Better off Dead A Lucy Hart, Deathdealer - By Eva Sloan Page 0,81

then smacking another in the teeth, flattening both. Another blurry movement and she took out another zombie’s legs, sending it clattering to the ground. In no time her grandmother had run to them, and was pulling Lucy to her feet with unnatural strength.

Lucy gulped when she caught the look on her grandmother’s face. She was majorly pissed off.

“As impressive as this is…” she waved a hand at the throng of corpses. “That you can raise an entire cemetery, if you can’t control them and send them back to their graves you’re going to get everyone killed!”

She grabbed Lucy’s injured hand and Lucy could feel her gram’s power flicker and sizzle against her flesh. It wasn’t very strong, but it was concentrated, and most importantly, it knew what it was doing. “Now let’s send all these poor people back to their rest.”

Lucy could feel her own power rise up again, this time it hurt and burned far more than before. But it wasn’t as frightening. She knew her grandmother was going to put everything right.

Gram raised her other hand up to the heavens. “Hear me, denizens of this cemetery. I am Lillian Haveraux, and I command you to return to your graves…now!”

Lucy felt the power flash up through her, rippling over her flesh and pulsing through her hand into her grandmother, then out to the zombies. Every zombie stopped in its tracks, slowly turned to face Gram, and then just like that, they all started moving in straight lines until they started falling back into their graves. And amazingly enough, all the ripped up earth and grass just seemed to open up and swallow them, and then settled and smoothed out until even the grass looked exactly as it had before.

Gram let go of Lucy’s hand and she felt the instant shock of their powers disconnecting. Her grandmother shot her with the angriest glower. “You stupid girl!”

“But Gram…I-I didn’t…”

Just then Gram’s eyes lit on Abbey’s still sobbing form, and she shook her head, giving her granddaughter’s arm a gentle squeeze. “I should’ve known.”

Gram walked over to Abbey, peering down at her with harsh, demanding eyes. This alone made Abbey shut up.

“Your grandma Donna May and I both told you not to mess with this kind of magic.”

“I had to try!” Abbey cried.

Gram grabbed hold of Abbey’s hand. She examined the wound and then let her go. “You’re just a witch.” Her tone was cold. Lucy had never heard her voice like that. “You can’t possibly control a necromancy ritual. It may be magic, but it is too removed from witchcraft for your kind to do anything but get themselves killed!”

Abbey sobbed. “I’m sorry…but I had—”

“If you had waited until you’d learned enough from your grandmother, you could’ve called your parents spirits from the nether realm, all by yourself, like any other self respecting Wiccan.” She got right in Abbey’s face. “No, you had to trick the first necromancer you came across into this foolishness, and you almost got my granddaughter killed!”

Abbey wiped the tears from her eyes, her face usually so full of life was stripped of all hope…beaten.

In an instant Gram’s face changed from angry to the gentle warmth Lucy was used to. She moved forward and took Abbey into her arms. “Sweet child. Zombies can’t remember what they were. They’ve lost the spark of humanity. Their souls moved on shortly after they died. So please don’t remember them like this. Remember them as they were when they were living.”

As always, Lucy was touched by her grandmother’s caring nature. Even though she’d been angry enough to kill Abbey only a minute ago, she was now consoling her, her arm around Abbey’s shoulders as they turned and started to walk towards the entrance of the graveyard.

Lucy brushed some of the dead leaves from her jeans, just starting to feel a little better. Still wobbly, but she was a damn sight better than she would’ve been if the heard of zombies had gotten their cold, dead hands of her.

Gram’s such a rock star…

She was going to elaborate on her grandmother’s wondrous qualities, but she didn’t get a chance to finish that thought. What’s more, she didn’t have a chance to even take a single step to follow either.

She gasped as she felt it: something cold and dead hurdling toward her from behind. The darkness of the graveyard made her all the more confused, and she turned in time to see flowing blonde hair and a smiling set of fangs. Something hurt, and