Grave Dance

Well, I can’t just stand here. Now that I’d reclaimed my heat from the ghosts, they would be a lot less corporeal, which meant the skimmers would be after me any minute. If the goons hadn’t accidentally shot them all.

I dashed across the gravel lot, the rocks shifting under my feet and doing nothing for my already precarious balance. I had the option of sticking to the road or tromping through the woods. I’d make it farther, faster following the road, but the skimmers would also have an easier time catching up with me once they reached their cars. Not that I didn’t think they’d find me in the woods—they still had those damn tracking spells, no doubt—but the odds were at least slightly more in my favor.

My lungs burned like ice in my chest, and the muscles in my thighs itched with exertion. I stopped, sagging against a tree as I gulped down air. I was shaking so hard PC would suffer whiplash soon, but I had to keep running. I squeezed my eyes closed. Once I catch my breath.

If I survived this, I was going to have to take up running.

Digging my phone out from under PC, I glanced at the time. Nearly two. Somehow I had to make it to the bridge and elude the skimmers, who I could hear crashing through the woods in the distance behind me. I could call John, but I wasn’t familiar with the area. Where would I tell him to meet me? Hell, right now all I knew about my location was that I was somewhere west of the cemetery and I could hear the river.

I shoved the phone back into my purse and my fingers brushed the enchanted bridle Malik had lent me before we went looking for the kelpie. I stopped. I could hear the river, so I wasn’t far, and a horse could cover ground a whole lot faster than I could.

“It’s a crazy idea,” I told PC between wheezing breaths. He looked up at me with his big brown very freaked-out eyes. The sound of the skimmers crashing through the underbrush was getting closer. I had to get moving again.

I headed toward the sound of running water. Tricking a carnivorous horse who liked to drown and eat people who climbed on her back was a crazy idea. But I didn’t have any better ones.

Once I reached the riverbank, I pulled my dagger and pressed the point into the flesh of my finger. The last cut hadn’t even healed yet, and here I was bleeding into the river again. I only hoped her curiosity would get the better of her and she would answer.

I stood on the bank, shivering and waiting with the bridle clutched behind my back for what felt like a long time. Every sound from the wood made me turn, expecting to see the skimmers rushing toward me. Then the water swirled as a large dark head emerged.

“You do taste tempting,” she said, her large nostrils flaring as she inhaled my scent. “Have you changed your mind? Care for a ride?”

“Actually, yes.”

The horse blinked at me. I hadn’t spent a lot of time around horses, only one summer when my father sent Casey and me to camp, so I wasn’t familiar with all of their expressions. I hadn’t realized that a horse could project pleased surprise, maybe even anticipation. She swam for the bank and then climbed up onto the damp sand. I’d forgotten quite how big she was until I found myself staring at an eye-level flank.

She leaned forward, stretching her front legs and lowering herself. “Climb on.”

Okay, this is it. I stepped forward, reaching for her thick neck. Then I tossed the bridle over her head. Malik had said as long as I tossed it, it would catch her.

It worked.

The kelpie screamed, a loud, equine yell of fury. “Release me this instant.”

“A favor, and I will let you go.”

Her dark eye rolled in the socket, focusing on me, and she whipped her large head around like a dog shaking out his coat. Water and seaweed flung off her, hitting me, but I didn’t release the reins.

After a moment, she huffed and turned her head toward me. “Name your request.”

Now the tricky part. I had to get the wording right or she’d find a loophole, which she would probably exploit as on opportunity to eat me.

Goon One, or maybe Goon Two—hard to say which, stepped out of the forest beside me. Damn, out of time.

“I request a ride for myself and my dog, above the water. You will carry us to the old bridge as fast as you can and allow us to dismount unharmed.” I hoped I hadn’t missed anything.

“Fine.”

The kelpie lowered her front legs again and I scrambled onto her back as the goon ran toward us. I had time to see him lift a gun. Aim it at me. Then the kelpie went from standing to an unnatural gallop and the world flashed by me.

I clung to the reins with one hand, my purse and PC with the other, and kept my knees pressed hard against the kelpie’s sides. I’d never ridden bareback, and I expected to fight to keep my seat, but the kelpie’s scales were sticky, holding me in place. Well, how else would she keep her riders locked on her back while she drowned them?

The trees blurred as she galloped past, and then the giant arch of the bridge loomed ahead of us. She slowed to a canter and then stopped at the base of the bridge. I slid down to my feet, my legs trembling with more than just exhaustion.

The kelpie shook her head and the bridle slid free. She looked at me, and huffed a breath smelling of rotted fish in my face. Then she turned, stepping into the river.

“You have not made a friend this day, feykin,” she said as she sank under the water.

“I know.” But I didn’t apologize.

She stopped with just her dark eyes and pointed ears above the water. “Perhaps your pursuers will desire a ride.” Then she vanished.

Maybe I’d grown jaded, but I couldn’t force myself to care if she ate the goons.

The collectors were waiting for me in the center of the bridge. I didn’t see the cops as I made my way along the bank, but I imagined that wherever they were they could see me. Wonder what they thought of that entrance?

I put PC and my purse under the bridge, tucked away out of sight behind a support pillar.

“Stay,” I said, pointing at him. He whined, but lay down, the bag shifting with his movement.

If I had to get out of here quickly, it was going to be hard to reach him, but he’d been through a lot tonight. If things went badly, I wanted him out of harm’s way.

Death smiled as I climbed the bank, relief making his hazel eyes brighter. I didn’t bother fighting the answering smile that his summoned in me, but joined him and the other two collectors. The center of the bridge seemed as good a place as any to draw my circle. A circle that I actually planned to use this time.

“Looks like you made it just in time,” the gray man said, and pointed with the skull that topped his cane.

The water on the far side of the bridge bubbled and whirled as a large shadow expanded under the surface of the river. A giant green head emerged. It looked like the head of an alligator with a long, leathery snout stopping in a flat forehead and thick eye ridges—but the head alone was the size of an alligator.

Sea serpent?

Then another head emerged. And another. I stumbled back against the railing of the bridge as two more heads on long, scaled necks emerged. How many of these things are there?

Seven. Heads, at least. Then the first huge taloned foot grabbed the side of the bridge as the creature hauled itself up, and I realized that all the heads were attached to one beast. Hydra.

And another construct. How many souls are fueling that thing? The mist under its glamoured form was solid, completely obscuring the charmed disk in the jumble of souls.

The police, whom I hadn’t seen, shouted into radios, calling for backup. I glanced at the edge of the bridge, wondering if I even had a chance of making it to the bank—this thing’s reach was massive. Then my senses picked up on familiar magic that was not part of the construct.

I let my eyes follow my senses. There, around the center head’s neck was a large collar, and dangling from the collar was a ruby saturated with Holly’s magic. I’d never seen her without the charm.

The police surged forward, opening fire on the hydra. Their bullets were too small in caliber to do much against the hydra’s thick hide, but the collectors were a lot more effective as they lunged at heads and jerked souls free.

“Wait! It’s wearing one of Holly’s charms. Maybe it’s supposed to take me somewhere,” I yelled, staring at the head with the jewel strapped to its neck. I met its red eyes, looking for a sign of intelligence, of intent.

It blinked large, reptilian eyes at me. Then lunged.

Huge fangs hurtled toward me, but Death reached me first. He tackled me to the ground, his hand behind my head keeping my skull from cracking against the stone. The hydra’s head sliced through the air above him, taking out a section of the bridge railing where I’d been standing. Death twisted, watching the head withdraw. Then he turned back toward me.

“Love, the only way that thing is supposed to take you somewhere is if it passes off the spell in its fangs. Don’t try to reason with it,” he said, his face close enough that his breath drifted over my lips as he spoke. His face wasn’t the only thing close. The entire front of his body pressed against mine. He seemed to realize that fact at the same time I did because a grin spread over his face. “I really wish there wasn’t a hydra here,” he said, his voice pitched low. Then he rolled off me and helped me to my feet.

Damn hydra.

Death stepped away, his focus on the hydra again. Oh, I wanted to destroy that construct. Bad.

I glanced at my dagger. If my reach had been a handicap with the gryphon, it was astronomically worse with the hydra. The dagger was just too small. Only one other option.

I dropped my shields.

I could feel graves in the darkness. The essence from small dead animals, some not so small, and some that were most definitely not animals, reached for me. Fresh graves. Old graves. And some graves that felt ancient as the essence clawed at me, trying to sink under my skin.

I didn’t have enough time to do more than try to block out the encroaching essence as one of the hydra’s heads snapped toward me. I dove to the side, reaching with power. As the head recoiled for another strike, I pulled with magic. A soul popped free. The head shrank. One soul down.