Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter
Fifty-Four
Ghouls are athletic and powerful and tough, but they don’t have the kind of strength and grace that allows them a thirty-foot vertical leap.
Freshly fed Malvora vampires do. These had been feeding on the various protesters for hours, and they bounded up through the air with grace and style, all pale skin and blond hair and glittering eyes in the arcane light of the castle’s glowing runes, coming from the front and back of the rooftop at more or less the same time.
I’d already gathered my will, and the second I saw the first of them appear, I rose, shield bracelet charged and ready, left arm bearing both the bracelet and my staff held in front of me as I drew back my right hand and flung it forward as if hurling a stone, screaming, “Ventas servitas!”
Wind howled forth at my will, swatting Malvora out of the air and driving them back from the castle’s walls into wild, tumbling falls. I kept my hand extended, sweeping them back like leaves before a heavy-duty blower.
White Court vampires are faster than striking snakes, and some of them got off shots at me before I could, literally, blow them away.
At one point in my career, holding a shield and a wind evocation at the same time would have been a challenge.
At one point this year, it would have been impossible.
If they’d come a month sooner, things might have gone a lot differently.
But I’d just needed time.
And work.
And rest.
And friends.
Healing isn’t the work of a moment. I still had a way to go.
But I was better now.
More than that, I’d been teaching.
I was better now.
My shield rippled with blue-green light as bullets hit it, and I tried to hold it angled so the shots would reflect as directly upward as possible.
Any projectile can be pulled down by gravity, but a lead hailstone was way less dangerous and less likely to harm bystanders than a bullet bouncing directly into a home.
I held the shield, focused the wind like a vast broom, and sent Malvora vampires flying.
I could have used fire but, you know. Alliance with Lara’s Court and all. It would probably be less of a headache for her in the aftermath if I didn’t slaughter them wholesale.
“Watch your six!” Bear snapped.
Someone hit me in the lower back with a heavy stick, maybe a .
45 round slamming into my spell-armored leather duster.
I sucked in a breath, staggered, but kept the wind spell going, spinning to begin sweeping the back side of the castle of incoming Malvora—but like I said, White Court vamps are fast as hell.
Another shot hit my duster over my left thigh before I could get started, and in my peripheral vision I saw half a dozen vampires come sailing up, weapons training on me.
Bear stepped in front of me like a human wall, dropping the four-bore and going for her pistols like an old west gunfighter.
I heard her guns speaking and a series of heavy slapping sounds as rounds intended for me struck her instead.
She sucked in a breath, staggering, and went to one knee, but kept shooting.
“Fiero, fiero, fiero!” Fitz shrieked, and blazing bolts of white-hot flame leapt out of the doorway to the stairway down to the third floor of the castle, adding his fire to Bear’s.
High-pitched shrieks went up from the Malvora.
Four of the vampires buckled and staggered when hit by Bear’s heavy rounds.
Two of them just went up in flames and dove back off the roof, shrieking.
And then the first of the ghouls arrived, clawing its way up the exterior of the castle and hauling itself into the crenel between two merlons and leaping toward me.
It had transformed fully, muzzle extended, lips peeled back from rotten-looking fangs, yellow eyes glaring, its skin grey and covered in spiky hairs.
The clothing the thing had worn over its upper body hung around its torso in tatters.
Its forearms were unnaturally long, its back hunched and powerful, and gangrenous claws extended from its fingertips.
A shotgun boomed, pellets smacking into the low center of the ghoul’s chest, staggering it, and buying me a critical second or two.
I don’t know if I’ve made mention of how much I dislike ghouls.
I dropped the wind spell, drew my blasting rod, pointed it at the thing, sent a fraction of my anger coursing down my right arm, and snarled, “Fuego!”
The blasting rod flooded with golden light, and a blue-white bolt of something a couple of steps beyond fire slammed into its gaping mouth.
The ghoul didn’t catch fire so much as its head instantly superheated and exploded like a kernel of gory popcorn.
The ghoul crashed to the floor amid glowing runes and sigils, spewing dark, watery blood like the juice from a crushed cockroach, arms and legs still thrashing wildly and randomly, its body having been relieved of its brain so that it couldn’t know it was already dead.
More ghouls began to clamber up through the battlements.
Bear’s guns clicked empty behind me.
“Fiero!” came Fitz’s voice, gasping, sending another, redder bolt of fire at a Malvora, who fell back over the edge of the rooftop to avoid it. Then he gasped, “Fiero!” again and nothing much happened.
The kid had talent, but it would take him time to get the kind of sand in his craw that a seasoned battle wizard had earned.
“Stairs!” I said. “Now!”
Bear groaned and staggered to her feet, almost falling. Blood was coming from her mouth, though she was grinning a wide scarlet grin. “One of them had armor-piercing rounds,” she gasped. “Had to take them.”
“Cheating vampires,” I muttered. I got a shoulder under one of her arms and half dragged her with me to the stairway. Matias emerged from the stairs, pumping the shotgun, and fired three times at the nearest ghouls to cover us, his expression focused, impassive, and grim.
“Help Bear down!” I shouted to him and Fitz.
The kid was gasping with the efforts of his evocations, but he rose to try to support Bear.
The two of them nearly fell down the stairs.
Matias, sturdier by several degrees than the kid, less exhausted, and with a lifetime of work behind him, nudged Fitz aside and got into a more leveraged position.
“?Uno, dos, tres!” he shouted, and on three, he grunted as they went down a stair. “?Uno, dos, tres!” he called again, and they went down another stair.
I whirled at the top of the staircase.
I found myself facing a dozen ghouls, with more on the way.
And Lara Raith, in close-fit white clothing, came arcing up through the air at the far end of the rooftop, behind the ghouls, bearing a slim, wavy-bladed short sword in either hand. She landed on a merlon in utter silence, a wide, predatory smile curling her lips.
And as she did, the sweet, ringing notes of a shofar soared through the night from somewhere down at street level.
Ghouls screamed, loud and high-pitched like panicked pigs, and clutched at their ears, and I saw two still climbing up who simply fell from the walls, half paralyzed. Others on the way up must have been falling, too.
And two inhumanly loud, bestial voices rose in shrieks of fear and fury and agony down on the street.
Lara’s face twisted into a snarl as the sound of the horn washed over her, but it didn’t slow her down.
She blurred into motion and hit the stunned ghouls from behind, blades flashing.
She went for spines and necks, single, supernaturally powerful slashes, and the wavy blades carved their way through bone and flesh like cutting through so much Jell-O.
Green-brown-black ghoul gore swept out in smooth arcs.
I brought my blasting rod up, sent a pair of ghouls to the stones, burning and yowling, and by the time I got to the third one, I had to snap the blasting rod up because Lara had gone through the rest and was close enough to catch some of the thermal bloom.
Lara’s pale blue eyes were bright as she flashed me a sharp, hard smile. “Fiancé mine,” she said. “I hope I’m not late.”
“Right on time,” I said. I looked at the luckier ghouls, the ones who still had heads. They didn’t have the use of their legs and were dragging themselves toward the battlements, ready to face a thirty-foot fall onto concrete rather than remain on the roof with Lara and me.
I saw no reason to allow them to continue drawing breath.
I raised my blasting rod.
Lara’s cool hand touched mine, pressing very gently down. “No, wizard. As a favor to me.”
I looked sharply at her.
Lara watched the ghouls with cool, calculating eyes.
Stray lightning in the storm I’d summoned flickered in the clouds overhead, vague light and rumbling sound, sending shadows dancing oddly across her face.
“The fight is out of them. Let them spread word of how they were received here. And of how the Malvora abandoned them to their fate. It will give my cousins in Malvora fewer potential allies and cat’s-paws in the future and make my life somewhat easier. ”
I stared hard at her and then drew in a breath and nodded. “Fine,” I said. Then, after a moment: “Thank you.”
She took her hand off mine and inclined her head slightly. Then I strode to the battlements to look down at the street in front of the castle.
My allies had arrived.
Waldo Butters, Knight of the Cross, was walking steadily down the street, Fidelacchius drawn and in his hand.
The glowing blade of the Sword of Faith shone with pure white light, the faint sound of an unseen chorus intoning chords of calm and perfect purity emanating from it, as though the blade itself was a slender opening to a realm of penultimate light.
He wore mail beneath the white surcoat of the Knights of the Cross, complete with a red cross over his heart and sports goggles in place of glasses, and the look on his face was grim.