Kevin's scent led them deeper into the woods, a mix of his usual sandalwood cologne and something else—fear, maybe. Jessica's heightened werewolf senses picked up every nuance, and the acrid tang of terror clenched her stomach. Even worse was the trail of darkness that seemed to follow his scent, a corrupted magical signature that made her wolf instincts howl in warning.
"We're getting close," she growled to Salina, who hurried behind her with the golden dagger clutched in one pale hand. The goth girl's combat boots crunched through dead leaves, a steady rhythm in the otherwise silent night. Despite her dark makeup and carefully cultivated image of apathy, Jessica could smell the anxiety rolling off her friend in waves.
"How can you tell?" Salina's voice wavered slightly, though she tried to mask it with her usual sarcastic tone. "Other than the incredibly obvious and ominous graveyard right in front of us?" She pushed a strand of black hair from her face, the silver pentacle at her throat glinting in the dim light.
Jessica squinted through the darkness. Sure enough, the trees were thinning out to reveal Moon Valley Cemetery's wrought-iron gates. They loomed ahead like skeletal fingers reaching for the sky, their usual imposing presence amplified by the knowledge that Kevin was somewhere beyond them. The full moon hung low and bloated above the cemetery, casting everything in a pale, sickly light that made the shadows seem deeper, more menacing.
"Real subtle hideout for an evil mummy," Jessica muttered, trying to ignore the way her enhanced senses were screaming at her to run. "What's next, another spooky castle?"
"Hey, at least it's not a museum basement." Salina attempted a weak smile, her black-painted lips trembling slightly. "Though I guess those are harder to come by in Moon Valley. Unless you count Mrs. Henderson's antique shop, but I doubt an ancient Egyptian queen would set up shop between vintage doilies and commemorative plates."
Jessica responded, but the words died in her throat. A sickly green mist was seeping between the gravestones, coiling around the markers like ethereal snakes. The fog carried a scent that made her wolf instincts bristle—decay and dark magic, mixed with something older, something that shouldn't exist in this modern world. It smelled like sun-baked sand and ancient tombs, like bandages that had wrapped the dead for millennia.
"Uh, Salina?" Jessica's claws extended involuntarily, the sharp points catching the moonlight. "Is this normal for a graveyard at night?"
"Depends on your definition of normal." Salina's grip tightened on the dagger until her knuckles went white beneath her fingerless gloves. "But if you're asking whether graveyards usually feature special effects from a B-horror movie? That would be a no. This is definitely Aziza's magic. The texts mentioned she was known for necromancy, but I hoped that was just ancient fear propaganda."
The mist thickened, and Jessica caught movement from the corner of her eye. A pale, withered hand burst from the earth beside a nearby headstone, followed by another, and another. All around them, the ground began to shift and bulge as more hands clawed their way to the surface. The smell of disturbed earth and decay filled the air, making Jessica's sensitive nose burn.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," Salina groaned, though her heart was racing so fast Jessica could hear it hammering against her ribs. "Zombies? Really? Could this get any more cliché? Next thing you know, there'll be lightning and maniacal laughter."
A corpse in tattered formal wear pulled itself free of the earth, bits of rotted flesh hanging from yellowed bones. Its jaw hung at an unnatural angle as it turned empty eye sockets toward them, green light flickering where its eyes should have been. The tattered remains of what might have been a police uniform clung to another emerging figure, while a third wore the moldering remnants of a wedding dress, its veil now a shroud of cobwebs and dirt.
"I'll take cliché over dead any day," Jessica said, dropping into a fighting stance. Her muscles tensed as more zombies emerged, surrounding them in a growing circle of animated corpses. The moon's power thrummed through her blood, making her skin prickle with the need to change. "Any bright ideas?"
"Well, according to my extensive research—" Salina had to dodge a lunging zombie, its blackened fingers grazing her leather jacket. She spun away with surprising grace for someone in platform boots. "—and by research, I mean every horror movie ever made, we should aim for the heads. Though these aren't your standard Hollywood zombies. They're being animated by Aziza's magic, which means—"
"Less theory, more survival!" Jessica snapped as a zombie in Revolutionary War-era clothing lurched toward her.
Her bones cracked and shifted as she gave in to the change, letting her wolf form take over completely. Coarse fur sprouted along her arms and face, her jaw elongating into a powerful muzzle filled with razor-sharp teeth. The transformation sent waves of familiar pain through her body, but she welcomed it. She needed every advantage she could get.
The nearest zombie shambled forward, reaching for her with blackened fingers. Jessica's clawed hand shot out, tearing through its skull like wet paper. The corpse collapsed, but two more immediately took its place. The sickly green mist seemed to pulse with each zombie she took down as if the magic was responding to the violence. Worse, the fallen zombies were twitching, their broken bodies slowly knitting back together under the influence of that otherworldly green light.
"There's too many!" Salina called out, brandishing the golden dagger at a zombie in what appeared to be a Victorian-era dress, its once-elegant bustle now rotted and trailing grave dirt. "This has to be Aziza's magic. She's using them to slow us down!" The blade flashed as she struck, leaving trails of golden light that seemed to burn away the dark magic animating the corpses. Where the light touched, the green glow flickered and died, leaving the bodies to collapse like puppets with cut strings.
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Jessica snarled in response, her wolf mind fully engaged in the fight. She spun and kicked, sending one zombie flying into three others. They went down in a tangle of limbs, giving her a moment to catch her breath. The scent of decay was overwhelming, but underneath it all, she could still smell Kevin's fear. It was fresher now, more immediate, and tinged with something that made her blood run cold—resignation.
"Kevin," she growled, the name coming out garbled through her transformed vocal cords. She couldn't let these walking corpses stop her from reaching him. The thought of what Aziza might do to him right now made her wolf form bristle with rage. After all, they'd been through—the curse that had turned her, the weeks spent learning to control her transformations, Kevin standing by her through it all—she couldn't lose him to some ancient perverted cat mummy.
A piercing scream cut through the night air, distant but unmistakable. It echoed off the gravestones, carrying notes of both pain and defiance that were so quintessentially Kevin that it made Jessica's heartache.
"Kevin!" Both girls shouted in unison. Jessica's enhanced hearing picked up the subtle breaking in his voice, the way the scream ended in a choked sob.
The sound came from deeper in the graveyard, where an ancient stone crypt stood outlined against the starless sky. Its heavy iron door hung open, spilling more of that sickly green light into the darkness. Painted ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs decorated the stone around the entrance, glowing with the same unnatural light. Jessica couldn’t read the strange writings, but they could be the spells reanimating the dead. Either way, they were a sign of the right direction.
"He's in there," Jessica snarled, her enhanced hearing picking up the rapid flutter of Kevin's heartbeat from within the crypt. Each beat was slightly weaker than the last. "We have to—"
A bony hand grabbed her ankle, fingernails like yellowed daggers digging into her fur. Jessica kicked free, bone fragments scattering across the dew-dampened grass, but more zombies were closing in. They moved with increasing coordination, forming a wall between them and the crypt. Their empty eye sockets blazed with that sickly green light, and when they moved, it was with an almost military precision.
"Go!" Salina yelled, slashing at a zombie with her dagger. The blade left trailing sparks of golden light where it cut through the dark magic animating the corpse. The magic screamed, a sound just on the edge of human hearing that made Jessica's ears flatten against her skull. "I'll hold them off!"
"No way am I leaving you alone with the zombie horde!" The words came out as a growl, but the meaning was clear in her tone.
"Jessica!" Salina's voice cracked with desperation as she reached into one of the many pouches on her studded belt. "Kevin needs you! I can handle these B-movie rejects. Trust me!" To emphasize her point, she pulled out a small leather pouch decorated with protective symbols and threw it at a cluster of zombies. The bag burst on impact, releasing a cloud of glittering dust that made the corpses stumble back, their flesh smoking where the powder touched them. "I didn't spend days translating ancient Egyptian spells for nothing!"
Another scream echoed from the crypt, more urgent this time. Jessica's heart clenched at the sound of Kevin's pain, and underneath it, she could hear something else—chanting in a language that predated civilization itself. The sound made her fur stand on end and sent shivers down her spine.
"Fine," she growled, every instinct screaming at her not to leave her friend. "But if you die, I'm totaling going to howl at your ghost.”
"Please," Salina scoffed, though her face was pale beneath her gothic makeup. A thin line of blood trickled from her nose—evidence of the toll the magical combat was taking on her. "Death is totally my aesthetic." She reached into her jacket and pulled out another pouch, this one marked with hieroglyphs that seemed to shift and move in the moonlight. "Now go before nerd boy becomes cat chow!”
Jessica gathered her enhanced muscles and leaped, sailing over the heads of the zombies in a single bound. She hit the ground running on all fours, her powerful limbs eating up the distance to the crypt. The grass beneath her paws was slick with dew and that strange green mist, making each step treacherous. The smell of dark magic grew stronger with every stride, mixing with the copper scent of fresh blood and the musty odor of ancient bindings.
Behind her, she could hear Salina shouting what sounded like Egyptian curse words—probably picked up during their research—followed by the distinct sound of rotting bodies hitting the ground. Golden light flashed at her back, throwing her shadow ahead of her in strange, elongated shapes. The goth girl could handle herself. Right now, Jessica has to focus on saving Kevin.
The entrance to the crypt loomed before her, that sickly green light pulsing like a diseased heartbeat. Kevin's scent was stronger here, mixed with the musty smell of ancient death and something else—something that made her hackles rise and a growl build in her chest. She could hear his heartbeat more clearly now, growing fainter with each passing second.
Aziza. The scent of dried herbs and burial spices, of age-old bandages and dark magic that should have stayed buried in the desert sands. There was something else too—a smell like sun-baked stone and stale air, like tombs closed since the days of the pharaohs.
Jessica paused at the threshold, her enhanced senses taking in every detail. Stone steps led down into darkness, the air growing thicker with each passing moment. The tomb smell was almost overwhelming now, tinged with the copper scent of fresh blood. More painted Hieroglyphs lined the walls of the stairwell, each one glowing with that same sickly light. Aziza probably decorated the old crypt to look like her secret Egyptian temple. But for whatever reason, she must be performing a powerful ritual.
The chanting grew louder, echoing up from the depths of the crypt. The words seemed to twist in the air, defying the laws of physics and sanity alike. Jessica felt them trying to burrow into her mind, promising power and immortality if she'd just submit, just surrender to the ancient magic that pulsed through the air like a living thing.
Her lips pulled back in a snarl, revealing teeth designed for rending flesh. The wolf within her—the curse that had once seemed like the end of her normal life—now gave her the strength to resist the magical compulsion. She was Jessica Tumblelee, a popular high school cheerleader, and girlfriend to the cutest nerd in Moon Valley High. And no ancient Egyptian queen was going to take that away from her.
A feral growl ripped from Jessica's throat as she charged into the crypt, her werewolf form a blur of fur and fury in the supernatural light. Whatever Aziza was planning, whatever sick ritual she had in mind for Kevin, it ended now. The moon's power surged through her veins, turning her fear into strength, her love into a weapon sharper than any fang or claw.
She just prayed she wasn't too late.