dEaDINBURGH: Origins (Din Eidyn Corpus Book 3) by Mark Wilson Read Free Book Online Page B

to her left and right.
    Several small groups of The Ringed, drawn by the noise of their brethren and the smell of fresh meat, were making their way towards her. In a few seconds’ time they’d close a semi-circle of decaying bodies and endless hunger around her. She could feel the next contraction coming. Joseph’s head pushed down. Waxy, white lips peeled back from brown-green teeth. The moans grew nearer, teeth snapped at the air in anticipation of flesh. They had her scent and it drove them hard towards her.
    She looked up into the patriarch’s eyes and flooded her own with a piteous pleading for help for her unborn son. She took her last gamble and pulled an orange, rubbery object from her pocket. A USB device.
    Holding it up to the hatch she handed it to Grayson, whose face wore a look of mild interest. He took the flash drive from her.
    “I have access to electricity, food, heating and computers,” she blurted.
    Grayson examined the device for one second before dropping it back through the hatch to the snowy ground.
    Grayson closed the hatch.
    Michelle abandoned all pretence of stealth and began raining fists onto the doors. She screamed and cursed and pleaded. No-one answered. The doors did not open, only the jaws of The Ringed did that.
    Rotted hands reached for her shoulder. Fingers much stronger than she’d imagined began to close around her. Michelle snatched up the flash-drive then pulled a flare from her coat pocket. Sparking it, she waved it and jabbed the bright red glow near the face of the closest Ringed, a large man dressed in a tattered suit. He did not flinch, but his eyes and all the other glassy dead eyes followed the flare’s light. She tossed it over their heads, up the hill behind them, and said a silent prayer as they followed the flare.
    Michelle tore herself away from the door, so ruthlessly and casually slammed on her last hope. Moving bow-legged to her right, she felt her son move lower into her pelvis and slipped under the archway of Parliament Square. Leaning heavily with her back on a table-like stone altar, Michelle brought her son into the city.
    Holding Joseph’s crown as it slid from her body, Michelle MacLeod screamed as her world was torn apart and her son slipped into her waiting hands.
    Gory, covered in her blood and coated in waxy vernix, her son took his first breaths and screamed his arrival into the horror her life had become. Michelle’s face was streaked with tears of pain and joy as she took in every detail of her baby’s miraculous face.
    The moaning grew louder again. The Ringed were coming.
    A scuff on stone above drew her attention. She lifted her eyes to the balcony and saw Padre Jock leaning over the stone railing, eyes wide, face filled with fear. The dead closed in, too many to fight, no escape for either her or for her son whose body, fresh from the womb, let loose warm steam that swirled cheerfully into the cold night, forming a tendril between her and the former Padre on the balcony above.
    Her eyes met his. A silent promise passed between them.
    One-armed, Michelle clutched her new-born son whilst she wriggled from her overcoat. Making a bed of the woollen garment in the stone doorway, she laid the love of her life in its folds and kissed him tenderly on his sticky, warm lips. She told him to be strong, to be brave. To be good.
    Leaning close for a final smell of him, her spirit soared with the love and the connection she felt. Whether it was their souls recognising each other or simply the chemistry of pheromones, the scent of her son surged her body with raw, primal courage and resolve. Lifting the umbilical cord that still connected mother and son she told him softly, “I love you, my Joseph. I love you so much, my beautiful son.”
    Biting through the spongey blood vessels, she separated her soulmate from herself, took one last look and ran screaming loudly into the cobbled street, umbilical cord trailing a macabre path of bloody breadcrumbs for The