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“Grab whatever you can to give them a good thrashing. Tasers won’t do the trick; if you use lightning or electricity, you need to fry them to a crisp with it, not tickle their funny bones,” I called out behind him.
As we hurried along the path, we saw several teens who either hadn’t heard the commotion or had ignored it. Chase sent one of his men over to firmly escort them out of the cemetery. We rounded the path, which wound through a patch of weeping willows, all old as sin and heavy with their long streamers of lacework leaves. I ducked under one of the strands as the sounds of growling came from up ahead.
As we rounded the corner, I stopped, motioning for the others to put the brakes on. Up ahead, in a pack that looked to be close to twenty members strong, hunched a group of ghouls.
They stank to high heaven. Some were long dead, others were still ripe and fresh. From where we stood, none of them looked like they’d been enchanted to last for the duration. No, they were castaways, raised for battle. Or for havoc. Ghouls like Martin—who belonged to Wilbur, our neighbor—were more resilient.
The ghouls who had their backs to us slowly turned. I groaned. They’d been feasting, and their dinner of choice was an older gentleman, thoroughly gutted by now. Camille sucked in a breath, while Kitten whispered something under hers. Chase cleared his throat, apparently waiting for me.
“Okay, we’re going in. Just remember—they’ll fight until you tear them apart. You can’t just take an arm off, or a leg. They’ll fight until they’re in little pieces, or unless somebody casts a spell to negate their enchantment. And unless Morio’s got one of those hidden in that handy bag of his, we’re about to put on a show, folks.” I glanced at him, not expecting anything, but still, a quiver of hope ran through me.
But Morio just laughed. “No such luck. But I’ve got a silver blade, and so does Camille.”
“Then in for the fight. And be careful. They’ll gnaw on any body part they can get hold of.” As I tried to gauge their strength, it occurred to me that for once, it would be nice to fight an opponent who wasn’t a pile of rotting flesh, or at least one who used deodorant. And then, pushing whimsy out of my mind, I moved in. It was time to rumble.
CHAPTER 22
As I jockeyed for a better position, the ghouls moved forward as a pack. I motioned for the others to spread out. Delilah and Chase moved to the right, Camille, Morio, and Vanzir to the left. Roz and I held center ground.
The ghouls paused, then mirrored our strategy, except there were a lot more of them than there were of us. How lovely to have a choice, I thought dryly as I tried to pick out the strongest of the group. Roz and I were best suited to attacking the ones with the most muscle. Luck held; the biggest brutes were coming right at us.
I heard the others suck in their breaths as our opponents drew close. And then—in that fraction of a second when all is silent in battle, when the lines have been drawn and all that you wait for is the final signal—I readied myself and sprang, Roz right on my heels.
Shouts rose as the others moved in, but all I could see were the two ghouls rushing toward me. Or, at least, shambling as fast as they could. Their flesh clung to bone like empty burlap sacks on a tree. Mold festered off the decay, oozing with carbuncles, the pus-laden boils giving their faces a lumpy look.
“You need some Clearasil,” I muttered as I took a swing for the biggest. He towered over me, even with his slumped shoulders and unbalanced gait.
I punched for the gut, hoping to double him over to where I could reach his head. With dead things, I could twist off their heads if I tried hard enough. Not pleasant, but it helped deflect their ability to situate their enemies. Then somebody with a blade could come in and hack them to bits.
The ghoul let out a low roar—the closest it would ever get to a shout—and I leapt for it, grimacing as my arms found purchase around his neck. He reeled backward from my sudden pounce as I managed to throw him off balance. I knocked him to the ground and swung around behind his head, pushing him by the shoulders to a sitting position. I couldn’t very well get at his neck if he was prone. He pawed at me, struggling to get away, but this was one area in which I held the advantage: I was a lot stronger than he was.
I maneuvered myself to where I was holding his chin in my left hand, the back of his neck in my right. With a sharp jerk to the left, the sound of bones breaking echoed in my ears, but I wasn’t done yet. Ghouls could get along just fine with broken necks. No, I had to tear off his head.
I pushed harder, hearing the rip of decaying flesh, and then I saw muscle—no longer firm and supple but spongy and ripe—and I poured on the sweat, twisting as the neck bones shattered. Within seconds, I was squatting there with the ghoul’s head in my hands. The eyes blinked at me in surprise, but they didn’t feel pain.
“Gross,” I muttered, tossing the head far from the body. “Need a blade here!”
Morio raced over, his sword drawn. As the ghoul flailed blindly, Morio darted in and out, hacking away. I left him to finish the job, glancing around to see how everyone else was doing.
Delilah and Chase were working together, pounding on one of the ghouls, while a second opponent pawed at Chase. It looked to me like the creature had gotten in a few solid swipes. We’d have to make sure everybody was treated; wounds from the undead, especially ghouls and zombies, became infected quickly.
Camille was holding a ball of energy in her hands, and as one of the ghouls descended on her, she danced to the side and, instead of targeting him, sent the ball directly into the midst of the pack where it would do the most damage. I quickly turned, covering my eyes as it landed with a loud explosion. The smell of singed flesh filled the air, and Camille began to cough.
At that moment, there was a loud screech as a large bird swept down, aiming not for us but for one of the scorched ghouls. Oh crap, a vularapture—an undead vulture. They were far more dangerous than the ghouls. We definitely had a full-fledged necromancer in the area; one who could do some serious damage. Luckily for us, vularaptures weren’t picky about their meals.
I darted a glance toward Vanzir, who was making quick work of his second ghoul. He had a methodical look on his face and went about it in a rough, if effective, manner. With one hand, he grabbed the ghoul’s throat, and with the other, he grabbed its hair and yanked. Hard. I hadn’t realized he was that powerful, because he pulled the freakin’ ghoul’s head right off the shoulders, the bones snapping like twigs. Of course, the ghoul might have had osteoporosis when she had been alive, making her bones brittle. The thought held an odd comfort for me.
Roz, on the other hand, was charging in with a deadly looking blade. He sliced and diced his way through the ghoul in front of him and turned to help Chase, knocking aside the one trying to gnaw on the detective’s elbow.
“Thanks, man!” Chase called to him, dodging another swipe from the ghoul in front of him.
Delilah raised her dagger. The blade gleamed with a menacing blue tint. Not only had our father given us each a silver long knife, but recently, Delilah’s had spoken to her, telling her its name, which meant that the two were bonded now.
“Lysanthra!” Delilah’s voice echoed through the evening twilight, startling a nearby bird perched in a tree.
As I watched, the stars began to peek out against that tinge that straddles the line between blue and gray. For a moment, it looked like a silver light streaked down from one of the distant suns to strike the tip of the blade, but it couldn’t be. She laughed, then plunged the blade into the ghoul that she and Chase were fighting. There was a split second where everything seemed to pause, and then the ghoul mumbled something and fell in its tracks.
What the—? It had to be the silver of the blade, I thought, watching as Roz took over slicing up the ghoul while Delilah and Chase moved on to the next one. I turned back to assess the battle.
