Page 103 of Bound in Blood

Both Axl and I call out his name like a prayer. “Alexandros!”

Chapter

Fifty

OPHELIA

59 MINUTES BEFORE THE LIGHT GOES OUT

Ophelia, do not leave Anikêtos’s side!Alexandros warns, and I assure him I won’t.

I have no intention of straying far from the huge black dragon, especially now that Alexandros is no longer at my side. Without Alexandros and the boys, I feel safer with Ani and Elpis than with anyone else. The warlocks have created force fields that deflect Dragonfyre, but I’m able to channel enough power to hold back any of the vampires and warlocks who draw too near while taking down the force fields one by one.

Cadence stands to my left and Enora on my right, chanting spells that counteract the warlocks’ dark magic. The vampires and wolves who remained, including Sienna and Osiris, have fanned out in front and are picking off Giorgios’s army and holding the line. The system is working, and although we’ve lost two vampires and a wolf—a fact which I cannot give too much consideration to right now because the pain would be debilitating—we’re winning. Giorgios’s army is no match for two powerful witches, an elementai, and her dragons.

But my sense of triumph is short-lived. Birds explode into the night sky as a lone moose rockets out of the woods, followed by a herd of deer. What appears at first to be a solid wall of darkness emerges next, but as it clears the gap between Apollo Hall and Erato Hall, I am able to make out individual figures. Every hair on my body stands on end at the sight of thousands upon thousands of shadows approaching us in one massive wave.

“What the hell are they, Enora?” Cadence asks.

“I am not sure,” she replies, her face a mask of fear.

I direct a shard of energy toward one, testing its defenses, and it splinters into a thousand fragments of darkness. “I don’t know what they are, but we can take them out easily.” I flash Cadence a grin. “They have no defenses.”

I would not be so sure of that, Anikêtos warns.

I turn back to the horde and watch in horror as the fragments are pulled back together, as though by a magnetic force, and retake the original shape of… What is their shape? Man? Vampire? Warlock?

What are they, Ani?

They are the undead, child. There is a crack in the veil.

“The undead,” I repeat aloud for Cadence’s and Enora’s benefit. An army of the undead isn’t the wildest thing I’ve seen lately—I mean, I’m communicating telepathically with a dragon—so that’s probably why the first thing I ask isn’twhat the actual hell, but instead, “How do we stop them?”

“They will not be so easily stopped, Ophelia,” Enora says gravely. “You cannot kill what is already dead.”

Ani and Elpis torch the advancing line of dark figures with Dragonfyre, but it simply burns them to an ash that quickly reforms. This is bad. Really,reallybad.

“But there must be a way to stop them? Have you dealt with them before?”

Enora pulls her hair from its topknot, and her silver locks swirl around her, sizzling and crackling with energy. “Not in any great numbers, sweet child.” She begins chanting a spell that has silver sparks of lightning whirling around us and seems to slow the advancing shadows.

I blast energy at them and watch them explode into particles one after one before becoming whole again. Cadence chants a spell that strengthens Enora’s, but the shadows move through it like they are passing through a wall of treacle, then pick up speed.

Ani and Elpis continue raining Dragonfyre, but the effort is in vain. At least we are able to keep the shadows from our allies on the quad, who go on fighting the living. “What the hell are we going to do? Keep destroying them and hope they have a distinct number of lives that we’ll eventually burn through?”

Enora weaves her arms in a circle above her head. “The only way to stop them is to close the crack in the veil. And the only way to do that is to return the wraith to the netherworld.”

“How?”

She glances at me, her usual youthful complexion now old and haggard, and I recall how Alexandros once told me she channels magic to mask her true age. “We must recast the spell of the great white witch, Selena.”

“Can you do that? Canwedo that?”

She turns back to the advancing army. “I believe it is possible, but we will need a little help.”

“Help?”

“I have called for Nazeel Danraath and her sisters. I hope they reach us before it is too late.” The mass of dark figures grows closer and closer.

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