His senses flew out, giving him an impression of every animal he touched. Four floors up and three down, and everything was visible. The information was overwhelming, and he shut down the spell instantly and felt around to see if there were any heat blowback.

Nothing.

He was almost crying in excitement, tightening his fist in triumph. Lying flat like a board with all of his muscles clenched.

He had done it.

Solved the problem and now they had a path to survival.

He had a functional Animal Sense spell. Daniel said that over and over in his head to let the success settle.

For a moment, he indulged and remembered the rush of information that he had felt. Next time he used it, he would be ready for that explosion. Before acting, Daniel forced himself to analyse what he had experienced. The spell had been active for only moments, but it had delivered everything it had advertised and possibly more.

First, his floor was not as empty as it had seemed when he was running away from that last big brute. There were lifeforms in at least three unopened rooms and the creature that had been flitting around the hallways. There were also scattered masses of insects in the roof space. Those centipedes falling on them yesterday had been bad luck; it appeared to have only happened in a couple of rooms.

Outside of his own level, his senses had extended for three levels in both directions. The results were mixed. The floors above had concentrated clumps of human-sized animals, and whether they were feral, mutated, or human would require more than a split-second use of the spell, but they were gathered together, similar to what he had managed on his floor. The floors below resembled what he would have expected if there were just a couple of zombies wandering the hallways, and all the humans had stayed in their suites. There was life, but it was still locked in the hotel rooms.

Again. Daniel pray internally that it would work and there was not going to a catastrophic failure. The spell clicked into action once more, and this time he focused exclusively on his floor, flitting like a super-fast ghost between human-sized masses.

“Fark, this is great,” he whispered, amazed at the information available to him as he first touched the zombie in the corridor. It had a shadow mutation, and then the next, another still somehow locked in a room, despite being strength-based. If that was the case, why hadn’t it broken out? Too dumb?

“What?” Ivey’s voice was groggy. He dropped the spell, and he pattered her back to sleep, while doing an internal stock take. No damage from that slightly longer use. The ability was not just good, it was jump-up-and-down-on-a-couch great. “Animal Sense.” He had been disappointed when he had first seen it on his skill list. Almost bitterly, he had thought it would be useless till he escaped to his farm or a forest. The opposite was true. It was extraordinary right here and now in this concrete jungle because he could see between floors.

The synergies between these skills and his wood growth abilities were off the chart. Tomorrow, when they discussed what to do, they would not be blind, and going forward, he could prepare tailored traps for the horrors that they faced.

Animal Sense reached out. Humans, a couple of them, like Ivey and the kids. When the spell touched them, it repelled him, and all he got was a jumbled mess of questions marks and a bout of queasiness. From that, he knew they were humans and then from their size, most likely female.

Yes!

Other survivors. It gave him a genuine thrill.

He killed the spell just to check everything was functioning normally. All was perfect. One more room to investigate. Two humans safe in a room, one zombie trapped, and the other zombie prowling the corridor. And the last unknown suite with two masses.

The final room was not quite opposite them, but it was still one of the furthest ones from where he lay. His power lashed out, and he was in the room, assessing.

Zombie. Human. What?

Confusion struck him.

His mind tried to interpret what it was seeing.

A small shape next to a larger one.

When his discorporate awareness touched the smaller body, he got thrown away with question marks about her abilities. That meant human. Physical shape was the other information he got. No injuries, long hair, slight frame. It was almost certainly a human girl.

He mentally examined the being besides her, bracing for the sickening feeling that he always got from touching a human with this spell.

He was not deflected. His probe was not rejected. A wave of information hit him. It was a zombie and of a similar power level as the other two on the floor. No active abilities, just an enhanced base of strength and agility.

Girl and zombie. His mind was reeling.

The zombie was next to the girl, and she was still alive. He checked again, but she was definitely both human and alive. Just touching a human was such a disconcerting experience, and that girl created that rush of ickiness that the others in his room did.

He killed the spell.

All that feeling of triumph at mastering the ability was gone.

What the hell was happening!

Daniel fell back on routine, checking the broken interface fragments to confirm that they were all functioning as they were supposed to. They were unaffected when he inspected them. There was not even a trace of excess heat.

What the hell had he seen?

It was like they had been sleeping next to each other, with the larger zombie standing guard over the slight girl. Was it predatory or paternal? If it was not a zombie, he would have assumed the latter. But it was a zombie. What he had seen was frankly unnatural. Was the zombie keeping a snack for later or something weirder?

Animal Sense.

First, he touched Gabby. Same feeling as he remembered from the girl. Then he shot over to the room and confirmed. A teenager or preteen trapped in a room with a zombie.

Daniel killed the spell. What should he do? What could he do?

The plan for the morning was now pretty clear. Step one would be to kill the shadow zombie and then save the three humans and kill the other zombies on the way. Saving the couple would be easy, but the girl?

How would he go about that? It was not like he could ask the zombie to release her. Pretty please? Presumably, the zombie had tucked the girl away like a squirrel storing nuts. She must be terrified.

Daniel abandoned his exploration of the floor below him and put all his plant magics into tendrils rushing over toward the poor girl.

Ideas flashed through him. Bait the monster out—but that risked it thinking that there was other food on offer. It might respond by killing the girl first. Maybe the vines could descend from the ceiling and tie it up, but it possessed enhanced strength, and the approach would probably fail . . . and if it failed, then what would the zombie do? The final idea he had was to distract the creature and, when it was not watching, cocoon the girl. If he could build up the cocoon plant mass next to or above the girl, then he was sure he could position it fast enough to protect her.

It was a plan?

But what happened if the zombie got hungry early? It was passive now, but he had seen these things in action and that could change at any moment. That feral desire to kill and eat. If the girl died because he had been too afraid to act . . .

He shook Ivey, and she snapped awake.

“What?” she whispered, holding herself still, but he could feel the tension in her body. She was ready to fight.

“I got my Animal Sense going.”

“Are we about to be attacked?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

“What is happening?” It was Jayden’s voice from the other side of the room.

“We need to rescue a girl. A zombie has her prisoner.” He said it loud enough for the other bed to hear.

Bright light blossomed.

Daniel took a deep breath and explained what was happening and what he had sensed.

“It is the middle of the night,” Jayden complained.

“And when it wakes up, it might eat her,” Tamara told Jayden. Then, to Daniel, “That was what you were thinking, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Daniel answered, pushing out of the cocoon, and was surprised to see that Tamara had already pulled herself out.

“What is your plan?” Ivey asked. She had followed him and had already grabbed her bow and spear.

Animal Sense flared out, giving him a lay of the land.

“Well, first we kill that,” he said, pointing beyond them right at the door.

Jayden gave a little squeal. Tamara spun to face the door with lightning appearing in her hands, and Ivey brought the spear down likewise.

“Are you playing with us?” Jayden asked.

The door wobbled like something was pressing against it.

“No!” Daniel answered calmly. “It is using magic. The door is about to give way.”

The shadow zombie had found them.