“What the hell does that mean?” I asked, clutching my chest. My legs quivered from the primal instinct to run away from something so clearly unnatural as the creatures emerging from the backyard.

“What do you think it means?” Bria ripped out her necromancy materials, her movements rushed and her hands shaking. “He’s got cadavers, he’s got souls aplenty in that house, and he’s clearly got a lot of Red Bull. I gotta tear those fuckers down before they get control of their new digs.”

“You mean they’re not going to stay like that?”

She organized her materials for ease of use. “Remember the rats?”

“Those were new bodies, though.”

“Doesn’t matter. As soon as the soul learns to pull the strings, things speed up. These souls can’t be that strong, since I didn’t feel them, but that doesn’t mean worse aren’t coming. Lord only knows what magic they have.”

Their magic throbbed in their middles, much less potent than that of the guy who’d put them there.

“No, they aren’t powerful,” I said, opening and closing my hands, feeling the souls pulse in the bodies.

“The power level of the magic and the soul are sometimes two different things, especially if the Necromancer used non-magical cadavers.”

“I know. Neither the souls nor their magic are very powerful. Way less than the guys we’re tailing, who are less powerful than us.”

She didn’t stop in her harried preparation, but her head tilted. “How do you know that?”

“I did something to Kieran last night and now I just know.” Two more souls popped up on my radar, farther down the road, creeping toward us. After another moment, another presence flared to life. “What can I do?”

“You can rip the souls out of those bodies. That’d be really helpful.” Bria slid her thumb across the top of a lighter. It sparked before the flame flickered to life. “Barring that, just keep them off me, if you can.”

Memories of the night before with Kieran rolled through my head. I remembered seeping into his chest and stroking his soul. He’d let me do it, I was pretty sure, but he was also a live Demigod with protections in place to keep his soul put. These suckers were just hosts for a bunch of poor sods who should’ve been well past the Line by now.

“Okay,” I said, stalking into the street. Another soul flared to life down the way, stronger than the one before it. “Definitely Red Bull,” I said, watching the animated dead people learn to walk. They were already much smoother, picking it up quickly. “I need to start grabbing these souls.”

I closed my eyes and felt through the closest body, finding the squishy middle easily. I dug down, ready for the hard plate protecting the soul. Instead, I punched through into nothing, and found myself immersed in someone else’s junk.

“Ah crap,” I said as the soul latched on and started crawling up the link I’d just created. “Ew. Get off.”

I yanked back, my version of flinching away. Without meaning to, I dragged the soul with me.

A man materialized on the edge of the lawn, his eyes rounded and a surprised look on his face. Behind him, the body crashed down to the ground, lifeless without its pilot.

“Wow. That happened,” I said in a rush of breath, energy rippling through my body. “Do you…ah…” I looked at the man, feeling another soul flare into the world. The magical worker was a machine. That, or it was super easy to grab a soul waiting in the world of the living and stuff it into a ready body. It was certainly easy to pull one out. “Do you want me to put you across the Line…or…”

“Did you do it?” Bria asked, surprised. Smoke tendrils curled around her into the air.

The spirit man looked around, confused. The reanimated dead woman cracked her neck and stepped off of the curb. She was getting ready to charge me.

“Uh-oh.” I punched my theoretical fist through her middle, hitting that cavernous area with next to no effort and snatching the trespasser. Just like the first soul, this one tried to crawl along the connection.

The heebie-jeebies washed over me. It was like I’d swatted a spider, only for it to come sailing toward me on spider silk. I yanked away, super grossed out and not wanting that thing touching me. Energy pumped into my body and the spirit went flying, smacking the ground and rolling like a real person might’ve.

I cracked a smile. I couldn’t help it. That was kind of badass.

“Okay. That part’s easy,” I said to Bria, letting go of the woman. “What should I do with them now?”

“Are you serious?” Bria asked, crouched over her setup with her hands up and out. A strange, wide-brimmed yellow hat adorned her platinum blonde head. “Did you seriously just rip the souls out of those bodies? Just like that?”

More reanimated dead people staggered into a front yard down the street, learning their new bodies, and learning them quickly.

“Yeah,” I said, turning toward them. “When a person dies, clearly the vault holding the soul breaks open to let the soul free. I wonder if it can be put back in place…” My brain started to wander, thinking through how someone might Duct tape that sucker in there so it wasn’t so easy to yank out.

“Focus,” Bria said, not having risen. “Can you do it again? Should I put this stuff away?”

“Yes, yes.” I waved at her to hurry up. “Like I was saying, without that vault, the soul is just hanging out in there, desperate for a way to escape.”

Bria stared at me for a moment, hands still out to her sides. Like a dam bursting, she was suddenly all action, bending to her incense and snuffing them out.

“Great. Head off those others,” she said, grabbing the candle. Hot green wax spilled across her hand and she sucked a breath through her teeth. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“But what about—”

“I do not care what you do with the souls, Alexis,” she said, throwing blunted incense into her pack. “Just do it fast. We have to get to that air elemental before he knows we’re coming. He’s the danger now.”

I nodded and turned, just in time to hear, “Watch out,” from one of the newly released souls.

A rotting body, the sex hard to tell, took a running leap, flinging itself at me. Discolored teeth gnashed in a face screwed up in rage.

I threw up my hands to protect myself as the body slammed into me, driving me back. My butt hit the ground first, but I was already moving, grappling with the reaching hands. I pushed the body off me as I grabbed the soul, easily ripping it out and throwing it to the side.

Two more souls, moving fast, caught my attention as a jagged point from the bone in a finger from the falling body scraped across my skin.

“You better not have the plague,” I said through gritted teeth, grabbing the souls from the other bodies as they reached me.

Once again, the spirits tried to crawl up my connection. My survival instinct kicked in, and I kept the souls put, knowing the enemy Necromancer was controlling them somehow. Could I take over? I probed around with my magic until I found a strange pulse of power, foreign to the souls and more alive than the bodies. Focusing hard, I tried to inject my own agenda into that spot while shoving my hand against a gnashing face. These things were acting like zombies. I didn’t want to go down that road.

The souls crawled along my connection again, trying to escape the bodies, and that weird spot of magic stayed strong, ignoring my advances. I pushed harder, trying to get the upper hand. Trying to take over.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Suddenly the body above me flew to the side. The soul came away in my grasp and a startled man in his thirties looked down on me. Bria jumped over me, running for the body she’d just kicked away, but slowed when she saw it was no longer moving.

“Stop screwing around,” she yelled.

“I was trying to control them.” I pulled out the souls and let them go immediately before sending out a shock wave of banishment, throwing everybody at the Line.

“Thank youuuuu,” someone yelled as they disappeared. Wind from the Line blew down over me, ruffling my soul.

“No, no, no, cut that out,” Bria said, clutching her chest.

“Sorry!” I hopped up and energy surged through me. “I think I get energy from taking those souls out,” I said as she slung her backpack over her shoulder.

“Probably. Who knows. You’re a damn freak of nature. Hurry, let’s go.”

She took off at a fast jog, running toward the house of horrors. I tried to keep up, but my shoes kept trying to slip off, hindering my progress. She dodged to the side and kicked open the aging gate. Wood splintered and a hinge broke. She kicked it again before battering her way through.

Hobbling now, I stepped over the curb and ran onto the weeds and dirt of the front yard, angling for that fence.

“There’s two of them,” John yelled from the house, confirming what Bria had already sensed. “They went around back.”

My shoe flipped off and my heel crashed down onto a rock. I cried out and staggered to the side, pain throbbing up through my ankle and into my calf.

“Mother trucker…” I slipped the shoe back on and hurried forward as a surge of debris flew through the air. I ducked down as I went through the fence, but the strange, shimmering debris flew high over the house, untroubled by gravity.

Another soul flared to life as I limped down the side yard, picking my footing a little more carefully.

“Alexis,” I heard, Bria’s call ending in a grunt.

More debris, transparent and sparkling, sailed up through the air at the end of the house. I followed the fence, which wrapped around the back, ending in some badly leaning tattered boards.

A vicious howl rent the air as I stepped around the side of the house. The man with the black hair sat cross-legged amid curling smoke and flickering candles, his face screwed up in intense focus and his hands resting on his knees. A body shook and trembled as it straightened up from the other two dead people, their faces slack and eyes staring at nothing. The animated dead body turned its head up to the sky and let out another howl.

On the other side of the yard Bria jabbed at the red-headed guy and clipped him on the chin. He lifted his hands and I could feel magic build before Bria struck flesh again, dragging a heavy boot across his thigh.

He staggered but didn’t fall and shook his head. She was after him again, but I had already shifted my focus back to the black-haired Necromancer. His eyes flickered open and his face, flush with fatigue, turned toward me slowly. The animated body shook next to him before facing me.

“You’ve left your materials behind,” the Necromancer said in a taunting voice. “Game over.”

“You got me all wrong, bub,” I said as the jacked up, reanimated body lurched toward me, a thick guy with a face that looked like it was melting off.

For effect, I held out my hand with my fingers open as I reached into the chest of the (currently) slowly moving body. I squeezed my fingers into a fist, grabbing the soul. The body shook and the soul skittered up my connection.

“Ew,” I said, yanking my hand out and shaking it off. I hated that feeling.

The soul tumbled to the side, a look of shock replacing a disgruntled expression. The jacked-up body collapsed into a pile of gross.

“What—” The black-haired man’s eyes widened and he jolted backward. He looked down at the body in utter disbelief.

“Yeah. Game on.” I ran at him and planted one foot before pulling back the other. My shoe flew off, but I didn’t let that stop me. I kicked forward, my foot hitting his face like it was a soccer ball.

He grunted. Spit flew to the side. Lights out.

He collapsed like his previously animated bodies.

A blast of air pulled my focus.

Bria staggered back in the sudden gale, her arms windmilling to keep her balance. The red-haired man kicked out with perfect form. The bottom of his shoe sole hit Bria mid-chest. She grunted and bent as he seamlessly transitioned into a round-house kick.

“No!” I said, too far away to help.

His foot hit her square in the face.

Crack.

She didn’t even stagger backward. She just dropped, knocked unconscious.

I didn’t have time to call out. The red-haired guy shoved his fists through the air and a gale burst forth, slamming into me and picking me up off my feet. I flew, rotating ass-over-end again and again, and crashed into the ground. The dead bodies caught my fall, lifeless and weirdly squishy.

Spikes of air sparkled in a ray of sunlight as they gathered above me, lengthening like daggers. The ends gleamed and I knew they’d be as sharp as any knife. Air wrapped around me. Clumsy but effective, the hold trapped my arms to my sides.

“Good trick,” I said in grunts. “Very quick way to end a fight.”

I tried to fall into a trance to call the power of the Line, but the air bands around me squeezed, cutting short my breath. Panic crept in and I attempted to reach into his chest, my mind hazy, my mental efforts clumsy. He grunted as more of the strange debris rose into the air.

No, not debris. Air particles. Because of Kieran, I could see air magic now.

The lack of oxygen hazed my brain and slowed my thoughts. The air particles hovered, lengthening, turning into spikes. My heart raged. My chest struggled for air. Black blotches clouded my vision.

A dark chuckle drifted from the red-haired man. The air daggers trembled, before raining down.