Breathing Fire

I swung my two-handed battle-axe in a circle, beheading two escaping necros at once. Yeah, I was showing off. Or rather, showing up Christian. He just gave me a disgruntled look. “Quit hogging,” he muttered, sending an explosive shotgun round into a running Necro as he spoke. It’s head exploded, spraying black liquid everywhere.

I sent Christian a warning look. “Don’t even think about shooting one of those bullets anywhere near me. Those things are a mess. I don’t want any Necro gunk on me.”

He snorted, eyeing me up and down. “You are already covered, you prissy b-”

“Show a little respect,” one of the non-druid Others who’d been following us, spoke. “These things used to be human.”

I turned my head slowly toward the new voice, glaring.

“Uh-oh,” Christian said in a loud whisper when he saw the look on my face.

“Respect? Have you fought these things before?” I asked the man, speaking slowly.

He was a small man with thick black glasses. His nearly gray hair put him past forty. He looked more than a little out of his element in his armored vest, carrying his handgun awkwardly. He glared right back at me, answering. “No, but anything that once had a soul should be shown respect on it’s passing.”

I raised my brows at him. “Is that so? Well, Mr.?”

“Allen.”

“Well, Allen, any soul these things possessed left them a long time ago. Me and Christian here have had more than a modest number of encounters with the necros. It’s been a few years since I’ve been on a necro raid, but let me tell you a little story about the last one we went on. It was at an orphanage the necros had ravaged in the middle of the night. They drank from the bodies of over sixty children. Killed all of the little ones in their beds. Not one of them rose from the dead. Not one. Do you know why that is, Allen?”

He swallowed hard. He looked a little sick as he shook his head.

“Because children don’t turn. In fact, many who’re bitten never turn. You have to make a choice to take another’s life to survive. And the taking of that blood creates another talking zombie. If you never feed, you never turn, you just die. The action that makes them a necro is murder, and most, given the choice, choose to abstain. So I don’t feel too guilty about not showing proper respect to the ones that choose to spread disease and death wherever they go. You wanna show respect, you take the safety off of that thing and take out some of the monsters that demolished an entire human city just weeks ago.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Death Spell

 “Watch this,” I told Christian as a growling necro came rushing from the building we’d just blown up. As he got closer, I stomped my left foot hard on the ground. A five inch blade switched out of the front of my navy running shoe. I kicked my foot straight up in the air, catching the creature dead-on with my blade in the bottom of his chin. I pushed forward hard with my right foot, taking him to the ground, his wind-pipe collapsing on impact. I pulled the blade out quickly, swiping my foot sideways and taking his head, just to be safe.

I clicked the blade back into place as I turned back to Christian. He grinned, nodding in approval. I grinned back.

“Badass,” one of the Other soldiers muttered.

“Those look like your normal shoes. You wear that thing all the time?” Christian asked, bending down to get a closer look.

“Naw, it’s a little trigger happy. I save these for special occasions. Having a blade pop out of my shoe in the middle of grocery shopping isn’t my idea of a good time.”

Christian laughed. “You get these from Caleb?”

I nodded.

“He’s so getting me a pair.”

I shrugged. “If you want to owe him a favor-” I stopped, going completely still.

I heard it again, the faintest voice calling out, “Help.” It was somehow separate from the sounds of battle, as though the voice was echoing from inside some small, quiet space.

I looked around at the crowd of soldiers. “Anyone hear that?” Several of them, including Christian, looked at me strangely.

“Hear what?” he asked.

I held up a finger for silence again. No one moved. “Hurry!” the voice prompted. It was more clear this time.

“No one heard that voice?” I asked them, glaring.

Several of them shook their heads at me.

“How can you guys not hear that?”

“They’re killing Dom!” the voice yelled this time, and the words got me moving.

“Follow me, you deaf bastards,” I told them as I broke into a run. I made a beeline through the compound, toward the loudest sounds of fighting. I knew Dom would be at the center of the battle.

I stopped when we came in sight of the fighting. We were on a grassy incline overlooking the carnage, and I searched frantically for Dom.

“They’re right in front of you! They’re casting his death spell!” the voice yelled, and I looked around, confused.

“Where are you?” I screamed at the voice.

“Don’t look for me, look for them. They’ve formed a circle. Find the circle!”

“Jillian, what’s up?” Christian asked me carefully. I didn’t address the fact that it was his, ‘I’m dealing with a crazy woman,’ careful tone. There wasn’t time.

“Everyone look for some kind of circle. It’s close, I think. Just cover every inch of this clearing.” Everyone started looking carefully at the grass. In the near-dark of the clearing, it was almost impossible to make out anything on the ground, so all of the soldiers without nocturnal vision quickly broke out flashlights.