Fate's Surrender (Eternal Sorrows Book 3) by Sarra Cannon (android based ebook reader txt) 📕

Her heart skipped a beat. What the hell was that? There were definitely three or more of them, whatever they were.

She thought back to the crouching one they’d faced in D.C. These were probably similar. Regular humans turned into disgusting, dog-like creatures with fangs or scissors for hands.

There were no words for how horrible the Dark One was, using people who had once been fathers, sons, mothers, or daughters, for her own twisted game.

Parrish prayed there was no part of who they used to be still locked away inside of them. Hopefully, they were nothing more than mindless shells of the people they used to be.

She wanted to go to Crash and Noah and help them with the dog-like rotters she’d just seen leaping toward them, but she could do nothing from here. All she could do was continue on with her plan and hope to draw some of the others away.

Not seeing any other potential threats than the couple in front of her, Parrish took a deep, centering breath and solidified her stance, sword drawn.

She focused on the power deep inside, drawing it to the surface until her blade seemed to be engulfed in an icy-blue light. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was capable of accomplishing with this magic, but she remembered that very first time she’d cut down the large trench-coat zombie inside the office building the night they met Crash and Lily.

She’d somehow controlled a blast of blue light that was focused to a single point.

Today, though, she was going to try something a bit different, because if she wanted to get their attention, she was going to have to do something big and bold.

Something really freaking dangerous but hopefully also effective.

She played through the move in her mind several times before she was ready, and then she drew her sword back, pouring even more of her power into its blue light.

With a yell, she sliced her sword horizontally across the air, imagining the light spreading out across the sea of rotters still headed for the compound. She kept her intention toward the middle of their bodies, hoping to take down as many of them as possible, and not entirely knowing what it would do to them.

To her surprise, it worked, too.

Every zombie her blue light touched fell to the ground, its bottom half severed from its body.

Including the super zombies.

Only, while the regular zombies who had fallen stayed where they were, the tentacle twins began pulling themselves toward her, their tentacles lengthening and extending over the tops of the other writhing on the ground.

She steadied her sword and readied another blast, but before she had a chance to unleash it, a flash of silver appeared in her peripheral vision.

Parrish didn’t even fully have time to process what was happening, but her instincts kicked in before her brain did, her sword gliding through the air toward the figure.

Only, the blade didn’t slice through the rotter’s flesh like she expected.

Even though she’d landed a direct hit, all she heard was the sound of steel clanging against steel.

The zombie, red-eyed and covered in some kind of silvery metal that acted like a shell or armor over its entire body, had caught the blade of her sword in its left hand. With a strangled cry, Parrish tried to leap back, pulling on her sword with all of her power.

But the rotter wasn’t letting her go that easy.

It pulled her sword from her hands with one swift movement and tossed it to the ground with a clatter. Parrish gathered her blue light in her hands and was about to unleash it toward the silver zombie when the thing quickly drew back its metallic fist and punched her in the gut.

Parrish went flying off the top of the bus, landing with a crack on the hard asphalt below, a pair of poisoned tentacles dangerously close.

And getting closer.

She’d been stupid to believe she could handle this all on her own, and now she was going to pay for it with her life.

Twelve

Karmen

“What the hell was that?”

Everyone on the roof stopped shooting and ran to the opposite side of the roof. Karmen had just barely caught the flash of blue light in the binoculars, but she didn’t have to see it to know what it was.

She stepped onto a milk crate nearby and lifted the binoculars to her eyes, scanning the area for Parrish.

Just as she suspected, the girl was standing on top of a dang bus over a hundred yards away at the back of the horde. What was she trying to pull here?

But then Karmen noticed the sheer number of rotters who’d been grounded by Parrish’s magic. She’d somehow used her light magic to sever their legs from their bodies, so even though they were still alive, they couldn’t move without dragging themselves forward with their hands.

She’d severely crippled their numbers with one swift move, which was pretty badass, even if Karmen wouldn’t have admitted it to her face.

Only, before Karmen could fully appreciate Parrish’s use of magic and intelligence, something leapt at the top of the bus from out of nowhere.

Red eyes flashed as a silver-coated zombie yanked Parrish’s sword from her hand and hit her so hard, she went flying like a ragdoll to the pavement.

Karmen’s stomach churned.

This was bad.

She spun around, seeking out the four super zombies she’d managed to turn to their side so far. She imagined creating a web between them, kind of like a mental group text.

That was the best way she had for making sense of it in her head, anyway.

As soon as she could feel the connection between her own mind and the four of theirs, she gave them a new directive.

Find Parrish. Save her. Destroy everything in your path.

She quickly gave each of them directions for how to find Parrish from where they were standing, and she was relieved when each of them broke out in a run. Well, all of them except the Beast.