Ding-dong.
The bell rang.
Delphine opened the door. A pack of little goblins squealed in unison, "Trick or treat!"
She lifted the candy tray she'd prepared and passed it out while scolding, "Don't be greedy on a piece!"
No one listened.
Moments later, each kid had fistfuls of candy and tore off.
"A band of little thieves," Delphine grumbled, shutting the door, and rewarded herself with a candy.
In the living room, Rai had Zoe, Madison, and Queenie playing Texas Hold'em; Nan, way too OP, was dealing.
Having realised there was a good chance they'd be hit tonight, he wasn't about to let his combat power wander off. Madison, who'd wanted to go out drinking, had been dragged back by force.
Folding his hand, Rai asked Madison, relaxed, "So, after that hotel-haunting stunt, did Hollywood actually reach out?"
He wasn't the rookie he'd been. After a string of run-ins with the supernatural, the jitters were gone; he had the headspace to remember the quip he'd tossed as he and Madison left the Monteleone.
Mention Hollywood, and Madison's mouth curled. "They did."
"Oh? Really?" Rai was a little surprised. So the joke had come true. Truly, it was an age entertained to death.
"What kind of movie?" he asked.
"Low-budget horror," Madison said. "Just like you said, once they linked me to a haunted hotel, those idiots only sent me horror scripts."
Queenie chuckled. "I know the type skimpy final girls screamin' while some slasher chases 'em. Wall-to-wall sex and violence."
Madison pursed her lips and, for once, didn't argue. Queenie had nailed it.
"But you're not exactly a match, Maddie. Your chest isn't big enough," Queenie added, deadpan.
Madison snorted. "You'd be perfect, Queenie, if any studio had the guts to cast you."
She turned back to Rai. "Cordelia and the Council won't sign off on me taking months to shoot anyway. And, honestly, I'm not interested in those two- or three-million-dollar scraps. I turned them all down."
"You could try bribing them with the Gator Man's, uh, crocodile," Zoe, getting a little corrupted, piped up suddenly. "Certain producers and directors might really need it."
"Great idea!"
Madison's eyes lit up, remembering that special tonic brewing in her room.
Rai went silent. He had a strong feeling that stuff was a scam. But since Madison was so confident, he didn't bother to rain on her parade.
Ding-dong.
Right on cue, the doorbell rang again.
"Trick or treat!"
With the now-familiar chorus piping outside, Delphine grudgingly but practised brought out the dwindling bowl of candy. "No grabbing. I'll handle it out," she scolded, then spotted a young man standing behind the kids and shot him a glare. "No candy for you."
The young man smiled politely. "Of course… uh, I mean, I'm not here for candy. I'm next door. I brought something for Nan."
Inside, Zoe grinned toward Nan. "Nan, your boyfriend brought you a gift."
"Not yet," Nan beamed, already up from her chair and hurrying to the door.
"Seriously?" Madison set her cards down, surprised as the two at the threshold chatted like a couple.
Rai caught Madison's look. He knew exactly what she meant. Not everyone chased the same "type" as she did. Unlike him, a confessed connoisseur of beauty face, figure, legs, some people prioritised the vibes of the heart.
Soon, Nan returned with the young man and introduced him to everyone but Zoe, who already knew him.
"I'm Luke, the new neighbour. Nice to meet you all," Luke said, sunny and sincere.
"Queenie," Queenie waved, welcoming.
"Madison Montgomery," Madison purred, test-driving a smile only for Luke's eyes to drift past her without lingering. Her expression froze.
Rai had to hide a smile. He stepped in smoothly: "Rai. Welcome. Nan's mentioned you about a dozen times this week, we were starting to think you were imaginary."
"Really?" Luke shot Nan a pleased look before turning back. "I've been meaning to drop by sooner just got tied up with family stuff."
"Come by anytime," Rai said.
Chatter flowed; only Madison seemed out of tune. She leaned to Rai's ear, muttering through clenched teeth, "He must have… issues."
Rai sighed. "Don't sabotage Nan and Luke." A beat, soft enough just for her: "And… believe in your own pull."
His hand traced a quick, covert circuit enough to flip her annoyance into a private smile. She was just about to retaliate playfully when Rai's brow pinched. Footfalls many skittered outside.
He rose, crossed to the window, and parted the curtain. As the clouds shifted, moonlight washed across the grounds and lit up a slow-advancing ring of rotted, reeking corpses closing in on the academy.
The doorbell chimed again.
Delphine moved, by reflex, to answer.
"Don't," Rai snapped.
She froze at his tone.
Rai strode back to the group, flicked a look at Madison. "Put him to sleep."
Madison didn't argue. Her gaze fixed on Luke; a heavy drowse crashed over him, and he flopped onto the couch. Not satisfied, Rai slipped out his big kukri and smartly rapped the back of Luke's skull. Out cold.
It all happened fast. By the time the others processed it, Luke was snoring. Nan rushed to check him, panicked. Queenie clutched her head. "Shit! Rai, Madison, what are you doing?"
"Enemies outside," Rai said crisply. "Unless you want our cover blown, Luke can't be awake for this. Nan, you're not ready to tell him you're a witch, right?"
Nan hesitated, eyes wet, then nodded.
"Then this was the right call," Rai said, already moving. "Gear up. Another hit on witches is coming." He gave Delphine a nod. "You, upstairs, carry Luke. Keep him safe. And grab Spalding on your way. No more hiding. Nan go, too."
Zoe, at the window, blurted, "Zombies! There are zombies like on TV everywhere!"
"Not zombies voodoo puppets," Rai corrected. "They're what those shows cribbed from."
Nan and Delphine hustled Luke upstairs. Rai, Madison, Zoe, and Queenie squared up.
"Unbelievable, we can't even rest when we get home," Queenie groused, snatching a carving knife. She didn't sound scared.
None of them did. They'd just flattened a gator-man and his cultists the other night. Hands were still hot.
"This is so fun," Madison said, a little too brightly. "I'm turning this into a script. It'll kill in theatres."
"Make me the male lead," Rai said, kukri in hand, stepping for the door.
"Obviously," Madison shot back.
"Then I'm the female lead," Zoe added.
"Dream on," Madison said. "That's me."
Before it could spiral, Rai threw the door open.
Delphine's three long-dead daughters stood shoulder to shoulder on the threshold, rotted jaws agape.
"Evening," Rai said politely.
Steel flashed. Three heads spun skyward.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
He stepped over the crumpling bodies and into the yard; the young witches fanned out on either side.
Across town, in the salon's sealed chamber, Marie Laveau floated, eyes snapping open, pupils bleached white. "Begin," she hissed.
At the same time, the shambling revenants lifted their makeshift weapons and moved towards the others, making deep, angry noises.
"Bro, that makeup is insane!" a fratty trio whooped, stumbling right into the horde. They clapped rotting shoulders in dopey awe.
Rai's jaw tightened. Lost causes.
Zoe opened her mouth to warn them, but it was already too late. Delight flipped to terror, and three screams cut short as bellies were split wide. The blood scent sent the revenants into a frenzy, and they barreled for the academy where Rai and the witches waited.
Voodoo puppets, dead bodies worked by voodoo rites into slave puppets that obey their master without question.
The famed pop-culture "zombie" takes its inspiration from revenants.
Unlike the shambling zombies, though, revenants move fast under a master's command.
The frontmost zombies already had its pitted, rust-scarred axe up, chopping for Rai.
A flash of cold light..
Rai was faster. His blade raked hard across its neck.
The revenant's motion hitched.
But in the next instant, sand-like grit welled up in the gash at its throat, knitting the wound shut in a heartbeat. It roared and lunged again.
"If normal cuts don't stick… then…"
Rai twisted his wrist. Faster than the revenant by a lot, he slipped past the downstroke and drove the blade straight in.
Shk!
The short blade was buried to the hilt in the zombie's brain; only the grip remained outside.
When Rai yanked the knife free, this one didn't heal. Like the three sisters he'd beheaded on the threshold, it crashed to the ground and stayed there.
With the zombies' weak point confirmed, Rai stopped playing cautiously and went straight at the rest.
--
On the other side…
After stabbing herself several times and seeing the revenants shrug it off, Queenie caught what Rai was doing and, oh, jammed her knife into her own skull.
A beat later, she tested again and found the heart was a weak point too.
Zoe and Madison didn't wade in with steel the way Rai and Queenie did. They did it the witch's way.
Whoom!
At Zoe's gaze, hungry fire blossomed on revenant flesh.
As one charred, shrieking body after another thrashed in the flames, Madison paused her best trick, telekinesis and joined in, kindling fire of her own.
There were many, but with Rai and the three young witches working together, the revenants in the courtyard went down bloody but manageable.
Seeing corpses piled across the paving stones, Rai sheathed the short blade and was about to tell everyone to clean the place up fast.
--
In the voodoo queen's hidden chamber.
Marie hung suspended, eyes turned solid white, as if she truly beheld the Academy's courtyard. She let out a thin laugh and gave the order.
"Continue."
Her word fell and, to the young coven's shock, every fallen voodoo puppet in the yard, save a few that stayed still, stirred and climbed back to its feet.
Not only that the gate beyond filled with more zombies, all hefting weapons as they strode in.
"Shit! What even is this?" Queenie stared, half sick, half furious, after putting a knife through herself so many times she was nearly numb.
Rai glanced at a nearby body. He'd just beheaded a zombie whose head was dragging itself back into place and forcing the body upright, and could only think: the voodoo queen's craft was never going to be simple.
He booted the half-risen thing aside, then checked the few that hadn't moved at all, and something clicked.
Everyone who stayed down shared a trait.
Its brainpan was basically burned out.
Zoe and Madison had torched a lot of zombies, but with quick, rough aiming, they'd mostly lit torsos; very few shots had set skulls alight and driven fire deep into the brain.
Which was why Marie's summons could pull most of them back up.
With that settled, Rai stopped hiding his edge. Fire curled up the blade.
"Am I seeing things, or can you use fire too?" Queenie's jaw dropped for the second time tonight.
Zoe and Madison took it in stride. After all this time and everything with the gator-man, they'd felt Rai wasn't ordinary. Now they had proof. It was… exhilarating. All in the family.
Rai didn't care that he'd shown a witch's gift. Salem bloodlines don't pass only to women; men can inherit too. Call him a warlock if they liked, there's never been a "Supreme Warlock," only a Supreme Witch, so Fiona had no reason to make him a target. He'd kept it quiet out of habit. In a crisis, hiding would be stupid.
No time to answer, Queenie Rai, fire-wreathed blade in hand, slipped past a zombie's swing and ripped upward. The edge split its jaw; the flames snaked in like hot serpents.
Thud.
A shudder, and the revenant collapsed for good.
Rai's eyes lit. "Aim for the head with fire!"
Zoe and Madison adjusted.
Skulls went up like lamps; the pressure eased.
Only a moment, though. Under Marie's distant will, the revenants learned they threw their forearms in front of their faces, letting flesh burn rather than give up their one true weak point.
Madison's brow pinched. She shifted tactics, yanked the guarding arm away with telekinesis, then ignited the head, but that doubled her drain.
With Rai holding the front line, trading hard with the press of bodies, Zoe's urgency spiked. She snatched a still-solid long axe from a fallen zombie and, like her boyfriend, went full melee-mage.
"Rai, I'm coming!"
Fresh off dropping another that had leapt for him, Rai heard her voice and turned. Zoe barreled in like a maniac, long axe haloed in fire, hacking through revenants as she came.
She was spattered head to toe with foul blood and rot, face smeared, gaze steady as stone.
Rai blinked.
This was his sweet, soft girlfriend?
Zoe didn't think about it. Fighting shoulder-to-shoulder instead of cowering behind him filled her up with raw, surging strength and down in her core, some long-sleeping power was starting to stir.
She raised the axe again, only for Rai to catch her wrist.
"Fall back inside."
His face was grave.
Compared to the spirit, the bull-man, the gator-man, a single zombie wasn't much. He'd already dropped dozens himself.
The problem was waves endless, thick as ants. Enough ants will eat an elephant. He wasn't made of iron; fatigue would come.
Time to use the house behind them, force the horde into a choke and cut them down on their terms.