deflates.
“Bec,” the demon master hums, staring at me directly. “It has been such a long time since our paths —”
“Let’s get out of here,” I snap, backing away from the lodestone and the mound of dead bodies, having no desire to listen to more of his rhetoric.
“Aye,” Beranabus says, retreating beside me. He thrusts a hand in Juni’s direction, but she darts through the window before he can strike. A crazy, lingering cackle is her only parting shot at us.
“Very well,” Lord Loss sighs. “Let the slaughter commence.”
Cadaver’s head explodes and the demon’s blood soaks the lodestone. It glows beneath the stack of corpses, sucking the blood as it pumps from Cadaver’s neck. A bolt of light shoots from the base of the stone, down through the watery layers of the sea, disappearing a second later into the murky depths below.
We should run. It’s crazy to linger. But we’re held, captivated, curious to see what will happen. This is new even to Beranabus, who’s seen virtually everything in his time.
For a few seconds—nothing. Then a ball of light rises from the darkness of the ocean floor. It’s larger than the ball which shot downwards, and expands the closer it comes. There’s a dark glob at the centre, almost like a pupil in an eye. It’s a long way off, but I’m certain it’s the Shadow. A strange, tingling energy washes into the ship, saturating the air around us. I’ve never felt any magic quite like it.
“Enough!” Beranabus shouts. “Let’s get out before it tears through the hold and rips us apart.”
We surge towards the door, a terrified Kirilli leading the way, Sharmila behind him, then me. Dervish and Beranabus bring up the rear, preparing themselves to fight off the Shadow.
Just before we get to the door, something moves nearby. It’s one of the humans. A woman. Her arms are twitching and her head is rising slowly. The demons must have mistakenly left her for dead.
“Wait!” I yell, breaking left. “There’s a survivor.” I bend over the woman, grab her arms and haul her to her feet. “Come on. We have to get out. I’ll help…”
I come to a sickening halt. The woman’s face is missing from the nose down. Scraps of her brain trickle down her chest as she gets to her feet, through the gap where her jaw should be. She can’t be alive, yet she’s looking at me. But not with warmth or gratitude—only with
My mind whirrs and I realise what’s happening. But before I can yell a warning, dozens of corpses around us thrash, slither, then rise like dreadful ghouls.
SHIP OF THE LIVING DEAD
Bill-E loved zombie films. He thought there was nothing cooler than corpses coming back to life and eating the brains of the living. But I don’t think he’d have been thrilled if it happened to him in real life, like it’s happening to us now.
The revived dead throw themselves at us slavishly, mindlessly, silently. They move as fluidly as in life, not in the shambling manner of movie zombies. Some are hampered by the loss of limbs and stumble sluggishly. But most are as quick on their feet as any living person.
They look more like living people too. They’re not rotting, misshapen monsters. It’s easy to rip the head off an inhuman beast from another dimension, but doing that to someone who looks human feels like murder. It’s horrible.
The woman I picked off the floor tries to claw my throat open. I shove her away and turn to kick a man in the head before he bites my thigh. Ahead of me, a girl throws herself down the stairs and knocks Kirilli over. She snaps at his left hand and chews off his two smallest fingers. He screams, then sets her aflame, instinct lending him the magical fighting impulse which he previously lacked.
“Zombies!” Dervish snorts with disgust, scattering a handful with a ball of energy. “First werewolves, then demons, now zombies. What will they throw at us next?”
“There might not be a
“You’re not worried about this lot, are you?” Dervish says, sending more of the living corpses flying across the hold. “We can handle them. We’ve faced a hell of a lot stronger in our time.”
“You miss the point,” Sharmila replies with forced calm. “The dead are meant only to delay us. There is our true foe.” She points to the centre of the hold. The ball of light is almost level with the ship. As we watch, it breaks around the hull and disintegrates. A black, hissing ball of nightmares explodes through the shield of energy and gathers around the lodestone.
We only got a glimpse of the Shadow that night in the cave. Here, in the lights of the hull, it’s revealed in all its furious glory. The creature is the general shape of a giant octopus, about fifteen metres broad, ten metres tall, covered in a mass of long, countless, writhing tendrils, which whip around the lodestone, tightening and loosening as the creature saps strength from the ancient stone. A few of the living dead wander too close to the lodestone and are beheaded by some of the knifelike tentacles—the Shadow doesn’t suffer fools gladly. The beast doesn’t seem to have a face, but I’m sure it sees us and is focused upon us.
As I gaze with horror at the massive, pulsing creature of shadows, a fat man trailing guts hurls himself at me, gnashing his teeth. I flick him away with the wave of a hand and shuffle closer to Beranabus. He’s eyeing the Shadow warily.
“It doesn’t feel like a demon,” I note.
“I know,” he mutters.
“Can we outrun it?”
“We can try.”
“The stairs are free,” Sharmila calls. “But more of the dead are coming. If we are to flee, we must do so now.”
“What are we waiting for?” Kirilli yells. He hasn’t managed to cauterise his wound. Blood spurts from the jagged stumps where his fingers used to be.
“You think we can fight it?” Dervish asks, stepping up beside Beranabus.
“I don’t know.”
The window Juni escaped through blinks out of existence. That seems to decide Beranabus. “Let’s test it,” he grunts, moving away from the door, back towards the lodestone. “Maybe it’s not as powerful as it thinks.”
He unleashes a ball of bright blue magic at the Shadow. The ball strikes the creature directly and crackles around it. Its tendrils thrash wildly, then return to their almost tender caressing of the lodestone. Its body continues to throb. A high piercing sound fills the hold—I think the Shadow’s laughing at us.
Sharmila bends, touches the invisible barrier where the floor should be and creates a pillar of fire. It streaks towards the lodestone, slicing through several zombies on the way. When it reaches the Shadow, Sharmila barks a command and it billows upwards, forming a curtain of flames. The Shadow’s consumed, its tendrils retracting like a spider’s legs shrivelling up. But when the flames die away, it emerges unharmed, oozes over the lodestone and slides towards us.
Dervish leaps through the air and chops at a thick tendril. He cuts clean through it, severing the tip. The amputated piece dissolves before it hits the floor, crumbling away to ash.
The Shadow catches Dervish with another tentacle, roughly shakes him, then flings him across the hold. Beranabus halts Dervish’s flight and the spiky-haired mage drops to the floor a few metres in front of the magician, gasping with pain, his skin burnt a bright pink where the tendril touched him.
“Stuff this!” Kirilli pants, and darts up the stairs. I let him run. No point trying to make him fight if he doesn’t want to. Besides, I doubt he could make much of a difference.
About a dozen walking corpses converge on me. I work a quick blinding spell, then plough through them as they mill around. I squat by Dervish as Beranabus and Sharmila engage the Shadow, and swiftly cool his burnt flesh.
“Are you OK?” I ask as he sits up, dazed.
“Three,” he mutters. When I frown, he smiles sheepishly. “Sorry. I thought you asked how many fingers
