That doesn’t stop the crowd who have all clearly lost their fucking minds. I’m not about to chop them to bits, too messy, so instead I focus on cutting off the circulation enough to make them pass out.
It shouldn’t have any long-term effects. It’s just enough to cause every one of them to drop as I focus my attention on each of them.
The idiots don’t even back off once the first of them stumbles. Instead, they trample on each other’s fallen bodies, like stampeding beasts.
Silver’s plastered to the wall behind me and once every bastard is down, I turn to her and cup her cheek.
“Are you hurt?”
She gives a wobbly head shake. “No. You moved too fast for any of them to get to me.” Shaking her hands out, she stares down at them, perplexed. “It was nuts. Just when you don’t want your magic to glitch out and mine feels totally... dead. I figured my glamor was on the fritz, but that was something else.”
“How do you mean?” I ask.
She looks up at me, her eyes wide and filled with worry. “My magic. It was like something was blocking it. I tried drawing it out, but nothing happened and when they were using their magic, it didn’t stir at all. Normally, I can’t get it to stay down and dormant.”
“Last night might have drained you more than you realized,” I say, rubbing small circles on her back and pushing aside the soul-deep satisfaction that comforting her brings me. Now’s not the time to get all gooey over her, turning to me for comfort.
It’s hard not to. After all the shit I’ve put her through, our connection seems to still be there.
For that, I’m infinitely grateful.
It feels like I’m getting a second chance. And this one I won’t fuck up.
9
Roscoe
Idid a pretty good job fighting off the zombies last night, even though my magic doesn’t exactly lend itself to one-on-one combat. Too bad. If the zombies could have been distracted by a dragon flying through the air and scaring the shit out of them, then it would have been more my speed. Unfortunately, they weren’t interested in anything I was pulling out.
I made one bad call and let one of them get too close. Got stabbed right in the gut with their creepy bone hand. It wasnasty. Sliced right into my fleshy-weshy.
A gut wound like that is normally fatal. I knew as much, even as it was happening.
There was a hot, stabbing pain and then a rush of warm blood, and I knew I was fucked.
Especially once my brain went quiet.
Usually I can’t get myself to shut up, even inside my head. But last night, everything went kind of fuzzy and distant and I felt like I might just float away. As I was staunching the bleeding with snow and my body temperature dropped, my mind slooowed riiiight the waaay doown. It was weird as hell.
There were two things that made me hang on tight, tethering me to the feeling of cold at my back and the pain at my front. The sensations that kept me anchored in this world.
Silver was the first, obviously. The thought of how bummed she’d be without having me around filled my insides with this deep, aching grief. And I knew I’d do just about anything to stop her from hurting. Including not letting myself fade off into the night.
I also knew my death was gonna be something where I go out with real pizazz. No chance I’m dying alone next to a trash can on a dirty street.
