Nadine yelled something in French, and the echo of explosions to the rear of them faded as the magic users with them focused their efforts on the front. Patrick tore his gaze away from the night sky, eyes going wide at what was coming toward them.
Walking over the sea of zombies was a glowing white taxidermized horse carrying a short rider on its back. The zombie was nothing but bone beneath a ragged uniform whose colors had faded from centuries of internment. The bicorn hat worn sideways sat limply on the zombie’s skull, doing nothing to hide the fiery magic burning in its eye sockets. The zombie rider and horse were too far back for any of the magic users’ spells to get a clean hit. Everyone still tried, but the zombies kept coming.
“Is that…Napoleon’s horse?” Patrick asked in disbelief. “Is thatNapoleon?”
“His body, yeah, maybe,” Nadine said, throwing up another layer into her shield. “We’re right next to Les Invalides.”
“First zombies, now zombie horses. What’s next? Kings and queens? Will we get cake for our efforts when this is all over?”
“Marie Antoinette isn’t buried in Paris.”
“I want cake,” Wade piped up.
Spencer thrust his arm forward, sending a mageglobe toward the horse and its rider. He broke the souls free of the bodies, but even as the horse lurched and lost its footing on top of the zombies filling the street, the swirl of another soul sank into its form, reanimating the body. Another soul settled in its rider, and the two zombies walked once more.
“The staff is pulling too many fucking souls out from beyond the veil. I keep breaking them, but more keep filling the bodies left behind,” Spencer growled.
Mageglobes streaked through the sky again, carrying attack spells from the direction of the Eiffel Tower. Patrick turned his attention back to the threat coming from above and drew magic from the ley line below through Jono’s soul to power them. He sent his counterattack into the sky, working to neutralize the threat.
“We need to—” he began.
Patrick was cut off by the distantboomsof a type of weapon he recognized from his time in the Mage Corps and not one he expected to hear in the center of Paris.
The rockets cutting through the air originated from the domed roof of Les Invalides to their left. Patrick reacted instantly, ready to protect their position, before he realized the rockets weren’t aimed at their group but at the mass of zombies directly in front of them.
Half a dozen rockets slammed into the Boulevard de la Tour-Maubourg, blowing apart countless zombies and abandoned cars, eradicating the dead, including Napoleon and his horse.
“That’s it. The French are never going to forgive us now,” Nadine muttered.
What space the rockets gained them wouldn’t last long, but Nadine still used the reprieve to push her shields forward the way an ice ship broke through sea ice in the Arctic. She gained them more ground one meter at a time, the same way she’d done during the Thirty-Day War.
The Eiffel Tower was so close, but still so far.
“I don’t know who that was, but anyone want to tell them that won’t stop the zombies?” Spencer said, using the lull to break as many souls free as he could and put them to rest. Fatima paced the leading edge of Nadine’s shield, drawing the souls into herself to guide them back beyond the veil.
Patrick crunched his way over bone, relying on Jono to take point and clear the way, ensuring the handful of zombies still intact enough to be a problem were torn to pieces by sharp teeth.
A second volley of rockets cleared the area between them and Les Invalides. Nadine didn’t hesitate and cut her shield sideways through the mess of bones the rockets had left behind, forming a narrow shielded tunnel.
Patrick was countering another volley of attack spells—too many for him to clear alone—when Nadine swore savagely in both English and French. The push of her magic was a pressure against his personal shields, but he couldn’t turn to look at what had caught her attention.
“Brace!” he yelled.
Patrick caught most of the attack spells midair, magic exploding above their location. Four got through, despite his best efforts.
The spells crashed against Nadine’s shield with enough force that Patrick felt the impact vibrate through her magic into the ground. Light exploded overhead, violet-colored waves rippling through the barrier between them and certain death. Nadine’s expression of rigid concentration didn’t change as she expanded her shields outward, holding back the attack with little more than an annoyed flick of one hand.
Her rapid push outward to provide their sudden backup with cover hadn’t been clean though, and more than a few zombies were now inside their defenses. Jono and Sage left Patrick’s side to take down the zombies—joined by Lucien and his Night Court.
“I hope you brought me one of those rocket launchers,” Patrick shouted.
“You don’t need one,” Lucien retorted, ripping a skull off a zombie and crushing it in one hand. The soul left in the body flickered until Spencer broke it free.
Carmen, dressed all in black with no glamour to hide what she was, hefted an actual honest-to-gods sword and cleanly decapitated a fresh-looking zombie with a single swing. Sage crushed the head in her massive jaws, and Spencer broke apart every last soul in the zombies inside the shield. Fatima swallowed them whole, drawing them to the other side.
“How did you even find us?” Patrick asked.
“Your magic isn’t subtle when you’re throwing combat spells around,” Lucien said.
