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“I’ll explain later. Let’s go.”
They both took a last look over the railing, but evidently didn’t see anything to convince them I was a fraud. I wanted to peek down myself, to find out what had become of Bill’s body, but if Des and Holden weren’t raising any alarms, there probably wasn’t much to see down there.
Bill and Parker were dead. I had to hope the rest of the teams had been successful as well. If they’d managed to knock out their targets, that would leave only Marcela, her man candy and Parker’s twin, Marty, behind for us to deal with. Three necromancers were no match for the new skills I’d acquired.
I jogged down the steps with the boys behind me, and it wasn’t until we reached ground level that it occurred to me the narrow corridor of the stairs hadn’t bothered me in the least. Maybe I was running on straight adrenaline at that point, but I hadn’t noticed the cramped conditions.
The rest of Parker’s men were still busy staking out the first deck, since their buddies hadn’t had a chance to raise any alarm bells before I burnt them up. Lucky for them I was more interested in getting away than testing my new skills.
“You think you guys can manage the bikes?” I asked, hopping up onto one of the idle motorcycles. The men had graciously left their keys behind. Not for the first time I was grateful for all the things Keaty had forced me to learn. Lock picking was more useful than motorcycle lessons, but they were finally paying off. I silently thanked my mentor, wishing I had a chance to hear him say I told you so one more time.
“Yeah,” Desmond said, climbing onto his own.
Holden eyed the vehicles with naked suspicion. Reading his tension, I said, “Get on.” This seemed to make him more apprehensive, but after a moment’s pause he climbed onto the back of my bike. “Hold tight.” In spite of the dire straig
hts we found ourselves in and the limited time offer on my life, the idea of a grown male vampire hanging on to me like a biker bitch was more than a little amusing to me. I smirked and was glad to be facing forward so Holden couldn’t see.
“Laugh it up, McQueen.” He looped his arms around me, knowing me well enough that seeing my expression was unnecessary. “You’ll get yours some other way.”
He was teasing, but he couldn’t have known how right he was. My mood went from amused to maudlin in the span of an instant. His arms around me were a physical reminder of how little time I had left with these men. My clock was ticking, only now I could see where time ran out.
Pushing the thought from my mind, I revved up my engine and Desmond did the same, Sutherland climbing on behind him. The men above us didn’t get an opportunity to get shots off before we pulled away from the castle and sped down the walking paths.
We stuck to the park for as long as we could, taking advantage of the empty paths that were easier to navigate on a motorcycle than the crowded streets full of abandoned cars would be. But soon we were out of Central Park and back on the main thoroughfares, weaving our way around smoldering cars and piles of refuse in an attempt to get back to Rain Hotel.
The number of corpses now lying truly dead in the street had gone up tenfold since we’d made our way to the park. Where it had once been difficult to move through the clusters of moving dead, now their bodies littered the streets, well and truly gone. I moved the bike around them as well as I could, but sometimes they were impossible to avoid altogether. I said a silent apology to every dead uncle or friend whose arms and legs I drove over.
Desmond waved his hand and pulled out ahead of me, angling his motorcycle up onto the sidewalk. Sutherland was staring up to the sky, seemingly oblivious to our situation. I followed Des, and we took the pedestrian route the rest of the way, as far as we could make it with the bikes. When we got within a half mile of the hotel, the streets were once again congested with bodies, these ones still fully active.
“Shit,” I seethed. I hadn’t been expecting to run into any of the active necros again so soon. I thought we’d have a chance to regroup and go in as a bigger unit.
Guess I’d get an opportunity to test my abilities again, a lot sooner than anticipated.
My bike screeched to a halt behind Desmond’s, and Holden tightened his grip on me as we lurched forward. Between us and Rain Hotel, which I could see looming on the horizon, there were close to a thousand of the walking dead. Somewhere in their midst I suspected there must also be the necromancer controlling them.
“Can we go around?” Desmond asked.
“I think we’re going to have to go straight through. If we try to make it on foot, they’ll stop us, and there’s no easy rooftop access.”
“I was worried you’d say that.”
“I was more worried she wouldn’t say anything, and she’d just go ahead and do it,” Holden added.
Desmond opened the throttle on his bike and scooted it towards the mouth of the street. A few of the dead had noticed our arrival—hard to ignore, considering all the noise the motorcycles were making—and they’d begun to shuffle their way towards us.
“Now or never,” Desmond announced.
“Let’s do it.”
I picked up my feet and released the brake, letting the bike fall in line behind Desmond’s. The first few dead near us sidestepped the motorcycles. Most of the risen had moved towards the sidewalks, avoiding any of the congestion of streets blocked by cars, which gave us a clear path for the first part of our journey. The farther into the crowd we got, though, the more difficult it became to avoid collisions. Some of the risen attempted to move out of our way but bumped into their slower companions and ended up falling in front of our paths before we had a chance to avoid them.
We managed to avoid the bulk of their bodies, but a few of the softer, decaying limbs were crushed beneath our tires, making the bikes wobble unsteadily. I’d been fine on the bike up until then, but this wasn’t something I’d been trained to deal with. I started worrying what would happen when the motorcycles could no longer navigate the uneven turf. There were only so many bodies that could collapse before the bikes couldn’t go any farther. They weren’t designed for off-road conditions, and the piling bodies posed something of a rugged-terrain experience.
I scanned the area around us, hoping for an obvious route, something that would either get us to the hotel or give us a way through the hostile territory. As we continued our slow progress it became apparent we weren’t going to get to the hotel unless I was able to clear us a path.
Time to put myself to the test and see if lighting up Parker’s men at the castle had been a fluke, or if Aubrey was true to his word.
“Desmond, stop your bike on three,” I called.
