Dead Of Winter (The Beautiful Dead Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

not that I’m annoyed, not exactly. How could a decent person be annoyed by the birth of a beautiful baby girl in this beautiful dead world? Is it that the husband treated me with such contempt the whole way here? Is it that no amount of help seems to be enough for the Humans? Do I resent them so much …?
    Do I resent John?
    “Oh, she’s so precious,” says the nurse, then quickly beckons for more towels or tools or something. I don’t know, I’m not really paying attention.
    And the Human Laura whispers something. I look up. Her watery Living eyes find my icy Undead ones. She reaches out a hand, says it again, a gentle smile finding her face. What did she just say?
    Then the life slips from her eyes, and her hand falls.
    “Doctor Collin. Doctor!” The nurse makes a grab at something, a tool drops from the tray and clatters loudly against the tile, startling me. Suddenly the room is in commotion and the screams of a newborn girl are long forgotten.
    “What’s happened to her!!” screams Gill, shaking his wife. “Where’d she go?! Honey? … What happened??”
    Undead Doctor Collin stoops forward to examine the mother and I’m up from the chair in an instant to give the experts room, watching wide-eyed as the nurses bustle about, panicked, unorganized.
    I’m still holding out my hands, painted red and frightful, afraid to touch anything.
    “What’s happened to her!? What’d you do!??”
    He doesn’t seem to be accusing anyone in particular. The baby cries and cries and cries, but the man’s attached to his wife, tears in his eyes. “Honey?? Honey?? Laura??” He’s shaking her, throttling her.
    I don’t realize it, but I’ve stepped away so much, my back hits the wall. My hands still up, touching nothing, and the Human Gill is yelling and screaming, accusing everything and everyone now. Despite Doctor Collin trying to save her, there is no saving Gill. John moves in to help, but he’s elbowed in the face and screamed at, too.
    Helena’s in front of me suddenly. “Winter, we’d better go. This isn’t going to end nicely.”
    “But John’s just—”
    “Go, Winter.”
    “The baby’s—”
    Hel pulls at my shoulder and guides me out of the room. The door shuts behind us and she’s moving me down the hall. I can still hear the screaming of men.
    “Is she going to make it?” I ask, feeling like a child, feeling as lost as Megan in the Whispers this morning.
    “Go, Winter,” my Reaper tells me. “Go and clean up. Bathroom’s at the end of the hall. Wash the blood off.”
    “Yes, alright.” I’m in a daze. So much has happened so fast, I find myself thankful for Helena’s direction.
    The bathroom door opens, I move inside, then close it with my back. For a while, I just stare at my strange, pale reflection in the mirror that’s warped by a lightning-shaped fissure running down the middle. My hair white, my clothes red, blood running up my arms and fingers.
    I remember the First Life Gill … the other Gill. I feel the heat of his body in those last minutes of my life … when Gill, my prom date, took me out to those cold, icy woods. I remember where he opened me up, pulling apart my prom dress. I remember not wanting it anymore and feeling the guilt of all my ugly, teenage defiance rush in. I can still hear the panting of his breath, still see the mist it made in the deathly cold. I changed my mind . After he left me, abandoned in the woods, I started running, shivering, my dress and my coat torn open. I changed my mind, I kept thinking as I raced through icy woods, not knowing that I didn’t have the rest of my life waiting for me. I didn’t have several more years to grow, to make amends, to ‘make right by all my wrongs,’ as my mother would say. I wasn’t even aware of the cracking surface of a frozen lake resting just beneath my cold, stupid feet.
    My hands are bloody. I move to the sink, twist the faucet on … but I’m still staring at my face in the mirror. When I look up, I