Page 88 of Death Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Not a full body engulfing blast, not the kind of strike that would have set the parking lot on fire. This was a surgical hit, a concentrated ribbon of flame that wrapped around Dagna’s robe and sank through the warding like it had teeth.

Dagna jerked back with a gasp, the first real crack in her smug mask. The smell that followed was wrong. Not burnt fabric. Not hair. Something older, something that made my stomach knot.

Dagna’s eyes flashed with rage. Drathar’s head turned toward Eve, interest transforming into irritation.

“Enough,” Drathar said, voice low.

Dagna’s hand snapped out, fingers curling, and the shield air shuddered. A ripple of darkness swarmed between us for half a heartbeat, just long enough to blur the edges of the parking lot.

When the ripple cleared, Dagna was already retreating, clutching her shoulder. Drathar moved with her, not hurried, but purposeful, as if he had decided the fun portion of the evening was complete.

Eve took one step after them, hellfire flaring again.

Faith grabbed her sleeve. “Let them go.”

Eve’s head snapped toward her, eyes bright with fury. “She is bleeding.”

Faith’s voice stayed hard. “Good. Let her bleed somewhere else. We have a hospital full of people who need us.”

The conflict played across Eve’s face. She wanted to pursue. She wanted victory. She wanted Dagna on the ground, not slipping into shadows with a demon escort.

But she also understood math.

The undead were still accumulating.

Drathar had proved he could reanimate what we killed by driving spirits into the shells. Every corpse we dropped without dealing with the spirit force risked becoming a poltergeist-powered weapon.

Eve’s shoulders rose and fell once.

Her hands closed into fists. “Fine.”

The parking lot filled with movement again. Undead, some barely intact, others dismembered and cracked, all of them jerking with that wrong dark energy. They did not stumble like traditional corpses. They surged like puppets in a storm.

Nishi’s hunters held a line near the hospital entrance, blades and batons keeping the undead from reaching the doors. Delia was still inside working through witnesses, and the last thing we needed was a second wave breaking into an already terrified building.

Whatever Dagna had built here was stubborn. It clung to the area like oil, refusing to be scrubbed away.

Nishi moved beside me, eyes scanning the undead mass. “We can keep burning them,” she said, voice clipped, “but is there another way? A better place to destroy them.”

I understood what she meant. Fire worked, but fire was messy. We had already dragged spirit-driven corpses through half the parking lot. Each time we broke them, the spirit force snapped hard and ugly. It felt like tearing fabric. It left residue. It risked leaving the kind of poltergeist problem that lingered.

Nishi did not want to create a town full of angry spirits.

Neither did I.

Cal’s wings shifted as he stepped closer, stone shoulders broad under the floodlights. The bond with the egg pulled at my ribs, steady and demanding, but my focus stayed on the undead.

Cal’s voice carried that deep resonance again. “The volcano is still the best option we have.”

Faith shot him a look. “You keep saying volcano like we are going to drop them into lava.”

Cal’s gaze flicked to her, patient despite the chaos. “It is dormant. It is a crater. The heat is contained, and the walls are steep. We can isolate them there until we find a permanent solution.”

Tegan’s face tightened. “Containment is good. But what about the spirits.”

Cal’s jaw set. “Spirits need anchors. A crater with constant heat and no easy exits is a poor anchor point. They will burn out faster. And if they do not, they are trapped.”

Nishi nodded slowly, calculating. “Better than the hospital parking lot.”