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“Me,” I say, unimpressed.
Nesanth jabs her finger at me. “I will make you hurt for this!”
I hold my ice blade up. “Bring it, bitch. Ask Elizabeth if she thinks it was a good idea to mess with me. Oh, wait. You can’t.”
“You misunderstand. I’m not going to slay you.” Nesanth approaches me. “I’m going to make you hurt for eternity.”
I have the perfect reply all set—something to do with being stuck in an alternate reality of karaoke bars full of drunk football fans trying to sing Bee Gees—when Nesanth suddenly lunges into a claw dive at Tammy.
I leap to intercept, but my daughter is already shifting into an enormous Kodiak bear. Nesanth grabs her by the throat, though her claws don’t appear to inflict too much damage. Tammy-Bear, who’s now standing about eleven feet tall on her hind legs, growls in Nesanth’s face, making the vampire’s long brown hair billow like a cloak in the wind.
As Tammy reaches back to slap the unholy hell out of her, Nesanth flies straight away in reverse, avoiding any damage. Perhaps realizing tussling with a massive bear may not be the best for her health, she turns and launches herself at Anthony.
Oh, she thinks she’s going to kill my children and make me mourn them for centuries. She’s in for another surprise—especially when my son transforms in an orangey-yellow flash into the Fire Warrior, reaching out to catch the vampire coming for him.
Nesanth jerks to a halt in midair, a few feet away from his flaming fingertips. She glides back from him, peers at Tammy, then the Fire Warrior, then me. The letters WTF practically appear tattooed on her forehead.
More information from Quentin floods into my brain. He’s gaining enough control over his own mind for her to lose her grip on the ‘godly’ powers. Both she and Demetria are now no more powerful in this world than ancient vampires would be. That’s still a lot of power, don’t get me wrong. However, they can’t bend reality to their will anymore simply by wanting something to happen… or all of us would be in deep trouble.
“My kids aren’t really the helpless victim type,” I say to her, holding my sword out, feeling tiny between the massive bear and the Fire Warrior.
With that, Tammy-Bear roars and charges at her, swiping a paw as wide as my whole chest at the floating vampiress. Nesanth zooms out of the way. My daughter wallops another table, leaving deep claw gouges in the wood.
On the floor nearby, Demetria twitches. Crunching noises come from her neck. She’s healing.
Nesanth glides back into the air, neatly dodging a lightning bolt from Allison and a small fireball from Lindsey. The woman makes a ‘come here’ gesture at the ground. Dense black vapor appears, welling up into dozens of columns about the size of people. Next thing I know, we’re up to our eyeballs in zombies again. A swarm of scary fast dead people fling themselves at us, biting and clawing in a wild frenzy.
Kingsley and the Fire Warrior shred and tear at the things. Anthony uses his blazing swords to great effect, lopping off heads and cutting them in half down the middle. Lindsey loses her confidence and ends up screaming and flailing like any ordinary person might do in such a situation. Allison has the advantage of having been through paranormal stuff like this multiple times. While she’s also screaming, her shrieks are closer to ‘eww, I don’t wanna touch this’ disgust than terror. She melts a face or three.
I’d help out, except I’ve got my own problems… like forty of them to be exact. I’d been standing far enough from the others to end up being totally surrounded. These zombies are so fast, almost as fast as I am, it’s impossible for me to defend against every attack. Their claws aren’t too bad, basically large fingernails, so I don’t even try to stop all the ouch coming in, rather I focus on killing them. I feel like I’m swimming through the inner workings of a wood chipper with really dull blades.
Tammy’s in about the same situation I am, surrounded by a swarm. Unlike me, the thick fur and thicker hide of her giant bear form is veritable armor against zombie fingernails. My daughter appears quite unbothered by their attacks, more annoyed. She swats zombie after zombie aside with her massive paws.
A loud, angry growl clues me in that Kingsley’s busted out of his clothes. Now in wolf form, Kingsley rips and shreds zombies apart much faster than he can fistfight them as a human. With Kingsley’s help, Allison’s no longer completely occupied trying to protect herself. This gives her the chance to start adding lightning bolts.
The Fire Warrior’s taking them out two or three per punch, sending charred, burning corpses flying across the room. Some break apart in midair, consumed by the flames. Others he chops in half from various angles with his flaming sword.
Ugh. Burned undead flesh really stinks.
Not sure how much time passes… it’s probably only a minute or so but it feels like ten. I realize two things. One: I’m down to my medieval underwear with only a few shredded tatters of the expensive gown remaining. Two: the number of zombies swarming me is not changing. As fast as I cut them down, more appear in columns of heavy black smoke.
Nesanth hangs near the middle of the ceiling like some evil witch from a dark Disney movie. She gestures as if she’s tossing small stones around the floor. Wherever she points, two to six fog columns well up, each one releasing zombies to join the fight.
Grr. We aren’t going to be able to keep this up forever. My endurance is going to outlast my wardrobe, though. This is only slightly more violent than the last time I tried shopping on Black Friday.
I am covered in scratches.
One bad part about me no longer being a bloodsucking/undead vampire is I can get tired now. Nesanth’s endless zombie horde will eventually cause me to drop from exhaustion. Worse, Allison and Tammy don’t have supernatural endurance. They’re going to pass out much sooner than me, Kingsley, or Anthony will. As soon as we lose one person, the fight is going to rather abruptly get much worse for the rest of us.
Thus far, I’ve only suffered superficial scratching. However, I’m not far away from having strips of skin flayed right off me… then muscle. Yeah, ouch is right. Allie’s taken a few nasty claw scrapes, too. Since she’s not an immortal being, she’s bleeding a whole lot more than I am from a significantly fewer number of cuts.
Gotta stop this, like now.
In the second it takes me to look up at Nesanth and form the urge to teleport in my mind, eight zombie hands sink claws into me and three mouths bite me on the arms and the left side above my hip. Before the damn things can tear chunks of flesh off my body, I summon the flame... and appear hovering right next to the bitch.
I unfurl my wings, stretching their black feathery expanse out to hold myself aloft while rounding my ice blade at the vampiress to take her head off. Since she’s no longer omniscient, my sudden appearance right next to her catches her completely off guard. All she can do is scream in terror as the glowing blue sword careens downward into the tender skin of her throat—and she blurs away from me in a black smear.
The force of my swing not meeting a solid target causes me to spin completely around in midair. The dark smear turns out to be Demetria, who is alive—relatively speaking—and well. She’s holding Nesanth, who’s got a hand clamped to the front of her neck, struggling to hold back a seep of dark blood. Looks like my sword cut in about an inch before Demetria shoved her away from me. Nesanth rasps, trying to talk, but she’s only blowing air through the bloody opening.
