A Secret to Die For (Secret McQueen) (15 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Things below had gone from bad to worse while we were busy hatching plans indoors. Even the few short blocks between the hotel and council headquarters were now thick with jostling bodies. It was like stepping outside during rush hour, except these commuters were corpses.

Holden—my designated vampire—stood next to me in the lobby entrance as we surveyed the situation. The air was thick with heat, and it was doing nothing to help the stench coming off the dead. An extra day had caused advanced decay to set in, especially with those who’d been hastily prepared for burial.

The bodies themselves were looking worse too. Exposure wasn’t doing them any favors, and many of them were showing advanced signs of decomposition. Skin peeled away from their faces and arms, leaving exposed teeth and bone.

“Now they look like zombies,” I observed.

“They didn’t look like zombies before? When they were, you know, the walking dead?” Holden asked.

“You’re the walking dead. They’re like movie zombies now.”

“Firstly, I take offense to that statement. I’m too pretty to be called dead, thank you.” The cheeky wink he gave me buoyed my spirits. I guess our time with the vampire council had showed him there were bigger enemies for us to worry about than each other. For the time being, at least, we were on friendly footing.

It would make the next part of our journey a lot easier.

“What’s second?” I asked.

“They’re the same dead they were yesterday. They might have scarier faces, more like zombies or what have you, but they’re still
not
zombies. They’re meat puppets at best.”

I took a steadying breath and watched the tide of bodies stagger past us. None of them seemed aware or concerned about our presence. I was tempted to reach out and touch one, but I didn’t know how the necros were working them or what the connection was.

The rot had allowed more of them use of their mouths because their lips had decomposed, meaning more of them were able to use their teeth. They might not be zombies, but I still didn’t want any of them to bite me.

“Can you feel anything?”

“I’m not a bloodhound.” He rolled his eyes. “The sensation is there, it’s been there since they first showed up. It’s like white noise at this point, present but not something that bothers me too much anymore. I’ll be able to tell the difference when we get closer.”

“Did it feel different when we were in the bar?”

He gave me a tight nod. “Much. Imagine a swarm of bees inside your skull, flying and crawling and stinging you. Imagine it getting worse the closer you got to the source.”

It sounded an awful lot like a panic attack, except my bees were in my stomach more than my brain, which was definitely not a feeling I wished on anyone.

We waited for a gap in the crowd, then slipped out of the hotel. Six groups had left before us, including Desmond and Clementine and Lucas and Sig. That particular pairing set my spider sense tingling, because I didn’t like to imagine what Lucas and Sig might discuss when alone together.

I’d once split town, and Lucas had gone to Sig to get me back. The two weren’t strangers, and that Lucas had volunteered to go with the Tribunal leader made me a
lot
uneasy. I’d tried to suggest Lucas go with my father, but that unlucky pairing ended up falling to Dominick.

None of the wolves were saddled with Juan Carlos. I’d ensured he was partnered with another vampire since he seemed the most likely candidate for disregarding my
no insults
rule. He didn’t have to obey my commands, so there was a good chance he would ignore them entirely.

Holden and I wove our way through the moving bodies and were soon out of sight of the hotel. The stink in the air was a gruesome combination of fetid flesh and charred metal and plastic. Most of the buildings in our immediate vicinity remained untouched by fire, but it was only a matter of time before the flames started to close in.

I was surprised more of the landscape hadn’t been consumed during the day. The fires must have been more spread out than I’d initially suspected, and perhaps there were some brave FDNY officers still working in the city, doing whatever they could to keep the flames at bay. We had heard sirens when we first got into town. The idea of humans struggling outside in these conditions made me queasy, but if O’Brian, Cedes and Tyler had stuck around, there had to be other civically minded folks out there trying to serve and protect even in this madness.

Holden grabbed my arm and pulled me off the street into an empty alley. I didn’t protest, but I gave him a look that clearly made known my opinion on being dragged around.

He dug out his map—a torn section of one of Lucas’s big city maps—and turned it around until it was facing the right way. “I think we need to go a block that way.” He pointed directly at the brick wall blocking the end of the alley.

“Okay, Shadowcat, you want to phase through first, or should I?”

“Shadow what?” Holden was too busy studying the square of map to pay much attention to what I was saying.

“Shadowcat. The X-Man. Kitty Pryde? She can… Oh, forget it.” Pop-culture references were lost on him anyway. I don’t know why I bothered.

“Are the X-Men the ones who have powers? Like Arachnid-boy?”

“You’re fucking with me now, right?” I raised an eyebrow at him, not entirely certain if he could have missed every comic-book character invented in the last seventy-five years. Surely he had to know who Spider-Man was.

He grinned.

Bastard.

“I’m not suggesting we walk through the building. I’m suggesting we go
over
.” A rusty fire-escape ladder positioned above an old garbage bin seemed to be his main focus. This might not have been my favorite idea, but it would be a lot faster than going around.

And sadly, since I still hadn’t unearthed any mutant superpowers, going through the wall was out of the question.

I scrambled up first, ignoring the rasp of rough metal against my hands. An iron sliver wouldn’t be fun, but it also wouldn’t kill me, so there was no sense in being a wuss about it. I got to the top and offered Holden a hand up off the last rung, bringing us both safely to the tar-papered roof.

Though we hadn’t climbed far, the view was so astonishing my breath caught in my throat.

“My God.”

The streets were packed with the dead, fumbling and tripping over one another like macabre bumper cars. From our new vantage point I could see clearly what I’d missed from higher up in the penthouse. They were
everywhere
. If this street was any indication, there must be hundreds of thousands throughout the city.

I let out a whimpering breath.

“Wow,” Holden said, following my gaze.

I shuddered and stepped closer to him, looping my arms around his, needing to feel something living and tangible. There was so much
death
out there, and I didn’t know what to think. My plan seemed so small in comparison to what the necros had done. They’d turned New York into a dead city, and how could I defeat that?

They’re only human.

“We’re getting closer,” Holden told me.

Beyond the ambling corpses, the image of a smoldering Chrysler Building caught my eye. I couldn’t look away. It was my favorite building in the city, and it was lit up like a Roman candle, smoking and beyond saving.

“Why would they do something like this?”

“You’re asking for logic out of evil. Evil doesn’t yield to reason, Secret. It simply exists to consume and destroy. Did you ever think maybe they just wanted to see if they could do it?”

“No.”

“Well…”

“I can’t think anyone would do this just for the sake of doing it. There
must
be a reason. Even if it’s a stupid reason, I need to believe there was something that motivated them to take things this far. No one burns a city to rubble because they think it’s a fun way to spend their Thursday.”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

I shook off his assessment, trying to push it out of my mind. I couldn’t leave it at that. Whatever the Hands of Death had come here for, it wasn’t just kicks and mayhem. I’d settle for an overkill way to assassinate someone, or perhaps wanting to establish their territory. Hell, I’d rather think they were trying to steal paintings from one of the art museums, or drugs from the hospitals. Any of those excuses, as flimsy and frustrating as they would be, was better than having no reason at all.

Anarchy might exist, but they were too organized for that to be their endgame. They’d planned this meticulously and divided their power. They’d been able to take the city to its knees in two hours flat. That took precision and careful work. Anarchists just threw dynamite into the cell and waited for the prisoners to start screaming.

Holden was already striding across the rooftop, and I jogged to catch up with him. He jumped from one building to the next effortlessly in spite of the wide gap between the two, and when I followed suit, I stumbled on my landing, proving no matter how graceful vampires and werewolves might be on their own, their joint offspring didn’t necessarily get the best of both worlds.

Dusting gravel off my palms as I got to my feet, I nearly walked into Holden’s back because he’d come to a sudden stop.

“Here,” he announced.

“You’re sure?”

One stiff nod was all the confirmation I needed.

“Now let’s get back so we can—” He stopped talking because I’d started to walk away and was no longer listening to him.

The decision to regroup after finding the necros was an integral part of the plan. A plan I had come up with myself. I’d been the one to drill into everyone’s head how important it was not to be a vigilante.
Come back and don’t be a hero,
I’d said.

So of course I was ignoring my own wisdom entirely.

“What are you doing?” He was beside me again, and I sidestepped before he was able to grab hold of me. Just because I didn’t flinch at every touch anymore didn’t mean I wanted everybody getting handsy with me.

“I’m going in.”

“That’s not the plan. You were very explicit about the plan.”

“I’m changing it.”

“You can’t change it.”

“Sure I can, I made it up. I can change it.”

I was almost at the next fire escape when he said, “And what if one of the others decided to change it? What if Desmond decided he was going to ignore you and go in guns blazing because he thought it would be easy to take out one necromancer all by himself?”

I froze. He wasn’t playing fair. Of course I wouldn’t want anyone else to do what I was about to do. But I had a double standard for myself. I knew I was never going to abide by the rules, so I generally assumed they didn’t apply to me. I’d figured by now everyone else should know this about me as well. Rules were more like suggestions, and right now I was choosing to ignore the suggestion.

“We aren’t the others. I’m not the others. I’ve already killed one of these bastards.” I was still facing the fire escape so I didn’t have to look at him. I was worried if his expression was too earnest or fearful, I might change my mind and back down.

After what I’d seen on the streets, I couldn’t back down.

These fuckers had to pay.

“You faced one, but at what cost?”

“Holden, don’t.”

“No, listen to me. At what cost? Would Keats want you to risk your life like this?”

That got my attention. I spun around and cleared the distance between us in less than a second, jamming my finger hard into his sternum. “Don’t you dare say his name to me. How can you pull it out like it’s a fucking magic trick, and play the
what would Keaty say
card. That’s a horseshit, low move, and you shouldn’t have said it.”

“I’m not taking it back.”

“Fuck you.”

“
Fuck you,
” he spat back. “You think you’re the only one suffering? You think your pain is the only real emotion here? Goddamn, Secret. You’re so blind to everything around you because you’re too lost in your own fucking bullshit to see what’s going on with anyone else.”

“I—”

“No, you don’t get to talk. You’ve had your say, now it’s my turn. This isn’t
your
city. This is
our
city. I’ve lived here since before your mother’s mother was born. I have known things about this place and have loved more people in it than you will love in your whole damned life. And I’m just as scared as you are about what’s happening. I know you’re mad. So am I. We all are. Every person you left at that hotel cares just as much about this as you do. This isn’t your vendetta. Not every fight has to be yours alone, you know.”

He paused, and I stared at him wide-eyed, unsure if he was going to continue or not.

“Are you done?” I asked.

“No.”

But rather than saying anything, we stood there in silence with only the sounds of burning buildings and the restless dead to keep us company.

“Well?”

“I can’t let you go in there. Not just because it’s selfish and stupid, but because I can’t risk losing you.”

I chewed the inside of my cheek to keep from crying. “I won’t—”

“Oh shut up, would you?” He looped his hand around the back of my neck and pulled me to him for a bruising kiss.

My cheeks burned from the suddenness of it. This was no quick kiss, nothing like the sweetness of our goodbye kiss only a few days earlier. This was a deep, dirty, end-of-the-world kiss. The kind of thing that evoked images of getting fucked up against a wall with almost all your clothes still on.

His fingers gripped my neck, holding me in place, and I braced my hands against his chest. I thought my intention was to push him away, but the need and urgency from his mouth stayed my hand. I closed my eyes and melted into it, meeting him measure for measure, and when he pulled back, we were both gasping.

I took a step away and stumbled, my legs gone rubbery underneath me.

“Whoa.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

I couldn’t say I was sorry, because kisses like that were the thing people dreamed about when they watched
Gone with the Wind
. Maddening, demanding kisses built to consume a person from their toes up.