All Hallows Night (Night Series) (27 page)

Pestilence, unlike Lust, loved war. The tingling fury of his power juiced me up. His touch wouldn’t do shit against dead bodies, but fighting with him was like the equivalent of getting a speedball shot of testosterone straight into the vein.

Aware that I had to prevent getting bit at all costs, I kicked out with my foot, shoving two bodies away and loosening the grip of the other three, getting them away from me just enough to scramble to my feet. Reaching into my back pocket, I grabbed my go-to weapon, the katana fan, and flicked it open.

“Come get me, MFers,” I taunted.

The five of them came at me all at once. Knowing I would have to be the aggressor to have any hope of keeping them on their heels and within the “safe zone,” I took just enough of a running start so that when I dropped to my knees, I was able to skid outside the reach of grabby arms. Now behind them, I hopped into a squat and sliced through their Achilles tendons.

They didn’t grunt or groan like they were in pain, but the moment they took that first step, they dropped like scattered bowling pins. Dead or alive, you still needed that tendon to walk.

Grinning, I blew them a kiss. “Slimy bastards.”

After that, it was easy to pick them off one by one. They were still dangerous, but all I had to do was slide one over at a time, drive my blade down their neck, punt the head aside, and move on to the next until finally all bodies were secured.

Luc had four of them down; his kills hadn’t been as clean as my own. Skulls were concave and oozing gray matter from the cracks. Luc was solid on his feet. His eyes flicked to me, and then, nodding, he grabbed the head of the final woman and ripped its head from its shoulder.

“You all right? You get bit?” he asked me the second the threat had passed.

“No.” I wiped my mouth, smearing rancid blood across it. Disgusted, I flipped up my shirt and wiped it off—no way was I licking my lips. Zombie ooze was the foulest stuff on Earth. “You?”

“I’m fine, and this was way too easy, wasn’t it?”

“Much.”

Narrowing his eyes, he looked back at the cave, and for a second I knew he was wondering what might have happened to my priest. Sighing, he said, “Let’s go.” Rushing to me, he made to grab my arm.

“We’re not leaving.”

“Dammit, Pandora, you really gonna do this now? Asswipe told you to hightail it the hell out of here if something like this happened. Wouldn’t be surprised if he set this whole thing up.”

A snappy retort was right on the tip of my tongue when I felt the prickle of sonar brush against me.

“Dora, let’s—”

“Shh.” I placed a finger against my lips. “Stop talking.”

His brows twitched but he did stop to listen.

Now that I was aware of the movement, I noticed the pitch wavering like the swell of a wave. Up and down, over and over again.

“You feel that?” I looked at him.

But I knew he did the second I saw him brush at the fine hairs on his arms, which were suddenly standing on edge.

“Sounds like some sort of a frequency wave.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Two guesses where it’s coming from, first guess doesn’t count.”

We both turned toward the cave entrance across the gully.

“I vote no.” He clamped his lips and crossed his arms in a way that made his biceps look twice as large.

“I’m not leaving him. He wouldn’t leave me.”

“I’ll follow you if you can explain how two sets of zombies got the jump on us without us noticing. I don’t trust him, Dora.”

“You don’t have to, Luc, but I do. And I’m going.”

Just as I was set to trace, he tried to grab my hand.

“Don’t!” I jumped out of the way. “Don’t touch me. I’m hopped up on Pestilence—I’ll knock you down into the valley if you do.”

Narrowing his eyes, he yanked my hand into his and I felt the power surge leap into him.

But maybe because he’d been prepared for it, he was able to clench his teeth and hang on. The surge didn’t last long, but it was enough to break him out in a wash of sweat and turn his normally bronzed skin ashy.

It actually felt good to release some of that adrenaline, helped me to feel not so wound tight as I normally did after a fight with Pest juicing me up. “You okay?” I touched his shoulder.

Jerking his head, he muttered, “Hang on.”

Then he traced us both to the cave.

“S
hit!” He cried out and clapped hands over his ears.

The vibrations in here were sonorous, moving through us with such force that I felt my insides quiver like jelly. Blood rushed immediately to my head.

The smell of death was bad enough, but the thick crush of bodies rapidly running our way was even worse.

The entrance of the cave wasn’t very wide. If he and I stood side by side, we’d easily be able to defend ourselves.

“Nothing passes, you hear me,” he barked out.

Those were the last words spoken before we were set upon. My fan wasn’t the greatest in such an enclosed space. Not the most practical of weapons—you needed room to flourish and brandish such a romantic piece of equipment. But with such limited space to move in, this job would require I get down and dirty.

Pestilence pulsed through my body in waves, oozing through my pores in a green rolling mist. I was bone-deep cold as his power rushed through me, but each time I used him, I was better able to control my reaction to that violent level of freeze. Curving my fingers, I flexed my elongated black claws and puffed out a jet of white fog from my mouth. The thrum of the fight filled me, and with a final leer I got to work.

It was easy enough to rip off their heads since most of their skin and muscle was already gone. What wasn’t easy was avoiding the bites.

One of the cannibals latched onto my elbow as I was yanking its comrade’s head off.

“Damn. It.” I growled when it ripped a chunk of meat out and swallowed my flesh with a slurpy sigh, then headed back in for more.

This zombie was missing all the flesh on its jaw so that it looked like it was giving me a perpetual bloody smile. I was just reaching for it to rip its head off when another one—a teenage female wearing torn fishnet stockings and black Doc Martens—crawled over the body of an emaciated old man before wrapping its legs around my middle, forcing me back into the wall as it hooked its rotten arm across my throat. Smiling zombie licked its teeth with a tongue that flickered around like a serpent’s. The thing that struck me most about these undead wasn’t actually the smell or putrescent flesh, it was the cloudy blue eyes that hinted at no soul within.

They were mindless killing machines; that more than anything bothered me. These zombies were so stereotypical as to be a cliché. But I had no more time to ponder it when Smiler wrapped his fingers around my wrist and jerked up. Shuddering, I jabbed my good elbow into chubby fishnet girl who was cutting off my air supply.

Zombies were immune to pain—they were dead, they felt nothing. But the law of physics worked just as well on them as it did on the living. My jab was enough to force her to crawl higher up, giving me the leverage I needed to flip her over my shoulder.

Gasping, I briefly touched my aching windpipe. Luc was dealing with his own horde while trying to maneuver his way back to me.

“Dora, I’m coming.”

“Just fight!” I huffed, sinking my claws into the neck of the smiler so that his teeth could no longer reach me. “I’m fine.” I yanked hard and it was nothing to separate the bottom jaw from the top; without the flesh and very little muscle left, even a human could have decapitated him.

Luc spun around, slamming his palm down on the back of a zombie wearing a moth-riddled blue-jean jacket. The zombie fell hard to the ground. Planting his boot on the zombie’s neck to keep him immobile, Luc whipped a flip knife out of his pocket, and in one swift move, he severed the head of the female who was now suddenly on him.

Ichor splashed everywhere and I swear, that smell is so much worse than the rest of the bodily fluids. A sharp burst of pain flared up the nerves of my arm. Grimacing, I flexed my fingers, and even while Luc should be focusing solely on the mass surrounding us, he kept flicking glances at me.

I shook my head at him, knowing what he was thinking. I had this and I wasn’t going to let a bite stop me, even if my arm was currently tingling and the tips of my fingers were going numb from the toxin of that bite as it spread its way through my bloodstream. Sweating, I knew if I didn’t shift focus from my pain to the fight, I’d go into zombie shock again. Growling, I pushed off the wall. Barreling my body into a duo of them, I pinned one claw into a short brunette girl’s neck and the other into a man who looked sort of like a heavier version of Antonio Banderas.

He especially was frantic with his need to get at me, snapping and hissing. His eyes weren’t nearly as cloudy or opaque as some of the others, and based off the faint odor of male cologne still on him, he was much fresher than the rest of them.

Lust slithered inside me for a second when his head rolled; the demon obviously had a thing for Antonio. Who knew?

As soon as I kicked him away from me, another took its place. This was really starting to feel like fighting an uphill, losing battle.

“Asher!” I cried, wishing I knew where he was, if he was okay. We’d barely made any forward progress and if he wasn’t even in here, then maybe it was time to get the hell out of Dodge.

I could have sworn I heard my name echo faintly in return. Heart racing with a sudden rush of adrenaline, I realized he was definitely still in here somewhere. I was a female Wolverine, slashing and clawing my way through zombie after zombie, almost on autopilot with my need to find the priest.

I was at the point in the pain process where it was so unbearable that I was completely in shock about it. Finally Luc managed to work his way to me and we were once again side by side, moving slowly but inexorably farther in.

He was breathing just as hard as I was, but we’d developed a system that was working. Luc, whether I wanted him to be or not, was definitely aware of the struggle my painfully shredded left arm was going through, so anything that came at us from the left, he managed. I felt bad that he was usually battling two or three to my one, but we were definitely moving faster.

His blade was a constant swirling motion of deadly precision, and it made me proud to fight with him by my side. Luc hadn’t been in the field for so long that I’d always worried he might have gone soft, but the way he separated head after head after head from zombie bodies let me know the man had never stopped his training.

My claws dripped with blood as I sank them in one neck after another, figuring out that because most of the bodies were so badly decomposed all I really had to do was make sure I got my nails in under the hyoid bone and pull up. Heads rolled in succession.

We were almost at the end of the tunnel, which was now littered with bodies. The horde had definitely thinned out at this point and the ultrasonic vibrations were growing worse, setting my teeth on edge.

“Shit,” Luc murmured, and I knew immediately he referred to the group of about ten zombies that were coming from around the bend. He looked at me, his breathing heavy and his clothing ripped and torn, hanging on him by threads. The hair he’d had pulled back earlier was now hanging free and loose around his face, the rubber band lost in the struggle back there somewhere.

He stopped, hanging on to my elbow, and I’d die before I ever told him that the room was definitely spinning, my stomach was sour from all the smells around me, and I wasn’t too sure I could take another step without dumping Pestilence off into something.

“I think they’re the last big bunch we’ll have to wade through—you think you can hang on?” His eyes looked worried and I shrugged, giving him a thumbs-up with my good hand.

“I’ve got this, boss.”

His raised brow told me he knew a bluff when he saw it, but at least he gave me my dignity and didn’t mention it.

“One.” He started the count.

The shuffle-step of the undead was practically upon us now.

“Two.” I squeezed his fingers one final time before letting go.

We never got to count to three—the group was upon us and they were hungry. Luc wrapped his arms around one and violently shoved it into three more, using it as a wall of sorts to push them back. That act helped me pull one toward me, giving me the element of surprise so that I could quickly and efficiently dispatch it.

But though we’re strong, we’re not invincible. I stumbled when I took that man’s head off, landing on my butt in the very center of the killing ring. My body felt like a jagged block of ice, my vision was swimming, and I was definitely not doing good.

With a roar, Luc slapped at a body bearing down on me. His skin was a dusky shade of gray as his demon surged violently to the surface—it was frothing and angry and all I could do was sit and stare as he twisted head after head off. Finally there was just one blond-haired female left. She was dressed in a green blouse and tan slacks and wearing only one shoe, and half her head was caved in. Attached to the lapel of her shirt was a wilted red mum. Luc sank his blade into her neck. She never gasped or muttered a grunt as he sawed off her head. The sound was sickening, the sight even more so—a wet tear that squished putrid blood under his claw tips.