I raise my eyebrows, letting that sink in for a moment. Maeve is a Gowdie witch. I’m not sure if she knows what she’s getting herself into, but I’ll take any help she can give me. “Okay. In that case, let’s fight our way out of this kingdom and go find Damien.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Working together, we shove through the doors and my stomach pitches at what is on the other side. We vastly underestimated the size of the elf army. Rows and rows of them, as far as I can see, are showering golden arrows toward the rebel troops. Only, those arrows are useless, because a dome of red magic shields our forces from impact.
“They came!” I pump my fist toward the sky.
Maeve is squinting. “What do you see? I see a bunch of archers with arrows. Are those the good guys?”
“Oh. Sorry. I forgot you have human vision. No, all these dudes in silver are the enemy. Up there, the witches of Dimhollow are protecting our forces from their arrows. I didn’t think they’d help us, but they did. I just hope I can reanimate Phantom and destroy this army before the witches’ shield gives way.”
“Can you get me near the bones?” she asks. “You’re going to have to lead me. I can’t see in this dark.”
“Good idea.” If Maeve pulls Phantom together, I’ll have my dragon back in no time. I sweep her into my arms and run toward the battle, stopping about a hundred yards behind the elven forces. This is as close as we can safely get to where Phantom and I were knocked out of the sky. Thank the goddess, the soldiersare all too busy trying to take down the shield to notice us.
Maeve turns to me, her eyes vacant as if she can’t actually see me in the dark, and brings her finger to her lips. Then she raises her hand to the sky, forms a fist, and punches the battlefield.
I hear her magic ripple through the ground like an earthquake opening a fault line. It’s as loud as a crack of thunder. Loud enough that the elves stop and look down at their feet.
The entire battlefield seems to draw a collective breath.
A scream rings out and an elf’s arms flail as he is pulled straight down, into the earth.
Another scream, this time across the battlefield. All I see is a spray of red and then a cascade of wet bones arcing over an archer’s head.
One by one, the elves start to fall.
A shriek to my left. A howl to my right. The snap of bones breaking. Arrows fly, not at the rebels but into the crowd of archers, at the ground, toward each other. My mouth drops open when I see why. Warriors rise from the dirt at their feet. Dead warriors. Some with half-missing skulls and bloodstained uniforms. Others, nothing more than animated skeletons. One of the zombies takes a sunlight arrow to the abdomen without reaction, then grabs the archer’s throat and tears it out with blunt, bony fingers.
None of this should be a surprise to me. I knew that Maeve was an animator and that her sigil, a skull and crossbones, meant that her Gowdie family strength was animating the dead. I knew that vampires feared herfamily because they were powerful enough to take control of certain vampires, who, after all, are dead. But it’s easy to forget that your best friend is capable of raising zombies when you don’t see her do it on the regular.
She giggles beside me. “I’ve always wanted to do this, but it’s not as if there’s much reason to pull out the big guns at home,” she says breathlessly. “How are they doing? I can’t see them well enough to give specific direction. I’m sending a general order to kill anyone between us and the dome.”
“It’s working!” I say. “Keep going.”
In fact, her spell is even more effective than what the resurrected army can accomplish on its own. The elves are panicking, shooting each other in their quest to stop the advancing dead. I am mesmerized. Maeve has…savedus. She’s single-handedly changed the course of this war.
The screams grow louder at first, but soon, they die out altogether.
Maeve wipes blood from her nose.
“Stop,” I say, my hand on her back. “The dead have reached the dome. You’ve done it! All the archers are dead.”
She yanks her fist from the dirt and shakes her fingers like her hand is cramped. The clattering of bones marks the end of the zombie army.
She lists on her feet, and I draw her into my side. “I’ve got you.”
We start walking toward the dome, but it is soon evident that her human strength is drained. I fling her easily into my arms and carry her the rest of the way.
“Goddess, you’re strong now, El,” she says.
“I guess I am,” I say. “Not stronger than most here, but surviving has given me a hard outer shell.”
“You’re a walnut, now?” she says with a laugh.
“Or maybe tuberculosis bacterium. I’m guessing Brahm and Nevina think of me like a disease.”
“If you’re a disease, any population would be lucky to catch you,” she mumbles.
