Chapter 58

Daniel was already running to the stairwell, but pulled up short once he reached it. There was no noise from below, and his senses showed no imminent threats. The light above him was increasing, and then the light flooded the dark stairwell.

“Cut the lights.”

The light vanished.

Animal Sense.

There was nothing concerning coming from the lower floors. The Hulk that had run had retreated into a room by itself.

Relief went through him.

The zombies had probed. The structure had held long enough, even if Daniel’s traps had not worked as well as he had hoped. The pressure spikes should have wounded them, but they had failed dismally. Maybe that earth zombie had spoiled that plan. Nonetheless, the heavy structure had delayed four elites for long enough for him to do something.

Ivey, while blind, had felt her way down the stairs.

He leant in. “We are safe. You can use a bit of light to get us out of here.”

There was a soft glow, barely strong enough to see the carpeted floor. However, barely was all he needed, and he could soon shut the door.

“I thought the worst. It was scary.”

You and me both, he thought to himself.

“It was just a probe,” he said out loud, but if he had not reacted as quickly as he had . . . if he had been upstairs rather than so close . . . If? He would need to strengthen the barricades. While it had worked to delay, it was not yet enough against a determined push.

They walked together back to their room. “Can you stay with me?”

“Maybe I will sit next to you,” he told her. “I will need to rebuild the barriers.”

“Please.”

“Till you are asleep,” he told her, lying down next to her.

“When you burst away like that, I was imagining something tearing through the others. Then I heard the roars.” She was stifling tears.

“It is okay.”

“I thought after everything we had managed that it was all going to fall apart.”

“The defences held.”

“It will not stop.”

“We will build a castle that nothing can assail,” he promised easily. “Something so grand that we do not even need to fear that purple lizard.”

“But we had already done that. We were supposed to be safe, and it still got through.”

“Only because I let it.”

“What?”

“It had earth armour. My traps were not working, so I let it through before it opened a path for all the others.”

“That is dangerous.”

“You saw how easily I killed it. It was not a threat.” But you did not know that, the little treacherous thought told him.

His list of things to do kept growing.

Ivey settled against him, and the silent crying transitioned to the even breathing of sleeping. While he lay there, he kept the stairwell barrier growing. Reinforcing, strengthening, expanding, he needed it to be ready if they made a coordinated attack.

Priscilla was once more annoying the zombies. She was double and then triple checking their skills. More than a little of her behaviour was driven by the fact she was enjoying herself. Even two floors away, he heard their regular roars as Priscilla provoked a zombie to rage. The roars were usually followed by an image of a bloody zombie and a tinge of excitement.

Daniel kept working, reinforcing both the upper and lower barriers. Ivey clung.

He tensed as his stomach started spasming, shifting before he could help himself.

“What?”

“Lightning bug,” he ground out as he jerked sideways. Half of his back muscles tensed. Then he flinched the other way as different set of muscles spasmed.

Ivey yelped as the arm pressed against her spasmed. She scrambled away from him.

His body then jerked to the side, and he tumbled off the bed. His chin smashed into the bedside table. There was nothing that he could do. The lightning bug core’s assimilation had robbed his self-control. His back muscles tensed, and he arched painfully. Stomach on the ground with legs, arms and head held off the floor painfully. Daniel bit off a scream. While he lay there on the ground with his body jerking in random directions every three or four seconds, all he could do was endure.

Healing hit him, and once more his head slammed into the bedside table.

There was a soft glow everywhere. Ivey was hovering with a pillow in her hand, but could not get close enough to do anything with it. He could taste the blood in his mouth, and his skull felt sore in the many spots he had headbutted the furniture behind him.

The spasming stilled.

“How bad was it?”

“Not too bad,” he told her, and was not even lying. There had been no pain, like what happened with a new zombie ability. The only item of concern had been the wild spasming. It was that which had caused him to bleed. Providing he was secure when they went off, he could go through twenty or so sessions of that. Especially if it meant getting lightning.

“Poor boy.” She sat down next to him, and with his mana reserves refreshed, he continued growing the barrier downwards. If the zombie tried again, the structure would do better this time.

“You go do your things,” Ivey said finally. “Eat your cores and build the defences. I am going to go to sleep.”

“I will stay here till then.”

He sat on the ground, and when he was sure she was asleep once more, he snuck out. There was a lot to do.

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