Seraphina's Revenge: A Rebirth In The Apocalypse Novel

Chapter 369: If I Didn’t Know Better

The man who pointed out that Sera wasn’t human quickly got his legs under him and sprinted off in the other direction, the smell of fear leaking from him.

But the other Saint Eaters did not.

Some were too loyal. Some were too afraid of the General. Some still wanted the reward for bringing one of them back.

Zubair met Rourke in the open.

Rourke fired first. Zubair turned his shoulder. The round grazed him as Zubair grabbed Rourke’s wrist with his left hand and set his right hand against Rourke’s chest.

Fire burst our from his palm point blank.

Rourke screamed and staggered back, armor smoking.

It did not burn through all the way, but it was enough to stun him.

His men fired at Zubair. Zubair let go of Rourke and threw a wide arc of fire across the ground. The shot from one of Rourke’s men struck Zubair high in the arm. Zubair grunted but held his stance.

"Zubair!" Elias tried to break ranks, wanting to get to Zubair in order to heal him.

"Handle your own," Zubair snarled without looking over his shoulder. He could feel his body pushing out the bullets and healing the wounds.

Alexei shot the man who had hit Zubair. Then he shot the man beside him. Then he shot the one trying to pull Rourke back.

But the numbers kept coming.

The trucks at the back began to spread out to try to encircle Alexei and the others, but they really didn’t need to bother.

While it was clear that they wanted to press in from both ends of the street and trap them, it was five people against what had to be hundreds if not thousands of men. They weren’t going anywhere.

Letting out a soft sigh, Alexei saw movement on the far right, behind the rail line. More men were using that route as the number of Saint Eaters continued to grow.

"They’re splitting up," Alexei warned, even now counting the bullets on his body. "They want to box us in."

"Then don’t let them," replied Zubair. But this was one of those moments were it was a lot easier said than done.

Still, an order was an order.

Alexei moved, not bothering to waste his energy rolling his eyes.

He left the exact center of their group and went to the right, past the front of the diner.

He used the edge of the building to shorten the angle. Two Saint Eaters rushed him. He shot one in the leg, then kicked him aside.

The second swung a pipe at his head. Alexei blocked with his forearm and drove his elbow into the man’s jaw.

Psycho wanted to rip the throat out, but Alexei chose speed instead. He shot him in the head at close range.

He reached the edge of the street and looked down the rail line. A group of eight was coming that way. They had rifles and were using the railcars for cover.

Alexei took a breath and pushed the ice in his veins out again.

It spread along the rail, up the iron, and onto the gravel.

The first man stepped on it, slipped, and hit the rail hard. The second tried to jump over him and fell too. The rest stopped firing to keep from shooting their own men.

That gave Alexei time to shoot three of them in the chest.

The gunfire in the main street did not stop.

Lachlan was in the thick of it now.

He had dropped his rifle, already out of bullets, and was fighting hand to hand.

Every time he struck, small shocks ran through the man he hit. It was not enough to kill, but it was more than enough to knock them out.

He used that time to take their weapons and twist them into something unusable.

He laughed once, short, but there was strain in it. Three men tried to pin him from behind. He threw his head back into one, spun, and kept moving.

Elias continued to use his bullets to take out the men around him, ignoring the hot bullets that were entering his flesh almost as fast as they were falling out.

Blood poured out from all around him, and the human part of his brain screamed to stop the bleeding. Dropping to his knee, he pulled a bandage from his pack, bit it open, and held it under his shirt.

While he did, a Saint Eater aimed at him from the far truck.

Sera shot that man without looking.

She had taken a rifle from one of the bodies, even as the creature inside of her snarled about stupid males that were willing to carve out their brains in order for things to make sense again.

Silently agreeing with her creature, Sera fired in single shots. Every round hit its target, her creature taking over her body in order to increase the accuracy.

The men who saw her do it lost interest in trying to grab her. They aimed for Zubair instead. He was the one lighting the street.

"General will skin you alive!" one of them yelled at him.

"Then he should come out and do it himself," Zubair answered with a shrug. "Because you aren’t going to be able to."

He threw his flames again, but this time it was weaker. He had been drawing on his powers too much during this fight and neglecting them before. He made a promise to himself that if he got out of this situation alive, he would never take his fire power for granted again.

Alexei moved back toward the center to cover him.

More trucks arrived from outside the town.

The engines were louder. These were not bikes. These were transports. At least three. Each had ten to twelve men in the back. T

hat pushed the number far past two hundred in view, with more behind them. They were not all in one place, but they were close enough to pose as a real threat.

If I didn’t know better, I would think that we were screwed, chuckled Psycho, his voice coming out loud and clear in Alexei’s head.

Alexei ignored the comment and shot the driver of the first new truck. The man slumped. The truck veered and crashed into the side of the post office. Men spilled out, cursing. That slowed the second truck behind it.

Sera stepped forward again.

She was covered in blood now.

Alexei had to do a doubletake to make sure that none of it looked like hers.

Her eyes were fully black. Her breathing was steady. The air around her felt wrong, but not to him.

To the men, the zombies, and even the birds in the air she was higher on the food chain. The zombies and animals recognized it long before the human did.

But even then, they were still smart enough to understand that they were biting off more than they could chew.

Several Saint Eaters began to back away without orders.

"Shoot the woman!" someone shouted.