Grave Mistake (Codex Blair Book 1)

by Izzy Shows

  I tried not to listen to his words, tried not to let them affect me. But they did. I felt the hopelessness of my situation, the death sentence that was no doubt hanging over my head now.

  I squared my shoulders. It didn’t matter. I was dead either way. Either he killed me or The Order did, and at least the latter option meant that the city of London would escape. “Cool with it.” I shrugged. “Always wanted to go out having accomplished something.”

  His eyes lit up at that. “Oh, but you could. You could join me. Imagine it, little girl. I have been given such power as you cannot dream, surely not such that you could possibly hope to vanquish. I could teach you things, things that I’ve picked up. Things no one in that stupid group would ever dream of allowing you to know. I have power, girl, and I could share it with you, if you would join me.”

  “Why the fuck,” I snarled, “Does everyone want to teach me?” I threw up my hands. “Do I look stupid? I don’t think someone who needs teaching could do that.” I cast a hand backwards at the corpse I had left behind. “And why the fuck would I want to work with you? I’ve seen what happens to your little helpers. No offense, but I’m not exactly disposable.”

  Something twinged inside of me—I didn’t even know the name of the man I had murdered. He had been disposable to this man, and his death had not been honourable. I reminded myself that he had been trying to blow up the city too, but it didn’t do a lot to assuage the guilt.

  Don’t think about that now. Focus. I reprimanded myself.

  “No, you are not.” He sighed, shaking his head and running a hand through his hair. He looked disappointed. “That was rather the point—you have a fire in you that cannot be taught. I would nurture it. The Order would destroy it.”

  “I’d rather put my own fire out than burn the city to the ground with it.” I said, not quite a whisper, but still quietly enough.

  “Disappointing.” He shrugged. “Well, I cannot allow you to continue then.” He waved a hand and turned away from me, dismissing me.

  I took a step forward, jaw set, the decision having been made for me. I was going to have to take down this circle and then the man within it. To say I was scared was an understatement—it was only the tight clenching of my jaw that kept my teeth from rattling, the painful digging of my nails into my palms from how I had them balled that kept my hands from shaking, the forward momentum that kept my feet steady. If I stopped, if I allowed myself to really look at what I was doing, to think about how the hell I had been carried into this one moment in time, I knew I would run.

  Because I didn’t belong. I wasn’t brave. I was just a fool.

  I shook my head, sending the thoughts away, and advanced on the circle.

  It was then that I heard—no, felt the ground tremble.

  Was it an earthquake?

  I snapped my head around, distracted and trying to find the source of the commotion. I saw Emily, still locked in battle with the henchman—bleeding! My heart lurched in my chest, I had brought her into this, endangered her. Stupid, stupid, stupid—and saw that she was distracted as well. She didn’t let it stop her from maintaining her level in battle, but she clearly couldn’t seize an advantage while she was thinking about the shaking in the ground.

  It turned out that we didn’t have to wait terribly long to find out what was causing it.

  A fucking stampede of corpses was surging around the circle and would be upon us in a moment.

  I’m not even ashamed to say that my jaw dropped. The sight, the stench, it was horrific. Decaying bodies ran at us with tattered clothes, some of them bearing weapons but most of them with empty fists and all of them intent on ripping us to pieces.

  I guess Aidan didn’t call these fucks necromancers for nothing.

  I didn’t have time to say anything, to think about a battle plan, before the first wave descended on me.

  My focus narrowed, the only way to survive.

  I slammed an elbow into the neck or jaw area of the first corpse that reached me—the jaw was hanging away from its rightful place, and it made a disgusting crunching sound when my elbow connected with it. I followed the thrust up with a high kick to the ribs, and threw a hand behind me when I felt the painful scratch of nails against my scalp.

  “Incendium.” I snarled, though I didn’t turn to see if I was even aiming in the right direction, I did it all on sense alone. Again, I felt the fire move through my entire body before it launched out of my open palm, though it moved faster this time. It was easier to reach, easier to get a hold of.

  Practice makes progress, I guess.

  I whipped my arm back around to punch the original corpse in its skull—I really needed to get a weapon after this. I didn’t have a lot of options, and I was starting to feel light headed, and I remembered what Aidan had said about creating a focus item and how it made the use of magic easier. I really needed to figure that out.

  Well, if I made it out of this alive, that is.

  Two corpses leapt over the first one, both wielding what looked like busted pipes, and they were swinging them straight for my head. I lifted both of my arms up and crossed them over my head in a defensive movement, pushing my will up and out at the same time. I barely got the ice shield to materialise in time—only that was dumb.

  Have you ever swung something heavy, really blunt, at a sheet of ice?

  The ice doesn’t stand up, and my magical creation was no different from the real thing.

  The ice shattered on top of me, and I managed to duck one pipe but not the other.

  I fell on my arse, managed to lock my neck in time to avoid slamming it into the pavement beneath me, and had to scramble back to my feet with a spinning head. Fuck. Every time I start to feel like I know what I’m doing, something comes along to remind me that I suck.

  No time for a pity party, though.

  I backed up a few feet and then closed my eyes for a moment to get my strength back together. I opened them just in time to see the horde descending on me—fucking hell, how many of them were there?—and began flinging shards of ice from my palms.

  It was an odd sensation, one that I was much more aware of than I had been the previous times I had brought ice into creation through my own willpower. There was a distinct tearing feeling in the centre of my palms, one that made them itch and burn, and I could feel my fingers going numb from the cold. Yet there was no blood and I did not lose control of my hands at any point.

  I had turned myself into a damn automatic gun, and for a second there, it was awesome.

  I mean, come on, how many people can say that?

  I relied on the backlog of cheesy zombie films I had seen in my life and aimed each shot at the head of the corpses coming at me. Some of them missed, but most of them buried deep into the skulls. Not every corpse fell when hit, though. For some reason, the worse the decay was, it seemed the stronger the creature was. The fresh corpses fell almost immediately, but the ones that were basically just walking bones would stay up for about three different shard shots.

  I filed that information away to examine later and focussed in on what I was doing.

  I’m not sure how long I was like that, constantly twisting in a circle and always moving, because if I stayed in one spot for too long then the horde would condense on me and I’d have to blast a spray at them just to keep from falling and having them crawl all over me.

  I knew that if I hit the ground I was a dead woman.

  “Mind if I join in?” Emily’s voice was beautiful, slicing through the panic in my brain as easily as her sword slid through the heads of the undead.

  “Oh, please.” I gasped, aiming another ice shard behind me. “Took you long enough to get through that guy.”

  “He was much smarter than the first.” She said, sounding playful. I stole a glance at her, surprised, and found the same impassive mask that had been on her face each time I’d seen her fighting. It was so at odds from the way she sounded that I faltered for a moment, and she had to swing her blade clos
e by my side to keep a corpse from reaching me. “Focus, Blair. I’d rather not die tonight.” She softened her tone with a smile, and I took strength from it.

  Without having to discuss it, we pressed our backs together and began to move through the horde like a well-oiled machine, her blade a constant whirring sound as she ploughed through body after body, and me hurling bolts of ice like they were going out of style.

  I didn’t want to let my mind wander from the task at hand, but it was just…it was so nice, to have someone beside me. I had never done this, never worked with someone, and I was surprised to find that I enjoyed it.

  Even if we were hacking our way through reanimated corpses.

  God, what had my life become?

  I was grateful for her presence for another, more concerning reason though. My energy was failing, and the support to lean on was a boon. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep this up, and I didn’t know how to face the fact that this was probably how we were going to go down. It was only a matter of time before we were overwhelmed, only a matter of time before I didn’t get a spell out quick enough and the horde consumed us.

  I set my jaw in a firm line and forced myself to push the thoughts out of my head. No, that wasn’t acceptable.

  “We can’t keep this up.” Emily shouted over her shoulder at me.

  Oh? So, she was thinking the same thing that I was.

  “What do you mean?” I called back, trying to keep the panic from my voice. Because if Emily didn’t think we could do this…

  “I’m not sure what number you started with, but I’m pretty sure we haven’t been reducing it. He’s just going to keep raising more and it is going to overwhelm us at some point. We have to deal with him if we want to get out of this.”

  I knew what she said was true, but that didn’t stop my heart from sinking.

  “I could clear a path for you…” I half-shouted, my voice faltering. I knew that wasn’t how this was going to play out. That would just be way too lucky for me.

  “Believe me, Blair, I would love to cut his head off. But I reached out for that circle, and I can’t get through it. It’s not like the one in the basement, it’s much stronger. You’re going to have to take it apart.” She said, cool and calm as ever. As if we weren’t fighting for our lives.

  “How the fuck am I going to take a circle apart in the middle of a goddamned battle? I don’t even know how to take a fucking circle apart!” I realised I was screaming, but the situation was starting to get to me. Desperation was fuelling my blasts now, and I knew, I just knew, that I was going to let everyone down.

  “Calm down,” she snapped, and I felt her frustration. “I’ll keep them off you. We need to get to it first. We’ll figure the rest out once we’re there.” She didn’t say the rest of that sentence, but it hung in the air between us for a moment. We didn’t need to figure it out until we got there, because if we couldn’t get there then it didn’t really matter. Dead girls can’t dismantle magic circles.

  We started moving again, this time with more of a destination than just ‘somewhere other than the spot the corpses are converging on right now.’ It was a lot more difficult, of course, but at least the corpses didn’t really have a mind of their own. They couldn’t seem to figure out that we were moving somewhere, and therefore didn’t try to deliberately impede our progress. They simply kept diving for us. If there had been a limit to their numbers, I wouldn’t have had a problem believing that we could have fought through them. But for every one we put down, there were two more clamouring over it for us with outstretched arms.

  I took another step to the left as Emily moved to the right, a spinning circle of death, and stumbled on the uneven pavement.

  “Fuck!” I managed to garble out as I went down on one knee, the gleeful shriek of one of the fresher corpses following me down. It seized on my hair, raking long claws into my scalp. I gritted my teeth and tried to raise a hand to fight it off, but found it caught by yet another corpse.

  This was it. I had hit the ground and I wasn’t going to get back up. I glanced around wildly, not wanting to accept the death that had come for me and yet unable to find a way out of it.

  Then with a grunt Emily had yanked the corpse off my head—tearing out a few handfuls of my blonde and bloodied hair along with it—and her blade brought an end to the one at my side. “Get. Up,” she snarled, but I knew the tone wasn’t directed at me so much as the difficulty that she was finding in speaking while fighting.

  Air is important, and wasting it on speech in a moment like this isn’t smart. I scrambled to do as I was told.

  I sent fire flying through both hands and kept it up for a moment, a literal flamethrower, to clear a bit of a path for us. I felt liquid pouring down my face, the salty and metallic taste of it when it reached my mouth told me that it was a combination of blood and sweat. My hands shook before me, and I knew that I was reaching an important limit inside myself.

  And we hadn’t reached Deacon yet.

  40

  THE GROUND SHOOK BENEATH ME AGAIN.

  I didn’t register it at first because, well, the horde of undead was a bit distracting. That and only so many earthquakes can surprise you in an hour.

  I drew in tired breath after tired breath, none of it doing anything to abate the burning in my chest as my heart worked overtime to keep me moving. I struggled to keep myself upright and not lean against Emily. I didn’t want her to know that there was a good chance I was going to fall and not get up again. I didn’t even really want to acknowledge it myself.

  I looked up and my heart stuttered, my eyes felt like they were going to pop out of their sockets, and a strangled noise came out of my throat.

  It was a goddamned monster that had no right to exist. Every step it took shook the ground, forced me to fight to keep my footing.

  My mind raced to try and come up with a name for the thing I was looking at, but I came up empty, settling for gaping at it in horror.

  Not that I really had time to do that, what with the monsters I was already fighting. Trying to fight. Failing to beat.

  Mammoth Undead? Undead Abomination? Names have power, name it and you won’t be so afraid.

  The thoughts raced through my mind so quickly that they somehow managed to not distract me from the task at hand.

  I spared a glance at Emily and realised that she hadn’t seen it yet. She was too engrossed with the task at hand.

  Probably for the best.

  Colossal. Colossal Undead.

  The name popped into my head after a moment, and I nodded. Yeah. Colossal was the right word for it.

  Over the din of battle, I realised that it was screaming, or rather that it’s limbs were. Each leg, each arm, was made up of hundreds of undead clinging to one another, and every movement it made had them wailing as they tried to hang on. Its movements were jerky, unnatural, unlike the others we had been fighting, that had moved with the basic, animalistic instincts they had left in them. This was a creation of abhorrent measures, I was certain it had no remnant of instinct, let alone a mind to control itself.

  This was all Deacon.

  The Colossal Undead then parted the bodies that made up its lips and let out a deafening roar the sound of which almost knocked me over.

  Emily took notice then, her head jerked to stare for a moment before she focussed back on the creatures she was fighting.

  “You’re going to need to go handle that. I’ve got this.” She snapped at me.

  I afforded myself a second to gawk at her—handle it? How the hell was I supposed to handle it?

  But I’d already asked her that one too many times today.

  No time for that. I nodded, gritted my teeth, and ran.

  My lungs were burning still, every breath was pain, and the muscles in my legs and arms were screaming at me to stop and just accept the death that was waiting for me.

  This was a suicide mission.

  I placed my hands in front of me like a diver, and sprayed f
ire forth to clear a path to the Colossal Undead. The smaller undead didn’t seem to want to get in my way—either because of the fire or because they knew Big Daddy over there was going to take one look at me and drop me with one swipe of its squirming foetid arm. I didn’t care, I was grateful for the respite.

  I arrived at the base of the Colossal Undead all too soon, with no plan formulated and my heart beating out a panicked tattoo on the inside of my ribs. My breath came in short, pained gasps, and I thought I felt tears on my cheeks.

  Didn’t have time to check.

  Without even looking at me—not that I really knew what looking at me would entail, the thing had a mouth but no eyes—the monster lifted a leg in a jerky fashion, raising it over my head.

  For a moment, I stood there frozen, watching the leg descending on me. It was huge. What would be considered its foot was easily three men wide and three men long, their faces leering down at me as if they were looking forward to feasting on me.

  Oh, right, I should move.

  Suddenly my heart seemed to start again, shoving adrenaline fuelled blood through my veins, and I launched myself into motion, diving into a forward tumble to get behind it and out of its path. I jumped back to my feet quickly, staying down would mean dying. I couldn’t die.

  Couldn’t leave Emily alone.

  I fired a burst of fire at its back and heard it roar along with all the voices of the undead that made up its rear end. They were screaming their rage at me, so many faces showing on its backside.

  If I made it out of this alive, I was going to have nightmares for years.

  I got off a few more shots as it lumbered around to face me again, lifting its leg again to try and smash me into the ground. I was prepared this time and already running to the side, barely managing to get out of the leg’s way before it came down on the ground where I had only recently been. I took a moment to drag air into my burning lungs, feeling like my chest was on fire.