The random fact startles me, because I didn’t know that. Mr. Jackson taught me so many things, supposedly everything there was to know about the Necromancers. But not that. I shake my head.
“What about the Boners?” Laney asks. “There seem to be a lot of them.”
Xave wrinkles his nose in confusion.
“The skeleton warriors,” I explain.
“Ah,” he says. “Skeletons can be raised very quickly, almost instantly. In a desperate pinch, a bunch of them can be quite useful. But they’re weak. Or at least they were. And then I created a more powerful version of them.”
“The Super-Boners,” Laney says.
“We fought them,” I add. “On the field.”
“Yes,” Xave says, nodding eagerly. “They take a week to create, but they’re less brittle, wielding nearly the same strength as a fully reanimated corpse. The only caveat is that you have to strip the bodies all the way to the bones in order to perform the magic.”
Who is he? Xavier was the one who used to cover his eyes during the scary parts of horror movies, who’d scream when the killer jumped out wearing a ski mask and carrying a bloody knife. And now he’s talking about stripping flesh off corpses? About new procedures for raising the dead?
Apparently I’m unable to hide my disgust, because Xave says, “You don’t understand anything,” and walks away.
When he’s gone, Laney says, “Freaks. All of them.” Although Xave’s my friend and I should defend him, I don’t, because I’m leaning toward agreeing with her.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Mr. Jackson’s been stopping by more and more. Sometimes staying for an hour, talking and talking and talking, and other times for just a minute, more than enough time to impart some pearl of wisdom.
Slowly, the full picture comes into view, however skewed it might be by the artist painting it:
President Washington and the New American military have built a fortified compound, which is really a refugee camp, housing thousands of human survivors. Attempts to invade the camp by rogue witch gangs have been unsuccessful so far, but it’s only a matter of time before enough gangs unite to attack. The only thing the humans have going for them is that the various witch gangs generally don’t like each other and prefer to operate independently. Mr. Jackson seems to think it’s a wonder they managed to unite long enough for Salem’s Revenge.
Bil Nez and some of the witch hunters, like The End, have been recruited by New America to kill witches. Other witch hunters, like me, operate independently, almost like a calling. While The End has been ordered to kill me on sight, it’s not their primary objective, which is to locate large groups of witches and call in air strikes. Contrary to what Bil said, it’s The End and not him who are attempting to destroy the Necros. According to Mr. Jackson, they might have succeeded if not for him convincing a sufficient number of Wardens, like Felix, to join the cause and protect Heinz Field. Bil, on the other hand, has only one objective: To kill any human Resistors, like me, who refuse to join New America. I’ve never received a formal offer to join New America, but I guess because I’m best friends with a Necro—or at least I was—I have a major target on my back.
Again, according to Xavier’s very biased father, the Necromancers are stuck in the middle between New America and the “rogue” witch gangs. He’s willing to destroy anyone who gets in the way of his version of “peace,” a world in which both witches and humans can live together in harmony. Although it sounds like a pipedream to me, I’ve listened patiently to his monologues, in hopes of gleaning as much information as possible from him.
Today, I’ve had enough.
“Why did you bring my mother back from the dead?” I say heavily.
“We need all the warriors we can get,” Mr. Jackson says.
“You say you cared about my parents?” I move closer to the bars, sticking my nose through.
Mr. Jackson nods slowly. “I did.”
“Then why would you turn my mother into a monster? She doesn’t even look human anymore.” I grit my teeth and try to fight off the memory of her grotesque, writhing body in the cage.
Mr. Jackson sighs, something he seems to do a lot these days. “It was the best I could do,” he says. Although he pauses, I can tell he’s not finished, his mouth hanging open thoughtfully. “Her soul wasn’t particularly willing.”
Seriously? Is this guy for real? If I wasn’t so flabbergasted I’d probably try to bend the magged-up bars with my bare hands.
“Would yours be?” Laney asks. “Your soul, I mean. Would you want to come back as some monstrosity?”
Without missing a beat, Mr. Jackson says, “Yes.”
I let out a sarcastic scoff.
“No, I’m serious,” he says. “To help our cause, I’d do almost anything. But I understand your mother’s reluctance. She probably wanted to be with your father—on the other side.”
“I’m sorry,” Laney says, not sounding sorry at all, “but I don’t know anyone who would want to come back like a zombie. Not even a freak like you.”
“She’s not a zombie,” Mr. Jackson says, sounding annoyingly patient. “She’s a Reanimate. And her new life will help the world find peace once more.”
“So you want to create an army of the dead in order to make peace?” I say, summarizing. Laney laughs at the sarcasm in my voice.
“You think I’m evil,” Mr. Jackson says.
“Yes,” I say. “And I don’t believe you. Once your army destroys anyone getting in the way of ‘peace,’ then what?”
“I call them off.”
“You call off the walking dead?”
“They’re Reanimates, not zombies,” Mr. Jackson reiterates.
“I’m not sure I see the difference.”
“One day perhaps you will,” he says in his usual cryptic way.
“You’ll never stop,” I say. “Not until you control everything.”
“I’m not looking for power, Rhett,” he says. “Only to make your parents’ and my wife’s sacrifice worth something.” With that, he turns, his cloak whirling around his feet, and walks away.
~~~
The following day arrives thunderously.
I awake to the ground rumbling and Laney shouting. “What’s going on?” she yells.
I try to stand, but the ground moves and I stumble over, scraping my knee. “I don’t know!” I yell back.
Footsteps slap the stone.
Xavier appears, skidding to a stop, water sloshing from the sides of a bucket he’s carrying. “Xave! What’s happening?” I drag myself to the bars.
Xavier’s eyes are wild, panicked. There are streaks of blood on his face and hands. He shoves the bucket to the ground, nearly spilling it. In his other hand there’s a knife, a bar of soap, and a wiry scrub brush, the bristly kind you’d use to clean crusty dishes.
When the knife clatters to the ground, I see the ribbons of blood slithering from it.
The ground shakes.
A heavy BOOM-BOOM-BOOOOOM! echoes through the dungeon corridors.
He doesn’t look at me, just crouches and dunks his hands in the bucket, retracts them, and starts furiously scrubbing his hands with the soap and brush.
“Xave!” I say, but my friend is gone, somewhere else, a place beyond hearing. He keeps scrubbing, dunking, scrubbing some more, even as new explosions shake the plastic bucket, chattering it along the stone. I say his name a few more times, but if he hears me, he doesn’t acknowledge it.
“Carter, what’s going on?” Laney says.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I say. Somehow.
My shell-shocked friend is our only option, and I have an idea. “Where’s Beth?” I shout as loudly and as forcefully as I can.
Xave’s head snaps toward me, as if someone has slapped him from the other side. His eyes lock on mine and widen, as if he’s just now realizing that I’m here. For a second, he stops scrubbing, and then continues, more violently than before.
He speaks. “Fathe
r’s taught me to do things…”—he stops, seems to rethink his words, continues”—…I’ve done things…”—back to his hands, scrubbing harder and harder, turning them redder and redder, like hot coals. “No matter how hard I scrub, I can still see the blood on my hands.”
His hands are perfectly clean, and yet I know exactly what he means. “Yeah, me, too,” I say, although I know it’s different for him. Our conversations feel like they’ve become a confessional between friends.
“You have?” he says, his expression so child-like and innocent, although I know it’s hiding acts that are anything but.
“Yes,” I say. “This world has changed us all. We’re harsher than we want to be. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have the chance to turn back, to find redemption in doing the right thing.” Like getting us the hell out of here.
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” Xavier says, finally dropping the soap and brush into the bucket. “Thank you, Rhett. Thank you for understanding. You’ll be safer here.”
He stands and runs off amidst shaking ground and rattling bars and thunder in the distance, even as I shout my best friend’s name at the top of my lungs.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Laney’s screaming as loudly as I am, a piercing shriek that surely carries well beyond the dungeon confines.
Behind me, there’s a long and pronounced CRAAACKing sound. I twist around to find the stone floor opening up, gravity grabbing shards and chunks of rock and sucking them into a black void. I cling to the bars like a lifeline, even as the floor tumbles away beneath me.
Hurried and anxious voices spill out from somewhere to the left, but I’m too busy bicycling my legs and clutching the bars to think about what it means.
And then the bars are gone and I’m falling, falling…forward?...hitting the stone floor, directly on my still-injured shoulder—which screams and hammers and explodes with pain—rolling and crashing into the rock-hard wall.
The ground shakes and my shoulder roars and strong hands pull me to my feet, two on each side, under my arms. To my left there’s a shimmer of blond hair and Laney’s determined face, grunting at my weight. And to my right…
The blacker-than-night beggar, his face contorted and split with what appears to be agony. Even as I stare at him, he backs away, excruciating pain causing him to shake his head and grit his teeth and ball his fists, and then he’s running, down the corridor and away from us.
There’s no time to think, as small rocks and dust begin raining from above, tearing loose from the straining dungeon ceiling. We give chase, following the shadow of the beggar, who’s suddenly so fast, sprinting effortlessly on the unsteady ground.
We plunge into terrifying darkness, and for a few moments I think we might meet our end when we knock ourselves out running headlong into a stone wall. But no…
A window of light appears up ahead, unobstructed. Which means we just have to run in a straight line and we’ll make it.
We’ll make it.
The beggar’s profile appears in the light, not twenty strides ahead, and then—
BOOM!
A particularly powerful and teeth-chattering explosion sends larger chunks of rock pelting at my back and hammering my hands, which I throw up to protect my head. And before us, the light disappears and we’re thrust into complete darkness.
~~~
I stop and Laney crashes into me, clutching at my arms to keep us both from tumbling to the ground, and for three heart-pounding seconds, we can’t see a thing.
A light appears.
The beggar is still in the tunnel with us, his face orange and ghostly in the eerie light, which appears to be jetting from his fingertips.
Why didn’t he escape when he had the chance?
Doesn’t matter, he’s here now, and without him we’d be blind. We make for him, and with each step I can see the pain on his face, forcing his mouth into a crooked line and his eyes shut. What’s wrong with him? Clearly he needs medical attention.
We reach him and he manages to motion to the boulder blocking the entrance, a slab of rock ripped from the wall. Using sign language, he conveys his absurd plan. I’ll lift the boulder and you run out. Then I’ll follow.
“But how can you—” I start to say, but I’m cut off when the barrier begins to rise and a sliver of white light creeps in along the floor.
My gaze snaps back to the man, who’s in a fighter’s stance, his knees bent, his arms outstretched, his eyes closed, concentrating.
And the giant, impossibly heavy rock floats upward with a groan and a crunch and a scrape.
“Go!” Laney shouts, diving for the floor and snake-slithering through.
I follow, sliding under, but then I pause in the worst possible spot: directly beneath the tons of rock hovering above me, enough weight to crush me into human marmalade. Stupidly, I twist around and squirm back, jutting my head back into the tunnel.
“How will you get out?” I shout, and the man’s eyes flutter open, a look of horror and fear and pain evident in his stare, which is wide-eyed one second and then cringing and narrowed the next. He gives a single nod toward the entrance, and then shuts his eyes tight once more.
He fades away as strong arms drag me through the opening, and I claw at the rock, shouting for the man to follow us.
Rumpled and dirt-powdered, Laney drags me to my feet, all on her own this time, as if I weigh next to nothing rather than a couple hundred pounds. “What was that?” she says, hitting me in the chest.
As if in response to her question, the boulder collapses with a heavy crash.
“No,” I whisper.
“He’s gone,” Laney says. “Whoever he was, he’s gone, and we’ll be dead, too, if we don’t move!”
We have no other choice, so we run counterclockwise along what is clearly the stadium’s atrium, an oval ring that surrounds the field’s bleachers, where vendors would normally sell hotdogs and sodas and popcorn during a game.
Lifeless—thankfully—corpses and skeletons hang from the ceiling above us.
An opening appears to the left and we take it, darting down a path that leads onto the field.
Ahead: chaos.
Fireballs arc across the sky, landing in explosions of blue and green flames, setting hooded witches and warlocks alight; they run screaming across the grass, which is burnt and charred in most places. Electricity crackles and scorches from the sky, where Volts attack from above, riding chariots pulled by the Destroyers, whose petrification attacks fill the air with nearly invisible ripples. Black-cloaked witches turn to stone and then crumble in little piles.
It’s mutiny, I realize, gaping at the scene. Mr. Jackson was right. Our only hope of survival was being tucked away in the dungeon, out of sight of the other witches and warlocks.
Laney realizes it at the same time. “The Necros’ allies are attacking them from the inside,” she says.
“We’ve got to find Beth and Xavier,” I say, not caring that my confused friend ran off without helping us and that Beth is surely dead. “Before it’s too late.”
“We will,” Laney says.
To the left, a horde of Necros have gathered by a rack where weapons—swords and guns and knives—are kept. To the right, dozens of other Necromancers are chanting in low tones, their arms raised above their heads, the nearby cauldrons smoking and shaking.
“They’re trying to raise the dead early,” Laney murmurs.
Above us, there’s a massive BOOM! and yellow mist bursts along a curved arc, as if there’s an enormous glass dome above us. “The wards,” I say. “New America is testing the wards, looking for weaknesses.”
“If they find one, we’re all dead,” Laney says grimly.
“We have to hope they don’t find one until we find my friends. Weapons,” I say, motioning back the other direction.
We skirt along the bleachers, staying low, trying to avoid being seen. Both sides have their hands full, and don’t seem to notice a couple of human teenagers sneaking along.
The Necros, now fully armed, charge into the fray, slashing and shooting at any witches that get in their way.
I sift through the picked-over rack. An unopened chest rests off to the side. I open it. “Laney!” I hiss. I grab my sword and her Glock, handing it to her. “Thank you, Mr. Jackson,” I mumble, because clearly he’s kept our weapons safe and hidden for us, just in case we decided to join his cause.
Laney snatches one of Huckle’s magged-up grenades for good measure.
“For Beth?” Laney says, raising her gun.
“For Beth,” I agree, raising my sword.
We follow the Necros into the battle.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
A Volt dies, surprise all over her face when I block the electricity crackling from her fingertips and send it back at her. I stare at my hands, shocked that I’m still alive and the witch is dead. Now that I realize my resistance to magic, there’s so much more I can do.
With uncontrolled glee, I whirl and spin and push every ounce of my focus into resisting the magic-filled air around me. Fireballs change direction, spinning off and colliding with witches and warlocks and wizards. Bolts of lightning aimed at my head skip away and sizzle into the bleachers. Destroyers who make the mistake of trying to turn me to stone find themselves frozen into rock statues. I don’t know exactly how I do it, just that it comes naturally to me—almost like instinct. It’s impossible, and yet, everything in my life is impossible so I guess I fit right in, a freak amongst freaks.
Laney’s gun continues to sound, and I can hear the cries of her victims. She doesn’t discriminate; both the Necros and their enemies die in waves as she uses Huckle’s parting gifts. When she chucks Huckle’s grenade into a pile of witches, it splits into a dozen smaller incendiaries and explodes in a shower of purple sparks that send magical body parts flying in all directions.
The chanting Necros have managed to raise a few creatures from the cauldrons, but they’re not fully formed. The monsters pull themselves out of their incubators, dripping with the noxious brew, barely able to stand. Their enemies kill them without discretion, and then turn on their creators, the chanting Necros.