Underground by Kat Richardson Read Free Book Online Page A

them both out, I could disentangle them more easily. This old corpse shouldn’t have been walking around for any reason—he’d been dead a long, long time and deserved to lie down for good. My stomach lurched, but I braced myself to do it, sending a muttered “Gods help me . . .” to the sky as I pushed my hands into the rotten flesh.
     
     
    The threads of spirit felt like live wires and burned my fingers. I gasped and bit off a yelp of pain as I hooked the living energy in my fists, squeezed my eyes closed against the coming flare of agony, and pulled. Fire and electric shocks jolted up my arms and down my spine, raging through my chest. And then the stands broke free. I staggered back, opening my clenched fists and closed eyes.
     
     
    The zombie tumbled to the ground, decomposing as it fell. The energy strands slid apart and for an instant two faces looked at me. I gasped. Two? That was all wrong. I stared at the faces—one pleased, one furious—and wondered why the angry one seemed familiar before it flashed away. The other was an Indian—some kind of local Native American, I would guess—and he looked on me benignly for a moment before all cognition faded. He didn’t say anything, didn’t smile or nod, just slowly vanished leaving a sense of profound relief in his wake.
     
     
    My shoulders sagged and I let my head fall forward as I exhaled. Could have been worse, I supposed. I heard a noise behind me and turned, having forgotten about Will in the pressure of the moment.
     
     
    Will was staring at me, breathing in panicky pants. “You . . . you killed that man.”
     
     
    “Shit,” I muttered. “No, Will. He was already dead.” I tried to close the distance between us, but he backed away from me, so I stopped. “Look at the body. Just look.” I turned my head back to see the rotten pile moldering into dirt as we watched. I glanced at my hands and then at his. A thin greasy dust clung to my fingers where the dead man’s remains had already dropped away. But I saw a knotted thread of blue energy clinging to Will’s fingers and wrapping around his arms where he’d touched the zombie.
     
     
    I walked toward him again, reaching for his hand to brush the energy strand away, but he jerked back, staring in disbelief at me and then at the pile of dust and dirt beside the now-docile hairy creature. I didn’t know how much of the Grey he could see by dint of the tangle on his hand, but it seemed to be enough. Or maybe he could only see the absence of a body, but that would do. He looked sick and his skin was slick with fear sweat that gleamed in the jaundiced light. He started shaking his head in a stiff manner that signaled the edge of hysteria. I kept my hands where he could see them and stood very still.
     
     
    “Will,” I said in the calmest tone I could muster. “I didn’t hurt anyone. And I wouldn’t hurt you, either.”
     
     
    “They attacked you. You—you attacked back!”
     
     
    “No. They wanted help.”
     
     
    “You tore that one to pieces!” he shouted, pointing at the drifting pile of dust.
     
     
    “Will. No. Will, I can’t tear a person up. It can’t be done. The body fell apart on its own. Will. It was a zombie. It wasn’t alive. It was a spirit trapped in a rotting corpse!”
     
     
    I shouldn’t have yelled. At the sound of my raised voice, Will turned and bolted. I tried to go after him, but the hairy man-creature loped after me and caught me, pulling me back around by the arm.
     
     
    “Lady, lady, dead lady. Even now.”
     
     
    “What?” I demanded. “Even for what?” Exasperating thing!
     
     
    It touched the scarring around its eye. “This.”
     
     
    “I didn’t do that to you!” I cried, frustrated, horrified, wanting to run away from it, to run after Will, and knowing it was too late.
     
     
    “This because of you. Scaled man struck me. Because you didn’t come with me.”
     
     
    I stared at the shaggy thing, halted in my thoughts of