Chapter 5 #3
It was like trying to steer a car while someone else yanked the wheel in the opposite direction.
My stomach clenched. Sweat broke out along my hairline despite the cold air.
Eve’s voice cut in, tight. “Salima.”
“I know,” I said through my teeth. “I’m working.”
Mina’s camera crew kept filming, and part of me wanted to scream at them to stop recording my struggle as if it were entertainment. Another part of me knew this footage mattered. If mundanes believed it was staged, maybe fewer people would die.
I forced my focus down, deeper.
I found the seam.
Not the caster. Not the source. The seam between the corpse’s dead threads and the external pull.
I grabbed it like a rope and yanked.
Agony spiked through my skull, harsh enough to make my vision blur.
The undead man’s thrashing stopped.
It went still, held in place by the nails and my will, head angled toward the camera as if it had been posed.
Mina’s face lit up. “Yes. That’s it. That’s the shot.”
The undead woman jerked harder, her tether flaring against mine like a living thing. My control slipped on her.
I staggered half a step, nausea rising.
Faith caught my arm. “Too much.”
“It shouldn’t be,” I whispered, more to myself than anyone. “It shouldn’t be this hard.”
Because it wasn’t supposed to be.
I had controlled undead before. Not armies. Not like this. But enough to know the shape of the work.
This was different.
Something was still interfering with my power, pressing back, tugging at the dead threads like an angry hand refusing to let go.
Delia’s gaze locked onto me, cool and intelligent. “Someone is contesting you.”
I swallowed hard, forcing breath into my lungs. “Yes.”
Spencer’s eyes flashed red. “Then we cut the line. Tell me where.”
I shook my head, frustrated. “It’s not a physical line. It’s… influence. It’s woven.”
Eve’s hellfire flared brighter, ready. “Then we stop filming and burn them.”
Mina’s voice rose, urgent. “No. Wait. We need ten more seconds. Just ten. We can use this.”
Faith stared at Mina as if she wanted to throw her into the van. “You don’t get to call the timing.”
Mina’s grin faltered, then she nodded quickly. “Okay. Sorry. But please.”
I closed my eyes for one beat, gathered myself, and reached for the undead woman again.
Cold flooded my veins.
The tether fought me, harder this time.
I pushed anyway, forcing her head to turn, forcing her arms to lift in a slow, exaggerated shamble.
Like an actor obeying direction.
My vision blurred at the edges.
Mina’s crew filmed, Mina narrating in a bright voice that barely hid her fear. “See. This is the choreography. We rehearsed this. We had safety nails. It looks real because we’re good at special effects.”
Delia moved through the crowd again, weaving suggestion into Mina’s words. “Special effects. Student film. A stunt.”
Some mundanes lowered their phones, blinking as if they’d woken from a nightmare into embarrassment.
Others kept filming, because some people clung to horror as if it were a hobby.
The undead woman jerked suddenly, my control slipping for a half second.
Her head snapped toward me, jaw opening wide.
A sound rose from her throat, not a groan.
A laugh.
Wet, broken, wrong.
The tether yanked hard enough that pain flashed behind my eyes again.
I stumbled back, breath ragged.
Faith slammed another nail down near the undead woman’s knee, anchoring her further. “Enough.”
Eve’s hellfire surged, ready to end the experiment.
Mina’s eyes went wide. Her grin vanished. She looked, finally, like a twenty-two-year-old who realized she was standing too close to death.
Delia’s gaze stayed on me, voice low. “You can’t hold them.”
“I can,” I rasped, furious at myself, furious at the unseen pull, furious at whoever was doing this. “I just can’t hold them alone.”
And that was the terrifying part.
Because if someone out there could contest my necromancy while I was actively using it, then they weren’t just raising corpses.
They were watching.
They were reacting.
And they were strong enough to push back.
Faith tightened her grip on my arm, solid. “We got what we needed. Mina, get your footage and get out of here.”
Mina swallowed, nodding fast. “Okay. Okay. We got it. We got enough.”
Eve exhaled hard, anger and fear tangling. “Salima, step back.”
I did, because the nausea was rising, and my hands were shaking, and the dead threads felt like they were burning into my palms.
Eve released hellfire.
The pinned undead ignited instantly, flames eating through rot and cloth and the awful laughter that still echoed in my head.
Mina’s crew kept filming for another second, then Mina snapped, “Cut. Cut. We’re done.”
Delia moved back into the crowd line, already erasing, already smoothing edges.
Victor barked orders to his officers, tightening the perimeter again.
Nishi shouted at her hunters, sending them down the block to check the alley mouths.
And I stood there in the middle of it all, smoke in my lungs, my pulse pounding, realizing something I did not want to say out loud yet.
Whatever was controlling those undead knew I was here.
And it didn’t like sharing.