I’ve been holding my breath. Letting it out, I bend over and smile raggedly. I even manage a weak laugh. That would have been an awful death. To stand up to one powerful demon after another, only to fall to a pack of alarming but relatively weak zombies…. It would have been a shameful way to go.
“You have done well,” the voice says, pulsing eagerly by the window. “Now come with me. We must leave this world. We have far to go.”
I straighten and study the ball of light. I’m glad of the excuse not to look at the writhing zombies, especially the children, every bit as ravenous as the adults.
“I’m going nowhere without the others,” I tell it.
“They do not matter. You are the one we need. Come…”
“Who are ‘we’?” I challenge the voice. “What do you want? Where—”
The ship lurches. I’m thrown sideways, towards the ranks of living dead. I yell with shock, but the barrier deflects me away from the gnashing, grabbing zombies.
I get to my feet slowly, rubbing my arm where I collided with the barrier. The ship has tilted. The water in the swimming pool is starting to spill out over the lowest edge, and some of the deck chairs are sliding backwards. A few of the zombies slip away from the barrier, but they’re back again moments later.
“What’s happening?” I ask the ball of light.
“The ship is sinking,” it answers. “Beranabus has been killed. Come now, before it is too late.”
It takes a few seconds for that to hit. At first I’m just panicked that the ship’s going down. Then the full impact of the statement rams home. “Beranabus?” I gasp.
“The Shadow killed him.”
“No!” I shake my head wildly. Beranabus can’t be dead. The world doesn’t make sense without him. He’s single-handedly held back the hordes of demons for more than a thousand years. I knew he was old and tired, and he often spoke halfheartedly of retiring. But secretly I believed he was invincible, that he’d live forever, reborn like a phoenix when he grew tired of the confines of his old bones.
“There will be no rebirth,” the voice says calmly as everything collapses into chaos. “Beranabus is dead. This world will have to struggle on without him. You must come with me. You must.”
I expect tears but there aren’t any. I’m devastated by the loss of Beranabus, and maybe I’ll weep for him later, but for now I’m dry-eyed. When I’m sure I’m not going to cry, I look at the light again. This time I regard it with a hint of loathing.
“You set this up,” I snarl. “You led us here. You’re in league with Juni Swan.”
“No,” the voice says. “We do not serve the Demonata.”
“You split us from Grubbs,” I accuse it. “You forced me to advise Beranabus to focus on Juni. This is your work as much as it’s hers.”
The ball is silent for a moment. “You were aware of our guiding hand,” it says. “Interesting. You see and hear more than we thought.”
“Yes.” I laugh roughly. “And I see through you now. Beranabus would be alive if we hadn’t come here. You manipulated us.”
“To an extent,” the voice agrees. “We needed a lodestone. I could not make the final push to your world without one. So we influenced you and your foes, and tempted you to this place. It is unfortunate that it resulted in Beranabus’s death, but that is an acceptable loss. All that matters is that you come with me. Everything else is immaterial.”
“Bull!” I snort.
The ball of light flickers. “I do not understand.”
“I’m going nowhere. My friends are here—Bec, Dervish, Sharmila. I’m staying to help them. I promised I’d keep this window open and I will.”
“No,” the voice says. “We cannot wait. If you fall, all is lost. I do not have the power to reclaim your fragment of the Kah-Gash. It would go to—”
“So that’s it,” I yell. “You want the weapon.”
“Only your part.”
“You can’t have it,” I sneer, taking a step away from the window.
The ball turns dark blue, before resuming its normal variety of colors. I think it just lost its temper.
“You cannot defy us,” the voice says. “You must come with me. It is vital.”