Free Sing for the Dead (London Undead) by PJ Schnyder

heavy with silence. “When I heard of the zombie infestation, I came back to have a look around and decided to give Seth’s pack what aid I could. It’s always a good idea to have a few well-placed men who owe you a favor. An alpha of any breed is a good connection amongst shape-shifters.”
    A truth, but not the whole of it. He was a cat, after all, and when did any of them give a straight answer? She spared a faint smile for her momentary whimsy. Perhaps wine would drink itself and she would find the way down to the answer she sought.
    Again, her gift for the future sparked, but no vision came. No knowledge of an impending death washed over her. Only a hint of surety—she needed to dig deeper and continue on her line of investigation. She’d have let the thread of conversation end there if her gut didn’t insist she needed to know more about why he was here. Perhaps she’d learn more from a slightly different approach.
    “The station tonight, I know why you took me down there, and for that, I am grateful.” Rubbing her upper arms, she turned in a slow circle, taking in the sparse furnishing, the lack of keepsakes of any kind. Mortals with good memories tended to keep both somehow. But this man, this man had nothing that wasn’t newly acquired. Everything had the look and smell of having been freshly unwrapped from some package. Facing him again, she tilted her head as she studied him. “Why do you go hunting down there?”
    He shrugged. “Much the same as you, lass. Patrolling isn’t always enough to take the edge off the need to hunt. I see a lot of stupid human men waste their lives heading into the parks every night. They make the mistake of thinking mindless zombies would provide interesting sport, a whole new kind of trophy hunting though a walking corpse goes to dirt. You can’t stuff one of those and hang it on a wall somewhere. Those hunters, they get cocky, brandishing some bit of clothing or some trinket they’ve looted and then they get themselves cornered or surrounded. Dumb and daft, they end up eaten, and worse, they add to the infestation. It makes me angry to see all of this every day and best to take my anger out where it will at least do us all some good.”
    Some part of Sorcha warmed to the idea. How many beings would simply vent their wrath without a care for the harm or the good it would do others? “Why did tonight surprise you?”
    His jaw tightened.
    A bit of intuition, another spark of foresight darted through her consciousness. The child, the child. It had everything to do with the child. But how had that zombie been different than the others in any other way but what it used to be?
    Kayden had stopped stirring the soup. Ever so carefully, he set down the spoon and switched off the heat. “I knew him.”
    He picked up the pot and poured a bit of soup into two camp mugs. Taking one in each hand, he offered her one. Careful of the hot sides, she took hers gingerly and followed him to one side of the room.
    “The boy was one of those street urchins you’d see running about the city.” Kayden braced his back against the wall and allowed himself to slide down until he sat on the floor. “Doesn’t matter what decade, there’s always bound to be some. Orphans, mostly, or runaways. If they’re lucky, they band together in packs of their own to survive life on the streets, pickpocketing and nicking a few things here and there for their survival.”
    She joined him, sitting within arm’s reach by his side. “But he was human?”
    Kayden nodded. “Aye. And he was a bright lad. He could tell I wasn’t strictly normal, though he didn’t say as much. He knew enough to let a man keep his own secrets. He was holed up with his pack in some of the old tunnels in Notting Hill Gate, closed off and not in use. They’d all learned not to trust adults, young as they were, but I’d been camping in another tunnel nearby. After a couple of days I guess they decided since I hadn’t tried to