Ashleigh couldn't breath. She slammed her knee up into Tommy's crotch, and he howled and staggered back.
“Bitch!” he snapped.
Ashleigh grabbed the lamp on Esmeralda’s bedside table. She swung it around, cracking the ceramic base into the side of Tommy's face. Then she drew it back and slammed it into his nose, breaking off a chunk of the lamp's base. She hit him again and again, staying close while he tried to back away. When the base of the lamp was completely broken, she swung the lamp like a baseball bat, denting the aluminum tube of its body against Tommy's jaw.
He knocked the lamp aside, grabbed the front of her shirt and raised his fist.
“Don't hurt me, Tommy!” Ashleigh screamed, in what she hoped sounded like Esmeralda's voice.
Tommy hesitated. Blood trickled from his nose and mouth, and one of his eyes was swelling up. Ashleigh knew he would be feeling conflicted, between his desire to punish Ashleigh and his affection for Esmeralda.
“If you hurt me, Esmeralda will stop loving you,” Ashleigh said in a low, calm voice. “You know she will.”
Tommy let go of her and lowered his fist. He sank to the bed. “I just want her back. And I want you gone.”
“Aren't you a sweetheart?” Ashleigh picked up the box of clothes again. “You're going to get half your wish right now.”
She turned her back on him and walked out of the bedroom. Esmeralda's mother was hurriedly cleaning the kitchen. She ran up to Ashleigh.
“You must get that evil boy out of here,” she said to Ashleigh, in Spanish. “It is like living with the devil.”
“Too bad,” Ashleigh said. She nudged the older woman aside, and she walked out the front door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Jenny watched as Alexander's men assembled the row of wood and cloth dummies near the crumbling back wall of the compound, towards the ocean.
“I haven't used these modern guns before,” Alexander said, nodding to the row of zombies with AK-47s at their feet. “They say these AKs are the easiest machine guns to use.”
“So easy a zombie could do it?” Jenny asked.
“I hope so.” He touched her hand. “When your power is feeding mine, I could probably get them to dance a ballet, if I wanted to.”
“That would just be grotesque,” Jenny said.
“I thought you liked grotesque,” he said, and Jenny smiled.
It had been about two months since her awakening. She understood how much she and Alexander belonged together, how many lifetimes they had spent as companions and lovers since learning to incarnate in human flesh. Her recent attachment to the healer was almost certainly a trick by the love-charmer. The healer had served the charmer since their earliest incarnations among the primates of this world.
Her recent time with Alexander had been the most delightful in this entire incarnation. She had cast aside the mask of poor little Jenny Morton and become her true, ancient self, to whom human life was just an amusing game. Her senses seemed sharper, her ability to experience pleasure greatly enhanced. They had attended concerts and plays in San Cristobal, a beautiful city with several centuries' worth of European-style architecture and a population of expatriate artists and dilettantes from around the world. She no longer feared cities at all—it was others who needed to fear her, after all. Jenny was learning to enjoy life without fear.
She'd also ditched the jeans-and-sneakers look, insisting on fashions imported from Italy and France, and jewelry to match. Alexander was happy to indulge her resurrected sense of taste and style, honed over the millennia.
“Let's give them a try,” Alexander said. He clasped his hand tight around hers, and Jenny felt the dark energy flowing from her into him.
Ten zombies stepped forward, picked up their AK-47s, and fired at the wooden dummies. Some of them were firing wild, their bullets chipping at the rock wall or sailing away over the ocean. Alexander looked at each one in turn, making them adjust their stances and grips until they were shooting at the targets. The bullets sliced the dummies to pieces.
Alexander raised a hand, and they all stopped firing, their dead eyes expressionless.
“What do you think?” Jenny asked.
“Much better than muskets,” Alexander said. “Imagine trying to get them all to clean, reload, add powder. This is just point and shoot.”
“How many can you control at once?”
“I could do thousands of them, with a little practice. And calories, lots and lots of calories. Are you hungry yet?”
“We just ate an hour ago. How far do you plan to conquer this time?”
“Conquest is slippery in the modern world. A mass of soldiers can be bombed from the sky. We will construct our empire with bribery, diplomacy and deception, as well as fear and force. Our immortals will only be one part of the strategy.”