18. Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen:

~Lochlainn O'Hare~

*Trigger warning- gore, zombies, decay, and decapitation*

T he windows shattered. Wind rushed into the greenhouse, swirling around Valerie and I. My feet kept me steady as I summoned endless ankle-breaking roots. They surged up around me and locked the undead beyond the frame of the greenhouse.

"Amber!" I bellow through the howling night, but my voice barely carried over the moaning dead.

"You stupid fucking hag!" Amber appeared in a new bolt of lightning, her fist meeting Valerie's cheek. I lunged for her, but my spell was backfired on me as bones climbed through the soul. They wrapped their fingers around me and dug into my skin. Blood filled the air, and I roared. Yet, my wild shape didn't come. Not as I summoned it, not even after I thrashed back and forth. Bones slithered up my body like a viper and looped around my throat. I struggled for air.

Yet, it all froze in time as Valerie straightened, her face indifferent. The red on her cheek seeping away like the lights in her eyes. "Now, now, I thought we learned our lesson about name calling."

"Fuck you!" Amber swung again, but a vine shot out of the soul nearest to Valerie. It stabbed through the Tiefling's arm. She screamed as her inky blood seeped out of her forearm in globs.

Valerie huffed, the woman I'd been kissing early gone from my sight. Instead was an angry force of nature, focused and without mercy. She flicked another finger at Amber and a second vine shot out, stabbing through Amber's other bicep. They began to dive in and out of the necromancer's body until her arms were stitched at bad angles. I tore through the bones trying to choke me, but I had no voice to stop her. Valerie jerked her hands backward and the vines ripped out of the Tiefling. The sound of bones cracking, tissue tearing, and Amber's screams drowned out the moaning of her swarming dead.

"What was it that you needed Lochlainn for? Was your thesis project not good enough?" Valerie cocked her head, eyes still glued to the necromancer. Amber's arms limply hung by her side, pieces of her missing just like her zombies.

"Why didn't you turn on her?" Amber's whimper silenced all her creations. Both Valerie and Amber looked to me as I shucked the rest of the bones like a husk.

"Why didn't…you poor misguided creature, you think your little show would make me turn on Valerie?" I needed to stall for time. The staff of the college would have heard the sound, would have felt the shift in magic. Unless the unthinkable happened, and she'd killed everyone…or… My thoughts were jolted as I heard screams echo from all over the campus. "What did you do?"

"It was really fucking simple! You two just wouldn't stop! You wouldn't just let me have what I needed to graduate! Isn't that what you're here for, Professor? To help us graduate! " Her snarling words were thrown at me with venom that I didn't understand. She stumbled toward me, and Valerie circled her back, keeping a hunter's eye on the crowd surging around us.

"Amber, I am sorry, I don't know what you're talking about!" I barked.

"You, and all those other professors just looooooved Adrianna. And here I was, with more talent , more power , more intelligence than her…and did anyone notice?" She spun around on her heels, wheeling her arms till they popped back into place. The chunks that were ripped clean replaced with rotting flesh. One of the zombie sorority girls collapsed into dust. "No!"

Valerie was snatched by grabbing hands. The trees lashed out, ripping through the corpses. I yelled out to her, but nature whisked Valerie away into their shadowy canopy. Amber shrieked, sending her horde after her. "Don't let that fucking faker get away with it!"

"Amber!" I snapped.

She stopped, lurching as my roots caught her ankles. While the zombies thrashed about, a few freeing themselves to chase my little witch into the woods that surrounded the campus, Amber was stuck in one place. I put out my hands, palms toward her, "Your anger is with me. With the staff here."

"No," she laughed, voice cracking with madness. Her face split into a creepy smile as she cackled harder and harder. I saw the way her skin sagged and her body swayed. The bog hex was still festering in her system. It'd progressed from sneezing fits to draining her. Her sallow skin looked clammy, red already creeping into her eyes, and her fingers were turning blue. But she swallowed something and fought to stand up straight. "No! No, my anger is with all of you! With every. Single. One! Of! You! You want to know what happened when I returned this semester, going to ask professors to write me letters of recommendations? They were already writing them for someone else. I didn't show enough mettle. I wasn't a good candidate for their internship. Me? Me! Not good enough! I had top grades! I'm sorority president, when even my sister couldn't get that! So, when I told my parents I was going to change their minds with my thesis project…do you know what they said?"

I shifted my stance, preparing to cast if needed, or rush my fur and fang.

"They said I should remove the obstacles in my way. If I wanted letters of recommendations, I needed to destroy the competition while working on my project. That I couldn't slip up or they'd stop my funding."

My heart sank. "What did Teddy have that you didn't?"

Amber cocked her head ninety degrees to the left, her eyes spinning in her own skull. "My letter of recommendation from the Head of Religious Studies, obviously! "

"And Valerie?"

"Business Management!" Amber threw her arms up into the air. Something moved behind her but I had to keep my focus on her.

"And myself?" I scowled. More movement…the shadows were creeping. Despite the rain pelting over our heads, and the growling skies, I could see the change. Something was stalking out of the woods.

"You were going to be the crowning achievement! Professor, don't you understand the power I would wield with an arch-druid under my control? I'd be wanted by every business in the realm! I'd have my pick of the fucking internships! I bet I'd graduate with honors!" She giggled with all her teeth showing, her hands clapping out in front of her.

"Oh," I nodded, completely baffled and a little dumbstruck by the sheer…fucking…audacity. "I think I've heard enough."

Her face soured as she straightened up fully, "You're. Not. Listening."

"You're not making any sense," I countered with a snarl.

I tried not to show the shock on my face as I watched gnarly, gangly branches crawling across the ground behind her. They picked off zombie one by one, ripping their head from their necks and turning them into soil. With every body, the branches grew in size. Their thorns sharp as swords.

"I just want what is owed to me! I'm a McClanes! I should be top of the school, but no one appreciates me, the hard work I've done! Is it too much to ask for the recognition I deserve?" Her voice pitched up as lightning cracked the sky in half behind her. My eyes widened as I saw the monstrosity growing behind her. Amber stopped immediately, her body tensing.

Wrapped in a curling thicket was Valerie, eyes wide and made of glowing rubies. Her fingers were elongated into daggers, her teeth sharp razors, and mushrooms blooming out of her arms. Tufts of moss and little white baby's breath decorated her cheeks and hair as she loomed over Amber's back.

Amber turned, inch by inch, her body contorting backward to see my little witch towering over her.

"You really should have killed me and framed Teddy, Amber." Valerie's smile cracked her face in half to show three other rows of razor teeth. "It would have gone better for you."

And then my little witch unhinged her jaw and swallowed Amber's head whole like a praying mantis feeding on her prey.