Free Strange and Ever After by Susan Dennard Page B

ready.
    An explosion thundered, trembling through the air. Oliver and I spun our heads toward the sound. Smoke billowed up from only a few streets away—but the wind instantly scattered it.
    Daniel. Joseph. And only a few hundred corpses between us.
    I had been planning to kill Marcus, certain that I could do it. Yet the fact of the matter was, I could not. But I would still use this power and this resolve to rescue Jie.
    I had the rage and the skills inside me. So did the Spirit-Hunters. We could do this.
    “Together,” I said, “we can make a path to Daniel and Joseph.”
    “All right.” Oliver’s head swiveled once more to the skeletons leaving the crypt. Then he grabbed my sleeve and pinned me beneath a stare. “We must put aside our differences, El. Right now. Otherwise we’ll never survive this.”
    “Yes—”
    “I mean it.” He yanked me closer, looking nothing like his boyish self. This was the demon in him speaking. “Your friend’s life is of no consequence to me. But your life is. I will follow you to the end of this, whatever that may be. So I beg you, Eleanor— beg you— to do the same for me.”
    “I . . . will.”
    “Then for now we are partners and allies once more.” Abruptly, he pulled back, and a cold, lethal expression settled over his features. “Command me, Eleanor, so I may use my magic, and let us see how long we can survive.”
    “Yes.” The word growled out, hungry. Ready. And as I turned to face the oncoming tide of putrid faces, I said, “Let’s lay these Dead to rest, Oliver. Sum veritas. ”
    Once we’d descended the stairs, it was a blur of bodies. Gray skin, mottled with maggots and buzzing with flies. Frayed fingertips and tattered lips. Everywhere my gaze landed, I met the Dead.
    But I faced them, and I was unafraid.
    Magic coursed through my veins, pure spiritual energy.Pure power . Then it exploded from me, a whip of necromancy to slay each corpse that crossed my path. I did not use the crystal clamp, but my left hand kept a firm hold while magic thrashed from my right.
    “Sleep, sleep, sleep.” The words rushed from my mouth, nothing more than a whisper. And though I could barely hear Oliver over the scraping of bones, I knew he chanted the same thing. “ Dormi, dormi, dormi. ” Building walls glowed with the blue light of our magic.
    As soon as one corpse fell, blasted by my magic into the final afterlife, Oliver would attack the next. Yet for every body that collapsed, another would take its place. Marcus had truly woken every cemetery in Marseille.
    When we reached the first intersection at the bottom of the winding cliff path, I realized with a rush of dismay—a dark explosion in my chest—that I had lost all sense of where the Spirit-Hunters were. We had aimed toward that one explosion, but I had neither seen nor heard a pulse bomb since. The wind covered almost all sounds. It rattled through trees and bushes, it roared in my ears, and there was no ignoring the gray clouds that it now carried in. A storm to block out the sun. Though rain wouldn’t stop us, it wouldn’t help us either.
    And the Dead—milky eyes and ripped skin were everywhere.
    “Sleep,” I said, panting. “Sleep.” Blue light flew from my fingers and slashed at the power animating each corpse in my way. An old woman. Then a soldier. Then two half-eaten sailors.
    When the first fat drops of rain hit my shoulder, a shiver slid through my body. We had reached a grid of smaller roads and intersections, and it was only a matter of time before the skeletons from the crypt reached us or Dead came at us from the side streets.
    Lightning from the storm cracked nearby. No—not lightning. Electricity. Joseph .
    Oliver’s face snapped to me, his eyes triumphant. That sound had been close. It was the push we needed to keep going. To charge at more corpses until at last—
    Crack! Blazing lines of electricity burst before us, lighting up shop fronts and closed doors. The Dead crumpled to