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The rain cascaded down, plastering my hair to my head, streaking my face and chilling me to the bone. A bolt of lightning crashed overhead as the dance of the storm played from cloud bank to cloud bank, thunder rumbling so ominously that my teeth chattered.
Morio closed his eyes and I could feel him summoning the dark power. The power of the grave. I fell into synch with his breathing, and as he began to chant I focused the power he was building.
“Return to dust, return to the grave, return to the night, return to the earth, return to the depths, return to the Mother, return to the womb . . .”
Wilbur fell into a cadence with him and held up his hands, palms facing the wandering group of bone-walkers. A chill ran down my spine. Just by the tone of his voice I could tell he was more powerful than either Morio or me. FBH or not, this man knew his magic and it had changed him. A gray-green energy flared in his aura, creating a nimbus of power around him, and he began to gather it, sucking it in through his breath, focusing it out through his hands, aiming it toward the skeletons.
“Dust to dust, return to the ground, cease your wandering, strip life from that which has no life, return to decay . . .”
I blinked, sinking into the energy, ignoring the droplets that trickled down the back of my neck. The compulsion to move was strong, and I began to stride forward, a trail of energy linking me to Morio.
One of the skeletons came at me and I held up my hand. A brilliant light shot out of my palm, hitting the skeleton and engulfing it in flames of purple. The creature opened its mouth and shrieked, then fell, clattering into a pile of old bones. Morio walked behind me—I could feel him in my wake.
Wilbur was doing something. What, I couldn’t see. I was focused on directing the energy that Morio and I’d invoked between ourselves. But I heard another shriek and it wasn’t my doing. I flashed my hands again, and again the purple light engulfed two more skeletons. They fell into dust. And then, Morio shouted, breaking the energy.
Whirling around, I saw that he was being attacked by a zombie. He let out a low growl and began to shift into his demonic form. I glanced around, quickly ascertaining my position. I was in a battlefield of living bones and had incoming on the left—a pair of the bone-walkers was headed my way. I scrambled for the dagger I kept strapped to my thigh.
At that point, Wilbur shouted and I glanced in his direction. He, too, had been taken by surprise. A zombie trundled out from behind a nearby bush, attacking him from the rear.
At that moment, Delilah leapt into the fray, leading the others, her dagger, Lysanthra, raised high. The blade was singing her name, singing her battle cry. And then Menolly raced past me, bowling over one of the skeletons as she ramrodded it to the ground, skidding in the wet grass.
And the fray was on.
CHAPTER 18
I jumped back from the skeleton coming my way. Edged weapons weren’t exactly the best defense against bone, but my dagger would have to do for now because the magic I’d just run through my body had burnt me out, and I’d need a clear head to call down the magic of the Moon Mother, considering how much chance for disaster there was when it backfired.
A quick glance over my shoulder told me that Morio had engaged the zombie that had attacked him. The shouts of the others rang out as they clashed with their opponents. Hoping Chase would be okay—he was the most vulnerable of us all—I brought my attention to bear on the skeleton again. As I moved in, trying to gauge the best way to attack the creature, it sidled to the left. I didn’t have any of Delilah’s fancy spin-kicks or Menolly’s strength behind me, but I wasn’t a total couch potato when it came to Bruce Lee-ing my way through a confrontation.
Sucking in a deep breath, I lunged, slicing at the bone-walker.
A hit! I actually hit its right hand. As my silver dagger slashed at the bone, there was a pale flare of light and I managed to sever the hand from the wrist. The skeleton’s hand scuttled across the ground, trying to find something to attack. But now that it no longer had its body to back it up, there wasn’t much danger from it. The thing would just drag itself blindly around until it ran up against something it could grab hold of. Unless somebody munched it first, or the spell dissipated.
The skeleton’s eye sockets gleamed with a sickly green fire, and its jaw clattered, as if it was trying to talk. Lucky for me, it didn’t have sentient magic that would allow it to speak. I danced away as it lashed out with its other hand, grasping to catch hold of me. The thing might not be wielding a sword or dagger, but it had unnatural strength and it could crush my windpipe without so much as a blink.
I heard a cackle from my left and turned to see Menolly landing smack on top of another skeleton. It fell beneath her and she began ripping it bone from bone with her bare hands, laughing all the while. Delilah was near her, her dagger singing in the night as she kicked and slashed her way through another bone-walker. Turning back to my own opponent, I made another calculated attack and managed to catch the left hand the same way I’d severed the first.
“Anybody need a hand?” I shouted, feeling a rush of excitement. The Hunt was still flush in my soul, and the exhilaration of the chase came flooding back to my tired muscles, giving me a much-needed boost.
With a victory cry, I decided to try Menolly’s method and launched myself headfirst toward the skeleton. It stumbled back, but not quick enough and I body slammed it, knocking it to the ground as I fell on top of it. We landed in the mud, but the bones were hard and rigid, and it felt like I’d fallen in a rocky field. Ignoring the pain, I brought the hilt of my dagger down on the skull of the creature, smashing a hole through the forehead, into where the frontal lobe would have been located if it still had a brain.
It shrieked as I brought the hilt down again, this time cracking through the bone between the eye sockets and nose. Though it waved its arms around, without any hands it couldn’t do much more than smack the arm bones against me. Or at least that’s what I thought until I felt the creature embrace me, elbows wrapping me tight as it struggled to crush me against its chest.
Cripes. Obviously, I hadn’t thought this all the way through!
I tried to break free but it was stronger than I, even with all the damage I’d done to it. The bone-walker was squeezing my waist like a bony python.
Pushing against the ground, I attempted to gain enough leverage to bust free of the vise grip, but my hands were too slick to manage any real purchase. Everything was starting to look blurry and I realized I wasn’t getting enough oxygen.
“Relecta de mordente!” Wilbur’s voice rang loud and clear and the skeleton’s arms loosened. It tried to scramble out from beneath me to get away from the necromancer’s bone-be-gone spell.
I rolled away and pushed to my feet, sucking in deep lungfuls of air, covered from head to toe in grass stains and mud. As we stood there, Wilbur steadying me with one hand, Menolly rushed past us. She was wielding a femur from one of the other bone-walkers, and she swung it right toward the skeleton’s waist, bludgeoning the creature in half. She then proceeded to pound it to smithereens.
I glanced up at Wilbur. “Thanks. I mean it,” I said, wishing I hadn’t thought such nasty thoughts about him.
He grinned then—not exactly a friendly grin, but it would do. “They’re tricky.” And then he was off, headed toward the last group of three.
Delilah was finishing up with a couple of skeletons and I blinked, peering into the darkness. I could see something moving beside her. It looked like a large dog at first, but when I squinted, it took on the shape of a large, ghostly feline.
