A Veiled & Hallowed Eve

by Hailey Turner

  “Is General Reed within the vicinity?” Nadine asked.

  “The brass are coordinating the defense of Grand Central Station on Park Avenue down the way.”

  “What’s going on with Grand Central?”

  The woman’s expression was grim beneath her hard helmet. “We don’t know.”

  Jono growled his displeasure before moving forward, and everyone else followed. He could hear the noise from what had to be at least hundreds of fighters both on the viaduct and below on the street level, scattered in groups for blocks by the sound of it.

  Jono knew the streets of Manhattan well, and fighting in this area would happen in tight quarters. With the Morrígan’s staff in play, anyone who died would just be resurrected to fight again like in Paris. The loss of life was going to be staggering if those in charge didn’t have a decent plan of attack.

  Jono’s group merged into a single column consisting of werecreatures, vampires, gods, and Órlaith’s fae. They must have made an interesting spectacle judging by the stares and the spike of anxiousness that hit Jono’s nose.

  The military had set up some sort of command center on the viaduct where it curved at the corner. Jono’s group came upon the section covered by a small domed shield that glittered gold in the fog. It was heavily guarded by soldiers and police in black riot gear. Jono didn’t miss the way a few people’s hands strayed closer to the triggers on their rifles and handguns as they approached.

  “We’re here for General Reed,” Nadine called out.

  A darker gold line cut perpendicular down the shield, parting it so the people on the inside could pass through it. Jono sat on his haunches and watched as General Reed and Casale came out, joined by several other people in uniform.

  “Sir,” Nadine said, her greeting echoed by Spencer.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d make it,” Reed said, his gaze raking over their group. Jono knew when the dragon came up short by the frown that settled harshly on his face. “Where’s Collins? And Captain Breckenridge?”

  At those questions, Jono started to shift, quickly tearing his body back to human shape. He ignored the way someone in police riot gear gagged, the rain washing blood and viscera off his skin as he stood. The cold rain made his skin prickle, but he wasn’t going to be human long enough for it to matter.

  “Jonothon,” Reed said, crossing his arms. The smoke curling out of his nose couldn’t be explained away by a cigarette, not in this downpour. “Where’s your pack?”

  “Patrick went to Salem to trade himself for Eloise on some spellwork there. He said something about cutting off Ethan’s power source,” Jono said.

  “We got word through scrying crystals the Salem nexus was barricaded by SOA mages out of Boston Tuesday night,” Reed said.

  Relief practically gutted him, but the news was only a silver lining because Patrick wasn’t with him. “When did you scry?”

  “Whatever passed for morning. Time isn’t running normally here. It’s difficult to gauge.”

  “Samhain is happening now,” Órlaith said, urging her steed forward. She towered over them all, practically glowing the way only immortals did. Quite a few people behind Reed and Casale eyed her with not a little worshipfulness in their eyes.

  “The veil tears,” Ashanti agreed.

  “We could use Collins, but Bailey will do for now,” Reed said.

  “No,” Jono shot back. “He stays with us.”

  Reed stared at him with narrowed eyes. “You don’t give the orders here, and we need his magic to hold off what’s coming up from below.”

  “You sent him to my pack.”

  “And now I’m reassigning him.”

  “I think not,” Fenrir said, taking control of Jono’s mouth.

  People jerked on their feet, weapons moving to train Jono’s way, but he couldn’t focus on them, not when Fenrir ran the show. Nadine hadn’t yet dropped her shield, so if anyone took a shot, he’d still be standing when they stopped shooting.

  “Uh, guys?” Spencer said.

  “Do you even know where Ethan is?” Reed demanded.

  “No, but we will,” Ashanti said with all the derision of someone who was ancient compared to a dragon.

  “We’re passing through. Our business is elsewhere,” Fenrir said.

  “Guys,” Spencer said, sounding agitated.

  His tone of voice made Jono want to tense, but Fenrir still had control. Let me go.

  Fenrir’s answer was all teeth in his mind. Not yet.

  “Spencer?” Nadine asked sharply.

  Fenrir deigned to glance at Spencer, and the look on his face was a sort of carefully bitten-back horror that came out in his eyes.

  “Those aren’t just any zombies.” A multitude of screams that Jono remembered from London tore through the air, followed by the desperate shouts of men and women trying not to panic. “They’re drekavacs.”

  “Hold the line!” Reed roared in a voice that rumbled with a depth to it no human would have. Then he stabbed a finger at Jono. “If you don’t help us blockade Grand Central Station, they’ll have a clear shot into the streets.”

  “They already do with the subway’s other stations,” Lucien sneered.

  “Massing here enables them to cut off the lower half of Manhattan from the rest of the island. They’ll spread out along the parallel streets and create a wall of the dead like the Dominion Sect did in Cairo when they split our forces with demons.”

  Lucien scowled, fangs gnashing together. “I remember. It still won’t stop them from spreading out across the lower half of Manhattan, if they aren’t already doing so.”

  Reed bared his teeth, the points too sharp for any human as smoke trailed out of his nose. “Get your people into the field, Lucien.”

  Jono wondered if those two had known each other at all before the Thirty-Day War or if Lucien was just that skilled at cultivating animosity with everyone he came in contact with.

  Fenrir gave him back control, and Jono unclenched his teeth to speak. “Drekavacs move fast.”

  “I know.” Reed’s attention shifted from Jono to Spencer. “Bailey, I want you up front. Buy us some time to get a foothold in this fight.”

  Jono was gratified to see Spencer look at him for approval first. “Do what Reed says, but when I leave, you leave.”

  Spencer nodded. “Understood.”

  Jono stared at Reed. “You can give him orders for this fight, but some of those with me will help guard him.”

  Emma planted herself by Spencer’s side without needing to be asked, her wolf ears flattening against her skull at the next wave of eerie screams that echoed through the stormy air. Takoma and two other vampires joined her on guard duty. Fatima tilted her small head back to look up at them all before letting out a yowl that was deeper than her tiny body should’ve been capable of producing.

  “Yeah, I know,” Spencer muttered as he conjured up a dozen mageglobes. “Let’s go break some souls.”

  Blackened streaks of magic crawled up the façade of Grand Central Station, a warning that had everyone rushing to their assigned position if they weren’t there already. Jono knew the zombies would come up on the street level first, which meant everyone who’d come with him up here had to get down there.

  “Bailey,” Reed called out.

  Spencer looked over at him. “Sir?”

  “The nexus is barricaded, but the ley lines can still be tapped. Use caution, and don’t burn yourself out.”

  Spencer nodded. “I’ll try my best.”

  “Then get your feet on the ground and put the dead to rest.”

  The only way down for a human would result in broken bones. Takoma fixed that problem by grabbing Spencer around his waist and hauling the mage over the side of the viaduct they were on with preternatural speed, Emma a mere second behind.

  To his credit, Spencer only let out a startled yelp before disappearing out of sight in the arms of a vampire.

  “What makes it through his magic will be our problem,” Reed s
aid.

  “We’ll aid you, but this isn’t where we stand our ground,” Jono warned.

  “Noted. Now shift and get your ass into the fight. We’re going to try to funnel the damn things into a kill box.”

  Jono rolled his eyes, already kneeling for the shift. “I’m not one of your soldiers.”

  “Now you sound like the fledgling. Where is he?”

  Jono was already shifting when the question was asked, jaw breaking in half as his human bones changed into something else. Fenrir pushed the shift faster than ever, and the world was a sickening twist of smeared color as his vision changed with it. When he was fully wolf and all his senses had settled, Jono tossed back his head and howled a challenge the drekavacs answered in kind.

  Let us fight, Fenrir said.

  Fenrir’s presence seeped into Jono’s thoughts and bones. It wasn’t stolen control but a gifted partnership that gave him speed like nothing before when he flung himself off the viaduct for the pavement below right in front of a barricade. The soldiers manning it thankfully didn’t shoot him or the other werecreatures that followed him down to the ground.

  Grand Central Station loomed above them, magic still crawling over its façade and seeping out of the windows. The wind blew harshly through the street, whipping rain over everyone. No one wasted power on personal shields, though he could see the glitter of a powerful layer of shields up ahead over the entrances. As Jono ran forward, he saw the familiar violet of Nadine’s defensive magic join what was already there to try to keep their fighters safe.

  If it was anything like Paris, he knew it wouldn’t be enough.

  The screaming coming from within Grand Central Station didn’t stop. Jono watched as up ahead Takoma hauled Spencer back behind a barricade while Fatima stayed on the other side. Ashanti landed beside Jono as he loped forward to take position by a barricade manned by soldiers instead of police. He didn’t know where the Cailleach Bheur had gone, but hopefully someone was watching over them up on the viaduct.

  “I told the dragon to let the zombies through. No sense in tiring out the magic users completely when we still have fighting ahead,” Ashanti said.

  “Will he listen?” Fenrir asked for the both of them.

  Ashanti shrugged one thin shoulder, blinking those black eyes of hers. “If he wishes for eradication of the walking dead, then he will give the order to draw down the shields. Be ready.”

  Jono kept his attention focused on the entrance located beneath the bridge that crossed East Forty-Second Street. The street in their immediate area was empty of vehicles save for the ones used to create barricades. Jono could see the maze Reed had created to try to funnel whatever came out of Grand Central Station farther away to be killed. He just hoped no one on their side got caught in the crossfire.

  “Lower the door shield!” Reed yelled from above, his voice echoing through the air with a reach no one human could attain without magical help.

  The magic users manning the shield in that area peeled their layers free, and what poured out of the broken doors through the rain and fog was a mass of bones and rotten flesh, their bodies lined with the light of the magic that sustained them.

  Cutting through the initial mass were creatures that moved with deadly swiftness. Elongated limbs and torsos gave the drekavacs’ human-shaped bodies an almost nightmarish look. Their heads were larger in proportion to their bodies, and they carried the scent of a grave with them as they surged forward, screaming all the while.

  Fatima met their charge with a yowl of her own, the wind picking up as Spencer’s particular kind of magic rose around her. The psychopomp acted like a beacon for the dead as his magic spread through the first wave, cutting through the control Morrígan’s staff had over them and breaking souls free. Fatima swallowed the souls like a tiny vortex, sending them on to rest wherever possible.

  Ashanti hissed out a laugh and flung herself into the pathway of a drekavac that Spencer’s magic had missed. She tore its head off with shocking ease, tossing the body one way and the head another before scouting out her next target. Jono stayed where he was as more zombies walked over the bodies and bones lying on the street.

  Spencer’s magic wasn’t hitting all of the dead, and some escaped his reach. They reached the first barricade where Jono and the soldiers waited. He turned his head to the side to eye the men and women in uniform standing ready behind the half circle of abandoned cars.

  “Watch your aim,” Fenrir said.

  A couple of soldiers swore, but Jono didn’t wait to see if any would respond to the warning. He lunged at the zombies coming their way, intent on tearing them to pieces. Paris had taught him that exhaustion was inevitable when it came to fighting millions of dead. They’d do what they could to help Reed, but short of turning Grand Central Station into a pile of rubble, Jono knew nothing they did would stop the dead from coming through the veil.

  Automatic fire rained from above onto the zombies coming out of the entrance. The area was quickly becoming a bottleneck, and the zombies were creeping ever closer. Jono spat out a foul-tasting limb and kept fighting. Down the street, Órlaith and some of her fae were regrouping, having somehow made it off from the viaduct without killing their steeds.

  Even with the bottleneck in play and Spencer’s magic breaking souls free and leaving bodies behind, the sheer number of zombies coming out of Grand Central Station was a problem. The soldiers in the forward barricades abandoned them for the next one closer to Órlaith’s position, a calculated retreat that Jono covered with a violence that left pieces of the dead scattered all around him.

  It wasn’t a sustainable approach. Even Jono, with his lack of military expertise, could’ve told Reed that. But then Reed’s full plan came into play when shouted orders had shields going up around the barricades and anyone on their side in the field, including Jono. The incineration spell that hit the street nearly melted the pavement in areas.

  The zombies stood no chance.

  Fire broke all sorts of magic, and Jono remembered how Patrick had used it in London to kill the drekavacs in Tottenham. It burned through the zombies like an inferno, licking at the stone and viaduct near the entrance. But even as the fire faded, the zombies kept coming.

  The fire stopped, and the shields were lowered to conserve magical strength. Lucien landed beside Jono, the vampire joined by Carmen without her glamour.

  “If Reed wants his kill box, he can have it, but we can’t stay here,” Lucien said.

  “We’ve secured extra ammunition from him that will get us to the next cache,” Carmen said.

  Lucien had dipped into his Night Court’s inventory of weapons and set up locations all around downtown they could feasibly reach to reload in an ongoing and moving fight. The cartel he owned had moved the weapons through the southern border at the beginning of October, and Jono knew the inventory was large.

  “Clear us a way south past Pershing Square,” Fenrir said, repeating Jono’s thoughts.

  Lucien and Carmen left in a blur. Jono swung his head around, ready to face off against the next wave of zombies, when the ground bucked beneath his paws.

  “Earthquake!” someone yelled.

  Jono planted himself firmly, rolling with the motion as the ground seemed to shake itself apart. A crack appeared in East Forty-Second Street, splitting wide. What lifted free of the shadowy hole had Jono howling a warning with Fenrir’s help.

  “Do not shoot!”

  Fenrir’s voice roared through the air louder than Reed’s, and whatever power he’d poured into the words stilled fingers on triggers of those around them as Baba Yaga rose up on her floating mortar made of bones, pestle in hand.

  She whacked her pestle on the mortar, her keen hunter eyes fixated on the second wave of zombies clawing over the bodies building up near the bridge. Her mortar floated away from the hole, and what came up after her would’ve made Jono gag if he’d still been in human form.

  The man was little more than a corpse, intestines hanging out of a wou
nd that was only half-closed, skin rotten around it. The rest of his skin was chalk white, as if he’d lost all the blood in his veins, but the manic brightness in his eyes and the crackle of ozone on the air hinted at a god hell-bent on ignoring death, even when it knocked on his bones.

  “Peklabog,” Fenrir growled, to Jono’s surprise. “So you are not dead.”

  The god of the Slavic Underworld smiled, revealing blackened teeth. “My Patriarch of Souls betrayed me, but he could not keep me dead after the staff broke. My godhead was set free and came home.”

  To a walking corpse, it seemed.

  Baba Yaga pointed her pestle at the zombies coming their way. “Is time to feast.”

  Jono was reminded of what Baba Yaga ate, and if she wanted to gorge on the dead, he wasn’t going to stop her.

  The god and immortal rushed forward, Baba Yaga letting out a gleeful cackle that people would remember in their nightmares.

  23

  Leaving Pershing Square was brutal, even with Peklabog and Baba Yaga on the street to aid them. Because of their presence, Reed had made the decision to remove the shields on the corner entrances of Grand Central Station. That meant drawing the soldiers and officers farther down into the foggy streets so they weren’t overrun.

  The immortals bought everyone time, and Spencer helped. Piles of bodies and bones remained on the street, none yet resurrected by whatever magic had given them temporary life. The flash of dark green magic erupted through groups of zombies like spot fires, leaving the dead in its wake. Jono didn’t know where Spencer was, but he knew Emma and hopefully Takoma would keep him safe.

  Órlaith’s steed used its hind legs to kick a drekavac in the face, sending the fast-moving zombie flying. That gave her space to ram her spear into the drekavac’s chest when it threw itself back at her, half its head caved in. When she jerked the spear upward, it split the body in half, and it fell to the ground. Seconds later, it rose again, stumbling their way.

  Órlaith snapped her fingers and set the drekavac on fire. “We are losing ground.”