Dearly, Beloved by Lia Habel

Author:Lia Habel
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

The Brother I’d gone with the night before had taken forever to find his mark. We’d ridden in circles for hours through the middle-class parts of town, a third Brother driving, stalking a bit of nameless prey and drinking.

“There,” he eventually said. “That’s him.”

“That’s who?” I asked, peeping out through the carriage’s venetian blinds, only to find that it wasn’t just a him. It was a them. The zombie wasn’t alone. The dead man was nondescript, but the living girl walking with him was nothing less than an uncanny angel. She had what appeared to be naturally snow-white hair, despite her obvious youth, and was dressed in pale purple, with a bouquet of violets pinned into the upswept shell of her bonnet. Above her head she carried one of those stupid gas lamp parasols, the light within it red. “What’s red signify? I know there’s a code the girls use.”

“Sympathy for the dead,” the Brother crouched by the door hissed. “Sympathy for the goddamn dead man who infected my sister.”

Vodka started to creep back up my throat. Like me, this Brother had a vendetta. He hadn’t been indecisive, he’d been searching. “We’ll have to wait until they’re separated and grab him.”

“I won’t hurt her.” He looked at me, the eyes of his mask expressionless. “Just him. I’m willing to risk it.”

“What? You can’t be serious. She’ll turn around and report us.”

“That’s why we have the masks, you dolt!”

The Brother playing chauffeur drove ahead of the perambulating couple and slowed, lowering the partition. “So we’re not getting this one?”

“No, we can’t,” I said. “It’s madness to kill a zombie right in front of a witness. The Brothers aren’t even here to see it.”

That was when the other Brother opened the door and sprang out, despite the fact that the carriage was still moving.

My heart stopped and I whirled around to watch as the driver slammed on the brakes. Within two breaths he’d flown at the zombie and pulled out a revolver, shooting him in the head. The zombie slumped to the pavement, and the girl began to wail, her hands going to her cheeks. The scene was unpoetic, cold. Somehow it seemed crueler than anything I’d ever dreamed of doing.

“Strigoi!” she shrieked, dropping her parasol, taking two steps toward the body.

“Are you sorry for him?” Brother Shooter demanded, grabbing the girl by the arm and yanking her away from the zombie. “What about those he bit? What about my sister, crazy and strapped to a bed until she rots! Are you sorry for them, too?”

The white-haired girl started to thrash. “Let me go! Oh my God! Strigoi!”

“Be still!” Brother Shooter ordered. “Be still, necroslut! Listen to me!”

But she wouldn’t stop moving, wouldn’t stop screaming. After a moment of struggle, Brother Shooter lifted his hand, flicking something out from beneath his gun. To my infinite surprise, he was carrying an Apache revolver—gun, knife, and brass knuckles in a single contraption. As I watched, frozen, he started to slash her beautiful face to ribbons.

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