“He’s fine!” I insisted, curling my lip. “They can check him out right here.”

His eyes hardened. “That’s not going to happen.” He tried again to pull Philip’s limp body from me, and I let out a growl—a deep throbbing sound I had no idea I could make.

The guard dropped Philip’s hand and jumped back, but then his mouth tightened into a thin line and he pulled a Taser from his belt. Ah, shit, this is gonna suck. Marcus had once described being tasered—which he’d had to experience in order to carry one on duty. His words: “That shit fucking hurts. If anyone ever tells you to comply or be tasered, you’d better fucking comply!”

But I wouldn’t…couldn’t…comply with this. All I knew was that Philip needed to stay with me a while longer.

I squeezed my eyes shut and braced myself for the feel of the metal probes shooting into my skin, but before the guard could fire, Dr. Charish’s voice came over the speaker. “Stand down. Leave the subject as he is. We’ll come in to get our samples.”

Relieved, I opened my eyes and resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at the guard with the Taser. He looked more than willing to “accidentally” tase me. However, he stepped back, eyeing me with undisguised distaste. For the first time I realized that Philip and I weren’t exactly a pleasant sight. None of the blood had been cleaned up, and it was starting to congeal to a sticky mess. I swiped at my face with the back of one hand, grimacing as a thick smear of drying blood came away with it. I definitely looked like a monster now, I was sure of it.

Dr. Charish entered, flanked by two more guards. I quickly catalogued them—one had gorgeous blue eyes, and the other had a nose that had clearly been broken a few times.

“Angel, that was absolutely amazing,” she said, eyes shining with a fervor that seemed obscene considering the level of gore present in the room. “The way the parasite works is a study in brilliance. This…this is the work of a lifetime.” She dropped to a crouch beside me, ignoring the fuck off, bitch look I gave her. “I need to get samples from you both now.” She tilted her head. “Tell me, is your reluctance to let Philip go driven by the parasite? Does it feel like an instinctive need, or do you simply not want to be left alone in here?”

“Get the fuck away from us, you psycho bitch,” I snarled.

She reached a hand to Philip, then had to backpedal as I took a swing at her. “Fascinating,” she said with a breathless chuckle. “An attachment between parent and child would explain a great deal, such as why Marcus is so taken with you.”

I set Philip down and leaped over him in an explosive move that could only be accomplished with zombie super speed, and in the next breath I was on Dr. Charish with my hands around her throat.

Aaaaanndd…the next breath after that, I learned just how much it hurt to be tasered.

An eternity or so later the searing pain stopped. I moaned on the floor, distantly aware of a guard helping Dr. Charish to her feet. Shivers of pain echoed through my body, and I could still feel two sharp points where the probes had embedded themselves into my lower back.

“Angel, please,” Dr. Charish said, coughing a bit as she straightened her clothing. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

I let out a dry laugh. “A bit late for that, don’t you think?” Before I could think about it too much I grabbed the two wires and yanked the probes out of my skin. Pain flared briefly, but thankfully settled within a couple of seconds as my parasite worked to repair the damage. That’s a good little parasite, I silently crooned. Too bad a mild jab of hunger came along with the decrease in pain.

“Here’s what I don’t understand,” I said as I crabbed my way back toward Philip. “Why’d you have Ed kill those other zombies? Why not kidnap them the way you did me?”

“I had to prove my research had merit before I could get investors to commit the sort of risk and resources that holding a live specimen would entail,” she explained. “And, if you must know, I had actually intended to have Ed obtain a live zombie for us. But he inexplicably decided to drop out of sight before I could do so.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You called in the anonymous tip about him being the serial killer.”

“Yes. I couldn’t be sure what he was up to, and it was necessary to keep him out of the way. But, in all fairness, he was the serial killer,” she pointed out. “Now hold still while I get samples from both of you.” She cocked her head and gave me a thin smile. “Unless you enjoyed the Taser?”

I grudgingly extended my arm.

“You regrew the bodies from the heads he gave you,” I said.

“Just the one so far,” she corrected absently as she slid the needle into my vein and carefully drew the syringe until it was full of blood. “It takes an enormous amount of brains—and time—for the parasite to regenerate that much tissue.” She pulled the needle free and stuck a piece of gauze on the puncture site.

“Oh, I see,” I said. “You just did the one, but you didn’t have enough real brains, so you tried to use Sofia’s fake brains,” I said. “But something went wrong. That’s why Zeke looked so old and why he died when he fell.”

She let out a soft sigh as she repeated the blood-drawing routine on Philip. “That’s right. It mutated the parasite to where it couldn’t survive. The subject would have died soon even if he hadn’t fallen. But I’ve since modified the brain substitute formula to remove the chance of that sort of mutation happening again.”

“Zeke was trying to escape, wasn’t he?”

Her lips pressed together in annoyance. “Yes, which is why I’ve completely changed the protocols.”

Ha! I was right! Not that it made any difference at this point. But, still, Ha! I was right! “And what happened to the real Norman Kearny?”

She gave me a blank look. “Who…? Oh, right, the janitor. Quite dead and disposed of. Unfortunately for him he was the one person in our personnel files who was the right age to take the fall, so to speak, for the dead zombie, and who likely wouldn’t be missed.” She shrugged. “We didn’t have time to make up a whole new personnel record. Easiest to simply do a bit of identity-switching.”

Well, that explained why the guy at the lab had said there was an opening in the custodial department when I’d pretended to apply for a job. Poor Norman. The really shitty part was that he died for no reason since we figured it out anyway because of the wristwatch.

“At any rate,” she continued, “despite the problems, the regrowth of the zombie was enough to prove that the program had potential.”

“You used Ed,” I said. “You convinced him his parents had been killed by zombies so that he would start hunting them. You didn’t want to get your hands dirty hunting down zombies on your own.” I curled my lip in my best contemptuous sneer.

“Angel, I’m not much bigger than you. I don’t have the brawn, so I had to use the brains.” She tapped the side of her head. “Besides,” she said with a shrug, “it wasn’t a total lie. His dad was killed by a zombie.”

“Yeah yeah, I know,” I retorted. “Pietro was banging Ed’s mom, his dad found out, shot her, and then Pietro killed his dad. Then, since you worked with his mom, you had access to her notes and research.”

Dr. Charish sat back and regarded me with something that almost—almost—looked like respect. “My goodness. Marcus said you were clever. Perhaps I was wrong about why he wanted a relationship with you.”

Right then I silently vowed that at some point I would slug this bitch in the face, hard.

She spread her hands. “Anyway, yes, I approached Pietro and told him what I knew, convinced him that I wanted to continue Dr. Quinn’s research. I could see the greater potential even if he could not.” Her smile was chock-full of self-satisfaction. “Then I bided my time, waiting for the breakthrough that would make my plan possible.”

“Sofia’s artificial brains,” I said.

“Did you know Pietro paid for her entire education?” Dr. Charish asked. “Sofia had an interest in medicine, but he convinced her to go into neurobiology. Supported her the whole way, while making sure she specialized in fields that would benefit him.”

Okay, that was more than a little manipulative, but I already knew that about Pietro. “And you hired her to make sure you could keep an eye on her and what she was doing.”

“Of course,” she said. “And with Pietro’s blessing as well, since it kept her close.” She chuckled. “That made things much easier all around, since it can be unwise to cross that man.”

“I can’t wait to see what Pietro’s going to do to you,” I said.

She lifted an eyebrow at me. “Do to me? For what?”

“For crossing him,” I said. “He told me he’d never allow any of the zombies under his protection to be harmed in any sort of research.”

“Angel, I didn’t cross him.” She leaned in close and smirked. “He simply made an exception in your case.”

She chuckled at the stunned look on my face. “Can you blame him?” she asked with a tilt of her head. “He’s been grooming Marcus for bigger and better things for a long time now, and it didn’t take much persuasion on my part to convince him that the last thing he wanted was to see Marcus hooked up with barely literate trash.”

I felt as if a fist had closed around my chest. She stood and raked her gaze over me. “Let’s get you cleaned up and fed, shall we?” she said with a bright smile. “We need you at your best!”

With that she left the room, leaving me to stew in my hate and fear.

Chapter 26

Food was brought in for Philip and me, once again on plastic cafeteria trays. Cheeseburgers and fries this time, and, of course, a side of brains.

The amount of brains they were giving me was generous—which either meant they didn’t know how much I needed, or they expected me to burn them off. Considering how much Dr. Charish clearly knew about zombies, I had a bad feeling it was the second reason.