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“Fuck off, necromancer! This has nothing to do with you!” Colette snarled, her expression losing all signs of playfulness.
“But it does. You’re threatening my friend, and I protect my friends. Besides…” Sky paused and clicked his tongue. “The Variks know what you’re up to. I don’t know much about vampires and politics, but it seems like they’re not happy about you trying to collect a shifter. Do you want to add hurting an innocent human and pissing off a witch to your list of crimes?”
Colette’s lips formed a twisted grin that more closely resembled an open wound on her face. “That’s assuming the Variks ever find out what happened here today.” With a wave of her hand at the three grunts she’d dragged along, she ordered, “Grab Owen. Kill the witch and the spare human. Quickly.”
“Sky!” Nolan shouted as he jerked his brother to his feet.
But it was unnecessary. It didn’t matter how fast the vampires moved; Sky was already a step ahead of them. Closing his fists and turning them, he pulled hard on all the strands of dead souls he’d gathered together. The ground rumbled and shook like an earthquake hitting a solid six on the Richter scale. Nolan tumbled to his knees as Owen fell over. The vampires spread their legs and held out their hands, trying to keep their balance.
A few feet away, on the opposite side of the road they’d all arrived on, small geysers of dirt shot into the air one after another like the fountains at the Bellagio. Sky smiled to himself as he counted over three dozen. The dead were very restless.
“Did you not notice that you entered a graveyard?” Sky taunted. “You’re on my turf now, bitch, and nobody is touching Nolan Banks.”
“What the fuck!” one of the vampire bodyguards shouted. The bloodsuckers turned at the sounds of scratching and cracking wood. Or maybe bones. Some of those corpses had to be pretty old.
Sky glanced over to see decaying bodies glazed in the hard light from the SUV. They pulled themselves up over tombstones and around statues, taking a few unsteady steps toward them. Each was in a different state of decay, from the freshly dead with their eyes and mouths sealed shut and wrapped in nice funeral clothes to others that were mere bones and a few wisps of hair.
They were definitely a creepy army to see in the gray mist of early morning.
But they were even scarier when they started to run.
“Sky! Sky!” Nolan jumped to his side and grabbed his arm with both hands.
“Shhh, it’s okay,” Sky said, patting his hands. “I’ve got it.”
“But-but—”
“I know. We got lucky. This cemetery is only a century or so old. Most of the dead are restless and want something to do. That’s how you get runners.” They were harder to hold together as pieces tended to fall off when they ran, but they were so much more interesting than those slow shamblers he got when he woke the dead from the old graveyards.
His dead army went straight for the vampires, forcing even Colette to get her hands dirty. The corpses were nowhere as strong as the vampires and couldn’t stop the bloodsuckers from pulling them apart and tossing them aside. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t put themselves back together again…and again…and again.
Sky giggled, directing more magic their way so that each torn-up corpse could reassemble itself and make another run at the vampires.
It took a few minutes for Colette to notice this problem and release an ear-piercing scream. She shouted for her men to attack him, but they couldn’t pull themselves free of the horde.
“How long can you keep this up? I can go well past dawn. How about you?” Sky called out, laughter bouncing between his words. Actually, he couldn’t. He was beginning to drag, but no one else needed to know that. It was to their benefit that the vampires were facing a ticking clock.
Colette released another scream of frustration and ordered the vampires into the vehicle. “This isn’t over!” she shouted him at like some boring TV villain. Sky rolled his eyes and didn’t even acknowledge that with a response. It was over for now. Once they got Owen and Nolan somewhere safe, he could leave this in the hands of the Variks to deal with the Sandor clan.
As the vampires clambered into their SUV, the corpses shuffled over to form a semicircle around Sky’s car in case Colette got the crazy idea to run them down. The dead might be flimsy, but Sky could use their bodies to make a more solid barrier with his magic. Nothing was getting through.
To his right, a whimper cut through the noise and he glanced over to see Owen crawling on his hands and knees to his brother’s side. He hid behind Nolan, sniveling and crying. Sky didn’t feel an ounce of remorse about that. What about the innocent humans he handed over to the vampires who didn’t know what they were in for? He liked Nolan, but he had no sympathy for his brother.
