“Oh, is that all?” Norden snorted. “And to think I gave up a perfectly good night of sitting home alone, getting plastered, for this.”
“What do you want us to do?” Daniel asked.
“Keep an eye out for Pryce. If you see him, contact me immediately.” I patted the walkie-talkie on my belt. “If the Morfran attacks, make sure I have room to do the ritual.”
Behind me, the door opened, and Tina called, “Vicky! Come help me with my costume.”
“Be right there.”
Norden and Daniel left to patrol the concert—Norden into the cemetery and Daniel toward the gate—and I went back into the dressing room. Tina had squeezed into the sparkly-silver boy shorts and was holding the matching bra against her front. She sported half a dozen slashes and gouges on her arms and torso from the Morfran attack.
“My aunt gave me some salve,” I said, fastening the hooks. “It might help with those wounds.” I doubted the salve would work on a zombie, but it was worth a try.
Tina inspected herself in the mirror. “I don’t know. They make me look, you know, edgier. More Night of the Living Dead. I guess they’re okay. You know, for shows and all. Hannah Horror has this big, gross, pus-filled sore here.” She pointed to her right cheek. “I thought I was gonna have to do something like that with makeup. But these look better. Like I clawed my way out of the grave or something.” She grinned at her reflection.
Someone rapped twice on the door. I reached for a knife but relaxed when a woman with spiky magenta hair stuck her pierced face inside. “Tina, they need you now,” she barked and was gone before I’d had a chance to count all her eyebrow rings.
Tina clasped her hands. “This is it,” she said, a little breathlessly. “Wish me luck.”
“Break a leg.” I kissed her cheek and wondered if that saying was just for actors. Whatever, suggesting bodily injury probably wasn’t the best way to wish a zombie good luck.
Tina didn’t care. Her grin was half-excited, half-terrified. I followed her outside. Her silver sequins glinted and gleamed under the lights. She turned left and hurried past the trailers, pausing once to stop and wave. Good thing zombies don’t feel the cold, I thought, watching her go. In an outfit like hers, I’d be chilly on a beach in the middle of August.
A couple of minutes later, Kane returned. “Any sign of Pryce?” I asked.
“I picked up his scent around one of the old Suffolk University buildings, but it was faint, and I lost it again. I don’t think he’s there now.”
Probably Pryce was jumping in and out of the demon plane until it was time to sic the Morfran on the zombies. “Let’s check it out.”
We exited the cemetery and pushed through throngs of zombies. Tremont Street was crammed with them, standing shoulder to shoulder, craning to see the stage. We skirted the thickest part of the crowd, crossed Tremont, and headed toward Bromfield Street. Half a block down Bromfield, there was more breathing room. More diversity in the audience, too. I spotted some werewolves and even a few humans. No vampires. It was dinnertime for them, and there wasn’t much in this crowd to whet their appetites.
We were almost at the building where Kane had scented Pryce when a low thrum of guitar chords pulsed from the speakers. A cheer went up. I turned around to see dry-ice fog covering the stage and spotlights sweeping the crowd.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” shouted an amplified voice. “Zombies, monsters, and things that go bump in the night!” The cheering swelled.
“Vaughn? You there?” Norden’s voice came from my walkie-talkie. I unclipped it from my belt.
“What’s up?”
“Are you ready to meet your worst nightmare?” yelled the announcer.
Norden said something over the walkie-talkie, but I couldn’t hear him over the music and the roaring crowd.
“Are you ready to dance with the dead?”
“What?” I shouted into the handset. I pressed it against my right ear and plugged my left.
“Are you ready to meet …”
Over the walkie-talkie, static. “… spotted the target. I’m …” More static.
“Where?”
“MONSTER PAUL?”
With a scream of guitars, music blasted out. Pyrotechnics exploded onstage, and Tina and the other two backup singers appeared through the smoke, doing a stiff zombie-walk dance. All around, zombies jumped up and mimicked their movements. The noise was ear-shattering.
I thought Norden said “cemetery,” but thanks to the static, the guitars, and the screaming crowd, I wasn’t sure.
“Repeat that.”
More fireworks onstage, and Monster Paul ran out. The crowd went berserk as he launched into the first verse of “Grave Robber.”
Through the walkie-talkie, Norden screamed.
“Norden!” I took off running down Bromfield Street toward the burial ground.
Kane caught up immediately. “Cemetery!” I shouted, and he surged ahead. At Tremont Street, the crowd was nearly impenetrable, but the zombies moved aside for Kane. I followed; it was better than trying to shove my way through. Zombies don’t move unless they want to.
The security guards had left their post at the gate. A dozen steps inside the cemetery, I stopped, breathing hard. Nothing moved. The music continued to blare, but we were behind the amplifiers, so it wasn’t as brain-thumpingly loud. I tried to raise Norden on the walkie-talkie but got only static.
“Norden said he saw Pryce, but we lost contact,” I told Kane. “Norden may be hurt. Let’s split up and look for him. Be careful.”
We agreed I’d go left and he’d go right; we’d work our way through the graves row by row and meet in the center. I drew the Sword of Saint Michael and started forward, moving quickly but with caution.
The final chords of “Grave Robber” crashed to a halt, and the audience thundered its approval.
I unclipped the walkie-talkie and tried again. “Norden?”
Daniel’s voice came back: “He’s hurt.”
“Where are you?”
“About halfway in, two rows in from the west fence.”
I ran in his direction, leaping over gravestones that got in my way. “Wait, Vicky.” Daniel held out a hand as I got near. “It’s bad.” I pushed past him. Norden lay in a heap on the blood-soaked ground. He was cut to ribbons. Pryce and his goddamn sword work.
“He’s alive,” Daniel said. “I’ve called for an ambulance.”
Good. There were at least two standing by; I’d seen them near the news vans. Norden didn’t look like he could wait long. His skin was ashy pale, his breathing rapid and shallow. Blood speckled his face, and blue tinged his lips. Daniel had already sprinkled activated charcoal on the ground—Norden would’ve carried that from his Goon Squad days—to soak up blood and absorb its odor. Still, it’d be bad for Norden if any zombies got a whiff of all that blood. The sooner we got him out of here, the better.
Red lights splashed across the tombstones, and a couple of EMTs unloaded a gurney from the back of an ambulance. “Over here!” I called.
Onstage, a guitar chord reverberated, followed by a squeal of feedback. “Helloooo, Deadtown!” growled Monster Paul. “Tonight, we show the world that—hell, yeah!—the dead can dance.”
Drums crashed, and a heavy bass line thumped out. The night suddenly grew several shades darker.
As the dead dance, the Brenin shall claim what’s his.
Overhead, the sky teemed with crows—so many it looked like the darkness itself seethed. They cawed and shrieked, their clamor overwhelming the music. There were more than I’d seen outside the slate mine. More than enough to destroy every zombie here.