The zombie stumbled, but it kept moving in our direction.
Kett was smiling. Actually smiling. Not smirking, not curling his lip, but a full-on, joyful, thrilled smile.
“Stop smiling!” I shouted.
He laughed. A breathy, rushed, eager laugh. He sounded human. Specifically, he sounded like a human who was about to do something incredibly stupid.
The sound chilled me through. “Smiling and laughing isn’t appropriate in this situation!” I yelled, completely losing my own connection to what was appropriate.
Kett picked up a headstone as if it weighed nothing to him. He tossed it up in the air.
I cranked my head up, unable to do anything but watch as the vampire went mad in a graveyard teeming with zombies.
The stone flew straight up, appeared to hang in the air above us, then spiraled down straight for my head.
“Hang on,” Kett murmured against my craned neck.
I threw my arms around his shoulders. He spun, taking me with him. Outstretched bony fingers brushed my cheek.
We stopped spinning.
The headstone crushed the zombie that had been about to grab me.
Kett threw his head back and laughed again.
Jesus. It was a game. The vampire was … playing.
I was going to die.
I had fought, then bargained for my life at the tender age of sixteen. I’d earned my emancipation, protecting myself from anything or anyone who could possibly have hurt me in any way since then.
And now I was going to die in the arms of a deranged centuries-old vampire, eaten alive by zombies.
I wrenched myself free from Kett. Again, he let me go. I scrambled back, making it to the pavement.
The vampire covered my retreat by drop-kicking two more headstones, one of which took the head off one zombie and the other of which cut a second walking corpse in half.
The other side of the cemetery was also teeming with the dead.
“That’s more than two,” I screamed. “Goddamn you, Kett! That’s more than two or three. It’s the entire goddamn cemetery!”
The vampire appeared at my side. “Adroit observation, witch.” His tone was filled with warmth and sarcasm. “I take it you’d like to go?”
“Go? Go? Go?” I was shouting. I was aware I was shouting, but I couldn’t seem to do anything but shout. “We need to find where she’s casting and shut her down!”
“Risky.” Kett flashed me a grin. “I like it.”
I closed my eyes in utter frustration, attempting to regain control of my emotions and tone. “Jasmine’s deflectors can’t hold against an assault of this magnitude.”
Kett darted to the side, took out three more zombies, then returned. “The necromancer won’t let her horde beyond the gates. She just needs me neutralized.”
I held my hands to my face, holding them like blinders. I was shaking. I hated that I was shaking.
“She has to be here, near the middle of the site, in order to cast the widest circle.” I spun, trying to look beyond the horde advancing on us. “She can’t wield this much magic behind the witch charm that cloaks her necromancy power, so she’d need to take it off.” I caught the blur of something in the dark — a smear of sunset-tinted energy that I didn’t recognize. “There!”
I darted forward, sticking to the path for as long as I could. Kett plowed ahead of me, clearing any zombies that attempted to block our way like a linebacker amped on illegal stimulants.
“Left,” I screamed, darting off the path and barreling straight toward the source of the magic. I had no idea what the hell I would do if I reached Teresa Garrick. I just knew that allowing a zombie horde to get loose in the middle of Seattle was going to be a serious black mark on my flawless record. Assuming I survived.
Kett spun around me, flashing in and out of my peripheral vision. I tried to ignore him. I didn’t need to be even more disoriented.
I went down without warning, tumbling through the darkness without any understanding of why I was suddenly on the ground and not running. Hands grabbed me, scratching, pinching, and dragging me across the churned earth.
I kicked and punched back, ignoring the rotting flesh ripping off underneath my hands and the dankness threatening to smother me.
“Wisteria!” Kett shouted from nearby.
“Here. Here. Here. I’m here.”
I was wrenched off the ground, the force snapping my neck back painfully. I was still in the clutches of a decrepit zombie, but that zombie was now being carried by Kett.
Feeling somewhat insane myself, I kicked the zombie’s head, over and over and over again.
It dropped me.
Kett caught me before I hit the ground, swinging me up in his arms and running again. We were surrounded by zombies. Utterly, completely surrounded.
And Kett was running the wrong way, heading toward the front gate.
At least, he was trying to run, but the zombies hanging off him were slowing him down. It was mind-boggling. How could beings composed of flesh and bone slow a vampire of Kett’s power?
He set me down on the pavement. “Go.”
“Go?”
“They want me, not you,” Kett said as he stepped back.
No, he stumbled back. Then, moving faster than I could see, he freed himself of the zombies holding him.
“Go, Wisteria. Text Pearl.”
I stared at him stupidly. “That’s not the plan —”
“Saving you is slowing me down, witch.”
I snapped my mouth shut, spinning away and immediately breaking into a run for the gates. We would regroup at the entrance.
The zombies weren’t following me.
I glanced back.
Kett was being swarmed by dozens upon dozens of the undead.
I slowed my pace.
The vampire went down. His silver-blue eyes met my terrified gaze. He snarled. “Run!” Then he was gone. Buried beneath a swarming, seething mass of zombies.
I faltered only a dozen steps away from the entrance, turning back to face a horde I had no power to defend myself or the vampire against.
They ignored me. The heaving pile of rotten flesh, rancid clothing, and dead eyes slowly rolled back toward where I had sensed Teresa casting.
The vampire was firmly held within the roiling mass of walking corpses.
I had to get out of the graveyard. I had to warn Jasmine and text Pearl. I had to clear the area for an extraction team and …
I wasn’t going to be able to rescue Kett. I was incapable of such a feat.
So he would die.
And the relationship between the Conclave and the Convocation would crumble.
Then Teresa and Benjamin would be executed.
I glanced around, already running back toward the teeming mass of zombies tearing the vampire apart. I’d been in the same situation only moments before. I could still feel those bony hands gripping me, scratching, trying to disable me, even kill me. Kett was fighting against dozens of them. There had to be some weapon I could fashion, something that would be effective against a rampant horde of necromancer-controlled undead.
Honestly, the Academy really needed to teach a course about what to do when your all-powerful vampire partner was overrun by a —
Something slammed against me, shoulder to waist, throwing me sideways into a gravestone. I tumbled, smacking my head against a second stone. Pain shot down my spine.
Then everything went black.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I woke in utter darkness.
Someone was moaning and muttering near me. A male voice. But young, unsure, talking himself into something. Excited but wary.
I blinked. I could see stars above me. I was sprawled across a lawn.
No, not just grass.
A graveyard.
Zombies.
Kett.
I sat up abruptly. A pulse of pain shot through my head.
Someone lunged out of the darkness, pinning me back against a gravestone. Cla
wed fingers dug into my upper arms as teeth flashed toward my neck. I got my left arm up, blocking my attacker, but he clamped down on my wrist, hard. Blood spurted.
I screamed, grabbing the back of his head with my right arm and yanking him off me with a strength I didn’t know I had.
My attacker shrieked in pain.
I hung on.
He dragged me to my feet, trying to flee, but he wasn’t reacting to my hold. He was trying to get away from my bracelet, whose magic was burning the hair on his head, searing into his flesh.
Shocked, I let him go. He scrambled away, whimpering as he tried to hide in the nearby darkness.
I caught a glimpse of him — brown hair, long limbs, and sickly skin. Forever eighteen.
“Benjamin?” I asked.
“Don’t call me that,” the teenager said. Then his voice deepened, sharpened with need. “I can still taste your blood, witch.”
I wrapped the bottom of my blouse around my bleeding wrist. The wound stung, but at least I wasn’t losing gallons of blood.
I glanced around. All the graves surrounding us were churned up and empty. I could see the main path that led to the cemetery entrance, but not the gate itself. Benjamin had thrown me farther than I would have thought. Or he’d dragged me deeper into the graveyard while I was unconscious.
Even in the filtered moonlight, I could clearly make out the nauseating pile of zombies maybe seventy-five feet away, still churning and seething. Occasionally, one or more walking corpses would fly into the air — often with fewer limbs. But then it and its limbs would crawl back into the fray.
Kett was still fighting.
Pain shot through my head again, reverberating down my spine. My stomach revolted, though I didn’t vomit. But I was concussed — possibly badly — which was probably why I was ignoring the teenaged vampire stalking me from behind the gravestones.
I picked up a sound. A voice in the distance. Someone calling out. I glanced back to where I thought the front gate was, unsteady on my feet. I didn’t want Jasmine entering the cemetery.
“Ignore her,” Ben growled.
Then I heard the voice more clearly. A woman, calling for someone. Teresa was looking for her son. I opened my mouth to call out to her, to expose our location and hopefully end this mess, but Ben lunged out of the shadows, slamming his fist into my stomach.
I collapsed forward, but managed to kick back at the side of his knee as I did.
He went down. He hadn’t expected me to fight back.
Big mistake. He was about to learn exactly who I was.
Pushing away the pain radiating through my gut and my head, I gained my feet. Ben did the same, snarling and on the edge of rabid. I widened my stance, steadying myself. Then I raised my fists, leading with my left and protecting my face with my right. I kept my elbows tight and rolled my shoulders slightly forward, settling naturally into the posture that had been drilled into me time and time again by a long line of self-defense instructors.
Running was always the first line of defense. If you could run, then run. Fast. But if you couldn’t run, the second line of defense was to go for the knees of your attacker.
Third, balls.
Fourth, eyes.
And I apparently had a fifth option that no one else wielded. A platinum trinket armed against vampires by the dowser herself. Still the only white picket fence I would ever own, my bracelet glowed with power on my right wrist.
“No one touches me without permission,” I said. “Let alone a weakling of a vampire.”
Mouthing off to your attacker hadn’t been on any of my instructors’ to-do lists, but I was seriously pissed off.
“What are you going to do about it, witch?” Benjamin spat. “I’m immortal. You’re just a sack of blood.”
“Come get your dinner, then.”
As he lunged for me, I faked left, then smashed my right fist and all the magic backing it into his nose. Cartilage shattered under my assault. Pain exploded within my hand.
Ben shrieked, stumbling back as he pressed his hands over his face. Unfortunately, he recovered quickly.
Moving faster than I would have thought possible — though being concussed wasn’t helping with my perception — he slammed into me, using his greater strength to take me down. We rolled, each struggling for a hold.
If he hadn’t been obsessed with biting me, the teenaged vampire would have easily won the fight. He was the stronger one.
Instead, I managed to wrap my right arm around his neck, touching my bracelet to his bare skin so that it seared him. Then, when he tried to twist away, I curled my legs around him, forcing him to drag me as I shifted my hold to end up on his back.
I got Ben into a chokehold, then yanked him backward and gained my feet. I kept him pressed against me — him kneeling, with his back to my front.
All the while, the magic of my bracelet burned him.
He’d been struggling to contain his cries, but once I had him pinned against me, he began to shriek. Even as I tried to catch my breath, Teresa stepped out of the shadows before us. Her dark gaze took in her struggling son, his neck covered in a mass of red blisters.
“Stop it,” she whispered.
“I won’t.” I tightened my hold, momentarily choking off Ben’s frantic cries.
Four zombies broke off from the seething horde covering the vampire, scrambling toward us.
“You know who I am, necromancer.” I shifted my grip to grab Ben on either side of his head, burning the flesh of his right ear and his face wherever my bracelet came into contact with his skin. “You know what a Fairchild witch is capable of.”
Benjamin screamed again.
I blocked out his terror. I had to in order to continue torturing him. Kett and I would die if I didn’t. And Ben would heal either way.
“Stop it!” Teresa shouted. The zombies were at her back now.
“I’ll kill him,” I said. “Even if your horde tears me apart afterward. I’ll kill him, then I’ll take you with me. I’ve already prepared my death curse.”
In truth, I had no idea how to craft or even phrase such a curse. But the Fairchild reputation would back my bluff.
I cranked Ben’s head sharply to the right, as if I had the strength to tear it off.
Teresa cried out, stumbling forward then falling to her knees. “Please, please …” she sobbed.
“Put the zombies to bed. Now.”
The creatures behind Teresa stilled, including the horde still churning around Kett.
“You won’t kill him,” she whispered. “You won’t risk the wrath of the Convocation.”
“Pearl has already sent an extraction team, necromancer,” I said, blocking out the way my heart twisted with every sob torn from her. “Your resistance was anticipated. Release the vampire, quell the horde, and I’ll testify on your behalf. I’ll plead for leniency.”
Teresa snorted through her tears. “The vampire is dead. Torn to pieces.”
Then behind her, the pile of corpses exploded.
Body parts burst forth in every direction, raining down in pieces all over the graveyard and pelting our heads and shoulders. Bile rose up in my throat, but I swallowed it down. Now was not the time to show weakness.
Kett appeared before the necromancer, his clothing hanging off him in shreds. His skin was marred and oddly dented, and his eyes were blazing blood red.
Teresa shrieked, throwing her hands up before her. “Stop!”
Kett froze.
My God.
The necromancer could control him. Just as she controlled Nigel, and as I assumed she controlled Ben.
Slowly, Kett reached forward, inch by inch, closer and closer to Teresa. The necromancer was shaking, struggling to hold him in place with her magic. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
She was looking death in the face. The worst death a necromancer could possibly imagine — a pale, fanged terror who was apparently immune to her command of the undead.
Vampires had slaughtered Teresa Gar
rick’s family. Perhaps it was fitting that she should die in the same way.
Then Kett bopped the necromancer on the nose, playing with her like a cat plays with an unfortunate mouse.
Teresa’s eyes rolled up in her head, and she slumped sideways in a faint.
The vampire threw his head back and laughed. That warm, joyful sound reverberated around the cemetery, echoing off churned earth, decayed corpses, the stone of the low outer walls — and chilling me through to the bone.
He was a pale smudge in the dark graveyard as he leaned over Teresa, whispering in her ear, “Two can play the mind control game, necromancer.”
Teresa woke from her faint with a scream stopped in her throat. She scrambled away from Kett, making it to her feet and halfway across the churned earth between us.
I was still holding Ben, though I’d pulled my bracelet away from him. The teen had gone almost catatonic in my arms, unable to tear his gaze from his mother but barely even flinching when she had tried to control Kett and failed. The zombies that surrounded us were still all seemingly on pause.
“Stop,” Kett said.
His command flowed through me. Had I been moving, I would have heeded him without question. Just as Teresa did.
The necromancer stared at us, her eyes wide with terror.
Ben began to sob silently in my arms, so that I was cradling him more than holding him captive.
“Give me your hand,” Kett said.
Teresa pivoted away from us, lifting her arm.
Kett stepped up to her with his own hand outstretched. His skin had smoothed over, pristinely healed. If his clothes hadn’t still been ripped to shreds, I would have had no idea that he’d just been overwhelmed by a zombie horde.
Moving as if in a dream, the necromancer placed her hand in Kett’s. He raised her palm to his face, drawing her closer to him, inhaling her scent.
I found my voice. “Kett …” But then not knowing what I could possibly say, I fell hopelessly silent again.
Ben clutched my arm. His grip hurt, but I didn’t shake him off.
Teresa began to shake, tears still streaming down her face. “Please … please,” she whispered. “Don’t kill me in front of Ben. Please don’t kill me in front of my boy.”
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