“See, that’s what I’m talking about,” Spencer called out from behind them.
Patrick rolled his eyes. “Oh, fuck you both. Let’s get moving.”
Jono and the woman shifted back into their animal forms, Jono towering over her slimmer bulk. Patrick looked around until he spied Wade standing behind a car and stuffing his face with the last of his cookies.
“Wade, I’m going to need you to stay with me up front,” Patrick said.
Wade rushed over, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth. It didn’t do much but smear cookie crumbs across his cheek. “Yeah?”
Patrick reached out and tugged him close, looking Wade in the eyes. “We’re going to push forward as much as we can. When I tell you to, I want you to firebomb the zombies without shifting. Can you do that?”
Wade hesitated a moment before squaring his shoulders and nodding determinedly. “Yeah, I can do it.”
Patrick clapped him on the shoulder. “Great. I’ll be right by your side. Just do what I say, when I say it, and don’t get distracted.”
“Okay. No distractions.”
Wade dug one last smushed cookie from his pocket, shoved it in his mouth, and chewed. He looked a little wide-eyed and worried, but not overly frightened, which was all Patrick could hope for in the situation.
Less than a minute later they moved out, Nadine dropping her shield as the last officer hustled inside the building. Patrick sensed the sorceress’ magic rise over the entrance, and he wished her all the best in keeping everyone safe.
The lone police officer who’d volunteered to come with them stuck close. Nadine scrambled on top of a car to get a better view of the square. Patrick joined her, scanning the area. Zombies were coming from the east and west, pouring out of the two parks on either side of the square. They looked newly dead compared to the dense movement of old skeletons lurching across the bridge south of them.
Nadine clapped her hands together, and the tiny mageglobe trapped between her palms exploded outward like ball lightning gone nova. A domed shield formed around them, moving quickly over the square. It split down the middle, two walls peeling back to momentarily block the zombies coming from the parks, buying their group time.
“Let’s go,” Patrick called out.
They ran toward the bridge, the group of werecreatures they’d brought into the fold keeping pace but giving them a wide berth to work in, which was fine by Patrick.
“Plan?” Nadine asked as she slid across a hood rather than waste seconds detouring around the car.
“Fire.”
“That’s not going to stop enough zombies to make a difference. The souls will still be wandering and get put back into the dead.”
“Can’t have a zombie without a body.”
She shot him an exasperated look. “This is why you get banned from cities.”
“I don’t get banned. It’s just suggested I never return.”
Nadine rolled her eyes and gestured expansively with her free hand at their current situation. Patrick opted to ignore her silent opinion of the way he interpreted things.
Patrick stuck his free hand behind him and wiggled his fingers. A second later, Wade latched on, and Patrick pulled the teenager along with him. Fatima bounded ahead of them, trailing a coldness the sun couldn’t cut through.
They passed the obelisk, growing ever closer to the dense wall of walking skeletons that waited up ahead. The eerie magic that enslaved souls to animate bones made Patrick squint against the glow hazing the air around the dead.
As he watched, the horde of zombies started to expand, rising up as they climbed each other to block the bridge, a wall of bones that reminded him of that shiver-inducing space in the Catacombs.
“Patrick?” Spencer called out harshly.
Patrick kept running, keeping hold of Wade. “Hold your magic. Everyone, stay close.”
The horde of zombies grew, clawing on top of each other in a rising wave of the dead that blocked out the far side of the bridge. Some skeletons couldn’t hold on and tumbled over the edge into the Seine. The mass of skeletons in front pushed outward like a leading trough, a multitude of old, bony fingers reaching for them as countless skulls with glowing eye sockets kept them in sight.
Patrick yanked Wade closer, skidding to a stop. He let go of Wade’s hand, settling his own in between the teenager’s shoulder blades in a supportive touch.
“Now!” Patrick snarled.
Fire could break most spells, but even magefire wasn’t strong enough to burn thousands of skeletons to ash and leave stolen souls without their anchor.
Dragon fire was.
Wade sucked in a deep breath and let it out with a roar that sounded as if it came from a body larger than the skinny teenager vibrating beneath Patrick’s touch. Fire erupted from Wade’s mouth, bursting forth with such intensity Patrick had to let go of his Carbine and throw up his other arm to protect his face from the heat.
The wave of zombie skeletons collapsed beneath dragon fire, limbs clawing at each other for a safety they would never find. Bone blackened in seconds, getting charred down to ash with every breath of flame Wade let out.
He was warm beneath Patrick’s touch, red scales pushing up through the skin on the back of his neck and on his arms. It took Wade less than a minute to clear the bridge of that group of zombies, but Patrick knew more would soon take their place.
“Move, move!” he shouted.
Patrick pushed Wade forward, catching him under the arm when Wade stumbled over a bone that missed getting burned to ash. He kicked it aside, then swore in surprise when a dark shape dove from the air to catch the tibia up in sharp talons.
The sun was dipping down toward the horizon but still bright in the sky. Its light was suddenly blotted out by the hundreds of crows and ravens that descended on Pont de la Concorde, picking at any bits of bone left. Patrick’s heart was beating double time as they ran across the bridge, boots sliding on the ash that covered it. His face reflected back at him in countless black eyes that watched them, the shadow of someone else’s visage overlaid on his own in their shiny depths.
Wade coughed out smoke, eyes squeezed shut as he heaved for air. Patrick never let him go, hauling him forward with a firm hand.
“Good job,” Patrick said. “You totally get a cookie when this is all over.”
Wade choked out a laugh that smelled like fire and sulfur, golden eyes with their reptilian slitted black pupils blinking rapidly. “Cookies. Plural.”
“As many as you can eat.”
When they made it across the Seine to the Left Bank, Patrick’s skin prickled with the awareness of too many eyes on them. The ravens and crows weren’t the only ones watching their push into central Paris.
The Morrígan watched as well through the countless eyes of her winged specters, and Patrick knew nothing good would ever come of gaining the attention of a war goddess.
26
The City of Lights had gone dark.
The sun was passing over the horizon, half-set, and the blue of the sky had deepened to something darker. In the east, where the sky was darkest, stars were slowly becoming visible. The sun and the beacon of sinister magic the Eiffel Tower had become were the only points of brightness in the city.
Well, aside from the souls animating millions of skeleton bodies, magic glittering between rib bones and in countless eye sockets, fresh zombies, and the barrage of offensive magic courtesy of Dominion Sect mercenary magic users.
“Incoming!” Patrick yelled.
The flurry of mageglobes that arced through the air from the west carried military-grade spells within them. Patrick conjured up a set of his own, thrusting an arm upward and guiding them through Nadine’s shield.
The strike spell he’d filled them with must have been the same as the ones aimed at their position. When they collided, the resulting explosion in the air was less fireworks and more nuclear, lighting up the night sky with magic. It provided a flash of illumination, enough light for Patri
ck to check that yeah, the sea of zombies blocking their way on the Boulevard de la Tour-Maubourg hadn’t decreased.
It wasn’t the only explosion going on in Paris. Pockets of resistance set up by magic users and those in the preternatural world were still coming to the city’s defense, working hand in hand with the police when they could. French resistance was alive and well against the dead.
Two hours ago they’d managed to catch a breather at the Ministry of Magical Affairs, if one could call being interrogated for thirty minutes a breather. Their French counterparts had finally wanted to listen to what they had to say now that Paris was overrun by zombies. The PIA’s warnings had come too little too late to stop Ilya from raising the dead, but that didn’t mean they could stop fighting.
They’d had to come clean about Spencer and his kind of magic though. Whereas before the French government might have thrown a fit about having a foreign mage with an affinity for the dead and a kind of necromantic magic inside their borders, this time they’d only been grateful.
But Spencer was just one mage against millions of dead, and he could only do so much. In retrospect, it wasn’t anything like the Thirty-Day War. The dead had never overrun Cairo like this. Spencer was flagging but still fighting, though the number of dead he could put to rest at one time had slowly decreased over the course of the day.
They’d been routed from Place Joffre and were now boxed in on either side of the Boulevard de la Tour-Maubourg by zombies. Spencer was focusing on their forward position, but it was like trying to move the ocean. The waves of zombies kept coming.
At least it wasn’t just Patrick’s pack, Nadine, and Spencer fighting. The ministry had asked for volunteers to aid them on their push to the Eiffel Tower, and they’d come away with twenty magic users to help them, though only one was a mage.
It still wasn’t enough.
“We need to clear a path,” Nadine said, staring at the zombies clawing at her shield a few meters ahead of them.
“What do you think we’ve been trying to do?” Spencer snapped tiredly.
“I know, I know, but this isn’t working. The fucking Dominion Sect knows our position, and they’re rerouting the zombies to keep us in one spot, hoping to overwhelm us.”
“At this rate, it’s less hoping and more succeeding,” Patrick said.
Nadine shot him an exasperated look. “Not helping.”
Patrick tossed another set of mageglobes filled with strike spells at the next volley of incoming attack spells. “Now that’s a lie. I’m a great help.”
The spells crashed together and lit up the sky again. Time was he wouldn’t have been able to keep up a sustained counterattack like this, not after the Thirty-Day War and the wounds he’d walked away from it with. Jono sidled closer and Patrick dug his hand into thick fur, leaning against him for a brief moment. The soulbond hummed between them, a depth of magic at his fingertips he was grateful for.
Jono and Sage had been forced behind the shield once they all got boxed in, and both were itching to fight. Patrick was reluctant to let Wade shift mass into his dragon form, not wanting French officials to know the truth about what he was. Wade was willing, Patrick knew that, but it was one thing to let him breathe fire in front of werecreatures, quite another to do it in front of representatives of a foreign government. He knew, as the minutes ticked down to midnight, they might not have a choice.
Right now, the only option they had was to keep fighting.
So that’s what they did.
However long later, when the sun had finally fully set, the Eiffel Tower became a warning beacon against the night sky, ochre-colored magic flickering like fire on the massive monument. The only light that didn’t come from their magic burned in the skulls of skeleton zombies, the dead piling up around Nadine’s shield.
The French magic users were tossing spells ahead and behind them, trying to clear a path, but the zombies were too numerous. Any dead that got blown up were immediately replaced by more bodies. Patrick couldn’t help them; all his attention was on incoming aerial attacks. As the only combat mage with offensive magic capabilities, it was his job to keep those attacks at bay if at all possible.
“Oh, that can’t be good,” Spencer said from behind him.
Patrick never took his eyes off the sky. “What can’t be good?”
Nadine yelled something in French, and the echo of explosions to the rear of them faded as the magic users with them focused their efforts on the front. Patrick tore his gaze away from the night sky, eyes going wide at what was coming toward them.
Walking over the sea of zombies was a glowing white taxidermized horse carrying a short rider on its back. The zombie was nothing but bone beneath a ragged uniform whose colors had faded from centuries of internment. The bicorn hat worn sideways sat limply on the zombie’s skull, doing nothing to hide the fiery magic burning in its eye sockets. The zombie rider and horse were too far back for any of the magic users’ spells to get a clean hit. Everyone still tried, but the zombies kept coming.
“Is that…Napoleon’s horse?” Patrick asked in disbelief. “Is that Napoleon?”
“His body, yeah, maybe,” Nadine said, throwing up another layer into her shield. “We’re right next to Les Invalides.”
“First zombies, now zombie horses. What’s next? Kings and queens? Will we get cake for our efforts when this is all over?”
“Marie Antoinette isn’t buried in Paris.”
“I want cake,” Wade piped up.
Spencer thrust his arm forward, sending a mageglobe toward the horse and its rider. He broke the souls free of the bodies, but even as the horse lurched and lost its footing on top of the zombies filling the street, the swirl of another soul sank into its form, reanimating the body. Another soul settled in its rider, and the two zombies walked once more.
“The staff is pulling too many fucking souls out from beyond the veil. I keep breaking them, but more keep filling the bodies left behind,” Spencer growled.
Mageglobes streaked through the sky again, carrying attack spells from the direction of the Eiffel Tower. Patrick turned his attention back to the threat coming from above and drew magic from the ley line below through Jono’s soul to power them. He sent his counterattack into the sky, working to neutralize the threat.
“We need to—” he began.
Patrick was cut off by the distant booms of a type of weapon he recognized from his time in the Mage Corps and not one he expected to hear in the center of Paris.
The rockets cutting through the air originated from the domed roof of Les Invalides to their left. Patrick reacted instantly, ready to protect their position, before he realized the rockets weren’t aimed at their group but at the mass of zombies directly in front of them.
Half a dozen rockets slammed into the Boulevard de la Tour-Maubourg, blowing apart countless zombies and abandoned cars, eradicating the dead, including Napoleon and his horse.
“That’s it. The French are never going to forgive us now,” Nadine muttered.
What space the rockets gained them wouldn’t last long, but Nadine still used the reprieve to push her shields forward the way an ice ship broke through sea ice in the Arctic. She gained them more ground one meter at a time, the same way she’d done during the Thirty-Day War.
The Eiffel Tower was so close, but still so far.
“I don’t know who that was, but anyone want to tell them that won’t stop the zombies?” Spencer said, using the lull to break as many souls free as he could and put them to rest. Fatima paced the leading edge of Nadine’s shield, drawing the souls into herself to guide them back beyond the veil.
Patrick crunched his way over bone, relying on Jono to take point and clear the way, ensuring the handful of zombies still intact enough to be a problem were torn to pieces by sharp teeth.
A second volley of rockets cleared the area between them and Les Invalides. Nadine didn’t hesitate and cut her shield sideways through the mess of bones the rockets had left behind, forming
a narrow shielded tunnel.
Patrick was countering another volley of attack spells—too many for him to clear alone—when Nadine swore savagely in both English and French. The push of her magic was a pressure against his personal shields, but he couldn’t turn to look at what had caught her attention.
“Brace!” he yelled.
Patrick caught most of the attack spells midair, magic exploding above their location. Four got through, despite his best efforts.
The spells crashed against Nadine’s shield with enough force that Patrick felt the impact vibrate through her magic into the ground. Light exploded overhead, violet-colored waves rippling through the barrier between them and certain death. Nadine’s expression of rigid concentration didn’t change as she expanded her shields outward, holding back the attack with little more than an annoyed flick of one hand.
Her rapid push outward to provide their sudden backup with cover hadn’t been clean though, and more than a few zombies were now inside their defenses. Jono and Sage left Patrick’s side to take down the zombies—joined by Lucien and his Night Court.
“I hope you brought me one of those rocket launchers,” Patrick shouted.
“You don’t need one,” Lucien retorted, ripping a skull off a zombie and crushing it in one hand. The soul left in the body flickered until Spencer broke it free.
Carmen, dressed all in black with no glamour to hide what she was, hefted an actual honest-to-gods sword and cleanly decapitated a fresh-looking zombie with a single swing. Sage crushed the head in her massive jaws, and Spencer broke apart every last soul in the zombies inside the shield. Fatima swallowed them whole, drawing them to the other side.
“How did you even find us?” Patrick asked.
“Your magic isn’t subtle when you’re throwing combat spells around,” Lucien said.
Patrick opened his mouth to argue, then thought better of it. He swallowed dryly, wishing he had some water. Looking around at their position—surrounded by zombies that kept relentlessly coming—he knew getting through millions of them was an impossible feat.
On the Wings of War (Soulbound Book 5) Page 31
