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Grave Dance(118)

By:Kalayna Price


I didn’t have enough time to do more than try to block out the encroaching essence as one of the hydra’s heads snapped toward me. I dove to the side, reaching with power. As the head recoiled for another strike, I pul ed with magic. A soul popped free. The head shrank. One soul down.

Someone released a sharp scream and I whirled around.

Beside me, the raver pressed a hand over her arm—an arm soaked in blood. The hydra can hurt them? My racing heart stumbled in my chest, missing several beats as my gaze snapped to where Death dodged the lunging heads, his hands darting out whenever one got too close. The head always drew back smal er, down one more soul. Then two heads rushed him at once.

No!

I thrust my power into the head lunging for his back, and jerked at the souls inside. One. Two. Three souls popped free. Then I was fal ing forward, the bridge rushing up to slam into my knees. The gray man stood above me, jabbing his cane into the nostril of a head fil ing the space where I’d been.

“Watch your own back, girl. He’l watch his,” he said as he pul ed his cane free. “We could use more room to maneuver. The beast is targeting you. Lead it to the bank.

We’l cover you.”

Right. I pushed to my feet, then immediately dove to the side as another head lunged forward. I made it only a few feet with each sprint, but true to his word, the gray man covered my dash off the bridge. Two men in uniform met me on the bank.

“Bul ets won’t pierce its skin,” I said, turning back to reach with my power again. The hand I lifted shook too hard to hold straight.

hold straight.

“It’s fae, right?” one of the men asked as he snapped a clip into his gun. A gun I wasn’t familiar with but bigger than the Glocks that most of the homicide detectives carried. It was also spel ed. He pul ed the trigger and one of the heads exploded.

I blinked at him, wide-eyed, as he squeezed off three more shots. Another head scattered into mist. We’d already destroyed two, and while he lined up another shot, the col ectors finished off the last three heads. Then al that was left was a lumbering body. The col ectors tore into it as the gunman squeezed the trigger twice more.

He smiled as the beast vanished and a disk the size of a tabletop hit the ground. “Spel ed iron,” he said, clearly thinking his bul ets had done the trick. I so wanted to disil usion him, but I didn’t. He turned to me and held out his hand. “Name’s Tucker.”

“Alex Craft.”

Tucker’s vest had ABMU stitched on the front. anti–black magic unit? When John arranged backup, he didn’t skimp.

Or maybe I was earning a reputation for trouble.

I left Tucker showing his gun to several of the uniformed officers and used my ability to sense magic to track where Hol y’s ruby amulet had fal en. I found it in the grass near the foot of the bridge. Then, clutching the amulet in my fist, I made my way to the three col ectors, who were huddled over the charmed disk.

“You okay?” I asked, nodding at the raver.

She shrugged the shoulder of her uninjured arm. “I’l heal, but this has gone too far. We’ve got to find that accomplice.”

“I don’t think they’re going to show here,” the gray man said, spinning his cane like a baton, his colorless eyebrows drawn tight. “I told you this sounded like a trap. And judging by the escalation of the aberrations, I believe you have gone from potential tool to potential threat. That one was out for your life, the compulsion spel included just for good out for your life, the compulsion spel included just for good measure.”

I didn’t disagree.

I clutched Hol y’s amulet tight as my trembling fingers threatened to fumble it to the ground. “So, what now?”

Death moved closer to me, wrapping his arm around my waist, which earned him a frown from his companions. Not that he seemed to care. “Now we try to figure out where the accomplice wil go next. We have to find him, or her, before the ritual is attempted again. And hopeful y before any more of these”—he hiked his thumb at the copper disk—“are created.”

I agreed. There must have been thirty souls in that construct. Where was the reaper col ecting the souls? He had to be reaping in more than just Nekros—we’d had a lot of unexplained deaths, but not that many.

I frowned at the disk. “Are you thinking the accomplice is a witch who can work glamour or a fae who can craft spel s?”

They looked at each other and shook their heads. Yeah, okay, the accomplice was a big mystery. I’d never heard of a human who could use glamour. Of course, even those fae who could use Aetheric energy—like Caleb—couldn’t create a jumble of spel s like those contained in the disk.