The Monster Apocalypse

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The blast hit Droz in the back so hard that he fell to his side.

"What the..." he said, reaching for his back to feel the gunshot wound.

"GET AWAY FROM HIM!" Brin screamed as she ran toward Droz, holding the sword out in front of her with the utmost confidence. "Ash!" she screamed, glancing back. "Shoot him again!"

Ash almost fell over from the force of the shotgun blast, but he stayed steady, stomped forward a few more steps, and fired again. This time, one of Droz's minions jumped in front of him to take the shot.

Droz laughed, wiped some black blood away from his lips, and jumped up to his feet. "Brin Skar? Is that you? You've arrived just in time for the final showdown!"

Brin didn't say a word; she had no interest in chatting. She started wielding the sword around, marching at top speeds, straight at Droz, straight for his neck. She rushed as fast as she could, but it still wasn't enough; five of Droz's henchmen leaped out in front of him and reached for Brin.

"You're dead!" one of them shouted.

"No," Brin said. "You first."

She ducked as the first vampire grabbed for her, and she pummeled the sword straight through his chest, like a knife through butter. She pulled the sword out and swung through the air, right at the neck, decapitating him in a lightning second. Three more rushed her and she sliced through them as well, splitting two of the vampires in two, and dislodging the brain from the third vampire's head. Five seconds, and they were dead. Brin continued toward Droz.

He put his hand out as she raised the weapon up high.

"Why'd you give your henchman up top a sword?" Brin screamed. "That was pretty stupid, pal—"

He moved in a flash; one second he was ten yards away, and the next he had his hand over her throat. Droz ripped the sword out of her hand and tossed it in the hole before she could try to reach for it. He brought her down to the ground, choking her so hard and fierce that Brin thought she could feel blood seeping out from her eye sockets.

"It's admirable, really, that you would come here to save Paul, kill me, and go back to your perfect boring life... but such is not the case, girly."

Brin tried to push herself out of the big baddie's grasp, but she couldn't budge. She was fading. She looked to her right to see her mom in the wedding dress.

"Mom..." she tried to say, but nothing intelligible came out.

Droz clamped his hands over Brin's neck and waited for her to die. "I've had enough of your bullshit!" he screamed.

"So have I!" Paul shouted from behind his father and struck the sword—Brin's sword—diagonally across his father's back, piercing it so much that the blade cut through most of his upper body, all the way to where his heart would be—if he had one.

Droz let out an audible gasp and opened his mouth wide, like the indestructible villain actually had the capacity to feel pain. He fell to the ground.

Brin rolled over to her side, coughing so hard she thought she would never get a chance to suck in oxygen again. She got up on her knees and continued to cough, as a hundred vampires up in the bleachers released a loud, unified shriek. The creatures all started running down the aisles, toward the stage, toward Brin and the others. Brin finally got her breathing back in check, but she had no time to relax.

"Oh shit," Anaya said, firing a couple shots from her silencer toward the bleachers.

"Oh shit is right," Ash said, and he waved the shotgun back in front of him. He aimed the gun at the oncoming vamps, but when he pulled the trigger, the blast blew him back so hard that the gun tilted upward and the bullet struck one of the spotlights on the ceiling. It shattered into a million pieces and came unglued from its source—and Ash looked up in horror as a string of twelve spotlights all fell to the center of the stage.

"Oh my God," Anaya said, grabbing Ash's arm. "Look out!"

Anaya tried to save Ash, but he was only concerned with one person. "Brin! Get out of the way!"

Brin grabbed the sword from Paul and let it hover over Droz's body. She was a second away from slashing it against his neck.

"Hold on!" she shouted.

"No! Brin! Move!"

Ash grabbed Brin and pulled her back. Justin grabbed hold of Anaya, and all four of them jumped away from the stage, just as the spotlights crashed down and burst into flames.

Brin and Ash fell against their backs and watched as the fire rose up into the center of the stage. Brin darted her eyes every which way. She saw Anaya limping toward them; she had a cut on her leg but seemed relatively unharmed. Justin jumped back up to his feet, unscathed, thank God. Then she looked to her right to see Mr. Barker, still a wolf, still in fighting shape, roaming toward her. He had a vampire's severed head dangling from his teeth.

"Oh, wow," Ash said, standing back up.

Mr. Barker stopped to the right of them and dropped the head at their feet. "One more down," the wolf said, "but many more to go."

A few days ago the sight of a decapitated head would have sent Brin Skar to the bathroom barfing up a lung. But in this moment she just kicked it aside and headed toward the flames.

Anaya and Justin collided against Ash, and the trio watched in terror as Brin kept walking forward.

"Brin?" Justin said. "What are you doing? Get away from there!"

"I'm not leaving here until I know he's dead," Brin said. She searched the grounds for the wounded—fatally wounded, Brin hoped—Droz, but she didn't see him anywhere. She stepped all the way up toward the flames, stopping just a few feet in front of them.

"Droz?" Brin shouted, her breathing heavy, her face soaked in blood. "Come out here and fight, you coward!"

Without the flames, Brin would've had to turn around and run. The firewall from the exploded spotlights blocked Brin and the other humans from the opposite side, from the other angry, bloodthirsty vampires.

Droz was missing. The hundred vamps all stood in a line, ready to pounce on Brin the second the fire lessened.

Worst of all, at the front of the group was her irritated mother, standing tall and devilish in her sparkly wedding dress.

"Brin," Tessa said. "You never should've come back here—"

"Where is he?" screamed Brin, who was slowly descending into madness. "Where the hell is that groom of yours, Mom?"

"You're never going to defeat us. Why even bother, my darling?"

"Because," Brin said, taking a deep breath, trying not to faint from the sight of her own mother, who looked so sickly pale her skin could have passed for paste, "I have to try."

The fire was raging, but Brin still heard the crash of the podium on the other side of the stage. Droz, limping even more than Anaya, was up on his feet, and racing out of the darkened auditorium, lit up now only with the ferocity of orange fire.

"Hey!" Brin shouted, but Droz didn't turn around. He disappeared out of the corner of the room.

Brin readied herself to chase after him, when the loud scream of her mom stopped her in her tracks. Brin turned to her right again to see Tessa approach the fire even closer.

"Enough with this," Tessa said. "You're not going to harm my husband-to-be, Brin. I love him! Don't you understand?"

And with that, Tessa took five big steps back, steadied herself for a second or two, then sprinted forward. She leaped over the flames and landed in front of her daughter, then grabbed Brin's right foot and brought her down to the ground. When Brin slammed her arm against the dirt, the sword flew out of her hand and bounced five yards forward.

Tessa stood up, spit unladylike on the ground, and took hold of her daughter's legs.

And she started pulling Brin back into the fire.