what you were. Rest, and walk no more."
Their eyes flickered almost like a television that wasn't quite on station, like two channels trying to be on screen at once.
"Tell me you brought salt," I said, voice low and even.
" Bennington wouldn't let us bring any, because salt is for putting zombies back in their graves and he didn't want you to do that to his wife."
"Fine," I said. I knelt, very carefully, keeping my eyes on the zombies the way I did when I was on the judo mat. You never take your eyes off your opponent because if you do they can rush you. I knelt and found the blade I'd dropped into the grave dirt. The blade still had Silas's blood on it. Salt would have been good, but I had steel, and grave dirt, and power. It would be enough, because it would have to be.
I stood up, slowly, deliberately, and called my necromancy. I called it in a way I hadn't before. I called it to use against the shadows in their eyes, the shadows that were promising me power, glory, conquest. Just let us stay, it seemed to whisper. Just let us stay and we will give you the world. I had a moment to envision a world where the dead truly walked, and moved at my will, but I knew better. I could see it in their eyes. I had animated the dead, but I hadn't filled their eyes with dark power, or had I? Something about them eating human flesh without a circle of power had caused this, and I remembered the third reason for putting up a circle of power before raising the dead. It kept things out. It kept the shadows away.
I'd been arrogant, and I prayed for forgiveness for that particular sin. I was heartily sorry for it. Killing Bennington didn't bother me. "By steel, blood, and will, I command you to go back to your graves and walk no more."
There was another moment of that eye flicker.
I put power into the words, all the power I had, and willed it to work. I called the dead to me. I called them with the power that had made my dog rise from the grave when I was fourteen. I called them to me with the power that had put a suicidal professor in my dorm room in college. I called them with that part of me that made vampires hover around me like I was the last light in all the darkness. I called the dead to me, and bade them to rest and walk no more.
I shoved my power into them, and felt something else in there. Something else that shoved back, but the bodies were too much mine. Too much of my power animated them, and one by one their eyes emptied and they stood like shells waiting for orders.
"Rest and walk no more; by steel, grave, and will, I command thee." They shambled back to their graves in a silent mass; the only sounds the shuffling of feet and the brush of cloth. Ilsa Bennington came to stand in front of us. She was still the lovely flirt that her husband had been willing to kill for, but her blue eyes were as empty as all the rest. Her mouth was smeared with redder things than lipstick.
Nicky whispered, "God." But when I moved to the side of the grave, he and Jacob moved with me. Ilsa lay down on the grave and the dirt flowed over her like water. I'd never had so many zombies lay to rest at once. The dirt made a sound like waves crashing as it covered them all back up.
We stood in a silence so deep I could hear the pulse in my own body thundering in my ears. Then the first night insect called, then a distant frog, then the wind blew through the clearing, and it was as if the world had been holding its breath. We could all breathe again.
"You almost got us eaten alive," Jacob said.
"You kidnapped me, remember?"
He nodded, and he was pale even by moonlight. Ellen made a small moan in his arms. "She'll be all right," he said, as if someone had asked the question.
He looked at the gun that was still in his other hand underneath her body. I watched the thought run through his eyes. "Don't do it," I said.
"Why not? You don't have any more zombies to eat me."
"Jacob," Nicky said, "don't."
"You'll