Chapter 11 #2
Not blocking physically, just existing in the space in a way that made the air heavier, harder to move through.
Eve’s flame hit his ward and scattered, sparks hissing.
Drathar laughed.
Faith grabbed Eve’s arm, yanking her back before she could try something suicidal. “Eve. Stop.”
Eve’s eyes flashed. “She is right there.”
Faith’s voice turned harsh. “And we are about to be drowned in undead. Kill the zombies. Now.”
The undead were accumulating too quickly. Every second we spent aiming at Dagna was another spirit puppet clawing toward the hospital doors, toward the mundanes Delia was wiping, toward patients who could not run.
Nishi shouted to her hunters through comms. “Contain the perimeter. Do not let them reach the entrance.”
Tegan grabbed Greyson’s sleeve. “The relic.”
Greyson’s expression was tight. “I know. But we cannot find it if we die.”
Cal shifted fully.
Gray rippled over his skin, shoulders broadening, wings unfolding with a heavy snap that made the air vibrate. His eyes gleamed, ancient and fierce. He stepped in front of me like a wall.
“Stay behind me,” he said, voice deeper now, resonant.
I wanted to object, but my knees wobbled and the bond tugged. I did what my body demanded and stayed close.
Eve’s hands lifted again. This time she did not throw a single blast. She compressed the fire.
She shaped it.
Three tight spheres formed between her palms, pulsing like miniature suns. She held them for a beat, controlling the heat, then tossed one toward the nearest cluster.
It hit and burst.
Flame spread in a contained bloom, consuming three poltergeist-driven corpses at once. The spirits inside shrieked, a sound that made my teeth ache, then snapped apart as if they had been cut free.
Eve formed another sphere.
Faith’s voice rose over the chaos. “I love the witch equivalent of a Molotov cocktail.”
Eve shot her a look that suggested Faith was one joke away from being used as a shield.
Faith grinned anyway, because Faith could find humor in a burning hellscape if it kept her from screaming.
Eve lifted her arm to throw again.
Tegan lunged and grabbed her wrist.
“Stop,” Tegan snapped.
Eve’s eyes widened in fury. “Let go.”
“We cannot start a fire this close to a hospital,” Tegan hissed. “Do you want the building to go up?”
Eve’s jaw clenched. The fire sphere wavered, heat licking at her fingers.
Nishi stepped in on Tegan’s other side, voice tight. “Tegan is right. No wide throws.”
Eve’s shoulders rose and fell once. Her rage was a living thing, but she swallowed it back, forcing control.
“Fine,” she said through her teeth.
She compressed the fire again, tighter, more focused, then dropped it directly at her feet where two undead lunged, burning them without letting flame spread outward.
Cal’s wings beat once, pushing air, shoving a cluster of undead back. He grabbed one by the throat and flung it into another, bodies colliding in a heap.
“They keep rising,” Faith shouted.
Drathar’s laughter rolled across the lot again. “Keep burning, little flame. You are feeding the fear.”
Dagna smiled from behind him, then gave Eve a small wave as if they were at a social event.
Then she and Drathar started to step back, using the undead wall as cover.
Faith saw it and snarled. “No.”
She took two steps forward, aiming at Dagna.
Nishi grabbed her shoulder. “Faith. Focus.”
Faith shook her off. “They are leaving.”
“And we are drowning,” Nishi snapped back. “If we chase them now, the hospital falls.”
Faith’s jaw clenched, fury vibrating in her frame.
Cal’s voice cut in, loud over the chaos. “We do not need to destroy them here.”
Everyone looked at him, even Eve, even Greyson.
Cal gestured toward the burning pile of ash, then to the larger wave still coming. “We can take them.”
Faith blinked. “Take them where?”
Cal’s stone eyes gleamed. “The volcano crater in the pocket realm. It can act as containment until we find a permanent solution.”
For a beat, my brain tried to process that while undead rushed us.
Then it clicked.
Scorchwood’s pocket realm. A contained, isolated environment with land that did not belong to the mundane world.
A crater there would not risk a hospital fire.
It would not risk mundanes.
It would not risk oxygen tanks and elderly patients, and nurses who did not deserve this.
Greyson’s expression sharpened. “I can manufacture a portal to Scorchwood. Cal will have to take them from there to the volcano. I can’t go through the shield, but I can butt up against it.”
Tegan nodded quickly. “Do it. We corral them, push them through.”
Faith’s mouth tightened. “We are making a zombie landfill in a volcano.”
Eve’s lips twitched, grim humor flickering. “It is the most Ravenholde solution possible.”
Cal extended one wing, sweeping it outward like a barrier. “Greyson. Gate. Now.”
Greyson pulled a small rune plate from his pocket, slapped it onto the asphalt, and pressed his palm down. The runes flared bright, then spread into a circle of light.
The air above it shimmered.
Heat rolled out, dry and fierce, carrying a scent like sulfur and scorched stone.
A portal opened, round and wide, revealing a glimpse of a vast crater beyond, its edges jagged, its depths glowing with contained fire.
For a second, it was almost beautiful.
Then an undead lunged at the portal, and the spell was ruined in my mind by the image of a spirit puppet being tossed into a lava pit.
Faith shouted, “Line them up.”
Nishi’s hunters moved in, blades flashing, not killing, but redirecting, herding the undead toward the gate like livestock that wanted to bite.
Eve used smaller fire bursts, burning only when needed to break spirits that got too close. Faith fired to stagger bodies, giving hunters openings to shove.
Cal became a bulldozer of stone and wings, grabbing two undead at once and hurling them through the portal with a grunt.
One body hit the crater floor and went still, pinned by heat and distance, the spirit inside it crackling as if confused.
More followed.
Drathar watched from the edge of the shield space, amused, as if this was all a game he had expected us to play.
Dagna’s smile stayed fixed, but her eyes narrowed slightly. She had wanted panic, not problem solving. She had wanted us scattered.
Instead, we were adapting.
That did not mean we were winning. It meant we were surviving.
As the last of the immediate swarm was shoved through the portal, Faith turned, breathing hard, face streaked with soot.
She stared at the spot where Dagna and Drathar had been.
They were gone.
The undead distraction had done exactly what it was meant to do.
It bought them time.
It bought them escape.
Eve’s hands trembled, hellfire still flickering at her fingertips. She looked furious enough to melt concrete.
Tegan’s face was pale. “We did not get the relic.”
Greyson’s jaw clenched. “But we confirmed it is here. The shield is anchored to it.”
Cal stepped close to me, wings folding slightly as he checked my face. “How are you?
The bond tugged, and my vision blurred for a heartbeat. The egg needed me. The baby needed warmth. The calling was still pressing, even with the undead shoved into a crater for now.
“I am functioning,” I said.
Faith snorted. “That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one I have,” I replied.
Nishi’s gaze swept the hospital entrance. “Delia and Spencer are still inside. Victor will need an update. Aurora needs to know the hospital is stabilizing.”
Eve stared into the dark where Drathar had vanished. “They are escalating.”
“Yes,” I said softly, and the words tasted like dread.
Dagna and Drathar had not come to win the parking lot fight.
They came to prove they could make us chase them while the real threat kept spreading.