“A few of the Destroyers tailed the Changelings for a while to see where they’d go, but they kept morphing into different forms and splitting up until it was impossible to keep track of them, so they gave up and returned. It’s possible they were just trying to keep us guessing where the next attack will come from. If so, it worked—I’m as confused as anyone.”
You don’t know the half of it, I think. My sister is with the Changelings, that much is clear. Is she their prisoner? Or is she helping them of her own accord? Is she really helping them? Oh Trish, why did you have to leave me? I wonder.
“Laney?” Hemsworth says. I glance at him to see that the fatherly look of concern is back.
“I’m fine,” I say quickly. “Just trying to work through everything in my mind. I feel like my brain is Swiss cheese.”
“You took quite a knock on the head.”
“It was your fist,” I say, forcing a smile.
He grins back. “And yet not.”
“I’m really starting to hate Changelings,” I say.
“They make it awfully hard to tell friend from foe,” Hemsworth says, which gives me pause. What if…
“Nah,” I mutter under my breath. If the Changelings had stuck around to fight and we’d lost the battle, surely I’d be dead, not chatting with a witch pretending to be my friend. We’re still in New America and humankind is still safe. For now.
Lieutenant Hemsworth gives me a strange look, but I don’t explain my thoughts; it would probably be rude to tell him I’m worried he might be a witch or warlock.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Rhett
Of course, being witch hunters, we run toward the Necros, rather than away. Hex is yapping around my feet as if urging me on. The black-cloaked magic-born, however, don’t charge. Instead, they form a circle around the jet’s severed cabin, chanting in low voices punctuated by high wails.
I hurdle what appears to be part of the cockpit’s navigation panel, keeping my eyes peeled for signs of Xave or the Reaper. Most of the Necros’ dark hoods are pulled over their heads, casting their faces in shadow, making it nearly impossible to identify them.
When a massive plume of green smoke spouts from the airplane, Floss raises a hand and we stop just short of the magic-born, who continue chanting. She looks back at us, her eyes wild. “Get ready,” she says.
The circle of Necros parts on the side closest to us, and bodies leap from a gaping hole in the side of the downed plane. The Necros don’t cheer, don’t command, don’t do anything but watch with silent mouths and hooded eyes as their creations race toward us, a tidal wave of plane crash victims reanimated like puppets. I wonder how many passengers a Boeing-747 can hold—and how full this plane was on the night of Salem’s Revenge.
They fall upon us like wolves on fresh meat, weaponless, with only nails to gouge and teeth to bite and bones to smash.
They almost seem hungry.
Disgust fills my mouth with a bitter taste as I draw my new sword. Re-killing the dead isn’t something I relish, especially not after Pittsburgh. Beside me, Hex turns completely black, even his eyes, as if mirroring his own somber mood. A woman with a crushed skull and one of her arms hanging limply from her side—clearly dislocated—charges at me. She’s still carrying a leopard skin purse, which seems to be infused into her skin, as if the impact of the crash allowed the straps to cut into her arm, becoming one with her. She’s barefoot, and I wonder if she lost her matching leopard skin heels somewhere along the way.
She leaps at me with surprising speed and agility, reminding me that Reanimates have supernatural athletic ability, regardless of their physical nature while alive. Ducking under my sword swipe, she attempts to sink her teeth into the flesh of my face, but I also duck, letting her fly over me. Her momentum carries her a few feet where she rolls to a stop. Lifting her head, she growls, her unusually big teeth like white pearls.
Hex growls back, his black form now roping with coils of red hot embers, like the remnants of an old campfire.
When she comes again, Hex cuts her off, tackling her to the ground with enflamed paws. He climbs off of her, wagging his tail, his black eyes reflecting the fire that now spreads up her clothes engulfing her. I want to look away but I can’t, entranced by the horror of watching her burn.
Her movements jerky, she stands, her clothes gone, her skin bubbling.
I back away a step, hoping she’ll fall and die, but she doesn’t. Instead she takes a step toward me, flames eating through her already decomposing cheeks.
Both arms outstretched, she reaches for me, as if trying to give me a flaming hug. Blech.
I sever her head from her neck in a single slash, surprised when my sword splits into three separate blades, cutting down a small burnt-to-a-crisp Asian man wearing a scorched tie and carrying a briefcase, and a big man who lost his shirt somewhere, showcasing the many bloody wounds inflicted during the crash. All three die under a single stroke of Huckle’s magged-up sword.
I’ll have to thank him again later. Jury’s still out on whether I’ll thank Hex for helping; he made my first kill of the day far more disgusting than it had to be.
Around me, my fellow witch hunters are fighting hard, some more successfully than others. I watch as the bird-like girl plunges her sword through the eye socket of a small golden-haired boy, grinning wickedly before moving on to a tiny blonde who might’ve been his sister. Not far from her, the old man who’d bragged about killing fifty-six witches is being viciously bitten by a gang of five Reanimates. His scream becomes a gurgle and then silence. He’ll never kill his fifty-seventh witch now.
Bil Nez is in trouble, too, his rifle and crossbow losing their effectiveness in close quarters. He has a knife out but it’s knocked away when a heavyset Reanimate barges into him from the side. The bald man head-butts him in the face, sending blood spurting from his nose. I start to run toward him just as the man’s mouth opens, revealing bloodstained teeth. He snaps at the witch hunter’s neck, but Bil manages to hold him off with one hand, reaching behind his back with the other.
I’m too far away, but I keep sprinting, hoping Bil can buy a few more seconds.
He does better than that, grabbing a bolt from the satchel strapped to his back and shoving it into the open mouth of the hungry Reanimate. “Eat that,” he growls, shoving the big man to the side. He bucks violently and then goes still.
Bil flashes me a smile, which I return with a shout of, “Watch out!” as another Reanimate, a gangly black woman with a piece of metal plane shrapnel protruding from her chest, leaps at him from behind.
He ducks and the woman tumbles over his back and then head, sprawling out on the road. I jam my sword through her forehead, cringing at the way her eyes and mouth widen as she re-dies.
I expect Bil Nez to say thanks, but he’s already running away. Not toward the action, but away from it, like a scared puppy with his tail between his legs. I’m shocked, because Bil has never been one to run from a fight, especially not with magic-born.
Something isn’t right.
Instead of heading down the road from where we came, he ducks into the woods, looking back for a split-second, his expression a miasma of deranged darkness. Crazy Bil is back.
Hex charges after him, a black streak, but then stops when he seems to realize that the guy who’d been playing games with him is long gone, and not just because he’s now running through the woods away from us.
I consider going after Bil, but there are already three more Reanimates surrounding me, closing in with clawed hands and snapping teeth. From out of nowhere, Floss leaps between them into the circle. Her teeth are bared like an animal as we fight side by side, cutting them down like they were never fathers or mothers or brothers or sisters or daughters or sons. Cutting them down like they were never human.
Floss moves on to the next battle, seeming to methodically move through the fray to help her fellow witch hunters. She might not be the friendliest leader, but she is certainly loyal to those und
er her command.
That’s when I see an opening. Almost like the separating of a zipper, the fight seems to part before me, creating a tunnel all the way to the Necros. A sudden thrill envelopes me and the familiar heat of vengeance spills through my veins. This is their doing. People are dying and re-dying, blood is being spilt, heads are being severed…because of them. And I don’t care that Xave is one of them or that he’s convinced the Reaper and his Necromancers are doing what they’re doing for the right reasons, in the name of some absurd form of peace-seeking.
My legs churn and my arms pump and my sword flashes at my side as I race through the open lane to the Necros, who are watching the entire battle with only barely concealed glee. Hex bolts ahead of me, seeming to comprehend my purpose. The Necros see us coming and they close ranks, forming a black barrier. They raise weapons—swords and knives—but I’m not interested in any of that. What I want to see is who’s calling the shots. Who’s the Wizard of Oz behind the black curtain? Is the Reaper here?
So I fake left, fake right, and then go right up the middle, slashing hard and watching as my tri-blade chops three Necros down like pathetic saplings. Hex pounces on another, his ash-black paws setting the warlock alight. And then we’re through the circle, on the inside, my eyes frantically searching around me, Hex running in circles.
The space inside the ring is empty, save for debris, body parts, and gore. No! I scream in my head. There must be something. Anything. Some meaning to it all. My bones are tight and my muscles tighter as I charge toward the mangled airplane cabin, dimly aware of the Necros closing in behind me, my ears muffling the screams of the witch hunters as they kill and re-kill their foes.
The cabin is dark as I swing my body inside. The seats are torn and burned and strewn about like a discarded hand of cards. A Reanimate groans from beneath them, her teeth snapping and hands clawing at me as I pass. Hex stands over her for a moment, letting a bit of drool from his tongue splash her in the face, which I’d say is pretty immature of him. I stab her in the face to bring her final peace. That’s the screwed up world we live in. Death for peace.
The thought startles me, because it sounds almost exactly like a sermon preached by the Reaper.
Hex lets out a low whine and then I see him, sitting in one of the half-destroyed seats. My brother from another mother. My best friend?
Xave’s eyes are fully white, his brown irises rolled back into his head. His arms are raised overhead, his palms flat. His lips are moving, but no sound comes forth.
The last ten minutes of my life congeals into a recognizable stew of truth. Not all Necros have the power to reanimate the dead. Most of them can only provide enough magic to prepare the bodies for rebirth. Only the most powerful witches and warlocks, like Xave, can restore life.
Every passenger on the plane was brought back to life by Xave, who seems to be continuing to exert considerable effort to keep them fighting. Fighting us. Fighting witch hunters. Fighting me.
Even as I watch him with disgust, his eyes roll forward and he blinks. “Crap,” he says. “Rhett?”
I stride forward, remembering Beth, remembering her sewn-shut eyes and her chattering teeth, the way her frail voice tried to sound out my name. Rhet-t-t-t-t-t.
I grab my friend’s cloak up near his chin and lift him to his feet, slamming him against the side of the plane. Raise the tip of my sword to the brown flesh of his neck. Revenge roars through me, seeking an outlet. “How could you?” I say, not sure of exactly what I mean. How could you be a warlock? How could you bring Beth back like that? How could you bring her back at all? How could you still be doing what you’re doing?
He’s not scared of me, his eyes narrowing. “How can you still not understand?” he says. “New America doesn’t seek peace, but destruction. Your president wants to kill all the magic-born, not just those that are evil.”
“No,” I say. “She wouldn’t. We have magic-born allies.”
My statement seems to startle him, his body tensing. “What? No. But my father said…” His words trail away even as I hear the sound of feet thumping into the cabin, of blades shrieking against each other, of guns booming.
“Do what you have to,” he says. “But know that all I want is to live. All I want is peace.” His words seem so contrary to the violence that I just witnessed from his creations, creations that…wait a minute. I realize something. It’s supposed to take months to reanimate the corpses of older people, unless they’re only skeletons. And yet Xave seemed to accomplish such a feat in mere moments of us having arrived on the scene.
“Your power is growing,” I say.
“Kill me,” he says. “I can’t live if you hate me.”
The rage and sadness and anger and turmoil inside me all seem to rise in my throat at once, choking me. I could so easily send my sword through him, preventing any future evil wrought by his magic. And preventing any future good, too.
The president’s question from earlier rattles through my head: If you come face to face with your ex-best friend, Xavier Jackson, the second in command of the Necros, what will you do?
And my response: Kill him.
I cough out a sob, not because I can do it, but because I can’t. As much as I want to hate him right now, I can’t.
I can’t.
Releasing him, I push him toward the back of the plane, where there’s a ragged opening where the emergency exit used to be. “Go!” I say, shoving him out into the air. “Run!”
Xave’s entire face is a frown, even as he looks back once, twice, and then stumbles into the woods, trailed by a group of battle-worn Necros.
And when I hear a noise behind me and I turn, I see Floss staring at me, a slash of anger on her face.
“Drop your sword or I’ll make you drop it,” she says.
I drop my sword.
Chapter Forty
Trish
One of yours tried to kill her, Trish says.
In her mind she grapples with the fact that Laney was even there at all, behind the fence, protecting New America. When in the back of her mind she knows she has to kill their leader. For what reason, she knows not.
Ever since Trish has changed and become what she was always meant to be, she’s felt in control. But not now. Now she wants to scream and scream and scream, until the Changelings’ smooth skin melts and their beautiful eyes fall out and their silky hair shrivels up and turns gray.
She knows she has the power to do that, but she doesn’t. Not yet anyway. But one wrong word from the red witch and she might change her mind.
“She didn’t know,” the Changeling leader lies, pushing her perfect hair off her flawless face.
She knew, Trish says. And your people Changed into me.
“They did,” the red witch admits. “I told them to.”
Why? Trish asks. The rest of the Claires, including the tall, willowy woman with the white-blond hair, crowd around her. Are they curious or are they preparing to fight? Knowing her Children, it’s a bit of both.
Yes, why? her Children echo, their voices a chorus of susurrations in her head.
“The President of New America needs to know who’s coming for her,” the red witch says.
A memory slips into view and then slides away. A slippery memory that Trish cannot seem to get ahold of. She can’t ask the red witch why again, because that would give away the hole in her mind. Whatever the reason, it’s important that the human leader fear her approach.
But her sister. Surely seeing her face on the necks of dozens of Changelings would’ve scarred Laney. And they almost killed her, something she cannot let go unpunished.
Threat for threat, she says.
“The threat was already killed,” the red witch says. “The Changeling that attacked your sister didn’t make it. Your revenge has been satisfied.”
Not revenge, Trish says. Punishment. And the punishment goes to her who leads.
Trish is surprised at the delight she feels when the red witch’s movie-star face twitch
es. Surprised at the power she feels running through her bones. Is it right? Is she losing control of her emotions?
No. She is in control and this is right. This is just.
“What would you do to me?” the red witch asks, her face once more stoic and fearless.
Speak to your mind, Trish says.
The red witch tries to hide the fear that bubbles up beneath the surface, but Trish is already inside her, probing, feeling the icy chill running down her spine, the trembling in her hands, the bumps that rise from her skin.
“I will take your punishment,” the red witch says, her voice surprisingly stutter-free.
Trish metes out the punishment without a wave of her arm or an uttered word, her mind’s eye as sharp as a dagger. All it requires is a devilish thought. And although the red witch’s screams do not affect her concentration, she doesn’t get as much pleasure from the act as she thought she might.
When it’s all over, and the red witch is curled up in the fetal position, her lips alternating between drooling and babbling, Trish says, We attack at dawn. And no one touches my sister.
Your will is ours, Mother, her Children say. The Changelings don’t respond, just collect their broken leader and carry her away.
Before proceeding to the long white table laden with all manner of nature’s fruits, Trish makes a silent vow. She will not leave her sister’s fate to the whims of the Changelings. Despite her agreement with their leader, she will enter New Washington and face the president, as she knows she must.
Chapter Forty-One
Laney
The news reaches me well ahead of the witch hunters’ return, rolling like a wave through New Washington, all the way to the infirmary. Apparently they fought with a gang of Necros. They won, not without casualties, but there was a problem. And Rhett was involved somehow. That’s all that I know.
Despite my insistence that Hemsworth stop treating me like a child, he gave one of the infirmary caretakers strict orders to not let me leave under any circumstances. Her objections are futile as I push past her and through the door, feeling slightly dizzy as bright sunlight hits me full in the face.