Tabitha shushed him. I went back to check on the two of them, then clasped Tabitha by the shoulder. “Maybe it’s best if the two of you get out of here.”
“No,” Asher said. “I can help.” He tried to push himself up, then grimaced and grunted when his hand met the grass.
“Not in your condition,” I said, brushing his hair away from his forehead. His skin wasn’t as cold anymore. Good. “You’ve got to sit this one out, okay?”
“We’re staying,” Tabitha said, nodding firmly. “These are my forests, and you may yet need my help. I’ll take care of the boy. Leave him with me.”
I wagged a finger at her. “I’m leaving him in your trust because you seem cool. Okay, Tabitha? No betrayals, or I come for your throat.”
She scoffed. “That’s rich. But no betrayals. I defend these woods, and you’ve shown that you mean to do the same. Asher is safe with me.”
Again it was too late when I noticed the little glass bauble in her hand. She smashed it against the ground, calling out two words.
“Smoke screen.”
An impossible quantity of smoke rushed out of the broken glass egg, forming into a dome around her and Asher. She nodded at me once, her face filled with conviction as the smoke swirled and solidified into a shield. As the last curls of smoke locked into place, I heard her voice.
“Give ’em hell, bloodsucker.”
I muttered under my breath. “I have every intention to.”
My hand slipped into my jacket pockets, searching for the one that held my favorite weapon within its depths. Only actually clashing with these beasts would tell us if they’d be vulnerable to physical weapons, but the blade’s electrical enchantments might help, too. I slipped the sword out of its scabbard, sparks crackling as the blade awakened in the red glow of the moon.
At my side, Gil groaned in pain. He stretched out his fingers, blood dripping from his skin as his wolf talons erupted. It was the same horrible trick that Damien had pulled, a partial transformation to help in the fight. Bastion held one hand up, needing no weapons apart from the force of his mind.
“How utterly charming,” Uriah cooed. “You champions of the supernatural, working together to defy me. And that witch – the Bridges have been a thorn in my side for far too long. Time was when these hills belonged to man and man alone. Yes. That time will soon return. Come along, now.”
Uriah raised his hand, faint threads of blue light running in arcs from the tips of his fingers. They were lengths of string. He waggled his fingers, like he was manipulating a puppet. And then there it was, jerking and twitching like a decaying marionette, the last thing to rise from the hole in the floorboards: a rotting corpse. It responded to Uriah’s gestures, feet shuffling, arms groping at the air. Its head lolled and flopped about, its tufts of white hair and beard streaked with clumps of dirt. My insides turned at the realization.
“It’s his corpse. He’s puppeteering his own corpse.”
“So much work to be done now that the blood moon is here,” Uriah’s shade said absently, his gaze looking off into the distance. In one hand he held his journal. With the other he made a harsh tug, pulling his corpse fully out of the hole.
“Quick,” Gil snarled. “Before he escapes.”
“And how do you expect me to get past those three horse-dogs? I’m not a miracle worker, Gil.”
Bastion’s chest puffed up. “But I am.” He threw his arm towards Uriah, clenching his fingers around thin air. The corpse twitched, Bastion’s power lifting it off its feet. Uriah cried out, tugging in the opposite direction, the glimmering strings attached to his corpse-puppet tightening. His rotted body spun in midair, flailing like a rag doll, exposing his back.
That was when I saw the faces, seven of them, no longer dripping blood, but threaded on a cord and draped across the corpse’s shoulders, a grotesque garland. Olivia’s voice reverberated in the back of my mind, a vague memory. “Uriah Everett wore many faces.” This paragon of the community, the beloved founder of Silveropolis.
Caught in Bastion and Uriah’s tug of war, the corpse tumbled again, its string of ripped faces undulating like some horrible snake. Weighing down the end of it was an eighth face, this one better preserved than the others, its shape not quite as warped or twisted.
Wait. That was because it wasn’t made out of flesh and skin, but metal. Silver.
The Filigreed Masque.
29
“He’s getting away,” I said. So close. The Masque was just out of our reach.
“Not if I can help it,” Bastion said, grunting. His forehead was creased, his fingers bent into crooked claws. “He’s strong, but I can break him.”
Uriah Everett was full of surprises. Few things could resist the sheer strength of Bastion’s mind. He could uproot a tree and use it like a club, but here was this dead thing fighting him on even ground.
“Rip his corpse in half and it’s over,” Gil said.
“What the fuck do you think I’ve been trying to do?” Bastion roared. “There’s an enchantment protecting the body. I can’t just pluck its limbs off. Would have been so easy, too.”