Fearless (The Blue Fire Saga) (15 page)

Leesa took all this in with a glance. The zombies were horrible, but it wasn’t their presence or appearance that surprised her.
It wasn’t even that they had apparently killed one of her dorm mates.
No, it was
Cali who
truly
shocked her.

Cali stood with her back to Le
esa, facing the standing zombie
.
The creature towered over her, but Cali had grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall and was spraying blasts of white fog into the creature’s face, keeping it at bay.
Dressed in a camouflage T-shirt and black sweatpants, Cali looked like a miniature soldier.

“Cali, we’
re here,
” Leesa shouted. “Get
the hell
out of there
!
”

Cali gave the zombie one long, final blast from the fire extinguisher, then hurled the metal canister at the creature
’s head
. She spun and raced back to Leesa and the volkaanes.
Heedless of the new arrivals, t
he zombie lurched slowly after her.

Cali gave Leesa a quick hug and then stepped back.

“They’re stupid and slow,” she said, “but dangerous
just the same
. They got Amber before we could do anything.” She looked at Rave. “You guys can take them no problem, right?”

Rave nodded. He didn’t sense any true life force
coming
from the creatures, so he wasn’t sure how useful his inner fire would be, but volkaane speed and strength should be
more than
enough.

“D
on’t let
them
bite
you,”
Leesa warned. “I don’t know
if their bite can turn you into a zombie,
and
I don’t want to find out.”

“Don’t worry.
Not getting bitten is what we do best. We fight vampires, remember?”

Leesa nodded, feeling a bit foolish. Avoiding
bite
s
would be rule number one when fighting a vampire.

The oncoming zombie
had cut the distance between them by half.
Rave turned to face it.

“You have to do something to stop their brains,” Cali said, recalling every zombie movie she had ever seen. “In the movies, they shoot or stab them in the head.”

“You girls stay
here,” Rave said. He looked at
Dral
and Bain. “I’ll tak
e care of this one. You get th
e other two.
”
The two volkaanes nodded.

They bounded down the hallway. In the enclosed space, they could not move at full volkaane speed, but they were still little
more than a blur.
Rave launched himself at the nearest zombie, while
Dral
and Bain literally ran three steps up on the hallway walls to get past him and on to the other two.
Their speed seemed to allow them to defy gravity.

Leesa watched as Rave
grab
bed the gruesome creature by the shoulders and he
ld
it at arm’s length.
A low growl rumbled from t
he zombie
’s
throat as it
tried futile
ly to reach Rave with its teeth, but Rave
was much too strong. Hi
s hands
moved quickly
to t
he sides of the zombie’s head. Rave
gave
the thing’s
neck a sharp, powerful twist, snapping it. With its body no longer connected to the brain, the zombie collapsed to the floor.
The creature’s horrid eyes still moved and
its
gruesome mouth still moaned, but it could do nothing else.

Farther dow
n the hallway,
Dral
and Bain dispatched
the
other two
zombies
in the same manner
.

Leesa heard sirens wailing outside
. The police were
finally
arriving.

“We need to get back upstairs,” she said. “You don’t want to have to explain how you snapped their necks like that.”

Dral
and Bain hurried back up the hallway.

“Just a minute,” Cali said.

She pulled a pen from behind her ear and bent o
ver the zombie Rave had crippl
ed.
The pen was typical Cali, fashioned of sparkly purple metal with a tuft of bright lavender fur hanging from the end.
Without
hesitation, she plunged
the point
into the thing’s eyeball,
and then used her palm to push the pen deep
into its brain.
Nothing was left
showing
of the pen but a bit of purple and the lavender fur.
The
creature’s
eyes stopped moving and the moaning ceased.

Cali
looked up and
smiled.
“
Rule ninety-one: Never leave a live zombie at your back
.”
She stood up. “Now we can go.”

Outside the dorm, Viktor watched from
among the crowd of onlookers who had gathered at the arrival of the police and campus security. At least ten cruisers and three ambulances blocked the street now, their flashing rooftop lights painting the grass and the front of the building in dabs of blue and red.
Yellow wooden sawhorses and crime scene tape kept the gawkers back.

A few moments ago
,
a crowd of young women had dashed out of the dorm. They were immediately surrounded by
the earliest arriving
cops and medical personnel. Viktor had moved as close to the cluster of coeds as he dared
and listened
in
. He overheard words like “horrible,” “scary,” and his favorite, “
freakin
’ dead people.”
He’d had to work hard to keep from smiling
when he heard that one
.

Near the dorm entrance, a squad of burly officers dressed
in black flak j
ackets was
preparing to enter the building
. Whatever the
final
outcome ha
d been inside
, all the police
would find now were three semi-fresh, lifeless corpses.
Soon after dark, Vikt
or had chosen the three newest
looking graves in a nearby cemetery and used his magic to uncover the
bodies. He had transported the corpses
here in a stolen van
and floated them up into the third floor stairwell
before re-
animating them
.
Aided by the Necromancer’s powerful magic sent through Viktor’s amulet,
he
had kept the dead bodies animated as long a
s he could
.

While the zombies
wr
eaked their havoc inside, he
had
hurried from the dorm and
stood
hidden
in the shadows
close to
the wall of
the building
, his senses alert for any
sign of magic being used
against his
undead minions. Sadly, h
e had sensed nothing.
The only magic here was what he had used to reanimate the corpses.
The Necromancer had known it was a long shot, but
thought it
worth the effort to try to find out if Dominic’s use of magic
right
outside the dorm might have been related to someone or something inside.
If it was, nothing about what had just happened gave any clue to it.

Won
dering how the authorities were going to
explain what they were about to find, Viktor
smiled and
walked casually away from the dormitory.

10
. A SURPRISING INVITATON

B
ack up in her room, Leesa swung the door closed
. Bain and
Dral
took up their usual positions beside the door while Leesa
spun around to face Cali.

“What were you thinking?” she said. “Fighting a zombie with a freaking fire extinguisher?”

Cali shrugged. “Hey, it worked, didn’t it? It slowed the thing down.”

Leesa could still picture
Cali spraying the extinguisher into the monster’s face.
She remembered how scared she’d been for Cali.

“Why didn’t you just run away like the other kids?”

“A couple of girls were trapped in their rooms,” Cali explained. “I had to do something to distract the thing while I waited for you guys to show up. You saw what the other two did to Amber.”

“I thought
you were v
ery
brave,
Cali,
” Bain said.

Cali moved closer to Bain and laid her hand on his forearm.

“Thank you, Bain.
” She grinned.
“
But if you’re
trying to flirt
w
ith me, I have to tell you
I
’ve
already got
a boyfriend.”

Bain got an amused look on his face.
“Oh
you do, do you?” He ran the tip of his finger
slowly
down Cali’s cheek. “What’s his name?”