“Because we’re fighting the actual crusade and he knows it.” For some reason, Treth was beaming. The ghost inside my head manifested a few metres away and lopped the head off a zombie that was pursuing some stragglers. Trudie and the others had evacuated most of the civvies, but there were so many we hadn’t been able to help.
My mood darkened as I let loose a flurry of blows, cutting down some more monsters. But no amount of carnage cheered me up.
We should have been here sooner. It wasn’t enough to just kill monsters. We had to save people. Yet, so many people…
I shook my head to break out of my reverie, just as I gored two zombies with my off-hand cutlass, before beheading them both in a single blow with Ithalen, the enchanted sword I’d received from none other than the Lady of the Lake.
“To be honest,” Treth said, blocking a zombie’s path as it tried to walk through him. He could choose to go corporeal when he wanted to but could only affect some things some of the time. It seemed that today was a day for effective ghosts and eager flaming coats. “I feel a bit redundant. You probably don’t even need the Crusaders. You’re a walking inferno!”
“Gee, thanks. You are definitely a master of complimenting a girl.”
“Hey, Brett called you a blood-covered mad woman and then you locked lips for a few hours.”
“It’s about time and place, my dear Treth. I hope you talk to Gorgo more respectfully.”
Treth somehow blushed through his semi-translucence. But he smiled, just as he executed the zombie in front of him.
For too long, my ghostly companion had had no one but me to keep him company. But, as my weird spectral powers grew, we had found a way for him to occasionally contact his long-lost love, beyond the In Between. I was glad. I had Brett. It was only fair that Treth had someone too.
A gust of flames beat a zombie onto the floor. Before it could stand, I pressed my steel-tipped boot onto its chest and skewered its head. At the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but note that an hour ago, this had been someone’s son. Someone’s father. A lover. A client. A friend.
But undeath took everything from us. I didn’t kill them. I just closed the casket.
I looked up after unsheathing my blade from the zombie’s skull, expecting another wave of gurgling corpses. But they were all dead. Scorched, beheaded, skewered, or shot to pieces.
Beyond the sea of the dead, a group of gunmen in grey lowered their weapons. I wiped mine off on my flaming coat, letting heat kill the necromantic bacteria, and approached the Crusaders.
Brett raised his visor and gave me a smile. But there was sadness hidden within it. I looked near his feet. A Crusader lay still, black blood oozing from his neck.
“Haynes,” Brett said, embracing me. We both smelled like sweat and blood. I added a nice fiery aroma to the mix.
“What happened?” I asked, voice husky, cold. Crusaders seldom died. But sometimes they did. And, every single time, I couldn’t help but feel it was my fault. Even if my logical brain said it wasn’t.
“Mobbed as we deployed. We tried to break through, but they managed to pull his collar off and bite him. Guy was there…”
I looked at Guy, Brett’s best friend and a stalwart founding member of the Crusaders. He was telling some recruits to keep a look out and to get ready to sweep the area. Didn’t want Sanitation to come and get bitten. That’d start the entire outbreak up again. Guy betrayed nothing about what he’d done, but I knew that it would eat at him. You didn’t kill a friend, even if you had to, and then sleep well.
A door nearby opened and Trudie appeared. Her fur and claws had receded, and she looked, mostly, human. It was odd that my werewolf friend always looked more vampiric than wolfish. She stretched her arms and yawned.
“What’s for lunch?”
“How can you talk about food when we’re still in the field?” I asked, exasperated. Brett squeezed my hand and then returned to Guy to take care of the sweep.
Trudie shrugged. Senegal, the sole werewolf in her pack, appeared nearby. Both of them had been helping with evacuation. While werewolves could easily take on zombies, and they were technically immune to the disease, the necroblood infection could still debilitate them. I much rather wanted my unarmed, albeit powerful, friends helping save people with their inhuman agility.
“How many?” I asked, looking up.
Trudie frowned, but then put on a fake smile. “A lot. Don’t worry, Kats. There’s plenty we saved. Better than last time.”
Last time, when an entire mall had been taken down by zombies. That had been almost all clean-up. No one left to evacuate.
I clenched my fist.
Necromancers…I thought that there was some humanity in them. Candace had proven that. But, for every redeemable necromancer, there were a dozen more that needed to be put down.
I passed my friend as she started talking to Senegal about lunch. The red-headed werewolf nodded politely, but I saw him growing nauseous. It seems iron stomachs were a Trudie thing, not a werewolf thing.
I scaled the now open two-storey apartment and arrived on its flat roof, which Cindy and the others had been using as a base of operations and medical bay.
The wounded, many missing limbs, lay in rows. Already, someone had erected a bridge to another rooftop to make space for more wounded.
There were too few of them. Too few survivors. In a city block this big.
A mother and daughter stood by the roof edge, watching the flaming corpses on the street. I walked closer to them and, at my approach, the mother turned to me. Her eyes were hollow. I knew that look. They were the eyes many of us had. The eyes of someone who had seen too much in too little time.
“I’m…” I started, stammering. “I’m sorry. Sorry that we didn’t get here sooner. That we couldn’t save more people.”
She looked stunned at my apology. I felt Treth’s pitying gaze. He’d argue that we did what we could. But we could always do better. We had to do better.
The mother looked down towards her daughter, as if considering if she was genuinely there. She stroked the girl’s head and then looked up at me.
“You saved her,” she said, simply. “And nothing else matters.”
Chapter 2.
Costs
“You know you don’t have to do this every time?” Brett insisted, as we made our way up a path to a humble suburban home. It wasn’t a rich looking house or neighbourhood, but its owner maintained a splendid garden in spite of that. Fae were rare in this area so, for a garden to be this lush, it took real human grit.
“I shirked my duties as commander before,” I replied, fidgeting with the buttons on my dress-shirt. “Never again.”
“None of the other agencies go through as much effort as you. Drakenbane sends out an SMS to the next of kin. If that. I ran into a wife of a guy who died a year ago and she asked when he was coming home. They hadn’t bothered to even notify her.”
“We’re not Drakenbane,” I replied, coldly.
Treth nodded his approval but, I could see by his creased forehead that he agreed with Brett’s sentiments. Both of them didn’t understand. I had to do this. Haynes had died under my command. He died for me. This was the least I could do for him. And it didn’t come close to being enough.