Page 55 of Which Witch Is Wicked?
"Such afuck," Aerin spat on the corpse—one of the halves anyhow—the limbs of which were still twitching. "They all are." Sweeping her free hand to encompass the undead pressed against the locked fence, a few managing to climb half-way up the gate, she addressed her sisters. "The souls of all these corpses are in hell. They're the damned, only reanimated, and they're after us because if they consume the organs that contain our powers, they'll be granted them.
And if they consume the rest of us, they'll take our souls."
"Ew," Claire grimaced, then paled. "That's why you were asking for
Tommy?"
"Yes, he's one of them, Claire."
"Well, yeah, he's a zomb...he used to be dead, but he didn't go to hell. Tommy was a good man. It's my fault he's dead."
"How do you know all this anyhow?" Moira asked Aerin, the chainsaw idling in her firm grip.
Three identical, suspicious russet eyebrows lifted in her direction.
"We have zombies to kill," Aerin said, and turned to the gate, brandishing her ax.
"Aerin," Tierra's voice held a note of dangerous warning, one she'd never heard before. "How do you know?"
"Okay, I asked Julian!" Aerin flung her arms out, forgetting for a moment that she was gesturing with a very sharp ax. "What?" she asked in defense against their stricken looks. "He's all immortal and smart and shit. I figured he could help us out."
"Goddess damn it, Aerin, keep it in your pants around the ones who are trying to annihilate us, would you?" Tierra wagged her shovel in Aerin's direction. "And I know I'm knocked up by Death, don't think I don't realize, but things are different now. I haven't seen him since... mostly."
"Point is," Moira cut in. "We can't trust a thing those Horsemen say."
"Julian wasn't lying," Aerin defended. "I would have known. I can feel when someone's lying, remember? He said that the blood of the martyrs is the fifth seal, and those who reap their vengeance and belong to their heavens will return there immediately. Those who are in hell are somehow being kept here. These zombies aredamned...literally."
They were robbed of the time to absorb that information as the latch on the gate finally sheared under the weight of a horde that had now swelled to forty. Their voices weren't groans and snarls and hisses like on TV, but threats and words and voiced desires that should have been unspeakable.
Inside the phone was ringing. In the distance, sirens blared.
All hell had broken loose.
Luckily for them, the dead did seem to move like they were constipated octogenarians. Constipated octogenarian evil cannibals controlled by necromancy and driven by the promise of Druid power and a second chance.
Or whatever.
"Oh man," Tierra fretted as she tightened her grip on her shovel, "we've warded this house up, down and sideways. I can't believe they can get through!"
"Must not work on someone who's already dead," Claire said, swiping at one of them with the wide side of her rake. It knocked down the teenager with the already missing arm, but in moments, he was struggling to his feet again.
"Well, shit." Tierra backed away from an approaching tiny Asian woman who screamed threats, or demands at her in Japanese. "Get back," she warned. "I don't want to hurt you."
The woman grabbed for Tierra's arm, her teeth opening to take a bite.
"Don't you dare!" Tierra wrenched her arm from the woman's grasp and jabbed the sharp head of the shovel into the woman's mouth.
Gnawing on the metal, the lady just held out her wrinkly arms and did her best to snatch at Tierra until the earth witch actually drove the shovel through her head, knocking the woman down and separating everything above her sinuses from the rest of her jaw.
"And stay down!" she yelled.
Problem was, like the decapitated hippie from the afternoon, they didn't stay down. It reminded Aerin of a Monty Python movie, except when she'd relieved a kid in a marine uniform of all his limbs, no blood had shot out of cheap pumps.
"Don't fight me," he'd cajoled. "I'll do more with your powers than you ever could. I know where the danger is. Give it up."
"Go back to your grave, uh, soldier," Aerin pointed. “That’s an order!” Maybe that would work.
He attacked her. And even when there was nothing left of him but a stump, his hands went all "Thing" from the Addams Family and finger-walked their way over to her, grasping at the hems of her slacks.
