Zombies Sold Separately Read Online Free PDF Page A

scene was as frozen as the icicles hanging from barren trees and lampposts.
    Soothsayers couldn’t stop time or the elements. Just the activity of humans within a certain radius. If the area was larger than she could control, we’d bring in a second or third Soothsayer.
    Afterward, the Soothsayers spent time wiping key memories from certain individual’s minds. Memories that could compromise the paranorm community.
    Snow had been trampled from the activity going on before our arrival, dark footprints stark against the white drifts. I didn’t doubt that the perpetrators of this crime had stepped in the blood and left it smeared in some places, not any of the investigators.
    I glanced over my shoulder at the Soothsayer. Not counting Lulu, only Olivia, Adam, NYPD captain Alex Wysocki, and I were among the mobile. My companions were studying the scene as intently as I was, only I’d bet that out of our little group I was the closest to heaving my breakfast onto the patch of snow closest to me.
    Lulu perched on a park bench behind us in her billowing satin gown. She had her back to us, refusing to look at the blood and gore. Her lovely personality had Olivia itching to pick up a dismembered foot and toss it into Lulu’s lap. Olivia had said as much when Lulu made a comment that had something to do with Olivia’s voluptuous figure, her petite stature, and Dwarves.
    Personally, I thought Lulu would be lucky if Olivia didn’t throw a hand or two along with the foot straight at Lulu’s perfect golden-blond ringlets.
    Lulu was a prima donna snob who acted like a spoiled princess and probably would have turned green if she knew that I am a real princess. I never let her or any of the other Peacekeepers know that I come from royalty and wealth, save for my closest friends.
    I might be a princess in title and entitlements, but I refuse to act entitled. I am a warrior at heart.
    NYPD officers and other crime scene investigators, paramedics, and one news crew stood stiff and unmoving, their faces and bodies frozen. Snowflakes had already begun to build a layer on their still bodies.
    I didn’t think Captain Wysocki had really gotten used to frozen crime scenes over the past few weeks after she had a gruesome introduction to the paranorm world.
    That unwanted introduction had been thanks to a large number of ruthless Vampires led by Volod, the New York City Master Vampire. It was a group that had decided they were sick of synthetic blood and sick of the control the paranorm world had over them.
    But this … this had nothing to do with Volod.
    “You’re wrong,” I said after a long moment of studying the scene, and I met the gaze of the tall and slender police captain. My breath fogged in the cold air. “It wasn’t a Vampire attack.”
    Adam and Wysocki looked at me, Adam with a question in his gaze and the captain with a frown on her face.
    “How can you say that?” Olivia gestured toward the assortment of arms, legs, torsos, and heads. “Hello? Doesn’t this remind you of anything?”
    I didn’t know whether or not to feel relief or fear. Relief that it couldn’t have been Vampires. Fear of what had actually done this.
    Because I’m Drow, the Elvin boots I’d changed into didn’t sink into the snow-covered grass as I stepped from the walk. The snow remained unbroken where I walked and I avoided a nearly frozen pool of blood. The attack had to have happened recently.
    “You’ve obviously noticed the bites taken out of the victims,” I said to the three looking at me for my take on this. “Vampires don’t rip out hunks of flesh like that.”
    The words tasted awful on my tongue and nausea continued to make me feel sick. But I continued talking as I walked from one end of the crime scene to the other.
    “If you’ll notice, too, the bites were taken by something that’s not normally a flesh-eating predator. No fangs. No jagged teeth.” I looked at Adam, Olivia, and the police captain. “Those bites look like