Undead for a Day Read Online Free Page B

railing—but not before a wire looped around her neck and her body was yanked over the edge.
    She barely had time to scream as she grasped the railing, the wire gnawing into her neck as she hung there, clinging and paddling her feet, kicking at whatever had attacked her.
    They were pulling on that wire while Dawn choked, trying to slip one hand into the noose while holding on with the other. Her vision got cloudy and, instinctively, she turned her head, baring her teeth, using the only weapon she had on her.
    A bite.
    But before she struck, she saw a face... An old man with sideburns, pale, puckered skin, and white eyes that looked like they’d rolled in to the back of his head. His mouth was in a pruned “O,” as if he was about to scream, too.
    The messed-up sight of him made her forget all about biting, and he took advantage of that, putting more force on the wire, even as he reached with his other hand to Vulcan pinch her neck.
    A memory flashed by, adrenaline-quick.
    London, an attack on their headquarters, another pinch at her neck—
    Gathering her guts, she bit his hand, sinking her teeth deep and letting go of the balcony at the same time.
    A yelping sound was all Dawn heard from him just before her stunt woman training came back to her, powered by muscle memory. Midair, she twisted her body, flailing with a hand and catching on to one of the trellises that decorated the side of her home.
    The wire whipped off her neck, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw it fall to the ground. But her attacker still held onto her, his hands wrapped around her waist.
    For a reeling, moonlit second, she hung there, the trellis cracking, threatening as her attacker’s grip began to loosen. She kicked back at him, but a pair of teeth sank into her shoulder—human teeth—and she yelled.
    As the old guy bit her again and again—as if he wanted to eat her—the trellis broke an inch, another, and Dawn brought up her elbow, smashing it into her attacker’s temple.
    He reared back, and that was enough to break the trellis, sending them both tumbling the rest of the way.
    They hit the ground, and Dawn’s lungs pushed out all the air she had. But adrenaline was animating her, forcing her to her feet so she could grab the piece of trellis that had cracked off. She brandished it like a staff to ward off this...thing.
    Not a vampire. What was it?
    She looked around, gaining her bearings, and her mind began to function properly.
    Three of these things , she thought.
    All dressed in black, hunched and circling her. The old man who’d attacked her was face-first on the ground, making animal sounds of pain, and Dawn realized that he’d fallen on something that had injured him.
    The other two were shaded by a shadow cast by her house, but Dawn could still see the whites of their eyes and how their arms were curved at their sides as they breathed, in, out.
    Were they growling at her, too?
    Hellhounds , she thought.
    No. These were human-like creatures, not dogs.
    Then another possibility. Fast and furious zombies? Revenants raised from the dead by something or someone on Samhain?
    Whatever these weirdos were, they were angry, and they weren’t stopping, as the guy who’d been lying on the ground rolled to his side, revealing the blood on his stomach where he’d landed on jagged, pointed rock. Even so, he crawled over the sand, as if homing in on Dawn at all costs. He left a trail of blood, and even if he was making a sad attempt to get at her, he was still covering some ground.
    “What the hell are you?” she whispered, and she had no idea why she’d even tried.
    She thought she heard one of them—the shortest and smallest one—make a twisted sound from the shadows. It made no sense at all, but something about the voice kicked in a thousand fractured memories that swirled around each other: Vampires and blood...
    Out of habit, Dawn broke the trellis stick in two, forming a cross.
    Turned out crosses didn’t work on these guys,