Chapter 5
Three bodies poured out of the alley across from the café, moving in that jerky sprint that made my brain want to reject the whole concept.
My magic flowed through the air, trying to buy distance, trying to keep teeth away from skin, trying to keep Victor’s officers from becoming a snack line.
Faith fired with mechanical precision. Nishi’s hunters moved in a practiced sweep, blades flashing, eyes cold.
Spencer tore into the closest undead with the efficiency of a man who did not want to think about what he was touching.
And Delia, as calm as a librarian at closing time, kept wiping minds.
That was the part that felt the strangest.
Fire, gunshots, shadow tricks, screams, blood on the pavement, and Delia walking through it all like she was conducting a very tidy social experiment.
She touched a man’s temple, spoke softly, and his eyes went blank with relief.
“You didn’t see monsters,” she murmured. “You saw a stunt. You panicked. You ran. You’re safe.”
He nodded, docile, phone lowering as if it weighed too much to hold.
Delia moved on to the next witness.
I tried not to resent her composure. I failed.
Another undead slammed into my force field push like it had hit an invisible wall. It skidded, snarled, then lunged again, faster than the first time.
“That’s new,” I breathed.
Eve’s hellfire hit it mid-leap, incinerating it before it could land. The flame crackled hot enough to make the streetlights feel weak. The corpse dropped in a heap of ash and burning fabric.
Eve’s eyes were bright with fury. “They’re not stopping.”
Victor barked a command to his officers, voice cutting through the panic. “Move the line back. Now. Block the street. Get them behind the cruisers.”
His people obeyed, trying to corral the crowd into safer angles. It worked on the ones who wanted to be controlled.
The rest kept filming.
One teenager held her phone above her head, tears streaking down her cheeks, still narrating like she was doing a documentary for extra credit.
“It’s happening downtown. I’m not joking. If I don’t make it, tell everyone I loved them.”
Faith shot her a look that could have curdled milk.
The teenager, impressively, kept filming.
“Delia,” Victor called.
Delia glanced up, quick, efficient. “Too many.”
Victor’s mouth tightened. “Do what you can.”
Delia’s expression didn’t change, but her eyes calculated. “Then we need a story. Something that makes their brains accept a simpler answer. I can erase the sharp edges, but if their feeds keep feeding them horror, they’ll make new memories by morning.”
That sentence landed hard.
Erase the sharp edges.
That was exactly what this felt like. We weren’t saving truth. We were sanding down reality until it fit into a mundane mind.
Nishi appeared at my side, moving fast, face set. “We have hunters checking alley mouths. They keep appearing in clusters. Not just staggering in. It’s coordinated.”
“Anything on the source?” I asked.
Nishi’s jaw flexed. “Not yet.”
Eve’s phone buzzed again. She glanced down, then at Victor. “Hunter’s sending updates. He’s got containment tightening on the west side, but downtown is lighting up on social.”
Victor’s eyes narrowed. “How bad?”
Eve looked grim. “Bad enough that people outside Ravenholde are already commenting.”
My stomach sank. “Of course they are.”
The internet never missed an opportunity to be loud and wrong at the same time.
A shout rose from the crowd. Someone pushed forward against the police line, waving their phone.
“Are you seeing this? This is real. They’re eating people.”
Victor’s shadow stretched across the pavement, darker than it should have been. It curled near the man’s feet like a warning.
The man stepped back.
Victor didn’t move. He didn’t need to. He simply looked like a man who could ruin your day with paperwork and darkness.
“Salima,” Faith snapped, pulling my attention back. “Left.”
I turned.
Two undead had slipped around a parked truck, sprinting straight toward a cluster of mundanes that had spilled out of a boutique doorway. The mundanes were trapped between curiosity and terror, bodies too close together. A perfect feeding ground.
I lifted my hands, forced power through my veins, and shoved.
The nearest corpse slammed into the truck’s side with a crunch. The second one ducked.
Ducked.
It actually ducked my push by shifting its weight, as if it had learned the shape of my magic.
My skin went cold.
Faith fired twice, the shots clean. The corpse stumbled, then kept moving, jaw snapping, head twisting as if it could smell her.
Nishi lunged past me, blade slicing upward. She didn’t aim for the body. She aimed for the joint.
The corpse’s knee gave out. It dropped.
Faith finished it with a head shot.
“Thanks,” I said.
Nishi immediately turned back to her hunters. “Sweep. Keep them out of the crowd.”
The undead I’d shoved against the truck twitched, started to rise.
Spencer seized it by the neck and smashed it down again, hard enough to crack its skull against the curb. His eyes flashed red, hunger and disgust at war across his face.
“Stay down,” he growled.
It didn’t.
Spencer swore, then snapped its neck with a fast twist.
The body still clawed at the pavement.
Spencer looked at the corpse as if it had personally insulted him.
“That’s not how that works,” he muttered.
Tegan stepped in, relic in her hand. The etched surface caught light, symbols pulsing. She pressed it toward the corpse and spoke a word under her breath.
The air shimmered.
The corpse’s motion slowed, like an invisible hand had pressed it into place.
Faith shot it.
It finally stopped.
Spencer exhaled, jaw tight. “Thank you.”
Tegan didn’t look pleased. “Don’t thank me. This isn’t normal.”
Eve’s hellfire roared again, and another cluster of undead dropped into flames.
For a heartbeat, the street opened. A small pocket of quiet between waves.
Victor seized the moment. “All units, hold this block. Funnel civilians back. Delia, keep wiping.”
Delia nodded once and continued, her vampires moving with her, blocking angles, guiding people behind vehicles, murmuring suggestions that softened panic into confusion.
Then a voice called out from the far end of the block, bright and excited in a way that did not belong here.
“Okay, everybody, this is insane. I love it.”
I turned.
A van had pulled up behind the line of police cruisers like it owned the street. The side door slid open, and Mina hopped out.
She looked exactly like Mina always looked, which was like a college student who had wandered into a war zone because she heard there would be snacks.
Jeans, T-shirt, tennis shoes. Slender athletic build.
Hazel eyes wide with awe and adrenaline.
Dark blond hair, except tonight it was no longer dark blond.
It was dark blond with a vivid streak of electric-blue running through it, like she’d dipped her head into a paint bucket and decided it was a personality choice.
Eve’s shoulders stiffened beside me.
Mina’s friends spilled out behind her. Two girls carrying camera rigs. A guy with a gimbal and a mic pack slung over his shoulder. Another girl hauling a backpack that clinked as if it were full of makeup, props, and questionable life decisions.
Mina waved at the chaos as if she were greeting fans. “Hi. We’re here to save the world with content.”
Faith stared at her. “You brought a camera crew.”
Mina’s grin widened. “Yes. Like we discussed. PR. Narrative control. I have been waiting for this. Also, my film club thinks this is the coolest thing that’s ever happened, and I didn’t correct them because I don’t have time.”
Delia’s gaze snapped to Mina, then to the crew. Her expression tightened.
“Absolutely not,” Delia said.
Mina blinked, then looked offended. “Absolutely yes. We need footage. People need to see behind the scenes. If we don’t give them a storyline they can swallow, they’ll keep replaying the nightmare version.”
Delia’s eyes narrowed. “Your friends are mundanes.”
Mina gestured vaguely at the group. “Some of them. Some of them are empowered. It’s a mixed bag. Ravenholde is like that. You can alter the memories of my human friends before we leave.”
Faith swore under her breath. “Great.”
Victor stepped toward Mina, expression hard. “You are not crossing the line. You stay behind my officers.”
Mina held up both hands, palms out. “We’re not trying to die, Chief Thornwood. We’re trying to make it look like we almost died. That’s different.”
Victor looked like he wanted to argue, then decided the universe had already taken enough of his sanity for one night.
“Fine,” he said. “You get five minutes. You film from behind the line. You do not approach the undead.”
Mina’s gaze flicked to the burning bodies, then to me.
She grinned, bright and unhinged. “Unless we can get a close-up.”
Eve’s voice went authoritative. “Mina.”
Mina turned, and for half a second I saw the daughter in her, the girl who wanted approval. “Mom.”
Eve’s jaw tightened. She looked like she wanted to pull Mina into a hug and also ground her until she was forty. “Be careful.”
Mina’s grin softened. “I am being careful. I brought sneakers.”
Faith muttered, “That’s not what careful means.”
Mina clapped her hands once, as if she was starting rehearsal.
“Okay. We need to shoot a quick setup. We need a shot that implies the undead are actors. We need behind the scenes energy. We need to show fake blood and prosthetics. We need a clip where I say we were filming a zombie movie and had no idea people would think it was real.”
Her friend with the gimbal nodded enthusiastically. “This is going to go viral.”
I stared at him. “People are dead.”
He blinked. The enthusiasm dimmed. “Right. Sorry. Respectful viral.”
I wasn’t sure that existed, but I appreciated the effort.
Delia moved close to Mina, voice low and controlled. “If you do this, you do it properly. You will give mundanes a narrative that overrides what they think they saw. You will not add details that create more questions.”