“I don’t need you to say it back.” She figured he hadn’t offered his love to anyone for a long, long time. Maybe not since his parents’ death. “It’s okay. I just…you had to know.”
“You’re mine,” he finally said, his voice hoarse and low. “I swear I’ll keep you safe, no matter the cost.”
She didn’t want that. She’d never wanted that.
But she didn’t argue. Instead, she silently made the same promise to him in the privacy of her thoughts. When she turned in his arms, the flick of her tongue against his lips distracted him even more effectively than she’d hoped. He had no attention to spare for the discreet movements of her right hand or the faint purr of his hoodie pocket’s zipper opening, then closing again.
Before he noticed his pomander’s return, the signal came.
The Girl Explorers had spread out, so they were barely within hearing distance of one another and covering as much ground as possible. Once the first girl sighted a zombie in the distance, she’d make a sharp, distinctive owl hoot, which the next girl would pass along the chain. In the end, the telltale sound would reach Riley and a few other especially powerful half-fae Explorers where they sat perched far above the central battleground.
That moment had arrived.
From now on, all subtlety was abandoned. They wanted the zombies to know precisely where they were gathered. Right here, right now.
“Take your positions,” Riley shouted. “Two strays up front, and the pack not far behind! A mile ahead at most!”
The Explorers lifted Starla and Gwen high up into the trees as well, using the branches as a sort of escalator, while Sabrina, Kip, Lorraine, Max, and Edie ran to their assigned places.
Kip called out a final reminder. “Eliminate or incapacitate as many as possible, and if all else fails, drive them back into the compound! Once we’re done, we feast!”
“You’ve been feasting for the last hour and a half, troll,” Max muttered. “I know what happened to that huge pot of saffron-shellfish risotto.”
“Understood!” everyone else yelled in response.
Four minutes later, the first snarl echoed through the forest, and Sabrina set off a final flare.
Edie brandished her cleaver just as the first zombies leapt into sight, jaws wide open.
***
There was nomissing their small group of fighters. Not when they remained so close to the blazing house and so easily visible through the trees, their exact position highlighted by a torch’s flickering light and a small campfire.
There was only one obvious route leading to them, and the two strays took it. The creatures raced along the side of the burning home, on the path cleared by the Girl Explorers, and into the backyard abutting the woods. The fence lining that backyard had long ago begun to sag. In one spot, a substantial section of the fencing had collapsed entirely, leaving a straight shot into the forest, toward all five waiting figures.
Edie tightened her grip and held her breath, invoking the names of all the gods and goddesses she could remember in an urgent request for assistance. Just in case it turned out she was Enhanced and simply hadn’t noticed for the past thirty-eight years.
“Come and get it,” Sabrina called out, the words a brazen taunt.
Suddenly, this entire plan seemed like a terrible,terribleidea. Like,worst ever.
When the strays spotted the stretch of collapsed fencing, their determined lope sped into a starved sprint. Their lean gray-pale bodies jolted with every bounding leap forward, saliva dripped from their slavering jaws, and the creature in the lead rasped something that sounded likebonjouras it raced past a fewdilapidated wooden pickets, through the fence’s gap, and up a small incline.
Only to disappear from sight mid-growl as the underbrush and dead leaves beneath its feet gave way to a deep, wide pit. Too deep to jump out of, too wide to leap across. A pit the Girl Explorers had dug after creating the firebreak, using whatever fae powers they could still muster.
Less than a heartbeat later, the second zombie dropped and vanished too.
Stepping forward, Kip peered down into the pit and offered the creatures a cheerful wave. “Bonjour!”
More growls and hisses erupted from the depths of the hole, but as Edie and everyone else had fervently hoped, the zombies seemed unable to climb out of their makeshift enclosure.
Edie glanced around, her heartbeat slowly steadying. Under her breath, she whispered, “If I’m an Enhanced who can now commune with deities, please give me a sign.”
Nothing. She waited a few seconds more, though, just to be sure. When she shifted her feet, she stepped onto what appeared to be a fossilized remnant of dog poop from the Buchwalds’ boisterous little terrier.
Okay. Fair enough. No unexpected powers for her.
“Next wave, coming right up!” Riley hollered. “The main pack this time! Girl Explorers, collapse in toward the center as soon as you safely can!”
