Page 86 of Death Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Faith saw it and snarled. “No.”

She took two steps forward, aiming at Dagna.

Nishi grabbed her shoulder. “Faith. Focus.”

Faith shook her off. “They are leaving.”

“And we are drowning,” Nishi snapped back. “If we chase them now, the hospital falls.”

Faith’s jaw clenched, fury vibrating in her frame.

Cal’s voice cut in, loud over the chaos. “We do not need to destroy them here.”

Everyone looked at him, even Eve, even Greyson.

Cal gestured toward the burning pile of ash, then to the larger wave still coming. “We can take them.”

Faith blinked. “Take them where?”

Cal’s stone eyes gleamed. “The volcano crater in the pocket realm. It can act as containment until we find a permanent solution.”

For a beat, my brain tried to process that while undead rushed us.

Then it clicked.

Scorchwood’s pocket realm. A contained, isolated environment with land that did not belong to the mundane world.

A crater there would not risk a hospital fire.

It would not risk mundanes.

It would not risk oxygen tanks and elderly patients, and nurses who did not deserve this.

Greyson’s expression sharpened. “I can manufacture a portal to Scorchwood. Cal will have to take them from there to the volcano. I can’t go through the shield, but I can butt up against it.”

Tegan nodded quickly. “Do it. We corral them, push them through.”

Faith’s mouth tightened. “We are making a zombie landfill in a volcano.”

Eve’s lips twitched, grim humor flickering. “It is the most Ravenholde solution possible.”

Cal extended one wing, sweeping it outward like a barrier. “Greyson. Gate. Now.”

Greyson pulled a small rune plate from his pocket, slapped it onto the asphalt, and pressed his palm down. The runes flared bright, then spread into a circle of light.

The air above it shimmered.

Heat rolled out, dry and fierce, carrying a scent like sulfur and scorched stone.

A portal opened, round and wide, revealing a glimpse of a vast crater beyond, its edges jagged, its depths glowing with contained fire.

For a second, it was almost beautiful.

Then an undead lunged at the portal, and the spell was ruined in my mind by the image of a spirit puppet being tossed into a lava pit.

Faith shouted, “Line them up.”

Nishi’s hunters moved in, blades flashing, not killing, but redirecting, herding the undead toward the gate like livestock that wanted to bite.