Kass almost shot Lily right then and there. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Sirius was watching she definitely would have. The girl was a zombie. There was no doubt about that. No matter how coherent she was right now, she wouldn’t stay that way. But Kass wasn’t about to kill the little girl that had been living at Sirius’s house and eating at his table and basically living like one of his own kids, right in front of him. She cared far too much what he thought to do that.

  Amanda still seemed to think she could fix the girl.

  She wasn’t a complete idiot though. She asked Lily for details about the boy. They would have to track him down after this. Poorly done necromancy magic liked to feed and it did it through blood. A bite was enough. It would likely feed on the boy. They would probably have to kill him too.

  Truth was, in some ways it was better than a rabbit. A rabbit would be harder to find and far more likely to spread the contagion.

  Kass watched as they set up the spell. Amanda told Sirius what to do. She didn’t ask anything of Kass. Kass didn’t offer to help either, she just watched them all, especially Lily.

  “Alright, step back,” Amanda said to Sirius once the circle and ingredients were prepared.

  It didn’t escape Kass’s notice that Amanda had had all the necessary ingredients on her person, as if she knew she might need to do this. Kass suspected it wasn’t the first time she’d done this. How many times?

  “Lily, come here,” Amanda beckoned. “Trust me, this will work.”

  “Are you going to kill the pig?” Lily asked.

  “Yes,” Amanda replied.

  Kass was surprised that Amanda didn’t sugarcoat it but she supposed there wasn’t much point in lying since Lily would see it happen soon anyway.

  For a moment, Kass thought Lily might object to the slaughter of the pig but then the girl got to her feet and walked to the edge of the circle Amanda had made on the ground.

  Amanda reached out a hand and offered it to Lily.

  Kass held her gun’s sights on the girl, just in case.

  She noticed Sirius glance her way.

  Lily didn’t bite Amanda. She took the offered hand in her own without incident.

  Amanda pulled her forward into the circle and pulled out a knife. Then she got the pig trotting.

  Around and around it went. Wide and loose first, then closer and closer to the blade that would end its life.

  In her monitoring of Lily, Kass forgot to look outside. Not that it mattered much, for the barn’s new guest had approached from the north.

  Amanda drew the knife ready to cut the pig.

  “Stop what you’re doing!” cried a voice from the door.

  Kass stayed silent and hidden just out of sight as brown-haired woman entered the barn. She was dressed like a local, but the pistol in her hands said she wasn’t. It was classic army issue, not the sort used by farmers. Sure, sometimes civilians bought them and maybe it had been traded, but the woman’s posture said soldier. A Mercy army soldier if Kass had to guess.

  The soldier hadn’t noticed Kass yet so Kass simply moved her gun’s sights to the soldier’s back and did not reveal herself.

  Amanda and Sirius did well not to glance her way. Both of them were looking at the newcomer.

  “Who are you?” asked Amanda, with the knife still raised.

  “I’m a soldier of Mercy, that’s all you need to know. You need to come with me. We have a few questions for you.”

  “I need to finish this first,” Amanda replied.

  The woman moved her pistol’s sights from Amanda to Lily but Amanda stepped in the way.

  “That’s an illegal zombie,” instructed the woman. “You will move out of the way or I will make you move.”

  “I won’t let you harm her,” Amanda said fiercely.

  Lily cowered behind her, showing not a hint of aggression, which Kass would have found strange if she hadn’t been busy focusing on the soldier’s movements. As far as she knew, once a zombie turned, it didn’t then regain sentience. It was supposed to be like a switch, a trigger that could not be reversed.

  From her position in the shadow of the door, Kass could see the woman’s fingers. Throughout her life, Kass had fired and had seen fired, hundreds of guns. She knew instinctively, the difference between posturing and a real killer.

  So when the soldier’s finger twitched toward the trigger with no hesitation, Kass fired first.

  Down the soldier went, face first onto the loose hay-covered dirt.

  Amanda flinched and a wall of fire appeared and then vanished in front of her. Had she intended to burn a bullet? Could she even do that? Would she have been fast enough?

  If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  “Use her for the spell.” Kass spoke without thinking too much about what she was saying. It seemed obvious. The woman was already dead. Kass’s bullet had gone clean through her skull.

  Sirius reacted before Amanda did. He was already halfway over toward the body, perhaps even with a plan to do just that. Without looking at Kass, he reached down and picked the body up, and dragged it toward the circle.

  Just as he was moving it over the line, the body suddenly moved.

  The soldier’s body gave a wild jerk, and she grabbed a knife from her waist belt and thrust it up and into Sirius’s side.

  Sirius gave a grunt.

  Their position made it impossible for Kass to take another shot without hitting Sirius.

  Amanda still had her own knife in hand, and she was less than a metre away from Sirius. She slashed out at the soldier’s neck.

  Blood spurted out in an arc.

  The soldier moved to attack Amanda.

  Kass could see the heavily bleeding neck wound. It was spewing blood but it was closing over. The soldier was a healer, a very good healer. There weren't many healers who could survive a bullet to the brain.

  Kass fired three successive shots into the woman’s head.

  Apparently that was enough. The soldier went down and this time she stayed down.

  Amanda finished the rest of the spell. Then she ran to Sirius as all of them were bathed in a fine pink mist.

  Sirius was still standing, clutching at his side.

  Kass eyed Lily but the girl didn’t go for the blood on the floor or anyone else for that matter. She behaved more like a regular girl than a zombie. The spell had probably worked, for now.

  Kass turned her attention back to Amanda and Sirius.

  There was a lot more blood on Sirius than there had been before, most of it his own. He’d taken his hands away from the wound and Amanda held hers there instead. It took Kass a few seconds to realise that she wasn’t just doing it to keep pressure on the wound. A silver chain was visible in her hand; the healing infusement.

  Kass watched in silence for a few seconds. Sirius was still standing so that was probably a good sign. She kept watch of Lily. The girl was looking down at the mess on the floor and seemed stunned. Kass didn’t know what to say to her.

  The floor was another matter. A pentagram sort of circle appeared to be burned in blood into the ground. Not to mention all the rest of the blood and their clothes. This was going to take some serious cleaning.

  Stella looked down on the town from where she hung halfway up a pole near the top of the hill.

  She shook her head. “Not enough blood,” she mumbled. “Still not enough blood. But we can fix that later. First...a prod in the right direction. Information is power. And information needs power.”

  She grabbed the end of the cable that she’d just stripped back and fit it into the new connector. Then she did the other end. She used her compression tool to secure them tight, pushing down until it gave a satisfying snap. Finally she fit on the outer casing. Then she eyed her work proudly. There was always something satisfying about doing a small and valuable task oneself. It was too bad she didn’t have the time to do such things more often. It was an ironic thought given she would likely live forever. Bambi would never understand and perhaps it was something Stella did to herself, but she had spent too much of her life feeling like there were too many things she needed to do.

  Perhaps it was the way her mother had tried to live through her by forcing a million extra-curriculars on her. Perhaps it was a side effect of her powers and her ability to see so many future paths, all with their own trade-offs. Perhaps it was simply her nature. Whatever it was, the world could have stood still for eternity and still, Stella would have likely forever felt like there was simply too much to do.

  Murphy got it. Murphy said it was good for an immortal to feel that way. Far better than the opposite. Stella wondered if she would still feel the same if she knew tomorrow would be her last day? Or would it put her in more of a panic? There was a darkness in her future along one line, a darkness that Stella could not see past, but it would not come tomorrow. It was days away at least and there was so much to do.

  There was one other person who Stella knew, who felt very much the same way, and who perhaps had far more reason for it. An old human roommate of hers, one whose home town was the very town Stella was looking down on now.

  She wasn’t down there at the moment but it was her solar panels that Stella had just repaired the connection to, and it was her whose number Stella dialed next.

  She made her call while still halfway up the pole. Stella hadn’t bothered with a full harness for this job. This one was meant for climbing and not sitting about in, but she wouldn’t need to talk for long. In fact, the moment she dialed the number she knew the information she needed. Still, she completed the call for the simple pleasure of hearing Odessa’s voice.

  “Yo! Stella?”

  “Hey Dess,” Stella purred down the line.

  Odessa sounded out of breath. That was normal for her. She was always busy doing something, often something life-endangering, like kayaking over large waterfalls.

  “How’s it going?” Odessa asked.

  “What are you doing?” Stella asked

  “Oh, just hanging about,” Odessa replied.

  Stella could see more clearly now, what it actually was she was doing. Odessa was halfway up a rock-climb, talking on a hands free phone, a technology most people in Witchaven had likely never even heard of.

  “Me too,” Stella replied. “I fixed your broken cable by the way.”

  “My broken-? Oh! Wait? What cable?”

  “The one at your parent’s place.”

  “Oh god! I forgot about that one! That’s been on my todo list for like ever but it’s been awhile since I’ve been home. Nice! Did you pop in and say Hi?”

  “Not this trip.”

  “Oh. I was gonna ask actually if you knew if my old kayak is there? I can’t remember where I left it.”

  “Yeah, it’s there. Listen, I need a favor.” Stella said.

  “Yeah?”

  “You once said you knew a heli pilot who’d do dragon runs?”

  “Dragon runs?” Odessa mumbled in confusion. “I did?”

  “Yeah. For really rich folk. He’d lure the dragons out for hunting or photography or whatever and then jump out of the chopper right at the last moment.”

  “Near Witchaven? That’s illegal, Stella.”

  “Yeah, but you know one right?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I need his number. There’s been a dragon attack,” Stella said giving a technical truth because she hated lying. “And there’s a specific one I need to lure.” Stella hated it, but it had to be done. The fate of the world stood hanging in the balance. She needed to buy Lily some more days... so Murphy could kill her at the right time. Stella hated that too, but the only future where Murphy didn’t kill her, was the one with the long black tunnel. Plus, there was the matter of the infected and the soon to be infected.

  “Are my parents okay?” Odessa asked.

  Stella could hear the worry in Odessa’s voice.

  “Yeah, they’re fine,” Stella replied. “There were a few other deaths, unavoidable, but not them and no one you liked.”

  “What about Olly? Do you know?” Odessa pressed. She must have found somewhere to rest or she’d reached the top of her climb, for she no longer sounded out of breath.

  Top of the climb, Stella decided a moment later.

  “Olly?” It took Stella a few seconds of looking ahead to work out what was going to happen to him. “He hitched a ride out of town,” she replied finally.

  “Oh good. He always wanted to get out, but he’s so damn lazy. I’m glad.”

  “Anyway, about that number?”

  Stella made her second call from the ground, then she packed up her stuff, and started the hike down toward the town. Bread crumbs had been laid and the main containment plan was kicked off. But there were a few more loose ends that still needed trimming. She had to make sure none of the infected left the area, at least not while they could still walk.