Too bad.

“Raid the house. Kieran’s, too. Sell everything of value. Keep your head down and keep training.” Tears burned my eyes and terror filled my chest. What if this was it? What if I’d never see them again?

At least they’ll be alive.

“I love you,” I yelled, and peeled out of the parking lot.

The kids ran to the bus, but Bria was already lumbering behind me. They’d be fine. I’d made them survivors, and Kieran’s guys had made them warriors. If any teenagers in the world could be orphaned…again…and still keep going, it was those two.

I stomped on the gas, not waiting for Bria. The spirits I’d anchored to bodies were autonomous, and she didn’t need my power to control the rest of her smelly brood. My abilities would go to better use jacking up the living.

The car took the curves in the road without problem, so I pushed the speed well past the limit. Near the bottom of the steep hill, I sped through a red light before slamming on my brakes. A big black truck had pulled out of a side road, cutting me off. Hard brown eyes flashed in the side mirror for a brief moment before the trailer cut off my view.

The rest of the street was desolate, this wasn’t our truck, and Kieran had wondered if his dad would be expecting him.

Clearly the answer was yes.

I slammed my foot on the gas pedal and pulled into the shared turning lane of the three-lane road. The truck’s engine roared, the vehicle picking up speed to block me, but come on—out-gunning a new BMW? He was dreaming.

A second later, I took those words back.

A jet of pure white light blasted from the window and across the bumper of my car. Metal screeched and then clanged. My car bumped up and down, running over what was probably part of my bumper. Metal screeched again, dragging against concrete. Yup, definitely my bumper. At least my tires made it.

Valens had his own Light Bender. One who either didn’t have the power to conceal the truck, or didn’t think he’d need to bother.

But guess what Valens didn’t have?

A Soul Stealer.

I reached into the driver’s chest with a thick rope of magic. His scream reached my ears. The truck swerved wildly to the right and hit the guard rail. I yanked on his spirit box as I pulled ahead in the BMW. For a brief moment, I thought about letting him go with a busted truck. But if I did that, he’d just get out, run a few blocks to the beach, and kill our people. This was war, and I was either the predator or the prey.

I slowed my car to match the declining speed of the truck and soaked down into the guy’s spirit box, disturbingly easy in a non-shifter, it turned out. I crushed the prongs and then yanked his spirit away.

Now what?

I slowed the car even more as I thought it through. Getting rid of him meant the other side was down one, sure, but what was he hauling in that truck? Chances were, Valens needed that rig, and we needed it gone.

“Plan B.” I jammed his soul back in, keeping a hold of that sucker and pushing my will on him, like Bria had taught me to do in Necromancy. He needed to turn that truck around, head up the hill, and…

A crawling sensation overcame me. I fought it off.

This is war. War is brutal. I joined the fight. I need to commit.

I took a deep breath. He’d head up the hill, pull into the lookout lot over the steep drop leading down to the ocean, and hop the curb. He’d go for a lovely roll and finish it off with a nice swim.

Padding the horrible actions with happy words, that was the ticket. I was sending him on a lovely little holiday.

The big yellow school bus slowed as it passed the now idling truck.

“Go.” I waved my hand at her.

She stopped and opened the bus doors. “What’s happening?”

“I’ve gotten control of the driver’s soul and now I’m going to send his truck up to the top and over the edge.”

A huge smile spread across her face. “Look at you! Donovan is gonna be pissed he lost the bet. I knew my girl had brutality in her.” She put up a fist. “Go girl!” Her gaze flicked to the large rearview mirror. “Sit down in the back you crusty old fucker, this ain’t our stop.” She rolled her eyes at me before pulling the handle to close the door. The bus shuddered forward.

Without wasting time, I rolled forward to give the bus enough space. I gave the soul another mental push, almost like an Encourager. The guy inside, strangely not terrified but certainly pissed (he was clearly a professional and probably one of the Elite) cranked the wheel and increased his speed. The truck just barely made the U-turn. I closed my eyes and felt the spirit, connecting with him as he traveled up the hill. As he neared the top, I almost lost him, the connection too weak with the distance. I just barely had enough time to make him slam on the gas, plow across the curb, sidewalk, and through the guard rail.

“A lovely sail through the air. What fun,” I mumbled, severing the connection. Blinking my eyes open, I started when I caught sight of the woman standing in front of me, dressed in some sort of red material, and holding a blow torch. “What the hell?”

I stomped on the gas pedal. She’d chosen a terrible place to stand.

Fire exploded across my hood and over my windshield, heat curling into the new crack in the window.

These people were seriously jacking up my car.

“Ouch. Ouch-ouch,” I said, smacking her with my car. “I win.”

Another two blocks and I saw the yellow bus pulled over to the side of the road. Nearly there, my heart lodged into my throat. Trucks like the one I’d just detoured were pulling into the parking lot up the way. Others had stopped on the road just outside it. Various men and women in black or red climbed out of them, and the troops jogged across the street to the beach.

Kieran had said that he’d collected nearly a hundred people. Judging from this crowd, Valens had organized a shit-load more, and who knew how many were hidden from view? How were we even supposed to get to him through all of Valens’s people?

“Mother trucker biscuit fucker,” I whispered, yanking the wheel sharply enough to screech the tires. I clipped the back of the school bus and a half rotted face tumbled into one of the windows. Thankfully, I couldn’t see it smashed up against the glass from my vantage point.

I hurried out and around and helped Bria unload the bus. She was no longer smiling.

“Valens isn’t fucking around,” she said in an uncharacteristically somber tone. “Did you see all those trucks up there?”

“Yeah.” I wracked my brain for something supportive to say. The battle was lost if fear had won. “The Six were closer than us, though. They must’ve gotten there in time to protect Kieran.”

“And how the hell are we going to get them back out?”

I gestured at the rotting corpses.

“Are you serious? Look at these things. They’re—”

One disappeared, then re-appeared ten feet behind me. Mia, obviously. “They’re the stuff of nightmares, and they pack a helluva wallop. You said so yourself. Plus, you’ve got me. Ripping souls out is gross, but I bet I can get a few of their important people working for us. We got this.”

She nodded as she organized the corpses. Her expression hardened into a determined look. She patted me on the back. “Thanks. I needed that. A punch in the face would’ve been quicker, but your softer approach won’t shake a tooth loose, so that’s cool.” She unslung her backpack, reached in, and extracted a furry critter.

“What? No! Not the rats. What do we need with rats when we have the bodies?”

She set it down and took out a second, already animated.

“They are good scouts. If we need eyes on the ground, we got ’em.”

“How about eyes in the sky? That would probably serve us better.”

“That’s on my list of to-tries. One day.” She turned and motioned everyone on. “Here we go, everyone. This is where it gets real. Remember, you can’t die again. But I can. Once I’m gone, your play day’s over. So keep me alive.”

“Does that work?”

“Hasn’t yet—they usually don’t give a crap about me—but I’m always hopeful.”

I took the lead, my fists clenched and nothing on my person but my clothes. Around the bend up ahead, I knew orderly lines of men and woman were filing toward the beach. There was no way they’d miss us coming, and while I could cut several people down at a time, I couldn’t withstand a magical attack. We’d be sitting ducks.

“We need another plan,” I said, stopping dead. Bria ran a few paces past me before curling back. The line of corpses shuddered to a stop. “We need some cover. I should’ve saved that damn Light Bender. I could’ve used him.”

“Now you’re thinking. Too bad it came too late.”

A grizzly hand nudged me, and my instinctive response was to grimace and move away. The corpse chosen by Chad, the guy I’d summoned with the locket, nodded jerkily. A long groan came from his throat.

“That is…off-putting,” I said softly.

“What is?” Bria asked.

The currently trapped spirit was trying to communicate, but we didn’t have time for charades.

I snapped his prong and yanked him from the body. The body fell into a heap next to his bewildered spirit. He blinked at me a few times, clearly dazed.

“What?” I barked. “We don’t have much time.”

“Run the bus through them,” Chad said, his voice clearing. “Those lines are filled with grunts. They aren’t trained to think for themselves. When they see danger, they’ll freeze and wait for a command. That command will come quickly—Valens’s people are highly organized—but we should have thirty seconds or so before they start retaliating. That’s enough time to get the bus into the middle of their crew. When you do, make sure the doors are open. We can file out and get to work. We’ll create chaos and hopefully they’ll start accidentally killing each other in their haste to kill us. You can slip out through the crowd and hit the beach. Make a path for us and we’ll follow. We can reassess after we rendezvous with Valens’s son and his men.”