in a perfect arch, at a young woman who had no time to anticipate the attack.
The woman screamed as the creature’s teeth sank into her neck, penetrating the jugular. Blood spurted out, soaking her dance partner, who could only look on in dazed incomprehension.
That was the moment panic finally set in with the crowd.
It was impossible that everyone had seen what just happened, but the fear from the few close enough to witness it swept through the guests like a contagion.
Ella watched in horror as hundreds of people, men and women alike, all rushed towards the double doors, the only exit from the ballroom.
“Wait!” she yelled. “There may be more of them outside!”
But of course, no one paid her any heed, the panic mentality outstripping their reason.
The creature’s victim had gone limp in his arms. Her partner – a soldier – had deserted her. With ruthless disregard, she was thrown to the floor.
Nausea rolled in Ella’s stomach when she saw the half-chewed neck and face.
Stumbling to her feet, she yanked at Izzy’s hand. “Get up,” she urged, wholly aware of the creature plundering his way towards his next victim. “We need to get out of here.”
Tears streamed down Izzy’s face. “I think I’ve broken my arm.”
“I’m sorry, but if we don’t get out of here you’ll have a lot more than a broken bone to contend with.”
As she spoke, the dead young woman splayed on the floor to their right, twitched.
Ella whipped her head at the same moment the dead – no, undead – woman sat up with superhuman jerks and immediately focused her one remaining eye on Izzy.
“Get up!” Ella beseeched.
But Izzy was too scared to move. Her eyes widened with terror as the creature who had once, possibly, been a friend lurched to her feet.
The undead soldier was quickly adjusting to his new body. From the screams that echoed around the ballroom like a school of banshees, he had found his next victim.
But this female creature was still an uncertain newbie. Her jerky movements, which contained the same ungainliness as a toddler who had just learned to walk, gave Ella time to remember the heels of her glass slippers.
With a deftness she had never dreamed she possessed, she pressed the diamond. The heel came off neatly in her hand, the blade twinkling like stained glass. Although her hands were damp and shaking, she kept her finger pressed on the diamond until it was fully extended to the length of a sword, completing her task with barely a second to spare before the female launched herself.
Everything happened in the blink of an eye. The creature was mere feet away from Izzy when Ella’s glass blade penetrated her chest, stopping her in her tracks.
Ella blinked in shock, wiping away a lock of damp hair that was sticking to her forehead.
The undead female stared down with mild curiosity at the object that was sticking through her heart. But she did not fall down. Not even close.
Instead she fixed her creepy, puppet-like grin on Ella, whose clammy fingers were in danger of losing their grip on the blade handle, and extended her arms to her.
Why was she still standing ? The blade had penetrated the undead female’s heart; gone through it as easily as a knife slicing through butter.
The answer came to her in a flash. They weren’t called the undead for nothing. How do you kill someone whose heart was no longer beating?
As quick as a flash, Ella pulled the blade out of the undead’s chest, swung it back, and sliced it through the air, taking the creature’s head with it.
The sound of a head bouncing on the hard floor was something she knew she would live with for the rest of her life, no matter how long or short that life may be.
But she felt no remorse, not for the creature whose humanity had already been taken. All she felt as she surveyed the carnage going on around her, the fleeing guests trampling over each other in their frantic need to escape, and the scent of iron that was thickening with