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A howl echoed up the corridor and raised the hairs on my arms. “What’s going on, Richard?”

“Danger,” he almost whispered it.

“Is it Raina and Marcus?”

He was still listening to things I could not hear. He pushed me behind him and went to the door, still shirtless, wearing nothing but his jeans.

I ran for the bed and the weapons. I got the Firestar out from under the pillow. “Don’t go out there empty-handed, dammit.” I dragged the Uzi out from under the bed.

A chorus of howls went up. Richard flung the door open and raced down the hallway. I called his name, but he was gone.

Jean-Claude came out of the bathroom in his black, fur-lined robe. “What is it, ma petite?”

“Company.” I slipped the Uzi’s strap across my chest.

The sounds of snarling wolves came distant. Jean-Claude ran past me, the long robe flying out behind him. He ran like a dark wind. When I got out to the corridor, he was nowhere in sight.

I was going to be the last one there. Dammit.

27

* * *

RUNNING full tilt towards a fight was not the best way to stay alive. Caution was better. I knew that, and it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but getting there in time. In time to save them. Them. I didn’t dwell on that; I ran, the Firestar gripped tightly in my right hand, the Uzi in my left. I was running like an idiot, but at least I was armed.

A roaring shout thundered off the walls ahead. Don’t ask me how, but I knew it was Richard. I didn’t think I could run any faster. I was wrong. I spilled into the open, breath coming in throat-closing gasps, not looking left or right. If someone had had a gun, they could have blown me away.

Richard stood in the middle of the room, a zombie held at arm’s length above his head. A wolf the size of a pony had pinned another zombie to the floor, savaging it. Stephen stood at Richard’s back in human form, but crouched and ready to fight. Cassandra stood back from them. She turned to me as I skidded into the room. There was a look on her face that I couldn’t quite read, and didn’t have time to puzzle over.

Jean-Claude was at the far left, away from the werewolves. He was staring at me, too. I couldn’t read his face, but he was in no danger. He hadn’t waded into the zombies. He knew better. Richard didn’t.

The room had been a narrow rectangle, but the far wall had blasted outward, scattering rubble across the floor. It looked like the zombies had crawled out from behind the wall. A graveyard that I, at least, hadn’t known was there.

The dead stood in front of the ruins. Their eyes shifted to me as I saw them, and I felt the weight of their gaze like a blow to my heart.

The fear for everyone’s safety was gone, washed away in a rush of anger. “Richard, put it down, please, it won’t hurt you. Call Jason off the other one.” It had to be Jason unless there was another werewolf down here. And if it was someone else, where was Jason?

Richard turned his head to look at me, the zombie, once a human male, still held effortlessly above his head. “They attacked Jason.”

“They wouldn’t have done anything without orders. Jason jumped the gun.”

“They didn’t attack us,” Cassandra said. “They started pouring out of the wall. Jason changed and attacked them.”

The giant wolf had opened the zombie’s stomach and was tearing at intestines. I’d had enough. “Grab the wolf,” I said. The zombie under him locked its arms around the wolf’s forequarters. The wolf sank teeth into the corpse’s throat and tore it out in a spurt of dark fluid and flesh.

The rest of the zombies, somewhere between sixty and eighty, surged toward the wolf. “Let him up, Jason, or I’ll show you what it’s like to be attacked by zombies.”

Richard bent his elbow and tossed the zombie away from him. The body tumbled through the air and landed in the mass of waiting zombies. They fell like bowling pins, except that these bowling pins got to their feet, though one lost an arm in the process.

Richard crouched by his wolves. “You’re attacking