When they made it across the Seine to the Left Bank, Patrick’s skin prickled with the awareness of too many eyes on them. The ravens and crows weren’t the only ones watching their push into central Paris.
The Morrígan watched as well through the countless eyes of her winged specters, and Patrick knew nothing good would ever come of gaining the attention of a war goddess.
26
The Cityof Lights had gone dark.
The sun was passing over the horizon, half-set, and the blue of the sky had deepened to something darker. In the east, where the sky was darkest, stars were slowly becoming visible. The sun and the beacon of sinister magic the Eiffel Tower had become were the only points of brightness in the city.
Well, aside from the souls animating millions of skeleton bodies, magic glittering between rib bones and in countless eye sockets, fresh zombies, and the barrage of offensive magic courtesy of Dominion Sect mercenary magic users.
“Incoming!” Patrick yelled.
The flurry of mageglobes that arced through the air from the west carried military-grade spells within them. Patrick conjured up a set of his own, thrusting an arm upward and guiding them through Nadine’s shield.
The strike spell he’d filled them with must have been the same as the ones aimed at their position. When they collided, the resulting explosion in the air was less fireworks and more nuclear, lighting up the night sky with magic. It provided a flash of illumination, enough light for Patrick to check that yeah, the sea of zombies blocking their way on the Boulevard de la Tour-Maubourg hadn’t decreased.
It wasn’t the only explosion going on in Paris. Pockets of resistance set up by magic users and those in the preternatural world were still coming to the city’s defense, working hand in hand with the police when they could. French resistance was alive and well against the dead.
Two hours ago they’d managed to catch a breather at the Ministry of Magical Affairs, if one could call being interrogated for thirty minutes a breather. Their French counterparts had finally wanted to listen to what they had to say now that Paris was overrun by zombies. The PIA’s warnings had come too little too late to stop Ilya from raising the dead, but that didn’t mean they could stop fighting.
They’d had to come clean about Spencer and his kind of magic though. Whereas before the French government might have thrown a fit about having a foreign mage with an affinity for the dead and a kind of necromantic magic inside their borders, this time they’d only been grateful.
But Spencer was just one mage against millions of dead, and he could only do so much. In retrospect, it wasn’t anything like the Thirty-Day War. The dead had never overrun Cairo like this. Spencer was flagging but still fighting, though the number of dead he could put to rest at one time had slowly decreased over the course of the day.
They’d been routed from Place Joffre and were now boxed in on either side of the Boulevard de la Tour-Maubourg by zombies. Spencer was focusing on their forward position, but it was like trying to move the ocean. The waves of zombies kept coming.
At least it wasn’t just Patrick’s pack, Nadine, and Spencer fighting. The ministry had asked for volunteers to aid them on their push to the Eiffel Tower, and they’d come away with twenty magic users to help them, though only one was a mage.
It still wasn’t enough.
“We need to clear a path,” Nadine said, staring at the zombies clawing at her shield a few meters ahead of them.
“What do you think we’ve been trying to do?” Spencer snapped tiredly.
“I know, I know, but this isn’tworking. The fucking Dominion Sect knows our position, and they’re rerouting the zombies to keep us in one spot, hoping to overwhelm us.”
“At this rate, it’s less hoping and more succeeding,” Patrick said.
Nadine shot him an exasperated look. “Not helping.”
Patrick tossed another set of mageglobes filled with strike spells at the next volley of incoming attack spells. “Now that’s a lie. I’m a great help.”
The spells crashed together and lit up the sky again. Time was he wouldn’t have been able to keep up a sustained counterattack like this, not after the Thirty-Day War and the wounds he’d walked away from it with. Jono sidled closer and Patrick dug his hand into thick fur, leaning against him for a brief moment. The soulbond hummed between them, a depth of magic at his fingertips he was grateful for.
Jono and Sage had been forced behind the shield once they all got boxed in, and both were itching to fight. Patrick was reluctant to let Wade shift mass into his dragon form, not wanting French officials to know the truth about what he was. Wade was willing, Patrick knew that, but it was one thing to let him breathe fire in front of werecreatures, quite another to do it in front of representatives of a foreign government. He knew, as the minutes ticked down to midnight, they might not have a choice.
Right now, the only option they had was to keep fighting.
So that’s what they did.
However long later, when the sun had finally fully set, the Eiffel Tower became a warning beacon against the night sky, ochre-colored magic flickering like fire on the massive monument. The only light that didn’t come from their magic burned in the skulls of skeleton zombies, the dead piling up around Nadine’s shield.
The French magic users were tossing spells ahead and behind them, trying to clear a path, but the zombies were too numerous. Any dead that got blown up were immediately replaced by more bodies. Patrick couldn’t help them; all his attention was on incoming aerial attacks. As the only combat mage with offensive magic capabilities, it was his job to keep those attacks at bay if at all possible.
“Oh, that can’t be good,” Spencer said from behind him.
Patrick never took his eyes off the sky. “What can’t be good?”
