“Your pessimism is, as always, unwanted, cousin.”
“Watch your left.”
Órlaith twisted in her saddle and slammed the spearpoint through the rotting head of a zombie about to claw her steed. She shifted position, putting space between them to better cover the area they’d been pushed to.
Around them, werecreatures savaged zombies before darting out of the way so soldiers could fire spelled bullets at the walking dead. The sheer number of zombies pouring out of Grand Central Station was enough to overwhelm an army, and they weren’t even that. What they did have was gods walking the earth once more, and Jono wondered how many survivors of this mess would vow to worship them. The cynical part of him wondered if maybe that was the whole point of this fight.
Despite Peklabog’s stomach-churning appearance, the god could put down more zombies than Spencer. Between him and Baba Yaga, they rerouted zombies into areas where magic users other than Spencer could take them down. Stragglers got pushed down the street into kill box areas, but those stragglers were turning into a wave at this point.
Jono’s people had pushed south, keeping on the street that ran parallel to the Park Avenue Viaduct. They fought to hold their ground with soldiers and police officers. Jono knew he couldn’t leave until Reed had the situation under control, but that might be wishful thinking at this point.
Especially when the hunters showed up.
Hidden by the fog and the noise of the battle already happening, Jono didn’t realize hunters had arrived until shots rang out from behind where they stood facing Grand Central. A couple of soldiers went down, and their fellow fighters had to hurriedly pitch their bodies outside the barriers.
Jono was saved from taking a bullet by virtue of being surrounded by zombies. He snarled and spun to face the new threat walking out of the fog. Jono tossed back his head and howled a warning that was taken up by other werecreatures. Soldiers and police officers shouted to each other as they worked to split their forces to deal with the heavily armed hunters.
Jono barreled his way forward through zombies, shaking off their grasping hands, to take cover near a barricade of cars. The police hunkered down in that questionable safety barely gave him a second glance, all their focus on the hunters taking indiscriminate aim at the battlefield.
Carmen landed lightly beside him, having dropped down from the viaduct to his right. She knelt beside him, shouldering an RPG with deft hands. Jono cocked his wolf head at her and eyed her weapon, noticing the lack of a reload.
“Reed is attempting to seal the entrances to Grand Central Station with something more permanent. Nadine is with him, so there is no defensive magic to spare this way,” Carmen said.
Then she stood in one swift motion, aimed, and fired the RPG in the direction of the hunters. The burn of explosives and magic stung Jono’s nose as the large grenade flew toward its target. The hunters had brought magic users with them, and he expected their shield to hold up against the attack.
It didn’t.
The grenade slammed right through the magical barrier, whatever spell adhered to the grenade forcing its way through to the other side. The crackling magic of the broken shield couldn’t be reset fast enough to block the attack. When it exploded, pieces of bodies went flying far enough they got lost in the zombies. Jono hoped they wouldn’t get resurrected.
Carmen ducked back down and tossed the now empty RPG over the barricade of abandoned cars. “Military-grade spell. Messy, but useful.”
Jono wasn’t about to complain, but a quick glance down the road showed the one explosion had merely dented the hunters’ forces. He growled, not sure how they were going to get out from where they were cornered between zombies and hunters. Peklabog and Baba Yaga had their hands full closer to Grand Central Station, and Jono wasn’t sure they’d leave their feast of the dead if he called for help.
Ashanti landed on a nearby car, crunching the hood before vaulting off it to reach Jono’s side. The mother of all vampires had bits of blood and rotten flesh sticking to her clothes, her hands messy from tearing through bodies alive and dead alike.
“This is unsustainable, cousin. We must leave,” Ashanti said flatly.
No, Jono thought, forcing Fenrir to listen.
“We cannot give up ground,” Fenrir said for Jono.
Ashanti’s lips curled over her iron fangs. “We lose it if we stay.”
As if to prove a point, bullets ripped through the air, forcing everyone to take cover. Jono breathed in a lungful of rot tinged with ozone, the dead coming closer despite the hail of bullets tearing through the advancing horde. Cutting through the slower-moving bones and decaying bodies were the elongated forms of drekavacs, their inhuman eyes locked on prey.
The soldiers and police were forced to split their focus between the zombies and the hunters, creating more crossfire that Jono’s people couldn’t fight through. Werecreatures were forced to the edge of the street, at risk of being boxed in. Fenrir clawed at his mind and soul, searching for complete control, expecting Jono to give it.
He would have if the world didn’t erupt in dragon fire.
The thunderous roar made his ears ring badly enough Jono had to dial down his hearing. The searing heat of dragon fire coming from above was hot enough to melt asphalt. The negative flashes of light that signaled demons fleeing dying hosts were almost impossible to see in the flame that burned through the magic to bodies behind shields. Jono looked up at the sky, expecting to see Reed, but the fire dragon whose beating wings forced the fog aside was a welcome, unexpected sight.
Wade landed on the Park Avenue Viaduct with a building-shaking arrival, his long, sinuous neck extending farther out as he belched more flame at the enemy. Magic couldn’t hold against dragon fire, and what spells the hunters had cast broke beneath the fire. Those who could flee down side streets did so, most likely running into the arms of Reed’s people to hopefully be cut down.
Jono howled a welcome as Wade folded his wings against his back, long tail lashing out behind him as he turned his focus to burning up the dead once the hunters on the street were eradicated. As Wade shifted position on the viaduct, Jono caught a glimpse of three people scrambling off his back. Jono’s heart skipped a beat, the relief flooding through him like a balm on his frayed nerves.
Jono wasted no time in using his preternatural strength to claw his way up the Park Avenue Viaduct, momentarily safe from bullets with Wade the bigger distraction. When he made it to the street level, Leon had already shifted to his wolf form, guarding Marek and Sage.
Marek had his arm wrapped protectively around Sage’s waist, hand low on her hip in deference of the gut wound she still suffered from. Sage was pale to the point of looking as if she would pass out, but the tight set to her mouth was a stubbornness Jono knew well. Both were soaked to the bone from flying through the reactionary storm.
