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Lucas is in the yard, and I get to the porch just in time to watch him tear the head off a zombie. Blood is dotted across his face, and he whirls around, mouth open with his fangs beard.
“Catch!” I shout and use magic to help throw the heavy sword through the air. He catches it with ease and spins around, slicing the head off another zombie. Certain Eamon has bailed by now, I’m surprised to see him wielding the broken piece of my porch, smashing a zombie over the head.
“Hey,” I call to him and pull the other sword from its sheath. Eamon kicks a zombie in the chest, sending it flying back several yards. It crashes into another and they both fall down. They get up, movements jerky but fast.
“What the hell did you get yourselves into?” He takes the sword from me, looking at the dried blood on the blade. It’s my blood, and when I was cleaning weapons, I enchanted a few with my blood just in case we needed it. Good thing I was obsessively wanting to prepare.
“This is normal for us.” I give a shrug and throw out my free hand, sending a ball of pure white light into the chest of a zombie. The energy sizzles through him and he catches on fire, burning from the inside out and collapsing in a pile of smoldering goo. “Now are you going to help or not?”
There’s a glint in Eamon’s eye and he gives me a sharp nod before speeding over to Lucas. “Feels like old times, eh?”
“I don’t recall facing zombies together,” Lucas shouts as he cuts the head off another zombie. It rolls to the steps leading to the porch, and I suck in a breath, recognizing his face. It’s Mr. Kennedy from the bank, and I didn’t even know he had been possessed back when Paimon attacked.
Looking out at my yard, I see more zombies coming down the road. Fuck, they’re probably coming from the graveyard in downtown Thorne Hill. I don’t know how the hell I’m going to explain this, but right now it doesn’t matter.
Gripping the handle of the curved knife, I grit my teeth and jump off the porch. Hellfire burns inside me, and when three zombies barrel toward me, I throw out my free hand, blasting them with the infernal flames. I feel the warmth of the fire on my face as they burn, and I watch, eyes wide, finding the weirdest satisfaction when the red flames take on a purplish hue.
Binx and Pandora are in the woods, snapping necks clean in half of any zombie they come across. Binx sends me a mental image, showing me that some of these zombies are older yet preserved because they’ve been embalmed—and aren’t all victims I failed to save.
Find out where they’re coming from, I mentally tell him. There are two cemeteries in Thorne Hill. One is historic and founding nons still bury their family there. The other is behind a church and houses most of the dead around here. If someone is summoning the zombies from the ground, we need to find them and stop them before the whole graveyard becomes undead.
“Pandora, go with,” I say out loud. If Binx does run into some sort of necromancer, he could use some backup. I feel them both reluctantly leave me, but they obey. Lucas and Eamon are in the front yard, almost mirroring each other in their movements. Eamon’s brother Siobhan was Lucas’s friend, but I’m getting the feeling there’s some history between Lucas and Eamon as well. Fuck, it’s weird to think of my husband having friends and relationships from over a thousand years ago. It makes me feel young and inexperienced and—I whirl around, using the karambit to slice through the neck of a zombie. It doesn’t quite sever the spinal cord, so I telekinetically tear it. The head drops to the ground before the body, and I kick it, rolling it away from me.
Throwing my hand out, I summon hellfire again, but this time it’s blue. I don’t specifically pull from one dimension or another, yet they both feel natural to me. The ball of blue hellfire hits the body in front of me and I step back, watching it burn. Tipping my head, I watch Lucas cut through another throng of zombies, all fast moving and shockingly spry. Eamon is right next to him, and I think I hear them shouting out numbers, each trying to kill more zombies than the other.
Something else moves fast through the woods, and I whirl around, slicing the knife through the air, slitting the throat of whatever just rushed me. But instead of slicing through flesh, the blade moves through black smoke.
No.
Not this again.
The blade falls from my hand, blood splattering my feet. I throw both hands out, summoning a surge of white light. I push my hands forward, shoving them into the black mist, but it does little to stop the tendrils of smoke rising from the ground.
The sound of cawing echoes above me, and I watch in horror as a swarm of black birds plague the house.
“Lucas!” I scream as the black shadow figure in front of me lunges forward. “Lucas!”
My worst nightmare is played out in front of me, and black smoke turns into tendrils of dark magic that wrap around my legs and yank me down. I summon more white light and hit the smoke with it. This time, it shrieks and slinks away and I army crawl forward before Lucas rushes to me, pulling me to my feet.
“I was wrong,” I pant as black smoke billows from the ground, wrapping around the house like demonic vines. “He wasn’t after me.” My entire body goes numb, like I’ve been dunked into dark and icy water. “He’s after Juliet.”
ChapterThirty-Seven
Lucas’s eyes meet mine for a fleeting moment and then he lets me go, running to the house. A large black raven swoops down, and Lucas swings his sword, cutting it in half. I turn around, heart in my throat, and summon blue hellfire in one hand and red in the other.
“Burn, motherfucker,” I growl and throw my hands out in front of me. The black smoke is choked out by the hellfire. But as soon as it’s out, another tendril comes from the earth. I throw another ball of hellfire at it and run toward the house, desperate to get inside.
Another raven swoops down, claws catching me in the face. I cry out from the pain but don’t stop pushing forward. Blood drips down my face and another vine of smoke grabs my ankle, tripping me. I fall hard, and my right wrist stings with pain. Still, it’ll be nothing compared to the pain of something happening to my daughter or my friends.
“Kristy!” I scream, wanting to warn her. “Kristy!”
The vine of smoke yanks me back, flipping me over so my head bumps hard along the ground.
“I got you,” Eamon says, speeding over. He brings his sword down on the black smoke and it does nothing to stop it. “Fuck!” He grabs my hand instead, pulling against the smoke. I throw my free hand forward, sending a jolt of white light at the smoke. It’s enough to cause it to break its hold, and Eamon pulls me several feet forward and then helps me up.
He’s covered in blood as well, and his dark eyes are wide.
“We need to get inside,” I pant. “I invite you in.”
