Page 58 of Which Witch Is Wicked?
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Lightning forked through the sky, and the rumbling answer of thunder crawled after it, a cold, loud wind shrieking in from the east.
“We’re not…read… back …Grim!” Tierra was saying something, but it was lost in the sounds of the approaching storm and the calls of trapped zombies and the power swirling, and the heart beating in Aerin’s ears.
“I’m going to need some fire and a skull,” Aerin called.
“Allow me” Claire jogged over with loud leather creaks. Once she reached Aerin, she swept an arm to the struggling horde. “I think we have more than enough skulls here.
“No!” Tierra lunged through her cadre of trapped undead, ducking and weaving their reach like a human pinball. “Those spells are necromancy,” she yelled. “That’s not what we do.”
“That’s not whatyoudo,” Aerin called back. “But nothing else is working. It’s time to fight fire with fire.” She slid a glance to Claire. “Er, death with death. Undeath? You know what I mean.”
“I gotcha.” Claire flicked her lighter. “I’m ready when you are.” Aerin began the incantation.
“Without a soul or body of earth.”
Tierra was almost to them, and Moira wasn’t too far behind her, working backward and swiping at the zombies with her trusty chainsaw.
“Don’t,” Tierra cried. “Those spells are dark. We don’t know what they can do!”
“It says right there,” Claire argued. “Incantation to control the undead.”
“We want them kilt, not controlled,” Moira called over the ripping of the chainsaw as another one melted before her, his limbs scuttling on their own toward Tierra.
“I didn’t see one of those!” Aerin yelled, then started over.
“Without a soul or body of earth. What once had life, but death has delivered…”
With discomfiting synchronicity, the head of each zombie, almost a hundred in all crowded in and around their yard, all swiveled around to gaze at Aerin.
“Those returned through unholy birth, out of the grave and ashes slithered…”
“Do you feel that?” Moira asked a chill visibly shaking her shoulders.
“Yes,” Tierra nodded. “It’s heavy… like a weight of something in the air, like it’s trying to smother us.”
Aerin could feel it, all right. It enveloped her like a cloak, settling around her like a robe of nobility. Power surged through her, tendrils of it snaking from her mouth and calling to the twitching undead on the lawn.
“I think it’s working. Look, they’ve stopped trying to bite us.” Claire pointed with her free hand.
“Heed me now, thou slaves of the past. Unchain your flesh from the grasp of
Death…”
“He’s not going to like that,” Tierra warned, reaching out for the book, though still a few paces away.
Aerin didn’t care. She felt hard, like her skin would crack and her bones would splinter, so much power surged through her. It threatened to tear her apart, but in a decadent way. Like a sneeze, or an orgasm. A moment of pure sensation that rearranged molecules and expelled chemicals and threats, and breath.
Air.
This was right… it may not be good, but it was right.
“I can feel it too,” Claire touched her shoulder. “It’s intoxicating.”
“It’s dark!” Tierra cried. “Stop!”
“No.” With a swipe of Claire’s hand, a wall of fire leapt between them, separating Aerin and Claire from Moira and Tierra. The heat singed the air like a scream, and smelled of sulphur and terror, and pain.
