Raynard Hall trembled on her foundations. We grabbed the swords and daggers Ryan had left for us, shoving weapons into our belts as we scrambled through the winding hallways. The earth tossed us into the walls and flung furniture against us, but we ducked and dived and stumbled our way to the entrance hall. Flynn reached the front door first and flung it open.

Cameras flashed at us as we staggered across the overgrown gardens, illuminating the ground in pulses of light. When the press realized Ryan wasn’t with us they backed off a little. Unease rippled through the crowd behind the gate as they craned their necks up at the cloud.

My eyes scanned the cloud, hoping it was just a freak storm rolling in but knowing in my heart it was not. Flynn had his phone’s flashlight trained at the sky, but the beam barely illuminated more than a halo around his red hair. At the edges of the beam, dark tendrils flitted in and out of view, like leather whips flicking through the air.

The earth rumbled – thunder rolling in beneath our feet and above our heads. The sound came from everywhere, from nowhere.

“That’s no storm!” a reporter cried.

“Excellent deduction, Sherlock!” Blake yelled back. His hand clamped over mine. Rowan moved to my other side. We crouched on the ground as the thunder rolled over us.

The rumble crushed me, invading my body and breaking apart, becoming not one sound but a great many – a thousand hooves clapping and clattering together. Churning legs shod in spiked shoes poked out from the bottom of the clouds, and dark shapes pressed against the edges, ready to burst.

“Run!” I yelled at the reporters, my hand flying to the sword at my side.

Of course they didn’t. They trained their cameras to the cloud and snap snap snap they recorded the hooves descending toward them, not knowing they were staring at the riders of the dead.

We were all that stood between the world and total destruction. Flynn tore my hand from the sword hilt, his palm already slick with water. Blake grabbed my other hand and he and Blake linked hands with Rowan, bracing ourselves against each other. The four of us formed a circle with our shoulders touching, trying to force out the horror so we could focus on the ritual. It was going to be tougher than we thought because we were missing two witches, but we had the belief magic to draw from. That would be enough.

It had to be enough.

There was no looking away as the cloud burst like a balloon. Horses made of the night rolled down from the darkness, their riders tall and proud upon their steeds. Dark hoods flew back to reveal grinning faces, and I got my my first look at the army of the dead.

Toothy grins leered at me from bare skulls – not white like in museum displays, but various shades of black and brown and grey. Skin hung in patches from their emaciated bodies. Many of them bore the marks of grisly deaths – ones had an axe-handle sticking out of its back, another had one half of its skull caved in, still another had a bullet hole punched through its forehead. Diseased patches of sickly green skin tore away from one’s cheeks as it flew toward us. Just like the knife sticking out of Corbin’s side. It seemed the restless dead wore their demise like a badge of honor.

They crashed onto the overgrown lawn, the horses bending so low their bellies scraped the ground. Leather saddles creaked and swords clattered as riders bore up, half of them turning toward the iron gates while the rest faced my coven.

Now the reporters reacted. Screams echoed across the lawn as they staggered back down the road toward the village, crashing into each other in their haste to get away from the front lines. Lights swiveled at mad angles as crews abandoned their equipment and shuttered themselves in their vans. Hooves churned up the dirt as the Slaugh raced for the gates. The horses bore down, their bodies traveling right through the iron bars as though they weren’t there at all.

How do they go right through the gates but leave hoofprints in the dirt? The physics of it doesn’t make any sense—

“Maeve!” Flynn’s voice snapped me back to reality. He yelled something else, but I could barely make out the words over the snapping and screaming and clattering as the Slaugh tore through the reporters. I couldn’t see through their ranks if anyone was hurt. “You ready?”

Ice-cold wind whipped my bangs across my face. My breath caught in my throat. If I stopped to think about what was bearing down on us, I was going to lose it.

We’ve got this.

“Ready.” I closed my eyes, shutting away the advancing army, the clattering of hooves, the creaking of leather saddles as their ghoulish riders adjusted their seat. I leaned into the guys, allowing the steadiness of their bodies, the strength of their shoulders and the tug of their magic to ground me. I sunk into myself, calling up the pillar that had been stoked by their touch. I drove it higher, pushing our magic toward the village.

The pillar burst out of my chest, rising in the center of our circle in a great cone of power. It shot high in the air and radiated out. As it moved across the horizon, it plucked magic from the screaming reporters and Flynn’s statue and The Witch’s Lament and the millions of people around the world reading about the strange goings-on in Crookshollow, England. With each morsel of magic it collected, it grew stronger and more cohesive, until it burst from its cage and spread across the heavens like a giant net made of filaments of glittering magic.

A horse reared up, the rider reaching a skeletal hand down to Blake. The light swelled, flaring out from the net to shove the horse back. Black tendrils tangled between its strands, trapping the horse in the light of belief. As I watched in awe, the light glowed brighter until it completely enveloped horse and rider. With a terrified neigh and an inhuman scream, they were swallowed up.

My heart surged. It works! I dug deep inside myself, touching the roots of my power, drawing up the magic in every cell of my body, the power that lurked in my DNA, and I pushed, and I wished, and I believed that we could win this.

The net spread wider, curling over the riders, tangling their weapons and tightening around their bodies. Horses went down in a clash of limbs and hooves, bringing down others who were moving too fast to avoid a collision. The momentum of the Slaugh slipped away as the flanks collapsed in on themselves. Horses turned around in fright, crashing into the ranks behind them in their haste to escape the advancing light.

Magic hummed through my hands as the guys fed me their power. The net tightened, tightened, pressing the beasts together, trapping them against each other so they couldn’t advance. Their power surged against the light, but I held strong. I believed.

Almost done. Almost—

Blake dropped my hand.

My magic dipped as his power was torn from me. Two horses escaped from the net and bolted for the castle gates. Behind me, the line buckled as horses bore down on me, their riders spurring them on as they threw themselves at the net again and again.

“Blake?” I cried.

Blake didn’t hear me. His body stiffened and his face froze in his familiar smirk. Two riders stood facing him, their horses snorting black fog as the riders cut the filaments that bound them with glowing blades of fire. The first rider lifted its hand to wave in greeting, and they both shrugged off their hoods.

Skin still clung to their faces, peeling back in places to reveal dark, charred bone, but their faces still carried the features of their human lives – their kind eyes and high cheekbones and wicked, hauntingly-beautiful grins.

My stomach churned as I recognized those features. They were decaying versions of Blake’s perfect face.

I was looking at the shades of Blake’s parents.