“I’ll stabilize the pathway,” Mae said, falling behind as she began to chant a spell. In moments the walkway became still, but everywhere else it was rolling as if the earth itself was water.

Then I saw the bones and the skulls and body parts sticking halfway out of the ground.

“Make sure you stay on the path,” Bianca said. “It’s too dangerous to step off the path at all. One of those hands can grab you.”

“How do you control the pathways?” I asked.

“Right now, we are using all of our magic to create these pathways to separate the Zombies from each other.” Jane said.

“Zombies?” I frowned. As I said the word, Bianca startled us with a loud howl. Something tugged at my leg. I screamed when I looked down and saw a bloody, boney hand gripping onto my pant leg.

“We’re not going any farther,” Jag said, gripping my hand and pulling me back.

“Don’t think–” I tried to argue.

“I insist,” Jag said forcefully, pulling me behind him as I looked to my left and screamed.

A dozen zombies were walking toward us out of the glen of the Fae.

“Get behind me,” Jag said, his hands bursting into flames.

He waved the fire at some of the zombies causing them to pull back.

“I don’t need to hide behind you,” I said. “I can fight too.” I held up my hands, but they only let out a little drops of gold light, which fell flat on the ground...

Which made the zombie stop and turn and look at me.

Mae started muttering a spell underneath her breath as I stood there like an idiot, not doing a single thing in the face of zombies coming toward us.

Jag was completely right. There was no reason why we should be in here, not right now.

“We need to get out of here,” I said. “We’re not equipped for this. I’m not equipped for this.”

Mae looked at me, Bianca, and Jag. She nodded her head. “You’re right. We need a larger force to combat them. I hadn’t realized It had gotten this bad.”

“It’s bad,” I said, my voice catching in my throat as I swallowed hard. The zombies were terrifying, flesh hanging off of their bodies, their bones protruding, muscles exposed. I could see them everywhere I shouldn’t see them. My stomach cramped and I wanted to throw up.

“Come on,” Jag said, reaching his hand around mine and pulling me from where I stood frozen watching the zombies lumbering toward us.

Chapter 16

My heart was still racing by the time we got to the house.

“There’s no way,” I said. “There’s no way we’re going to survive this. How are we supposed to stop that? It’s a zombie invasion!”

“We don’t actually know,” Mae said as she walked in front of me up the stairs and into The Estate. We all convened in the red room. The guys had stayed out at the cemetery to keep an eye on things while the rest of us were here trying to figure out the problem.

“Do we even have an approach?” I asked.

“Not just yet,” Mae said. “We’ve been mostly waiting for the sixth member of the coven to show up so we could try to assess the capabilities of our group.”

“So here we are.” I folded my arms across my chest. “The sixth member and we’re no smarter for it.”

“We have a high priestess, a werewolf, two Fae, a light fae and a dark fae, a vampire, and you,” Mae said. “The only thing we can relate it to is the original Hayes. When she lost her daughters, she created the blood pact and brought together all of our ancestors and Chloe’s maker to form the blood bond into the coven.”

“We think there’s something in the cemetery triggering the pentacle to call us forward,” Jane added. “So, somehow the six of us should be the solution; all of our power together.”

“If we can figure it out,” Bianca leaned forward. “So far, we’ve been able to do one thing at a time. Each one of us had a challenge to overcome.”