Luke sat back on the creaky church bench, stretched his arms wide, and let out a yawn loud enough to echo off the stained-glass windows—like he was waiting for popcorn at some late-night, low-budget horror flick.
Terri, Peyton, and Jill just stared at him and Selene in pure disbelief.
Did these two not see what had just crawled out of the ceiling? Were they blind? Or maybe just clinically insane? Because neither of them looked remotely scared—Selene's eyes gleamed like a predator sizing up prey, while Luke looked… bored.
Terri leaned closer to Peyton and whispered nervously, "Do they have… night blindness or something? Maybe they can't actually see how terrifying those things are?"
"Hey, wait! That's dangerous!" Jill barked, stepping forward and reaching for Selene's arm. But before her hand could even brush leather, Selene was gone—her body sliding into the shadows.
Luke gave Jill a lazy flick of his wrist, waving away her concern. "Relax. She said she can handle it—so she will. Trust me, she's not the one you should be worrying about."
Truth was, if it had been before Selene's little upgrade, maybe she'd have struggled. But now? Now she was different—stronger, sharper, perfectly capable of ripping those things apart. And Luke respected that. No point in stepping on her fight.
A sudden thud, thud, thud announced the arrival of three Lickers, their claws scraping the stone floor as they circled Selene. Their long, slimy tongues slithered out like whips, tasting the air.
Luke made a face and shuddered. "Ugh, gross. "
Truth be told, Luke couldn't stand gross stuff. Tentacles, ooze, rotting flesh—his brain screamed nope.
He had a little streak of OCD, hated things that looked filthy or unnatural. Watching monsters like this made his stomach twist like he'd just bitten into something rotten.
One of the Lickers screeched and lunged straight for Selene's throat, its claws wide and its tongue darting. Jill and Peyton instinctively raised their guns, but froze. They couldn't fire—not with Selene right in the creature's path.
"What is she doing?! She doesn't even have a weapon!" Peyton hissed, sweat dripping down his temple.
But then, under their stunned eyes, the shadows around Selene stretched like liquid.
From the floor, black tendrils surged upward, wrapping around the Licker mid-air. The beast writhed and snapped its teeth, but the shadows tightened like iron cables.
With one sharp twist, the tendrils snapped its neck a full 360 degrees. The corpse flopped uselessly to the ground.
Luke blinked, raising his brows. "Huh. Didn't think of that. I always figured shadow-tentacles were just for binding. But using them to… snap?" He whistled low. "Gotta admit, that's efficient. She learns fast."
The other two Lickers shrieked and pounced together. But Selene was gone before their claws could even swipe the air. One blink later, she reappeared beside the first, her form sliding out of the dark like a phantom.
A black bullet was already in her hand—the Dark Bullet skill. With surgical precision, she pressed it right against the Licker's temple and pulled the trigger. Bang! Its brain matter splattered, and the creature dropped like a marionette with its strings cut.
The last Licker didn't hesitate. It screeched, grabbed a whole church bench with its claws, and hurled it at Selene with terrifying force.
The group gasped—Terri ducked, Peyton swore, Jill half-raised her gun again. But Selene simply caught the flying bench one-handed, the wood cracking under her grip.
Without a pause, she swung it back like a baseball bat, smashing the bench straight into the Licker's head with a thunderous CRACK.
And before the beast could recover, the floor beneath it split open. Enormous jaws of living shadow surged upward, their serrated fangs snapping shut like a trap.
The Licker had only a fraction of a second to screech before the darkness consumed it whole, crunching it into silence.
Peyton, Terri, and Jill didn't know what to say, their mouths half-open, eyes wide. This woman had just taken care of those monsters like they were small fries—like it was nothing.
And those powers… shadows bending like living creatures, bullets of darkness, jaws erupting from the floor.
What the hell is going on with this world? First a virus that turned humans into mindless zombies, and now someone who could perform impossible feats.
Was the world changing so fast that they were being left behind? That thought dug into all three of them, making the fear run colder than even the monsters themselves.
For a moment, silence reigned. Nobody spoke, nobody even breathed too loud. The three of them stood frozen, caught between awe and fear, shock and disbelief.
Then that fragile stillness was shattered.
A guttural roar ripped through the air, like claws dragging across steel. All three of them whipped their heads around at once. A Licker crawled across the cracked church window, its clawed limbs scraping the stone, its elongated tongue slapping wetly against the glass.
The next second it leapt. It came straight toward the group, all teeth, claws, and hunger.
Luke stood up immediately, rolling his shoulders. His whole body pulsed with a faint blue aura, humming like static.
"Alright," he muttered, flexing his fingers, "time to punch ugly right in the face."
But just as the Licker came within striking distance—something else cut across its path.
A blur. A sudden crash of metal and glass.
A motorcycle smashed straight through the broken window, colliding with the Licker in mid-air. The two tangled together in a violent impact before slamming into the ground. Sparks skidded across the stone floor as the bike crunched and pinned the creature under its twisted frame.
Everyone's jaws dropped.
A figure dropped down right after it, landing hard but graceful. In one smooth motion she raised her gun, aimed at the bike, and fired.
The shot struck the gas tank.
BOOM.
The motorcycle erupted in a fireball, flames swallowing both steel and monster. The Licker shrieked once, high and sharp, before vanishing into the explosion.