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“Bingo. That place has a lot of cemeteries, which is creepy. Although technically, most of them are on the outskirts. This one? Smack in the center.” I zigzagged through the streets, skirting the cars parked along the narrow street.
Abby and Fritz’s house had been on a relatively spacious street, but we were now in the older part of the district. Here, the houses were falling apart, with few of them occupied. The yards and trees were so overgrown that it was difficult to make out the paths leading to the doors. Few lights shined through the night, and what few did were shrouded behind blinds and ratty-looking curtains.
We silently glided through the maze of streets until we came to a turnoff onto a side street filled with potholes. It was barely wide enough for one car at a time. We bumped along, with me struggling to see the road in the rain, under the streetlights that were spaced few and far between.
Eventually, to the left, I saw the broken gates to an overgrown cemetery. The sign had long ago disappeared, but I knew it was the right one—it was exactly where Chase had told us it would be.
I pulled through the arches, cautiously entering the parking circle. As I slowed, then turned off the engine, Menolly’s Jag pulled in behind me. I glanced at the guys.
“Time to get this show moving.” With a sigh, I opened my door. Morio grabbed the bag of gear from the backseat and we all climbed out.
Menolly and Delilah wandered over to me, as we squinted, trying to figure out where we were. Chase had told us that the egg could be found about a block down the main path, but which was the main one? There were paths going in five different directions.
Menolly stood back. “Hold on.” She closed her eyes, slightly unsteady on her feet, and the next thing we knew, she’d turned into a bat.
I blinked. Ever since Roman had re-sired her, she’d made remarkable leaps in some of the old-school vamp stuff that seemed to be the domain of mostly the elder vampires. Of course, with Roman’s blood in her now, along with Dredge’s, Menolly was turning into one scary-assed dead girl.
She swooped off into the night and we waited, sorting out our weapons. We’d brought enough silver to arm a small militia, just in case we had to call in the Supes again, although most of them would have their own gear.
After a few minutes, Menolly came sweeping back, landing gracefully to transform back into her natural form. She reached out, steadying herself on Roz’s arm, then cleared her throat.
“It’s getting easier, but damn, the landings still get me.” With a toothy grin, she shrugged. “I’ll master it in time. Meanwhile, the egg is down the middle path. From up above, even in the dark, it shows as being wider than the rest. It’s hard to tell down here on the ground, though, especially since all the paths are overgrown.”
“Then I guess we head in. Delilah, you have Frank on speed dial?”
She nodded. “All I need is five seconds. The minute he gets my text with the address, he’ll start the phone tree—and everybody on the other end is waiting for the call.”
There was no more procrastinating. “Let’s get a move on, then.” And with that, I took the lead and, with Smoky by my side, headed down the middle sidewalk, hoping like hell this was going to be easier than this morning.
The egg was no more than five minutes’ walk away, around a curve in the sidewalk behind a clump of overgrown rowan trees—also known as mountain ash in the area. The branches were covered with ghostly white berries that would turn red in a few months, and bright orange by late summer. For now, though, they were just ghosts of color against the rain-soaked sky.
Tombstones littered the field, and I do mean littered. They were scattered haphazardly, as if they’d been tumbled every which way. Some were rubble, long ago fallen into heaps of broken rock; others looked weatherworn and were covered with moss.
Mounds of earth showed that the inhabitants of the graves had dug their way up, through rotting caskets and dirt, to the surface. The grass was knee high, making it difficult to see if there were any twigs or rocks in our way.
The egg stood in the center of the boneyard, looking very much the same as the one this morning, though a lot smaller, with a group of bone-walkers clustered around it. That alone told me the age of the graveyard—the flesh had long ago rotted away, leaving only the skeletons of whoever had been buried here.
One at a time, they walked forward, vanishing into the egg, sucked in and sucked dry. A sickening thud hit my stomach.
“We have no way of knowing what’s going to happen when we crack open that egg.” I stared at it, almost afraid to try. But if we didn’t stop it now, the carnage would be worse later. At least I didn’t see any of the Fae or FBH witches hanging around. Maybe Gulakah didn’t realize we’d found this one, or maybe their energy wasn’t useful until the egg was almost ready to hatch. Whatever the case, the fact that they weren’t around meant one less worry for us.
“We need to stop the bone-walkers. Menolly, can you and Roz and Delilah go after them? Smoky, Morio, Trillian, and I will take on the egg.” I wasn’t sure just exactly how we were going to do that, but lack of a plan had never stopped us before.
Menolly nodded, and the three of them moved toward the bone-walkers. As we watched, they began trying to herd the shuffling creatures away from the egg. The skeletons, which had paid no attention to our presence before then, suddenly seemed to notice that yes, there were obstacles in their path. Rather than fight back to harm, they fought to get past my sisters and Roz. Which meant they were just as dangerous as any unbewitched bone-walker.
Meanwhile, my men and I headed over to the egg. We walked around it, staring at it. Smoky reached out to touch it, but I yelled at him, startling him enough for him to step away.
“Don’t touch the shell—that’s how it sucks you in, and I don’t know if a dragon can resist the pull.” I was pretty sure that Smoky would be okay but didn’t want to find out. After all, we were dealing with demons.
“Well, there’s no other way to do this.” Smoky pulled out his silver sword.
“Was that your grandfather’s?” I asked, as we waded into the fray.
He smiled. “You presume correctly, my love. This belonged to my mother’s father. Remind me when we have more time and I’ll tell you the story of how I came to possess this, and what my grandfather used it for.”
And with that, he swung it against the egg. The silver of the blade contacted the egg, and a shrill reverberation echoed through the rain. I winced, wanting to cover my ears, but it was too dangerous to set down my blade to do so. I sucked in a deep breath and waited for any sign that the spirit demons were going to come racing out of the shell.
The egg pulsated—that’s the only way to describe it—and then shuddered. The shell shifted, reminding me of a pregnant woman’s belly when her baby was pressing against it. Or rather, more like Kane’s chest in Alien, when the alien was writhing beneath the skin, ready to burst out into the room. Only with the egg, there were dozens of baby aliens beneath the shell, moving and twisting against the outer membrane.
