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After a moment, he pushed past me and headed around one of the shelving units, with us following. We found ourselves plunged into darkness—the light couldn’t penetrate through the packed shelves. I pulled out a flashlight and flipped it on, shining it into the floor. There, in the gloom, lay Wilbur.
“Wilbur!” Before I thought about what I was doing, I knelt beside him, feeling for a pulse. He was still alive, and he let out a faint wheeze, turning his head to shade his eyes from the flashlight as he looked up at me.
Menolly knelt on his other side. “Wilbur, can you talk? Wilbur? Can you understand me?”
He winced, managing to raise one hand to rub his head. His lips were cracked and chapped, and I wondered how long he’d been down here. He looked gaunt, and Wilbur wasn’t a gaunt person. He was a burly guy who never missed a meal. By the looks of things, Martin had tried to bring him food—there were scattered plates around with hot dogs and raw eggs and other delightful concoctions on them.
“Wilbur, can you speak to us?” Menolly frowned. “I don’t want to lift him up because we don’t know what happened—if anything’s broken. Call Sharah or Mallen. We need a medic here.”
“Please ask Camille to call.” I motioned to Smoky and he retreated up the stairs. As he left, I took the light and flashed it up and down Wilbur’s body, looking for signs of blood or broken bones. He had peed his pants and, by the smell, probably defecated, but if he’d been down here for some time, he wouldn’t have been able to help it. As I shone the light down his legs, I noticed that one of them was twisted in a direction that no leg should be twisted.
“Holy crap, look at that.” I motioned for Menolly to take a look.
“Broken, possibly crushed.” She took the light and examined his head. He murmured something, but we couldn’t understand what he was saying. “I think there’s dried blood on his head—skull fracture, maybe?” Another look-see at his arms and we found that one sleeve of his denim jacket was covered in dried blood, the material stuck to his skin.
As I stood up, preparing to go get some water so we could moisten his lips, a noise—like the crackling of lightning—sounded from the other side of the basement. Taking the light, I made my way over to the buzzing. As I peeked down the aisle next to the shelves, a shimmer caught my eye from the very end.
I slowly approached, wondering what the hell it was, when a loud flash sent me reeling against the wall. The next thing I knew, I was on my back, and the flashlight had rolled away from me. As I started to sit up, I found myself facing what appeared to be a Tregart. In front of him stood two zombies. And they were heading toward me.
Chapter 12
“Crap!” As the zombies came at me, two things became abundantly clear. One—these zombies moved faster than normal zombies. Not a good thing. And two—maybe, just maybe, Wilbur wasn’t the one betraying us. The jury was still out on the latter, but there was no time to dwell on it. As I rolled to the side and ducked away from a fist that came raging down to hit the floor, I was becoming more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. That blow could have split my skull. Just like somebody had split Wilbur’s.
I came up, swinging with my dagger. As Lysanthra made contact with the zombie’s arm, it let out a muted roar and pulled back. A lot of undead didn’t like silver. And she sang with the metal.
“Menolly, get over here now!” As I shouted, the zombies surged forward again. I leaped to the side, trying to dodge both of them. Zombies were brainless, no better than automatons. They would fight until destroyed.
The Tregart stood in back of them, arms crossed, watching with a bemused smile on his face. Apparently, he didn’t think much of my chances. And that assessment didn’t set well with me.
Realizing they were caging me into a corner, I decided it was time to get out of there and into some open space. The basement ceiling was fairly high—an advantage for me—and I’d been working out a lot over the past few weeks. I slid my dagger back into her sheath as I gauged how far I’d have to jump to get out of their way, then coiled and sprang. Using the wall as a springboard, I catapulted myself over the heads of the zombies. Only I miscalculated and ended up directly in front of the demon.>Camille let out a harsh snort. “That figures,” she said, but then bit her lip. “I’m sorry. It’s a knee-jerk reaction.”
“Once you’re in the chat room and forums, we can sort through and see if we can find any information to help.” I pushed the laptop back after setting up Shamas’s new e-mail. “What next? We can’t register him until we get the proxy server going with Tim, and I don’t think he’d appreciate being woken up at…” I glanced at the clock. “Oh man, at four thirty in the morning.”
Menolly suddenly jumped out of her chair. “I know where we saw that table! Motherfucking pus bucket.” Her eyes turned bloodred and her fangs descended. “If I’m right, and if it’s what I think it is, I’m going to feast on Wilbur’s blood tonight.”
“Wilbur?” I frowned, trying to remember. We’d been inside his house a couple of times, Menolly a couple more than the rest of us, since she was usually the one who showed up on his doorstep when we needed his help.
A blurry memory of standing in his dining room filtered into my head. The cramped chamber had held a large, old china hutch that was filled with books instead of dishes, and there had been several dusty plants, and…a dining room table. The table I’d described. “You’re right! Wilbur! That’s his table.”
“I knew it!” Menolly started to slam the wall, but Morio caught her wrist. She glared at him for a moment, then stopped. “Sorry.”
“You would have put a hole through it.” He held on to her wrist for a beat longer than he needed to, then stopped, looked at her, then Camille, and let go. Menolly pulled her hand back.
“We need to pay Wilbur a little visit,” she said. “We can do that now. I don’t mind waking him up this early.”
I sighed. “Might as well. Camille, you coming?”
She nodded. “Sure. But I want Smoky and Shade with us. That should be enough. If we show up en masse and we’re wrong, we’ll ostracize someone who has been, up till now, a valuable if questionable ally. Morio and Roz, you two wait near his porch. The rest of you stay here and keep an eye on the house.”
She stood up. “I guess we’d better get dressed. I sure hope to hell we’re wrong. I’d hate to think he’s been plotting against us.” She yawned. “What I want to know is why these things can’t happen when we’ve had more sleep? An hour just isn’t going to cut it for the day.”
The thought of being betrayed by Wilbur stung. He wasn’t a close friend. In fact, he was a lecher who looked straight out of a ZZ Top music video. A fairly powerful necromancer, he was rude and lewd and had a pet ghoul named Martin who had once been an accountant. But he had helped us more than once, and the possibility that he was working with our enemies would be a harsh blow.
“If he is helping them…” I glanced over at Menolly.
“Then we take him out.” She shook her head. “If he’s on the other side, he’s dead. No excuses. I’m going to change. I’ll meet you up here in ten minutes.” Turning toward the bookcase, she straightened her shoulders and headed down to her lair.
Camille gave me a look that mirrored my own feelings. If we discovered Wilbur had stabbed us in the back, we wouldn’t have to worry about him retaliating. Menolly would bleed him dry before we could even touch him.
