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As we fell into line, I took a moment to gather the Moon Mother’s energy. The afternoon was fairly sunny. There was no chance for me to call down the lightning, and so I had to focus her power into an energy blast.
I’d also brought the Black Unicorn horn with me, and it was secreted in a hidden pocket in my skirt. I didn’t want to have to use it, if I could avoid doing so. A few good blasts would drain it of energy, although they’d be megacharged blasts. I had to renew it every month under the new moon for it to both retain and recover its power.
Morio was prepping for a spell, too, though I wasn’t sure what it was. I glanced back. Shade needed no weapon. He was a weapon. Vanzir, too, with his powers recovering in a strange fashion that none of us were sure about at this point, including Vanzir, himself. Delilah had her dagger out, and Roz was fiddling in his duster, probably making sure he had easy access to the multitude of weapons he carried.
“Ready?”
They nodded.
“Then let’s go.” We ducked under the police tape and jogged down the street. The trees on either side seemed sickly, and as I reached out, a sickly tendril of energy came creeping my way. Snakelike, it was twisted, reminding me of a withered, grasping hand. I yanked my attention away and quickly told the others.
“I think it might be able to latch onto our energy, so please, be cautious. Pay attention to what’s going on in your thoughts. We’ve all been leeched onto at some point, and this is one time we can’t afford to go down to some astral freakazoid.”
I quickly focused on raising some wards—Morio and I had been practicing our internal shields over the past few months, and I was getting a lot better at them. Protection magic had never been my strong suit, but I worked overtime to learn it now, because our need was so great.
We hit the end of the street and headed through a drive that was bounded on both sides by large iron gates. But the gates had been pulled off their posts and hung loose, a sad statement to what had once been a magnificent mansion.
Across the circular driveway, the rubble remained from Abby and Fritz’s house. A demon had been trapped in the house, as well as several nasty ghosts. I nervously glanced from side to side, wondering where the hell spawn had disappeared to. The house had burned to the ground, leaving the cracked foundation and basement open to the elements. The front porch had burned, too, and there was no sign of the vortex that had formed beneath the rotting timbers.
“There it is,” Keo said, pointing directly to where the porch and vortex had been.
Chase’s something weird was a good description, all right. Whatever it was, weird definitely fit the description. Standing about ten feet tall, it was a vaguely circular shape—although it wasn’t a perfect circle. And it was easy to see why he thought it might be organic—alive.
The thing was a pale gray, almost silver in color. The mass was smooth, almost shiny. But it didn’t look extremely hard. Rather, it seemed almost amorphous—smooth, with no protrusions or limbs or anything of that nature. As we stood, staring at it, it shuddered, and as we watched, it seemed to grow a few inches.
“The Blob,” Delilah whispered.
“You watch too much TV,” I answered back, although the same thought had run through my head. But it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t soft and oozing.
“Fine, but I’m going to call it that, because we don’t have a fucking clue what it is, do we?” She took a step into the driveway and the blob—for lack of a better term—shuddered again, and again, grew.
“Okay, this thing is getting bigger as we watch. And I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Whatever it is, it can’t be good—oh fuck, look.” Morio pointed across the lot. I shaded my eyes and followed his direction.
There, shuffling across the grass from the back of the lot, were a host of zombies. But they didn’t seem focused on us. Instead, they were headed directly for the gray . . thing.
Shade jolted forward. “I have a hunch that it would be a very bad thing to let the walking dead touch whatever that is. Keo, stay here.” He headed across the drive. The rest of us, except for the werewolf, followed. We’d gotten no more than four feet when a group of people emerged from behind a group of large rhododendron bushes to the left.
I stopped. “Who the fuck are they?”
“I don’t know, but looks like a mix of humans and Fae and maybe a couple of others in there that I can’t identify.” Delilah stopped beside me as they formed a living shield in front of the creature and the zombies.
“Are you crazy?” I yelled at them. “Zombies—those are zombies and they will kill you!”
But the line of about twenty people—give or take a few—joined hands and stretched out, forming a half circle around the thing. Mostly women, they said nothing, just smiled with vacant gazes, and held tight. A hum began to rise from the group, and at first I thought they were embarking on some bizarre form of sing-along, but then I realized they were raising energy, and they were directing it at us.
“Fuck, they’re casting a group spell. Hit the dirt!” I dropped, not able to see who else made it to the ground. Seconds later, a wave of energy came racing our way, crackling with static. I heard a scream—it sounded like Delilah, and then the air exploded into flames, which burst brightly over my head, then faded into vapor.
Stunned by both the sound and the force of the magic, I pushed myself up. A glance told me Delilah had gotten caught—she looked singed and burned along one shoulder and her right cheek. But she was up and moving.
Within seconds, we were all on our feet and facing our opponents, and I suddenly knew just who the hell they were, and why we couldn’t fight them.
Chapter 11
“Don’t attack!” I frantically waved the others back. “Retreat. Get out of their line of fire.” I raced behind the nearest cedar, hoping to hell everybody was behind me. I leaned against the tree, shaking. The others were right on my heels. As soon as I was sure they were out of danger, too, I motioned for Shade to watch our backs.
“Are you hurt?” I asked Delilah as Keo took a look at her burns.
“Yeah, they sting, but the burns are superficial. What’s going on? Why did you tell us to get out of there?” Delilah was digging her blade into the tree.
