I glanced up to the sky. Up to Kai. He hung there like a terrible and beautiful painting. His wings spread out on either side of him. Just like in my dream, they weren’t the pristine white of his Nephilim wings but the silver-tipped ones. He was both Kai and not. His eyes narrowed at the Nephilim around him with no more than a second thought.
There were almost a hundred Nephilim in the air, but their numbers weren’t increasing. The trumpets continued to sound but no more guards rose to the sky.
“It’s now or never,” Eugenia said.
Professor Mortimer nodded.
Pushing everything else out of my mind, I was about to draw blood to start the exorcism when thunder clapped in the air. Not allowing it to distract me, I raised the knife. Behind me, the high-pitched scream of a child tore through the landscape. It was followed by a blinding flash of white light. My insides clenched as I recognised the spell being unleashed by the necromancers. The destroyed human soul fluttered through my chest and rocked me forward. That was when every high- and elemental-magic user around me fell to their knees.
49
“Basil!” I screamed as he toppled over.
“What the hell is this?” Giselle snapped. I whirled around in time to see one of the necromancers drop the body of the human child on the ground like it was a ball. Giselle shouted something beside my ear, but it was eaten up by the sound of high magic eroding as the blood circle they had erected began to degrade. Around us, Nephilim plummeted from the sky. My relief that they didn’t have far to go was short-lived. The necromancers around the perimeter of the circle began to walk towards us.
“Inside the soul circle!” Matilda shouted.
There wasn’t enough room for all of them. Dread sank claws into my throat as I shot up and made an awful decision that left dozens of supernaturals unprotected. Dead weight was super heavy. It took both Harlow and me to drag Basil within the confines of the soul circle. The Sisterhood took pains to expand the circle but there literally were only five of them.
There was too much happening around me. Alison gave a pitiful whine as the necromancers inched closer. They were unhurried.
Winnie gasped where she was trying to recon the field. I turned to where her attention was held and felt the strength leave my body. The beautiful mosaic brickwork of the Seraphina square was collapsing in on itself. The blue, white, and gold tiles that depicted scenes from their history cracked in a million places. The ground beneath it began to sink as decomposed fingers pushed through the dirt and clawed their way up from magical graves. Undead.
As I watched, they dragged themselves from the ground and stared about them with unseeing eyes. The speed with which they were birthed from the ground was unnerving. More and more of them spat out, as though their numbers were unlimited. That tended to be the case with undead. The stronger the necromancer, the more dead they could raise. Looking into the shadow-covered face of the closest necromancer, I didn’t doubt his strength.
“What do we do?” Harlow asked. Out of misguided instinct, the Sisterhood crouched down like they were hiding, despite the fact that the soul circle was transparent and shimmering in translucent white.
“We need to take him out,” Giselle said. She inclined her head towards Kai.
Matilda raised her face to the sky. “And then what? Even if we succeed, he becomes a killing machine, and we have no way to get him in here.” Her head swivelled. “And then we’ll be left at the mercy of these monsters.”
To be fair, we were already pretty much at the mercy of these monsters. The sound of the trumpets was starting to grate on my nerves. Behind the wall of undead, there were now Nephilim guards rising in the sky. I squinted. No, not just guards. While some of them were in battle armour, the rest were in civilian clothing.
A stone lodged in my throat. My thoughts harkened back to the Reserve when all of the submissives had to rally and fight. There were only Nephilim in the air, which meant that no portals could be opened up anywhere else inside Seraphina either.
Giselle swore with such vile hatred that it made me flinch. “These monster bastards,” she said. “They keep dragging us into this and then leaving us high and dry. I’m going to enjoy killing them.”
It was a futile attempt to lash out in the face of absolute defeat. The soul circle would remain intact for a time. They were stronger than arcane circles. But what about the supernaturals we’d had to leave outside. What about those Nephilim in the air? What about the Nephilim in the rest of the city?
My heart bled for all of them. And for myself. And for Lex who had done everything she could to protect us in the only way she knew how. Giselle’s hand drew into a fist. She smashed it onto the brick and turned to Matilda.
“Take my soul,” she said.
Matilda blanched. “What?”
“Unstitch me. When my soul goes off, you can make a break for it.”
Winnie really wailed this time.
“Don’t be ridiculous, G!” Matilda snapped. She turned her head to show she wasn’t even going to consider it.
Giselle grunted. “How else are we going to get out of this?”
My gaze swept over Giselle. Something Lex had told me once settled in my mind. That while Giselle was formidable because of her spirit in general, Matilda’s soul was actually the stronger one. Cold settled over my mind.
While they were arguing, I grabbed hold of the knife and sliced my palm open. Matilda’s face was screwed up in distaste. The Evil Three were distracted by the oncoming march of the acolytes, and Giselle was trying to shake some sense into her friends. Nobody noticed me pulling my arm back
