like his face, which appeared to be sliding off the bones, with huge, red, gaping holes under the eyes. They weren’t wounds, but rather the sockets, which had sagged an inch or more into his cheeks, leaving bloody half-moons under yellowed, bloodshot eyes. The irises were milky as if in death, but apparently still able to see. Because he followed me as I crab walked backwards, so freaked out that I couldn’t get back to my feet.
He bent down, that horrible, dead face in mine. And, of course, just about that time, my shield gave out. I felt like screaming, but I didn’t have the breath. And before I could get it, he spoke, in a horrible, dry rattle, completely unlike any voice I’d ever heard, human or fey.
Although it didn’t matter, as I couldn’t focus on the words anyway, since the stench of his breath almost had me passing out again.
It smelled like death. It smelled like old death, weeks past its prime, full of rot and decay. It smelled—
I couldn’t describe how it smelled.
I rolled away, desperate to get out of range of that stench, but now they were all coming at me. Not quickly, not with weapons, and not in any other way threatening. Just coming.
And it was worse than any attack I’d ever suffered.
“What the fuck?” That was Tomas’s voice, and then Louis-Cesare’s arms were around me, pulling me up.
I knew him instinctively, and assumed that the rest of the team was here, too, but I didn’t turn to see. I couldn’t seem to move. Because the fey were still coming, only not with the springy grace they usually had, but with a shuffling, halting sort of walk. Even worse, they were speaking.
I didn’t know the language; didn’t know what they said.
But Tomas seemed to.
“What do they want?” Louis-Cesare rasped. And, for once, the two weren’t arguing. Petty, or even not so petty, emotions just didn’t hold up in here.
“They want us to kill them,” Tomas said blankly, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, either.
“Not a problem,” Jason said harshly, and raised his gun.
Tomas shoved it down. “They want to die in Faerie! That’s the only way their souls can be reborn. It’s their religion.”
“Fuck their religion.”
But Sarah was a little more generous of heart. She didn’t say anything, but she came forward and put a hand on her brother’s shoulder. And, without a word being spoken, Jason holstered the gun.
“You’re the expert,” he said to Tomas. But he was still fingering his weapon, as if he’d enjoy granting their request.
Only, it looked to me like somebody already had.
“Jonathan,” Louis-Cesare said.
And, yeah, obviously.
But Tomas didn’t seem to agree. “No,” he said, because of course, he’d know the story. They had been master and servant for something like a century, whether Tomas had liked it or not. And he seemed generous enough not to make fun of that, at least. “But he isn’t behind this.”
“He is. He’s here.”
And something about the way Louis-Cesare said it, made shivers go down my spine.
“You can’t make zombies out of fey,” Tomas insisted. “They’re not like us. Their bodies and souls . . . they are linked in a way that ours just aren’t. Necromancers don’t want a soul in house. They want to put a bit of their soul in an empty vessel, to control the creature they’ve created.”
“And . . . what would happen . . . if there was already a soul in place?” Sarah asked.
We looked at the horrible creatures in front of us.
I thought we had our answer.
Someone suddenly screamed. It was a high-pitched sound that could have come from either a man or a woman, and it was loud enough that everybody jumped. Even the vamps.
“Shit!” Sarah said. “Shit, shit, shit!”
I’d never agreed with anything more.
We moved back to the area around the burning truck and mostly destroyed entryway of the warehouse. There were a lot more bodies there, but they weren’t fey and they weren’t moving. Zheng turned one over. A little gold charm was on the ground under the corpse. I guessed it was one of the kinds that came off after death.
He picked it up.
“Eternity,” he said, turning it over in his fingers.
“So . . . the fey killed the triad?” Jason asked, sounding dubious. Maybe because those fey didn’t look capable of killing anyone.
“They’re supposed to be working together,” Louis-Cesare said. “They hit Hassani’s court together.”
“Seems like they’ve had a bit of a falling out,” Zheng said dryly.