Bone Gods

honed like a blade, zombies were the same thing, summoned into corpses prepared for the purpose. The mouth was stuffed with ritual herbs, and the eyes were crossed out with black thread. Zombies weren’t bright, but they were relentless and resilient. Pete pounded ineffectually at the thing’s chest, skin cool and pulpy under her fists, like a rotted orange.
    The zombie scrabbled at her clothes, overgrown nails tearing holes in her shirt and raking at the skin beneath. Pete kicked and struggled as much as she could. Screaming was out of the question, with the thing’s hand around her throat. Zombies were strong, fueled by the rage of the ghost bound inside their flesh, and she wouldn’t have been a match even if she hadn’t just run a fucking forty-yard dash.
    It stared down at her with its eyes crossed by thick black stitches, hissing and scratching as if it were an enormous, furious housecat and Pete was the mouse.
    She didn’t really mean to use the last of her air on a spell. She wasn’t even very good at magic, at least that sort, when she was focused and calm and not being set upon by a corpse with a bad attitude. Still, the word came to mind and flew from mind to tongue with minimal intervention. It was the simplest of hexes, one Jack could throw out pissed and standing on one leg, but Pete had never been able to simply grab a handful of power and fling it outward in the same way. She gasped rather than spoke with any authority, her vision starting to spin as her last breath went. “Sciotha!”
    The Black rippled around them, as if she’d cast a stone into it, and Pete felt a small tug on her chest. The zombie lurched, as if he’d caught a limb in a bear trap, and then fell to the side, twitching like a squashed insect.
    Pete gasped for a moment. The newsagent, who’d been closing his shutters, was on the pavement a few yards away, staring. Pete met his eyes, and the man held up his hands and retreated. In Brixton, they clearly knew not to get involved in street fights involving a petite woman and a hulking hellbeast.
    Her throat burned, and her shoulder and knees throbbed when she got up and started going through the zombie’s pockets. It was wearing a polyester suit, cheap and unidentifable. It didn’t have any marks of being embalmed, and it wasn’t decayed overmuch. Pete would lay money the body’s former owner had been murdered specifically to bind the ghost inside him. She went through the suit’s pockets with fast fingers. The paralyzer hex didn’t last forever, even when it was thrown by someone who knew what they were doing. The zombie’s legs began to thrash, and he bucked under her like an excitable pony.
    “Why you following me, eh?” Pete said, holding him by the neck as he’d pinned her. “What’re you after, you scuttling piece of shit?”
    The zombie’s cloudy eyes rolled back in its head and it made an enraged sound, low and guttural. Pete found nothing in the pockets except a dry-cleaner’s receipt and a few pennies. The zombie made a feeble swipe at her as she tossed the items aside, and she caught sight of a faded mark, not from ritual but from ink. An ace of spades nearly hidden in the webbing of the man’s thumb, the sort of thing they stamped on your hand at clubs that washed off in a few hours.
    “I don’t know if you understand any of this,” Pete said, standing as the zombie began to twitch more violently. “But if your masters send you after me again, I’m going to chop you into firewood and douse you in petrol. Right?”
    The zombie hissed.
    “Right,” Pete said, and took off running before somebody called the police.

CHAPTER 16
    She rang Lawrence from an all-night café in Southwark, after she’d walked and doubled back enough times to satisfy her throbbing heart and twitchy nerves that no one and nothing was follwing her.
    Lawrence mumbled, “I know you’re nocturnal, but some of us ain’t.”
    “Fucking zombies,” Pete said. “Fucking zombies after me, Lawrence. Within full view of a bunch of Met officers. These bastards have got balls the size of the O2.”
    He yawned. “Who’s got zombies?”
    “Whoever killed the bloke we asked the Antiquarians about,” Pete said. “I’m bloody angry now, Lawrence.” Bad enough to top McCorkle, bad enough to try for her at the mortuary—a host of sorcerers against her was something that never would have happened six months ago. Morningstar had been right, much as she was loath to admit it—the