Page 35 of Death Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

A shout rose from the crowd. Someone pushed forward against the police line, waving their phone.

“Are you seeing this? This is real. They’re eating people.”

Victor’s shadow stretched across the pavement, darker than it should have been. It curled near the man’s feet like a warning.

The man stepped back.

Victor didn’t move. He didn’t need to. He simply looked like a man who could ruin your day with paperwork and darkness.

“Salima,” Faith snapped, pulling my attention back. “Left.”

I turned.

Two undead had slipped around a parked truck, sprinting straight toward a cluster of mundanes that had spilled out of a boutique doorway. The mundanes were trapped between curiosity and terror, bodies too close together. A perfect feeding ground.

I lifted my hands, forced power through my veins, and shoved.

The nearest corpse slammed into the truck’s side with a crunch. The second one ducked.

Ducked.

It actually ducked my push by shifting its weight, as if it had learned the shape of my magic.

My skin went cold.

Faith fired twice, the shots clean. The corpse stumbled, then kept moving, jaw snapping, head twisting as if it could smell her.

Nishi lunged past me, blade slicing upward. She didn’t aim for the body. She aimed for the joint.

The corpse’s knee gave out. It dropped.

Faith finished it with a head shot.

“Thanks,” I said.

Nishi immediately turned back to her hunters. “Sweep. Keep them out of the crowd.”

The undead I’d shoved against the truck twitched, started to rise.

Spencer seized it by the neck and smashed it down again, hard enough to crack its skull against the curb. His eyes flashed red, hunger and disgust at war across his face.

“Stay down,” he growled.

It didn’t.

Spencer swore, then snapped its neck with a fast twist.

The body still clawed at the pavement.

Spencer looked at the corpse as if it had personally insulted him.

“That’s not how that works,” he muttered.

Tegan stepped in, relic in her hand. The etched surface caught light, symbols pulsing. She pressed it toward the corpse and spoke a word under her breath.

The air shimmered.

The corpse’s motion slowed, like an invisible hand had pressed it into place.