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

harm them, I must be safe enough to talk to. Besides, they wanted to know how I’d avoided being caught by the station guards. Even street-smart kids are still curious.”
    “Was it so easy to avoid detection?” For a shape-shifter, it probably had been. Normal human guards would easily overlook a shadow in some abandoned tunnel. Even a large predator like that could lie in the shadows and hide from eyes that didn’t expect to find it.
    “If a mess of children could successfully hide from the station guards every night, of course I’d have no problems doing the same in order to have a quiet piece of sheltered territory to sleep in for a few days.” Kayden snorted. “I suppose they might have been looking for a bit of something to believe in, and a supernatural is a brilliant discovery to a wee one.”
    He hadn’t avoided her original question, but he was working his own way to giving her his answer. Smiling, she took a sip of soup. Surprisingly rich flavor burst across her tongue, savory and warming. How had he managed to turn a few onions and jerky into such a satisfying comfort?
    “You like it, then?” He’d been watching her. “I made this for the kids too. It’s mostly in the seasoning for the jerky. Any greens you can find are a bonus, added nutrition and flavor. I carry the jerky when I travel in case I’m not in a place where I can run down fresh meat, but you can make it stretch by turning it into a soup. I left them an entire package of this jerky when I moved on.”
    He fell silent. She continued to sip, waited.
    “They didn’t want me to leave. Said there were rumors of people falling ill. Random people gone mad on the trains. Too cold for them to find another hidey-hole up on the streets so they had to stay in the underground.” Kayden set his mug down on the floor with exaggerated care and then crossed his arms over his knees. “But I didn’t want them becoming too attached to me. Liked them all well enough, but big cats like me are loners by nature. We drift, we move on. And that’s what I did. I left them.”
    And how much chance did a group of children have in a city with an epidemic running rampant? Oh, she didn’t fault him. Impossible for him to have known how bad it all would have gotten. But she was beginning to understand the weight he must carry with the memories.
    “I didn’t know,” he whispered. “The zombie virus was only a rumor at the time. I was already out of the city by the time they set up the quarantine. And when I came back, I lost time arguing with the human officials. Had to contact Seth’s pack to have a reason to be here, to look for them. And by the time I could, the children were gone. Their scents were scattered, too lost in the chaos for me to track any of them. But I keep going down there, hoping to find out what happened to them. And tonight, I saw Ralph.”
    Safe enough to assume Kayden’s reaction had more to do with the guilt and the shock than any supernatural power the zombie might have had over Kayden, then. Relief swept through her. The chance of zombies developing powers was unlikely but the effect would have been devastating. After a moment she set down her own mug and reached out to give him a tentative pat on the arm. Awkward, but she wasn’t used to giving consolation to someone who wasn’t dying. And yet, she wanted to. Her heart ached for him, even as the emotion surprised her.
    He covered her hand with his, then curled his fingers around it. “I didn’t take it well when I caught the scent of your blood, lass. If we’re to fight together, you mustn’t do that again.”
    “I...” His gaze caught hers, held her with unsettling intensity. She fell silent—no desire to argue with him but unwilling to give him a false promise either.
    “You’re a fierce warrior, of that I have no doubt.” He lifted her fingertips to his lips. “But it undid something inside me to see you bleeding.”
    The heat of his lips pressed against her