Read Bite Me (London Undead) for Free Online

tense.
    “I’d gone out for a bit of a walk to cool my head.” Maisie decided the best thing to do would be to answer Brian’s earlier question as she continued to flush out Seth’s wound. Conversation would keep all of them from thinking too hard on what she was up to.
    “A bit of a walk, Maisie? At night?” Frightened or no, Brian wasn’t beyond making his exasperation clear to her.
    “The landlord had his head up his ass and you can’t deny it.”
    “I’m not, believe me. But at night? If I’d realized you’d be gone past sunset, I’d have made you promise to stay inside the clinic. You of all people should know better.” Brian would bring up the biggest mistake of her life.
    One that cost her a family.
    Everything she’d held close, lost in a single night, and she carried the weight of the memory on a crutch.
    As she set down her tools and stepped away to dump out the used saline solution, Seth’s stare burned into her. She wondered if he knew somehow...
    But he couldn’t.
    Best to press on, then.
    “In any case, my walk ended up a bit further than I’d planned.” She ignored Seth’s snort. “A family went running across the green at Kensington Gardens with a pack of zombies on their heels. Never seen anything like it.”
    “Really, Maisie.”
    “No truly.” She set her jaw and returned to Seth, prodding at his flesh again for fragments. “I mean, we’ve all heard of one or two zombies stumbling on a lone person in the alleys or a few wandering about in the parks. But this was a true group of the blighters, Brian, looking to feed.”
    “Zombies are always hungry.” As if the little knowledge any average person might know about the undead was enough to explain it away. “Hunger is one of the few basic urges they still retain.”
    “Right, so how were these coordinating with one another? The behavior was off, I tell you.” Maisie shook her head. “Like a pack of stray dogs. Sick ones, starving even.”
    “It’s true.” Seth grunted as she pressed a particular point. She looked harder and reached for a pair of forceps. He continued talking despite her work. “These did act in tandem and cooperative attacks. They were faster, fiercer too.”
    “So when I fired a few shots to take down the lead zombie, the family bolted in the wrong direction. They went deeper into the park instead of coming up to the streets.”
    Odd, that. She hadn’t stopped to wonder why, only cursed and followed after them. Once she’d gotten their attention, the zombies had almost caught up with them. She’d had to provide covering fire for them when the man proved to be no help at all even with a shotgun in his hands. He’d fired twice and then been unable to keep his hands steady enough to reload.
    “No way you were on the edge of the park.” Brian shook his head. “Admit it, you went back.”
    Perhaps having a childhood friend wasn’t an advantage.
    Seth shrugged. “I wasn’t going to call you on it.”
    Maisie stared at him, hard. “Pardon?”
    “Werewolves can smell a lie, hear it in the change of inflection in your tone.” Seth wasn’t smiling, but his eyes were kind somehow. “It was a little white lie. I figured you had a reason for it.”
    She held her breath then let it out slow. “I suppose there’s no point in denying it. Yes, I went back to the place where my family died. It’s just inside the park and normally there’d be no danger at all.”
    During the day.
    “Upset, angry... I can see why you want to walk off your temper, even why you go there.” Brian’s voice had softened. “But you shouldn’t have taken the risk at night.”
    “If I hadn’t, that family would be dead, yeah?”
    Brian opened his mouth to argue again but it was Seth who stopped him. “Lives were saved. She held the attack off for a good bit before I arrived. If they’d been normal zombies, she’d have gotten the family out and to safety all on her own.”
    “Yeah well, I’m not the type to run off in