by Sarra Cannon
“He might die if we don’t deal with this right now. A battle out there could last hours. I can’t just leave him like this.”
“If we don’t leave him, we might all die,” Karmen shouted.
Parrish shook her head. This was not a choice she was prepared to make. She needed to take it one thing at a time.
Everyone kept looking to her to be the leader here, but she didn’t have all the answers, either.
She was tired of having it all put on her shoulders. She just wasn’t cut out for it.
“Then you come up with a plan,” she said to Karmen. “I’m going to try to wake him up, so you can either help me, or you can get out.”
She saw Karmen and Crash exchange worried glances, but she honestly didn’t have time or energy to think about them. She just needed Noah to wake up so they could go out and fight. She needed him by her side right now.
Somewhere inside her mind, she realized how ridiculous that was. There was no way Noah was going to be fighting with them right now, even if they could wake him up.
Still, she had to know he was okay.
She took the water bottle Crash had partially used on the washcloth and poured it on Noah’s face and neck.
Finally, she got at least some kind of reaction from him, then. He still didn’t open his eyes, but his body shifted on the floor a little bit. That was something, at least.
“Here, let me try,” Karmen said, pushing Parrish to the side.
Normally, Parrish would have been pissed to be pushed like that, but right now, she was just glad someone else was willing to help.
“I’m going to see if I can snag some of those antibiotics from the storage room,” Crash said. “I’ll be right back.”
He left the room, and the second he opened the door, Parrish got a glimpse of the chaos that had quickly erupted within the compound. Word of the horde had spread to everyone, and they all seemed to be running down the hallways, guns in hand.
Parrish just prayed they could hold off whatever was coming long enough to get Noah up and moving.
She watched, helpless, as Karmen put both her hands on Noah’s head.
She stood there for what seemed like ages, even though it had probably only been a few seconds. She needed to do something, but what? She couldn’t leave his side. She just couldn’t.
Instead, she sat down beside him and took his hands in hers.
Like a miracle, Noah opened his eyes.
“Where are we?” he asked, and Parrish nearly cried from joy at the sound of his voice. “Back in the room?”
She threw her arms around him.
“I was so scared you were lost to us,” she whispered in his ear. “I don’t know that I could live without you.”
He hugged her back, but she could tell he was weak.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I vaguely remember laying down in here and thinking I needed to get up and get moving, but I must have laid back down. How long have I been in here?”
“Only about an hour,” she told him. “But we don’t have any time to waste.”
She told him about the horde and the red-eyed super zombies.
“They’re not that far away,” Karmen said. “I think they must have been gathering together most of the night and the morning, which is why we didn’t see any last night in the neighborhood or on the trip back here today. They were waiting for the right moment to attack.”
“What?” Noah asked, bringing a hand to his forehead. “I don’t think my brain is fully working yet. We’re being attacked?”
“Yes,” Karmen said. “If we don’t get out there right now to help, this whole place will fall. There are children in this compound. Families. Those zombies are here because of us, you guys. We’re the ones who have to deal with this.”
“Okay, so let’s figure it out, then,” Parrish said, standing to pace the room as Noah pulled on his jeans and a fresh t-shirt. “Karmen, your best vantage point might be back up on the roof. Control and hold back as many of those things as you can.”
“I can try,” she said. “But I don’t even know if my mind control magic will work on them when they’re so obviously being controlled by the Dark One. How am I going to override her commands?”
“I don’t know, but you can at least try. If it doesn’t work, you grab a gun and adapt,” Parrish said. She touched Noah’s shoulder. “Do you think you can hold a gun? Or are you feeling too weak?”
He ran a hand through his hair.
“I honestly don’t know right now,” he said. “I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus. It hurts just to lift my arm over my head.”
Parrish sighed in frustration.
“So, that’s basically a no,” she said, searching her mind for solutions. “Then, if you can at least walk, get out to the Humvee. Crash has that gun on the roof that he used that first night he helped save us from the rotters in D.C.. If you can at least pull the trigger, you should be able to use that without having to use your strength to hold it up.”
Noah nodded. “I’ll do my best.”
He went to stand and then quickly sat back down, clutching his forehead.
Parrish didn’t have much hope that he’d be of any help right now but Karmen was right. They had to get moving. They’d wasted too much time already.
Crash burst through the door and then slammed it behind him again. To Parrish’s relief, he carried some kind of IV and needle.
“Anyone know how to find a vein and insert an IV?” he asked.
“I can do it,” Karmen said. “Hand it to me.”
Parrish had no idea why Karmen would know how to insert an IV line, but she actually got it done surprisingly fast.
“Wow, good job,” Parrish said. “Where’d you learn to do that?”
“Can we please focus on the plan?” Karmen asked, crossing her arms over her chest. “The fight is ramping up out there, or hadn’t you noticed the sound of all that gunfire and explosives?”
She was right. It sounded like a war zone out there.
“Okay, then, Karmen on the roof trying to control and hold back as many as possible,” Parrish said. “If you can, see if you can get them to attack each other or turn and go the other way.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Karmen said.
Parrish was surprised Kamen hadn’t argued with her instructions. She’d never just taken orders from Parrish before, but there was a first time for everything.
“Crash, help Noah out to the Humvee. Identify the weakest points of entry like that front gate and the spot in the back where they were still working on the steel walls,” she said. “Do everything you can to protect those weak points. If we don’t let them get in, maybe we can pick them off one by one outside the walls.”
“Where will you be?” Noah asked.
Parrish shook her head. He wasn’t going to approve of this, but she’d already thought through it from various angles in her mind since the walkie first warned them of an attack.
“I’m going out the front gate, and I’m going to hunt down every one of the super zombies and put an end to this attack before anyone else gets hurt.”
She didn’t wait to see what anyone else had to say. Karmen was right. They had already lost too much time, but now that Parrish knew Noah was going to live and that he was being taken care of, she had to switch her focus to the battle ahead.
As she grabbed her sword and ran out the door, she wondered if the super zombies coming for them now meant Lily was still close by, or if she was already in New York searching for Zoe.
Wherever she was, Parrish hoped she was suffering.
Eight
The Witch
The witch dreamed of fire only to open her eyes to ice.
She was surrounded by it. Even her own eyelids were frosted over, and the cold had seeped so deep into her bones, everything ached.
It wasn’t good for a fire witch to be left in the cold.
On instinct, the witch reached for her fire magic, hoping to conjure a simple fl
ame to warm the space.
Nothing would come, though. She’d been here too long, cut off from source.
It was dark in here, wherever she was, but there was enough light coming in from a block of translucent ice on the wall for her to at least tell that she was trapped inside some kind of bare, square room.
No furniture filled the room. No sign of another person. Just a cold floor that felt slick and icy to the touch and four icy walls surrounding her.
When she placed her palm on the ice to get traction so she could stand, the frozen cold of it nearly burned her.
“Hello,” she said, her voice so weak she hardly recognized herself.
She cleared her throat and tried to swallow, but she hadn’t had anything to drink in so long, it hurt to even try.
How long had she been trapped in this place? And who had brought her here?
She struggled to recall where she’d been before this. What was the last thing she could remember?
Zoe’s hotel room.
The symbol of air drawn on the window.
Telling the Dark One that somehow, the fifth had found Zoe before she did.
The memories rushed back with a vengeance now, and the witch gasped. Why couldn’t she have left them locked away in a dark place in her mind where she might never see or think of them again?
Hours of torture and pain, repeated over and over again without relief.
And just when she’d thought, mercifully, it was finally over, the horror had started again.
Punishment for her betrayal. For giving the stone to Parrish. For allowing them to give her a name.
The pain was meant to make the witch sorry for what she had done.
Instead, it had made her sorry she’d chosen the wrong side and betrayed the only friends she’d ever had.
There was nothing to be done about that now, though. There was no turning back from her bad choices. Now, the only thing she wished for more than home was death.
When she’d lost consciousness, the Dark One must have had her brought here.
But where, exactly, was this place?
Despite the tenderness of her wounds, she managed to push herself up to a sitting position before finally, after several minutes of pain and determination, finding the strength to stand..
Her shoes had been stripped from her, so that she had to stand on the icy floor in bare feet. She winced through the pain of the cold’s burn and walked to the block of ice that provided the room’s only light.
She lifted onto tiptoes to look through the clear block of ice, but it was too thick and distorted to see what lay beyond it. A shadow moved across her vision, though, and she backed away.
A cold room was nothing compared to what she’d endured at the hands of the Dark One. She didn’t dare do anything to invite that kind of wrath again.
The witch looked down at her burned and deformed skin, then brought a trembling hand to her once-beautiful face. It now matched the horror of the rest of her body.
An icy tear fell onto her fingertips, and she lowered her hand, wishing again for the mercy of death.
She used to hate her life before she came to this world, believing there could be nothing worse than the way the Council of Fire treated her. They ignored her and refused to teach or train her properly. They refused to even give her a name, saying someone like her didn’t deserve one.
They did that to all the young girls like her. Orphans brought in from the outerlands.
The witch had believed life with the Council was the worst horror she could ever endure.
Now, though, she could see every blessing. Every moment of joy.
She closed her eyes and imagined the young ones entrusted to her care over the years. The tiniest babes cradled in her arms. Watching them learn to walk and coo. Witnessing their first smiles or kissing their heads when they cried at night.
The witch had always done what she could to protect as many of the young ones as possible from the suffering she’d endured. She held them and whispered loving words in their ears when the Council wasn’t watching.
She’d given many of them names. Nothing she’d ever spoken out loud, but names she’d carried in her heart.
Instead of seeing the blessing and joy they had brought to her life, though, she’d focused on the unfairness and heartache when one of her wards was given a real name and a real home.
Her own longing had filled her with anger every time a child was adopted and given a life apart from the Council.
The witch had hated that life, believing there was nothing more in the world she wanted than to have power over all of them. She wanted a chance to make them all regret just how poorly they’d treated her for all those years.
But now, beauty and power stripped from her, the witch could finally see how foolish she had been.
Now that it was too late, she wanted nothing more than to go back to her old life.
Or her life with Parrish and the others.
Why had she ever left them? Why had she betrayed them?
She collapsed onto the floor, tucking her legs and skirt under her body as she prayed for some relief from the cold. She needed to block those thoughts from her mind. It was too late now, anyway.
“Feeling sorry for yourself?” the Dark One asked.
A shadow crossed the room in front of her, and the witch slid backwards until she hit the wall behind her.
Her body shook in fear.
She didn’t dare answer the question. She had no idea what she was expected to say, and she was so tired of getting it wrong.
The witch searched the room for the source of the voice, but there was nothing more than shadows here. She knew better, though. The Dark One often hid in the shadows. Watching.
“You had such promise when you first appeared in this world,” the voice said again. It echoed off the icy walls.
“I’m sorry, Mistress,” the witch said. The tears she wanted to cry earlier came freely now, so cold they stuck to her cheeks like icicles. “Please forgive me.”
The Dark One stepped forward now, her image shadowy and unclear, like a mirage.
“Stand up, girl,” she said sternly.
A sob escaped the witch’s lips.
Not again. I cannot survive this again.
“You are weak,” the Dark One spat. “Not like my Parrish. She was always the strongest. She would have done great things at my side, but she betrayed me, just like you. Why is loyalty so difficult to foster in young ones?”
The witch looked up, surprised. “Your Parrish? What does that mean?”
The Dark One waved a shadowy hand in front of her face and paced the floor. Well, more like hovered over the floor. She didn’t seem to actually be there at all, and the witch wondered how she was doing that. Had she escaped her own icy prison already? Or was this merely a projection?
Maybe none of this was real.
“That was so long ago, it no longer matters,” the Dark One said, a hint of sadness in her voice. “I have come to know betrayal so intimately, I have learned to use it to my advantage. But I would give anything to have someone strong like her on my side now. You have the potential to be strong, but you are too weak-minded. Perhaps, if I had raised you from birth, things might have been different.”
The witch lowered her head, hopelessness flowing through her like a dark river.
This was the end, then. The Dark One would consume her power and her life force, and it would all be over.
The witch realized now that she did not really want to die. She still hadn’t made anything of her life.
She would die a failure.
The witch collapsed at the shadow’s feet, and was immediately yanked upward until her own feet dangled far above the icy floor.
An invisible power pushed her back against the wall, and despite her instincts, she knew better now than to resist. Resistance only made the torture worse and last longer.
Instead, she gritted her teeth and braced herself for whatever was to come next.
To her surprise, the Dark One smiled.
“There,” she said. “A little of that strength I was after. Perhaps I have yet underestimated your resolve and inner fire. Perhaps you are of some use to me moving forward. I’ll have to do something about your loyalty, however.”
The Dark One’s shadow moved in close as a dark purple energy began to swirl around the witch’s feet.
Terrified, she kept her chin up, even as her breath came faster and her heart pounded in her chest. She bit down on her lower lip until she tasted blood, but she did not flinch or try to move away.
Whatever was to become of her now, it was out of her hands.
“I have one last job for you,” the Dark One said. “One last opportunity to prove yourself as a loyal servant. And to go along with this chance, I will also show you a small glimpse of my power.”
The necromancer flicked a finger upward, and the purple energy swirling on the floor snaked up the witch’s body, its light growing until it nearly blinded her.
She braced herself for the pain, but what came instead was something she never expected.
Healing.
For the first time in hours, she experienced not only relief, but true bliss, as if the sun had finally chosen to shine on her cold, shriveled body. She blossomed like a flower inside its light.
Her burned skin smoothed out and regained its youthful glow. The warmth of her fire returned to her core. And…
Something else. A flash of blinding light inside her skull, disorienting but not exactly painful.
When the light released her, she fell to her knees.
“How?” the witch cried, running her hands along her perfect skin. She had been so sure she was ruined forever. Gratitude flowed through her like oceans.
Where before she was sure she had felt something close to hatred for the necromancer standing before her, now she felt nothing but love and adoration.
In fact, she couldn’t imagine feeling anything less than love and absolute devotion to the Dark One. It filled her with purpose.
“I am a necromancer,” the Dark One said. “In one hand, I control death and can inflict unimaginable pain, but in my other hand, I also hold life. Rebirth. As easily as I have given it, I can also take it away.”