“You’re the necromancer,” Ethan snarled. “Shouldn’t you be doing something other than giving us cruddy odds?”
For the first time in these trials, he was right. This was Wally’s world and we needed her to pull it together. “We’ll protect you while you figure this out.” I put my back to her. “We’ll stand our ground.”
“That’s suicide!”
I grabbed Ethan by the arm and gave him a shake. “And Wally’s right. Running will get us nowhere. Orin is out there by himself figuring that out right now. We stand together, we fall alone.”
“Or he’s made it to the exit.” Ethan turned and squared himself. “Damn vampire. They can’t be trusted.” We faced the wolves together, the pack of three moving faster than the other undead. As they drew closer, my jaw dropped. I couldn’t help it. They looked to be not fully wolf, but not fully human either. Like the wolfman out of the old horror movies we’d watch on Saturday nights. Only they were hunched forward, not running on two legs but four.
“Are they only partially shifted?”
Ethan nodded. “Stuck between shapes in death.”
There was no more time for words as the weirdly shaped animals launched at us, snarling and snapping. They were not acting like normal wolves, or even the shifter wolves we’d faced in the previous trial.
These just came straight at us with no effort at stealth or subterfuge. All three of them came for Ethan, ignoring me.
Mistake number one on their part.
He went down under the weight of them with a shout. I grabbed the one closest to me by the scruff of its neck and heaved with everything I had in me. The skin stretched and pulled, tearing as I yanked the dead wolf off Ethan, flinging it to one side and taking down two more zombies with its thick body.
A burst of light cut through the air, sending one of the wolves straight up into the air in pieces that scattered like a burst piñata at the worst kind of party. Ethan rolled from the third, and I went in with my knife, driving it down and into the thing’s neck.
The wolf tried to turn his head, and I yanked the handle hard to the side, tearing the blade through the bone and rotting tissue, popping its head off like a daisy.
The dead wolf wobbled, fell to its all-too-human knees, and rolled over as its head tumbled away from its body.
Ethan and I backed up.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Don’t mention it.” I swung my blade to the right, catching a zombie that had risen partially from a grave. “We need to get our backs against something. Stuck in the center like this, we have no chance at all.”
“There’s a mausoleum in the center of the graveyard,” Orin said. “We can climb on top of it.”
Ethan and I whipped around at the same time.
“You came back?”
I couldn’t help the question. Orin tipped his head, looking like nothing more than an oversized black bird, right down to the flat black eyes.
“We’re a team. We’ve established that. Frankly, I’m surprised at your surprise.”
“You’re a vampire,” Ethan said, “Don’t be surprised that we’re surprised that you didn’t just leave us here.”
“That’s the pot calling the kettle black,” Orin threw back.
“Not the time, boys!” I said as I pushed another zombie back, shoving it with my boot. My foot sunk into its chest, trapped for a second by the partially shattered ribcage. I snarled and shook my foot harder until it was free, although covered in slimy substances I didn’t want to identify.
I grabbed Wally by the arm and we bolted for the mausoleum. Part of me still worried Orin would turn on us, that he was potentially leading us into a trap, but I didn’t see any other choice.
Orin led the way, cutting through the zombies with his elongated creepy claw fingers. The zombies fell under his hands better than any other weapon we’d used so far. A quick glance down at Pete showed that while his fur was covered in zombie guts, he’d suffered no bites.
“No bites?” I asked the others as we jogged along, Wally in the center of us. She was strangely silent, and I knew why without asking.
This was really her test, and so far she’d done nothing but give us crappy odds. She seemed to have frozen.
Orin made getting to the mausoleum seem easy. I should have been happy, but the very fact that it seemed easy felt wrong.
“Slow down.” I said. “Something’s off.”
“If we slow down, we aren’t going to make it,” Ethan pointed his wand up into the air and shot a burst of light that spread out around us, showing me just what we were facing. Easily a thousand zombies moved in on us. I could see them under the fan of light. Goblins, gargoyles, shifters, and men and women who held splintered wands in their gnarled and rotting hands.
Except...I didn’t see any vampires.
Or any obvious Shades.
“Once we’re up on the building, what then?” I asked. “We’ll be surrounded and there will be no way out.”
“We have no choice,” Ethan yelled. “We can’t outrun them!”
A zombie goblin launched itself at Ethan as if to help make his point. Pete shot forward, taking the shambling undead out by the legs, but it wasn’t down for good. It rolled over and pushed itself toward us again.
Like a swarm of ants. I’d seen red army ants devour a downed bird. You’d think the bird could escape, but after a thousand tiny bites, it gave up.
And the ants had their prize.
I wanted to vomit. This was not an enemy that could be killed or outrun.
But I also knew that pinning ourselves down without an out could—no, would—get us killed.
Because there was no doubt in my mind that Wally was right. This was no normal trial. It was meant to do one thing and one thing only.
Eliminate me.
Chapter 4
“We have no choice but to go to the mausoleum. Maybe I can blast them from there,” Ethan repeated. The graveyard was full of moving parts, along with the constant groaning and shuffling of the undead as they came for us en masse. I looked to Wally.
“Wally, talk to us. Talk to me.”
“We need high ground,” she said, her eyes closed. “Then maybe…maybe I could do something.”
Ethan shook his head and muttered “useless” under his breath.
“Then we go.” We started out again, this time without hesitation.
Orin reached the building first, climbed up and then waited, watching with his flat black eyes as we drew close.
The mausoleum was a perfect square building with a few ornate edges, a flat roof, and no visible ladder to the top. I hurried forward, driving Wally and Pete ahead of me.
I bent and grabbed Pete around the middle and threw him up onto the building.
Damn it, I hate it when you do that! his voice echoed in my head.
I grinned. “You just wish you had wings.”
“Give me a boost!” Ethan shouted.
“I am right beside you, idiot.” I crouched beside him, cupping my hands, and then hoisted him up.
“Come on, Wally, you’re next.” I turned to see her standing behind me, her eyes despondent, arms wrapped around herself as if she wished she could shrink right where she stood.
“You should just leave me here,” she said. “He’s right, I’m useless to the group. I know stats, I know numbers, but I’ve never been trained as a necromancer. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to help our group. I can feel the dead, but I don’t know how to stop them. I can’t…. I can’t, Wild. I’m not good like the rest of you.” Her eyes flooded with tears.
“Look—” I waved a hand at the oncoming horde. “We don’t have time for you to doubt yourself. We need you to be the necromancer of this group. We need you to be a badass raiser of the dead.” I crouched beside her, and she reluctantly put her foot in the cup of my fingers.
I stood, boosting her high into the air. She scrambled over the edge, and I turned to see the zombies coming for me.
A semi-circle of the undead reached for me as a unit, smiles on their rotting faces. Those smiles sent chills of warning through me, and not the “hey, zombies are coming to eat you” kind of warning. This was more like “hey, whoever is running these zombies is coming for you,” which was infinitely worse in my opinion. Like the necromancer controlling them could see through their eyes and knew his prey was right in front of him.
I lashed out, shoving them back, breaking off bits and pieces as fast as I could. Strike, lunge, rinse, repeat. A bite landed on my forearm, and I howled as the zombie’s teeth dug into me, tearing flesh. The teeth were jagged, and they clamped on with a ferocity that would give any wolf a run for its money.
I brought my knife down hard on the biter’s head, driving the blade all the way into the hilt, but it didn’t let go. It shook its head and its broken body began to shift into something else—
House of Claw. Get out of there, Wild! Pete’s voice came through loud and clear.
“Yeah, trying!” I yelled as I pulled the knife out and tried a different angle, jamming the blade into the zombie’s head sideways, through the jaw bone. The mouth went slack on the one side, and I yanked free, blood running down my arm, my fingers numb on that side.
I backed up and reached up with my good hand. I opened my mouth to ask for help when a zombie shuffling toward me stopped me in my tracks. Instead of trying to get away, I took a step forward.
“No.” I struggled to breathe around what I was seeing, the world dipping and curving like I’d held my breath for too long and was about to pass out.
My brother stepped through the crowd, his body not as rotted as the others, as if he’d only just been killed, as if he’d died protecting me as he’d promised to do if it was asked of him. The line of his jaw, the brush of his hair, the hands that had boosted me into the apple trees how many times? It was all so familiar, so unmistakably him.
This could not be happening. This had to be an illusion.
Didn’t it?
“Tommy.” I could barely say his name as he pushed his way through the crowd, and then he was rushing me, pushing me back against the mausoleum with so much force he knocked the wind out of me. I tried to grab at him, to see his face. I had to see his eyes. I couldn’t believe this was where he’d been kept. And now he was fighting me.
“Tommy!” I bellowed his name, pain wrapping around my heart as I fought him.
The necromancer had done this to Tommy, had set my own brother against me. I drove my fist into his side, felt the ribs crack, but it didn’t slow him. Not for a damn second.
His hand came up lightning fast, his fingers wrapping around my neck, squeezing.
I kicked as he lifted me, stronger than he’d ever been. Weirdly, I could only wonder if he’d been this strong as a living Shade, or if this was the strength of the undead. My brother was undead.
And he was going to kill me.
“Tommy.” I whispered his name, choked on tears. I didn’t want to die. But I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t bring myself to destroy him.
I tried pulling his fingers off my neck, snapped one of them backward and he didn’t so much as blink. Staring into his face, his rheumy eyes, I knew then there was nothing left of my brother in this body. This was not the boy that I’d adored, the one I’d looked up to and wanted to be like. Not the brother who’d shown me how to wrangle cows, ride horses. Not the brother who’d taught me how to track and survive out in the woods.
It was only his body, not his spirit.
“I’m sorry.” I mouthed the words rather than spoke them as I lifted a foot and kicked him in the hip, throwing him off balance. We went to the ground and I rolled, driving my elbow into his, snapping the bone. His fingers still clung to me, but I pried them off, one broken finger at a time, gasping for breath.
Orin, Ethan, and Wally were shouting at me to get up, to hurry, but it all seemed so far away. Even the other undead seemed to be waiting to see how this played out between me and Tommy. No, not Tommy. This was not my brother, not anymore.
I spun as another body rushed through the horde. Green eyes, dark hair, and the scent of home. The other half of my childhood, this one alive and desperate. Desperate to watch my back, at all costs.
“Rory—” No words, there were no words, just his name, as Rory thrust himself into peril and rushed over to me. He dragged me back to the mausoleum. He bent and cupped his hands to give me a boost, same as I’d done for Wally and Ethan.
“What about—”
“Go. I’ll be fine!” he yelled over the din, fear heavy in his voice.
Like in the trees, I knew it wasn’t fear for himself, but fear for me. Fear he’d lose me as he’d lost my brother. Maybe fear that I’d end up like Tommy—
I choked back a sob and took the boost, balancing a hand on his muscular shoulder. I scrambled to hold onto the edge, Ethan helping me up the rest of the way.
I spun on my belly in time to see Rory disappear under a wave of the undead.
“Who was that?” Orin leaned over the edge.
“NO!” My scream echoed through my head. Through my heart. My middle had already been ripped open by seeing Tommy as one of them, by having to fight my own brother. To lose Rory too…that was beyond unfair.
A flash of his dark clothes was all I could see as he was rolled under the zombies, like an undercurrent in an ocean of the undead had taken hold of him and swept him away from me. I stood and bolted to the other side of the roof, looking for him, searching the masses with my eyes, frantic to see him one more time.
“RORY!” His name ripped out of me as I frantically searched for him.
Gone, he was gone. This time, I couldn’t even see a shred of fabric.
I was no fool. There would be no diving in after him, no saving him from these creatures. He wouldn’t want me to throw my own life away when we both knew he was done. That he couldn’t be saved.
He’d put his life on the line for me, just like he’d said he would.
I bent at the waist, my entire body shaking. Memories and images cascaded through my head—the first time we’d gone skinny dipping in the river as kids, the two of us grinning at each other as we hid from Tommy, that cheeky ass smile of his, the feeling of his strength pooling around me and protecting me the night he’d hidden me from the assassin.
I couldn’t stop the shaking, couldn’t stop the tears as they bubbled up. The others were all talking at once—I could hear them in the background discussing what to do, how to get out of here. How to escape.
And all I could think about was Rory.
The way I’d talked to him. My last words to him had been spoken in anger, pushing him away. A wave of nausea rammed its way up my throat, and I threw up over the edge of the roof, right onto a zombie’s head. It blinked up at me with a bemused look.
Nice shot, Pete said from beside me. But what’s got you all riled up?
“Stop it, just stop it!” Wally yelled and I turned to see Ethan pushing her across the roof, toward the edge.
Ethan kept shoving her. “Do something to help. If you can’t be useful, then you can be the bait this time. You can draw them away.”
Orin just watched.
And the grief in my belly turned to an instant white-hot rage. I would not lose another friend to the army of undead.
I didn’t even recall moving across the space between us, I was just there on Ethan, driving him back, my hand wrapped around his throat the way Tommy’s had been wrapped around mine. I held him out over the edge of the roof, balancing him on the backs of his heels, his face red from the lack of oxygen. “You don’t touch her. You don’t hurt her. Got it?”
“Wild, it wasn’t that bad,” Wally said. “Honestly, this is too far, even for you. Don’t drop him. We need him. We need all of us to get through this.”
Ethan watched me with wide eyes, his entire body leaning out over the grasping, broken, and rotting hands that reached for him.
I swallowed hard and drew him back o
nto the roof. He fell to his knees and coughed, shaking his head and looking up at me. “What does it matter? You might as well have dropped me there? We aren’t going to make it out of this. None of us are.”
We all stared at him.
“What are you talking about?” Orin said. “You want to die now?”
Ethan shook his head. “Don’t you get it? This isn’t normal.” He swept his hand over the dizzying scene. “This isn’t a test for the Culling Trials. I was trained in all the variations on the challenges, going back generations. This was never mentioned. Never. No, this is meant to kill us. Wally was right about that much. Because even if it was meant for one of us”—he shot a glare at me—“they can’t have witnesses. That’s how this world works and you all know it. You can’t allow witnesses to a death that was an assassination.”
While I wanted to tell him he was wrong, that we would make it out of this too, I truly believed our lives hung in the balance.
I would grieve for Rory later, but right now I needed to figure this out. I had to find a way for us to escape this trial.
Wally’s hand slid down to my palm and she linked her fingers with my good hand. A burst of awareness flooded over me, and I slowly turned, hanging onto her as I looked down at the sea of dead.
Glowing lights lit up inside each and every one of the bodies, throbbing with a deep green pulse that I knew without understanding belonged to the necromancer controlling them. “Do you see that?” I whispered to her.
She tightened her hold on my hand. “The light? Yes, but I don’t know how to stop it.”
I nodded and dragged her to the edge of the roof for a better vantage point. The zombies didn’t look as rotted. The longer I stared at them, the more they looked…alive. “You see them as they were, not as they are.”
Wally blew out a slow breath. “You shouldn’t be able to see them like I do, Wild. There is only one—”
“If we can pinpoint where the light’s coming from, we can stop the necromancer.” I looked at her. Really looked. She was as terrified as I’d ever seen her, and I didn’t think it was just the fact that we were facing death. “Wally, why does this scare you?”
Shadowspell Academy: The Culling Trials, Book 3 Page 3