Underground by Kat Richardson Read Free Book Online

where the fox had glanced and saw two vaguely human figures emerging from a shadow that should have been too small to hold them. The world around them boiled in the Grey and heaved layers of time like stacked plates in an earthquake. I faltered forward a step, and the figures moved into a thin slice of streetlight.
     
     
    In the ordinary light, they looked like two men dressed in rags, stumbling a little from drink or debility, but as they moved forward into shadow again, they shed their normal aspect in my eyes. One was the shaggy creature that had braced me in Occidental Park and it was leading the other, shambling and putrescent, toward me. The clinging cowl of black threads and Grey strands like spiderweb wasn’t necessary for me to know that the thing was dead—a walking corpse. I gagged on the stink of decay the zombie carried with it.
     
     
    The hairy man-thing held out a hand to me. “Help, lady. Free—”
     
     
    Will pulled me back and stepped between us. “Don’t touch her,” he warned the scarred creature. “We don’t have anything for you. Go your way.”
     
     
    “Will,” I started.
     
     
    He put a protective arm up in front of me but kept his eyes on the two creatures. I knew he didn’t see what I did. He must have thought they were just a couple of bums panhandling a bit aggressively.
     
     
    I began objecting again. “No, Will. Don’t!”
     
     
    Will tried to push me back. The matted hair on the furry one’s head and neck rose like hackles on an angry dog. It lowered its head and growled. “No. Need lady!” Fury sparked in its green eyes and it jumped at Will, butting its head into his midsection.
     
     
    Will tumbled backward and both the monstrosities rushed for him, voicing weird cries. Bright lines of Grey energy rippled around them as the three figures tangled on the ground, thrashing.
     
     
    “No!” I shouted, plunging into the fray. I didn’t want to touch the Grey things and I didn’t want them to touch Will any more than they had. I grabbed onto him and hauled backward as hard as I could, pushing back on the Grey as I went. I shoved the edge between us and the shambling, furious things that flailed at Will. “Stop it!” I yelled at them. “Stop!”
     
     
    Will’s hand connected with the zombie’s face and a chunk of rotten flesh fell away, trailing Grey strands on Will’s fingers like glue. The dead man’s jaw sagged open, unhinged on one side. Will recoiled with a shout, stumbling back and staring at the gaping thing and its feral companion. His shout turned into inarticulate sounds of horror, but I didn’t look back at him. The shaggy thing lurched forward again and I slammed my forearm across its chest, shuddering at the touch of its matted hair and knotted body.
     
     
    “Stop!” I ordered. “Stop now or I won’t help you.” I was panting from the adrenaline surge. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? My help?”
     
     
    The thing whimpered with frustration but turned its gaze to me at last. “Yes. Help,” it whined. It reached for the undead man and drew him closer to me. “Trapped. This spirit, tangled here. One of my people, before your kind. Free it.”
     
     
    I peered at the standing dead man and saw a tangle of Grey threads, yellow, blue, and black under the unnatural spiderweb of soft Grey—similar to the stuff I’d seen in the train tunnel—that seemed to bind the rotting flesh together. The threads were inside the body, but the rot was well advanced and only the web of Grey held it to form. I’d pulled a living Grey thing apart before, deconstructed it by force, hating every burning instant. As I looked at it, I could make out a shadow of a face amid the tangled strands of energy and magic, a face that suffered and implored with a look where voice had long failed.
     
     
    It was disgusting and repellent, but . . . I’d have to make the best of it. I didn’t know if I wanted the blue strand or the yellow one, but if I pulled