Page 126

Then he tore himself away, gasping, and threw the magic wide.

The ground began to move, shaking and roiling like a pot on boil as the dirt shoved things free. Pale hands. Boney fingers. Tattered remains ensnared with red and gold light. Easily a dozen staggered from the backyard, others shuffled from the woods strung along the back of the subdivision, as if drawn by magnets. All of them moved around the monsters, the Veil merge, and the tear as if they were dancers rather than zombies.

Jude squeezed my hand, unwilling to release me, as he followed them toward the tear. “Sorry, I sort of need you close.”

And I was good with never letting go again.

Jude began to stitch, and his zombie minions followed, unbothered by the snapping energy of the Veil angry at being forced to close.

“Not gonna lie,” Jude muttered, “this is the weirdest craft project I’ve ever been part of. Brings new meaning to being a hobby ho. Or would that be a zombie ho… wait, no. That’s worse.”

I snorted and kept watch. The team shoved the escaped monsters back across the Veil. The tear slowly closed, taking a long time, though since Jude’s hand was in mine, I barely noticed.

The fallen soldiers recovered most of their memories. I watched a slew of EMTs care for them and take them away. Only Phelps had still been comatose when moved. Hanna directed the larger response from the street, where vehicles still lay scattered like they’d been thrown by a giant having a tantrum. Planes and helicopters circled overhead, and I still worried the military would bomb us into submission, though nothing came.

Wade handed me a pair of sweatpants, since apparently at least one of the copters was from the news, and bare asses had to be blurred. I pulled them on one-handed, too tired to care about the audience.

The entire team shifted back, one by one, collapsing at our feet like marionettes whose strings had been cut. They’d run marathons, fought a god, and kept the world from ending. They deserved to rest. And I felt that way too after a while, Jude pulling on our bond and the entire team’s energy to stitch the Veil.

Beau offered food. Cookies and muffins, which I devoured without tasting. Ivan approached with hesitation, but I waved him close, and he wrapped his arms around Jude’s core in a desperate hug, still letting his brother focus.

The kitsune twins remained close, wary.

“Thanks for trusting me, and not following,” Ivan whispered into his brother’s shoulder.

Jude sucked in a deep breath, as if holding back something he desperately wanted to say. “Where’s dad?”

“Xavier has him,” Ivan whispered. And that’s all he said.

I had questions. A lot of them. But the look on Ivan’s face, the tightness around his eyes, the way he clung to Jude like he was afraid his brother would disappear again, told me this wasn’t the time. Not here. Not now.

I’d ask later. When we had privacy. And maybe a few hours of rest without a growing tear to worry about.

That Hanna directed both the SED and military forces gave me some semblance of peace. Everyone warned against befriending the fae, and while I wasn’t certain we were friends, our interests had often aligned. Her voice carried over the chaos with the kind of authority that didn’t need to be loud. The hounds were gone. The vial with Phelps’s motes was somewhere in her coat. I didn’t ask what her beef with him had been, or what she planned to do with him. It wasn’t my business.

The purple heart in the sky flickered once, twice, and then faded like a dying ember, vanishing to the normal night sky, moon at half wane. The sky was starting to lighten. Dawn, real dawn, not the sickly purple of the otherworld. The neighborhood was a wreck—houses shattered, cars flipped, craters in the lawn where Erlik had dragged itself free. It would take months to clean up. Years to rebuild. And with the merge remaining as a strange smoky shadow over the house, I wasn’t certain it ever would be rebuilt.

The bodies pulled from the ground came to a shuddering stop as the tear closed, frozen as if little more than marionettes without a purpose. The ability itself had terrified me when I was younger, but in Jude’s hands, a man who had more heart than good sense, I knew he’d never abuse it.

“Is someone upright enough to take a report of names before I drop them?” Jude asked.

Our team lay scattered around us. Wade flat on his back in the grass, one arm thrown over his eyes. Bobby sat cross-legged, staring at nothing, swaying slightly. Ezra curled around Remi, who half dozed. Kerry and the rest of Victor’s supe team were coordinating the EMTs as Victor sighed. He was the only one still moving of our immediate group.

“I’m too old for this,” he grunted, and waved his hand. “Send them to me.”

The zombies did that strange jerking movement to turn themselves around and shamble toward us. To say it didn’t give my heart a little skip of fear would be a lie, but they lined up in a careful group to give Victor names, ages, and dates of death.

“We’ll need a shit ton of body bags,” Bobby grumbled. He glanced back toward the Reapers who vanished into the darkness. “There were more souls than bodies?”

“Yes and no,” Jude hummed thoughtfully. “Some are blank, like the handful we found in the more recent rituals. Too broken, maybe? I’ll have to talk to Nat about it.” He let out a long breath. “I hope there is enough left of them to move on.”

Jude’s hand stayed locked in mine, and our bond sang with a warmth I hadn’t felt since before Erlik took him. Something that felt like it had been missing my whole life without me knowing. He glanced at me, exhaustion and affection warring on his face.

“I missed your face,” he said, teasing, though the affectionate tone in his voice was unmistakable.

“Yeah? I missed your ass, pretty boy.” I threw back, which made him snort.

“You can have my ass later.”