Chapter 6 #3
“Okay,” I said, voice low. “We break two anchors. One on each side of the curve. Faith, you and I do the physical damage. Nishi, keep watch. Eve, be ready to burn anything that rises. Tegan, watch for an object.”
Faith’s mouth tightened. “Physical damage to a grave is a bad look.”
I glanced at her. “So is letting corpses eat civilians.”
“That’s fair,” Faith said, and moved.
We spread out, stepping carefully between stones, flashlights cutting through the mist.
The cemetery felt smaller now, more enclosed, as if the dark trees had crept closer while we argued.
I stopped in front of one carved grave, lifted my boot, and hesitated.
It felt wrong to destroy someone’s marker. Even if the marker was being used as a magical anchor, it was still a grave. A person lay under it. Someone had loved them enough to put their name in stone.
Then I remembered the bodies downtown.
I remembered the scream that cut off too fast.
I stomped.
The stone didn’t shatter, but it cracked, the carved symbols splitting across the break.
The air shifted.
A cold gust rolled through the cemetery, low to the ground, stirring dead leaves.
Something in my senses eased, like a rope losing tension.
Faith swung her hammer down on another marked stone, striking hard. The headstone fractured, chips flying. The symbols broke apart.
The cold gust returned, stronger, swirling around our ankles.
Eve’s hellfire flared in her palm, not thrown, just ready.
Tegan’s relic shimmered, and she turned in a slow circle, eyes scanning. “Something moved.”
Nishi’s posture tightened. “Where?”
Tegan pointed toward a cluster of graves near the back fence. “There. Under that tree.”
We moved as one, boots crunching on gravel.
The mist thickened near the fence. The cedar branches hung low, heavy with damp.
And there, half buried under dead leaves near the base of the tree, was something dark and metallic.
Not a coffin handle. Not trash.
A disk, about the size of my palm, etched with symbols that looked like the carvings on the stones, only cleaner, older.
Tegan crouched carefully, relic held close. “That’s not from this cemetery.”
Eve’s face went tight. “That’s placed.”
Faith held her weapon steady. “Don’t touch it.”
Tegan didn’t. She hovered her relic over it, eyes narrowing. “It’s resonating like a beacon.”
My stomach clenched as the tether sensation flared. Stronger now that we were close.
“That’s the knot,” I whispered. “That’s where the array is anchored.”
Nishi’s phone buzzed again, and she glanced down, eyes narrowing.
“They’re asking for backup at the funeral home,” she said. “The outbreak is escalating.”
Eve’s jaw clenched. “Of course it is.”
I stared at the disk, at the carved language of resurrection, at the echo of Drathar’s style in the lines.
Then I looked at Eve. “Could Dagna be involved?”
Eve’s gaze flicked to me. “Why would you say that?”
“Because this feels like something pulled from the black market,” I said, voice tight. “Something placed deliberately. Dagna deals in banned magic items.”
Tegan nodded slowly, eyes still on the disk. “If someone needed an artifact tied to resurrection, they’d go to someone like that.”
Nishi’s expression stayed controlled, but her eyes hardened. “Dagna disappeared. That makes her harder to track.”
Eve’s mouth tightened. “Glinda is turning in her grave over her sister’s power.”
“Only because she lost our fight,” Faith said.
The disk sat there, silent and smug, like it knew it was the center of our problems.
And somewhere downtown, another building full of bodies was becoming a second feeding ground.
Nishi lifted her phone again, voice clipped. “We take the disk. Now. Then we move to the funeral home.”
Tegan’s eyes widened. “Take it. Are you sure?”
Nishi’s gaze didn’t waver. “We can’t leave it. If it’s the knot, it goes with us. We can contain it, study it, break it somewhere controlled.”
Eve looked at me. “Can you handle it?”
My mouth went dry. “I can try.”
Faith shifted closer, hammer still in hand, weapon ready. “And if it bites?”
“I don’t think it has teeth,” I said.
Eve gave me a look. “Everything has teeth tonight.”
I crouched slowly, keeping my hands steady, and reached toward the disk.
The cold hit me before I touched it, as if my fingers were nearing ice.
Under that cold, I felt something else.
A pulse.
Not a heartbeat. Not life.
A signal.
Something calling into the ground, into the dead, into the places where bodies waited.
I swallowed and wrapped my fingers around the edge, bracing for resistance.
The moment I lifted it, the tether sensation snapped tight, as if the line had realized it was being moved.
My vision blurred for a half second.
Then the air around us shifted, and from somewhere deeper in the cemetery, a low sound rose.
Not a scream.
Not a groan.
A breath.
Like the earth exhaled.
Eve’s hellfire flared brighter.
Faith’s grip tightened on her weapon.
Nishi’s voice went rose into her phone. “We’re moving. Hold the funeral home until we arrive.”
And as we sprinted back toward the SUV, the disk cold in my hand and the cemetery behind us waking up, I had one clear thought that felt like a curse.
If the cemetery was the source, the funeral home was the pantry.