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We mounted the stairs behind Dominick, and he led us down the corridor to Lucas’s bedroom-slash-office. After a polite knock of warning, he opened the door and ushered us inside. “It’s Secret and Desmond,” he announced before ducking out of the room, leaving us alone with the pack king.
Lucas was pacing in front of the fireplace, his blond hair a mess, as though he’d been running his fingers through it repeatedly. He had a day’s worth of stubble growth, and the bags under his eyes were a dark, bruised purple.
“You look like shit,” I said.
“It’s nice to see you too.” He stopped pacing and gave Desmond and me a once-over. “How are you feeling?” he asked Desmond.
Des had had the misfortune of being dosed with a nasty drug while we were in Paris. It had forced him into his werewolf form, and I’d come to Lucas to reverse the process when we got stateside again.
“Decent. I mean, all things considered.”
Lucas nodded. He appeared to have more questions, but thought better of them and stared at the fire instead. “The world has gone crazy.”
“Not the whole world.” I wasn’t sure if there was a way to comfort him. Lucas was a control freak, and this situation was out of all our control.
“Did you ever in your life think you’d see something like this?”
“I once decapitated a flying demon bent on razing the city to the ground. So, I mean…I’ve learned not to count any possibility out.” I smiled, trying to get him to lighten up. We weren’t going to get anywhere if we got mired down in the doom and gloom. This was the kind of situation where giving up felt almost inevitable and it was all too easy to stop fighting.
“I’m glad Kellen isn’t here to see this.”
At the mention of Kellen I was reminded of one of the problems I’d been expecting to face when I got home. Before I went to Manitoba, Aubrey Delacourte, the fairy king, had been quite adamant I give him the favor I owed him. Though now was not the most ideal time to think about debts to the fairy king, I couldn’t shake the notion.
Aubrey wouldn’t care what happened to my world, but if there was anyone who might be able to do something, it was him. Manipulating a fairy into doing something against their will, though, was another story altogether. It wasn’t the best plan, but it was something to keep in the back of my mind. If all else failed, I might need to turn to the fae.
I didn’t love the idea, because I knew I wouldn’t walk away from it without losing something that mattered to me. The last time I’d tangled with Aubrey, he’d stripped me of all my power, and it had almost cost me my life.
Instead we’d let Kellen marry a fae knight, and now I owed Aubrey a favor.
And no one wants to owe a fairy a favor.
“Kellen’s better off where she is,” I agreed. I wasn’t sure if I should tell him about Keaty. Talking about it seemed impossible, and Lucas’s mood was already borderline morose. I didn’t want to make things worse.
“We need your help.” Desmond must have sensed I was at a loss for how to continue, and he charged ahead without me. “We’ve determined who’s behind this whole mess, and Secret has issued them an ultimatum. If they don’t clear town by nightfall, we’re going to need to make good on her threat.”
“Who could do something like this?”
“It’s a…well, it’s a necromancer biker gang.”
The words sounded insane—and borderline hilarious—spoken out loud. Had I not seen Marcela and her gang in person, I wouldn’t have believed it either, but the fact was, we couldn’t let them get the best of us simply because we were busy scoffing at the idea they existed.
“It’s a group that calls themselves the Hands of Death.” Desmond placed his hand on the small of my back. Until recently, human contact set my internal alarms off, and I tended to avoid it as much as possible. But this was different. For the first time in a long time, my skin tingled in response to his touch. I don’t know what brought the change around, and I tried not to overthink it. Instead I enjoyed the brief moment of pleasure, something that had become foreign to me in the months since my encounter with The Doctor.
“Hands of Death?” Lucas asked, now looking at us instead of the fire.
“Have you heard of them?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nothing specific. I got a call last week from the Northern pack king, Gil O’Shaughnessy. Apparently a few of his bars on the Montana/Alberta border had some issues with a gang, but he didn’t mention anything about them being able to raise the dead.”
“They probably weren’t advertising the skill at that point. As far as I can tell, they’ve come here for a reason. I don’t know what they want, or what they’re trying to accomplish, but they meant to hit New York and nowhere else. We don’t have a lot of time here. Tyler’s working with the FBI, and he says they have a task force set up on the outside, but I don’t know what they can do about it. If we don’t fix this situation soon, it’s going to turn into a military operation, and with tens of thousands of corpses walking around, I only see that ending one way.”
“You don’t think they’ll level the city, do you?” Lucas seemed stunned.
“Tell me what comes to mind when you see dead bodies walking around the streets?”
“Zombies.”
“Yeah. You think the military is going to wait for someone to explain the difference between a zombie and a necromancer-controlled corpse? I doubt it. If they think there’s a chance they won’t be able to keep this contained, I think New York won’t live to see the end of the week.”
