Free Vampire's Hunger by Cynthia Garner Page B

sofa and plopped down. The other two sat beside her. “She wants me to resurrect a Lazarus that’s over a hundred years old.”
    “What?” Natalie leaned back against the arm of the couch. “She can’t be serious. No one’s ever raised one that old.”
    “And there’s a good reason why,” Kimber said. “I’ve only once had to reanimate someone who’d been dead twenty years, and I slept for a week afterward. Well, when the nightmares would let me sleep.”
    “Nightmares?” Bishop asked, bracing an arm against one thigh.
    While Bishop had seen her in action as a necromancer, he’d never seen the aftermath. “Whenever I tap into the Unseen,” she told him, “I have nightmares afterward. Most necromancers do. I think it’s the residual magic of that plane lingering inside me, and it has to have an outlet.” She gave a slight shrug. “Apparently terror works well.”
    “I had no idea.” Bishop leaned toward her. “And if you tried to reanimate a corpse that’s over a hundred years old?”
    Kimber shook her head. “I don’t even want to think about it,” she said with a sigh. “That week, the one where I had nightmares every time I fell asleep… I thought I was going to lose my mind.”
    She didn’t want to think about that week. It had been before the Outbreak, before Duncan had come into her life. It had been just her and Natalie, and thank God Natalie had been there with her, soothing her every time she screamed herself awake. She never wanted to go through that again. Ever.
    She glanced at her friends. “To do what Maddalene wants me to, I’d have to tap so deep into the Unseen, I don’t know if I’d survive it.” She glanced at her friends. “At least not with my sanity intact.”
    Before either of her friends could respond, the door opened. Rather than Duncan, three gaunt, red-eyed-with-hunger vamps walked into the room.
    “Oh, shit,” Natalie breathed.
    Kimber agreed completely.
    *  *  *
    “You’ve gone too far, Maddalene.” Duncan paced in front of her chaise. “Threatening Kimber and her friends isn’t the way to get her to cooperate.”
    “I think it’s the perfect way.” The vampire queen’s upper lip lifted in a snarl, showing the sharp tips of her fangs. “If I cannot cajole her cooperation, I’ll coerce it.” She stabbed her forefinger at him. “And you will help.”
    “No.”
    Her eyes narrowed. “I think I misheard you, my sweet. What did you say?”
    “You heard me right, Maddalene. I’m not going to coerce Kimber into raising Eduardo for you. I’m not even sure it can be done, especially now. It’s the magic of the Unseen that has given us our current zombie…problem. We ourselves are nothing but reanimated corpses, perhaps even by the same magic.”
    “Exactly! Zombies have no real impact on our way of life. There are still plenty of humans to go around. Why, we could even offer them a safe haven from the hordes. For a price of blood of course. This may have been the best thing that could have happened to us!”
    She was crazy. He’d suspected it before, more than once, but for her to think that the zombie apocalypse was good for vampires was the ultimate insanity.
    “We are of the Unseen; you said it yourself. Don’t you see, Duncan, why it would be possible, then?” She stood and glided off the platform to stand in front of him, blocking him from pacing, and stroked her hand down his forearm to clasp his hand. Her slender hand felt frail curled around his, but he knew she had preternatural strength equal to or perhaps even greater than his. She’d never told him her age, but he knew she was old. Much older than he was. He had never underestimated her and he wasn’t about to now.
    “What are you talking about?” he asked.
    “If we are animated by the Unseen, then Eduardo can be brought back. Returned to me as if our enemies had never taken him away. And he can celebrate their demise with me.”
    “But why, Maddalene?” He kept his voice