Chapter 66 #4
As they ran, awareness came back to the shades in pieces at first—a twitch of fingers, a head turning too slowly toward the sound of a man breathing—and for one suspended breath, the shore held.
Vredians stumbled forward with blades half–raised, foam swirling around their boots, every man watching the army that had been tearing them apart a moment before stand motionless beneath the falling stars.
Then one of the shades looked at the rift and Ivan felt the horror of it slide cold through his blood as the creature’s head tilted, eyes narrowing with something far worse than hunger.
Calculation. The shade beside it followed the line of its gaze, then another, then another, until the dead began to move with a horrible new purpose.
They did not surge like a wave this time.
They spread. Three broke left to cut off the path to the hull.
Two lowered themselves into the surf and vanished beneath the foam.
Another crouched behind the broken rock and waited.
“Move!” Ivan shouted.
The word hit the living like a spark in dry straw.
The survivors sprinted to the rift as it flickered at the north side of the hull, black and narrowing against the air.
Dario shoved two wounded Vredians ahead of him while Gideon turned and drove a broken blade through the face of a shade that had learned to duck.
Yoni staggered from the rocks where Bryn had died, his face emptied of everything but the need to keep moving, and Dominic hauled him by the back of his neck when he faltered, roaring something Ivan could not hear over the crash of the sea and the sudden, awful coordination of the dead.
Behind them, Avis walked backward toward the rift at her own pace, unhurried in a way that should have gotten her killed three times over.
Every shade that came within reach of her found the ground beneath it simply gone, swallowed into a sinkhole that closed again the instant it had taken what it wanted.
Ivan’s grip tightened around Elara’s unconscious body.
Tristan was twenty feet in front of him, Sybil sagging against him, one of her arms hooked around his neck while her feet dragged more than stepped.
She had spent herself past the point of sense, her head lolling against his shoulder, blood black on her lips.
Ivan’s chest seized. Tristan’s face had gone white beneath the grime, every careless thing burned out of him as he tried to drag her toward the rift and fend off the dead with a sword in the same hand.
Ivan shifted Elara’s weight higher against him and ran.
His ribs screamed. His shoulder tore. The darkness beneath his skin clawed for room, but there were too many bodies, too much torchlight, too much open shore. He reached Tristan as a shade lunged and drove his knife into its arm before it could hook its fingers into Sybil’s hair.
The thing twisted toward him, eyes bright with recognition that had no business living in a corpse.
Ivan shoved Elara into Tristan’s free arm just long enough to step into the shade and let the shadow crawl up his hand.
He drove the darkness into the wound his knife had opened, flooding the dead flesh with black until the shade jerked hard enough to crack its own neck.
Elara’s dagger flared weakly in his hand as if answering from sleep, and the thing came apart in strips of smoke and seawater.
Ivan took Elara back before Tristan could drop under the weight of both women.
“Go,” Ivan snarled.
They ran together, Ivan half-carrying Elara, half-dragging Sybil’s weight when Tristan stumbled.
The line ahead was collapsing into the rift one body at a time.
Dario vanished with a wounded man under each arm.
Avis followed backward, still fighting until Dominic seized her by the arm and threw her through.
A Vredian at the rear was clipped by something from the rocks—a shade’s hand closing around his ankle, intelligent enough now to wait until the man had committed his weight forward before pulling.
He hit the ground hard, fingers clawing at wet stone as three more fell on him.
Dominic turned back, searching the shore with frantic eyes until his gaze landed on Elara and eased. Yoni grabbed him, shoved him through the rift, and then looked back once at the shore, at the men they could not save, at the dead learning how to hunt with minds returned to them.
His face broke.
Then he stepped through.
The rift began to close.
“Move!” Tristan shouted, voice cracking.
Ivan drove forward with Elara in his arms and Sybil’s sleeve clenched in one fist, dragging Tristan with them as the shades converged.
Fingers caught the back of Ivan’s coat. Another hand slashed across his calf.
He felt cloth tear, felt skin open, felt Elara slip against him as his strength gave for half a step.
No.
He hauled her higher and threw himself at the narrowing dark.
Tristan hit the rift first with Sybil crushed against him. Ivan followed a heartbeat later, turning his body so Elara went through before he did. Something caught his boot. He kicked blindly, felt bone give beneath his heel, and then the world folded inward.