Free From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set by Scott Nicholson, J. Thorn, Tw Brown, Kealan Patrick Burke, Michaelbrent Collings, Mainak Dhar, Brian James Freeman, Glynn James Page A

we leave here, I will consider you a threat.”
    “So what does that mean?” I asked.
    “No more questions, Ava. You are on your own from here on out.”
    “Well then… maybe I will give you a little bit of a warning,” I blurted. For the life of me I have no idea what possessed me to open my mouth, but here we were, and I had her full attention. “I will give you twenty-four hours to leave. I don’t care what you do someplace else, but you aren’t starting some silly zombie apocalypse here in my neck of the woods.”
    “That is cute,” Adrianna said. She didn’t smile anymore, and for some reason, that really bothered me. “But perhaps it is time to give you a little warning. I am The Queen of the Zombies. I was made immortal by a demon and have existed for hundreds of years. You are…nothing. We are no longer bound to one another, and once you leave these premises…”
    She let that hang in the air. It was not a threat. She was tel ling me that my ass was in serious trouble. I was considering just how the employees here a Voodoo Doughnut would feel about me moving in.
    “Oh, you think that I care about you?” Adrianna laughed. And now I wished she wasn’t doing that. “You serve me no purpose whatsoever…but your little friend…she is just a child, true?”
    “You touch her and I will rip you apart,” I hissed. And as if to support that threat, my fingers and toes went switchblade. To add a bit of impact, good old sharkmouth decided to show up.
    “My, my!” Adrianna had the sense to look worried. “That is something new. I am almost sorry we don’t have a few more questions.”
    “Mrrglph,” I said. Dammit! That was probably the wittiest comeback I’d managed to think of in my life , and it was wasted on my sharkmouth. And wouldn’t you just love to know what I was going to say.
    “Trust me when I say that she won’t feel a thing,” Adrianna said as she stood. I was immediately struck by how cruel life was when somebody that is obviously so evil has curves like this lady. It just isn’t fair!
    I started to get up , and then I guess I saw Adrianna for the first time as she really exists. Her perfect skin was mottled and gray, her stylish hair hung in greasy clumps. Those eyes that were so shiny and a deep chocolate-brown flecked with green and gold were milky and oozing dark liquid that ran like tears down her face. Funny thing, now her hands which had been her worst feature were actually her least icky. There was one other unfortunate aspect to the change.
    My knees buckled , and the closest thing that I can compare it to for a human is to suddenly be dunked in a vat of Godiva fudge. I heard a wet splat and was embarrassed when I looked down to see a long line of drool hanging from my lower lip.
    “Out!” a voice barked.
    Both Adrianna and I looked up to see the vampire that I’d noticed working back in the doughnut kitchen standing in front of the counter. She had obviously put the whammy on the girl behind the counter, because she was standing with a blank look that I’d seen on Lisa’s face more than once when Belinda had been near.
    “Get in your kitchen, little girl,” Adrianna said with almost none of her regular voice. It was almost fully the deep, bass sounding one now, and it had a dry echo that you felt in your teeth. Well…at least I did.
    The vampire paused as if she was unsure. Then, like all vampires do (although I’ve only met a couple, so perhaps I am being unfair), this one obviously felt it was dealing with an inf erior being. She let her fangs show and her eyes went a really pretty shade of ruby red. I guess she was still seeing the glamour version of Adrianna. Perhaps she wasn’t paying attention to the dark swirly stuff that was flowing off her like steam. Whatever it was, the vampire just did not think it through.
    It launched across the room in one of those movie -style blurs. I only had enough time to appreciate that Hollywood had done a good job of