Chapter Fifteen

Dillan

Lightning in the Brain

Dillan stepped out of the house to get some air before he forgot what his mother taught him and actually punched a girl. What was it about Selena that affected him so much? But not five minutes into his cooling off break, a powerful electric jolt sliced down his body. To say it hurt would have been funny. Because Jesus H. Christ it hurt. He only started thinking straight again when his feet carried him toward the woods.

That invisible line he’d first felt at the bookstore pulled taut. It reeled him in. His heart banged in his chest. He had no idea where the overwhelming sense of worry and urgency came from. All he knew was he had to be somewhere fast.

He blinked to adjust his sight to the evening gloom. The trees obscured much of the moonlight, better for him rush through the forest unscathed. Unthinking, his thumb rubbed against the charm on his leather cuff. He channeled his energy toward the stone, and the charm grew into a sword. Blue sparks from its blade showered the forest floor, setting it ablaze before snuffing out.

The telltale groans of the undead reached his ears. The wretched, rotting smell only served to confirm his suspicions. A feminine yell spurred him faster.

At a stand of pines, he caught sight of Selena swinging a stick at five corpses. She yelled something incoherent at them. They groaned back. He almost stopped to stare if it weren’t for the prickly balls of panic bouncing around in his chest. What could be going on in that brain of hers to challenge a group of undead with a stick?

The corpse in a shredded, blue suit hobbled forward, its hands groping for Selena. Reaching her side, Dillan brought his sword down in a clean slash across the undead’s chest. When the corpse turned into black goo, he reevaluated what they faced. The undead didn’t turn into goo. They merely fell to the ground until their heads were chopped off. His gut twisted at the alternative. He’d rather face the undead.

As if they noticed their companion melt, the other corpses paused. He moved to dispatch the rest when Selena’s questions distracted him.

“Dillan? What the hell are you doing here?” She stood at his side like some warrior ready for battle. “Is that a sword?”

Everything she asked entered one ear and out the other. “I should ask you the same thing. What the hell are you doing facing down these puppets?” There, he’d named them, and yet the knot in his gut didn’t ease. Shit!

“I’m keeping these things from reaching the house,” she answered simply.

Shaking his head, he elbowed her aside and buried his sword into the man with a skull for a face. Unfortunately, his move to save Selena from having to fight angered her more. She brought her stick down over the head of the corpse in the pink dress. The action brought the puppet into a frothing frenzy, grabbing at her with boney fingers.

“You need to cut them to dispose of them,” he said through his teeth. He whirled in a tight circle and severed the head of the corpse Selena annoyed with her stick.

“You can’t just expect me to sit here and let you take over. I can fight,” she insisted.

“Are you hearing me?” He slammed an elbow into the puppet with a hollowed out stomach. It stumbled backwards with a gurgling grunt. “You need to cut them.”

Blowing a curl away from her face, Selena reached out for him. “Then lend me your sword.”

“Not gonna happen. Now shut up, and let me take care of this.” But before he could move, Selena was on him. She made a grab for his sword. Shocked like a deer in headlights, he let go of its hilt. She closed her hands around the handle and swung it at the corpse that used to be an old woman attempting to bite him. The blade hit the puppet clumsily. The only reason it cut the puppet’s arm off was because Dillan kept it sharp with his life force. The weapon was an extension of his body, and it pissed him off to have someone else touching it. Especially if that someone was Selena.

Using his annoyance to regain his wits, he yanked the weapon away from her grasp. “Give me that before you hurt yourself.” He scanned the forest. “I count four down. Weren’t there—”

“Behind you!”

Without looking, he closed both hands on the hilt and stabbed backwards. A sickening squelch followed the blade entering the puppet he’d elbowed earlier. Shifting, he faced the surprised corpse. In seconds, it joined its friends as goo on the forest floor. He flicked the rest of the residue off before pin-wheeling the blade with a twist of his wrist forward twice then backward once. His weapon returned to its inert state at his cuff. Using his dark enhanced senses, he scanned the area. Nothing else moved. The regular sounds of the night resumed. What happened to the wards of the property? How did the puppets get in?

“What the hell were those things?” Selena asked, breathing ragged.

“Puppets.” He grimaced.

“Is that a new word for zombies?”

He rolled his eyes at that. Humans and their fixation with Hollywood monsters. “There’s no such thing as zombies.” He stopped himself from saying anything more. Then reality hit him. Shit. A human encountered puppets. How the hell was he going to explain this? So much for keeping his identity a secret. He mentally counted the number of rules he’d broken by telling her about the puppets until Selena staggered against the nearest tree and used its trunk for support.

“What’s wrong?” The invisible string pulled him toward her.

She gave him a wobbly grin. Sweat coated her forehead. “I fell and hit my knee.”

“And you still fought against them?” He didn’t know how to feel about that. A part of him found it stupidly reckless. Another part found it incredibly sexy. He closed his eyes and banished the combination of Selena and sexy from his mind. “You know how many kinds of stupid that is?”

“Didn’t you hear me?” She struggled to stay upright. “I was trying to keep them from getting to the house.”

The same hammering in his chest returned. Stupid, stupid girl, and yet he couldn’t stop himself from taking her into his arms. The familiar electric shock zoomed through him. Her answering gasp told him she felt it, too. The second their bodies touched, a loud popping followed, like the shorting of a circuit. Apparently, if they held onto each other, they blew a fuse. Good to know.

“What are you?” he whispered into her strawberry-scented curls. Damn. He breathed in deeply. He could inhale that smell all night. His body reacted to it like cats to catnip.

She reached behind him until her hands anchored onto his shoulders. “I read on the Internet that some people are predisposed to generating more static shock than others.”

He chuckled at that, all the panic and worry draining out of him. “I hate the fucking internet.”

Touching her felt unreal. She wasn’t human. She couldn’t be after tonight. He knew this in his gut. He’d known since the first time they’d met. Maybe he wasn’t breaking any rules after all by telling her about the puppets. But why were they in Valley View?

He held her closer, unable to let go.