by Stacey Jay
Okay, maybe not that hot, but I could feel the flames scorching my face. Both Jess and Beth-who had been closer to the cauldron- were screaming bloody murder. Beth fell to the ground and Jess flung herself on top of her girlfriend, acting as a human shield, but I didn't let myself feel sorry for them. Instead, I poured even more power into the spell, until the flames rose at least six feet in the air. My bones buzzed with the force of the magic I was working, but I didn't tire out nearly as quickly as usual.
Guess fear of certain death had ramped up my personal mojo. Thank. God.
I turned to Monica, knowing this was our only chance. "Come on, follow me!" I stood up and began hopping toward the front door. Just a few more hops and-
"Ahhh!" My screams replaced Monica and Beth's as I fell through a rotten place in the floor and my fire abruptly went out.
Thankfully, I'd only fallen a few feet. I could still find a way to free myself if I could just-
"That's it! Stuff the sock in her mouth," Jess yelled.
Seconds later Beth had ahold of my nose and was cramming the sweat sock into my mouth, shoving it so deep I started to gag. It was only with a great degree of effort that I managed to stop myself from puking. Call me crazy, but I had a feeling Jess and Beth would let me choke on my own vomit before they gave me another chance to talk.
"I thought they couldn't work spells on living people," Beth said, turning back to Jess with an accusing glare, showing me the left side of her face, which looked painfully red. At least I'd left my mark. "It was the dead cat in the pot." Jess cursed and stamped her foot on the ground, looking like a five-year-old throwing a tantrum. "Now I have no idea how many of them we'll get out of their graves. The ingredients weren't supposed to be set on fire until the moon was dark."
"What if it's not enough, Jess? This is the only lunar eclipse this year. I can't wait until next year," Beth said, her face scrunching as she prepared to have a come-apart. Man, these two were the whiniest couple ever. "We'll never be able to stage something big enough, we'll never get out of this town, we'll never be together, and-"
"Don't worry." Jess pulled it together a little bit, pasting a smile on her face. "If worse comes to worst, we can book it over to Mount Hope and raise a few more."
"No way, I don't want any zombie bite marks on my skin. That could scar. And scars are like… forever." Ah, Beth, vain as ever, her mind on the future of her flawless skin even in the midst of murder. "The Settlers could turn those zombies back on us since they're not as old as the Indians."
"The Indians can still be turned on us, but they won't be," Jess said, calmly explaining the situation to her partner of very little brain. "They're corpses, after all, the same as any other zombie."
"Jess! There are more than three hundred bodies under here. If the spell still raises them all, we'll be-"
"We'll be fine."
"But the blood we stole from the blood drive is almost gone." Beth wrung her hands.
Aha, so that was how they'd been getting their RCs back in the ground without a bunch of bite marks. They'd donated blood and then shoplifted it for their own nefarious purposes, letting the zombies take a sip whenever they came running back to their Makers. One small needle puncture versus a bunch of festering zombie bites-it made sense.
"We're not going to need it. We don't have to worry about Settlers anymore. These two are going to be dead, and there's no way Ethan will be able to handle all those zombies by himself."
So Jess didn't know there were other Settlers in town besides me, Ethan, and Monica. Maybe there was still a chance to stop this craziness before anyone got hurt. Well, anyone except me and Monica. At this point, it looked like we were pretty much done for.
"We'll be halfway to Louisiana by the time they figure out how to get rid of the corpses. We'll be totally safe," Jess said. "Their spell doesn't work at that kind of distance."
How did she know so much about Settlers? Someone other than me had been telling tales out of class. But who? Monica wouldn't have told Jess or Beth anything. She wasn't weak enough to need support from her non-supernatural friends in order to continue on her Settler path.
"So don't worry. Okay?"
"Okay." Beth sniffed and then grabbed Monica-who had hopped in the opposite direction from the one I'd indicated, of course -and pulled her back to where I was now sitting and heaving my legs back above the floor.
I tried to wiggle away, but Beth still managed to get Monica and me tied together in a less than a minute. Now we were bound together, back to back on the mouse turd-littered church floor, stuck here to wait for the zombies I'd unintentionally caused to rise a good thirty minutes early. Way to go, Megan.
"There, all ready to go." Beth crossed back to give Jess a hug. "Speaking of going, I'd better jet down to the gym and get ready to spill some blood."
"Awesome. I'll call you to give you the cue when the zombies are done with these two," Jess said, a smile on her face once more. "I'd better hurry and get in position too. I want to make sure I have time to turn the video camera on."
"Take care of you," Beth said.
"Take care of you." Jess leaned up to give her a quick kiss before Beth ran for the other door-the one they'd been using because the floorboards near the front of the church were rotten, duh, Megan- and Jess made for a rope hanging near the cauldron.
In seconds, she had scrambled up to the ceiling and crawled out onto one of the rafters, where she began to arrange a tiny video camera. Not only was she going to watch us being eaten alive, she was going to record it so she could relive the magic again and again.
In that second, I realized I hated Jess. I couldn't think of anyone I had loathed more in my entire life-even the evil minion presently shoving her back into mine.
"Whhmm?" I asked, hoping she understood gagged Megan as well as I understood gagged Monica.
"Pmm yrr fmm imnu frrr."
"Whhm?"
"Yr fmm imnu m frr!" Her butt lifted an inch or two off the ground before dropping back to the floor. Floor! Push my feet into the floor.
If we both pushed our feet into the floor and pressed our backs together, we might be able to stand up. Whether we'd be able to get out of here in time with both of our ankles tied together and our upper bodies connected by Beth's rope was another question, but we had to try. Anything was better than sitting here waiting to be eaten.
"Yr rree?" Monica asked.
Hell, yes, I was ready.
"Un-hnn." I bent my knees.
"Un, mmu, free," Monica grunted, and on three we both dug our heels into the church floor. Slowly, inch by torturous inch, we made it to a squatting position before falling back to the ground.
"You two might as well give it up. The zombies are already on their way. The burial ground is right beneath us. A few hundred skeletons should be clawing their way to the surface as we speak," Jess said, her voice echoing eerily through the rafters. "They're nearly three hundred years old, so they're going to be really hungry."
God, no. We were too close; we didn't have a chance.
"Whh rr uu rrng rs?" I screamed around my gag, tears of frustration in my eyes.
"I think we covered the 'why' pretty well, Megan." Jess obviously understood gagged Megan too. "I actually figured you'd prefer this. I thought about killing your mom to really make the punishment fit the crime but then decided it would be more fair to take you out."
Just when I thought I couldn't hate her any more.
She'd thought about killing my mom? My mom! My mom, who had treated her like another daughter? Who had been there the day she started her period to give her hugs and take her to buy pads so Jess wouldn't have to tell Clara? Who had brought us snacks and driven us to the mall and summer camp and a zillion other places over the years and even taken us for a spa day for Jess's fifteenth birthday?
How dare Jess even think about hurting someone who had gone above and beyond to care about her, even love her?
Monica continued to shove against my back, frantically
trying to stand up, but all I could think about was what an ungrateful, horrible, evil person I had once called my best friend. Talk about killing me all you want, but apparently, bringing my family into the picture was enough to make me completely lose it. Big-time.
"Mmmph!" Monica screamed as I leaned to the right, tipping us both over onto the ground.
I ignored her, staying totally concentrated on slamming my cheek into the floor. If I could just get the freaking sock out of my mouth, I'd torch whatever was left of that cat, make it burn so high Jess's bleached blond hair would light up like straw drenched in gasoline. I had the power, and I was no longer afraid to use it.
"Give it up, Megan," Jess said. "If you get the gag out of your mouth, I'll work a spell to call more blood from the cut on your neck. Not enough to kill you, of course, just enough to make the zombies go crazy."
Go ahead and try it, witch. We'll see how strong your magic really is.
I moved faster, scraping my cheek along the floor until it stung even as I shoved my tongue against the sock from the inside. I wasn't scared of Jess anymore.
The rage burning through my veins made me positive I could take out Jess and however many zombies she invited to the party if I could just- slam, scrape -get- shove, shove -the-freaking gag- slam -out-of- scrape -my- shove, shove, shove -mouth.
Yes! "Exuro!" I screamed the command at the same instant Jess screamed the words to a spell. I had just enough time to realize she'd been bluffing about her ability to summon blood before all hell broke loose.
Monica started thrashing, spinning us in a circle on the ground, while up in the rafters Jess screamed like her eyes were being gouged out. Not about to show my ex-best friend mercy, I poured even more power into the flame I could feel burning behind me, willing it to climb higher and higher, to rise and feed and destroy.
I was so concentrated on the exuro spell that I didn't notice the crashing sounds at first. It was only when the floor started to vibrate and first one skeletal fist and then another burst through the rotted boards that I realized we had company. I heard them before I could see them. The unmistakable grunts and groans of the undead filled the room, making Monica scream around her gag as they closed in on where we lay.
"Exuro!" I invoked the flame command on the first red-eyed zombies that crawled through the hole I'd made when I fell through the floor.
"Reverto!" I screamed the command into the face of the first zombie to fall on top of me with teeth bared. No matter that it had no internal organs and therefore no stomach to put my tasty human flesh inside; it was still going in for the kill.
The zombie spun away, searching for either Jess or Beth-I had no clue which it'd hunt down since they'd concocted the spell together-as I thanked God for Kitty. Without Kitty's afternoon of coaching, I wouldn't have lived this long.
Summers at Camp Junior Enforcer were looking like a better idea all the time. Like Dad said, I'd never be normal, but I could be properly prepared to fight for as much normalcy as possible. And to defend innocent people who deserved my protection.
"Reverto!" I lashed out with my legs, kicking at the zombie headed for Monica, bringing it down to our level before invoking the command again. Soon both it and the two RCs behind it were reeling around and shuffling away. We were safe.
But not for long, I realized, as I got my first clear look across the room.
Looked like Jess shouldn't have worried about lighting the ingredients on fire too early. There were at least sixty zombies already in the church, and more were still bursting through the floor and trudging in the door, relentlessly shambling toward me and Monica.
There was no way I'd be able to get rid of them all, not without Monica's help or my arms free at the very freaking least.
God! If I could just find a way out of the-
"Monica, I can't believe-" As if summoned by my deep, persistent need, strong hands started tearing at the ropes binding me and Monica together. "Megan? What the hell are you doing here?"
Ethan! I'd never been so happy to see anyone in my entire life. Especially considering how horrified he sounded to see me here. Maybe he did feel the same way I felt about him after all! Maybe the thing with Monica had all been a horrible mistake, maybe-
"Untie us first, ask questions later," Monica, whose mouth was apparently now sock free, snapped. "We're all about to die, in case you hadn't noticed."
Maybe Monica was right and I needed to maintain my focus on the undead.
"Exuro! Exuro!" As Ethan finished untying us, he and I both cast, and more zombies burst into flames-which was the good news. The bad news was that I was forced to put out the flame burning in the cauldron to conserve energy, which gave Jess the psychotic another chance to cast her spell.
"Ohmygod!" Monica screamed as blood gushed from the wound at my jaw.
So much for bluffing. Looked like Jess had more power than I'd anticipated.
"Megan? What's happening?" Ethan asked, pressing the sleeve of his sweatshirt against my face, applying pressure to the cut.
"Up there in the rafters. It's Jess; she and Beth are witches-" Jess shouted again. Ethan pulled me close and spun us toward the corner of the room, dodging the spell. We got out of the way just in time. Unfortunately, Monica wasn't so lucky.
"Ahh!" Monica screamed and clenched one hand around her shoulder. From the blood seeping through her fingers, it was obvious she'd been hit.
Though probably not too badly since she was running for the door seconds later.
"Parsons, don't you dare-" Ethan cursed as Monica disappeared.
Of course the floor held for that skinny little turd while I had fallen through. As if I needed further evidence that life wasn't fair.
"Go, Megan. Run," Ethan said, pulling me across the room, dodging zombies as we went. "I'll stay and make sure Jess doesn't-"
"No way, I'm not leaving you here."
"Settlers' Affairs are on the way," he said. "I'll use the exuro command until I run out of power. I only have to hold them off for ten, fifteen minutes until-"
"Reverto!" I grand jetй kicked the first zombie to make it through the naming corpses. It stumbled backward before turning around. "You only need ten minutes to get killed."
"How did you do that? The reverto spell shouldn't work unless-"
"I've been training with some Enforcement people," I said, feeling pretty proud even though I did my best to make it sound like no big deal.
"When was this?"
"While you were busy making out with Monica." Why did my mouth have to go there? This was so not the time or place. "Reverto! Reverto!"
The zombie skeletons were getting creative, swarming across the floor on all fours, leaping over each other in their haste to get to our yummy flesh. "Reverto!" The command was still working, but I was feeling the drain on my power from working the reverto and exuro commands at the same time. The buzzing in my bones had turned into a full-body tremble. I couldn't maintain this level of power much longer. If Settlers' Affairs didn't get here soon, Ethan and I might still end up zombie food.
Unless we risked getting zapped with some wicked magic and made a run for the door…
"Reverto! Reverto!" Two more down and there was a little break in the RC action. "Maybe we should both make a run for it."
"But Monica could be waiting outside."
"Monica? But Monica isn't in on this."
"She definitely raised the corpse that attacked her at the cemetery that night," he said, looking pissed. "It took a few days of searching, but I finally found the evidence in her room. She had the spell to raise the dead written in a journal and some extra dolls with long brown hair. I was on my way to headquarters to turn in the evidence when I got your text."
Searching? Evidence? Suddenly, the pieces all fell into place. Ethan had been pretending to date Monica to get close enough to her to find out if she was the one who had it in for me! He must have thought her "attack" as suspicious as I did; hence the sudden shift in his behavior since that nig
ht. It wasn't a confession of undying love, but it certainly meant he cared.
Too bad there wasn't more time to celebrate.
"Exuro!" Gathering my strength, I set a few new zombies aflame while relaxing the amount of power I was funneling toward the corpses already burning out on the floor. My breath was coming heavier by the time I turned back to Ethan, but I already felt a little better without so many zombies burning at the same time. "She might have raised that corpse, but I'm pretty sure she had nothing to do with the rest of this." I quickly gave Ethan the lowdown on Jess and Beth and their motives and plans for the rest of the evening.
"And you've been using the reverto spell?" he asked, disbelief in his tone. "When you knew Beth was already headed down to the dance?"
"Well, yeah," I said, stomach sinking. "I didn't really have much of a choice, and I wasn't sure which of them the RCs would go for. I was just trying-"
"Now we've got to get out of here. If we don't get to those zombies in time, we're going to have a Class Three Containment crisis-not to mention a bunch of dead high school kids." He darted to the left, setting another zombie on fire as he moved, then stopped to scan the rafters. "Looks like your friend made a run for it."
"Okay, but what-"
"Come on." Ethan grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the door before I could finish my sentence. "Borrow my power and torch as many of them as you can. The fewer following us down to the school the better."
We charged into the center of the swarming undead, groaning, hungry skeletons closing in all around us.
I let down the last of my shields and pulled Ethan's power into my body, waiting until I felt like I was about to burst before I spoke the command. "Exuro!"
Ethan caught me when the force of the backlash threatened to knock me off my feet, then pushed me down to the ground as everything around us exploded into flame. Soon I was facedown on floor, tucked under Ethan's body while unearthly shrieks filled the air. Even with another person between me and the heat, I still felt like a lobster thrown into a pot of boiling water. I tried to will the flames to die down a bit without much effect. Somewhere along the line, I'd lost control of the blazes I'd started.