Shalise’s screams pierced the air as the magical ritual dagger pierced her hand like a knife through butter. Six of the thirteen stone arrowheads immediately splattered red and green with blood and gore. Eva sheathed her dagger and did a quick check of Shalise’s arm.
All the rot had been torn away, leaving an even larger wound than before. Still, it was clean.
Eva pulled the girl into a tight hug. “It’s alright, it’s okay,” Eva said as tears ran down her chest. “It hurts, but you are fine. No zombie Shalise tonight.”
Her words didn’t seem to comfort the crying girl. Shalise cried harder and squeezed back.
Juliana took half a step forward. Eva shook her head, pointing at the bloodied stones and shaking her head.
“You are safe. Safe from zombies, but we need to do something about your wounds.” Her arm and face were still bleeding and now her hand had blood pouring out of it. Eva couldn’t see it, but she could both feel and sense the blood running down her back where Shalise had her gripped. “I’m going to let you go, I have to grab some potions. I’ll be right back and we’ll get you feeling better, okay?”
Eva tried to stand, but the girl was reluctant to let her go. Eva pried herself out of Shalise’s grip and moved to her bloodied lab coat. Using her knife, Eva punctured her arm again. Drawing the ritual took a good amount of blood out of her, but she needed to make sure there was no contaminated blood getting back into Shalise’s bloodstream.
With a snap of her fingers, all traces of blood on the lab coat had been obliterated using drops of her own blood. She grabbed six vials of Arachne’s blood and sent orbs to obliterate the six arrowheads. She grabbed all of her potions, making sure they were clean, and went back to Shalise’s side.
Eva handed over two light blue vials and a yellow vial. The general remedies would help boost her blood production as well as general pain relief and the yellow vial would help stop the bleeding, though her arm and hand were going to need some serious healing before they went back to normal. If they ever got back to normal.
“Juliana,” Eva said, “see if you can round-up some clothes from the other party goers. It doesn’t need to be a lot, I don’t care if you can’t get clothes for me. Just something for Shalise to wear.”
The blond nodded. She still seemed to be in some sort of shock, but at least she was responding.
“Oh,” Eva said before she left, “don’t touch Arachne. She’s still covered in zombie blood.”
A soft whimper brought Eva’s attention back to Shalise. She knelt down and resumed her hug.
Halloween Streets
“Terrible night, isn’t it?”
“Is this an attempt at small talk?”
The man grumbled something under his breath.
Zoe took her eyes off searching the streets and glanced at him.
Wayne’s eyes searched the tops of buildings as they walked down the deserted street. He, like her, was fully dressed in his usual black suit. He held a large tome open in one hand as if he was in the middle of reading it. He wasn’t, of course.
Zoe had never understood why he used a tome as a focus. Their storage capacity surpassed staves. One could pen down spells into the tome’s pages to avoid the concentration required for more complicated spells. Wayne never used spells that took advantage of those traits. As far as she could tell, he used the tome like any other focus.
Tomes were heavy and unwieldy, yet it was all he used outside of the classroom.
“Ahead,” he said.
Zoe broke her thoughts and snapped her eyes forward.
Another group of the creatures shambled around the corner of the street.
Six of them looked old and rotted. Two had bright red blood still dripping from their wounds. Their clothes were less torn and one wore a Halloween costume. Fresh victims.
Still, no mercy would be shown. Zoe readied her dagger. She already had to put down one of her students, she only hoped neither of the two fresh corpses were students.
Zoe lanced a lightning bolt at the nearest one’s head. She sustained the bolt for a few extra seconds. A normal person would go down with a heart attack, brain damage, or nerve damage, depending on location and power. A zombie didn’t care about such things.
She held the bolt until the zombie’s eyes exploded. Another few seconds and the zombie crumpled to the ground with smoke rising from its body. The putrid stench of burnt flesh filled the street.
The crack drew the attention of the rest of the creatures.
Wayne didn’t hesitate for a moment. He immediately sent out a blast of fire, enveloping a zombie.
Zoe took a step backwards, casting a heavy wind in the direction of the zombies. Two of them stumbled and fell to the ground. A follow-up razor wind took the head off of another.
Wayne threw a blaze of red fire over the two on the ground and caught a third in the inferno.
