Page 33 of Zomromcom

At some point, they must have let their guard down. Maybe because they hadn’t spotted a zombie for nearly a full day, and they knew—or thought they knew—that the pack remained within Zone C, fully occupied by inflicting grisly violence on helpless residents there.

Still, Edie had no good explanation for how they could fail to anticipate or notice a stray zombie lurking in the most obvious place imaginable: just inside Max’s home, hidden behind the front door, which was half hanging from its hinges.

Despite their evident distraction, he insisted—as he always did whenever he thought there was even a slim possibility of danger ahead—on entering the house before her.

Given his height and the bottleneck created by the doorway, she couldn’t see around him.

Couldn’t try to intervene before it was far too late.

A shuffling noise, immediately followed by a triumphant, guttural howl and a spray of cool blood across her cheek, was her first warning that something had gone terribly wrong.

She shouted his name, and his hand reached below his nape to unsheathe his sword, the movement so quick it was little more than a blur.

He didn’t answer her. Couldn’t answer her.

Not when he was engaged in full-scale battle with a zombie while—judging from the growing pool of Merlot-red blood at his ever-shifting, agile feet—bleeding heavily.

Very heavily.

Hands shaking with adrenaline, she unzipped her cross-body bag and unearthed her cleaver. She gripped it so tightly her knuckles ached, waiting for the moment when Max would edge forward and allow her to enter the doorway and support him in the fight.

The seconds ticked past. She kept waiting. And waiting.

It took her unforgivably long to realize what he was doing.

As long as he blocked the doorway, she remained safe.

Even if it meant he couldn’t drive the zombie backward into the hall, where he would have more room to maneuver.

By protecting her, he’d put himself in a position where he couldn’t pursue an advantage and advance on the creature, and he couldn’t easily dodge the creature’s tearing claws—or, worse, its ragged, needlelike teeth.

Another few endless moments crawled by, punctuated by rage-soaked growls and grunts of effort and pain.

More blood. Wet ripping noises that indicated tearing flesh. Max’s flesh.

Assuming the zombie didn’t do the job for her, she was going to murder him .

“Fucking move , asshole!” she shouted.

No response. He wasn’t going to let her inside, the stubborn jackhole, and pushing him forward could destabilize him and might very well lead to his death.

Fine, then. This godsdamn house had more than one entrance, and all of them were currently busted wide open.

Turning on her heel, she leapt down from his front porch and raced for the patio around back, whose door—if she remembered the house’s layout correctly—would give her a pretty straight shot at the zombie’s rear flank.

Skidding around the corner of the garage, she slipped and fell heavily to the muddy, brittle grass but immediately heaved herself back upright and kept running.

The patio door hung askew, its window panes’ remaining shards of glass tipped with dried yellow blood. She batted the door aside and finally got a clear view of the zombie and the stupid fucking vampire she was going to kill as soon as she saved his stupid fucking life.

The war cry tore from deep in her chest. It rang in her ears and shredded her throat.

“Over here, fucker!” she bellowed, and brandished her cleaver with her feet firmly planted.

Max’s startled jerk unbalanced him. In a moment of uncharacteristic awkwardness, he slipped in his own slick blood and fell to one knee, and if she’d wondered how badly he was injured, that answered the question.

Very. Very badly.

Even as he slipped, though, the feral intruder snarled and swung around to confront her. Disaster averted, if only for a few seconds longer.

The creature’s red-rimmed eyes narrowed on her, agleam with animal cunning. For a heartbeat, she and the zombie simply studied each other, sizing up their new opponent.

The intonation vibrating in its throat sounded remarkably like a raspy bonjour .

Max had come very, very close to cutting out its heart.

The gash wept yolky blood but was placed slightly too far to one side.

The zombie’s neck also gaped wide from a neat slice that hadn’t gone quite deep enough.

Other glancing wounds dribbled miserly amounts of viscous fluid, but clearly none of them were sufficient to end the battle.

The same couldn’t be said for Max’s injuries.

She had no idea how he was still scrambling upright or even breathing after suffering that kind of damage.

While she’d been running around to the back of his home, he’d obviously taken another claw swipe to his own neck, one that tore his flesh there into raw meat, with ivory bone visible in several places and blood pouring in a ceaseless stream down his torso.

Other sets of ragged, parallel furrows marked his upper body, the creature’s claws biting hard enough to rip through muscle and cause the average human to bleed out within minutes.

As he’d so often reminded her, he wasn’t human. But he wasn’t made of stone either. Even though he was immortal, he could still fucking die , and that outcome seemed entirely plausible in this moment.

And then there was the issue of whether he’d been bitten. Whether a fluid exchange had occurred. Whether a vampire might transform after a bite, as a human would, within ten minutes.

If he’d received a bite, the clock had already started counting down.

But that was a problem for later. Right now, she had a zombie to kill.

Max’s eyes burned into hers as she tore up her throat with another battle cry—the better to distract the creature and draw it away from her half-dead vampire. Even through all the blood, his scowl should have turned her to stone.

“Edie!” he roared, and actually had the nerve to sound angry at her . “Get out!”

Instead, she charged forward, his lost blood a red haze clouding her thoughts.

The zombie that was bounding toward her—while grunting something that could have been magnifique —had hurt Max.

Max . When she was done with that gray-skinned fucker, it wouldn’t have an ounce of that yellow fucking blood left in its misbegotten fucking—

With a sudden fierce lunge from behind, Max chopped off the creature’s head. Spraying fluid, it landed with a thump and a squish on the faded, curling linoleum, swiftly followed by the louder thud of the zombie’s body collapsing in a heap maybe two feet in front of her.

Max staggered to the nearest wall and braced himself with a heavily bleeding arm while he used his other hand to keep his gushing neck attached to his shoulders. He sagged there, bent over at the waist as he gasped for breath and glared up at her through his lashes.

His skin had turned as pale as any Hollywood vampire, and it scared the hells out of her. When she rushed toward him, though, he held up a staying hand.

“Max—” she began, stopping a step away from him.

“Wasn’t bitten.” His voice was rough and low, his tone urgent. “Couldn’t avoid claws, but kept its teeth away. I think. Can’t be sure. If I’m wrong, stake me. Right through my heart. Or cut off my head.” To her shock, he managed a thin huff of laughter. “Job’s already half-done. Easy…peasy, right?”

Her brain promptly supplied the image. The gleam of her knife raised high. The crunch of cleaving bone. Weak spurts of Merlot-hued blood. His head rolling away, his eyes open and sightless. His chest stilled forever.

She twisted away from him, jackknifed forward, and dry-heaved violently. Her eyes watered at the force of it, her breath coming in choked sobs between every jolting retch. Max tried to push off the wall to get to her, but he was too weak to stand without assistance.

“Edie.” He sounded desolate now. “Don’t.”

She shook her head, unable to speak. He gave her a few moments to calm herself, then issued more orders she wasn’t certain she could follow. Even if it might save her life.

“Elevator,” he rasped, one hand still clamped to his neck. “Get us belowground. Check for bites. If you find one, do it. Put me down. Promise.”

“I’m…” Raising her head, she gagged anew and swallowed back bitter saliva. “I’m not sure I can promise that, Max.”

A similar promise had nearly destroyed her once. She wasn’t putting herself in the same position again.

“Either promise or…” By leaning his shoulder against the wall, he was able to free a hand to delve into his hoodie pocket.

When he looked up a moment later, he had a smooth, viciously sharp wooden stake clutched in his red-stained grip.

“Won’t risk you. I’ll do it myself, right now. Bite or no bite.”

Oh fuck. He would. She knew he would. Other than her promise, the only thing that could stop him might be a physical confrontation.

When her eyes fell to his shaky grip, he gritted out, “Still strong enough, human. Don’t test me. Promise .”

Her retching had stopped, but her tears hadn’t. She sheathed her cleaver, slapped the moisture away from her cheeks, and made herself say it. “I promise.”

Uttering the words felt like issuing her own death sentence. Part of her—the softer, more hopeful bits—wouldn’t survive keeping that vow. Not this time.

She’d honor it, though. Even if it killed her as surely as it did him.

“Thank you, ma puce.” The terrible tension in his face and body eased a fraction. “Down now. Safer.”

When she took a cautious step toward him, he didn’t ward her off again.

Instead, he muttered instructions, directing her supportive hold around his hips as his less-injured arm settled heavily over her shoulders.

He leaned much of his weight on her, trusting her to keep them both steady while they moved down the hall toward the discreetly hidden elevator.