Page 30

I spotted an Indian sadhu wearing only a loincloth and a lot of ashes, the latter having turned his limbs and long, matted dreadlocks almost as pale as the ghosts flitting about.Or as his entourage, which consisted of a group of skeletons held together with a little sinew and a lot of magic.A whole lot, I thought, as it took a great deal of power to keep bodies that far gone operational.

And he was keeping a lot of them.I watched in awe as more than twenty skeletons passed by the dead tree under which we’d taken refuge, their bones softly clacking as they moved.A few had a little dried meat still discoloring their bodies in places, but more were a bright white that bones rarely reach unless bleached by years in the sun.I stood there, wondering how long it had taken them to turn that hue when what I should have been doing was making sure they didn’t do that, I thought, when one of their hands brushed Gray Curl’s cloak—

And it latched hold.

The tattered garment had been whipping slightly in the wind, or possibly with a mind of its own, becoming more animated with all the dark magic in the air.And it had just grabbed the skeletal zombie arm with its flat, tanned digits and wasn’t letting go.The zombie stopped abruptly, and up ahead, the sadhu stopped with it.

Of course he did, I thought savagely.That thing probably felt like an extension of his body as he animated it with a bit of his soul!How he’d animated so many when, in my time, a necro was lucky to manage three, I didn’t know, but then, the old rules seemed to have gone out the window, hadn’t they?

And now, he was walking back this way.

Alphonse tensed beside me, but I didn’t think his patented eat-‘em-before-they-can-yell routine was going to work this time.“Stay put,” I hissed and stepped out in front of Gray Curls before the sadhu reached us.

I bowed low before him, mainly because it kept my less-than-convincing face toward the ground.

“My apologies,” I said hoarsely.“My servant is new and too feisty for his own good—or mine.”

I reached out and pulsed enough necro magic through the misbehaving cloak to get it to release the zombie’s hand, and to my surprise, it worked.Even more surprisingly, it didn’t pop my own disguise, something I hadn’t even thought about until the magic had already left my body.And then all I could do was hold my breath and wait for whatever was going to happen next, only nothing did.

Except that I seemed to have caught the sadhu’s attention.

“You are new?”he said after a pause.“I do not recognize you.”

“Just came in tonight,” I deepened the bow by going down to one knee.Because it was either that or stand up, and I couldn’t stand up!

“And all these are yours?”I felt him send a little tendril of power around my group, touching lightly, almost politely, but enough to confirm that, yes, they were indeed dead.Or at least, the things they wore that obscured their magic were.

“Yes, your...Grace,” I replied because I had no idea what to say, and groveling seemed to be working.

“I care nothing for titles,” he told me loftily, but his voice sounded pleased.“But your arrival is well-timed.You should join us for dinner after the entertainment.”

“You are too kind,” I rasped.

“Not at all.The demonologists grow too many and seek to challenge our authority.A new, powerful practitioner is welcome.Come, I will introduce you.”

“I—you honor me,” I said, furiously thinking.Because if I stood up, he was going to notice my slack-jawed face, but if I didn’t, he was going to find that suspicious, too!But no way could we fight him without drawing the attention of everybody in the vicinity, andthatwas likely to get us—

“Boned,” Alphonse muttered from above my head.But he didn’t do anything because something happened at the same moment, only I didn’t know what.Power rippled across my skin, enough to cause a shudder to go through me, and I guessed the sadhu felt it, too, because he spat something in another language that sounded like a curse.

“What ishedoing here?”he snarled and turned away before snapping his fingers at me like a dog.“Come along, and hurry.We’re going to need all the help we can get.”

He and his skeleton army swept off, and before I knew it, I was back on my feet and being hustled along behind him, but not because some of his boys had caught me.But because one of mine had.“Put your game face on,” Alphonse hissed, dragging me along while our group crowded close around us.

“What?”I stared around in confusion.

“You used necromancy back there,” Topknot said rapidly from my other side, where she began puffing a bit from the pace.“Don’t tell me you didn’t!”

“Of course I did.I had to!And what the hell—”

“Well, that’sdark magic, isn’t it?”she demanded.“It’s control over the dead!So, do it again and fix your face!You look like your skin is sliding off your bones!”

Probably because it was, I thought, sending a tendril of necromancy into the cloak and feeling it almost immediately firm up around me.Which was less than pleasant as it suddenly felt like I was wearing a dead skin facial mask.But I barely noticed, being too busy paying attention to what had just appeared in the sky overhead.

Shit.

“Demon!” the call rippled through the crowd while I stared at a golden chariot worthy of a god but not being driven by one that was tearing through the skies.It was drawn by a group of snarling, snapping, crimson creatures I couldn’t name, but that looked a little like dragons if they were composed of fire instead of breathing it.They were constantly writhing and changing appearance, like dancing flames.

But they weren’t the main show, at least as far as I was concerned.No, not even close.Because the man driving that whole monstrosity, which lit up the skies like a small red sun, was another familiar figure.