Page 35

I let go.

15

ANGEL

Everyone waited a long heartbeat the moment the zombies collapsed as if my complaint had cut their strings.

Then the teams swarmed. Cops. SED. Medics. The wail of sirens cut through the rain-soaked air as the attacker was hauled to his feet and cuffed, still sputtering protests no one listened to. Around us, voices overlapped in anxious debate. How to identify the bodies? Were they zombies of people who’d passed here, pulled by someone with a necromancer variant? Or were they from the other side, slipped through the new tear?

No one had answers.

Wade threw me a look.

I shook my head. No sign of Jude. Maybe he was closer to the tear? The wild purple magic swirled over the top of the building, vanishing on the other side.

Wade’s frown deepened as he headed toward the pile.

Before anyone could even lay out a stretcher to begin cataloguing, the dead rose again.

A collective gasp rippled through the crowd. The nearest officers jerked back, hands twitching toward weapons. The zombies moved like a spooky unit of animated puppets, stiff and synchronized, their hollow eyes fixed on some distant point none of us could see. Then they shuffled off, quick and purposeful, heading straight for the tear.

Were they from across the Veil, then?

The rain fell, cold and hard against my face. The red and blue lights of emergency vehicles painted the scene in strobing fragments, while behind them, the purple lightning of the tear cast shifting shadows across the building walls, leading down the street.

Hanna glanced my way, eyebrows raised in silent question.

I put my hand up, palm out. Not me. Whatever I’d done to make them stop before seemed temporary, if that had been me at all. The zombies weren’t coming for me, but they were responding to someone.

No one pulled a weapon. No one tried to stop them. The updated training must have covered this since zombie crossings had become common after the Veil started thinning. Or maybe everyone was just too stunned to react.

Either way, I jogged after them. I wasn’t worried about the zombies turning on us. I was worried about Jude.

I splashed through puddles. My dead arm hung useless, numb fingers tucked into my pocket. The zombies shambled ahead, focused on something I couldn’t see. Half the SED agents followed.

Somewhere beyond the rain and the flashing lights and the tear still crackling in the sky, I wondered if this wasn’t a strange fluke.

Maybe Jude was already there. Fixing the tear.

But as the sky gaped like a dark maw, I shook my head. No. There was no way Jude could fix something that big.

I hadn’t seen anything this large since my days in the military. Huge as it arched up beyond the clouds as though reaching for the moon. Growing by the minute. These sorts of tears devoured entire cities.

Only this wasn’t...

I stopped; gaze focused on the end closest to us.

Was it shrinking?

I gasped as one edge began to close.

No way.

Was Jude really trying to close this? My heart leapt into my throat. There wouldn’t be anything left of him if he kept going. The Marshal himself couldn’t close a nightmare tear like this. Jude, a ghost running on nothing but stubbornness and snark, didn’t stand a chance.

Right?

I raced toward the tear. Toward Jude. Praying I could pull him back before he destroyed what little was left of his soul.