Wounded(40)

That didn’t slow the others, or more pointedly, Pamela.

“Look,” I finally barked, coming to a standstill on the south side of the Charlestown Bridge. “It was personal. It has nothing to do with any of you or this fucking salvage or whatever the hell this is.”

I started across the bridge, my eyes taking in the heavy utilitarian girders, focused on everything but my team ranging in behind me. Near the middle of the span I stopped and let them catch up.

“I went to see my adoptive parents.”

Pamela’s breath caught and I knew that she, of all those who stood with me, would understand. Her own parents had handed her over to a handful of overzealous priests to have her ‘exorcised’ of the ‘demons’ in her.

“What did they say?” She slid a hand over one of mine as the first flakes of snow dropped from the sky.

“My father wants me to come back to see them,” I whispered the words, still unsure how I felt about that. Happy, freaked out, uncertain. Erik said nothing, but there was understanding in his eyes. Family was important to him too. Berget was unreadable, and for that I was grateful. I wasn’t sure what she thought about our parents. I wondered how much she even remembered of them.

Frank was the last one I thought would have anything helpful to say. But he shocked me. “Parents love you, even when they are afraid of you. They can’t help it; they will always want to believe the best of their kids. Even my mom was like that, with me raising the dead when I couldn’t help it; I scared her so badly she passed out on a regular basis. But she still loved me. Even when she asked me to move in with my uncle.”

I turned to look at him, and in his young eyes I saw a wisdom that shouldn’t have surprised me. “Thanks. You’re right, I guess.” I blew out breath, catching a few flakes of snow and spinning them away from my face. “That being said, we still have a job to do. We have to take out the covens and get those kids away.” I refrained from mentioning that one of those kids was already lost to us. “To be safe, we’ll stake them out for a bit.”

“We aren’t going in right away?” Pamela asked as we headed over the last half of the bridge.

“No, we need to see if we can figure out the best way in and out, where Frank will place his friends, and see if we can find out where the witches are exactly.”

The threads of the coven were growing stronger, getting closer with each step we took. There was very little time before we’d have to go in and face the black witches, rescue the two kids who hadn’t been possessed, and kill the one who had been taken over by a demon.

Yup, good times ahead.

Tracking the witches was easy. Simple. And we found them at the Navy Shipyard.

Contrary to the name, there was no navy waiting for us. A shipyard for repairs and construction on big boats. Yeah, I know, not very technical but I was no boat buff. The docks were not active; the night had cleared out most of the humans. Good and bad, it was harder for us to blend in when it was just us walking the docks as compared to say the bustle of mid-day.

“How close are we?” Erik asked, breaking the silence.

I stopped and looked to the far end of the docks, an old navy ship in the farthest berth bobbed lightly in the water. I squinted, using my measly second sight, and could see the lay of spells on the hull. They shimmered and danced in the blowing snow. If I didn’t know that it was black magic and witches, I would have thought the boat almost pretty. “That one, at the end. Why?”

Erik didn’t answer me. Instead he asked Frank a question. “How many dead can you sense?”

The kid cocked his head to one side, as if listening for voices only he could hear. “There’s a lot of dead people around here.”

But I had a suspicion I knew what he was talking about.

“In the water?”

He nodded and pointed to a rope ladder that spun down to touch the dark water. “Yeah, there are a lot in the water, but to get them up to the dock might take a bit of work. Zombies aren’t known for being coordinated.”

“I can lift them if there is a part of them dry from the salt water,” Pamela said. “But like I said, the other witches will be able to sense me working my magic, so I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”

Berget tipped her head. “If there was something solid for me to stand on, I could throw the zombies onto the boat.”

Neither option looked good.

Crap, without a secure way to bring the zombies out of the water, I wasn’t sure it was going to be worth it.

“Frank, are there any dead bodies closer? Some from dry ground, perhaps?”

He rubbed his forehead. “No, sorry there aren’t.”