Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,231

side: hundreds, thousands, and then what might have been tens of thousands of them, I didn’t know. Just that they were everywhere, including at both ends of the street, cutting me off. And when I tried to shift for the fiftieth time today, I went nowhere.

She’d been wearing me out, I realized, the ozone smell of lightning and depleated power in my nose.

Even with all her power, she’d been worried, and Jo wasn’t like the other acolytes I’d faced. She didn’t overestimate her abilities or underestimate mine. She got backup—a crap ton of it—and still took the time to tire me out to the brink of exhaustion before she was finally ready to end this.

I guess I should be flattered, I thought, as she appeared at the end of the street.

And then someone tried to shift me away.

I could feel the tug of magic, pulling on me; just as I could feel another, far stronger stream slap it down. Over the next moment, I experienced the sensation of almost shifting again, and again, and again, as more of my acolytes located me. There was a second when I swear I could see spectral versions of myself leaping into the sky, in all different directions, like petals on a flower—

Before slamming back into place, hard, because Jo was done playing.

But my acolytes weren’t, only I don’t think “play” was the right word. Not when the hordes of bodies leaping toward me suddenly paused in midair. And then began moving a whole lot slower. They surrounded us, clawing and reaching but barely moving, forming a stadium of flesh, ghostly pale against the night—

And, suddenly, I understood one thing, at least.

“That was my father’s idea!” I yelled at Jo, who had paused to admire her handiwork, I guess. Or to fit in one last gloat.

“I know an old friend of his,” she agreed, walking slowly toward me. “And there were so many ghosts in the Badlands, so desperate for another chance—”

“You couldn’t have fed this many!” I raged.

“I didn’t feed them,” she said casually. “The Black Circle did. I made the same deal that your dad worked out with them, only I didn’t lie. He promised them a ghostly army; I delivered. Just with a twist.”

Yeah, a big one. Facing a ghost army would be bad enough, but Jo had borrowed another idea from dear old dad. She’d stuffed her ghostly corps into real human bodies, combining the two types of necromancy into one.

Only that still didn’t make sense.

“You can’t control this many! No necromancer could!”

“I don’t control them. I don’t have to. They follow the orders of whoever rings the dinner bell.”

“Meaning what?”

“That if they don’t follow orders, they don’t get any more life magic, and they slowly fade away. Unlike humans, ghosts don’t bite the hand that feeds them.”

And no, they didn’t. Like Billy Joe, asleep in my necklace, still worn out from almost draining himself in our fight at the consul’s. He was loyal, but he couldn’t help me here. No more than my acolytes could.

I stared around at her ghost army, clad in the rotting flesh of the plague-riddled bodies she’d dug up, and felt my stomach drop. They were going to break over us in a minute, and there was nothing I could do. Nothing! Ideas cascaded in my frenzied brain, but none of them stuck, except for one.

The one I didn’t know how to do!

“Wait!” I said, as she raised a hand.

“Oh,” she said politely. “Is this where we pause so I can tell you all my dastardly plans? Sorry, Pythia. I’m not in the mood tonight.”

“Why? Who am I going to tell?” I asked desperately, and she laughed.

“You? No one at all. But your acolytes might. I’ll go after them, once you are dead, but there’s always a chance I might miss one. And that would be a shame.”

“Wait!” I said again, trying to come up with another question; anything to buy a little time. Although that didn’t seem like a great strategy when we were about to be swamped anyway. I glanced up at the leaping creatures who were about to close over our heads, and then past them, to where the moon shone serenely down, the light as pure and clear as it always was.

Mother’s symbol; but she couldn’t help me now, either. And I shouldn’t need it! Damn it, why couldn’t I think?

“You gave me a good chase, I’ll give you that,” Jo said, sounding almost sympathetic for once. “But you’re out of