Chapter 6
The last pinned corpse burned down to a shape that barely resembled a person, and the smell clung to the back of my throat like punishment.
Downtown Ravenholde looked like a natural disaster.
Police cruisers angled across the street.
Flashing lights bounced off shop windows.
Smoke drifted in thin ribbons, and ash dusted the pavement like black snow.
Victor’s officers held the line, pushing mundanes back behind the vehicles, repeating the same instructions with the tired intensity of people who knew nobody listened until it was too late.
Delia moved through the crowd in a steady rhythm, two fingers to temple, a soft voice, a shift in the eyes. She worked as if she’d done this a thousand times, which was unsettling for several reasons I did not want to examine.
Mina and her friends stayed behind the police line, filming their staged explanation, whispering cues to each other as if this were a student project and not a public massacre.
Mina’s excitement had finally dulled into something closer to seriousness.
Not enough seriousness, but more than she’d started with, which was something.
Eve stood close to me, hands lowered now, hellfire banked but not gone.
I could still feel the heat of it in the air, even with the winter bite.
She kept scanning the street as if she expected another wave to barrel toward us at any second.
Her face was smudged with soot, and her eyes looked bright in a way that always made my stomach tense.
Eve with access to rage was a dangerous thing.
Eve with access to hellfire and a reason to use it was scary.
Faith reloaded with practiced motions, not looking at the bodies, not looking at the blood. She had that same hard focus she always got in a fight, like emotion was a luxury she refused to purchase.
Nishi paced a few steps away, phone pressed to her ear, speaking in quick bursts.
Her hunters moved along rooftops and alley mouths in coordinated sweeps, checking angles, securing exits, keeping the undead from slipping into the crowd again.
If anyone could make chaos look organized, it was Nishi Kazuko.
I stayed still for half a second, trying to let my heartbeat return to something that didn’t feel like it wanted to break out of my chest. My hands shook.
Not from fear, exactly. From strain. My necromancy still felt contested, like I’d tried to lift something heavy and someone had shoved back from the other side.
I hated that feeling.
I hated it because it meant the person controlling the undead could touch my power. Could resist it. They were more powerful than me.
Somewhere in the mess, Mina’s voice carried through the air, bright and staged.
“We were filming a zombie movie. We had no idea people would think it was real. Please stop sharing the videos, we’re working with authorities.”
Delia moved past a cluster of witnesses and murmured, gentle and precise, “A stunt. A student film. A misunderstanding.”
A woman blinked, face twisting from terror into embarrassment. She lowered her phone as if it had suddenly become shameful.
I didn’t know whether to be grateful or furious. Probably both.
Nishi’s posture changed. She lowered her phone, head tilting as if she were listening to a voice in her earpiece. Her eyes narrowed, and she turned toward us.
“We’ve got a report,” she said.
Faith’s head snapped up. “Another wave.”
Nishi shook her head once. “Not here.”
Eve stepped closer. “Where?”
“One of my hunters found the source,” Nishi said, and even her calm voice tightened around the word.
My stomach dropped. “You’re sure?”
“As sure as I can be based on what she’s seeing.” Nishi looked past us toward Victor, then back. “Ravenholde Cemetery.”
Faith made a low sound. “The big one?”
“No,” Nishi said. “The smaller one. The older cemetery on the east side.”
Of course it was the older one. Old places held old magic. Old places held memories. Old places held bones that had been in the ground long enough to forget their names, but not long enough to stop being useful.
Eve’s eyes flashed. “We gotta go.”
Faith had already started moving, then stopped, her gaze flicking back to the chaos behind us. “What about this?”
Nishi’s eyes cut toward Victor. “He holds downtown. Delia finishes the wipe. Spencer stays with her. Mina pushes the narrative. My hunters keep the perimeter.”
Victor heard his name as if he had a sixth sense for problems. He turned, suit still crisp despite everything, eyes like steel.
“We’re shifting,” Nishi called to him.
Victor’s gaze flicked to her, then to the street, then to Delia and Mina’s crew. He didn’t ask questions. He asked for assignments.
“Go,” he said. “I’ll keep the line. But if more come, I need a heads-up.”
“You’ll get it,” Nishi said.
Delia glanced up from a witness, green eyes narrowing. “If the cemetery is the origin point, you end it there, or I’ll be wiping memories until my fingers fall off.”
Spencer stepped closer to Tegan, voice low. “Be careful.”
Tegan nodded once, face tight. She looked as if she wanted to kiss him.
“If it’s a locus,” she said, “there may be an object.”
Faith opened the SUV door. “Then we find it.”
Mina jogged up, camera crew orbiting her like eager moons. Her cheeks were flushed, eyes bright, phone already in her hand. “Are we moving locations? Because I can do location work. I’m good at that.”
Eve’s gaze snapped to Mina. “You’re not coming.”
Mina blinked, actually offended. “Excuse me. This is literally what I’m here for.”
“No,” Eve said, voice flat with mother authority. “You did your part. Stay. Keep the story alive. Do not follow us.”
Mina opened her mouth.
Eve lifted an eyebrow.
Mina’s mouth closed. She exhaled hard. “Fine. But text me if you find anything cool, because I want to build the narrative around it.”
Faith muttered, “I’ll text you a picture of my middle finger.”
Mina’s grin returned, quick and fearless. “That’s on brand for you, Saber.”
Faith looked as if she regretted existing.
Nishi swung into the driver’s seat. Faith took shotgun without being asked. I slid into the back next to Eve, and Tegan climbed in on the other side of her.
The engine roared, and we pulled away from downtown, leaving Victor, Delia, Spencer, and the vampires to hold the line and clean up the minds of a crowd that would keep trying to remember.
As we drove, I watched the city lights blur past the window. Neon and streetlamps and holiday decorations that suddenly felt obscene. Someone had put up a plastic snowman on a storefront, and it smiled cheerfully at the chaos like it didn’t know the dead were sprinting around the streets.
Faith kept her gaze forward. “So the cemetery is the source. What does that mean?”
“It means the undead are not random,” Nishi said. “It means someone’s working from an anchor point.”
“And it means,” Tegan added, voice tight, “they’re using a place that already has thin walls between life and death.”
Eve’s fingers touched her necklace again. “That’s why they feel wrong.”
I swallowed, tasting smoke and old blood in my mouth. “Or it’s why I can’t get a clean hold on them.”
Faith glanced back at me briefly. “You still feeling the pushback?”
“Yes,” I said. “Like someone’s gripping the same thread.”
Silence filled the SUV for a moment, heavy.
Then Eve spoke, voice quieter. “If someone is contesting you, they’re strong.”
I stared out at the dark trees sliding past. “Or they’re not alone.”
Nishi turned off the main road onto a narrower street, the kind lined with older houses and heavier shadows. The city lights faded behind us, replaced by streetlamps that cast pale pools on wet pavement. The air looked misty here, as if the night had thickened.
“Hunters are already on site,” Nishi said. “They found markings.”
Tegan’s head snapped toward her. “Markings where?”
“On graves,” Nishi answered. “On headstones. On ground plates.”
My skin prickled. “Carved.”
“Yes.”
Faith exhaled, low and controlled. “That’s deliberate.”
The cemetery came into view, tucked behind a row of cedars and a low iron fence.
It wasn’t the big memorial park with manicured lawns and family plots that people visited on Sundays.
This place was older, smaller, with uneven ground and stones that leaned like tired teeth.
A few headstones were so weathered they looked as if decades of rain and salt air had sanded them down.
Nishi parked near the gate.
A hunter waited for us, hood up, flashlight in hand. She looked young, but her stance was professional, and her eyes were intense when she spoke.
“Commander,” she said to Nishi. “It’s back there.”
Nishi nodded once. “Show me.”
We climbed out.
The air hit me immediately. Cold and damp, with that cemetery smell that was half earth, half stone, half memory. The silence here was different from normal quiet. It felt watched.
Faith checked her weapon. Eve’s hands flexed once, as if she wanted to be sure her magic was ready. Tegan pulled a small relic from her coat pocket, its surface etched.
I stepped through the gate and felt something shift. Not a barrier exactly. More like a subtle pressure change, like walking into a room where someone had been crying.
“Do you feel that?” I murmured.
Eve nodded. “Yes.”
Tegan’s gaze swept the rows. “This place is loaded.”
Faith snorted. “It’s a cemetery. That’s the point.”
We followed the hunter along a narrow path between graves. The stones grew closer together, older, less decorated. Some had small iron fences around them, rusted and bent. Some had flowers, real or plastic, limp in the cold.
Then I saw it.
A grave marker with fresh cuts in the stone. Not random scratches. Symbols.
They looked too crisp to be old. Someone had carved them recently.
The hunter pointed. “There’s more.”
She moved her light across the row.
Another headstone had the same style of cuts. Another. And another.
My stomach dropped further with each one.