Page 28 of Trick Me
No. I shove myself to stand steady despite the injuries, and lunge.
Except Cain barrels toward me from the side in the same moment. I don’t have time to think, only move. I pivot, blade flashing, too late to dodge. His weight slams into me, claws digging in, but I twist with the impact, drive my blade up hard against his ribs.
Warm blood sprays my hand. He lets out a sharp,strangled yelp and stumbles back, pawing at the wound.
I don’t wait.
I whip around, Tobias looming over Erynn.
My insides snap, when suddenly, I stumble on my steps.Wait, is that me?
The ground trembles once more…
And this time, it’s not rage.
“Uh, Ash?” Mikael’s voice cuts through the chaos, stripped of all humor. “What was that? Even I felt it.”
I don’t answer. I’m already moving, pushing through the quaking earth, through the pounding in my skull. Nothing matters but her.
Tobias yanks Erynn up by the hair.
“After I’m done with you, maybe I’ll keep you. Make you watch while we hunt down?—”
I slam into him, shoulder to his side. He stumbles, snarling, releasing Erynn. I don’t let him recover. I drive my knee into his back. Bone pops. He crumples with a howl.
I swing my fist down, cracking it against the back of his skull. He groans, collapsing flat. Not dead. Not yet. But he’ll stay down.
I reach for her. She’s on the ground, arms wrapped around herself, trembling. “Ash” is the only word that comes out.
“I’ve got you. Don’t worry,” I reassure her.
The world shifts beneath us once more. A lowgroan rises again from the earth itself, louder this time, ancient and unnatural.
She stares up at me, eyes wide, pupils blown, whispering, “Ash… I think something bad is about to happen.”
I don’t have a response.
Then Cain is on me again, a blur of rage and blood, and I spin just in time to meet him, my blade raised. We clash and fall to the ground, him still in wolf form.
Suddenly, I catch movement from the corner of my eye.
Three figures claw their way from the earth like nightmares given form.
The first is mostly skeletal, patches of mummified flesh clinging to yellowed bones, wearing the rotted remains of what might have been a suit from decades past. Its jaw hangs loose, connected by strips of dried sinew, and when it moves, bones click and scrape like broken wind chimes.
The second has more flesh but maybe wishes it didn’t as skin slides off in gray-green sheets, revealing muscle that’s turned to jelly, eyes that have liquefied and run down its cheeks like tears of rot. It wears a dress that might have once been white, now stained with every fluid a body can produce as it decomposes.
Even Cain has paused, attention locked on the terror before us.
The third is the worst because it’s the freshestcorpse, maybe dead only weeks, skin purplish black and split at the seams, revealing writhing masses of… things inside.
Cain whimpers, scrambling back on all fours in his human form now.
“It’s you, Ash!” Erynn shouts. “Ash, you called them! Your anger, your need for help… You need to control the power.”
“Zombies?” Mikael asks. “You raised fucking zombies. That’s new. Also terrifying. I’m dead, and even I’m creeped out.”
“I sure as fuck didn’t mean to!” I climb to my feet as the corpses shuffle forward, their movements too fast for things that dead, joints bending in ways that shouldn’t be possible.
