Revenant (35 page)

For
the moment, I was in control again.

On
the spot where Mildred had stood there was only the dark cloud. It was twice as
big as before and still growing. My chest tightened with worry. Was Mildred
inside it? Did she use her magic to teleport away before it hit her?

Anger
roared through me, blasting away the last remnants of confusion and doubt that
clung to me. I felt the strength of it pumping through my blood. Gage had
turned me into his plaything. He forced me to
marry
him. I felt sick all the way to my core.
He needs to pay for what he did to me
. With lethal intent, I raised
my hands, and after a moment, heard howls on the wind. My spirit pack. I was
finally free to use my powers.

In
the back of my mind, I felt something else answer my call—not the pack,
but something not alive, something mystical and strangely familiar. I could
feel it closing in from several directions. After a moment, it clicked—I
was sensing the zombies. Those that were still able and intact were coming to
my aid.

Dark,
misty shapes whipped through the air. As they neared, I felt their excitement
building, pounding in my head.
They will
protect me. They will keep me safe
. I focused everything in me on one figure:
Gage. He was wielding the blazing red sword in the middle of the square,
hacking away at the growing bramble.

In
a rush, my pack surrounded
him,
their
howls and deep growls ringing out into the night.

“Colina!”
I heard my name called out and searched for the source. It was Dean. A group of
men surrounded him. He was on the ground, and a
dark-haired
man sporting a goatee loomed over him with a dagger held high, ready to strike.

I
raced for him, but two steps in realized there was no way I could get there in
time. My heart slammed into my throat, and I watched in horror as the blade flashed
down, heading straight for Dean’s heart.

A
stream of fire flew through the air. It hit Dean’s attackers and they burst
into flames. Dean rolled away as the man standing over him shrieked and fell to
the ground, his whole body on fire.

I frantically scanned the chaotic crowd to find
the source of the fire. Caleb stood on the other side of the square—his
hands ablaze with orange and red flames.
Caleb?
Caleb
did that?
He used his
hellfire to save Dean.
Caleb,
my sworn enemy, killed his
own
men. It
didn’t make any sense. Why would he help us?
Caleb’s eyes locked with mine and his flames
went out. Confusion filled his face and he cried out my name, but just then a
small voice caught my attention.

“You’re ruining all my plans.”

Even without looking, I knew it was
the demon
child. I turned to face her. The
creature walked with a determined little-girl gait, swinging its disturbing
doll. It abruptly flung the toy straight at me and it hit me in the chest with
unnatural force, throwing me off my feet.

I fell with a jarring thud into the mud, raising
a spray of brown water into the air. Blinking through my spotty vision, I
slowly lifted my head off the ground, pressed my hand to my aching chest, and
saw the demon child heading my way. Its eyes
were
deep
red, blazing with power and anger.

Move
,
a voice in my head screamed. My battered body throbbing in agony, I pushed to
my feet.
The demon girl stalked closer,
her face contorted in rage.
Surely it wouldn’t
kill me. It wanted me to release the
legion
.
It needed my magic. It wouldn’t hurt me…unless I had angered it beyond reason.

I
braced myself, sure it would get close enough to strike a killing blow, when zo
mbies suddenly flooded into the square
from out of the darkness.

Most were in bad shape—bloated bodies
with missing limbs—but they were still capable of doing damage. The
zombies began to attack Gage’s men. I had somehow called them and forced them
to fight. The demon and I both paused, distracted by their appearance.

A group of the zombies closed in on the demon,
circling slowly around it and moving to block its path toward me. The child would
have looked harmless, if not for its unearthly eyes, which were now glowing
with otherworldly power. The menace they exuded gave even the fearless zombies
pause, but it didn’t stop them from attacking. As they clashed, broken and
twisted bodies began to fly like cannonballs through the air.

Around
me, chaos reigned.
I couldn’t
see if the zombies were having any effect on the demon—but their fearless
aggression and numbers changed the tide of battle. The huge amount of damage
they could take while continuing to fight was daunting. I saw a zombie missing
an arm and with a hole blasted through his abdomen tackle a huge man swinging
an axe. Immediately three more undead jumped on the struggling pair. When they
rose, the man on the ground was torn to pieces.

Screams
of rage and anger filled the air and mixed with the clash of thunder and the
roar of the pelting rain. As I gazed around, I saw groups of zombies battling
Gage’s supporters, fading in and out of the darkness. The decorative red spotlights
were gone
. The square
was thrown
into darkness, lit only by the
moon’s faint glow through the clouds, flashes of lightning, and whatever
candles were still lit. Through it all, a glowing red trail flowed through the
darkness. Gage’s sword of blood created a pool of sickly red light,
illuminating him as if in a splash of bloody color and casting long shadows
behind him. Zombies rushed at him in steady tide, appearing in flashes of
crimson—only to fall in sprays of blood, made black by the red light. He
was on the far side of the clearing from me, but his presence still called to
me with a siren call.

A
flash of lightning showed Dean fighting hand to hand with two men dressed in
black. As I watched, he broke the wrist of one of his attackers.
He was incredibly strong and fast, but it didn’t seem
like he had turned berserker yet. His eyes weren’t glowing, and he moved with mere
human strength and speed. I watched him get hit by the magic whizzing through
the air. Why wasn’t he turning berserker? I expected the magic bouncing through
the battle would turn him, and he’d go on a mindless killing spree. How was
Dean controlling his powers? I didn’t know, but I thanked the Goddess for it.

Out
of the corner of my eye, I saw bright colors flare through the night around Caleb.
He was fighting for his life as Gage’s pet death dealers hurled spell after
spell at him. In
the seconds
I watched,
Caleb’s blazing fire engulfed a very small, very pale death dealer. The man went
down, screaming as he burned, but Caleb paid him no mind. He’d already moved on
to another death dealer whose wispy banshees were no match for Caleb’s powerful
fire.

The
nearly healed burns on my leg throbbed as I watched him fight, remembering the pain
he’d inflicted on me. Confusion filled me as I watched one of my worst enemies
use evil magic to fight on my side. Why was he doing it? Why was he helping us?
I shook my head to clear it—no matter whose side he was really on, now
was not the time to contemplate it.

I’d
been dazed and confused, standing by while the others fought, not sure where to
go. But now a clear thought pounded through my head, driving away any thoughts
of finding Gage—the demon child was here. There was nothing stopping me
from using my magic on the creature. I could finally try to destroy it.

I began to search for the demon in the madness,
but was distracted as the smaller number of newly made zombies entered the
battle. It had taken longer for them to reach the battle from the lab deep in
the mine. They moved more quickly and with more menace than the earlier models.
They were in all different stages of the mummification process, some with
burial wrappings flapping around them, and some with none at all. One with
complete wrappings paused by me, and a voice I recognized called out to me.

“That’s right, girly, you get out of this
madhouse
! We’ve got this. We’ll show these boys
not to mess with our girl.”

It was Wanda. The absurdity of the whole
thing
actually
made me laugh out loud.
Wanda—a spirit that had tried to take me over during the second death
dealer ritual—had somehow stalked me here to this remote place. And now she
was trying to protect me.

Wanda rushed straight into the fray, killing
a black-garbed man with a powerful swing that almost took his head off. I heard
the sound of her laughter as she waded deeper into the chaos, and then she disappeared,
entirely surrounded by a group of fighting bodies.

A flash of lightning illuminated the night
for a long moment, crawling along the underside of the clouds from one end of
the horizon to the other. Everything seemed frozen in that instant of stark
light, a painting of unbelievable violence with a little girl demon at its
center. It stood in the middle of the carnage, staring at me fixedly. Even from
my periphery, I could feel the awful force of its gaze.

As
for Gage, I could only see the trails of reddish light his sword made as he
swung it at my spirit pack. I turned to face the demon.

It
stood there like an unruly child having a temper tantrum. The torn and shredded
bodies of zombies and mummies lay in piles around it, still writhing like a
bundle of broken snakes, but the demon looked untouched.

I’d brought the creature into this world, and
I needed to send it straight back to hell. But I had no idea what to do—all
the magic I’d performed so far had come from following my instincts. I closed
my eyes and concentrated on the darkness inside me and all around me, pulling
it close. I let it slide across my skin, let it fill me up. I felt the energy
tingling through me. And then I opened my eyes—looking at the demon child’s
amused expression—and raised my hands.

I didn’t know if I could kill this evil
thing, but like Mildred, I was ready to die trying. There would be no need to
bring Luke up from hell—there was a very real chance that in seconds I
would be joining him.
At least we’ll finally
be together.
I raised my hands higher and began to call on the power
building inside of me.

A
lightning bolt struck the ground between us. The look of surprise on the
child’s face mirrored mine. We both turned in unison to see Mildred approaching
quickly from a few feet away. Her face showed overwhelming fear as she said, “No,
child, you won’t survive this fight. You aren’t strong enough…yet.” Her hair
and clothes crackled with electricity. I could see the energy glimmering off
her skin and sparkling at her fingertips. When she was close enough, she
reached out and touched me, and I felt electricity race through me.

I
screamed out as all the dark power I’d built up shimmered away and I fell to my
knees.
What is Mildred thinking? She’s
supposed to help me!

“Boy,
get her out of here!” Mildred shouted.

Hands
grabbed me from behind and lifted me up, settling me over a man’s shoulders. I protested,
struggling against my captor’s grasp.

“Colina.
No, let her go!” I looked up to see Dean running toward me. He’d almost reached
me when Mildred raised her hands and sent a bolt of electricity right into the
middle of him.

“No!”
I screamed.

I
was being carried away, hanging upside down. I slammed my fist into the wide
back I was being jostled against. Who had me? How could I make them let me go?

From
my helpless, awkward vantage point I watched as Mildred struck him again and the
boy I knew disappeared. Whatever control Dean had been able to wield up until
now was gone. In his place stood something monstrous. A berserker. His yellow
eyes shone brightly in the dark.

I
watched, terrified, as
D
ean
grabbed the arm of a huge man running past him carrying an
axe
. The man spun and tried to swing the
axe
at Dean, but before it was even
halfway
through its arc, Dean ripped his arm off.
Using it as a club, he beat
the man
to
death with his
own
limb. The arm
disintegrated under the force of Dean’s swings—blood and bone became shrapnel
and shredded its victim.

Dean
dropped the still-twitching limb and
was gone
so fast that my eyes couldn’t follow him. He reappeared alarmingly close, but
his attention
was immediately captured
as
every enemy in the square focused their magic on him. They clearly had no idea
it would only make him stronger. At the asylum, I’d watched him grow more
powerful every time Mildred and Weatherton hit him with their magic. Under the
onslaught, the yellow glow of Dean’s eyes spread to his entire body. When he moved
again,
he was, if possible, even faster—like
lightning flashing across the ground.

As
I
was carried
past Gage, I saw that he
was still standing, sword swinging through the air, black blood running out
from gashes across his body.
My
spirit pack was pressed against him, flashing in and out of existence. Many of
the
pack
bled
their shadowy essence from dark wounds, and I understood too late that Gage’s
blood sword seemed able to reach into the spirit world. I cried out in horror
and shame at the cost they were paying to heed my call.