For one full beat, I did nothing but stare at him. Where the hell had Kieran found this guy?

“That’s a good plan,” I finally said. “A very good plan. You make it sound easy.”

“It is easy.”

“Right.” I turned to tell Bria what he’d said, then started to jog back to the bus.

“Hey, aren’t you forgetting something?” Chad called out.

“Oh yeah.” I stopped and stuffed him back in the body, latching him in with the rickety prong. The limbs jerked to life.

“Chad, huh?” Bria said as we got everyone back into the bus. “Does his spirit look like a Ken doll?”

“What?” I shook my head in annoyed confusion as one of our crew tried to break free and run. I yanked him in the right direction and pushed him up the steps.

“Chad. That’s such an eighties name. It reminds me of Ken, from Ken and Barbie?”

“Except Ken’s name is…Ken.”

“Right, yeah. It should’ve been Chad.” She slipped in behind the wheel. “Behold,” she yelled. “I have never, in my life, driven a children’s school bus filled with cadavers into an enemy crowd in an epic magical battle.” Judging from her smile and sparkling eyes, the thought pleased her as much as the prospect of a shopping spree would have pleased me. “This is going to be awesome!” She cranked the wheel. “Buckle up, everyone, we’re headed for a wild ride!”

35

Alexis

The roar of the engine and shaking of the old vehicle competed with my flip-flopping stomach and adrenaline-fueled anticipation. The cadavers crowded near both doors and some hung out of the windows, cocooning me in the grossest way possible. The John corpse waited by my side, not touching, thankfully, but hovering in what seemed like a protective way. I wondered if he’d assigned himself as my bodyguard.

“Yep, we’re coming right for you,” I heard Bria yell, laughter lacing her words. She was enjoying this entirely too much. “Ten seconds until impact!”

I grabbed onto the seats next to me. Yelling filtered in from outside. Shouts, then a scream.

“Boom, fuckers!” Bria shouted.

The bus jolted forward before bumping wildly. My vision jiggled as the frame shook. More screams, much closer now, some anguished. Hands came up to slap the windows. Glass shattered somewhere beyond the cluster of bodies to my right. Through the gaps between the bodies on my left, I saw glimpses of the crowd outside. They had showed up in dizzying numbers.

“Go, go, go, go!” Bria’s voice rose over the din. “We’re surrounded. Take ’em down!”

The throng of corpses began to move around me. Sparkles shone in through the window. The view suddenly changed, and I saw vivid blue waters and white sand that stretched for miles. It sure as shit wasn’t Ocean Beach.

“They have an Illusionist,” Bria yelled. “A damn strong one, too. Alexis, you gotta take ’em down.”

The bus melted around me, the metal dripping down until it fell away. No heat kissed my skin, though. The drops of molten metal didn’t splatter on my head. I was left standing on that beautiful, idyllic beach.

“Alexis,” Bria shouted again.

Noise assaulted me from all sides. Yelling and screaming. Shouts and commands. A roar sailed past the right side of the bus, but I saw only limitless ocean. A blast shook the soft sand I stood on.

Corpses grabbed me, and suddenly Chad was by my side, groaning again. Trying to tell me something. He hustled me forward and gravity pulled at my feet. I felt a jolt and fell onto the hard, unforgiving…sand.

That Illusionist was messing with my head.

“Alexis!” Bria yelled again, closer now. She was barreling toward me. “You gotta get to work, girl. We need eyes.”

“Okay,” I said softly, stilling myself in the moment.

The hands around me fell away. Bria’s voice quieted. The shouts and screams around me faded into the background. Spirit rushed in to cover the world, washing away the illusion that had blanketed it.

Bodies surrounded us in a circle, keeping us put as they waited for the command to action, just like Chad had said they’d do. There were so many of them, their souls throbbing merrily in their middles. Outlines flickered within the corpses around me, showing me the spirits in their temporary homes.

“Valens has a lifetime of wrongdoing to atone for,” Chad said. The words were garbled within his decrepit body, but with all the spirit coursing around us, I understood them anyway, as though they’d been spoken directly into my head. Chad must’ve led people, because he’d noticed my hesitation. “His people have tortured and killed without concern. Innocents have died by the thousands under his rule.”

The Mia corpse appeared on the other side of me. She was proof that Chad’s situation wasn’t an anomaly.

“If you do not act, they will take you as a prize,” he continued. “You wear the son’s mark, do you not? Valens will make you pay for that. He will make all of you pay. Only the dead are safe.”

The fire of anger burned brightly in my middle.

“Not even the dead are safe from him,” I said, feeling the faith Mia and Chad and John and the others had put in me. They were depending on me to set this to rights. “And it’s the dead I’ve sworn to protect.”

I sent a blast of the Line’s magic out in all directions like a shock wave, punching through the middles of Valens’s minions. Once they were down, I collected the little ribbons connecting everyone in the area, took a split second to grab them, and yanked them all to the ground.

“Here comes Johnny!” Bria shouted, quoting her favorite movie.

The illusion of the ocean cut out. Screams and hoarse yells rose around us as the enemy forces were brought to their knees. Some even tumbled onto their backs.

Through the din, one person rose. A woman built like a tank struggled up from the ground and staggered toward me.

“Kill the vile Soul Stealer,” she yelled. “And save yourselves!”

“That was hurtful,” Bria said as she ran forward to meet her.

She punched the woman square in the face, jabbed forward with her knife, pulled it back, flinging drops of crimson, and round-house kicked her in the head—all in one graceful series of movements.

The woman fell like a sack of bricks.

“That was overkill,” Chad murmured.

I repeated it for Bria’s sake.

“Can it, Chad, or I’ll tell Barbie you cheated with Kimmy.” Bria motioned us on. “Let’s go. This is just a few of a great many. The boys are on that beach. We need to get to them.”

She was right. Behind the group of peons kneeling around us, a sea of red and black moved toward the ocean. Magic flared and arched over the crowd, the battle raging and the Six clearly fighting for their lives.

Fear gripped me. I sent spirit through the connections I held, using it to seep past their spirit protectors. Without delay, I ripped out their life essences, the process easy now that I’d given in to the feeling of it.

Too easy.

Gritting my teeth, I yanked them all free.

Spirits popped out all around us and bodies fell to the ground. I didn’t wait until the spirits regained their equilibrium from that harsh transition and started calling me names. I ran, cutting through the downed bodies and spirits alike.

“Follow Alexis,” Bria shouted to our undead crew, purely for effect since her magic was actually leading most of them.

A group of people turned to face me as I reached them, just within the large parking lot beside the beach. Hands came out and a sword rose. They weren’t waiting for a command to attack.

I slashed through their middles and kept running, dodging between them as they froze or sank to the ground with wide, terrified eyes. A couple of them startled into action again, pushing past their fear or discomfort, but by that time the corpses had reached them. The army of the dead slammed into them, ripping and tearing with their hands. One dead guy bit someone’s nose, losing a tooth in the process.

Another group of Valens’s people waited beyond, shifting in their ranks, no doubt wondering what was coming their way. The organization made it clear who was in charge. I slashed at their spirit boxes while veering in the other direction, not wanting to barrel through bodies if I could help it. Group by group I took down whoever waited in my path, ripping the souls out of the leaders and leaving the others to be dealt with by the force at my back.

Kieran had been dead right to keep my magic a secret. My unfamiliar and deeply uncomfortable magic stopped them cold, and by the time the stronger, harder, more advanced soldiers regained their equilibrium, the dead were ravaging through them.

No one knew to target me until it was too late.

“Get to a place where I can work,” Bria shouted, slashing a serrated blade across someone’s throat, turning in the same movement, and sticking it into the side of someone else’s neck. “You’ve given me a lot of spirits and bodies to work with. I might as well make myself useful.” She kicked a guy in the balls before ramming her knife through his breast plate.

“You’re plenty useful now,” I muttered in awe.

Amazingly not out of breath from all the running and magical fighting, I reached the barrier between the parking lot and the beach. A blotch of red drenched the first step and driblets ran from the bottom step out onto the sand. A body dressed in green lay facedown.

Glancing up, a shock of cold dread ran up my spine and fear pinched my gut. Greens and blues must be Kieran’s colors, against the blacks and reds of Valens’s people. They’d had to use colors to distinguish sides, but as I stood there, I saw a green-clad man turn and stab someone in blue. Likewise, someone in red flung out his hands and the woman in black in front of him sank down to her knees. Regardless of the turncoats, it was clear from the action spread across the beach leading to the water that Kieran’s army was vastly, horribly outnumbered.

Beyond the turmoil, the ocean rolled and surged in unnatural ways. The natural waterline had been pushed back halfway to the spot where Kieran’s mom’s skin had been kept, and two figures fought on the hard-packed sand with a speed and ferocity that left no doubt as to who they were. The waves or foam swirled around them, sometimes nearly reaching one of them before being magically pushed away again.