Darkness Calls Read Free Page A

started walking, stumbling, but did not go down. My head pounded. I bent over once, still moving—afraid to stop—gagging uncontrollably. Felt like my stomach was going to peel right up through my throat, but instead of making my head hurt worse, the pain eased.
    I touched my right temple with a trembling hand, savoring the smooth, unbroken skin. Momentarily in awe that I still lived.
    I had been shot before. Frequently. All over. Never felt a thing. Bullets bounced off me during the day. A nuclear bomb could hit me in daylight, and I would survive—without a scratch. Might be a different story at night, when the boys peeled off my body, but I never underestimated their ability to keep me alive.
    But no one—no one—had ever had the foresight—or the balls—to try killing me in that moment between night and day, caught in transition between mortal and immortal.
    Near-perfect timing. Any earlier, and the boys would have killed the shooter before the bullet could be fired. Any later, and I would have been invulnerable. Which was exactly the case. Saved by a fraction of a second.
    Too damn close. I scanned the shadows but saw nothing except for warehouses and dark windows, and the glitter of downtown Seattle to the north, all the lights of the city frozen like the unwavering pose of fireflies. Nothing unordi nary. No shooter, waving a flag. But I felt watched. Someone, somewhere, out there in the darkness. Long range, or else the boys would have felt their presence well before the attack.
    Zombie, I thought. Had to be. No one else who knew what I was would try to hurt me.
    “You almost died,” I said out loud, needing to hear the words, to hear myself—as though I required some proof of life. Maxine Kiss. Almost taken out, just like my mother—with a bullet through the brain.
    A zombie had killed her. But that was different.
    It had been her time to die.

CHAPTER 2
    I T took me thirty minutes to return to the Coop. The walk did me good. By the time I reached the rear door of the homeless shelter’s kitchen, I had stopped shaking, stopped suffering those gulps of weakness in my knees and hands. But I still felt the bullet, pushing into my head. Nor could I dismiss my absolute certainty that whoever had shot me knew exactly where I lived. Which meant they probably knew who I cared about.
    Nightfall could not come soon enough.
    The sky had lightened, revealing a canvas of clouds. Still gloomy out. Raining harder. I remained bone-dry. Even when asleep, the boys had a knack for consuming things, and all the water that had been dragging down my clothes and hair was no exception—absorbed within minutes of dawn, and now within seconds of hitting me. I only hoped no one thought too hard about how I managed to stay dry when everyone else coming inside looked as though they had been dunked in a pickle barrel.
    That was the problem with secrets. There was always something to trip you up. Especially if you stayed too long in one place.
    The Coop took up an entire block; a jumble of warehouses that had been renovated and linked together to form a center for the homeless that provided temporary shelter, meals, and a host of other services. Corporate and private donations funded some of it, but not enough to name rooms after anyone or hand out gold stars. Almost all the bills were paid for by one man, Grant Cooperon—and he preferred it that way. There was no such thing as a price on autonomy.
    Seagulls hovered, screaming. The loading dock was crammed with vans, white and unmarked. The shelter had a system of sending out vehicles in the middle of the night, scouring local bakeries and grocery stores for day-old food that might otherwise be thrown out. Doughnuts and bread were a popular castoff, though I passed several giant crates of oranges being wheeled in through the back. One of the new volunteers, a young woman with blond dreadlocks sticking out of her striped hemp cap, staggered in front of me under the weight of several