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Camille’s spell had dropped three of them. Yay, her! She smelled a little singed around the edges herself, but at least she was still on her feet, and she hadn’t burned herself like before. Vanzir was taking care of yet another ghoul, and it looked like we’d gone through over half the pack.
I dove in to another one, this one weaker than the first and easier to handle. I figured, Why mess with something that works? and once again went for the head-off trick. Another moment, and I was onto a third, while Morio went into cleanup mode for me.
We—along with Chase’s men—cleared a path through the pack without injuries on our part, although Chase had sustained a few wounds he’d need to have checked out.
As I stood there, surveying the carnage, I noticed there was one last ghoul, but he was over by an azalea bush, crouching as if in fear. Ghouls tended to be emotionally challenged when it came to fear, so his actions made me pause. Hell, he was making it easy for me. I headed over, intending to dispatch him back to the grave, when I stopped short.
Martin. Martin the ghoul. Wonderful. Was our neighbor Wilbur behind all of this? I grunted as the others made their way to my side.
“What’s wrong—oh shit,” Delilah said. “That’s Martin, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, that’s him, but he’s not talking.” I shook my head, trying to decide whether to put him out of our misery or leave him be.
He wasn’t trying to attack us, and if he’d been feasting on the old man, I couldn’t see any signs of it. No fresh blood on the face, no questionable matter staining his shirt. In fact, he was dressed quite conservatively in what looked like a faded pinstripe suit, and his neck appeared to have been fixed from when I’d broken it. Wilbur had welded a nice smooth steel collar around it, with a brace up the back of the neck to keep his head straight. Joy, a dandy and Frankenstein’s monster, all rolled into one.
“Wait—don’t hurt him!” The voice reached my ears faintly, and I spun around. There, running through the veil of dusk descending around us, was Wilbur. Wilbur the necromancer.
Chase looked confused. “Shouldn’t we take care of this thing?” he asked, pointing to Martin.
“His name is Martin, and he belongs to our neighbor.” I gave him a look that said, I know, I know.
“Oh, got it. Great. That explains everything.” Chase let out a huff of exasperation and motioned to his men. “Clean up that mess, and be careful. Some of those . . . things . . . might still have some life in them.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “We might get a little help here.” As Wilbur joined us, a worried expression on his face, I pointed to Martin. “You in the habit of losing that thing all the time?”
He stared at me, his concern turning to disinterest. “Martin has a habit of wandering off, yes. I try to keep him out of trouble, though . . .” His voice trailed off as he looked around. “What the hell happened here? Who owns all these ghouls?”
“We thought you might be able to tell us,” I said. “Since you’re a necromancer, and you have a sprightly ghoul of your own, we thought you might know who brought the rest of the gang back to life. Nice repair on the neck, by the way.”
Wilbur grunted. “I had to do something after you got done with him.” He glanced at the strange ghouls and shook his head. “I have no idea where these came from. They look crudely raised, though. Have you checked the cemetery for empty graves?”>I frowned. We’d fought more wights than I cared to remember not long ago, but ghouls . . . ghouls were just nasty. “Wights eat both spirit and body. Ghouls devour flesh only, but they’re cunning, and until you torch them or tear them from limb to limb, they’ll continue to fight. Even a severed arm can attack until you chop it up.”
“Delightful,” Chase said, and his tone perfectly mimicked Camille’s. I started to laugh, and he frowned. “What?”
“Nothing. I think we’re rubbing off on you. Okay, to kill a ghoul, silver always works, but it has to be big silver. No silver dimes, if they even still make them, no silver spoons. Silver as in big whopping silver. The metal sucks out the magical energy they’ve been infused with. As for other weapons, you can smash them with a hammer. Maces work. But to thoroughly destroy them, you really need a blade to cut them into little pieces.”
“What about magic?” he asked, looking decidedly queasy.
“Fire works, magical or not. Ice, not so much, unless it freezes them solid so they can’t move. Most other spells won’t do any good. Oh, lightning works. They can’t drown, and they can live without air, so strangling really isn’t an option. But if you cut or twist off their head, they can’t see what they’re doing, so they make easy targets to pound on until they’re fully . . . dead. Again.”
Chase stared at me like I was a psycho.
“What? You asked.” Why did I always have the feeling he thought I was going to change into a three-headed people eater or something equally monstrous?
“I know, I know.” He shook his head. “I’m just amazed by the variety of ways you come up with to destroy people. Or things. Things that shouldn’t be walking around. What about you? Can you drain their blood?”
I grimaced. “What do you think I am, a syringe? First—just so unappetizing. Do you have any idea of what those things taste like?”
He grimaced. “No, and I don’t want to find out.”
“Fine, but their blood tastes like dirt and feces and worms, so no, thank you. Second: Whatever blood most of them had when they first died is long gone. Dried up. Think bag of walking bones with decaying flesh. I have no stomach for drinking the liquids that form when they decompose. How about you?”
That did the trick, because he abruptly shut up and returned to Delilah’s side.
“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.
