“Be right there.”
Norden and Daniel left to patrol the concert—Norden into the cemetery and Daniel toward the gate—and I went back into the dressing room. Tina had squeezed into the sparkly-silver boy shorts and was holding the matching bra against her front. She sported half a dozen slashes and gouges on her arms and torso from the Morfran attack.
“My aunt gave me some salve,” I said, fastening the hooks. “It might help with those wounds.” I doubted the salve would work on a zombie, but it was worth a try.
Tina inspected herself in the mirror. “I don’t know. They make me look, you know, edgier. More Night of the Living Dead. I guess they’re okay. You know, for shows and all. Hannah Horror has this big, gross, pus-filled sore here.” She pointed to her right cheek. “I thought I was gonna have to do something like that with makeup. But these look better. Like I clawed my way out of the grave or something.” She grinned at her reflection.
Someone rapped twice on the door. I reached for a knife but relaxed when a woman with spiky magenta hair stuck her pierced face inside. “Tina, they need you now,” she barked and was gone before I’d had a chance to count all her eyebrow rings.
Tina clasped her hands. “This is it,” she said, a little breathlessly. “Wish me luck.”
“Break a leg.” I kissed her cheek and wondered if that saying was just for actors. Whatever, suggesting bodily injury probably wasn’t the best way to wish a zombie good luck.
Tina didn’t care. Her grin was half-excited, half-terrified. I followed her outside. Her silver sequins glinted and gleamed under the lights. She turned left and hurried past the trailers, pausing once to stop and wave. Good thing zombies don’t feel the cold, I thought, watching her go. In an outfit like hers, I’d be chilly on a beach in the middle of August.
A couple of minutes later, Kane returned. “Any sign of Pryce?” I asked.
“I picked up his scent around one of the old Suffolk University buildings, but it was faint, and I lost it again. I don’t think he’s there now.”
Probably Pryce was jumping in and out of the demon plane until it was time to sic the Morfran on the zombies. “Let’s check it out.”
We exited the cemetery and pushed through throngs of zombies. Tremont Street was crammed with them, standing shoulder to shoulder, craning to see the stage. We skirted the thickest part of the crowd, crossed Tremont, and headed toward Bromfield Street. Half a block down Bromfield, there was more breathing room. More diversity in the audience, too. I spotted some werewolves and even a few humans. No vampires. It was dinnertime for them, and there wasn’t much in this crowd to whet their appetites.
We were almost at the building where Kane had scented Pryce when a low thrum of guitar chords pulsed from the speakers. A cheer went up. I turned around to see dry-ice fog covering the stage and spotlights sweeping the crowd.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” shouted an amplified voice. “Zombies, monsters, and things that go bump in the night!” The cheering swelled.
“Vaughn? You there?” Norden’s voice came from my walkie-talkie. I unclipped it from my belt.
“What’s up?”
“Are you ready to meet your worst nightmare?” yelled the announcer.
Norden said something over the walkie-talkie, but I couldn’t hear him over the music and the roaring crowd.
“Are you ready to dance with the dead?”
“What?” I shouted into the handset. I pressed it against my right ear and plugged my left.
“Are you ready to meet …”
Over the walkie-talkie, static. “… spotted the target. I’m …” More static.
“Where?”
“MONSTER PAUL?”
With a scream of guitars, music blasted out. Pyrotechnics exploded onstage, and Tina and the other two backup singers appeared through the smoke, doing a stiff zombie-walk dance. All around, zombies jumped up and mimicked their movements. The noise was ear-shattering.
I thought Norden said “cemetery,” but thanks to the static, the guitars, and the screaming crowd, I wasn’t sure.
“Repeat that.”
More fireworks onstage, and Monster Paul ran out. The crowd went berserk as he launched into the first verse of “Grave Robber.”
Through the walkie-talkie, Norden screamed.
“Norden!” I took off running down Bromfield Street toward the burial ground.
Kane caught up immediately. “Cemetery!” I shouted, and he surged ahead. At Tremont Street, the crowd was nearly impenetrable, but the zombies moved aside for Kane. I followed; it was better than trying to shove my way through. Zombies don’t move unless they want to.
The security guards had left their post at the gate. A dozen steps inside the cemetery, I stopped, breathing hard. Nothing moved. The music continued to blare, but we were behind the amplifiers, so it wasn’t as brain-thumpingly loud. I tried to raise Norden on the walkie-talkie but got only static.
“Norden said he saw Pryce, but we lost contact,” I told Kane. “Norden may be hurt. Let’s split up and look for him. Be careful.”
We agreed I’d go left and he’d go right; we’d work our way through the graves row by row and meet in the center. I drew the Sword of Saint Michael and started forward, moving quickly but with caution.
The final chords of “Grave Robber” crashed to a halt, and the audience thundered its approval.
I unclipped the walkie-talkie and tried again. “Norden?”
Daniel’s voice came back: “He’s hurt.”
“Where are you?”
“About halfway in, two rows in from the west fence.”
I ran in his direction, leaping over gravestones that got in my way. “Wait, Vicky.” Daniel held out a hand as I got near. “It’s bad.” I pushed past him. Norden lay in a heap on the blood-soaked ground. He was cut to ribbons. Pryce and his goddamn sword work.
“He’s alive,” Daniel said. “I’ve called for an ambulance.”
Good. There were at least two standing by; I’d seen them near the news vans. Norden didn’t look like he could wait long. His skin was ashy pale, his breathing rapid and shallow. Blood speckled his face, and blue tinged his lips. Daniel had already sprinkled activated charcoal on the ground—Norden would’ve carried that from his Goon Squad days—to soak up blood and absorb its odor. Still, it’d be bad for Norden if any zombies got a whiff of all that blood. The sooner we got him out of here, the better.
Red lights splashed across the tombstones, and a couple of EMTs unloaded a gurney from the back of an ambulance. “Over here!” I called.
Onstage, a guitar chord reverberated, followed by a squeal of feedback. “Helloooo, Deadtown!” growled Monster Paul. “Tonight, we show the world that—hell, yeah!—the dead can dance.”
Drums crashed, and a heavy bass line thumped out. The night suddenly grew several shades darker.
As the dead dance, the Brenin shall claim what’s his.
Overhead, the sky teemed with crows—so many it looked like the darkness itself seethed. They cawed and shrieked, their clamor overwhelming the music. There were more than I’d seen outside the slate mine. More than enough to destroy every zombie here.
Daniel’s eyes followed my gaze, then widened.
I sheathed my sword and took out Home Sweet Home.
“Daniel, listen.” I spoke quickly. “That’s the Morfran. I’ve got to do the ritual to imprison it. Pryce will try to stop me. Whatever it takes, don’t let him.”
Daniel nodded, still watching the Morfran. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.
“Detective Costello? Daniel?” We both turned at the voice. Behind the EMTs came Lynne Hong, cameraman in tow. “What’s happening?”
“Get out of here!” I shouted at her.
At the same time, Daniel yelled, “Lynne, don’t—”
The bassist faltered, hit a sour note, then stopped. Three more beats and the drummer stopped, too. That’s when the screaming started.
Hong stopped in her tracks. The came
raman spun around, not sure what to film.
I looked at the plaque in my hand, then up again at the overcrowded sky. Even with magical enhancement, could this one small slate hold all that? It didn’t seem possible. It had taken an entire slate mine to contain this much Morfran.
Screams pierced the night like sirens of terror. Now wasn’t the time to wonder.
I leaned the plaque against a tree and backed up ten feet. I took a centering breath and gripped Hellforged in my left hand. I tried to ignore the screams, the massive amount of Morfran overhead. Focus. Be pure. Do what you have to do. With my left hand, I traced large, clockwise circles. Immediately, I felt a shift in the energy around me as tendrils of Morfran were pulled into the movement. The screaming quieted. An eerie silence settled.
Circling felt like stirring a huge vat of nearly set concrete, there was so much Morfran dragging on my arm. Making the circles smaller increased the strain, but I kept going. With a strong tug of will, I pulled the Morfran toward me. A tsunami of ice-cold power charged up my arm. It lifted me from my feet and slammed me down flat on my back. Hellforged rocketed from my hand and spun into the darkness.
Screams again shredded the night, more this time. There was too much Morfran here. I couldn’t control it all at once. Okay, I thought, rolling onto my hands and knees and feeling around for Hellforged, I’ll subdue it in smaller batches. Some zombies would get hurt, but if I worked fast, maybe I could imprison all the Morfran before the attacks made it to phase three.
I found Hellforged. The athame jumped when I put my hand on it, but I caught it and got back to my feet. I took a deep breath—two, three—and tried again. This time, I kept the ritual light, drawing only the nearest Morfran closer instead of putting everything I had into pulling all of it toward me. The screams lessened. Sirens approached. Monster Paul urged the crowd to stay calm. Please let Tina be okay. I offered up that thought like a prayer, then closed my eyes and refocused on my task. I proceeded quickly, feeling for balance. When I’d pulled in as much Morfran as I could handle, I circled smaller and faster. It was almost time to switch hands.
“Put her down, you son of a bitch!” Daniel yelled.
His voice threw me. My eyes flew open, and Hellforged wobbled in its orbit. I kept circling, but I felt some of the Morfran slip away.
Daniel had his gun out, aimed at something to my right. Pryce held a struggling Lynne Hong a foot off the ground, his hands around her throat. She clawed at his fingers with her mittened hands, her eyes bugging out. Pryce looked at Daniel and laughed an ugly laugh. He tossed Hong aside. Daniel fired, but Pryce disappeared before the bullet left the gun.
Daniel sprinted to where Hong had fallen. He scooped her up in his arms and ran toward the ambulance.
My arm was still circling, almost like it was on auto-pilot. I returned my focus to the task at hand, tightened the circles more … more. I pulled in the Morfran that was still in my orbit and got ready to make the transfer.
Pryce popped back into the Ordinary, not ten feet in front of me. He picked up the plaque. “Home Sweet Home. How quaint.” He disappeared into the demon plane, taking the slate with him.
38
THE WHOLE DAMN SKY WAS BOILING WITH MORFRAN, AND Pryce had stolen my target.
Hellforged twitched, but I kept hold of it. I slowed the circles and widened them, just enough that the energy wouldn’t charge up my arm. The energy waned a tiny bit. The screams from Monster Paul’s audience didn’t. It sounded like full-scale panic out there now.
I was close to panic myself. My circling arm ached from the Morfran’s drag. I relaxed the circle a little too much and felt more Morfran slide out of Hellforged’s orbit. Again I picked up the pace; daggers of fiery pain stabbed my shoulder with each circuit. I couldn’t keep this up. Soon, I’d stop from sheer exhaustion, and hundreds of zombies would die.
The cawing rose to an insane pitch. The zombies were dying, anyway. I was holding back one small bit of Morfran, while the rest tore viciously into its victims.
“Vicky?” Kane called from the darkness.
“Here.” My voice croaked with fatigue.
He hurried toward me, winding through the tombstones. “There are two PDHs back there, the guys from the gate, and they’re—” He stopped when he saw me.
“Under attack by the Morfran,” I finished for him. “I can’t help them, Kane. Pryce stole the slate target Mab gave me. I don’t know what to do.”
“Slate?” He frowned. “Does it have to be a special kind of slate?”
“No, but—”
“Vicky, look around. Most of the headstones in this cemetery are slate.”
I nearly dropped Hellforged when he said it. He was right. All around me stood hundreds—hundreds—of slate gravestones. And that meant hundreds of Morfran targets.
“Keep Pryce away,” I said.
Kane nodded, and I went to work.
Quickly, I tightened my circles and pulled in the Morfran. I zeroed in on the nearest gravestone. I transferred the athame from left hand to right, pointed Hellforged, and shouted, “Parhau! Ireos! Mantrigo!” The stone split like it had been struck by lightning. The halves fell away from each other, and smoke spewed out. Overhead, the sky grew half a shade brighter.
I let out a whoop of triumph.
I scanned the cemetery. Rows of crooked gravestones stretched into the darkness; the center obelisk glowed an eerie white. No sign of Pryce lurking among the graves. He was here somewhere—I didn’t doubt that for a second. But Kane would keep him back from me, and there was no way he could steal all the slate from the cemetery.
Success brought strength back into my limbs. I began the ritual again. And then again. And again. Over and over, I pulled in a batch of the Morfran—as big as I could handle—and slammed it into a slate gravestone. I made my way across the grounds, scooping up as much Morfran as I could as fast as I could, stoning it, moving on. Some gravestones split, some fell over, a few just shuddered. But nothing broke my focus on my task. I was aware of sirens, footsteps, voices; none of these pushed through my concentration. Gradually, the drag on my circling arm became less. Degree by degree, the inky darkness lightened. Finally, after what felt like days of effort, I chanted the incantation and made the hurling motion … and nothing happened.
I’d done it. I’d imprisoned the last of the Morfran.
My knees turned to water. I sank to the ground, limp with exhaustion.
But not for long. Behind me, sounds of fighting broke out—grunts, curses, the smack of flesh hitting flesh. Then Kane’s voice shouted, “Don’t shoot, damn it! I’ve got him. Just get that human the hell out of here!”
I fastened Hellforged in its sheath, got up, and ran over to where Kane clasped a struggling zombie around the waist, holding him in the air as he kicked and thrashed. One EMT pointed a gun at them; the other shoved at the gurney holding Norden, but its wheel was stuck and it wouldn’t budge.
Daniel appeared. He lifted the gurney’s front end and pulled, freeing the stuck wheel. The gurney started rolling again. Daniel pulled, one EMT pushed, the other walked beside, his gun still trained on the zombie.
Kane, backing away, tripped over a low-lying gravestone and went sprawling. He kept his grip on the zombie. I made a flying leap and landed on top of the two of them. It was like riding a bucking zombie bronco, but together we held him down.
Daniel kept going with the EMT guys. “Lynne’s okay,” he called back over his shoulder, though nobody had asked. “She’s in the ambulance. I told her not to unlock the doors till I came back.” His voice faded as he moved down the path, saying something to the ambulance crew.
As the scent of Norden’s blood grew more distant, the zombie’s struggles lessened. “I’m hungry,” he moaned.
“Soon,” I said. We couldn’t let him up until Norden was safely packed into the ambulance and on his way to Mass General.
“Those guys should carry potato chips, not guns.” Kane’s muffled voice emerged from somewhere under t
he zombie.
“Yeah, but—” Before I could say more, a gong reverberated through the cemetery. For a couple of confused seconds, I thought the concert had started again and the band was launching into another song.
But no music followed.
Shit. The last time I heard that sound, I was in an abandoned Welsh slate mine.
Kane cursed. He recognized it, too.
When the second gong rang out, I knew we were in trouble. The dead weren’t exactly dancing anymore—they were stampeding through Boston in a panic—but Pryce was freeing the Morfran I’d trapped.
I whipped my head around, trying to locate the sound’s direction. Daniel and the EMTs had almost reached the ambulance, but I didn’t see Pryce. When the third gong sounded, I watched. A deeper darkness swirled up out of the night.
“There!” I pointed. Kane twisted his head around to see. “Can you handle this zombie while I do the ritual?”
“Yes, but don’t say zom—”
I was already on my feet, unsnapping Hellforged’s sheath. I kept my eyes on the mist. It solidified into a flock of crows that blasted into Norden and the EMTs. The techs took cover as the gurney flipped over. Daniel drew his gun. The crows soared up into the sky.
They circled once, then, sensing the zombie on the ground, dived at him. He screamed. Kane tried to shield the zombie, but the crows passed right through him to get at their prey, gouging out chunks of undead flesh.
“You can’t protect him,” I yelled. “Get Pryce.”
I moved Hellforged in a big circle, pulling the Morfran toward me. Hellforged drew the Morfran like a magnet, dragging crows off the zombie, sucking them toward me in mid-dive.
The zombie’s screams faded to moans. Kane took off at a run toward where the mist had risen. Daniel followed him.
“Pryce has an oak stick or staff,” I shouted after them. “Get it away from him.”
I made the circles smaller. The zombie staggered to his feet. I glanced toward the ambulance. One of the EMTs slammed the back door, then ran around to the passenger side. A second later, the ambulance peeled away, siren blaring.
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