“Bailey,” Reed called out.
Spencer looked over at him. “Sir?”
“The nexus is barricaded, but the ley lines can still be tapped. Use caution, and don’t burn yourself out.”
Spencer nodded. “I’ll try my best.”
“Then get your feet on the ground and put the dead to rest.”
The only way down for a human would result in broken bones. Takoma fixed that problem by grabbing Spencer around his waist and hauling the mage over the side of the viaduct they were on with preternatural speed, Emma a mere second behind.
To his credit, Spencer only let out a startled yelp before disappearing out of sight in the arms of a vampire.
“What makes it through his magic will be our problem,” Reed said.
“We’ll aid you, but this isn’t where we stand our ground,” Jono warned.
“Noted. Now shift and get your ass into the fight. We’re going to try to funnel the damn things into a kill box.”
Jono rolled his eyes, already kneeling for the shift. “I’m not one of your soldiers.”
“Now you sound like the fledgling. Where is he?”
Jono was already shifting when the question was asked, jaw breaking in half as his human bones changed into something else. Fenrir pushed the shift faster than ever, and the world was a sickening twist of smeared color as his vision changed with it. When he was fully wolf and all his senses had settled, Jono tossed back his head and howled a challenge the drekavacs answered in kind.
Let us fight, Fenrir said.
Fenrir’s presence seeped into Jono’s thoughts and bones. It wasn’t stolen control but a gifted partnership that gave him speed like nothing before when he flung himself off the viaduct for the pavement below right in front of a barricade. The soldiers manning it thankfully didn’t shoot him or the other werecreatures that followed him down to the ground.
Grand Central Station loomed above them, magic still crawling over its façade and seeping out of the windows. The wind blew harshly through the street, whipping rain over everyone. No one wasted power on personal shields, though he could see the glitter of a powerful layer of shields up ahead over the entrances. As Jono ran forward, he saw the familiar violet of Nadine’s defensive magic join what was already there to try to keep their fighters safe.
If it was anything like Paris, he knew it wouldn’t be enough.
The screaming coming from within Grand Central Station didn’t stop. Jono watched as up ahead Takoma hauled Spencer back behind a barricade while Fatima stayed on the other side. Ashanti landed beside Jono as he loped forward to take position by a barricade manned by soldiers instead of police. He didn’t know where the Cailleach Bheur had gone, but hopefully someone was watching over them up on the viaduct.
“I told the dragon to let the zombies through. No sense in tiring out the magic users completely when we still have fighting ahead,” Ashanti said.
“Will he listen?” Fenrir asked for the both of them.
Ashanti shrugged one thin shoulder, blinking those black eyes of hers. “If he wishes for eradication of the walking dead, then he will give the order to draw down the shields. Be ready.”
Jono kept his attention focused on the entrance located beneath the bridge that crossed East Forty-Second Street. The street in their immediate area was empty of vehicles save for the ones used to create barricades. Jono could see the maze Reed had created to try to funnel whatever came out of Grand Central Station farther away to be killed. He just hoped no one on their side got caught in the crossfire.
“Lower the door shield!” Reed yelled from above, his voice echoing through the air with a reach no one human could attain without magical help.
The magic users manning the shield in that area peeled their layers free, and what poured out of the broken doors through the rain and fog was a mass of bones and rotten flesh, their bodies lined with the light of the magic that sustained them.
Cutting through the initial mass were creatures that moved with deadly swiftness. Elongated limbs and torsos gave the drekavacs’ human-shaped bodies an almost nightmarish look. Their heads were larger in proportion to their bodies, and they carried the scent of a grave with them as they surged forward, screaming all the while.
Fatima met their charge with a yowl of her own, the wind picking up as Spencer’s particular kind of magic rose around her. The psychopomp acted like a beacon for the dead as his magic spread through the first wave, cutting through the control Morrígan’s staff had over them and breaking souls free. Fatima swallowed the souls like a tiny vortex, sending them on to rest wherever possible.
Ashanti hissed out a laugh and flung herself into the pathway of a drekavac that Spencer’s magic had missed. She tore its head off with shocking ease, tossing the body one way and the head another before scouting out her next target. Jono stayed where he was as more zombies walked over the bodies and bones lying on the street.
Spencer’s magic wasn’t hitting all of the dead, and some escaped his reach. They reached the first barricade where Jono and the soldiers waited. He turned his head to the side to eye the men and women in uniform standing ready behind the half circle of abandoned cars.
“Watch your aim,” Fenrir said.
A couple of soldiers swore, but Jono didn’t wait to see if any would respond to the warning. He lunged at the zombies coming their way, intent on tearing them to pieces. Paris had taught him that exhaustion was inevitable when it came to fighting millions of dead. They’d do what they could to help Reed, but short of turning Grand Central Station into a pile of rubble, Jono knew nothing they did would stop the dead from coming through the veil.
