The Silver Star (Kat Drummond Book 11) Read online

  The Kat Drummond Series

  Part-Time Monster Hunter

  Blood Cartel

  Devil’s Gambit

  Necrolord

  Darkness Beckons

  Lost Huntress

  Dead World

  Silver Brotherhood

  The Fae Hunt

  Dark Order

  The Silver Star

  Kat Drummond Boxset

  The Kat Drummond Collection (Books 1-4)

  Short Stories

  Soul Bound

  Side Novels

  Blood Hunter

  Copyright © 2020

  Kat Drummond

  All rights reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher and the copyright owner.

  Cover Design By: www.derangeddoctordesign.com

  Website: https://nicholaswoodesmith.com/

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  Newsletter: https://nicholaswoodesmith.com/newsletter/

  Contents

  Chapter 1. Crusade

  Chapter 2. Costs

  Chapter 3. Agenda

  Chapter 4. Business

  Chapter 5. Drinks

  Chapter 6. Trauma

  Chapter 7. Necromancers

  Chapter 8. The Past

  Chapter 9. Plans

  Chapter 10.Travel

  Chapter 11.Dark Water

  Chapter 12.Safe Harbour

  Chapter 13.Island

  Chapter 14.Crew

  Chapter 15.Voyage

  Chapter 16.Resentment

  Chapter 17.Down Under

  Chapter 18.Mer

  Chapter 19.Captured

  Chapter 20.Island of Sorrow

  Chapter 21.Royalty

  Chapter 22.Reunion

  Chapter 23.Training

  Chapter 24.Family

  Chapter 25.People

  Chapter 26.Hate

  Chapter 27.Propaganda

  Chapter 28.Falling Apart

  Chapter 29.The Silver Star

  Chapter 30.Moments

  Words from the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1.

  Crusade

  Be thankful for what you have. You never know when you might lose it.

  “Mommy!” my daughter screamed, tearing up something primal within in me. A mother should never have to hear their child scream like that.

  “It’s going to be okay!” I lied, crying over the gut-wrenching crunching of bone and flesh. Blood stained the tarmac. Neighbours lay dead, their limbs strewn at impossible angles. Blood pooled beneath them. And some were still moving. Black sludge oozed out of their open wounds. Bitemarks on their necks. Ripped throats. No one could survive that. Yet, they rose.

  My child backed ever further down the alley. The brick walls flanking us should have given us a semblance of safety. But they made me feel trapped. Trapped inside a cage with beasts wearing the faces of those I’d once befriended.

  Why?

  A deafening thud sounded out as a car swerved off the street, turning hastily to avoid the undead horde rising to consume the living. The car impacted with the solid brick wall of a shuttered store. The owner didn’t let us in. He probably had good reason. But I would never forgive him. Not that I would have time to forgive him.

  The rapidly paling, blank eyed, gurgling and shambling corpses turned from their previous meals turned comrades and looked my way. My heart leapt.

  “Cheri…I need you to run…”

  Maybe I could distract them. Maybe she could survive. Maybe…

  “Mommy…”

  I clutched her by the shoulders, steeling myself. I had to be strong. For her. Because the world was unfair. Because someone had to be strong and do what was right.

  “I love you. Always remember that. When they aren’t looking, you need to run and not look back.”

  She shook her head, tears falling down her cheeks.

  “I’m scared. I can’t.”

  I repressed a choked sob. I felt tears falling unchecked.

  “You have to be strong, Cheri. For me…”

  Her eyes were puffy. Red. And her skin pale. But she rubbed her tears away. She nodded. I felt my fears melt away then. Pride glowed in my heart. And I knew what I had to do.

  I embraced my daughter, one final time, and stood in front of her.

  The undead loomed ever closer, distracted by other corpses and the chaos on the street. There were too many of them. But I wasn’t going to fight them. I couldn’t. But I could be a distraction. That’s what she needed. And that’s what I could be. Till the very end.

  “I love you, darling,” I said, and ran towards the abyss. Zombies looked up at me. Hungry. Angry. I didn’t know what they could feel angry about. I should be the one filled with rage. But, right now, I didn’t feel any fury.

  My daughter would survive.

  For that, I was happy.

  Black and red blood sprayed at my feet as the zombie before me collapsed onto the ground, a fist sized hole in the back of its head. I froze, the sounds of gunfire and the roar of the undead filling my ears. The zombies turned towards the bang, just as a further shot fell from nowhere and decimated another zombie’s head.

  Before the zombies could choose between me or the invisible sniper, a man wearing a tiger print martial arts outfit sauntered into view, at the end of the alley. He cracked his knuckles and punched the air itself. Zombies’ limbs flew off, slapping against the walls. All the fleshy shrapnel somehow missed my daughter and me.

  The tiger man stood still. Confident and unshakable as the remaining zombies charged him, growling and spluttering their displeasure. Flames erupted from just behind him, searing the horde. The nauseating stench of burning flesh awoke me from my shock and I ran back to my daughter.

  “Don’t look!” I insisted, even if it was too late.

  Some of the flaming corpses collapsed in heaps, one on top of the other. But others continued to charge the tiger man and a one-armed sorcerer who had joined him. In two swift jabs, as if boxing a bag, the tiger man annihilated the zombies. Their burnt flesh splattered across the alley. I recoiled from the display, just as I heard groans and more gurgling.

  With horror, I looked to the wall at the end of the alleyway. My child’s schoolteacher looked back at me, his eyes milky white and blood pouring from his neck. He was clambering over the wall.

  “Your fire just makes a mess, flame boy,” the tiger man chided, his voice nonchalant. As if he was playing a game of dice.

  “Says the guy who keeps repainting the walls with necroblood,” the sorcerer replied, as he let out a jet of flames, scorching the wall behind us. Heat washed over me, but I didn’t flinch. The sorcerer’s fire turned the paling and greying zombie flesh to a scorched black.

  The sorcerer turned to the tiger man with a satisfied smirk, just as the undead responded with a collective wail. Like a tidal wave, zombies charged the other side of the wall, causing dust to fall as they clambered over one another to get through. The sorcerer let loose another barrage of fire, but the zombies weren’t impressed.

  Silly me. I thought I was saved. But you couldn’t stop the tide.

  “Get behind us, ma’am!” the tiger man said, taking a step forward and falling into a boxing stance.

  “Mom…” Cheri murmured, calling my attention to the entrance to the alley. My heart skipp
ed a beat.

  More of them. Shambling, sniffing, snorting. How could there be so many?

  “We’re encircled in the alley between grocer and mechanist,” the sorcerer spoke, calmly, into a cell phone attached to his shoulder. “We’ve got civvies, Wolfie. Time for some of that furry magic.”

  “Roger, One-Arm,” a female voice came over the speaker phone, just as the zombies charged towards us.

  The tiger man dove in front of us, just as a bullet found its home in a zombie’s head. The tiger man let loose with two swift jabs, caving in zombie ribcages like he was hitting them with a sledgehammer. He followed through with a sweeping kick, cutting them off at the knees, before bringing his heel down on a final assailant, exploding its head into a gooey bloody mess. I had long given up covering Cheri’s eyes.

  “Wolfie, what are you waiting for?” the sorcerer chimed, unrelenting as he sprayed gusts of fire towards the zombies clambering over the wall.

  He cut off as a young woman landed between us. She had raven black hair, a black leather jacket with torn off sleeves, and her arms were clawed and covered in black fur.

  “Took you long enough,” the sorcerer jabbed, with gritted teeth as he kept up the fire. I’d never seen a pyromancer keep up their flames for this long.

  The woman with the furry arms turned to me. Her eyes glowed gold, but her smile was friendly. Disarming. Even if she was wearing black lipstick and mascara.

  “We’re going up, miss. It’s safe on the roofs.”

  I wanted to ask how we were meant to do that. The woman squatted down to Cheri’s level.

  “You’re going to be okay. We’re the Crusaders.”

  My eyes widened. That was something I did understand.

  “Ma’am,” the girl I realised was a werewolf asked. “I can carry you up one at a time…”

  “Take my daughter, please,” I insisted, no hesitation.

  She nodded.

  “Mom?”

  I stroked Cheri’s head. “It’s going to be okay, darling. I’ll be right up.”

  “On my back,” the werewolf offered to Cheri, who, after a bit of hesitation, jumped on, putting her arms around the werewolf’s neck to steady herself. The werewolf didn’t seem to mind.

  “This will be quick…”

  “Better be,” the one-armed sorcerer added. “I haven’t felt my spark get this low since I was hunting furries like you.”

  “Keep talking about stuff like that, Mr York, and I might make you one of us.”

  In a blur, the werewolf disappeared. One second, she had been crouching down, my daughter on her back. The next, she had leapt up, scaling the building in a single bound.

  Werewolves are monsters, I reminded myself. Or were they?

  Right now, if she saved Cheri, she could be a monster or an archdemon. She’d still be a hero.

  More zombies charged from both sides, using their sheer fleshy mass to resist the tiger man’s magical punches and the sorcerer’s flames. The werewolf hadn’t returned, and the gunfire hadn’t ceased. But, even the best sniper could only kill one zombie at a time.

  I thought that, just as the hidden sniper lined up a shot between two zombies. The round passed through the first’s cranium and had enough momentum to impact with the second, dropping it instantly.

  The Crusaders. They were everything I had heard. And more.

  But even then, the undead pressed closer and closer. My legs grew weak.

  They were heroes. But they could only do so much. But, at least Cheri had survived.

  With my daughter safe, I felt my energy rapidly dissipating. I had accepted death already. I could go, not gladly, but content that I had done what I could.

  In a flurry of blows, zombie heads flew up into the air. Behind the horde, a lanky woman with short black hair stood, holding a glaive.

  “You sounded like you needed some back-up,” she said, spitting another zombie who lunged at her.

  “Thanks, babe,” the sorcerer grinned. The tiger man rolled his eyes. Just then, the werewolf returned.

  “My child?!” I cried, hastily.

  “She’s okay! She’s on the roof with the medics. If she’s hurt, there’s nothing Cindy can’t fix. Time for you to ride the wolf elevator.”

  She offered her back and, feeling a bit sheepish, I held on. She was smaller than I was, and I worried that she wouldn’t be able to handle my…

  We shot off, rising into the sky as if flying. In one bound, the werewolf caught a lip of a window and then propelled herself up onto the roof. From here, I could see the true scale of the horror that had taken place in my home.

  Smoke rose in plumes from battlegrounds, crashed cars and out of control fires. Hordes of undead battered at shuttered shops and cars. Groups of gunmen wearing the Crusader dark grey uniform kept some of them at bay. But there were too many of them.

  “How…” I whispered. “How can we survive all this?”

  The werewolf registered confusion, and then understanding.

  “Ah. Yeah. It looks bad, right? But don’t worry. Kat’s here. And we’ve got every Crusader operator in the city out here. You’ll be okay.”

  As if to trying to disprove her own point, the werewolf leapt from the building’s roof and began falling. I screamed as I saw the ravenous undead below. I felt a jolt as we landed on the next roof.

  “Sorry about that. I’m new on rescue missions. I’m more of a slashy slash type of gal.”

  I was too stunned to respond, as she sprinted across the rooftop and cleared it in a leap.

  “Now, here’s the dangerous part…”

  That wasn’t dangerous?!

  The werewolf carried me to the lip of the building, overlooking a corpse-strewn street. My heart leapt as I saw gunmen mow down people I had once worked with. I was…had been friends with many. But I had to remind myself that they weren’t human anymore. They never would be again.

  “Oi! Brett, where’s Kat?”

  One masked gunman stopped firing and looked up at us. He pointed down the street. I looked where he had pointed and had to shut my eyes as a plume of flames erupted into the air.

  The werewolf grinned and I saw the flash of fangs.

  “Yeah. That’s a good distraction, Kats.”

  Without warning, she jumped down from the building’s roof and sprinted behind the gunmen. Zombies charged towards us from both sides and were chewed apart by bullets and finished off by axes and swords.

  Near the opposite building, the werewolf leapt. Carried by her running start, she didn’t even need to catch a window. She bounded directly onto the flat roof itself, where we were greeted by groups of wounded men and women. And, to a relief I will never be able to describe, my daughter.

  She ran to me, zigzagging between a laptop display and some wounded being treated by a motley crew of medics and mages. The werewolf let go of me in time for Cheri to collide into me. She sobbed, but I could see they were tears of relief.

  Still, I turned to the burning streets. There were so many of them. And the wounded here…too few had survived. But, despite some very grievous wounds, and a few amputations, they were alive.

  “Please bite down, sir,” a bearded man, wearing Sufi headdress, insisted, passing the local mechanic a piece of wood. The man bit down, as the man incanted some magic and a fiery saw closed down on the man’s arm, amputating it. Immediately, from across the rooftop, a woman with arms covered in scarified runes released a barrage of golden light towards him. The bleeding stopped and the man released the bit, seemingly no longer in pain.

  I stumbled forward, realising that the werewolf had gone.

  A young man wearing a sweater vest was attending to another wounded man. I stumbled towards him.

  “That…that young woman. Who was she?”

  He looked up, his face filled with consternation, but he spared Cheri a smile.

  “That was Trudie. Don’t worry. She’ll be back if you want to talk to her. She makes a habit of proving how indestructible she is.” />
  Indestructible. Maybe, she would survive. But how could the rest of us? My daughter and I were safe, but we were surrounded by a sea of undeath. Of chaos.

  “How can we survive this?” I muttered.

  The young man pointed down the street.

  “Her,” he answered, simply.

  The gunmen had stopped firing, as a woman walked through the street, surrounded by the undead. She held two swords, which danced in a blur, cutting down everything in its wake. And trailing her was a fiery behemoth. It was as if she was wreathed in flames, but it didn’t burn her.

  I knew her. Well, of her.

  We all did.

  Tears sprung up in my eyes. Cheri tightened her grip on my hand.

  Hordes of undead fell to the flaming swordswoman. None survived. And in that purifying inferno, I knew we’d live.

  The Last Light executed the final zombie with a simple thrust to the head. And then it was over.

  ***

  How could an outbreak this large have happened so suddenly? Zombies couldn’t infect someone unless they had a handler. A necromancer pulling the strings. Someone to keep up the necromantic connection and ensure the necroblood was virulent. Otherwise, they were just angry, hungry corpses.

  “Behind you,” Treth called, but was cut off as my salamander coat let out a concentration of flames, incinerating the undead.

  “He’s pretty eager today, isn’t he?” I asked.

  “Because we’re fighting the actual crusade and he knows it.” For some reason, Treth was beaming. The ghost inside my head manifested a few metres away and lopped the head off a zombie that was pursuing some stragglers. Trudie and the others had evacuated most of the civvies, but there were so many we hadn’t been able to help.

  My mood darkened as I let loose a flurry of blows, cutting down some more monsters. But no amount of carnage cheered me up.

  We should have been here sooner. It wasn’t enough to just kill monsters. We had to save people. Yet, so many people…

  I shook my head to break out of my reverie, just as I gored two zombies with my off-hand cutlass, before beheading them both in a single blow with Ithalen, the enchanted sword I’d received from none other than the Lady of the Lake.

  “To be honest,” Treth said, blocking a zombie’s path as it tried to walk through him. He could choose to go corporeal when he wanted to but could only affect some things some of the time. It seemed that today was a day for effective ghosts and eager flaming coats. “I feel a bit redundant. You probably don’t even need the Crusaders. You’re a walking inferno!”