Last Rites (Darkling Mage 6)

I wasn’t going to argue with Royce. Not on that point. On the very next step, I released my body’s hold on our reality, letting myself fall into my own shadow. I fell quickly into the Dark Room, allowing myself to sprawl across its horrible, leathery ground. I could’ve kissed it. Somewhere, back in the real world, the Overthroat’s laser had probably just annihilated an entire section of forest.

My chest heaved as I panted, gasping for air in the already stifling environment of the Dark Room. Wait. That meant that the Overthroat was probably getting ready to fire another one of its fucking beams.

I groaned, pushing myself off the floor, carefully depositing Vanitas’s scabbard in my backpack. Idiot, I thought. He was too gung-ho. I tried my best not to let the actual distressing thought of him possibly dying linger, but there it was, clouding the back of my mind with its miasma.

No, I thought, heading towards the closest exit, a pinpoint of light at the end of the tunnel. Vanitas was fine. He was just – asleep. Something about the Overthroat’s alien physiology had numbed him, put him dormant. Maybe a nullification field that dulled out Vanitas’s enchantment. All we had to do was kill the fucker, and V would come back again.

I stuck my chest out, clenching my jaw as I strode out of the Dark Room and reentered reality. Easy. No problem.

“Dust,” Herald shouted, his eyes huge, his fingers digging into my shoulders. “I told you to be careful, what the fuck were you – ”

“I’m okay,” I said. I’d chosen to return to Valero on a patch of earth right beside him, because I’m all about flourishes and big entrances, you know? Even in the face of death. I smiled at him. “I’m totally fine. You didn’t have to worry so much.”

“I wasn’t worried,” he said, flustering, retrieving his hands. “It’s not like I – ”

“Listen,” I said. “We’re going to have to do better with this communication thing. I know you care, and you know I care enough that I came back right here, right next to you. So you wouldn’t be afraid.” I gestured at myself. “See? All in one piece. Every perfect, pretty little part of me.”

“I swear, Dust, it can be charming, but right about now – ”

“Right about now, we need to put that piece of garbage to sleep.” I flung one finger out at the Overthroat, half its body still embedded in the portal, its mouth open as it gathered force for another shot. “We need to get Vanitas back.” I clapped Herald on the shoulder. “Save the world. Am I right?”

“Right.” Herald nodded. “Agreed. Let’s finish this.”

I called the fire, building a clump of it in my hand, because what else could I do? Herald was at my side, his own hands clutching around floating particles of ice, and together we sent flame and frost raining down on the Overthroat, aiming at its head. But each time, nothing. The Lorica and the Boneyard were doing well enough to distract it, giving it too many targets to effectively use its beam, but any moment now, it was going to fire, and fully a quarter of Latham’s Cross would be cratered.

Shrieking came from behind us, inhuman noises mingled with the screams of the Lorica’s mages. I spun, horrified to find more shrikes frothing in a fresh assault, tearing at the Hands and Wings. No. The forest. I’d forgotten. The Overthroat had augmented its awful magics, planting seeds for the shrikes’ forbidden fruit everywhere its beam struck.

That was it. If the amulet wasn’t enough to close the portal, and if those worthless Scions weren’t going to come in to help, then I had to turn to our one last resort. I rummaged through my backpack, feeling for the crystal that Nyx had given me. It was time to summon the Midnight Convocation.

Or so I thought. The ground was suddenly awash in a pale green mist, shrouding my feet in a cool, wet cloud. It smelled of incense, a kind of distant fragrance I thought I remembered from church, or the phantom scent of an ancient, forgotten rite.

Something sharp and white burst from the earth, slipping between blades of grass like a bony spike. Then more of them came, raking at the dirt and furrowing. Not a spike, I realized. It was a skeletal hand. And as it pushed, pressing at the ground, digging for traction, it pulled the rest of its dead, ivory body from out of the earth.

I screamed.

Chapter 30

Around us, all over Latham’s Cross, from graves and crypts and mausoleums, more and more of the dead burst into unlife, returned from the darkness.

I scrambled away, summoning more fire in my hands, when my back bumped up against Herald. He was more composed than me, but maybe that was because he actually had some idea of what was happening. He shook his head, then pointed towards the center of the graveyard.

Asher had his hands lifted to the sky, pale green light pouring from his eyes, his mouth, his fingers. This was his doing. He had mastered his necromancy enough to summon the very dead themselves from out of their graves.

His chest was heaving, his forehead glazed, his shirt stuck to his body with sweat – but he was smiling. I couldn’t imagine the amount of power surging through him just then, but I did know that it made him an extremely visible beacon of light – and an ideal target for the Overthroat.

“We need to protect Asher,” I said to Herald. But we couldn’t attract so much attention that the Overthroat would so easily discern where to strike next. I did the best thing I could think of.

Pressing my hand into the ground just at Asher’s feet, I called for the Dark to send a drift of shadow to billow up from the earth. It worked: a curtain of solid night draped over Asher, a thin and truthfully immaterial wall between him and Shtuttasht, but it served its purpose: to camouflage our friend from the Old One’s baleful eyes.

“Nicely done,” Herald said, helping me up off the ground.

I nodded at him, panting as I rose to my feet. I was already on my last dregs of power from earlier in the night, and all these fireballs and summonings of shadow were skimming off the rest of what was left. Not even blood could save me in that state.

“This has to end,” I breathed. “Sooner rather than later.”

Herald nodded at Asher’s skeletal army. “They sure as hell are helping. A lot.”

They were tearing at the shrikes – hundreds of skeletons, most of them human, and a small number of strange skeletal creatures built from the bones of various fallen wild animals. Asher’s minions – no, his friends, I suppose – fought soundlessly, apart from the creak and scrape of bones made sturdy and sharp through his power. Each of them glowed faintly with a jade pallor, animated by his necromantic might.