  “There’s no way.”

  “It happened.” She moved, so she was standing right in front of me. So close that I got a lungful of her sweet vanilla scent. “And you know what? I liked it. A lot. And part of me can’t wait for you to do it again.”

  My dick turned into a rock while my mouth went dry.

  “But there’s another part of me that’s terrified about what that means, because I can’t let myself care about you… about anyone that way.”

  “Why?” I asked softly.

  Her eyes shadowed with memories I could only guess at.

  “Is it because of what happened with your parents?”

  She nodded.

  “I’d never hurt you. You know that.”

  She rubbed her hand over her chest, drawing my gaze to the outline of her nipple pressed against the fabric.

  Without thinking, I reached my hand out and cupped her breast. It sure as hell felt real.

  She let out a breathy moan.

  I brushed her nipple with my thumb, all the while waiting for her to knock my hand away.

  She swayed toward me and then seemed to catch hold of herself. “We don’t have time for this. We have to bring Eden home before it gets too bad out there.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” I loved how flushed she’d gotten and how her breathing was hitched. At that moment, I kind of wanted to stay on that trip for the rest of my life. I tried to yank her down on the bed with me, but she resisted.

  “
You don’t believe anything I’m saying, do you?”

  I ran my hand up her thigh. “I want to. Jesus, how I want to.” It was just too unrealistic. Ironically, her letting me touch her was far less believable than zombies attacking us.

  She clamped her legs together, trapping my hand between them. “How about this? You help me get Eden and when we get back, we’ll continue this.” She motioned between the two of us.

  Holy shit. Hallucination or not, I couldn’t turn that down. “You’re on.” I jumped up and headed for the door.

  “Wait, you’re not even going to put a shirt on?”

  I shrugged. Why bother feeling self-conscious when none of this was real? Besides, Aubry said some chicks dug scars.

  Or did I hallucinate Aubry too?

  Unsure, I glanced over at the bats hanging in my closet. My favorite Louisville slugger was missing from the rack.

  Because I just beat Ronnie’s brains out with it.

  Panic clawed its way up my throat before I took a deep breath and reminded myself this was all one crazy hallucination.

  Ronnie is fine. He’s probably laughing his ass off at me right now. Screw him.

  Maybe there was some kind of Freudian shit happening here. It was kind of cathartic to confess my love for Lee and end a toxic friendship. Maybe when I sobered up, I’d take this all to heart and start living my truth.

  Lee suddenly unbuttoned my shirt.

  All higher-level thinking evaporated. Jesus. My dick nearly tore through my jeans. “Come here.” I tried to pull her over me.

  “We don’t have time. Here, put your shirt back on.” She started to shrug off my flannel.

  “You wear it,” I said, thoroughly enjoying the way it looked on her. “Just leave it open like that.”

  She groaned. “Get your mind out of the gutter and get dressed. You can’t go inside the police station half naked.”

  Ugh. Bossy Lee is back. I wanted sexy, surprisingly vulnerable Lee. “Can’t we skip to the part where we have sex?”

  “No!” she said, striding out of my bedroom. “And grab another bat for the road. We might need it.”

  16

  Lee

  Reed and I stepped outside to the sound of sirens. The banshee-like wails were quickly drowned out by the deafening sound of military helicopters tearing through the sky above.