Grave Ransom

by Kalayna Price

  And in the process, he’d murdered at least half a dozen people.

  We descended all the way to the basement level. The stairs ended at a door, which was closed. The moisture in the air thickened as we reached the bottom of the stairs. The smell of mold, mildew, and rot permeated the air.

  Briar glanced at me before reaching for the doorknob.

  “No wards. But a lot of magic. And a lot of dead things.” I shivered, the grave essence tracing over my flesh like a pair of frigid hands. It was the same dark, inky essence I’d felt coming from the soul-eating child. Which meant the dead things I felt weren’t buried but were walking around. And animated with things that had never been meant to exist in this plane.

  “Thirteen minutes,” Briar whispered, then shoved open the door.

  Chapter 28

  I was expecting darkness, but as the door crashed open, light from a dozen lamps flooded out, blinding me momentarily. Briar didn’t have the same issue. I heard the ping of her crossbow release before I even had time to blink. It pinged again as I squinted into the room, which was actually rather dim, I realized, as my eyes adjusted.

  The two foam darts, though they’d been perfectly aimed, hung in midair several feet from their intended targets. The potions in the darts, which were designed to splatter the target, were instead dripping down the invisible barrier of the magic circle the darts were caught in. Two stunned male faces stared at us from several feet behind the suspended darts. A dark cauldron stood between them, and beside it, bound to a chair, sagged the form of a woman. Her back was to us so all I could see was the slump of her shoulders and her red curls caught in a dingy cloth that must have been used to gag her.

  “Who the hell are you?” Rue Saunders yelled, taking a step toward the edge of the circle.

  The other man, presumably Gauhter, caught his arm.

  “We are at a delicate transition. We must finish.” He turned back to the cauldron, consulting the book he held in his hand. A book that looked a hell of a lot like the alchemist’s journal. In the cauldron, something moved, lifting what looked like a half-formed arm, the skin translucent and clinging to bones that didn’t appear quite sturdy enough.

  A homunculus.

  We rushed into the room. The men were behind a circle, but circles could be overloaded. The process had already started, sparks of magic breaking in lightning flashes around where the potion had spilled on the barrier. Briar shot the circle again, this time with a steel-tipped incendiary round. Fire crawled over the circle, sending more flashes of light through it, but the barrier held.

  “FIB,” Falin called out. “I suggest you drop the circle and surrender.” He lifted his gun and aimed at Saunders. “There is no magic in these bullets, and your circle won’t stop them.”

  As he spoke, I was still staring at the woman in the chair. She looked just like . . . “Rianna?”

  Her head jerked up at the sound of her name, and she twisted, the one green eye I could see wide with terror, the other swollen shut. Blood dripped from her nose onto the gag. I hadn’t noticed what looked like another shadow in the back of the circle before, but now I could make out Desmond’s hulking furry shape at the edge of the corner. His paws and muzzle were bound with duct tape. A dark pool of blood had gathered around him.

  “That’s Rianna,” I yelled, running toward the circle. I wasn’t sure what I would do when I reached it, throw everything I had into it most likely, but I had to get to her. Derrick had said I had to beat the sunset. Now I knew why. Rianna would die if she wasn’t in Faerie at sunset.

  Gauhter lifted his hand and made a swatting motion in the air. Magic crackled. Not a spell initiating, but magic breaking.

  “He just collapsed a circle,” I yelled, turning in the direction from which the discharge of magic had originated. Briar and Falin followed my lead.

  All the lights were in the part of the basement where Gauhter and Saunders were working. The rest was lost in shadow, including the area where I’d felt a circle collapse. A part of the basement where I could feel the dead waiting.

  As the containing circle broke, the smell of decomposition intensified a dozenfold, spreading like a choking miasma through the underground area. Bile rose in my throat, but I didn’t dare flinch or turn away. I couldn’t see what was coming, but I could feel it.

  Briar clearly had the opposite issue.

  “Fucking zombies,” she yelled, lifting her crossbow and releasing two shots back to back. “Why can’t I ever encounter a necromancer without fucking zombies.”

  Two bodies exploded into flames as her shots hit. The light from the fire provided enough illumination that I could finally see what I’d only felt before. I almost wished it hadn’t.

  The dead heading for us weren’t corpses with their time stopped like the ones piloted by the ghosts, or even well preserved like the soul-eating child outside. These were rotting corpses, mad with hunger. They ran toward us, scrambling over each other. Some dragged themselves, their legs too decayed to carry them. All stared at us with cloudy or missing eyes, emanating hunger because we had something they wanted. Our living souls.

  Briar lit up two more. They kept moving several steps, even once already on fire. They didn’t burn as well as ghouls—too juicy. But after a couple of steps, the incendiary rounds did their job, and the zombies fell.

  Falin fired repeatedly, but body shots did nothing, and it took too many head shots to stop one. He emptied his magazine and only dropped three of the corpses. With a curse in the musiclike language of the fae, he holstered the gun and drew two daggers as long as my forearm. I had my dagger in my hand as well, but I wasn’t keen on getting close enough to use it. I backed away as the zombies charged nearer. Briar incinerated another, but they just kept coming.

  “Any truth to the fact that a zombie bite makes you a zombie?” Falin asked, as he made a wide slash with the dagger, decapitating the zombie closest to him.

  “Myth.” Briar kicked a zombie, knocking it back so she had time to reload her crossbow. “But flesh-eating bacteria tends to breed in their mouths.”

  Falin slashed out with the dagger, and another zombie fell, viscera flying. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Zombies burst into flame or fell headless, but more took their place. They pressed in closer, too close for Briar to keep incinerating them without catching fire herself. She pulled a short sword from her back and kicked at the dead bodies, trying to open enough space that she could swing it. Falin was facing similar issues. Two slipped around Briar, headed for me. I considered the dagger in my hand. It was eager to be used, but even it knew it wasn’t up for this fight.

  I threw open my shields. The zombies paused. I felt the moment they all turned, sensing me as something new. Different. Roy once told me that when I straddled the chasm between the living and the dead I lit up like a sun in the land of the dead. These zombies had never seen a sun before.

  They forgot about Briar and Falin, shambling and scurrying toward me. Now that my shields were open, I could feel each of them individually. There were still nearly three dozen up and walking.

  The first one reached me. I thrust out my hand and pushed. Not with muscles or grave magic, I pushed with the part of me that touched different realities. I shoved the corpse into the land of the dead. It crumpled into ash and blew away in the wind whirling around me. I did the same to a second. A third. A zombie charged into the space where I’d disintegrated the first, and its skin fell away, followed by muscles. It dropped to the ground, only inanimate bone before I even had time to touch it. I wasn’t just pushing the zombies into the land of the dead, I was pushing the reality around me. I didn’t have time to think about it or try to fix it. I had to keep moving, keep pushing. Flames burst from near Briar; she’d used the distraction to get enough space to use incendiary spells again. Falin was a pale blur of movement to my side, zombies falling at his feet. And I just kept pushing
the corpses into the land of the dead, accelerating decay.

  It seemed to go on forever, but when the last zombie fell, sunset had not yet hit. I glanced down at my watch, but it was gone. As were the sleeves of my coat and my sweater. Small decayed bits of fabric still clung to my shoulders, but my arms were bare aside from my charm bracelet, which was badly tarnished, several of my charms made of less permanent material missing, presumably rotted away. I’d deal with it later.

  “Time?” I asked, turning back to the circle where Saunders and Gauhter stood, their heads pressed together as they conjured magic.

  “Four minutes until sunset,” Briar called back.

  I hadn’t closed my shields, so I could see the magic swirling around the two men. It whirled in a tightly woven ball, growing larger and larger and feeding down into the cauldron between them. Gauhter was the one weaving it, Saunders freely surrendering his magic to the other man. Another tendril of the magic was tied to Rianna, draining energy from her life force into the homunculus. The shimmering ball of orange and red magic sank to the thing moving in the cauldron. If it reached the homunculus . . . Rianna would die. Her soul might move to the homunculus, but her body, her real body, would die. I had no doubt.

  “Shoot Gauhter,” I yelled.

  Out of an MCIB investigator, an FIB agent, and a private investigator, I was the least authorized to make that command, but Falin didn’t question it and Briar didn’t contradict it. Falin pulled his Glock, slammed a fresh magazine in place, and pulled the trigger.

  The shot took Gauhter in the chest. There was a moment when the report of the gun was still echoing in the basement, where Gauhter looked stunned, his mouth falling open and his eyes going wide. Then the book he’d been holding slipped from his fingers. He looked down and pressed a hand to the growing red stain on his shirt.

  The magic he’d been working with churned, incomplete. I saw the energy start to unravel, growing unstable.

  “Rianna, get down,” I yelled.

  She was still bound to the chair, so there weren’t many options for where she could go. She kicked her feet, and the chair teetered before crashing to the side. Even through the gag I heard her scream of pain. It was better than the alternative.

  A heartbeat later the unstable spell exploded. Gauhter and Saunders were flung backward, a magical ricochet bouncing through the circle. Fire crawled up both men where the spell struck. Saunders hit the ground. He rolled, screaming, trying to extinguish himself. Gauhter slammed into his own circle. It shattered with a discordant snap of magic, and he screamed as the backlash tore through him. Then he fell silent, still on fire, but not dead yet. I would have felt it if he’d died.

  The blast also knocked over the cauldron. It rolled, spilling liquid that glittered in the weak lights and dumping a body onto the ground. It was almost fully formed, though skeletally thin and shimmering with the liquid it had been grown in. Red curls were plastered to a face that looked far too much like Rianna.

  I took only a heartbeat to see it roll to a stop, falling still and lifeless, but not dead as it had never been alive. Then I rushed to the real Rianna, ignoring the two burning necromancers—they could fend for themselves. I didn’t have time to be delicate, but pushed the rope binding Rianna into the land of the dead. I pulled her free of the chair as soon as the coarse knots had deteriorated enough to release her.

  “We have to get you out of here,” I said as I dragged her to her feet. One of her arms hung funny; it had broken when the chair landed on it in the fall.

  “And go where, Al?” she asked, rushing to Desmond as soon as she got her legs under her. “There’s what, two minutes until sunset? I can’t reach Faerie that fast.”

  No. No, that wasn’t acceptable. Why would Derrick have warned me I needed to beat sunset only to have me find Rianna in time to watch her wither and die?

  Rianna fell to her knees beside Desmond. He was hurt. Bad. But Desmond was fae. As long as he survived his injures, he would heal. Rianna would die if we didn’t get her to Faerie.

  Rianna sank her good hand into the fur around Desmond’s ear, careful not touch the large bleeding wound on the back of his skull. At her touch, his eyes opened, and he whined around the tape sealing his muzzle.

  “We have to get this off you,” she said, trying to gently peel back the tape, but her broken arm wasn’t doing what she wanted and she couldn’t do it one-handed.

  “No, we have to go to Faerie, Rianna,” I said. The big, doglike fae made a sound deep in his chest that I took as agreement.

  Rianna shook her head, looking defeated, but resigned. “There is no time, Al. It’s okay. I’m okay with it.” She tried to smile at me, but her lips trembled, refusing to hold. “Hey, I found the missing bottle.” She laughed, the sound more hysterical and desperate than anything that could pass as humor.

  “When I defeated Coleman, you ripped a hole into Faerie. Can’t you—”

  “No. That was part of Coleman’s spell. I can’t rip through reality and space like that normally.”

  Reality. She couldn’t rip through reality, but I could. And I could weave it together too, theoretically.

  I just needed enough of Faerie to work with.

  I looked around. We were minutes from sunset, from the time between when Faerie’s influence was thinnest. But it was never gone. Not fully.

  So where were the threads of Faerie? The shadow court tied into every shadow, and there were plenty here. The nightmare realm drew power from nightmares. I glanced at the fallen zombies, at least those rotted bodies that hadn’t turned to ash. They were definitely the things of nightmares. Belief. Belief was the greatest source of power Faerie had. And there were mortals here. I pulled off the chameleon charm that hid my telltale Sleagh Maith glow, letting my true self show.

  I couldn’t exactly see the threads of Faerie, but I could feel them. They were too thin, too sparse. They couldn’t sustain a changeling. Where else could I find the magic of Faerie? Enough to create Faerie where it wasn’t?

  Fred’s words came back to me. “Look to yourself. What you seek is never far.” Her advice may have sounded like it belonged in a fortune cookie, but . . . I was a true-blooded fae, which meant the magic of Faerie ran through my blood. And through Desmond’s and Falin’s.

  “Desmond, I need your blood,” I said, kneeling to dip my hands in the dark puddle around his head.

  He didn’t growl, so I took that as consent since I didn’t have time to secure anything better. The blood from his wound had stopped flowing some time ago, and the puddle surrounding him was already cooling, congealing. I swiped it across the cement floor, drawing a circle around Rianna. The cooling blood didn’t go far, so it was a small circle.

  “Al, what are you doing?” she asked, her voice shaking. Even if she’d accepted death as inevitable, she was terrified of it.

  I didn’t answer but sliced a gash across my palm with my dagger as I yelled, “Falin, I need you.”

  Falin had Saunders on his stomach, his hands cuffed behind his back. The man was no longer on fire, which was more than he deserved. Falin dropped him as soon as I called and rushed over.

  “What—?”

  “Add your blood to the circle,” I said as I let my own blood dribble over the circle I’d drawn with Desmond’s.

  Blood magic was dangerous. Illegal. But Falin didn’t question me. I’d asked for his help, and he offered it, cutting his palm in the same way I had.

  I’d done true blood magic only once before, and it had been only my blood then. Now, with blood from all three of us in the circle I’d drawn, I could feel the three different, potent magics we each possessed. And I could feel the common thread that tied us all together. The thread that was Faerie.

  I still couldn’t see it. I was used to magic being visual to me, but this wasn’t. I could feel it, though, so I closed my eyes. I reached down, lifting the dainty thr
eads of Faerie magic from the blood with my fingers. Then I reached out, gathering everything around me that felt like Faerie, and began knotting them together, piece by piece, strand by strand, like a fishing net. I worked by feel, looping, threading, knotting. As I worked, the strands grew thinner, Faerie magic drawing out of the world, but it caught between my knots, held.

  “Duck,” I commanded Rianna. I heard the sound of her clothes moving and felt the air shift slightly, but I didn’t dare open my eyes and see the emptiness I’d been working with—I didn’t want to disbelieve my net of Faerie away.

  I tossed the net over her head, pulling it down.

  “Get as low as you can,” I said, and she must have listened, because I was able to pull the net down to meet the circle of blood and tie the points down.

  Then all that was left to do was wait.

  We didn’t have to wait long. I finished only moments before sunset. Usually I wasn’t very aware of sunset. I might feel slightly tired, but it wasn’t devastating. This time it hit like a punch to the gut.

  The breath rushed out of me and my head spun. I could feel the draw of energy and magic being pulled from my blood to maintain the net of Faerie. The others must have been feeling the same. I heard Falin collapse to his knees beside me, and Desmond whined. I bowed my head, tucking it between my knees as vertigo made the world lurch despite the fact that I was perfectly still. But I didn’t open my eyes.

  I tried to count heartbeats but couldn’t seem to get over three. I wasn’t sure how many times I counted to three and then stopped, feeling ill and wondering what number I’d left off on.

  Finally the world calmed. I could breathe again. I waited for the vertigo to return, but it was gone. Sunset had come and passed. Faerie magic was reentering the world now that night had arrived. I lifted my head and cautiously opened my eyes, afraid I’d see one of my best friends aged several hundred years inside a bloody circle.

  Silent tears ran down Rianna’s still young, still-living face. She jumped free of the circle and threw her one good arm around my shoulders, nearly dragging both of us to the ground.