In moments of emergency, you can process information much faster than usual as the adrenaline floods your body, and you tend to notice all sorts of odd details. 

For example, Ashe's stance with his rapier had only a vague resemblance to the Olympic style of fencing I knew; the way he bounced and swerved around made me think of him more like a boxer or maybe even a dancer.

He always kept the buckler between him and the zombies, only moving it to deflect the zombies' slow, yet brutally strong attacks away from him. Each blow was accompanied by a meaty crunching noise and the ringing of metal.

"Disable my brother and kill the others!" Eiry commanded.

"Understood," confirmed the necromancer, Gravetender.

"You two get the undead, this bitch is mine!" Ventusa snarled.

Ashe gritted his teeth, but didn’t vocally object to Ventusa’s murderous intent towards his sister. Instead he used his wind magic to boost his speed in an attempt to circle around the zombies and strike at Gravetender herself. 

Gravetender grabbed the ruby amulet at her neck and started muttering something in a deep voice that was wildly mismatched to her appearance.

The zombies responded to whatever command the necromancer had given and all six of them moved to block off Ashe’s advance.

The necromancer obviously had me pegged as the weakest opponent, which, while true, was still a little insulting. 

"Are you serious? I don't even warrant a single goon?" I tried to provoke her into sending at least one zombie my way so Ashe wasn’t in a 6v1.

"Kid, you are obviously far too inexperienced to be a real threat. You can't even aim your gun straight at me" Gravetender said dismissively.

As much as I hated to admit it she had a point. My aim was wavering near Gravetender and I was hesitant to fire at her. 

I didn't actually know if she was human or not, but that hardly mattered. She was a sapient being and that was enough for me to take pause, as ill advised as it was.

I know I should just shoot her - she's trying to fucking kill us - but can I really do that? Do I actually have it in me to kill a person? 

In the brief moment I was deliberating, Ashe shoved me to one side as an icicle the size of my forearm nearly went into my head. The spike flew past me and I could hear the projectile whiz past my ear. I managed to catch myself and ran from my previous position.

I glanced over as I moved and Ashe gave me a quick thumbs up with his buckler hand, then impaled one of the advancing undead through one of it’s closed eyes and the sword made the distinctive clink of metal on metal.

When Ashe pulled the rapier out of the zombie it collapsed to the ground with a dull thud

I couldn't be sure if I'd imagined it, but the rest of the zombies appeared to react in some way to the defeat of their comrade, they almost seemed energized by it.

"Get into cover!" Ashe shouted.

A pretty good idea considering that someone, presumably Eiry, seemed to be targeting me. I ran to the side of the lane of the parking garage, almost getting hit with another icicle, and hid behind a beat-up SUV, putting it between me and the incoming icy spikes.

I chanced a peek over at Eiry and Ventusa. Ventusa had closed the gap and Eiry’s attention seemed to be off me for the time being. Ventusa was viciously pressing the attack as Eiry dodged and weaved while waving her arms in the air and muttering something I couldn't make out.

Ventusa's combat style surprised me even more than Ashe's. Traditionally you'd expect someone wielding a huge fuck-off sword like a claymore to swing it in huge arcs, but she used short decisive swipes and jabs at Eiry, using the sword more like a short spear by holding on to the leather covered part just past the crossguard with one hand and the hilt with the other.

It occurred to me why she was using the claymore like that, although the area of the parking garage we were in wasn't that cramped there still wasn't much space to swing a sword that was nearly five foot long.

A long dagger appeared out of nowhere in her left hand. It had small notches along the back side of the blade. There was no amount of sleight-of-hand that could've produced such a blade from Eiry's tight dress.

As soon as Eiry materialized her dagger, Ventusa made a lunge at her, releasing the front grip for extra range in an attempt to kill her before she could properly defend herself. 

Eiry easily caught the claymore in one of the slots in her dagger and pushed the sword to one side so the stab missed completely.

The Winter sidhe cast another spell with her free hand and a stream of rain from over the short walls of the garage suddenly flowed horizontally towards Eiry and quickly coalesced into a rapier of her own made of blackened ice in her hand. It looked nearly identical to Ashe's slender sword, only Eiry’s was made of ice. 

Out of the corner of my eye I saw something coming towards me and I toppled over backwards to dodge one of the zombies slamming the SUV with a two-handed overhead smash.

The blow made a softball sized dent in the vehicle, right where I had been only a second before and I heard the bones of the creature’s hands snapping from the force of the attack.

"Aaagh!" I shrieked, but in an incredibly courageous battle cry and definitely not in absolute pants-shitting fear.

The creature yanked its mangled hands out of the SUV, they were broken so horribly it would have taken surgery to untangle its hands from one another.

With great difficulty I awkwardly shuffled backwards with my uninjured arm, then got to my feet in time to dodge another attack.  

I shouldn't have complained about not getting sent a zombie. I've got to do something, fast, this arm sling is going to get me killed if I don’t get it off soon. 

I hastily leveled my pistol at the zombie and fired a couple of shots. The gunshots echoed throughout the garage. Thankfully, the garage wasn't enclosed so it wasn't as deafening as my last time using the gun had been.

Two direct hits; one in the torso and one in its neck. To my surprise, no blood spurted out from the wounds; there didn't seem to be any blood at all in the corpse. To my despair, the hole in its throat didn’t slow the thing down at all. I continued to back up as the monstrosity advanced. 

Then my back hit the damp concrete wall. It went to punch me again with supernaturally enhanced strength, but thankfully I was able to get out of the way in time by painfully flinging myself slinged arm first at the SUV.

I screamed as all my weight landed on my elbow, and hazily noticed that the zombie had stumbled on all fours when its attack didn't connect.

Seeing this could be my only chance to survive, I focused my magic as best as I could while in such pain and slammed a electrically charged pistol whip into its back with all the force I could muster. 

With a sickening crunch the pistol grip hit the corpse's right shoulder blade, followed by the acrid stench of burning flesh and clothes.

The zombie was unable to hold its balance and fell face first into the concrete. I stomped my boot into it's head and immediately wished I hadn’t.

It's not that it didn't finish the zombie off, but that its head exploded from my stomp and brains and unidentifiable goop flew everywhere, completely covering my boots with bloodless viscera. I nearly threw up as I pulled my foot out of the gore. 

I gave my leg a quick shake and forced myself to not think of what had just happened and focus on the threat at hand. 

I looked up to see Ashe’s attempt to circumvent the undead goons cut short when one of the four remaining managed to get a lucky hit on his solar plexus that knocked the wind right out of him.

All credit to Ashe, he allowed himself to move with the punch and did a backwards somersault and staggered back to his feet and tried to steady himself for his next move.

He sucked in several ragged breaths and flicked his rapier with magic enchanted speed, cutting off an arm of one of the attackers as it swung at him.

It almost looked like the zombies had sped up somewhat from their initial lumbering gait. I couldn't help but wonder how controlling the undead actually worked.

The reason behind it didn't really matter much at the time, because no matter how necromancy worked, Ashe was still flanked by the undead and his movements were becoming increasingly frantic as he defended himself from the four remaining zombies' increased speed.

Just then I heard furious screaming from Ventusa. She was yelling at the top of her lungs in a language that I assumed to be some ancient form of Irish.

Whatever Eiry had said to provoke Ventusa must have been pretty vile for the bodyguard to fly off like that. 

I could only hope Ventusa was smart enough to not let her rage make her make a fatal mistake and leave Ashe and me with our backs exposed to Eiry.

Ashe will die if you don't kill Gravetender first. This is kill or be killed, the voice in the back of my head reminded me.

Deciding that survival was more important than my moral quandary of shooting a person I hastily tore off the sling from my arm, then went into the Weaver shooting stance and pointed my gun at Gravetender and fired a shot. 

The bullet made a neat hole on the side of her van, but missed the necromancer entirely. 

The necromancer looked somewhat shocked that I had actually tried to shoot her and she booked it to cover behind her vehicle. I fired twice more vaguely in her direction to make sure she stayed there.

With Gravetender occupied with suppressing fire I could fully turn my focus on the other four zombies for a moment. I couldn’t get a clear shot on any of the zombies without risking hitting Ashe, so I was forced to enter the melee.

No attack of opportunity, one time. 

Getting behind the zombie closest to the van, I rammed my palm into its head, slamming it into the hood of the vehicle. There was a clank of metal hitting metal and I saw something shiny fly out from the zombie’s face.

I glanced to where it went and saw it was a small coin that was rolling away the ground. Looking back at the undead I'd just smashed, it was lifeless and unmoving. I put two and two together.

"There was a coin in its head, might be a focus!" I exclaimed.

"Got it," Ashe replied.

Again the zombies became faster, but this time their coordination increased as well.

With no warning, one of the creatures spun around, swinging a wild haymaker.

On reflex I attempted to redirect the punch past me, it almost worked too. It grazed my shoulder, and even though it had barely hit me, it hurt like being hit by a baseball thrown by a major league player in their prime.

I only prevented myself from falling by awkwardly pushing on the hood of the van with my injured arm and moving with the push.

Falling over in combat is the same as being killed due to the ease of finishing off a downed opponent. It disturbed me greatly that I had barely escaped that fate.

I took a snap shot at my attacker and with no small amount of luck put a bullet right into it's left eye and it dropped like a sack of potatoes.

And then there were two.

Ashe circled around the last two undead as he dodged their continued onslaught of attacks. There was a burst of movement from all three that I could barely track with my eyes. Ashe stabbed one of them through the neck and pushed the blade around it, cutting the zombie’s head off. With a wet plop the decapitated head hit the ground along with its body.

Immediately Ashe started struggling to keep with the last zombie. Its movements became far more natural than they had been prior to the other undead being dispatched, supporting my theory that the fewer undead that Gravetender controlled the more power she could put into ones she did control.

Before I could get close enough to help, there was a slight opening in the creature’s defense and Ashe leapt forward, trying to skewer the thing's head on his sword. 

The undead feinted out of the way and made a swift kick to Ashe's outstretched leg. With a wet pop his knee was dislocated and he fell to the ground. He cried out in pain and tried to scuttle back, but couldn’t manage it.

Then the zombie then turned to me, its emotionless face showed no mercy if I had been the one knocked over. He was lucky as fuck Eiry ordered him taken alive as the zombie could’ve easily killed him there and then..

I’ve got no chance to fight this zombie if it bested Ashe. Our only hope is to stop Gravetender.

Gravetender came out from behind the van and held her amulet out, gesturing to her fallen minions. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head as she angrily spat out some words in some guttural language and three of the zombies on the ground near us started fucking twitching. 

“I think she’s trying to raise them again,” I gasped.

"That's not fucking fair," Ashe groaned.

He slammed his knee back into place with a slap and a loud wet pop. He attempted to get back on his feet, but toppled back down when he put weight on his leg.

I had to take Gravetender out before she managed to bring the zombies back, there was no way Ashe and I could defeat them for a second time. 

I had no idea how long it would take her to complete her spell, but given the look of panic on her face was becoming a sadistic smirk I had no time to waste, I started sprinting towards her.

As I ran towards the necromancer at full speed I felt the warmth of my magic flowing through my body and my sprint was boosted than I could possibly hope to achieve even when I had been in shape.

When I was about eight feet from Gravetender I realized my mistake, there was no way I could slow myself down quickly enough to stop myself from hitting the necromancer like a human cannonball. 

I had a split-second to come to a decision before colliding with her. 

Cannonball it is then.

Bracing myself for impact. I jumped and did my best to tuck in my legs and cover my head, lest I snap my neck afterwards.

Gravetender had her focus completely on Ashe and didn't notice me until it was too late, I barreled painfully into her and we went flying around ten feet before we made contact with the ground again.

She skidded on her side a few yards until she stopped, but I tumbled along the rough concrete, trying my best to cover my head so my skull didn't crack open on the hard ground. 

By the time I rolled to a stop I was thoroughly disoriented and for a time there were no thoughts, no sights, no sounds, only a blanket of agony covering me. Slowly the pain separated into individual parts. 

I had no way to know how long it had been since I catapulted myself at the necromancer, but when I finally able to open my eyes I saw Gravetender weakly slap her one hand over her ruby amulet and begin to get up of the parking garage floor.

My gamble paid off, in the brief moment the necromancer's focus was lost Ashe was not only able to dodge the zombie's attack, but counterattack and dispatch the attacker.

I took a second to look over my own wounds. Nothing seemed to be broken, but I'd scraped a couple of large patches of skin off, like moderate road burn, which it technically was.

As much as I would have prefered to lay on the ground for the next several hours, the threat of Eiry, the final zombie, and Gravetender didn't allow for such luxury. I stood up as fast as I could manage and only cried out in pain a bit. 

Somewhere between role-playing as a cannonball and landing I dropped my pistol out of sight, leaving me with only my limited magic to work with.

Gravetender must’ve decided the fight wasn't going in her favor as she had started stumbling her way to her van.

“We got what we came for, let’s just leave!” Gravetender shouted.

“That’s rather boring,” Eiry said coldly, it almost sounded like a warning. She continued, “but, I suppose that’s acceptable.”

What did they come here for if not to find out where Mark is? As soon as I asked myself that the answer came to me.

“They have the book, we can’t let them get away!” I shouted.

I hobbled my way to Gravetender’s van as quickly as possible. She made it there just a second before me and swung open the driver side door, then practically threw herself in, then I heard the engine rev up.

I got to the back of the van and opened one of the rear doors just before she pulled away, then literally threw myself in. 

I struggled to put the unopened door between me and the ground of the parking garage. When I was confident I wasn't going to fall out I took a second to assess the situation.

The back of the van was empty besides myself and something covered by a blue tarp. I could see Gravetender through a window that separated the front from the back.

Then the tarp moved, I couldn't be sure it wasn't due to the van moving, but the possibility of it being another undead didn't thrill me.

Deciding that knowing was half the battle, I pulled the tarp off. It was a person who was hog-tied and gagged. They had hastily applied bandages covering most of their skin, but where there wasn't there were massive burns that looked very fresh.

One hand had been completely spared from whatever had happened to them. I noticed a wedding ring on the ring finger and my stomach dropped about a mile when I realized who it belonged to.

“Dad?” I whispered.