Killing the Dead (Season 2 | Book 2): Dark and Deadly Land Read Free

this side of him.”
    “I’ve seen him kill people…”
    “It’s different though,” I interrupted gently. “Seeing him kill during a fight is one thing. Knowing he is up there, with two bound and helpless prisoners…. Well, it’s a whole different thing.”
    “And when you know he’s enjoying himself,” Gregg said with a shudder. “I can’t understand it. I know it’s necessary and I like the guy… but… this is just too fucking weird.”
    My smile slipped a little and I forced it back onto my face. That the two people in that house needed to die was not in question. The things they had done, the people they had killed, it was more than justified. I just wished he didn’t take so much pleasure in it.
    The next sigh that sounded was mine. I’d been forced to kill to defend my people. Worse than that I had killed sleeping men, held them down and sliced my blade across their throats. I wouldn’t ever tell him, but every night since then I’d woken up in a cold sweat as I saw their faces in my dreams.
    I’d touched - oh so briefly - that cold and dark place that you needed to be part of to be able to kill someone in cold blood. To be able to murder someone. Frankly it scared the hell out of me and the fact that Ryan lived in that place, it was part of him all the time. Well, that scared me even more.
    No wonder he found pleasure in those deaths. Every time he killed he was allowed out of that darkness and into the light. All too brief to be sure, but for that short time after a kill, he was alive.
    I would be lying to myself if I said it didn’t scare me, these feelings I had for him. God! If someone had told me a year ago that the world would end and the man I loved and trusted more than any other was a serial killer, I would have laughed in their face.
    “Where’s Toby?” Gregg asked, his voice breaking into my thoughts. I shook my head to indicate I didn’t know.
    “He said something about looking at those tracks,” I said.
    “Ah right, as if our friend killing two people in the house wasn’t creepy enough we have that as well.”
    My gaze went to the gouges in the mud near the house. They just looked like small holes with a little left over rain water to me but according to Ryan, and Toby agreed, they were tracks left by someone or something that had crossed that area.
    Not usually anything to worry about but Ryan seemed to believe they were left by one of the feral zombies. Those undead creatures that were different to the usual slow, stumbling and above all, stupid zombie.
    The Feral ones were agiler and possessed a basic but malicious cunning. Also, if what the others had seen when they’d gone to Coniston was any indication, they fed on the other undead when no humans could be found.
    Ryan seemed to believe that the zombie he’d had locked in the cellar here had escaped and rather than rush in like any other zombie would have, it had waited close by and watched him. It had come to the house during the night when he slept and by all accounts, even attempted to use the door handle.
    He hadn’t seen it despite trying and since Toby was an excellent woodsman and tracker he had decided to take a look. To be fair he also preferred to avoid Ryan since their last encounter had been when Toby had tried to kill him and ended up with a nasty scar on his throat.
    Not that Ryan held a grudge. Weirdly, despite his willingness to kill and the pleasures he gained from that, he didn’t hold it against someone that they had tried to kill him. If they tried again he would no doubt stop them permanently but so long as they left him alone, he saw no real need in revenge for the attempt, so long as they were useful to him.
    At first, I thought it was because of the promise I’d made him make all those months ago. That promise not to kill anyone who was innocent, but I soon realised that in his mind, trying to kill him would make them far from innocent. It was just a quirk of his personality and one of those