Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) Read Online Free PDF

the man he used to be, and they didn’t realize that the old Vincent truly was dead, and the one left standing didn’t know who or what to be.
    Just like her.
    Her head injury lingered. Bright sunlight bothered her, and headaches were common. She had a hard time remembering things that happened before she touched down in Detroit with Bob and Miles, and her memory of that first night was shot to hell. Fragments. Pieces. Voices. She remembered heat and fear. She remembered running.
    She remembered a little girl.
    There was nothing more to say to Bill or Taylor.
     
    ***
    Darkness. Shortness of breath. She was awake. Awake and breathing. Sweating. Sitting upright. Alive. Still alive.
    In the dark, she couldn’t see. She couldn’t see anything, and she reached for the 9mm that was beside her pillow. She pointed it at the window. A moment ago, she’d seen a face there. There was a face that looked at her.
    “Breathe,” Vincent said. He was in the room with her.
    Her hands shook.
    “Breathe girl. Take a deep breath.”
    Moonlight on the windowsill. Her tattooed hands shaking. Sweat in her eyes. The face had been looking at her. Through the window. Looking down upon her.
    “We’re safe. Take a deep breath. We’re all right.”
    Her heart rate had quickened. Nerves jittery. Moonlight on the windowsill.
    A warm hand gently touched her wrist and eased her down. She still held the gun, and she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the window. The gun was between her legs, her fingers wrapped around the grip.
    “Shhh.”
    Somewhere a dog barked.
    “There was a face in the window,” Vega said. She swallowed a mouthful of air.
    “Another bad dream,” Vincent said. His voice smooth, calm. Soothing.
    She closed her eyes for a moment and opened them. Nothing there. Nothing but moonlight.
    “There was a face,” she said.
    “Ain’t nobody here but us. I promise. Lay your head down. I’m here.”
    His fingers swept strands of sweat-soaked hair from her forehead.
    The dog barked.
    She could hear Vincent sitting up on the bed. He slept soundly sometimes, but not always. He stayed up more often than not and watched through the window. He waited for something. He watched over her.
    A gunshot. A distant pop. Another one. The dog barked. A few people shouted.
    Her body shuddered, and she wasn’t cold. This night was like all the others. Vincent had told her more than once that life hadn’t changed much in the ghetto. A couple gunshots and no sirens. No ambulances. No rescue. Shouts. Tears. Silence. Church on Sunday.
    They weren’t going to repeat their past conversations.
    “Finding him won’t make it stop,” Vincent said.
    The mission. She talked about it sometimes. The mission she didn’t complete. Vincent knew she would start up about it, and they would have their usual argument about leaving to go out there and find Jim Traverse, the man she had been brought into to Detroit to find. But the trail was cold. There was no sane argument for taking off to go hunting for a ghost.
    When she was a mercenary, she killed plenty of people in combat, but her nightmares were mostly about her father, the man who abandoned her. There was no alcohol now.
    “I’m sick of hiding in our little hole,” Vega said. “The nightmares are getting worse, not better. Those things aren’t going away. I’m rotting here.”
    “He’ll be back,” Vincent said. He’d said it before. “Whatever he wanted was here. He lost it, so he’ll come back.”
    “Right. He’s coming for Father Joe. That was supposed to happen a long time ago. And here we are.”
    “Things aren’t getting worse. Wherever he went doesn’t matter.”
    “It does matter. It matters to me. It’s unfinished business. It was something I should have done, something I failed to do.”
    Vincent stood in the dark and left her on the mattress. He went to the window and allowed the moonlight to touch his face. He ran his hand over his head.
    “You’re going to give me shit