Grave Dance by Kalayna Price

Author:Kalayna Price
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction, Contemporary, General, Urban Life, Fantasy, Epic
ISBN: 9780451464095
Publisher: Roc
Published: 2010-12-31T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

I hung back at the edge of the crowd as I waited for the site to be declared a crime scene. I’d told Tamara what I found before I called John. The revelation that there was a body—or really, part of one—on the scene garnered a low groan from her, but she rolled her shoulders back and went to talk to the officer in charge.

John had been at home when I called him, but by the time I finished telling him where I was, what I’d sensed, and what Lusa had uncovered, he’d already been on a second line, waking up a judge for his warrant. He, the warrant, and cadaver dogs were on their way. Now all that was left was to wait.

A scream rang through the darkness and the crowd around me went silent as dozens of heads turned toward the sound. I couldn’t see the screamer, but the voice was masculine, though pained, and distant. One of the skimmers? I squinted even though I knew I had no chance of spotting him—after my brush with the land of the dead under the bridge, the shadows were even darker.

“What happened?” someone beside me asked.

“Not sure,” another said.

“Can we get closer?” asked a third.

That question seemed to reflect the sentiment of the entire crowd. Shoulders brushed against mine and a hot hand pressed into my back as people shoved forward. The crowd surged toward the fence, carrying me along with it as everyone jockeyed for a better view.

Somewhere ahead of me the scream mutated into a fullthroated howl of pain, and suddenly I could see. Not from a spontaneous reversal of years of damage, though until that moment I would have said that possibility was only slightly less likely than spontaneous combustion from magical overload. No, I could see because one of the skimmers ignited, the blaze casting the scene in grim light.

The flame engulfed the man in a single heartbeat, the raw Aetheric energy he’d gathered acting as fuel for the unnatural fire. It illuminated the group of skimmers surrounding the tear, splashing them in color as the fire spit out sparks of green, purple, and red.

I’d heard that drawing too much Aetheric energy could burn up a witch from the inside out, but the few cases of overload I knew of had resulted in madness or the inability to access the Aetheric after overexposure. I’d never heard of anyone actually combusting.

The skimmer’s scream broke, his voice hoarse from his howls. He flailed, but the other skimmers never looked away from the rift. They didn’t even appear to notice their burning companion.

“Let me through,” a woman wearing an official OMIH tag yelled as she charged the gate. A second official flanked her. “We can help.”

A contingent of Bell’s guards blocked the entrance, but the redheaded lawyer threw out his arms, motioning the guards to move.

“Get that gate open. Let them through,” he yelled at the guards, and then to the OMIH officials he called, “Hurry.”

The two officials and the lawyer ran for the burning skimmer.

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