Page 54 of Which Witch Is Wicked?
"I got you a rake." Tierra handed the garden tool to her.
Clare dubiously inspected it with her nose wrinkled. "Gee, thanks."
"Let's not try not to use magic,” Tierra said. "The last thing we want is to open another seal seeing as how this is the fallout from the last one." She looked around at the lovely gardens, anxiety wrinkling her delicate brow. "And keep them away from the garden, especially my peonies."
"Fuck your peonies, I'm keeping them from eating my face,” Claire said.
"Yeah," Aerin agreed. Then stopped to think. "But also, let's try to avoid breaking the new windows."
"Says the woman who blew them all out in the first place," Tierra muttered.
"Shut up."
Moira stepped to Tierra. "Do y’all think Tierra should be out here fighting, what with the baby and all?"
Tierra scowled and lifted her shovel. "Don't you dare try to make me sit in the house while you fight zombies."
The gate rattled as one of the denizens of the grave flung a leg over the spiked top, ignoring the fact that he impaled his taint as he began to scramble down the other side. A few of the ghoulish faces appeared almost alive, as though they hadn't been in the grave very long. Others barely had skin covering sunken skeletons, and ranged between several different stages of decomposition.
For zombies, they were all impeccably dressed. Nice suits, military dress uniforms, and colorful frocks that loved ones had buried them in.
"At least they ain't naked zombies," Moira observed.
"Yeah, becausethatwould be the weird part." Claire rolled her eyes.
Cat calls and dirty words were flung through the iron bars as the growing crowd frenzied with panic because one of them had finally gotten through.
The one staggering at them now.
Aerin knew she was running out of time. She had to tell her sisters the information she'd gleaned from Julian. "These zombies are not just after eating our brains or whatever, they're after our souls. Our powers. They need todie...like, again." With that, she rushed the interloper, knowing that hacking his head off wouldn't stop him, but it would slow him down long enough for them to make a plan.
"What do you mean, they're after our powers?" Tierra chased after her, brandishing her shovel. "How do you know that?"
Aerin ignored her question, lifting her ax and holding it behind her like a batter waiting for a pitch.
The zombie, a man in his mid-fifties with an accountant haircut, gave her a bone chilling smile, even when she swung her ax. He moved at the last moment, and the blade missed his neck, but embedded in his shoulder, nearly hacking his arm off.
"I don't need all my limbs to kill you, girl," he said, reaching for the sleeve of her blouse. "I've killed plenty of women. You should see who's buried in my basement."
"Pastor Bill?" The note of horror in Tierra's voice was almost drowned out by the rip of a chord and the roar of a small but powerful engine. "How?"
"Always had my eye on you, little Tierra de Moray." Disgusting excitement flashed in his dead, dead eyes. "Always wanted to take you to the basement, I was waiting for you to ripen to the correct age, but I died before you hit puberty."
"Die again, you chicken-fucker!” With a war cry that would have impressed a kamikaze, Moira leapt past them all, sinking her chainsaw into Pastor Bill's head. Chunks of flesh and carnage flew everywhere like a blender turned on high with its lid left off.
Pieces of Pastor Bill hit Aerin’s suit pants, and she fought the sour bile crawling up her throat.
Moira didn't stop until the man had been cut clean in half down the middle, his two parts melting to the ground.
"Well, if that doesn't stop them, then nothing will," Aerin said.
"Damn right." Moira revved the chainsaw engine. "I liked that more'n I should have."
Tierra made a strangled noise, and they whipped around.
"You going to be sick?" Claire asked. "Do you need to sit down?"
"No," Tierra looked at the pieces of zombie that was tossed at her feet. "Maybe. But I just can't believe this. Pastor Bill? He was always so nice to Aunt Justine and me. I can't believe he's a... that he did... that he's such a..."
