Chapter 5 #2
Mina nodded rapidly. “Yes. That’s why I’m here. I’m good at this.”
Eve muttered, “That’s what scares me.”
Victor motioned to an officer, and the man moved the crowd back another few feet, creating a small gap. It was still too close, but it was something.
Nishi appeared behind us, scanning Mina’s crew. “Where’s your father?”
Mina’s grin flickered. “He told me to work with Lucinda and be responsible.”
Eve visibly flinched.
Lucinda was not even here, and she still managed to ruin Eve’s mood. That took talent.
Mina kept talking, oblivious or pretending. “He said this was council business, and I should treat it seriously.”
Faith’s mouth tightened. “So you brought a mundane film club.”
Mina shrugged. “I treated it seriously. I brought equipment.”
Eve stepped closer to me, voice low. “She’s going to get herself killed.”
I kept my eyes on Mina. “Not if we keep her behind the line.”
Eve’s gaze flicked to the alley mouth where more undead kept emerging. “That line isn’t holding forever.”
She was right.
The undead kept appearing in bursts. Every time we burned or shot them down, more slipped in from angles we hadn’t covered. It wasn’t endless, but it was constant enough to feel like a faucet that wouldn’t shut off.
Mina looked at the alley, then back at me.
Her eyes narrowed slightly, calculating.
“Salima,” she said, pointing at me as if she were casting for a role.
I blinked. “Yes.”
Mina’s grin returned. “I need you to look scary.”
“That’s rude,” I said.
Mina shrugged. “Sorry. Can you do the thing?”
Faith’s eyes narrowed. “What thing?”
Mina’s gaze locked onto the alley where two corpses had just stumbled out and paused, confused by the shifting crowd and the fire.
“The control thing,” Mina said. “The necromancy thing.”
My stomach dropped.
Of course she would go there. Mina had grown up in coven politics. She didn’t see taboos. She saw tools.
Eve’s voice rose. “Mina, no.”
Mina looked at her mother, expression earnest. “Mom, if we can make this look like a scene, if we can show zombies that aren’t eating people, if we can make it look staged, we can save lives. We can stop the panic. We can stop the filming.”
Delia’s gaze slid to me, cool and assessing. “Can you control them?”
I didn’t answer right away.
Because the truth was, I could.
The truth was, something was interfering tonight. The tether I’d felt wasn’t passive. It was active, tight, like a line pulled by someone who didn’t want to share.
If I reached for the undead now, in front of everyone, and failed, Lucinda would be very pleased.
And people would die while I struggled.
Faith stepped closer, voice low. “We can pin a few first. Those binding nails from Andel. If you’re going to try, do it with restraints.”
Nishi nodded once, already pulling a small pouch from her belt. She handed it to Faith. “Use these. Don’t waste them.”
Faith peeked inside, then looked at me. “You control. I anchor.”
My mouth went dry. “And Mina films.”
Mina’s grin turned feral with excitement. “Yes. Thank you. I promise to make you look mysterious and competent.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” I muttered.
Victor’s gaze flicked to us. “Make it fast.”
Delia’s expression remained neutral. “And contained.”
We moved.
Nishi signaled her hunters, and they shifted, drawing a line closer to the alley mouth, forcing the next few undead into a narrow section of street between a parked car and a lamppost. Victor’s officers held the crowd back, shouting at people to stop filming.
Nobody listened, but at least they stayed behind metal.
Eve lifted her hands, hellfire hovering but not released. She held it like a threat, ready to drop the moment things went sideways.
Faith stepped forward with two binding nails in hand and a small hammer she’d taken from somewhere I didn’t ask about.
Two undead stumbled into the gap. A man in a torn hoodie. A woman in a stained skirt. Their eyes were wrong, cloudy, but their heads snapped toward movement with predator focus.
Faith didn’t hesitate.
She lunged, slammed the first nail down through the undead man’s pant leg into the pavement with a quick hammer strike. The sound rang out, metal biting concrete.
The corpse shrieked, a wet, furious sound.
Faith drove a second nail through the other leg.
The undead dropped to its knees, pinned, thrashing, hands clawing at the ground.
Faith pivoted, fast, and did the same to the undead woman, anchoring her by the ankles. The woman snapped her jaws, trying to bite Faith’s boot.
Faith kicked her back and drove another nail in, pinning the hem of the skirt to the ground.
The undead’s movements became frantic, but limited. Like angry dogs on leashes.
Mina’s crew filmed, eyes huge, faces pale, but their cameras stayed steady. I hated that part of me admired their focus. I hated it more that their focus was on this.
Mina leaned toward her mic pack friend, voice loud enough to carry into the camera. “Okay, see, these are the actors. We had them in restraints for safety because we were doing stunt work. We didn’t know people would panic.”
Eve’s mouth tightened. “Mina.”
Mina kept going. “We’re going to show behind the scenes in a second. Everybody breathe. It’s not an outbreak. It’s a very unfortunate misunderstanding.”
Delia moved into the crowd line, voice soft, compelling, threading suggestion through Mina’s words. “A misunderstanding. A stunt. A student film. A scary costume.”
Some mundanes blinked, their expressions shifting. Confusion replacing horror. It wasn’t perfect, but it was something.
Now it was my turn.
I stepped into the gap, close enough that I could smell the rot, the damp earth, the copper tang of old blood. My stomach did a slow roll.
I lifted my hands, palms angled toward the pinned undead.
Necromancy was not like healing. Healing felt like warmth and light, a steady pull toward balance. Necromancy felt like cold water poured down your spine. It felt like reaching into a room you shouldn’t enter and touching something that remembered being alive.
I reached anyway.
The dead threads were there. I could sense them, faint, frayed, tied to muscle and bone. The spark that shouldn’t exist in a corpse flickered like a candle in the wind.
I tried to take hold of it.
Tried to pull the movement into my control, like guiding a puppet by its strings.
For a heartbeat, it worked.
The undead man’s thrashing slowed. Its head turned toward Mina’s camera, jaw slack, eyes blank.
Mina’s grin widened. “Yes. Perfect. Look at that. That’s acting.”
Then the tether hit me.
A tug, not on the corpse, but on my grip.
Like someone on the other end had noticed I’d touched their toy and decided to yank it away.
Pain flared behind my eyes.
My fingers shook.
The undead snapped, sudden, furious, straining against the nails hard enough that the concrete around them cracked. The nails held, but the force behind the corpse surged as if it had been fed.
I hissed, breath catching.
Faith’s hand shot out, steadying my elbow. “Hey. Stay with me.”
“I’m here,” I snapped, though my voice came out thinner than I wanted.
I tried again, pushing harder, forcing my will into the dead threads.
The corpse’s head turned again, slower, like it was fighting through mud.
I felt resistance. Not from the body itself. From whatever was controlling it.