Page 13 of A Very Armitage Christmas
“No, but it’ll be a nasty, festering wound that might kill you anyway, and if enough of them get on you at once they’ll take you down in a pack and rip your flesh off your bones.” Arik cleared his throat. “Maybe avoid that.”
“Thanks a million. We’ll be there soon.” I hung up. Thanks for nothing. Fuck.
Nate stood stock-still beside me, biting his lip and staring at the door. Something hit it hard enough to rattle it in the frame, and Nate jumped about a foot in the air.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “This isn’t — I really, really don’t like horror movies. Which is kind of ironic, considering my life so far. I’m the guy who gets eaten. I mean, have you seen a zombie movie? No one in skinny jeans survives past the first twenty min—”
I put a hand over his mouth, wrapped his waist in my other arm, and pulled him close. I stared him down, as he peered at me wide-eyed over my fingers. “Have you considered wearing normal pants?” A muted, outragedmmphcame through my hand, and his eyes glittered with outrage. I smiled at him. Good. If he could get annoyed with me, he wouldn’t be so scared. “Also, no matter what pants you’re wearing, your mate’s an alpha werewolf. You’re mine. I’m the only one who gets to have my mouth on you. Understood?”
Nate nodded, and I took my hand away. The zombie groaned, scratched at the door, and started thumping again, rattling the door handle. I’d locked it. But still. Not super reassuring, even for me. I liked enemies I could kill, and things someone had already killed once coming back at me gave me the creeps.
“Get dressed,” I told him, and added, “Maybe skip the skinny jeans. I’m going to do the same, and then we’ll figure out how to get out of here without making a mess on the floor inside. The porch is going to be bad enough.”
“That porch needs to be condemned anyway,” Nate muttered. “Some guts might brighten it up. Maybe even improve its structural stability.”
But he went to the dresser and started pulling out clothes, at least. I stuck my tongue out at his back and dug around on the floor for my pants.
***
Getting to the pack house, it turned out, was the easy part.
I had Nate climb up on my back and hold on, grabbed the machete I’d thankfully brought back to our little house with me, and wrenched the door open, kicking the zombie out of the way hard enough to fling it off the porch and send it skidding into the snow a couple of yards away.
“Hang on,” Nate said. “Let me lock the door again.”
He was right, but I still gritted my teeth at the delay.
When I heard the click, I ran. I beheaded the zombie I’d kicked without so much as a pause, and then took off full-speed for the pack house, zig-zagging around a couple more zombies without stopping to do anything about them.
I needed to get Nate safely behind his wards. Then I’d deal with them. But no fucking way was I risking him in close combat, not when he didn’t have a shifter’s healing abilities and stamina.
The pack house came into view, lit up like the Christmas tree Nate hadn’t had a chance to set up yet. I headed to the back. Matt, Jennifer, and a few others of the pack’s experienced fighters were prowling, mostly behind the wards. Arik crouched down near the back steps, fiddling with a big bowl, a small fire, and a pile of random magic crap in bags and boxes. Luke, who was built like a Mack truck and a lot faster than he looked, along with Andy, who could also hold his own, had gone out from behind the warding line and were heading off to the cottages down the hill. No one had stayed down there for the night who couldn’t take care of themselves, but maybe someone had called and said they had zombies at their front doors, too, and wanted a little backup.
And then I looked away from Luke and Andy toward the decorations I’d put up the night before, and I saw red. Not just the red of that fucking inflatable Santa’s goddamn suit and hat, but the searing blood-red of rage.
Two zombies had made it to the Santa, which sat right outside the warding line.
And the fuckers were trying to eat him! I’d spentnearly an hour of my lifeputting that fucking thing up!
I stopped for a millisecond, just long enough to drop Nate off my back and safely behind the wards. He let out a startledeep.
“Motherfucker!” I shouted, running for the Santa-eating zombies. “What the fuck!”
I swung my machete hard, turning one zombie into two bite-sized pieces, but I was too damn late. The other bit into the side of the Santa’s leg, ripping a giant hole out of it.
The hiss of escaping air and the zombie’s moans blended together, and the Santa dented, tilted, and deflated, his face morphing from a Christmas grin into a weird, distorted grimace.
The zombie turned to face me, its half-rotted burial gown fluttering and its disintegrating jaws wide open, showing me a set of yellow teeth and a blackened lump of tongue. I swung the machete before it could get close enough to snap at me, sending its head tumbling off…right onto the deflating body of Santa Claus.
Oh, fuck. If the zombies didn’t kill me, Nate would.
“More coming out of the woods!” Matt’s voice, loud enough to echo all the way down the hill to anyone still at the cottages.
I spun around. Yeah, more, all right. In the first glimmering of pre-dawn, the shambling mass pushing its way out of the woods looked like something out of a nightmare.
Most people’s nightmares. My normal life, apparently.Thank you, Matt, for mating a fucking half-competent necromancer. I drew a deep breath, took a firm grip on the machete — because my claws would work at least as well, but no way in fucking hell was I going to get zombie goo all over myclaws, fuckinggross— and got ready for the onslaught.
“Get behind the wards, Ian!” Matt called out.
