Vesik 04 - This Broken World (27 page)

Foster climbed in. His wings and head stuck out of her pocket.

My eyes trailed across a pale brown wolf. “Looks like Caroline.”

A huge, dark brown figure turned toward us. Something large, gray, and metal glinted in the firelight. As we got closer, past the railroad tracks, I could see it was a harp, hanging beneath what looked like a cloud on a heavy chain around his neck. Something clicked in my head, and I recognized the pattern from the green flag of the Irish Brigade, one of Caroline’s.

“Peace,” Caroline said as she placed a paw on the large wolf’s arm. “Damian, is Carter with you?”

I shook my head. “If he’s here, I can’t tell. There’s too much noise.”

I caught Zola’s smirk out of the corner of my eye.

“Damian!”

I thought I recognized the half-growl half-shout. There was no fear in his voice. It almost sounded like he was glad to see us. I scanned the ranks of wolves until I found movement.

A black wolf pushed his way between two smaller wolves and took two graceful leaps to land beside me.

“Haka,” I said. I extended my arm.

He slapped his clawed arm into my own and gave me a wolfish grin. I heard a flurry of whispers start up and then die down as Caroline glared at her wolves. She stepped toward us and joined Haka.

Another smaller form jostled through the line, cursing as he went. I grinned when I saw him lift a chocolate bar and take half of it down in one bite.

“Dell, is the Old Man here?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No, but I’m going to kick his ass when he gets here. This is bloody awful.”

“This one,” Caroline said with a nod towards Dell, “this one likes to complain.”

“I told you I’d get better with chocolate,” Dell said under his breath. “I’m hardly complaining at all.” An ember landed on his arm and he resumed cursing.

“Have you seen Ezekiel?” I asked.

“Yes,” Caroline said. “He was heading south.”

Zola nodded. “Edgar believes he’ll return to Cemetery Ridge.”

“Fucking hell,” Dell said. “That’s where the Old Man was going to go first. I think he was planning on persuading some gravemakers to help.”

“We’d better go that way,” I said.

Caroline shook her head. “Hern’s forces have already infiltrated the city. We were able to flank the eastern line, but they are firmly ensconced to the west and south. I’m taking my wolves north. We’ll try to outflank them again.”

“We saw some of the fighting,” I said. “I’m sorry we couldn’t stop.”

Caroline nodded. “We all have our priorities. I harbor no ill will for that.”

“Show her,” Haka said.

“What?” I asked.

“Show her the bloodstone in your pocket.”

I blinked and stared at the wolf. “How did you know?”

“Is that what’s making me nauseous?” Dell asked before he crumpled a candy wrapper and then bit into another chocolate bar.

I unbuttoned the pouch and pulled out the dark stone. The wolves behind Caroline recoiled. Caroline’s face fell flat. If she’d been in her human form, I’d have guessed she’d be frowning.

“Put it away, please,” she said.

I did.

“You cannot let that fall into Ezekiel’s hands. We have enough problems.”

“No shit,” I said.

“Thank you for showing me,” Caroline said. “It will help convince my other wolves you are not like the necromancers of old.” She made two sharp, short barking sounds, which were echoed by the werewolves behind her. “Be careful. I’m afraid we’ve only seen part of what we face here,” she said as she walked past us.

“We’re staying with them,” Haka said. “Dad says the water witches will be here tonight.”

“Really?” I said.

He nodded. “Probably with Glenn.” He waved and Dell nodded as they trailed after the Irish Brigade.

“So, should we go back for the car?” I asked.

“No,” Zola said. “We go on foot from here. A car will be too obvious. Too likely to call attention. Ah want to use stealth as much as we’re able.” She started forward and we followed.

We finished climbing the hill that led back to the roundabout. The burning building was behind us now. Zola didn’t think it would spread since it was contained within the collapsed brick frame.

Sam whimpered as we walked into the carnage that had been the town square. Her hands leapt to her mouth.

I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. “God dammit.”

“We can’t save them all,” Zola said. “It’s not your fault.”

“But we drove right by them,” Sam said while she stared at the bodies, as if she was trying to commit every detail to memory. Her voice trailed off. “We drove right by.”

The dead were strewn across the street, mixed with blood and viscera and all manner of body parts. Dead banks of fur lay piled beside bodies that had been werewolves. Bits of scaled armor and weapons lay scattered along the ground where the Fae had fallen and been absorbed by the ley lines.

I stared at the face of a young wolf. She looked like she was seventeen or eighteen at the most. Her right arm was missing and her pale face stared at the stars above in sheer shock. Half her chest was burned away. A charred breast hung awkwardly from the other side.

“He dies,” I said as I tore a red cape off the empty armor remnants a Fae. “Ezekiel dies.” I knelt beside the mutilated girl and carefully wrapped the red cape around her. I gently tried to close her eyes, but flesh just flaked away on the burned side of her face. I tucked the edge of the cape beneath her head.

When I looked up, Foster was awake and standing on Sam’s shoulder. “What happened here?” he asked.

“Ezekiel’s troops met the Irish Brigade.” There was far more vacant armor strewn across the field than dead wolves, but that spoke nothing of the murdered commoners. The control on my aura slipped and voices exploded across my mind as I stood up. Screams and curses of a battle long done tore through my head.

I embraced it.

“Don’t,” Zola said. She grabbed my arm. “Not yet.”

I slowly ratcheted my control back in place and met her eyes.

A barely contained rage lit her eyes, and her wrinkled cheeks flexed as she ground her teeth together.

Sam pulled on my other arm and it got us moving again. We stayed in the shadows of the old buildings as we left the carnage behind.

“That cape was from the Burning Lands,” Foster said. “That was not an Unseelie from Faerie.”

“Apparently they die just fine,” I said, unable to keep from biting off the words.

“They die hard,” Foster said. “They are skilled in war. Some of those commoners were zombies.”

“What?” I said. I hadn’t paid much attention outside of the girl. She’d been so young. My hands curled into fists again.

“At least fifteen were zombies,” Foster said. “I could smell it.”

“Dell must have taken them down,” Zola said.

“Explains the chocolate,” I said.

A small group of screaming people ran down the street ahead of us and to the left.

“Commoners,” Foster said.

“Come on,” I said. I broke into a flat run.

Sam was faster than all of us. The thing that was chasing the commoners rounded the corner. It wore a black cloak with a braided belt tied at its waist. I only took another second to register that it was a necromancer, but they didn’t have a chance.

Sam’s scream cut off as her fangs found their target. The hood flew back from the violence of the impact. A shocked face met the yellow glow of a streetlight. The man didn’t have a throat left to cry out. Sam wrapped her legs around the man’s chest, crushing out what little life remained. She rode his body to the ground. When he stopped twitching, she ripped his head off to the sounds of crackling gristle.

I stared at my sister as she started walking back to us. Blood ran down her chin and was splattered across her face.

“He’s dead,” she said.

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” I said.

She grinned. Her bloody fangs were still low in her mouth and she looked like a walking nightmare.

“You uh, got a little something right there,” I said as I rubbed at my chin.

She wiped her face on her shirt, smearing away most of the blood.

“We can’t let the Old Man face Ezekiel alone,” Zola said. She led us forward again.

As the screams of the commoners Sam had helped faded, I heard more people screaming off to our left. The sounds of battle and explosions and magic lit up the sky two blocks over.

“We must make the ridge,” Zola said. “Trust our friends to take some of the burden.”

“She’s right,” Foster said. “None of this matters if Ezekiel wins.”

“We go through the cemetery,” Zola said. “It will be harder for Ezekiel to recognize us among the dead.”

I shivered at the thought of running through that field of ghosts and gravemakers. Zola was right, though. Anything that kept us off Ezekiel’s radar until we were ready was a very good thing.

I tried to keep telling myself that as we cut through a parking lot, hurdled a low wrought iron fence, and crashed headlong into the cemetery.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

I
t felt like running through honey. Cold honey that wanted to eat your brains. The dead auras dragged at us and I couldn’t even close down my Sight. The ghosts were disturbingly solid, as though something was dragging them closer to our own realm. It didn’t take long before I realized some of the ghosts were battlefield remnants. Lost souls left to watch over the slaughter grounds.

“Keep moving,” Zola said. She weaved between the headstones.

I did that, focusing on Zola’s swinging braids as she led us through a half circle of tombstones. Sam stayed at my side, pulling me forward when the worst of the voices threatened to overwhelm me. A statue caught my gaze from the corner of my left eye. I glanced at it and saw a soldier comforting another solider, laid out across a stone dais. Carved below them were the words

FRIEND TO FRIEND

A Brotherhood Undivided

“Almost there,” Foster said. We continued to put one foot in front of the other, rushing through the graveyard as fast as we could.

I could see the fence that marked the other side of the cemetery. We crossed it without pausing, scurrying over the vacant street and onto the opposite sidewalk. The buildings were lower here. There were fewer shadows to hide in. The floodlights by a hotel pool cast harsh light over the grounds. We moved through quickly, leaving the lights behind when we came to a parking lot further down the street.

Bodies lay still and silent among the crushed light posts.

Zola led us across the lot into a thick stand of trees before she slowed down. She spoke quietly. “Catch your breath. Ah do not know what is waiting for us on the other side.”

Ghostly cannons flickered into view as we moved forward. Soldiers stood beside them with plungers and worms, waiting to fire on an enemy that would never come.

I slowed as we crested the rise. Ezekiel stood in that field of souls. The cracked, rusted flesh of the gravemakers milled around him. A few came close, and then trailed away from Ezekiel. There were at least a dozen on the field.

I stared at the pale form beside him. Their voices rose as they began to shout at each other. Nixie’s long hair and glistening armor awed and terrified me at once. We moved as silently as we could, taking up a post behind a low line of stones. Our position was dangerously exposed, but we could finally hear.

“ … you?” Ezekiel said. “You could be my ally if we dethrone the Queen. I will leave you and my son to live in peace. All you need do is leave this city to the Leviathan.”

“There isn’t enough water here to summon a Leviathan,” Nixie said.

“Will you leave Ward to die? The lakes are deeper than you think.” His voice was dead, and somewhere, some horrified part of my brain knew he wasn’t lying. “It is already done. I have no quarrel with the witches. You can die last, for all it matters.”

Nixie backed away slowly. “You have changed, Anubis. You are not the noble god you once were.”

She turned and ran to the southeast.

I cringed as something summoned an unthinkable amount of power. A terrible smile curled Ezekiel’s papery flesh. “At last,” he said. “Come, meet your maker.”

I couldn’t see who he was talking to at first, and then I could just make out another form further down the hill. Wooden fences ran across the field in a lightning bolt pattern. The newcomer didn’t even pause. He simply walked through them and they fell apart.

A gravemaker was unwise enough to approach the shadow, and the shadow absorbed it. Small pieces at first, tinkling away like black snow until the core of the form suddenly vanished. An explosion of power tore across the field after that, flattening the grass and shaking the tree branches.

“It is time to end this, Ezekiel.”

I stared. I knew that voice, but the Old Man’s flesh was too dark. His arms covered in a gravemaker’s chaff. He was already on the verge of losing it. I cursed and looked at Zola.

“Damian, take Sam and Foster and go after Nixie,” Zola said. “You can do more good with the Leviathan right now. This is not yet our fight.”

I didn’t hesitate. Zola knew more about war than I did. She knew more about the Old Man than I did. I trusted her gut.

“Sam, let’s go,” I whispered.

We followed the path to the southeast that Nixie had taken. It wasn’t long before we were back in the woods, hidden on all sides, but unable to see where we were going. I tripped and cursed as my shoulder slammed into a tree.

“Oh, screw this,” I said.
“Minas Illuminadda.”
A sphere of pale light began to glow above the palm of my hand. I popped it gently into the air and it glided along in front of us.

“That’s a new one,” Sam said.

“It’s the same one I used to blind you with. I’m just better now.” I flashed her a smile, but caught motion out of the corner of my eye.

Briefly, it looked as though one of the battlefield ghosts began to move. As soon as I looked at it, it seemed to still.

“Did you see that?” I asked.

“It moved,” Foster said. “What the hell?”

“Worry about it later,” Sam said with a hiss. “Let’s get out of here.”