Chapter 20
CHAPTER
TWENTY
LILY
Having to assemble a flat-pack piece of furniture while a ticking clock toward my death literally looms overhead, and a partner who has become much more than just a partner battles a horde of zombies to defend me from certain death—or at least something really gross from happening—is absolutely diabolical.
It’s something straight out of one of my worst nightmares.
IKEA flat-pack included. Allen wrench checked off the list of nightmare objects as well.
But I get it done. Or almost done.
I glance up at the red lit-up clock that descended at some point after Zan jumped off the platform to go battle zombies—truly a sentence I never thought I’d think, much less have happen—and there’s around forty-five seconds left.
I finish tightening the second-to-last screw just as Zan lets out a blood-curdling, guttural howl that tears my attention completely away from the goddamned piece of furniture.
Three zombies are on him, one worrying at the hole started by the worm.
My heart nearly stops as I take in the damage.
The hole the worm created is bigger now, black, necrotic, like something I saw in a science textbook once, showing the damage that a brown recluse spider could do.
My stomach roils, and suddenly I don’t give a shit about the fucking flat-pack or the ticking timer or the goddamned zombies straight from one of my worst nightmares.
All I care about is that the male I love, who has come to be one of my closest friends over the last week and a half or so, is hurt and is facing one of the worst things I’ve ever seen by himself.
I throw the last screw into the joint, and don’t bother tightening it. Then fling myself off the platform, racing forward.
Zan is struggling to keep the zombies off him. No matter how he tears at them with his teeth and talons, they’re latched on.
It’s vile, and yet I don’t stop. I don’t falter.
He sucks in a huge breath, and I wince as a growing purple light begins to emanate from his chest and neck.
I have no idea what’s causing it or how he’s doing it, but I know deep down in my bones it isn’t good.
“Stop,” I tell him. “Get off of him, you nasty—”
I struggle to find the right word, because they’re not exactly zombies, and they’re definitely not humans, and I’m not really sure how you address dead, reanimated things.
I kick the one on his wing, and I’m surprised when it goes absolutely flying. If it was that easy to get off, then how come they’re still crawling all over him?
Panic and adrenaline make my hands shake.
“Get back, Lily,” Zan yells, his voice about thirteen times deeper than usual and almost unrecognizable. He takes another deep breath, his chest expanding, heat now radiating from him too.
More zombies are coming, a Black Friday sign pulled off the ceiling and dangling as they surge forward toward us.
“Get back on the platform with the furniture,” Zan says. Smoke unfurls from his nostrils and mouth, and I kick the other zombie that’s on him.
“Zan, I’m almost done. Just get away from them so we can finish. I just have to screw in the last—”
“Save yourself,” he bellows. He takes a huge, deep breath, his chest glowing brighter than before.
And those two words decide what I’m going to do before my brain has fully caught up to it. I knock the second zombie off him, again surprised at how light it is and how quickly it detaches from him. Something is really wrong with him, and my hands go clammy with fear.
He’s burning up.
Zan runs slightly hotter, has been this whole time, but now? Now he’s like an inferno.
“Stop,” I say. “You don’t have to do whatever this is—”
Ignoring me, he takes a deep breath, fire licking across his tongue, across his mouth, the smell of burning flesh singeing my nostrils.
I still know fuck all about the draegon alien race, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that this dude is about to breathe fire.
I mean, there have been draegons in human media for as long as I can remember. Not that I’m a historian, but looking at his body and what’s already happening, I can guarantee that he’s not built for whatever magical shit draegons actually do when they breathe fire.
Not to mention that he also is doing the whole self-sacrifice thing to a tee, and it is absolutely enraging me.
If I could breathe fire right now, I would.
I step in front of him, waving my arms and making sure that he sees me.
“Do not do what I think you’re about to do.”
“Step aside,” he says, smoke curling from his mouth, his throat glowing a bright purple-red.
That should be impossible.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says.
“You dying will hurt me!” I scream at him.
A zombie shambles close, and I punch it in the face, my hand smacking against rotting flesh as it falls back to the ground.
I turn my attention back to Zan.
He starts to hook his arm around my shoulder to push me out of the way, a desperate glow in his eyes that matches the fire now searing through his chest and arms.
“I love you,” I tell him. “I love you, you absolute fucking asshole. I swear to God, if you incinerate yourself right now to save me, I will figure out a way to bring you back to life—”
I tackle him.
The time for words is over; I throw myself on top of his body just as he inhales.
My skin bubbles, pain unlike anything I’ve ever felt rocketing through me, overloading my brain.
And then it’s blessedly cool.
I look around from where I feel like I’m adhered to his chest.
It’s as if time stands still, and I wonder if this is what it’s like to die.
But the pain hasn’t stopped.
Shouldn’t the pain be gone if I’m dead?
How am I able to look around?
The weird corpses seem to be dissolving before my eyes, the IKEA labyrinth itself slowly disappearing.
Then it feels like a hook grabs me under my lungs, into my diaphragm, around my spine, pulling me forward.
I tighten my grasp on Zan’s body, because wherever it is that I’m going right now, I don’t want to go there without him.
And you better believe I’m going to tear him a new one for sacrificing himself to save me in this stupid-ass reality TV show we signed up for when I was drunk.
Nobody gets to sacrifice themselves for me, especially not when I love them.