Chapter 13
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
“What kind of machete-wielding freak owned this place before you?”
I stared into the drawer full of huge knives right there in the kitchen, looked back at LaRhonda, and then down at the knives again. “I honestly don’t know.”
“Maybe it’s a collection?” Rosie offered in her typically optimistic way. “My aunt collects salt shakers. And you know how Ivan is about his Legos.”
Maybe the former Mister Dodge had collected knives or maybe he’d known about chopping up ghouls during a war with a necromancer. I wasn’t going to judge him. After all, this was a huge windfall for us all.
“Regardless,” I said as I picked up a blade, “he’s given us a lovely cache of weapons to help us fight the ghouls and Oisian.”
LaRhonda leaned in. “Who’s Ocean again?”
I didn’t bother correcting her pronunciation. “He’s the other hellhound.”
“But won’t Saph be the one fighting him?”
I hated to say it and dim their light, but they needed to know the truth. “Saph seems to think he’ll be enslaved by Gaufrid right away and that that’ll mean we’ll have to fight him, too.”
Rosie gulped so loudly I heard it. “Oh, goddess, that’s bad.”
“I’m going to choose to believe he won’t hurt me.” I held aloft the two-foot-long machete with curlicues etched along the dark blade. “The rest of you can do what you feel is right, but I’m going after Gaufrid.”
LaRhonda paused in handing out… I was just going to call them swords. They were honestly the closest I’d ever come to holding a sword, so that’s what they were.
LaRhonda paused in passing out swords to everyone else and said urgently, “You can’t do that by yourself . You’ll have to get through the ghouls and everything before you can get anywhere near Garfield.”
Celestine snorted and started twisting her long blonde hair up on top of her head. “It’s Gof-rid,” she corrected.
LaRhonda gave her a dead-eyed stare. “Like I’m worried about pronouncing the devil’s name correctly.”
To stop Celestine from correcting LaRhonda about Gaufrid not being a devil like I knew she would, I said, “Bozboq told me that if we cut the ghouls up, they’ll have to find new bodies before they can rejoin the fight.
Our cemetery is really small, so I figure that’ll only work for, like, six of them.
And I bet that’s only if there’s enough left of those bodies to reanimate.
” I chose another blade, this one shiny and silver.
“It’s possible they’re just piles of bones by now, no flesh at all, and I imagine that matters. ”
Rosie made a gagging noise. Theo accepted two swords from LaRhonda while making a face like he smelled something terrible.
Neither of them was going to be of much good if they couldn’t even handle imagining the smell of death.
Bozboq had stunk in a way I’d never experienced before and his borrowed corpse hadn’t been that old.
“Something to remember,” Morning said as they stepped up for a sword as well. “Gaufrid is just a dude with a skill. He got sent to Hell once, so it can happen again.”
Celestine eyed them skeptically. “A dude with a skill?”
“Yep, being a necromancer is a title . I looked it up.”
Theo groaned. “And we’re just going to trust a search engine? Please tell me you skipped over the AI summary.”
Morning gave him a disgusted look. “I looked it up in our grimoire , thank you. My five-times great grandmother had a whole section about Gaufrid specifically. Necromancers are human people who’ve learned necromancy. Just a human spell caster. He can totally be killed.”
“Okay, see,” I said with a smile, “ that’s the kind of information we need!
None of this doom and gloom crap I’ve been getting.
” From Saph. He’d been there for Gaufrid’s last uprising, but he hadn’t said the bastard had been killed, just that he’d been stopped.
“So if I get to him and chop off his head…”
Morning smiled. “Dead necromancer.”
“Why, then,” LaRhonda asked, “wouldn’t they just run around in pairs? Kill one, the other brings him back.” She clicked her tongue. “Men never think long term.”
“Uh, excuse me?” Theo said with a hand on his hip. “I was right there thinking the same thing about the buddy system.”
“Straight men,” she amended.
Theo curtsied to her.
“Well, Gaufrid didn’t think of that,” I said to get us back on track, “so let’s run with it.
Those willing to dismember ghouls—and yes, I’m using that word specifically so that there’s no misunderstanding what we have to do.
But if you’re willing to do that, then follow me.
And if you have the chance to do the same to Gaufrid, take it. ”
“The rest of you,” Morning said, “can stay with me and help me work the spell to upset the balance.”
I honestly wasn’t sure I wanted to know too much about what that meant. LaRhonda’s paganism had always intrigued me, but now we were veering into things that sounded awfully Christian to me. Like angels and devils? No, thank you. I had an easier time believing the trees and grass might help us.
As we trooped out the kitchen door into the driveway, I discovered a platoon of exceptionally fit young men parking motorcycles.
Not above the pull of thick thighs swinging wide as they stepped down, I absolutely stared for a little too long.
Someone behind me made a quiet whimpering noise, and I nodded.
“Is one of you Ambrose?” a deep voice asked as a leather-clad man in a solid black helmet walked forward. He flipped up the visor, but all I could see was pale skin and brown eyes.
I waved lamely only to realize I held two swords in my hands. Goddess, I hoped they were here to help us fight and not members of the historical society or something.
“I’m Diego. Aunt Vera sent me. This is my crew.”
“Oh! Oh, good.” That was a relief.
LaRhonda giggled beside me. “Strong, young reinforcements,” she practically purred.
“Keep it in your pants,” I whispered to her. “At least until after we win.”
But a quick glance said no one—on either side—was listening to me. I led the way around the back of the house and hoped some of them would follow me.
“They’re coming!” Saph hollered the moment I saw him. He pointed toward the back of the property, and oh fuck, there they were.
Shuffling into view came at least thirty ghouls.
They wove around the mausoleum and out from under the willow tree’s branches, and I hated that they were sullying those spaces.
But then I realized that even though the ghoul bodies were in various stages of decay, all of them had a whole lot of flesh still holding them together.
Could I have been right that they needed more than just bones to reanimate a body, even with the help of a necromancer?
“Hoe-lee fuck,” Diego said.
I gave him the silver-looking sword I had. Everyone else in the coven who’d taken two also passed one off to a biker. And it looked like maybe a couple of them had brought their own.
“Aim for their joints,” I said loud enough that I hoped everyone heard me.
“Chop ’em up!” Diego hollered with his sword raised.
The rest of them must’ve thought that was the signal to go because all of a sudden they were running to meet the ghouls.
I almost went with them, but I wanted to see Gaufrid first. I needed to know where he was, so I could aim my attack.
And I needed to see what he looked like to stop imagining him as a huge, unstoppable force that I couldn’t possibly defeat.
Saph was fighting with the rest of them, tearing through ghouls with his claws, his hands moving so fast they were a blur.
Thirty ghouls were reduced to twenty in minutes.
The fire in Saph’s chest was glowing so brightly that he was illuminating everyone around him.
Fuck, he was hot. I laughed at myself because watching him was sincerely turning me on.
But then I saw Gaufrid.
A little bit of relief settled inside me because this wasn’t some giant monster—Saph was twice his size.
Gaufrid strolled into view like he had all the time in the world and not a single worry to mar the perfection of his porcelain completion.
Which, okay, that was troublesome because I didn’t want the bad guy feeling cocky.
At the same time, though, he was dressed like some preppy rich boy in khakis and a polo with a sweater tied around his shoulders, and I immediately wanted to destroy him.
I’d taken a step, ready to enter the fray, but that was when Saph went still as a statue. The ghouls near him flowed around him, heading for my friends like Saph wasn’t a problem anymore.
Was this it? Was this when Gaufrid would take control of my beautiful mate? Was he about to force Saph to turn on us? The sounds of the bikers joining the fight faded as I watched Gaufrid stop in front of Saph.
My heart broke as I watched Gaufrid glaring, his mouth moving but the words too low for me to hear from this distance.
Beside Gaufrid stood a stooped and filthy hellhound, his fire seemingly extinguished and his fur matted and streaked like he’d already spent most of the day killing.
I felt terrible for Oisian, for what Gaufrid had done to him.
I almost couldn’t bear knowing that Saph was about to become the same thing.
“He can’t control him.”
I flinched, looking over to find Morning standing next to me. “What?”
They were smiling. “Do you love him?”
“Saph? Yes, of course.” I frowned at them, having no idea what they were getting at. “Morning, what’re you?—”
“I knew you were involved, but I didn’t realize…” They laughed gleefully. “ That’s why Gaufrid can’t take control of Saph. His soul isn’t free. It belongs to you .”
“His soul?”
I looked across the yard at where Gaufrid was suddenly yelling the same words over and over again, his face turning red and fists clenched. He looked enraged, but also…impotent.
His spell wasn’t working.