Bloodsport: Z Sisters: Book 1 Read online

  And behind the leader, I could see other soldiers starting to climb over.

  I heard Kaz yell, and then she fired, so close to me I could feel the heat as the bullet passed. The guy on the right’s head exploded.

  Kaz moved up to stand next to me.

  “Here,” she said, thrusting one of Mac’s machine pistols into my empty left hand.

  “Give me the sword,” she said. “I’ve trained with it.”

  “No,” I said, “you’ll have to get too close to use it.”

  But she took it anyway.

  The leader was still just standing there.

  I raised the pistol and shot the guy coming over the wall.

  Tissue and blood and bone painted the wall like some horrible mural.

  The leader looked at me. And then as if responding to some unspoken signal, at least five more men came over the wall.

  They have linked neural networks, Mac had told me. They don’t have to see what’s going on in here, their leader can tell them.

  We were in so much trouble.

  We are fucked.

  I shot the leader and it felt so wrong. Like the others, he wasn’t armed. Shooting an unarmed man makes you a bad cop. It went against every instinct I had.

  Their teeth are weapons.

  Their nails are weapons.

  I stitched him up.

  The zombies kept coming.

  Things got a little hazy after that but for a moment, I had laser focus. The gun in my hands had an extended magazine, so I knew I had at least thirty shots before I ran dry. I would make those shots count.

  I could sense Kaz moving around me, her figure a blur in my peripheral vision.

  I saw bits and pieces of images, like a crazy comic book sequence—frame by frame. And then, suddenly, I realized, all the Mindless were dead and I was still alive.

  I saw Kaz huddled in a near-fetal position beneath the basketball hoop on the garage door. The Mindless she’d killed were in pieces around her.

  I walked over to her and pulled her up into a hug. She grabbed the front of my jacket with her fingers like a kitten clawing its way up a sofa leg.

  Her heart was beating so fast I thought it might explode.

  I was starting to feel nauseated from the backwash of the adrenaline.

  And where was Mac?

  We were sitting on the blood-streaked concrete in front of the garage when Mac returned.

  We’d dragged all the bodies into a corner and piled them into a small pyramid. I knew there was a tarp in the garage we could use to cover them up, but it had taken all our energy just to accomplish that one task. Doing anything else felt like it was impossible.

  Mac was out of the car almost before the engine cut off. I rose to meet him and for a moment we just clung together.

  “I’m all right,” I kept saying, but of course that was a lie. I was a mass murderer now and there’s no coming back from that.

  Over Mac’s shoulder, I saw a tall black guy step out of the passenger side of the car.

  He worn a torn t-shirt and was bleeding from half a dozen places on his chest and arms.

  Mac said, “Linwood, this is Rose and her sister Kaz.”

  Linwood nodded at us both.

  Rose is dead, I thought.

  “Call me Roz.”

  Roz and Kaz will return in Blood Trail: Z Sisters 2.

  About the Author

  Kat Parrish is a fantasy and science fiction writer whose work has appeared in various magazines and online sites. She is the author of the Shadow Palace series and Magic in the Blood. She was born in Washington, DC, but now lives in the Pacific Northwest.

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  Also by Kat Parrish

  L.A. Nocturne: Tales of the Misbegotten

  Soul Kiss

  Tears of Idrissa

  The Howl

  The Summer Garden

  Vaikus

  Venomous

  A Dream of Sun and Roses

  Hunter’s Kiss

  Fashionista

  The Shadow Palace:

  Bride of the Midnight King

  Daughter of the Midnight King

  The Midnight Queen

  La Bruja Roja:

  Magic in the Blood

  Santa Muerte (February 2019)

  Rosa Rugosa (2019)