Keeping her eyes on Mark, Rachael clasped her hands behind her back, pointing off to the side away from the stairwell with one hand, hoping that one of her people would understand what she needed. The traitor went on with his tirade. Hopefully he wouldn’t notice what was going on in the shadows behind him.

“So, what now?” she asked. “There’s a lot of us here, Mark. Do you really want to have that many murders on your conscience?” Please let him focus on me and not turn around, she prayed to anyone or anything that would listen, her fingers wrapping around a small knife tucked in a sheath at the small of her back. Taking one, two, three steps forward, she continued to talk.

“Fuck,” laughed Mark, “I’m not even sure murder is a crime anymore. Seriously . . . go ahead and call a cop. Oh, wait, you can’t, because they all got eaten. That’s how it is now. It’s a big scary world, so I’m doing what I need to do to protect me and mine.”

“Okay,” said Rachael, keeping her voice calm, “I agree with you. The world is really scary out there. It’s terrifying. But, come on . . . you have to at least take a chance for some peaceful way for us all to survive. I don’t know who you are, I don’t know your friends, or what any of you have done, but you can start over. Don’t you want that? We’re already at war with the world out there. Don’t you want a chance for something better?”

A clatter of something sliding across the tiles on the second floor echoed like a gunshot. Mark flinched, and his gun went off. Rachael cried out as a bullet grazed her shoulder, hissing as white-hot agony seemed to ignite in her skin.

“That’s just a taste, bitch,” Mark yelled. “Unless you want more you’d—”

In one fast, fluid movement, Rachael whipped the knife from its sheath and flung it at Mark, then dove behind the lobby desk. He dropped his gun off the balcony and let loose a stream of curses. In the dim light of the unlit lobby she heard the echoes of the pistol clattering off the tiles.

He yelled a command to his partners, and Rachael’s warriors sprang into action at the same moment, roaring out battle cries like a pack of marauding Vikings.

Pulling the long knives out of the sheaths at her hips, she crouched, moving as silently as possible. Then she launched forward, propelling herself off the wall and diving over the counter toward Mark’s henchmen charging down the stairs. Swinging her knives in the half-light, she felt them sink into living flesh. Men screamed in shock and pain, and Rachael pulled her knives from their bodies, rolling through the dive to slide behind a pillar.

Parkour and sneak attacks and fighting undead were one thing, but going up against trained men with knives was still far outside Rachael’s realm of expertise. This wasn’t LARP or tabletop or cosplay; this wasn’t make-believe. All of their lives were at stake, their home, everything they’d worked for.