Hellforged Read Online Free

“And my hair?”
    “Wash it a hundred times, shave it off, whatever. You could even leave it in for a new look—if you can stand the smell. The stuff in your hair won’t hurt you. But get it off your skin.”
    A tremendous crash shuddered the bathroom door. Tina must have been awfully hungry—it sounded like she’d torn the front off the vending machine and hurled it down the hallway. Well, why not? Like I said, zombies are always hungry. And she’d already wrecked her manicure.

2

    “I DON’T SEE WHY YOU WOULDN’T LET ME DRIVE.” TINA SAT sideways in an upholstered chair in the lounge of the group home she shared with other zombified teens. A sofa and some chairs formed a semicircle in front of a thirty-two-inch TV mounted on the wall. Behind the chairs stood a battered Ping-Pong table, its net sagging. Bookshelves lined the far wall. An audio system took up more shelf space than any books did.
    Tina lay back against one arm of the chair; her legs stuck out over the other, showing off her ripped-knee jeans. Her legs didn’t exactly dangle, thanks to her undead stiffness, but it was as close to lounging as a zombie could get. Empty chip bags and donut boxes littered the floor.
    “Why didn’t I let you drive? Hmm. Well, for starters, you don’t have a driver’s license.”
    “So? I know how. I almost had my learner’s permit when the stupid plague came along.”
    “You were fifteen,” I reminded her. “You need to be sixteen to get a permit.”
    She picked at her baby-pink nail polish. “I said almost . Anyway, who’d teach me? My dad promised he would, but he and Mom couldn’t dump me fast enough once they realized I was gonna be stuck this way forever.”
    It was true. And I felt for the kid, really—but nobody besides me would ever drive that car. A 1964 E-type Jaguar in classic racing green, Dad had shipped it over from Wales when he and Mom moved to Massachusetts in the 1970s. Now, the Jag was all I had left of him—and Tina would not be wrapping it around a lamppost.
    “Enough. Let’s talk about tonight’s job.” Tina was getting work-study credit at her high school for being my apprentice. “What did you know about Glitches going in?”
    She swung around in the chair so she was sitting up straight—more or less. She tore open a bag of pretzels and stuffed handfuls into her mouth between sentences. “Anti-technology demons. Glitches are really old—like, older than cavemen. Back in the day, they didn’t bother the norms. They lived in storm clouds, eating electricity. But the Bronze Age dawned, and humans discovered that bronze weapons kill demons. Glitches declared war, attacking any new kind of technology.”
    “Right.” I nodded. “That’s why I have to go after them with low-tech weapons like knives and axes. Anything more advanced, and they gum up the weapon itself. You saw what happened when the security guard fired his gun.”
    “That was awesome.” She sent me a sidelong glance. “Are you mad at me for busting out of that professor’s office? I know you said I have to stay away from the job site, but—”
    “It’s okay. This time.” Back in October, Tina had wreaked all kinds of havoc when she’d followed me into a client’s dream and accidentally torched his dreamscape. “You’re supposed to stay with the client, yes, but this client wouldn’t stay put. It was an unusual situation.”
    We went over other info about Glitches—their habits, their habitat, the effects of Glitch venom on humans and other species.
    “Would that stuff hurt zombies?”
    “That’s a good question, Tina. I don’t know. Probably not.” Boston’s zombies, like their horror-movie counterparts, were hard to kill. Direct exposure to sunlight made their skin deteriorate—a “zombie sunburn” caused orange, pitted, permanently damaged skin—but it didn’t kill them. A zombie could fall off a building, walk through a raging fire, be riddled with bullets, chug a gallon of drain