Page 53 of Chaos Demons

Except that thought didn’t cheer me up as much as I’d hoped.

“Ah… yeah, me too,” Trent said, his voice shaky. “She’s… like no one I’ve ever known. So…hot!” The way he said that last word, laden with layers of meaning, made me smile.

“Yeah,” I agreed. She was hot-blooded, hot-tempered, and too-hot-to-handle. She burned with a bright intensity that was hard to ignore, and equally hard to live with some days. “You sure you’re up for that heat?”

With everything going on around us, he actually smiled. It was a slip of a smile, and it didn’t last, but I saw his devotion to her.

“I’d rather die in her heat than live in the cold,” Trent breathed.

Nowthatwas love.

“I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up!” Eva yelled. She was a beast, hacking away at the horde, but no matter how many she dropped, more kept coming. She wouldn’t last long.

Ineededto help.

I had to do something, but an overwhelming fear gripped me.

The zompires swarmed in, still slowed by Harmonia’s calming influence and Eva’s onslaught, but more and more of them slipped in through the door, filling the church and clambering over the pews to surround us.

“Run!” Harmonia gasped, voice strained. “I don’t know how much longer I can slow them!”

Trent picked up the rifle and the backpack with extra ammunition and bolted for the raised area at the front of the church. I followed. We sprinted up the few steps, but… there was nowhere to go after that.

I glanced back. Harmonia was faltering, walking backward as fast as she could, looking exhausted. Eva was holding her ground, but that only meant the zompires were quickly surrounding her, and even as I watched, they swarmed over her.

“Eva!” Harmonia and I shouted at the same time.

Harmonia ran forward, blasting her peace at the zompires around Eva specifically. Those ones shifted and fell back, stilled, and it had been just in time. Eva was revealed, blood staining the many tears in her black clothes. Harmonia grabbed the other woman and her face turned red with the extreme effort it took to send out another wave of peace, keeping the fiends at bay as she lugged a limping Eva back toward Trent and me.

That was it.

That was all we had.

We’d given everything… well,everyone elsehad given everything, while I’d stood there like a post.

I caught Eva as Harmonia handed her over to me. Then Harmonia collapsed in exhaustion next to me. “I’ve got nothing left,” she huffed. “I’m so sorry, Ana.”

Shewas sorry? At least she’d done something.

Eva was a dead weight in my arms, and my heart squeezed with worry.

“Guess I’m not so much of a hero after all,” Eva rasped, her voice hoarse and her face scratched and bruised as she looked up at me, giving a weak smile.

“You’re more a hero than I’ll ever be,” I breathed, holding her close, and doing the only thing I could, healing her.

Eva sighed as her many wounds closed. I hadn’t realized how badly she’d been mauled until I’d healed her and felt how much that had drained me.

The zompires, no longer slowed — but not particularly fast to begin with — had filled half the church. They’d reach us soon enough.

“Trent, how’s the rifle coming?” Eva asked, breathing hard.

“Half loaded.”

“Good enough.” She reached out an arm and he handed over the large weapon.

Except I knew we were doomed. It didn’t matter how many shots Eva had left. There had to be close to two hundred zompires in here, and they were piling up so high outside they’d begun smashing through the raised windows along the sides of the church. We’d be overrun in no time.

I couldn’t let that happen.

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