Chapter 2
TWO
DAKOTA
A woman topples over the holy water bucket, quenching the flames, while the coughing man tears into the arm of a woman with inhuman ferocity.
More screams. Bodies shoving each other.
What the fuck is happening?
Someone flails, grabbing a flower arrangement that doesn’t hold. It crashes to the floor, white petals scattering like snow.
“Move!” Julien’s got one arm around Amelia, supporting her weight as she sways on her feet.
My father grabs my mother’s arm as she’s shell-shocked. “Carmen, move!” He hauls her toward the side hallway, gesturing Julien to follow.
“Dios mío!” Rosa’s eyes roll back as her body crumples.
I catch her before she hits the ground. Her small frame is surprisingly heavy against me, the weight of her body threatening to drag us both down.
Shit.
Amelia struggles against Julien’s grip. “Dakota!”
His eyes lock with mine over my sister’s head.
“Cameron!” I grip Rosa tighter, my wedding dress tangling around my legs as I struggle to keep us upright. “Julien, get my sister out of here. I’ll be right behind you.”
His jaw works like he’s grinding his teeth to dust. “I don’t take orders from—”
“This isn’t about whatever fucked-up history our families have.” My voice comes out sharper than I intended. “You care about her, right? So take her and go. Cameron and I handle your grandmother.”
Something flickers across his face—surprise, maybe, at hearing perfect, polite Dakota Levine say ‘fucked-up.’ Or maybe it’s the raw desperation in my voice.
Julien makes a sound like a curse cut short. “You’d better stay alive.” He practically lifts Amelia off her feet, carrying her toward the back exit.
“Abuela!” Cameron grabs his grandmother, hauling her into his arms just as a body slams into me.
I stumble, catching myself on the edge of the altar.
Rosa resists her grandson, her eyes finding mine. “We can’t leave her!”
“Sienna?” Cameron’s head whips around, scanning the churning crowd. “Where’s—”
“Not her!” Rosa tries to wrench free, pointing at me. “Dakota!”
“Cam!” Sienna’s trapped on the other side of the central aisle, fighting against the flow of panicked guests. “Get your grandmother out! I’ll find my way!”
“Sienna!” Desperation floods his face.
Sienna shoves a man blocking her path. “I’ll meet you at the back!”
Cameron hesitates, torn between the woman he loves and his grandmother, before shouldering through the crowd toward where Julien disappeared.
Rosa stretches her arm back toward me, fingers grasping at air. “Mija!”
I try to follow, but hands seize my shoulders from behind. The reverend spins me around, directly into the path of a bloody man who’s finished with his previous victim and lurches toward fresh prey.
Me.
“Take her!” the reverend screams. “Please take her!”
What? I stare at him in disbelief. A man of God throwing me to the wolves to save his own skin?
I try to twist away, the reverend’s fingers digging into my shoulders as he tries to keep me between himself and death.
Its eyes meet mine. Mr. Henderson, my mother’s tennis partner’s husband, lunges at me, his mouth slick with blood, eyes vacant yet hungry.
“Get off me!” I slam my elbow back into the reverend’s ribs.
He grunts, grip loosening just enough for me to break free. I dodge sideways, and the thing stumbles past me straight toward the reverend.
“No! Please!” The reverend scrambles backward. “Take her!”
The thing pivots and lurches back toward me, its movements jerky but fast. Blood drips from its chin, spattering the floor between us.
Shit.
I back away, scanning for anything, really anything, I can use. My hand closes around something cold and metal on the altar table. A ceremonial knife, its hilt encrusted with ornamental gems.
The thing lunges. I slash wildly, the blade glancing off its shoulder without even cutting the fabric of its suit.
“It’s decorative!” The reverend huddles behind the altar. “That’s not a real knife! It’s ceremonial, for symbolic cutting of—”
“Super fucking helpful!” I drop the useless weapon, dodging another lunge that sends me crashing into a row of prayer candles.
The man’s hand shoots out, grabbing my veil, and I feel the pins tear from my hair.
“The crucifix!” the priest shouts. “Behind you!”
I wrench the veil off, letting it tear away, and scramble for the crucifix. It’s heavier than it looks, the metal cold against my palms. I rip it free just as the thing closes in, its fetid breath hot on my face.
My arms shake with the effort of keeping it at bay, its teeth snapping inches from my face.
Is this really how I die? In a wedding dress I never wanted. Never having lived?
Fuck that.
I drive the pointed base into his eye with all my strength.
The crucifix pierces in with a sickening squelch. He screams—another sound no human throat should make—and thrashes. Dark fluid spurts around the metal as I push harder, driving it deeper.
His hands claw at my arms, nails raking bloody furrows in my skin. I grit my teeth, ignoring the pain, and twist the crucifix.
Please.
The body goes rigid, then limp.
I let the thing crumple to the floor, the crucifix still protruding from its ruined eye socket.
Blood. His blood—
My hands shake.
I—Did I just—
A hysterical giggle comes to my lips.
I just killed somebody?
My hands shake uncontrollably, blood cooling against my skin. Twenty minutes ago, I was walking down the aisle toward a marriage I didn’t want, playing the perfect daughter. Now I’ve driven a crucifix through someone’s eye. The disconnect is so complete my mind can’t bridge it.
I wipe blood from my face with the back of my hand, smearing it instead of clearing it. My wedding dress is shredded, stained with whatever just tried to hurt me.
I scan the space, heart hammering while everything around me seems to slow down.
The church has mostly emptied, pockets of struggle still happening near the exits.
Bodies litter the aisle. Some move. Some don’t.
Across the room, Sienna grapples with an older man in a gray suit.
Her blonde hair whips around as she smashes her elbow into his face, but he doesn’t slow down.
He grabs her arm, yanking her toward his snapping jaws, and she strains to hold him back, her face twisted with effort.
This isn’t an older man anymore.
I start toward Sienna.
“Leave her!” The reverend grabs my wrist. “She’s already lost!”
“Let go of me.”
“Please don’t leave me here! We need to hide, to pray—”
I stare at his hand on my arm, then at his face. “Are you—I don’t have time for this.”
His fingers dig deeper into my arm. “I won’t let you throw your life away for—”
“You used me as bait.” I shove him back hard enough that he stumbles.
Sienna’s strength is failing. I grab a leather-bound Bible and hurl it at the man attacking her. It hits his shoulder with a dull thud. Not what I was aiming for.
“Hey!” I yell. “Over here! Look at me.”
The thing’s head swivels toward me, mouth hanging open in a grotesque parody of hunger while Sienna sags against the font, gasping for breath.
Good. I’ve—
Two more of these things shuffle from between the pews toward me. One’s a woman in a floral dress, Mrs. Abernathy, who brought homemade cookies to every school function. The other’s a teenage boy in a suit too big for his frame, blood soaking through his white shirt.
“Shit, shit, shit.” I didn’t think this through.
My heels slip on the marble floor as I backpedal, searching for another weapon. Bible’s are too soft. There’s nothing—
My eyes land on a heavy brass candlestick. I wrap my fingers around its base. Solid. The thing, who was on Sienna before, reaches me.
Behind it, Sienna forces herself upright, her face pale.
“Run!” I shout at her.
But she doesn’t. Instead, she goes after the thing, trying to yank it back. “Asshole!”
The man whirls, faster than something so wrong should move, and sinks his teeth into her shoulder, hitting the leather. She screams, shoving her arm under its jaw.
I don’t think. Don’t care about the other two.
I run forward, candlestick raised high, and swing it like I’m going for a home run. The brass connects with the back of the thing’s skull with a sickening crack. It releases Sienna, staggering sideways.
I swing again. And again. Until it drops to the marble floor and doesn’t get up.
Sienna stares at me, eyes wide, chest heaving, and holding her shoulder. Blood and gray matter splatter her jacket, her face, her hair. She looks like she stepped out of a horror movie.
“You—” she starts, but then her face crumples. “Behind you!”
I spin as Mrs. Abernathy lunges for me, teeth snapping. I hit her on the chin, and she stumbles into a pew but rights herself.
The boy is faster, fingers clutching at my torn dress and trying to get a bite out of it.
I heave the candlestick back and swing it at the boy’s head. The brass connects with a wet crack that turns my stomach. His skull caves inward, dark fluid spattering across my face and body. He drops like a stone.
My breath comes in ragged gasps. Blood and bits of… something else… drip from the candlestick. I feel numb, disconnected, like I’m watching someone else murder a teenager in a church.
“No!” Sienna’s voice cuts through the fog.
I turn to see Mrs. Abernathy lunging at me again, her floral dress soaked with blood, mouth stretched impossibly wide. My arms feel like lead weights.
I won’t be fast enough—
Julien materializes from nowhere, ramming into Mrs. Abernathy with brutal force. They crash into a pew, splintering wood. She snaps and claws at him, but he pins her thrashing body with one arm across her throat and drives a letter opener straight through her eye.
Mrs. Abernathy goes still.
He rises, blood splattered across his face and suit, letter opener still clutched in his hand as his eyes scan me from head to toe.
“Holy shit.” Sienna clutches her neck with one hand.
I drop the candlestick, my arms trembling from exertion and adrenaline as I reach for her. “Are you—Let me see.”
Julien grabs my wrist, yanking me backward. “Don’t touch her.”
I stagger. “I’m trying to help! That thing bit—”
He shoots me a glare before releasing me, his face tight as he tilts her chin, checking her neck. The leather is torn and dented with marks, but luckily unbroken.
His shoulders relax a fraction. “You’re clean.”
“The leather held.” She laughs, but it’s thin, shaky at the edges. “Lucky the old guy didn’t have many teeth left. Just gums. Otherwise, I might be bleeding out right now.”
“Lucky.” He pats her shoulder, then turns to me. “We need to go. There are more coming.”
“Amelia,” I say. “Is she—”
“She’s with Cameron and my grandmother,” he says. “We need to—”
The entrance door bangs open, and a dozen of those things stagger inside.
“Sienna, get Dakota.” He already positions himself between us and them. “I’ll have your backs.”
“What about you?” Sienna demands.
“I’ll be right behind you. Go!”
Cameron appears from a side alcove, face splashed with blood that hopefully isn’t his. “Sienna!” Relief washes over his face when he sees her. He rushes over and grabs her hand, tugging her toward the hallway. “This way!”
Sienna reaches back for me. “Come on!”
I try to follow, but my damned wedding dress decides now to tangle around my legs. I stumble, nearly falling face-first onto the bloody floor.
“Fuck.” Julien crouches beside me, those dark eyes meeting mine for a charged second. Then his hands are on the skirt of my dress, ripping the delicate fabric with brutal efficiency.
“What are you—”
“It didn’t fit you anyway.” He tears away layers of tulle and satin until the dress ends just above my knees.
Heat floods my cheeks. “It was—”
“Doesn’t matter.” He grabs my elbow, hauling me to my feet. “Can you run?”
I kick off my heels, feeling the cool marble against my bare feet. “Better than you.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “Then run.”
We sprint into the hallway, toward the back room where Cameron holds the door open. Behind us, the creatures pick up speed. Sienna dives through first.
I follow, Julien right behind me, his body heat at my back. The sensation of him so close feels wrong and right at the same time.
The man who hates me just saved my life, but I don’t have time to process that particular mindfuck.
Cameron slams the door shut the instant we’re through, throwing his weight against it. “Help me!”
Julien grabs a wooden chair and wedges it under the doorknob. Together, they heave a bookcase in front of the door as something crashes into it from the other side, making the walls shake.
“What the fuck is happening?” Sienna asks, voicing what we’re all thinking.
No one answers. Another crash against the door. The bookcase shudders.
“It will hold,” Julien says. “We stay here for now.”
The certainty in his voice should be comforting.
It isn’t.
The room is some kind of office administration area.
Amelia sits on a wooden chair, her face ghost-white but composed.
Rosa stands beside her, one gnarled hand on my sister’s shoulder.
My mother and father sit on a couch, while the reverend cowers in the corner beside a fireplace, muttering prayers.
I move to Amelia, taking her hand in mine. The medication makes her run cold sometimes, but this is different. Her skin feels too cool, clammy.
“Always knew weddings were dangerous.” Her fingers curl around mine.
“Maybe,” I say.
The door shudders again under another impact. Something on the other side wants in.
And it won’t take no for an answer.