A/N: I hope you enjoyed the cliffhanger! If you haven't yet reviewed, DO SO. I need those reviews to keep me going… Please? Pretty please with a Scooby Snack on top? Although read to the end of the story first! Jazzola
"Come on, chimera… Come find us… Hey!"
The fire extinguishers were jerked from our hands by multiple people, and we swerved round simultaneously, looking at our attackers.
They were the people who had been attacked. Eyeless, with skin so pale it was almost white, and with completely blank expressions. Their hands were so cold they sent shivers up and down my skin.
But maybe that wasn't their temperature…
They stood there, crooked and bent, like the zombies on Moonscar Island, with their empty eye sockets and vacant expressions, so horrifying and yet so tragic at the same time, and easily worse than the zombies on Moonscar Island. They stood behind us, two to each person, holding the extinguishers with both hands. The little boy, a previously sweet child with a thick thatch of dark hair and a smattering of freckles on his cheeks, stood in front of us, having snuck up while we were distracted.
A silhouette walked up behind them and into the light, smiling, eyes glowing red and completely unnatural.
It was Kristina.
"You!" I yelled.
Kristina smiled, stroking her hair coyly, not at all shy or alarmed, completely at ease. Her black dress, as dark as death, fluttered in a light breeze, although the area was completely devoid of wind at all. Her hair seemed to stir in the same wind. Her skin was so pale it could have belonged to a corpse.
"Me."
She raised her hand and the people- zombies? Whatever they were- dropped the extinguishers onto the tarmac.
"Good. Now apprehend them."
The people moved forwards and we struggled in their grasp. They were trying to tie us up with ropes from the pockets of their ragged clothing, and although their limbs were shaky and not really co-ordinated they were stronger than they looked.
"Subdue them by any means," Kristina called. Her eyes, which I was right to suspect (so there, Freddy Jones!), were glowing even more, harsh and bloodthirsty.
How did she control these creatures? What had happened to them to make them like this?
"What are they?" I cried, struggling hard against my assailants. They were the youngest couple there, from the looks of it, in their late fifties or early sixties, and they were much scarier close up; their rotting skin hung from their faces in clumps, giving their faces up to nature and showing their skulls. I could hardly bear to look at them, and tried desperately to stop myself from vomiting, but it wasn't working. I doubled up onto the pavement and retched my food out, tears streaming down my face and falling onto the pool of vomit now on the tarmac.
"They are dead bodies, enchanted by me to obey me, as I am an enchantress," Kristina said coldly, her eyes flashing at me. We struggled harder against the people and I managed to half-free myself.
"Looks like we need more helping hands," Kristina said, silky smooth, and she walked forwards to where Officer Palmer and Sergeant Braithwaite were hiding. They both yelled and started running.
"Leaving so soon?"
Kristina raised her hands and the branches on two trees reached out and wrapped themselves around the fleeing men, throwing them back to land at Kristina's feet. They both tried to scramble up, but Kristina put her hands on their shoulders and pulled their faces towards hers, opening her mouth to reveal jagged rows of crimson fangs, stained with blood.
Then she buried the fangs deep in Sergeant Braithwaite's forehead.
Sergeant Braithwaite screamed, a high, terrible scream, a scream of death in the making, and I screamed with him as he fell to his knees, blood cascading down his front in a scarlet tidal wave and flowing freely onto Kristina's body, onto her dress and marking her skin, dripping from her chest and legs to form a huge puddle on the floor.
Eventually, after what felt like a nightmare lifetime, the man crumpled to the floor, and his breathing ceased. Kristina drew her head up, her lips and chin stained with scarlet gore and her forehead speckled with it. She smiled vampirishly at Officer Palmer, who screeched and tried to run, but her hand sunk onto his shoulder and her teeth penetrated his skin with the deathliness of an assassin.
Almost as soon as the liquid sprayed from his body, Kristina pushed him to the floor, her long fingers holding him down and her glare unforgiving and hateful. From the second that she had caught him, he was a dead man.
After she had finished her work, she straightened up and smiled at us, displaying her mouth to us, hatefully gory and reminiscent of what had just happened. I felt like I was living in one of the 18 movies Fred watched in secret at home.
"Your turn, Mystery Inc.?"
Velma struggled harder, her eye screwed up in effort. Fred tried to kick his captors but only succeeded in toppling over onto the pavement. I tried biting mine and experienced my first mouthful of dead flesh.
And then a new figure appeared.
The saviour? I thought so.
Until it walked into the light.