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Well, I did really want to see some necromancy, didn’t I?
The spirits flew toward the soldiers, and she could hear screams mixing in with the sound of gunfire. She said a silent and quick prayer for Rinaldo. He was a good man. Hell, many of the men who were now being torn apart were probably fantastic people. Just on the other side of what was quickly turning into a war.
But as long as she stayed where she was, she should be safe until he—
When a bullet tooka chunk out of the stone next to her head, she shrieked and ducked around it, quickly trying to scramble for better cover. Heart pounding in her ears, she could hear dull thumps of bullets as they embedded in the trees or sharper cracks as they hit the graves.
Something snatched her around the waist, and with no more warning than that, she was moving through the air. She screamed, but something was pressed against her hand. Something that was even colder than the rain that was now pelting down on them.
Tucked behind a mausoleum, Gideon’s lich form melted away until he was human again. His clothes no longer had holes in them, nor was there any blood. But he was panting from what must have been a great deal of exertion.
“They were”—she shouted, but quickly lowered her voice into a harsh whisper as he glared at her—“firing at me!”
“Are you surprised? You tried to burn down the Vatican,” he hissed back.
“But—but—they deserved it—and—” She growled. “It isn’t fair.”
“Now isn’t the time.” He pressed his back to the wall and held her close. “They’re after you. They know they can’t stop me like this.”
“Necromancer!” Someone shouted through the pouring rain. It sounded like Rinaldo, but she sure as fuck wasn’t going to lean around the edge of the mausoleum to find out. “Either we take her with us, or she dies. It’s your decision. Let her go and she lives. We have you surrounded. And last I checked, not even you can fly. You might get out of this, but she won’t. And neither of us want her to get hurt.”
She looked up at Gideon questioningly.
“Well, I can’t fly for long distances,” he muttered, before anger overtook him again, and he swore viciously in another language under his breath. He pounded a fist into the stone behind him, sending a series of cracks spreading from the site of the impact like spiderwebs. The swearing continued for a few moments, jumping from language to language before it ended in one she understood. “Motherfucker.”
She would have normally laughed at the sight of the great and noble Gideon Raithe swearing like a sailor, but she figured this was a very bad time. “What do we do?”
He shook his head, unsure. “I…don’t know, princess. If I try to get us out of here, I can kill many of them before they find you, but I do not know how many they’ve brought. I can summon more spirits to aid us. But they can banish them, even as I raise them.” He swore again. “I will not surrender to them.”
Quickly thinking it through, she considered their options. Run for it, which meant she would probably get shot, even if she was being carried by a giant lich. Fight them, which likely meant the exact same outcome. Surrender, which meant…she was their captive again. And she knew her next imprisonment at the hands of the Order was not going to be nearly so hospitable.
Or—
She blinked. “We hide.”
“What?”
“We hide. We find a tomb. You get us in through a broken roof or something with your super lichy…whatever powers. We hide out until morning. They’re holy assholes with guns—they don’t want to be seen by tourists. Hell, we can probably call the cops on them as soon as the sun comes up. They’re wrecking property.”
He opened his mouth as if to argue or point out a flaw in her plan, but then shut his mouth again. “That might actually work.” He flicked his wrist, and from nowhere a figure made of transparent white mist appeared beside them. It was the shape of a man wearing a long-dated suit. “Find us a place to hide. A tomb with a hole in the roof, large enough for her to safely pass through it. Something with no other windows or holes. Take her to it once you locate something suitable. Once she is there, you will inform me. Now go.”
The man bowed his head and disappeared.
Gideon turned back to her and placed his palm against her cheek. “I will cause us a distraction. And I do wish to kill a few of them before the night is through. I will be at your side the moment you are there. Be careful, princess, I—” His voice wavered. “I do not know what I would do if you—”
She grabbed him by the back of the neck and yanked him down to her in a searing kiss, soaked from the pouring rain. She held the embrace for a moment before she released him. “I know what you’re going to do. But these aren’t bad men. They aren’t wrong, or evil. They’re trying to protect the world. I won’t ask you not to kill everyone, just…please don’t kill Rinnie. He warned me. He spared my life a second ago.”
He grimaced in disgust but nodded once. “Very well. I will see what I can do.” He dissolved into black smoke and slithered up the side of the tomb onto the roof like every kind of nightmare anyone had ever had of such a shadowy creature. When he let out another one of those inaudible screams, she thought she might have heard glass shatter nearby.
“Find her!” she heard someone yell through the rain. They were far, far too close for her liking.
“This way, miss…”
She bit back a scream as the same ghostly figure of a man appeared beside her. He was expressionless and empty, as though the chaos going on around them was meaningless to him. To be fair, it probably was. He began to walk in the other direction.
Doing her best to keep out of sight, she ducked behind stones and around trees as she followed the handling-this-way-too-casually ghost. “Can we go a little faster?” She half-whispered, half-shouted at him.
The man didn’t respond and kept walking at an unhurried pace.
