Bad Blood (Battle of the Undead Book 1) by Nicky Peacock Page A

for, eh?”
    “Definitely.”
    “Any contact with your unit? I mean, after the undead crap hit the fan?”
    “No. Not before or after undead crap.” He smiled a little then turned to me. “The way you move, how fast you are.” He shook his head.
    “I’m a friend. Can we leave it there?”
    “Nicholas, he’s…?”
    “Like me. He’s not as pretty as me , though,” I laughed.
    Way to fish for a compliment, Brit!
    “No, he isn’t.”
    He smiled at me. Even the dimples were as I remembered. I wanted to kiss him , to spill every secret I’d ever known to him, make sure nothing could ever come between us again. But I didn’t. Josh had enough problems right now—a million miles from home, unsure whether his friends and family were in danger too. I glanced at his left hand—phew, no wedding ring!
    “What’s the plan?” he asked.
    “We need a vehicle to be able to transport everyone safely. There’s a more permanent safe house up north.”
    “Double Decker bus?”
    “Yeah, that could work. We could put all the wards on the top deck and Nicholas and me on the roof. Can you drive one?”
    “I can drive tanks, I can manage a bus.” He winked at me.
    We made a good team—again.
    “You don’t like Nicholas.” He stated it rather than posing it as a question.
    “Is it that obvious?”
    “He watches you.”
    “He doesn’t trust me.”
    “Why?”
    “I …”
    I really wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence . Because I kill his children? No, too violently gross. Because I begrudge the fact he made me a vampire? No, too much information. Because he’s fugly and dresses like a bad mime? No, too childish.
    “You dumped his ass,” Josh said through a lopsided smile.
    I didn’t want to lie to him, but it was kind of true, so I nodded. I might have even managed to blush too.
    “I’m not exactly on the same page as Green either,” he said.
    “You dumped him too?” I laughed.
    He rolled his eyes at me, and his lopsided smile became more even. “We were in the same unit in Iraq, and, you know, some people you just don’t take to, and some”—he turned to look at me—“some you just take to right away, regardless of their supernatural shenanigans.”
    “Like you’ve met them before?” I prompted.
    “Maybe, something like that.”
    I fluttered my eyelashes like an idiot and looked away. Somehow, in the last five minutes, I’d reverted back to a sixteenth-century merchant’s daughter. The last four hundred odd years were red water under the bridge, a violent, lonely blur tumbling joyfully into the middle distance.
    A retching sound broke the moment. I turned to see Danny bent over puking into a box of crisps. It woke everyone.
    “He’s infected!” yelled Green , reaching for his gun.
    Nicholas, now awake, deftly flicked Green’s gun’s ammo switch, allowing the bar of bullets to drop to the floor. Green blushed like it was his trousers that had fallen down.
    “He’s not infected, he’s just sick,” Tracy said, moving to rub his back.
    “Don’t you touch Danny!” yelled Rose. She stomped her little foot and marched up to Green. “Or Britannia will bite you!”
    “Amongst other things.” I finished her train of thought and moved to stand on the opposite side of Danny.
    The smell of puke was almost overpowering, but I forced my senses to ignore it. Me up-chucking a couple pints of blood wouldn’t help the situation.
    “Back off, Green,” Josh said, getting up.
    “So , what? We just sit here waiting for him to zombie-up and maul us all?”
    Dr . Watts finally slunk from the shadows to defend her patient.
    “He has leukemia. He has not been bitten. I’ve been with him the whole time.”
    “She’s right,” Henri chimed in.
    Green put his hands up in mock surrender, and the tension seemed to ebb.
    I put my hand to Danny’s forehead. It was clammy and hot. “He has a fever,” I said.
    “He’s dying.” Dr . Watts didn’t even move any closer. Instead, she raised an eyebrow.