The Culling Trials 3 (Shadowspell Academy #3)(6)
I didn’t tell her she was wrong. That warning system, as she called it, had been saving my butt most of my life and since I’d arrived here, it had kicked into high gear.
She stepped to the right, her hand trailing over the tops of the gravestones closest to her, a sigh slipping from her lips. “The dead are so quiet, so simple. So much easier to talk to than the living.”
“How big is this magical graveyard?” I asked.
“Acres and acres,” she said. “Miles upon miles.”
Pete let out a groan. “I’m shifting. If we’re going to be running for long distances, I’d prefer to do it as a honey badger.”
I didn’t disagree with him—he was much more agile in his animal form, and far more aggressive, which wasn’t a bad thing in the least. The fact that he said nothing about his clothes told me just how worried he was. He just stripped, tossed his clothes to the side and shifted to his four-legged form.
I reached out and put a hand on Wally, slowing her. “Just take it easy. We don’t want to fight or run until we have to.”
“Agreed,” she whispered. “There is another necromancer here. He is starting to call the dead to life. I’ve only ever tried to handle two or three at a time. Zombies that is.”
“Crap,” Ethan whispered, his fear all but tangible. I glanced back at him. He and Orin were side by side, Pete waddling along between them and us, sniffing at the graves. Orin’s eyes glittered in the darkness, and for the first time I was worried about him.
Not that he wouldn’t make it.
But that he might have been setting us up. According to Rory, vampires were in on this, maybe even behind it. Mason’s roommate also thought a vampire was involved with his disappearance. Could Orin have been playing us all along? Vampires hated necromancers, so why had he defended Wally? Thoughts and questions rolled through me like tiny bolts of lightning.
A slow grin spread across Orin’s face, and my heart picked up, adrenaline lacing each beat.
What if the vampire Rory had warned me about wasn’t Jared, or some nameless blood sucker?
What if it was Orin?
Chapter 3
I didn’t have time to consider just how deep a game Orin was playing, if he was friend or foe, or whether he would stand by us now that we were here in his house. The graveyard we stood in trembled beneath our feet, the ground rumbling and rocking. A roll of earth rippled toward us like a wave in the ocean, and with it came a warning that was so thick it seemed to smother my lungs, freezing the air in them.
We were in serious trouble.
“Jump!” I said as the wave in the ground got close, and we all leapt into the air. Well, with the exception of Pete, who was tossed up by the rolling earth, flipped like an oversized pancake. His paws scrabbled outward as he twisted, reaching in four separate directions, his teeth bared and his tail jutting straight up before he fell back down. I landed in a crouch, fist to the ground.
The ground gave beneath me, like it had turned into a pile of quicksand. I quickly rolled away, but there wasn’t far to go. All around us the ground sunk and dropped around the different markers. “The graves.”
“The dead are being wakened!” Wally stood in the center of our group, her head thrown back, her hands outstretched. “The necromancer…oh God, he’s so strong! How can he do this? This isn’t supposed to be possible!”
“You said two or three zombies at best, that’s what you can handle?” I spun in a slow circle, counting the graves coming to life. Five, six, seven… ten, twelve, fifteen.
I stopped counting when I realized every single grave was stirring.
Every. Single. One.
Hands, elbows, tops of heads and shoulders pulled themselves free of the now softened ground, clawing their way toward us. Most hands were partially decomposed, others were straight up skeletal with tattered rags hanging off them. Only a few were solid, still holding muscle and bone together with actual flesh—even if that flesh was more than a little decomposed. The smell that wafted up with the emerging bodies sent us all stumbling back, Ethan gagging, and Orin pulling a face. I tried to breathe just through my mouth, but I could taste the rotting flesh which was far worse than just smelling them.
Time to move. “Wally, tell me you can slow them down!” I grabbed her arm and dragged her through the middle of the graveyard, assuming the others would follow, picking up speed as I searched for the best path between the dead, grasping bodies. The three guys stuck close, Orin falling to the back as I tried to find us a way out that didn’t involve going over graves.
A hand shot out toward my ankle and I kicked it away, snapping it off at the wrist.
Fore! Pete’s voice reverberated through my head as his honey badger form chittered.
“Not playing golf, Pete!” I sidestepped a pair of hands that came at us, closer to knee height. “Keep your wand out, Ethan!” I hollered.
“Really, Sherlock? I thought I’d let them take us.” He snapped back then yelped and a burst of light shot up behind us. The darkness and fog faded for the space of two strides, and in that brief moment I could see, we were in far bigger trouble than I’d realized.
Acres of graveyard was an understatement. There was no end to it that I could see, no wall at the far side. And every grave was moving, every occupant climbing out.