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The orange-red ones were the brightest, like firelit rubies, casting leaping shadows onto the frightened faces of the crowd. They were also shedding flurries of sparks, not constantly but in fits and starts, like they were being carried by a breeze I couldn’t feel right now. And, in one case, an entire plank, like off the side of a house, came spinning into the night and then lay in the street, burning.
There were also some ugly yellowish ones, with a haze inside that was leaking out, wrapping them in dirty cocoons. And a group that appeared to show a cheerful blue sky, like a bright spring day, strangely eerie under the circumstances. And still more that roiled with dark gray clouds, massive bursts of lightning, and powerful gusts of wind that sent debris flying down onto the crowd, many of whom were standing around, staring up in wonder—
“Cassie!” Pritkin gritted out, bringing me back down to earth. I realized that the people streaming out of the inferno were too panicked to grasp that he was the one shielding them. Because they kept running into him, threatening his concentration.
And if it went, his shield did, too.
I got in front to attempt some crowd control, feeling the heat on my skin and the suddenly dry air in my lungs, and watching the dark silhouettes of people against all that light, trying to fit through one door, because the other was being consumed by flames. It should have kept my attention, and it did—helping people up who fell down the incongruously still icy steps and sending them to the right, because the left side of the street was a dead end. But even so, I kept stealing glimpses at the sky.
And realized that there was one more version of the strange phenomena that I hadn’t noticed at first, because it blended so well with the night. It seemed to show a cityscape, only I couldn’t see details, because there were no streetlights or house lights anywhere. It was so dark that all I could see was the brilliant arc of the Milky Way stretching overhead, coldly beautiful against the night. And a few moonbeams limning a mass of tightly packed buildings that were otherwise blanketed in darkness; I didn’t know why.
And then I found out why.
Because something came flying out of the surface, but it wasn’t a plank.
A bomb hit a building down the street, which detonated in a roar of shattering wood and flying brick. Pritkin cursed—I couldn’t hear him, I couldn’t hear anything over the sound of the explosion—but I saw his lips move as I jerked my head around. He didn’t have that option, having to remain concentrated on the apothecary, but he somehow managed to jerk his shield over us as well.
And just in time.
I was left staring at a hail of burning bits shooting into the pale blue ward, like a thousand daggers stabbing for our hearts. And for those of the crowd, I realized a second later, who he was also protecting. He’d somehow managed to throw his shields all the way across the street, putting up a barrier between the explosion and the mass of now screaming and fleeing people.
It shocked me, even after what I’d seen him do on the train, because shields don’t work like that. Even war mage shields don’t. Not surprisingly, the section protecting the street was much thinner than the one in the atrium, looking like a sheet fluttering in a breeze because of how far it had to stretch. Also not surprisingly, it was getting shredded.
But shredded isn’t down, and it was somehow holding. And acting like a fisherman’s net, something that also has a lot of holes but manages to trap plenty of fish. Or bricks and burning roof tiles and larger pieces of wood in this instance.
But some of the smaller stuff made it through, although it had been slowed way down. Which meant that the flimsy shields of the regular Joes and Janes in the crowd could handle the impact—at least for those who had them. But some didn’t, being too frightened to hold concentration, because they weren’t trained for this!
I saw a middle-aged woman shriek and fall as something slammed into her leg. I saw an old man’s body bow outward as he took shrapnel in the back. I saw a small child get splattered by her father’s blood when he was hit in the shoulder, causing him to drop her in the middle of the street. And then panic and run away, leaving her standing there, screaming—
Until I shifted her into my arms.
I clutched the crying child and stared at the burning street in horror. But also in dawning realization. I didn’t know what this was, but I bet I knew who was behind it.
“Jo!” I yelled at Pritkin, but wasn’t sure he heard.
I barely did. The blast was echoing in my ears like a hundred kettledrums, while he looked like he had on the train, with the cords on his
neck standing out and straining, broken blood vessels in his eyes, and his face flushed bright red. Although that may have been the hellish light from the burning building and burning skies and burning street. The whole damned place was burning!
And then, just when I thought things were as bad as they were going to get, one of the pretty blue shapes started to descend, and it was dropping something, too.
I stared up in disbelief as it began spewing forth a crowd of pale bodies. And since it was still three or four stories off the ground, they slammed down on the pavement with meaty-sounding splats, in a jumble of broken limbs, cracked skulls, and ruptured torsos. Where they lay seemingly unfazed.
Probably because they already looked like corpses.
There were huge black lumps on their skin, blood and pus on their faces, and they were naked and filthy and all tangled up, like they’d been in some kind of communal grave. A young woman caught my eye, tinged a sickly greenish hue, as if mold had already started to grow on her body. She had a baby clutched to her breast, and looked like a Madonna from a funerary monument, beautiful and marble-cold. I stared at her, at the fall of matted dark hair, at the sweet face that couldn’t have been more than sixteen, at the long lashes shading the youthful curve of her cheek—
That suddenly opened, revealing a cavity crawling with maggots.
Pritkin cursed and stumbled back, almost losing his grip on the shield, as the whole pile started moving. The dead baby mewled and tried to suck; limbs writhed like pale snakes, attempting to detangle, and the corpse of a dog began silently barking. It was beyond horrible—
But not dangerous—except to my sanity.
“She’s trying to scare us!” I yelled at Pritkin, because the street was suddenly filled with screams, ones I could barely hear because the sound of the explosion was still echoing in my ears. “No necromancer can animate more than two or three zombies at a time! I don’t care how powerful she is!”
“Then explain that!” he said, as a dozen of the creatures leapt for us all at once, clawing and biting and digging at the shields he’d just pulled tighter around us.
“Fuck!”
