With a grunt of effort, Saul changed the trajectory of each fireball and sent them chasing after her. Forced to keep moving, she reshaped her wall of air into a rounded half-shield that protected her back while she sprinted toward the cemetery fence.
Finally, the two surviving girls were free of the threat that had loomed over them all day.
Bankroft, who’d been waiting in the wings, hurried over to the petrified girls, slung one over each shoulder, and raced off toward the lumberyard. With the sorceress and the girls no longer inside the circle, the structure deactivated, the ominous red glow replaced by the orange glare of the church fire.
For good measure, Saul pointed a finger at the section of flooring upon which the circle was drawn and cast a simple fire spell. A tiny flame appeared at one corner of the flooring and began to consume it, circle and all.
Satisfied that the sorceress couldn’t restart the ritual, Saul took off after her just as she jumped the fence. He directed his fireballs through the gaps in the bars, but they were hampered by the abundance of headstones.
The sorceress ducked behind one headstone, and two of the fireballs struck it, fizzling out with a puff of smoke. Saul quickly snuffed out the remaining three fireballs before they struck a tree or…
Are those zombies?
Saul climbed the fence and dropped to the other side, his gaze glued to the spectacle in the cemetery. He had felt Adeline’s power surge a few minutes prior, but he’d been so preoccupied with overcoming the sorceress that he hadn’t spared a glance toward the cemetery.
Now, he stood there flummoxed as dozens of reanimated corpses charged at Slade, who was slashing away at them with a sword sporting a sleek black blade. Slade kept trying to advance on Adeline, but every time he got within five feet, another wave of moving corpses dragged him back.
Adeline was violently shaking, sweat streaming down her face, from the effort of maintaining so many zombies at once. But she wasn’t going to give in, Saul could tell, even if it killed her.
A flicker of movement in the corner of Saul’s eye was all the warning he had before a nearby tree exploded into a rain of wooden shrapnel. Saul dropped to his knees behind a headstone and covered his face as a hail of sharp splinters poked and prodded him.
The moment those splinters stopped falling, he sprang back up, a spell sitting hot on his tongue. Only to find the sorceress flying through the air toward her partner in crime, moving almost as fast as Tanner had been when he made that reckless grab for Excalibur.
I’m going to shake him senseless for that boneheaded stunt, Saul thought as he vaulted onto the top of a mausoleum and prepared one more strong fire spell. The last one he could manage with the energy he had left.
The sorceress swooped in low and grabbed Slade by the collar of his coat, hoisting him into the air. Startled, Slade yelped out, “What the hell, Val?”
The sorceress—Val—jutted her thumb at the magic circle in the parking lot, now burned beyond use. “Time to call it quits.”
Slade groaned and kicked the skull of a leaping zombie. “The boss is going to have our heads for screwing this up.”
“Well, we didn’t fail entirely,” Val replied. “One out of three is better than nothing.”
Slade shot Adeline a glare, a promise for a rematch, and tapped his black sword with two fingers, banishing it back to the magical space in which it was stored. “We have to recover Excalibur before we leave,” he said to Val. “The other brother has it.”
“Of course he does.” Val carried him toward the woods beyond the back side of the fence, where Tanner was likely hiding. “Which way did he go?”
Oh no, Saul thought. You’ve hurt my brother enough for one day.
Reeling back his arm as if he held a javelin, Saul spoke an incantation that burned his throat, and a tightly wound funnel of flame coalesced around his hand. He heaved his arm forward, and the funnel shot toward Val and Slade, growing in diameter as it closed in, threatening to swallow them whole.
Val scrambled to drag them out of its path, and Slade sloppily worked up a shield to try and block it. But both of them, low on energy, should have failed in their attempts and been burned beyond recognition.
They would have been too—if a giant pillar of white light hadn’t dropped out of the sky at supersonic speed and snatched them up a split second before Saul’s funnel sliced through the air where they’d been floating. The light retracted just as fast, and by the time the fire funnel hit a tree and set it ablaze, the pillar was nothing but a bright speck zipping through the sky, miles away from the battlefield.
Saul lost track of it when it sailed behind a billowing storm cloud, and that was that.
The perps had fled by some manner strange and fey, and the PTAD could not follow.
Saul, now drained of energy and weary to the bone, dropped to his knees atop the mausoleum and shouted what everyone was thinking: “God fucking dammit!”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Tanner
A bright light in the sky stopped Tanner in his tracks.
He’d been following the edge of some body of water that he thought was a creek, shuffling through knee-high grass and trying his hardest not to trip over the myriad obstacles he couldn’t see in the dark. The sudden flare of white light made him worry that an unfriendly person was searching for him with a flashlight, or a spell that mimicked one. So he dropped to his knees, using the grass as cover.
But when the light washed over the creek again, Tanner realized its origin wasn’t the woods behind him. It was the sky above.
He looked straight up just as the light streaked off through the sky and vanished behind the cloud cover.
What the heck was that? Tanner asked inside his head, but no one answered.
His heart sank even further into his gut. Kim hadn’t responded to him since he’d entered the woods. She must’ve passed on to the other side while Tanner was busy gawking at the incredible magic feats of Agent Napier and the necromancer.
The fact that her presence had inadvertently caused his second abduction notwithstanding, Kim had given Tanner a great deal of help this evening. She’d taught him useful spells. She’d provided him with solid tactics. She’d spurred him into action when his indecision could’ve led to disaster.
Without her, Tanner wouldn’t have retrieved Excalibur at that crucial moment, saved the lives of those two girls, and partially spared the world of whatever the necromancer, the sorceress, and their boss was planning. Kim had played a critical role tonight, and the world was that much safer for it.
Yet Tanner had missed the opportunity to thank her and say goodbye. That chance wouldn’t come around again for another lifetime.
I should’ve been paying more attention to her, Tanner rebuked himself, instead of the spectacle.
When no more surprises appeared in the sky after a minute or so, Tanner stood up and resumed trudging through the grass. Unfamiliar with the area, he didn’t know how far these woods stretched, but he remembered crossing a small bridge on the way to the Episcopal church.
Based on the direction he was going, the creek almost certainly ran under that bridge. So if he followed the creek long enough, he’d find the highway. From there, he could take the long way back around to the church. Or perhaps use his earpiece to call for a pickup, if he wasn’t out of range.
He tapped the mic button on the earpiece, and a burst of static sounded in his ear. The thing was still working, but he hadn’t heard a single voice come through since the fighting started. Everyone was too absorbed in their own…
Tanner came to a halt as he spotted a misshapen figure lying at the edge of the creek up ahead. It was no more than a silhouette in the darkness, but something about it struck Tanner as keenly familiar, and that familiarity struck a chord of dread inside Tanner’s gut.
The internal vibrations of fear resonated through his bones, all the way up to his skull, where they triggered a mental alarm that repeatedly screamed, Run away! Run far, far away!
Clutching Excalibur close to his chest, Tanner began to backtrack—and immediately stepped on a twig, which snapped in half. In the silence, that little crack sounded like a gunshot.
The figure stiffened, dried mud sloughing off its shoulders, and slowly raised its head to reveal a featureless face. Featureless except for a horrible mouth full of needlelike teeth that Tanner remembered so very well.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Tanner muttered as the sable wight rose up and up on its long, spindly legs, until it towered over the grass and the shrubs, and itself looked like one of the gnarled skinny trees that bordered the creek.
Out of all the places it could’ve washed up… Tanner whimpered. Fate literally fucking hates me.
The sable wight apparently remembered Tanner just as well as Tanner remembered it. The creature opened its huge maw and let out a high-pitched screech of fury that scared away every animal within half a mile. Birds flew off in a flurry of feathers. Deer loped through the grass. Croaking frogs leaped into the creek and swam away.
The sable wight advanced one careful step at a time to avoid losing its footing on the soft earth and tumbling into the creek. Even so, each step it took covered five of Tanner’s backward paces, and since Tanner couldn’t run on this ground either, it gained on him. Fast.
“The nasty little wizard’s back,” hissed the wight. “The nasty wizard can still be a snack.”
Tanner’s mind raced for a solution to this predicament. He could slash the wight with Excalibur, but the sword’s reach was shorter than the creature’s arms, so he wouldn’t be able to hit the torso or head. Exposing the creature to the sun wasn’t an option this time, and Tanner didn’t have access to anything that could produce UV rays to mimic…
A memory popped into his head. A revenant memory. One that harkened all the way back to the life of the original Merlin.
A stormy night much like this night. A dark wood much like this wood. And a man who was both Tanner and not Tanner, a great wizard in a bad situation, struggling to overcome an enemy that kept taking shots at him from within the long shadows beneath the trees.
The frustrated Merlin, badly bleeding from the repeated attacks of a creature with sharp claws whose form never fully resolved in his vision, plunged his sword into the ground, raised his hand, and spoke three words.
And then there was light.
Tanner blinked back into the present just as the sable wight lunged for him. Its fingers outstretched to wrap around his throat. Its jaw unhinged so it could swallow him whole.
A defiant growl in his throat—Tanner was damn tired of allowing this creature to terrorize him—he raised his hand like Merlin had in the memory, rammed as much energy into his palm as his soul would allow, and spoke those same three words of power, of magic, demanding that a tiny sun appear before him in all its burning glory.
A sphere of blinding light blinked into existence in front of Tanner’s palm. The wight instinctively recoiled from the light, but it was too close, moving too fast, and its feet skidded too far on the damp earth. Its head plunged straight into the light.
The sphere pulsed, and the wight’s entire body violently trembled. Then the creature disintegrated into a cascade of hissing cockroaches.
Unlike the hand that devolved into bugs at the factory, these cockroaches didn’t have the chance to reassemble themselves into a new body. The light sphere pulsed a second time, setting all the cockroaches ablaze.
Some of the roaches tried to scurry into the creek, but their squirming bodies burned away before they reached the water. In the span of five seconds, the nightmarish creature that had stoked so much fear in Tanner’s heart was reduced to nothing but little piles of ash and a few wisps of smoke.
The light sphere winked out, and vertigo gripped Tanner’s head, causing him to stagger sideways. He fell toward the creek—oh god, not again—but a strong hand caught him just before his face smacked the rushing water.
The hand pulled him flush against a firm chest, and though Tanner’s eyes were filled with bright afterimages of the sphere, he slumped against his unknown savior, boneless and quivering. The man wasn’t wearing a long dark coat, so it wasn’t the necromancer. And that was the only man he feared finding him.
The man tried to help Tanner to his feet, but Tanner’s knees buckled, so the man instead half carried him over to a tree, where he was gently deposited. The man then crouched in front of Tanner and said in a musical baritone, “Are you well enough to walk, Mr. Reiz? Or do you require medical attention?”
Tanner squinted through the lingering spots in his vision, and the man’s face finally resolved in the darkness. His savior was none other than Elliot Bankroft.
Back at the mansion-like crypt, Tanner had thought the man devilishly handsome. The neat blond hair and high-dollar suit emanated an air of “stereotypical rich boy” just thick enough to offset the viciousness in those blood-red eyes, to make them say haughty more than they said inhuman.
Now though, the man’s pristine black suit had been ruined by the battle, the jacket littered with tears and scorch marks, the white shirt stained dark red. His hands were caked in gore, blood and guts stuck under his nails, all the casual elegance of his smooth hand gestures lost. And finally, a thick layer of soot clung to his body like a veil, his blond hair dusted an unnatural gray, completing the deconstruction of his fine human façade.
Tanner would have been afraid of this blood-covered creature of the night, crimson eyes almost glowing in the darkness. But he was too tired to be afraid of things with fangs after things with far worse visages had chased him day and night through this little New England city he’d stupidly pegged so peaceful a place.
In addition to being exhausted, Tanner was also too injured to reject anyone’s help. That sun sphere spell had drawn most of his remaining life energy away from its task of healing the extensive impact damage he’d suffered in the graveyard. He could feel in his chest that he didn’t have enough left to fix the wounds that remained.
He wasn’t dying, but he was hurting. Dear god, was he hurting.
The vampire, lucky him, had no visible injuries, except for a bright-red burn that stretched across the left side of his face. It looked like he’d stuck half his face in a fire for a few seconds. That burn was already healing though, so fast that Tanner could see the skin regenerating.
But if he heals that fast…
“Did I do that?” Tanner spluttered, pointing to the burn.
Bankroft touched his cheek, and chuckled. “Vampires are not quite as vulnerable to sunlight as the mundane lore suggests, but we do burn more easily than humans. And that was quite the artificial sunlight spell you conjured up.”
Tanner grimaced. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you were nearby.”
“No need to be sorry. You were only defending yourself from the wight.” He waved his hand flippantly, as if searing the skin off a vampire magistrate’s face was no big deal. “And very capably, I must say. That spell showed a great deal of finesse, which is not at all what I’m used to when dealing with a Reiz. Your brother’s spellwork is sloppy at the best of times.”
He smiled, displaying his sharp white fangs. “I would love to know how you acquired such fine magic skill so soon after your introduction to the preternatural.”
Tanner floundered for an answer that didn’t give away the big secret. “Well, I, uh…”
“That’s none of your damn business,” a cold voice cut in. “Now back away from my brother.”
Saul stood on the opposite side of the creek, his gun clutched tightly in his hand. The gun wasn’t pointed at Bankroft, but the threat was implicit.
Bankroft rose, and his smile turned supercilious. “Goodness, Agent Reiz. Always so hostile.”
“For good reason.” Saul jumped over the creek with the aid of a pinch of magic and came to stand face to face with Bankroft. He was taller than Bankroft by more than an inch, but the vampire’s presence still felt larger. It was as if you cou
ld sense the vampire’s long life sitting atop his head, a high crown made of blood and bone.
Bankroft rolled his eyes. “You really shouldn’t antagonize me so much. One day, I might be tempted to play the part of this beast you fear so much, if only to teach you a lesson about the importance of politeness.”
“You don’t need to playact. You’re already a beast,” Saul spit. “And you’re supposed to be protecting those girls.”
Bankroft tucked his thumbs into his pants pockets. “What, do you think I left them lying alone in the lumberyard, cold and shivering?”
“Did you?”
“Of course not.” Bankroft pushed past Saul, ramming their shoulders together hard enough to bruise. “They’re in your team’s car, wrapped in blankets, with the heat turned on, and one of my men is guarding them. I stayed at their side until I was certain they weren’t seriously injured, and then I came to look for your brother, to make sure he didn’t get hurt while he was wandering alone through the woods in the dark.”
“Oh yeah,” Saul said. “You’re just a regular good Samaritan.”
Tanner cleared his throat, cutting off Bankroft before he could drag out this verbal sparring match any further. “Um, so, Saul, if you’re here, does that mean the fight is over?”
Saul stared down Bankroft for a few seconds more, then turned to Tanner. “Yeah, it’s over. The perps bugged out in that pillar of light—I guess their boss came to the rescue. Afterward, the vamps and Frasier’s people gathered up the drone bodies and tossed them into the church to burn. And all the chimeras have been thoroughly disabled; Adeline’s deconstructing them now.
“Romano and Berkowitz were just rolling in when I hopped the fence to come find you. So all we have to do is tidy up the scene before the mundane police and firefighters arrive. Then we can leave, take the two girls to the hospital, and…”
Inform the parents of the third girl that their daughter was murdered, he couldn’t bring himself to say.
Tanner lowered his gaze. “I’m sorry I wasn’t fast enough to save her.”
A Knight of Cold Graves (The Revenant Reign Book 1) Page 35