Page 28 of Midnight Hunt

“Nah! I like it better when I’ve earned it,” I wiggled my brows. He scowled, but there wasn’t an ounce of actual ire in it. Especially as I wiggled on his desk, his cock still pressed inside me. He was soft, but that didn’t mean it didn’t feel good as I squeezed him once intentionally. He groaned, his face flitting between being delighted and stern. “Now, you really should have told me that you enjoy schoolgirl skirts.”

“I enjoyyouin skirts. Or dresses. Anything I can push up and over you,” he countered, giving me a sharper look.

“Uh-huh.” I beamed.

“Wicked little thing, your ass is too red for you to be playing with your backside’s future like this.”

“And who are you to tell me how sore—OW!” I yelped as he popped just the bottom of my ass that hung off the desk. “Fine, point taken.”

He forced me to sit still as he grabbed my discarded panties and pulled them onto my legs. I couldn’t help the giddiness in my bones. Lochlainn was right, he did make me forget about everything. I twirled his hair and giggled as he peppered my face with sweet kisses. Sat in his lap, kissing him lazily and talking about anything and nothing. I forgot what I was doing that morning…

Until it came crashing back down. First it was hands, at least ten of them, slapping against the greenhouse windows. Thunder cracked over our heads and the once sunny sky turned painfully dark. The groans of the dead filled the air slowly after. My heart skipped a beat as I stumbled to my feet. Before Lochlainn could stop me, I pushed out of the vines separating us from the rest of the room. We were surrounded by molding members of my previous sorority. Dead eyed girls wearing mangled clothes. Their skin was pulled taut and bones protruded where they tried to put up a fight.

My horror stopped at the front to the greenhouse. Teddy, once as pretty as the sun after days of storm clouds, was distorted. Her jaw knocked clean off, only leaving half a set of teeth and her sunken in eyes. They stared through me, screaming their accusations that her broken mouth couldn’t speak.You left me to die. You left us all to die. Traitor!

I stumbled forward, my legs bringing me toward the green glass between us. Dirt caked her face like she’d been dragged out of her grave.Forced to do someone else’s bidding.

“Amber.”

I glanced back at Lochlainn.

“You knew?” I croaked.

“I…suspected, once I found her ill with bog hex this morning. I didn’t know…” his words fell away as we both took in the storm surrounding us. Close to forty bodies surrounded the greenhouse. Those who weren’t from my old sorority were older, decrepit things that slammed their bodies against the glass.

“Why didn’t you say?” I scanned the swarm around us. Rain spat against the greenhouse without mercy.

“I was intending to tell you, but it seems Amber is tired of waiting.”

Cold, unfeeling fury settled into my belly. Something snapped into place. It didn’t have a name, but it did have a sensation. Like long nails brushing down my spine. They raked across my sides and cupped my stomach. My heart slowed to a sluggish beat as I stared into the western wall. Lightning cracked and I was reminded of the cave. Instead of a faceless shadow or a wraith or whatever she was hidden behind, now there was just Amber…and the army of undead she’d summoned.

“Best not to keep her waiting.”

Chapter Seventeen:

~Lochlainn O'Hare~

*Trigger warning- gore, zombies, decay, and decapitation*

The windows shattered. Wind rushed into the greenhouse, swirling around Valerie and I. My feet kept me steady as I summoned endless ankle-breaking roots. They surged up around me and locked the undead beyond the frame of the greenhouse.

“Amber!” I bellow through the howling night, but my voice barely carried over the moaning dead.

“You stupid fucking hag!” Amber appeared in a new bolt of lightning, her fist meeting Valerie’s cheek. I lunged for her, but my spell was backfired on me as bones climbed through the soul.They wrapped their fingers around me and dug into my skin. Blood filled the air, and I roared. Yet, my wild shape didn’t come. Not as I summoned it, not even after I thrashed back and forth. Bones slithered up my body like a viper and looped around my throat. I struggled for air.

Yet, it all froze in time as Valerie straightened, her face indifferent. The red on her cheek seeping away like the lights in her eyes. “Now, now, I thought we learned our lesson about name calling.”

“Fuck you!” Amber swung again, but a vine shot out of the soul nearest to Valerie. It stabbed through the Tiefling’s arm. She screamed as her inky blood seeped out of her forearm in globs.

Valerie huffed, the woman I’d been kissing early gone from my sight. Instead was an angry force of nature, focused and without mercy. She flicked another finger at Amber and a second vine shot out, stabbing through Amber’s other bicep. They began to dive in and out of the necromancer’s body until her arms were stitched at bad angles. I tore through the bones trying to choke me, but I had no voice to stop her. Valerie jerked her hands backward and the vines ripped out of the Tiefling. The sound of bones cracking, tissue tearing, and Amber’s screams drowned out the moaning of her swarming dead.

“What was it that you needed Lochlainn for? Was your thesis project not good enough?” Valerie cocked her head, eyes still glued to the necromancer. Amber’s arms limply hung by her side, pieces of her missing just like her zombies.

“Why didn’t you turn on her?” Amber’s whimper silenced all her creations. Both Valerie and Amber looked to me as I shucked the rest of the bones like a husk.

“Why didn’t…you poor misguided creature, you think your little show would make me turn on Valerie?” I needed to stall for time. The staff of the college would have heard the sound, would have felt the shift in magic. Unless the unthinkable happened,and she’d killed everyone…or… My thoughts were jolted as I heard screams echo from all over the campus. “What did you do?”

“It was really fucking simple! You two just wouldn’t stop! You wouldn’t just let me have what I needed to graduate! Isn’t that what you’re here for,Professor? To help us graduate!” Her snarling words were thrown at me with venom that I didn’t understand. She stumbled toward me, and Valerie circled her back, keeping a hunter’s eye on the crowd surging around us.

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