here.” Brigit looked at Rhiannon. “Are you both okay?”
“I would have gotten the better of them momentarily,” Rhiannon said, batting at the muck in her hair in irritation. And then she frowned. “What is that sound?”
Rhiannon turned her attention upward, toward the floor above, but Lucy heard nothing.
“I want to go home,” she said. “I want to go home now. I did what you asked, and I’m finished here. I really am. This is not my problem, and I want to go home.”
“Yes, yes, I know.” James bent to grip her elbow and help her to her feet. “It’s okay, you’re safe.”
“What were they? What did you do?”
“What was necessary, Lucy. What I had to do.”
“But…but they looked like…like the dead. Did you bring them back from the grave? Is that what you— God, James, how could you? That’s so wrong. That’s just so wrong.”
“Is it wrong to try to save my family?” He met her eyes, then looked away, his attention turning upward, too. “I hear it now.”
“Mortals. A lot of them,” Rhiannon said.
And then even Lucy heard the roar, the shouting, the motors and squealing tires. Right on their heels came the sounds of shattering glass, and the smell of smoke and burning wood.
“They’re torching the house!” Brigit shouted.
“Oh, God, and we’re in the basement.” Lucy looked around frantically. “We’re trapped!”
11
James took Lucy by the hand and tugged her back into the lab. She resisted, pulling against his grip, but he couldn’t let her go, and he couldn’t wait for her to get over her current state of shock and fear, or try to reason with her. He had to move her now, or they would all die.
He didn’t blame her for being traumatized by what she had seen. He understood why she didn’t want to walk through the gore that Brigit’s zombie blasting had left behind. But again, no choice.
He yanked her arm when she tried to pull away, enough so that it hurt, because the pain would be the fastest way to cut through the haze of panic in her eyes. He could tell he’d reached her.
“There’s another way out, Lucy. Come with me. If you don’t, you’ll die.”
She stared at him as if she’d never seen him before and said, “Forgive me if I have to think about which option I prefer.”
Angry words, delivered in a voice that was thick with unshed tears. He narrowed his eyes, impatient and remorseful and determined. Pulling her close, he hauled her up and over his shoulder, then strode through the lab. His feet slapped down into the remnants of the bodies, fat and flesh and parts of organs, and plenty of fluids. He heard her gag, whether at the sight or on the choking, cloying smells, he couldn’t be sure. He was close to gagging himself. But he hurried onward, to a shelf along the rear wall. And then, holding her with one arm, he pulled on a hidden catch and the shelf swung inward, revealing itself as a door in disguise.
Once it was open, he stepped aside, and let Rhiannon and Brigit race through ahead of him. As Rhiannon hurried past, Lucy spoke.
“Pandora?” she asked. “Where’s Pandora?”
Rhiannon stopped in her tracks, looking back at the woman hanging over James’s shoulder. Then at James. He saw what was in her eyes. Surprise, and appreciation that Lucy, their captive, would be concerned about Rhiannon’s unconventional pet. “I sent her away with Roland earlier. I…was afraid something like this might happen.” Then she nodded at James. “Put her down, for God’s sake. She can walk.”
And then they hurried through the wall and down into the darkness.
“The tablet,” Lucy whispered, as James set her on her feet and she peered into the deep gloom ahead of them.
“It’s too late.” He took her arm and led her down into the sloping, earthen passage, pulling the door back into place behind him. And then he led her onward, through utter darkness.
A moment later she stopped walking and turned to stare at him, though it was pointless, with no light to see by.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Lucy,” he said, wondering what she was up to.
“You mean like trying to reanimate rotting corpses, for example?”
“That wasn’t stupid. That was necessary. This way.” He took her hand to lead the way, holding it too tightly for her to try wriggling free and running back to those murderous mortals.
“Necessary? You’re playing God, James. With human lives. What could possibly justify that?”