Read Online Deathless by Scott Prussing - Free Book Online Page B

hearts. Three hearts formed a diagonal row from the bottom left square to the top right, with an arrow drawn through them to show hearts had won the game.
    “ I really am sorry, Lees. Rule ninety-four: sneaking up on someone who hangs out with vampires is not a good idea.”
    Leesa smiled, her body beginning to recover from the adrenaline jolt. “I don’t ‘hang out’ with them. I just happen to know one. And if I never see Stefan again, that will be just fine with me.”
    “ Speaking of things that go bump in the night, did you hear about that thing in the graveyard over in Higganum?”
    Leesa’s heart rate spiked again as the images from her dream came rushing back to her. Higganum was a small rural community less than ten miles south of Weston College. She hoped Cali wasn’t going to say what she thought she was going to say.
    “ Graveyard?” she asked. “No, I didn’t hear anything.” She was almost afraid to ask about it, but she had to know. “What happened?”
    “ It’s really freaky. Someone dug up a bunch of bodies, and then left ‘em lying right there on the ground.”
    Leesa closed her eyes for a moment. She could see the images from her dream as clearly as if she were dreaming it right now.
    She opened her eyes. “How do they know someone dug them up?”
    Cali’s brow knit in puzzlement as she stared at Leesa. “How else would they have gotten there, silly? They sure didn’t climb up out of the graves themselves.”
    I hope not, Leesa thought. I really and truly hope not.
    Cali saw the concern on Leesa’s face. “Oh, no…you’re not going to tell me zombies are real, too, are you?”
    “ No, of course not,” Leesa said. “At least not as far as I know, anyway. It’s just that I had this weird dream last night. Some bodies pushed themselves up out of the ground in an old cemetery.”
    “ Really? That’s definitely freaky, especially with this story today.”
    It was much too freaky, Leesa thought. But if vampires existed, and volkaanes, why not zombies? She was definitely going to have to ask Rave about it.
    “ In your dream, what did they do?” Cali asked. “Once they got out of their graves, I mean?”
    “ Nothing, really. They stumbled around in circles for a few minutes, then fell to the ground. That’s when I woke up.”
    “ It’s six-thirty. Turn on the TV. Maybe we can catch something about it on the news.”
    Leesa grabbed her remote and switched on the television. The local news was just coming on. They had to sit through a boring story about some possible corruption in the state house, but then a jumpy video of an old graveyard, probably taken from a helicopter, filled the screen. It was still light out in the video, so it had obviously been taken earlier in the day.
    “ There’s a strange story coming out of Higganum today,” the neatly coiffed, gray-haired anchorman began. “Police are investigating an unusual act of vandalism in one of the town’s old cemeteries.”
    The picture switched to a live shot of a reporter on the scene. Bright klieg lights lit up the graveyard behind her. A green knit ski cap pulled down over her blond hair showed how cold it was outside. Her foggy breath was visible on the television as she spoke. Still, she looked remarkably fresh and perky.
    “ Here’s what we know so far,” she said. “Sometime last night, someone dug up six bodies here at the old cemetery. Police aren’t sure if this was simply a thoughtless act of vandalism, or perhaps the work of grave robbers searching for valuables. All the graves here are well over one hundred years old, so it’s doubtful thieves could have found much of value.”
    The camera panned over her shoulder to the graveyard, focusing on several very old headstones. Leesa looked closely, but no bodies were visible from this angle. The news director had probably decided that a pile of rotting corpses was not proper dinnertime fare. Either that, or the authorities had already covered them