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“Fucking A…you really travel in some squirrely places, dude.” Morio shook his head. “Let me clear my thoughts.”
“I warned you. Even though you work with death magic, the ebb and flow of the Netherworld forces are harsh on those who don’t spring from its energy. I’m pretty sure Camille found that out when she was in Gulakah’s mind.” Shade glanced over at me, a faint look of pity washing across his face.
I gave him a little shrug. “It was bad, that’s for sure. But I’ve been through worse.”
“That you have, Mistress Camille. That you have.” Shade inclined his head, giving me a small salute.
Just then, Roz returned with Delilah, and Vanzir followed. We got our bearings and began to make plans.
“Here’s the thing: Most of the human shield won’t be able to fight us here. I know they have stronger powers than most FBH pagans, and there are some Fae with them; however, they don’t appear to have an awareness that we’re here. And even if they knew, I don’t think there’s much they could do about it.”
Vanzir shrugged. “So, we can skirt around them and attack the creature from the back. The zombies won’t be able to affect us, either, so we just might manage to trace the energy signature of whoever raised them, while we’re at it.”
I whirled around. “Do you think we could trace the signature from here?”
He pursed his lips, considering. “Maybe. Depends on who cast the spell and how adept they are at hiding their whereabouts.”
Delilah peeked around the trunk, then darted back. “Do we have any clue what the hell that thing is?”
“I recognize something about it, but for the life of me I can’t quite bring it to mind.” I strained to find the words for what it resembled.
“Looks like a silver squishy orange,” Delilah said, grimacing.
And then, it hit me. “Not an orange! An egg. Reminds me of a giant fish egg or something like that. You don’t think…that couldn’t be…” A sudden rush of fear hit me. If that thing was actually the egg of some creature and it was sucking up zombies right and left, what the fuck could it be? “Shade, that’s not a dragon egg, is it?”
Shade let out a strangled “Ugh” and gave me a look that said he thought I was crazy. “Dragon egg? No, not dragon. However…you may have a point. That might just be an egg. The questions are: What’s inside, and when is it going to hatch?”>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.
