Rhianna believed that Albert Schmidt’s body was among them.
According to Nyssa, access to the island was heavily restricted and photos were banned. Rikers Island inmates performed the burials in mass trenches without tombstones. First used as a cemetery in the Civil War, Hart Island had served as a training camp, a prison for captured Confederates, a workhouse, a mental asylum, and finally a Cold War missile base. The New York City Department of Transportation ran a single ferry to the island from the Fordham Street pier on City Island. Guests had to be relatives of the deceased and were allowed to visit the island only once a month under strict supervision. They were breaking the law by approaching the island in an unregistered powerboat.
The plan was to dock, locate the body and the book, and leave before the Coast Guard showed up. The Order operated in the shadows and confrontations with the authorities were to be avoided at all cost.
Peering through a pair of high-powered binoculars, Cormac scanned both air and sea for possible dangers. An aerial attack by a group of Necron’s gargoyles was as much of a possibility as an unpleasant run-in with the law enforcement boats that monitored these waters.
As they approached the dock, they glided through a passageway formed by two long, parallel rows of wooden poles rising out of the water—a gateway to the dead.
The boat pulled up, and Cormac expertly tied a rope to the mooring. One by one, they stepped off the bobbing boat.
Artan spotted a number of ruined, abandoned buildings, which had served as a prison workhouse at one time. Weeds and even trees grew rampant over the walls and windows as nature reclaimed the island.
“How do you expect to find one buried body among all the dead here?” Artan asked Nyssa.
Nyssa’s answer was to point at Rhianna. “Your girlfriend’s psychic connection to the grimoires will guide us. Are you ready for this, Rhianna?”
Rhianna nodded, her expression determined. Despite what she’d been through, her spirit was strong and focused. “What do I do?” she asked.
“Don’t force anything. The grimoire will communicate with you once it senses your presence and the link you’ve shared with the other books. Just walk among the graves and see what happens.”
Artan tore the
Blade of Kings
free from the scabbard strapped over his right shoulder. He watched Rhianna with wary eyes as she stepped away from the group. There were no tombstones on the eerie, barren island. Instead, white posts rose from the ground, each one marking a mass gravesite of a hundred and fifty bodies.
At least the island was small enough to provide a complete view of the surrounding terrain, making it difficult for anyone to sneak up on them. No human foe would be able to approach unseen—but was Necron still human at this point? Like himself, the warlock had embraced the curse of the gargoyle. He hadn’t witnessed Necron turn into the beast yet, but he’d sensed the creature’s presence back in the subway tunnels.
Cormac and and the last surviving hunter whose name was Ryder kept a watchful eye on the dock as Rhianna roamed the island’s mass graves, an expression of dogged determination etched into her face. Despite the ordeal she’d been through, Rhianna was hanging in there. He felt genuine admiration for the young woman who’d earned her way into his heart. They hadn’t really had a chance to talk since being reunited. Even though they’d been separated for less than twenty-four hours, so much had changed. The dark forces that had brought them together a year earlier had returned. Would they succeed this time in tearing them apart? He hoped not.
The minutes ticked away as Rhianna continued to explore the grave markers. Artan and Nyssa followed her progress from afar, giving her some space so she could mentally open herself to the grimoire.
“She hasn’t said much since we saved her from Necron,” Artan remarked, surprised at his willingness to confide in Nyssa. Maybe her opening up to him back in the subway tunnels made it easier for him to voice his own concerns.
“Neither have you,” she said.
Artan eyed her for a beat before a smile curled his lips. She had a point. After the initial joy of being reunited, it had seemed like they were tiptoeing around each other, afraid to touch upon the elephant in the room. The gargoyle was back, and they were both uncertain how the monster’s presence would impact their future.
Rhianna froze near the center of a mass grave, her still form framed by skeletal trees. Her red mane of hair danced in the wind, and Artan experienced a momentary sense of déjà vu. For a surreal instant he felt he was back in Kirkfall looking at his wife, Samara.
“She’s an impressive girl,” Nyssa said.
Artan nodded in agreement.
“How does someone like you end up dating an archeologist?”
“Maybe she has a thing for old fossils.”
Nyssa’s normally cool demeanor cracked, and she flashed him a grin. “You asked me earlier whether the grimoire could free you from the beast. The answer is yes. But it would come at a price most of us wouldn’t be willing to pay.”
“What do you mean?”
“Whoever uses the book, even if their intentions are noble, runs the risk of being seduced by its evil. Necron is a perfect example.”
Artan’s eyebrows turned upward. “What are you saying? Necron is evil, isn’t he?”
“Necron lost his wife to the plague. He became obsessed with bringing her back to life. The grimoire offered him a chance at mastering the forces of life and death. But its darkness infected him, turned him into the monster we face today.”
Artan considered this for a second and said, “So then I must accept what I’ve become.”
“Not necessarily.”
Artan eyed her curiously.
“When I was first brought to the Order, many of its members saw me and my abilities as a threat. No one with magical powers had ever served among their ranks. Fortunately for me, a senior member recognized my potential. He took me under his wing and guided me as I developed my abilities.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Maybe we don’t have to be enemies once this is over. You’ve demonstrated that you can control the evil inside.”
For now
, a skeptical Artan thought.
But what about tomorrow? Or the day after? For how long will I be able to control this monster?
Almost as if Nyssa could read his mind—and given her abilities, perhaps she could—she said, ”If you fail to reign in the beast, the Order will hunt you down. Until then, maybe we can help each other.” She took a step closer. “I’ve seen you in action. The gargoyle is a powerful weapon. I believe it’s a weapon we could use in our battle with the forces of darkness.”
Artan stared at her, stunned by her words. Was Nyssa seriously proposing he should join her band of monster hunters for good?
“You think the Order will go for this idea?”
She smiled. “I can be persuasive.”
Artan didn’t doubt it. He had to admit that her proposal intrigued him. For centuries he’d seen the gargoyle as a curse. Could Balor’s evil be channeled into an instrument for good? It all depended if he could resist the dark call of the Fomor blood.
The Order hinted at a world far bigger and stranger than he’d known, a world in which he had a purpose again.
Their conversation came to an abrupt end when Rhianna collapsed near the center of the pauper’s cemetery. A cold hand tightened around Artan’s heart and he burst into motion. Sinews working like pistons, he surged toward his girlfriend, Nyssa right behind him.
By the time he reached Rhianna, she was already regaining consciousness. Artan helped her get back to her feet. The moment their eyes met, he felt convinced they would find a way to overcome any obstacles life might throw their way.
“What happened?” Nyssa asked as she stepped up to them. “Did you see something?”
“Yes. I saw Schmidt being put into the earth. His body is right here. We’re standing on it.”
Nyssa waved Cormac and Ryder over. Both hunters had shovels in hand, ready to do the dirty job of digging up the body. It didn’t take long before the steel edge of their shovels hit a wooden casket.
Disinterring a man who’d been dead for years was no one’s idea of fun, but nevertheless Artan saw a gleam in Nyssa’s eyes. The moment of reckoning was at hand. They were about to beat Necron at his own game.
Nyssa jumped into the freshly dug hole and used a shovel to pry open the wooden coffin. A sickening cloud of stale air wafted up at them, and Artan suppressed a gag. A mud-encrusted skeleton lay revealed in the fading sunlight. The creatures of the earth had feasted on his flesh, and the bones were bare. Long strands of gray hair sprouted from the skull like a tangle of weeds.
Nyssa kneeled over the corpse, and from her steely expression, Artan guessed this wasn’t the first dead body she’d had to exhume. Using a dagger, she popped open the buttons of the corpse’s ragged coat. What Nyssa did next made Artan’s stomach turn. She reached into the ribcage. If Schmidt had devoured the pages of the book in a fit of magic-enhanced insanity, wouldn’t his stomach acids have digested them? Clearly magic operated under a different set of laws because Nyssa was now pulling a perfectly preserved grimoire from the ribcage. She opened the tome, and Artan caught a glimmer of dark fascination in her eyes as she studied it. Was the book already tempting her?
Artan was having a bad feeling about all of this. Was it wise to let a woman who’d been seduced by black magic before handle such a powerful spellbook? Nyssa paused, eyes glued on the open book, and then snapped it shut, almost as if she’d successfully fought back the impulse to decipher the tome’s horrifying secrets.
Ryder leaned over the edge of the open grave, clearly hoping to get a better look at what Nyssa was doing. The ground moved beneath his feet, and a rotten arm erupted from it in an explosion of soil. Ryder cried out in surprise as another mold-covered limb shot out, followed by a skull half-covered in decomposing flesh. The zombie drove its hungry, mud-encrusted teeth into Ryder’s left leg as it scrambled out of the ground with the speed of an attacking shark. A heartbeat later, the undead monster was on top of Ryder, biting and clawing, teeth glistening with their scarlet prize.
Artan spun toward the monster and drew his sword. An arc of steel took off the zombie’s head at the neck. The creature’s headless body slumped forward. It was too late for Ryder, who was gasping his last, bloody breath. Artan bowed his head for a moment, cursing himself for not being fast enough, when Rhianna’s shriek alerted him to new danger.
Ryder was dead, but he was still moving. His eyes turned black and savage as the dark magic revived him. Before zombie Ryder could get up, a bolt struck his forehead and he collapsed into true death.
A grim-faced Nyssa regarded Artan. Words were not needed to communicate their thoughts:
Necron is here.
As if to confirm it, the earth began to shift around them again. One by one, the ravenous dead fought their way out of the mass gravesite, their eternal rest disturbed. The army of zombies stumbled to their wobbly feet, clad in dirt-stained rags, teeth snapping, rotting arms flailing in murderous anticipation. Nyssa pulled out her enchanted whip, ready to engage the incoming horde.
Artan shielded Rhianna protectively, eyes searching for the figure in black. Where was the fiend?
He received his answer a second later as a winged monster swooped toward them. The ground shook as the massive gargoyle landed ten feet away from them, the beast’s gaze alive with triumph. The transformed grimoire rested in his right hand, waiting only for the third and final piece to become complete. Necron let out a terrifying bellow, and the vibrations made Albert Schmidt’s skeleton’s tremble in its open grave. The third grimoire lit up with a blue-red fire and flew out of Nyssa’s hands.
As soon as the third volume touched the other book, they fused into one, the cover and pages morphing into one fully restored super-grimoire. The most
powerful book of magic the world had ever seen was whole again—and in the hands of a madman.
C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN
THE BLACK MAGIC of the Grimoire’s first two volumes had allowed Necron to raise the first wave of the dead. Now that the full power of the three books was his to wield, he could take the spell to the next level. All across the island, the mass cemetery erupted with unnatural movement. Rotting, skeletal bodies emerged from the ground, the shambling horde driven by an inhuman appetite for the flesh of the living.
Artan could imagine the undead spilling across the island and into the sea. They would wade through the choppy water, determined to reach the glittering metropolis in the near distance to begin their unholy invasion. New Yorkers would fall the same way Ryder had, their humanity no match for the zombie horde. If Necron’s army of the dead reached Manhattan, it would truly be the beginning of the end. And if the grimoire’s spell was allowed to run its course, the dead would rise all across the United States and eventually the world. An insatiable, demonic hunger would consume every person on the planet.
Artan couldn’t let this happen. Necron had to be stopped. But first he had to make sure Rhianna was safe. Nyssa had jumped out of the grave, whip in one hand, crossbow pressed tight against her breast. Cormac had joined her, battleaxe drawn. They flanked a weaponless Rhianna. The trio was backing toward the old prison workhouse. The structure’s crumbling walls wouldn’t stop the rapidly multiplying horde, but was better than remaining in the open where the zombies could easily surround them.
It would be up to Artan to buy them some time.
Sword in hand, he tapped into the power of the beast inside him. The sun was vanishing below the horizon, and the impending nightfall made the change smoother than the last time. He simply thought of the monster, and his muscles gave way to the powerful physique of the gargoyle. Exhilaration burned in his blood as the creature burst from under his skin, as if it had only ever been a disguise masking his true self. His shadow expanded as the giant wings grew from his back. Incisors lengthened, fangs replacing teeth, and then he unleashed the inhuman roar of a monster.