Chapter 48
CASSIE
Cassie had always wondered what her last thought would be.
She had hoped it would be something meaningful, like how much she loved her family or how grateful she was for the good parts of her life.
She had imagined, in a vague and distant way, that if death ever came for her, she would have some kind of peaceful moment of clarity…
some noble final realization…some shining truth.
Instead, as the Infected came crawling over the platform rail with their milky white eyes and snapping black-red jaws, all she could think was,
Well, this is it. This is how I die—as a zombie snack.
Honestly, it figured. This was how her life was going lately—why should her death be any different?
Ravik and Severin closed ranks in front of her without a word. One second they had been standing on either side of her, all anger and bruised feelings and unresolved male bullshit, and the next they were shoulder to shoulder like they had been fighting together their entire lives.
Which, Cassie supposed, they had.
Ravik swung his shock blade in a wide, brutal arc, cutting down the first Infected that lunged at them.
Severin fired his plasma pistol with cold precision, each blue-white bolt taking an Infected in the head or throat or chest. Cassie stood just behind them with the charge baton gripped in both hands, her heart hammering so hard she could feel it in her teeth.
The creatures just kept coming.
They climbed over each other, clawing at the metal platform, their long Visskous fingers digging into the grating as though pain meant nothing to them.
Maybe it didn’t, she thought. Several of them were missing pieces—one had no lower jaw, another dragged a shattered leg, and another had a hole burned through its chest but still kept crawling.
Their mouths clicked and snapped and hissed, and the smell of them was so awful that Cassie had to swallow hard to keep from gagging.
Ravik kicked one in the face and sent it flying backward into the mass below.
Severin shot another before it could sink its teeth into Ravik’s calf.
Cassie shocked a clawed hand that reached between the two males and grabbed for her ankle. The baton crackled, blue energy flashing, and the Infected shrieked as it lost its grip and fell away. For one wild second, she felt almost proud of herself.
Then three more came over the rail and her pride disappeared to be replaced by dread. There were just too many of them.
“Oh God,” she whispered, her voice small and squeezed.
Ravik heard her, though. Even with the shrieks and the metal groaning and the horrible wet clicking of the Infected, he heard her.
“Stay behind us!” he roared.
“I’m trying!” Cassie shouted back. “There are a lot of them!”
Too many, she almost added, but swallowed the words before they could come out.
Severin’s pistol made an ugly sputtering sound and Cassie saw his face change.
“That sounded bad,” she said.
“Power cell is nearly drained,” he said, firing again anyway. The bolt took an Infected through the eye, but the glow at the end of the pistol flickered weakly afterward.
“Please tell me you brought extras,” Cassie said, though she already knew the answer from the look on his face.
“I did.”
“Good.”
“They’re with the med-kit below us.”
Cassie stared at him.
“That is not where I wanted them to be.”
“No,” he agreed grimly. “It’s not where I wanted them to be either.”
Ravik snarled and drove his blade into the throat of an Infected that had gotten too close to Severin’s side.
Even angry, even furious, even with all that raw pain between them, he still protected Severin without thinking.
And Severin was doing the same for him. The two males might be hating each other at the moment, but they would still die for each other.
Cassie saw it and wondered if either of them did. Probably not—men were ridiculous, even Kindred sometimes and they were usually a hundred times more emotionally intelligent than human men. They—
Another wave of Infected hit the platform then, sending every other thought out of her head as fear took her by the throat and squeezed.
The tower shook under them, metal screaming as more Infected climbed up the ladder and struts.
Cassie stumbled, and Severin caught her with one arm while still firing with the other.
Ravik stepped in front of them both, his broad back blocking her view for one second before he slammed his blade through two Infected at once.
There were too many, she thought again. But this time she knew it in her bones with a cold, horrible certainty.
Ravik and Severin were magnificent fighters. They were huge and strong and terrifying, and if there had been ten or even twenty Infected, maybe they could have done it. But there were dozens climbing now. Maybe hundreds below—the whole tower was crawling with them.
They were going to be overwhelmed, it was just a matter of time.
“Severin,” she said, and hated the way her voice shook. “Can the signal work faster?”
“It is already broadcasting,” he said. “If the Mother Ship received my earlier pulse, they may already be looking for us.”
“May?” Cassie demanded. “May is doing a lot of work in that sentence!”
Before he could answer, an Infected launched itself over Ravik’s shoulder straight at her.
Cassie screamed and swung the baton with both hands.
The crackle of electricity met gray-green flesh and the creature jerked violently, its lipless mouth snapping inches from her face. For one sickening second, she could see its teeth—thin, wet, black at the roots—and smell the rot pouring from its open throat.
Then Ravik grabbed it from behind and ripped it away from her.
The creature flew off the platform and vanished into the writhing mass below.
Ravik turned, his golden eyes wild with fear.
“Cassie? You okay, baby?” he demanded roughly.
“I’m okay,” she gasped, though her knees were shaking. “I’m okay. Still not eaten. Very proud of that.”
His mouth twitched despite the horror around them. Then another Infected climbed over the rail and he turned back to the fight.
Cassie looked past him and saw more white eyes rising from the mist—so many more. Too many to count.
This was it, she realized. There was no way out…no place to run…no place to hide.
The tower was too high to jump from—the platform too exposed to defend for long, and the Infected were coming from every direction.
Ravik and Severin were still standing, but both were breathing hard now.
Severin had blood on his mouth and bruising along his jaw where Ravik had hit him.
Ravik had black Infected blood streaked across his chest and arms, and the fresh bite wound on his upper arm was still raw and oozing, even though the cure had driven back the milky haze in his eyes.
They were beautiful and brave and hopelessly outnumbered.
Cassie’s throat tightened.
She didn’t want to die here. She didn’t want Ravik and Severin to die here either.
Not after everything the three of them had been through together.
Not after the bunker and the cure and the awful, wonderful, impossible thing that had started forming between them.
Not while Ravik was still angry and Severin was still hurt and none of them had said the things that needed saying.
“Goddess,” she whispered, though she had never been sure if the Kindred Goddess listened to humans or was even real. “Goddess, please.”
And then a blast of red light split the sky.