Page 132 of Grave Situation

His surprised laughter echoes through my head and then fades as he cuts the connection between us, and I glance toward the door. The light has started to fade—not a lot, but since we’re in a city we don’t know well, it’s enough that we shouldn’t linger for long. Coryn wanted to move us to a more secure building, and this is as good as any.

Now I just need to drag Arimen away from communing with Wasianth.

We’re onlytwo streets away from the temple when the stone’s alarm blasts through me, followed by the faint sound of shouting.

“Fuck!” I grab Arimen’s arm and break into a run. “They need?—”

A man drops into the road six feet in front of us, and we skid to a stop. Pushing Arimen behind me, I reach for my magic and study the man closely. He looks completely ordinary except for the extreme blankness of his expression.

Zombie.

“Stay back,” I tell Arimen. If Coryn and Jaimin are pinned down themselves, they won’t be able to help, so this is all on me.

Waning daylight reflects off the zombie’s sword as it comes closer, moving like a living human but still oddly blank and silent, and I reach out to Leicht.

“I’m on my way,”he assures me.“The buildings are a problem. Can you get back up to the aerie or down to the lakeshore?”

“Don’t worry about us. I need you to be my eyes—can you see the others?”I can still hear them yelling, and I hate not knowing what’s happening.

The zombie suddenly lunges at me, and I slam a telekinetic wall in the way of its blade, then wonder why I’m bothering with it. I blast it with magefire.

“I can see them,”Leicht confirms as Arimen and I watch the zombie batter its blazing fists against the invisible barrier between us as it gruesomely burns to ash.“They are besieged but holding their own.”The sound of his wingbeats fills the air as he swoops lower.“They are now in control for the time being. The zombie pieces keep attempting to attack.”

“Yeah, I’m on my?—”

“Talon?” The fear in Arimen’s voice has me spinning quickly to see three zombies approaching from the direction we came.

“Behind you!”

Magefire is blooming from my hands even as I turn back, Leicht’s warning ringing in my head. Another five zombies converge, and three of them were not freshly dead when they were raised. The smell of rotting flesh precedes them, but even without it, I’d be able to tell.

Eight on one. Okay. I sweep magefire toward them, then grab Arimen and push him toward the nearest building. “Get your back against a wall,” I shout. The magefire should tip the odds in my favor, but with this many of them and the way they keep trying even while dying, there’s a chance one of them might reach us.

I don’t know what would happen then.

Leicht’s scream of fury echoes off the buildings around us as I aim fire at the nearest zombie. If we weren’t right in the middleof the enemy, I’d be telling him to burn the whole city down with dragon fire, and I can tell that’s what he wants. His frustration is burning through me.

I sweep two more zombies with magefire, then blast some toward a third, but Imiss. Fucking turds, how could I miss? I don’t have the energy to waste on misses.

This zombie is fast, too, and even though the next blast gets it, I have to shove Arimen along the wall to avoid being grabbed. The moment of distraction is our undoing, and blades flash within reach in the next second… and a hand? Is the zombie trying to grab me?Why?

I put the question out of my mind and focus. The heat of the magefire surging from me is unbearable this close, and I’m eternally grateful that it will only burn its target. Otherwise, we’d be defenseless.

A random blade catches my arm, and I choke back a scream, intensifying the flame in that direction. Why haven’t they all burned yet? Are theremore? Where are they coming from?

A yell carries to me over the crackle of the flames. I don’t know if it’s one of my friends or a human enemy, but I can’t stop to check. My priority has to be keeping me and Arimen alive. Gritting my teeth, I ignore the pain in my arm, ignore the wetness along my skin, and the way I can’t bend my elbow anymore, and focus on?—

The zombies are gone.

Blinking away sweat, I realize that’s not right.Someof the zombies are gone, piles of ash at my feet. The rest of them are wriggling, dismembered piles on the cobblestones, blood dripping on them from the point of a sword.

My gaze travels up the length of the sword. It’s not Coryn’s—the shape and size are wrong, designed for one-handed use instead of two. The hand on the hilt is smaller and slimmer thanCoryn’s, though even from here, it looks just as callused and scarred.

I lift my eyes to the stranger’s face. Something about their manner makes me reluctant to assign them a binary gender, even in my own head. They’re watching me intently, and even though their sword isn’t pointed at me, I don’t assume it couldn’t skewer me in a heartbeat. I’ve seen that expression before—my swordmaster used to wear it, and so did Tia. Coryn. It’s the expression of a fighter who hasn’t let down their guard.

As if to prove me right, the sword slashes in a lightning-fast movement, and the arm that was creeping toward me loses its hand at the wrist.

“If you wouldn’t mind, Mage?” the stranger says, their voice a mellow, mid tone. They have a light accent I don’t recognize, but I can puzzle that out later.

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