Page 97 of Livewire Witch

“Nice one, Hanna.”

Rook has barely got the words out before there’s another groan, this time from behind us.

Oh fuck.

I spin around, just in time to see another one of the creatures staggering along the main street.

“Shit. Seems like he brought some friends.”

I internally roll my eyes at Roscoe’s glib reaction as we skid out onto the main street. There’s another zombie creature about ten feet away. Another is seemingly mesmerized by the lights and movements of the cars on the road that are moving only slightly faster than before.

My eyes scan up and down the road. It’s one of the main connecting roads that threads right through Arcanum and goes for miles. I can see at least another five of the zombies from here.

Fuck. How many of them are there?

As we stand for a moment, taking in the situation, there’s the crunch of metal as a car rear-ends another just up the street. Distracted driver, no doubt. Their attention caught by the snow and the dead guy wandering around the city. There’s then yelling as both occupants get out of their vehicles.

... which is followed by panicked shouts and a piercing shriek of pain as one of the creatures apparently reaches them.

“Do you think you can burn them without accidentally throwing fireballs at all of these cars?” Ro asks Hanna.

She tosses her head back and shoots him a smirk. “Sure thing, mage boy.”

The grin Ro shoots her in return is feral.

There’s a gleam to his eyes that can only be one thing.

He’s excited by this whole fucking horror show.

He touches the rune on his chest and summons Missy, while simultaneously touching a handful of others all over his body. They’re the ones for agility, strength and summoning our doubles.

Hanna and he both jump into action. I’m momentarily mesmerized by the sight of Hanna wielding a whip made entirely of fire, which she uses to lash out at the nearest creature.

“Take that, you creepy prick,” she yells. “You. Are. So. Fucking. Gross.”

The thing stumbles, its legs burning. As it smacks wetly against the snow, it then starts to crawl along the pavement using just its arms.

Fucking nightmare fodder, for sure.

“You might want to pull some lightning out of your ass or something,” Rook growls at me. “Do. Something.”

He’s right. Hanna is throwing fireballs and tossing fire around like it’s second nature, and Ro’s jaguar is leaping at the nearest monster, tearing into the thing’s rotting flesh. There’s a horrific ripping sound and the thing’s chest is a gaping cavity.

The two of them can clearly handle themselves in a situation like this. Too bad my magic doesn’t exactly lend itself to close combat.

I can’t do anything like what Rook has suggested.

Then I watch as he punches one of the creatures clean through its face. The decayed flesh and bone splinters and he lets out a roared, “Fuck!”

I can’t throw lightning or thunder around like a weapon. But I can draw on the same power I used to defend Silver against Simpson. I focus it into my body and blast the nearest creature with a fork of lightning when it gets too close to Ro. The lightning hits the thing straight in the chest. It goes flying, splatting onto the pavement where it lies stationary.

We’re not exactly inconspicuous here. And Roscoe is too busy to be able to summon an illusion to hide our activities. Which means that the people in the cars driving by get an eyeful.

The road becomes a chaotic mess of rubber-neckers and panicked drivers as people realize something is going on andtwig that they need to get the fuck away. But with the snow beginning to fall even harder, visibility sucks and the sounds of horns blaring and shouted curses fill the air.

It’s chaos. A fucking mess.

The zombie things trudge along blindly. Almost like they can’t sense anything other than movement.

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