Page 121 of Elora and the Crow

“She’s raised the dead,” Elora said, her voice tight with fear.

“Shit, she can do that?”

“Apparently.”

“Where the fuck did they come from?” Jonah asked.

“She magicked them from a graveyard,” Elora said.

“Fuck me,” Jonah groaned.

“The protection spell won’t help against the undead,” Elora said. “Nor will the barrier spell. They can be brought to life with magic, but you can’t control them or stop them with magic.”

“Awesome,” Jonah said as he pulled the gun from the holster at his hip. “I assume regular zombie rules apply? Shot to the head to kill them?”

“I guess so,” Elora said before wincing. Malencia was staring intently at them, her lips moving, but the wind carried the sound away before it reached them.

“You okay, baby?”

“Yeah, she’s trying to break the barrier spell,” Elora’s hands glowed a brighter blue, and she spoke another incantation as Jonah studied the shambling zombies.

He aimed and fired at each zombie with quick and graceful movements. Before the bullets could find their mark, Malencia waved her hand, and the bullets stopped a few feet from the undead, spinning in the air before dropping to the ground.

“Fuck me,” Jonah muttered as the zombies shuffled through the snow. They were less than two feet from them now, and Jonah grimaced when one of them, a woman with a rotting face, opened her mouth, and a flood of dead beetles poured out.

“I’ll distract Malencia while you kill the undead,” Elora said.

“Right,” he said, raising the gun again.

“I love you,” Elora said.

“I love you, too,” he said.

Elora ran toward Malencia, her boots kicking up snow, her voice echoing in the cold air as she cast the spell. He heard Malencia scream and immediately fired his gun at the closest zombie. Its head exploded with a wet squelch, and brains splattered across the face of the one behind it.

He shot another zombie, grinning wildly when it went down in an explosion of rotting flesh and blood.

“Fuck, yeah!” Jonah fired the gun again. At the dry click, he shouted, “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

Before he could even try to clear the jam, a dead man wearing a moldy suit and the flesh peeling from his fingertips grabbed his jacket and pulled him forward.

Jonah dropped the gun and pushed against the dead man with one hand while he reached for the knife in his jacket. He pulled it free and sliced off the zombie’s hand before stumbling back. The zombie pushed forward relentlessly, his mouth stretching open to reveal blackened teeth.

With a harsh grunt, Jonah thrust the knife into the dead man’s forehead. It sank into the hilt, and the zombie immediately dropped, dragging Jonah to the ground with it.

A fourth zombie, a fat man with his skull poking through his skin and a bolo tie embedded in the fatty flesh of his throat, dropped on him. Jonah held the fat man back desperately with one hand while he tried to yank the knife from the dead zombie’s skull. The dead man on top of him made a hellish yowl of hunger and lunged forward, his teeth snapping shut only inches from Jonah’s nose. Jonah shoved him back, one hand still scrabbling for the knife. From the corner of his eye, Jonah could see the final two zombies wandering toward Caleb, who still hung suspended in the air beside a large pine tree.

“Caleb!” Jonah shouted. “No!” He tried to heave the zombie off him, panic rushing through him when he couldn’t budge the fat man. Christ, he’d never really given much thought to the term dead weight until now.

“Caleb!” he shouted again as one of the zombies reached for his brother. A branch from the pine tree shot forward and impaled the zombie through her forehead, exiting the back of her skull in a burst of rotting flesh and brain matter. Her groping hands fell to her side, and she slumped forward, hanging from the branch. The other zombie brushed past her and eagerly reached for Caleb.

A second tree branch circled the zombie, pinning his arms to his sides before slamming him back against the tree. Cece, her face pale but determined, joined Caleb, her hands glowing green. More tree branches wrapped around the zombie from neck to feet, squeezing mercilessly until the zombie’s body exploded, sending chunks of flesh and organs through the cold air.

The zombie’s head fell into the snow at Cece’s feet, his jaw opening and closing as he tried to bite her foot.

The dead man on Jonah leaned closer as Jonah’s arms shook from exertion. His mouth yawned open, and the smell of rot and decay made Jonah’s stomach lurch and heave.

The crushing weight disappeared when the zombie was yanked off of him and tossed to the ground. Ronin pressed one foot on the snarling zombie’s chest and shot him point-blank in the head. The zombie’s head burst apart, and Jonah grunted in disgust when blood and brains splattered across his face.

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