Bad Blood (Battle of the Undead Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

air.
    The sun was setting, but daylight still bathed the scenery below. I leapt onto the railings, balancing, so I could see out over the city.
    London was burning. The flames licked the landscape with abandon, and the waters of the Thames looked dark and strangely busy. I strained to see it more clearly. That’s when I saw people thrashing, trying to swim. They pushed and pulled in the water, some just giving up and sinking beneath the surface. They were trying to get away from something, a faceless crowd that seemed to have gathered on the banks just to watch them drown. I couldn’t help them. Even with my speed, they’d all be dead by the time I got there.
    Satan barked then backed into me as my neighbor attempted to traverse the partition separating us. Mr. Gervis was not a nice guy when he was alive. As a zombie, he was positively gross. Ten stone overweight for his height of five-foot-five, he had almost hoisted himself over the barrier between us. His half-eaten hands reached toward me, his hungry moans sounding his frustration as he got stuck halfway through his journey. His belly sagged out of his jogging bottoms and wrapped itself over the fence top. Mr. Gervis the zombie was not strong enough to lift his own body weight…interesting.
    Satan barked again, and I watched as the zombie cowered at the noise—he didn’t like dogs either. His eyes were bulging and bloodshot with one eyeball dangling down his bloated cheek. He yelled at me, and for a moment, it was almost like I’d stepped on one of his garden boxes and he was telling me off. Yet the yell had no form and was just a long, uninterrupted stream of vowels. He wriggled to get free but couldn’t. He continued to reach toward me, ignoring Satan who had now stopped barking and was casually sniffing around the balcony.
    Knowing my zombie interloper wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, I strolled back into my flat, showered, changed, and packed a rucksack. I didn’t need food, but Satan did, so I put in a couple of chews and a few dog food cans that I had left from my pre-zombie-apocalypse dog-sitting days. I dressed in my Sex Pistols tee, red leather skinny jeans, and electric-blue leather biker jacket and boots. I plaited my long hair to keep it out of my face. I packed a first aid box, a change of clothes, my hand scythes, and two grenades left over from the Second World War. I always knew they’d come in handy someday! I’d also kept a pint of blood from my last kill. I didn’t like to think about the humans I killed . I tried to dwell more on the vampires. This particular human had been a rather nasty piece of work who’d dedicated his life to making people suffer. I’d been drinking the tax inspector for five days now, and as I downed the last of him, I heard another more impatient moan from Mr. Gervis, who had now managed to wriggle free from the fence.
    Two strides and a swipe of my scythe, then off tumbled his head. It made a satisfying wet thump on my floor. Satan stared up at me. Then he sniffed the body and recoiled.
    “Bad blood, Satan. It’s why I can’t drink them.”
    Satan, of course, didn’t understand, but I think he knew the world was different now. I bent to put his leash on and stopped myself. If he were to have any chance of survival, he’d need to be free to run. I threw the thin strap of leather to the side, ruffled his head, and headed to the door.
    I hoisted my backpack onto my shoulders, pulled at my still steady barricade, and took a deep breath—told you it’s a hard habit to break. Suddenly, freedom loomed tantalizingly in front me.
    It wasn’t the first time in my life this had happened. Back when I had been first turned, Nicholas had kidnapped me in the vain hope of turning blind fury and hatred into love and passion. Twenty years I was imprisoned by Nicholas as he waited patiently for me to come around to his advances. I hadn’t come around. Instead, I just got angrier and more used to being alone. Once a day,