Vesik 3 Winter's Demon (30 page)

The River Pack’s old alpha nodded and then accelerated faster than any mortal could move. Two fairies darted in beside Carter as he vanished into the distance. We crested the hill a moment later.

My pace slowed as a thirty-foot dome of lightning flickered across the field.

“Bloody hell, Zola,” I said.

The shield pulsed and turned, lightning showering from the apex to the stones below like a hell-bound carousel. Zola stood in the middle, her head bowed and her lips moving constantly.

“We’re here!” I said as we passed the circle and slid up to the back of the cabin. “How long can you hold it?”

As if in response, another cascade of lightning poured down the shield and a crack of thunder deafened the world around us.

“Get to the front,” I said. “Carter! It’s time!” I didn’t know if he’d hear me from where he was, but he wouldn’t miss what came next.

Alan crouched back on his hind legs and let loose a howl to wake the dead. I covered my ears as that howl laid its claws on the night around us. The Ghost Pack appeared beside us. Foster, Cara, and Cassie swept in behind them.

“We’ll start the fog,” Foster said. “Get to the front.”

The fairies disappeared over the roof. The rest of us circled around the eastern side. Past the ruin of the shed where we’d fought Azzazoth.

“Alright,” I said as I stepped up onto the short set of stairs. “When I start this, I’m out of commission. Try not to let me get vaporized.”

“Frank,” Alan said. “We’ll stay behind to watch over Damian.”

“Tell him that’s a damn fine idea,” Carter said. “Gods but I miss my friends.”

“We all do,” Maggie said as she leaned against her husband.

“You didn’t bring any crispy rice squares?” I asked.

“It’s somewhat difficult when you’re dead.” She bared her teeth in a wolfish grin.

I returned the gesture and nodded.

“We’ll watch over Zola,” a voice said from above us.

I jumped in shock and looked up to find the Watchers.

“Dammit, Edgar,” I said. “Bad time for a heart attack, but thank you.”

He tipped his hat and glided up past the fairies.

“Shit,” I said. “Vicky’s out there alone now.”

“Happy’s with her,” Sam said from beside me, and I almost jumped out of my skin again.

I scowled at my sister. “Where’d you come from?”

She pointed south and my eyes trailed after her finger.

The Old Man strode out of the woods at the far end of the field. He could have been out for a morning stroll if it wasn’t for the trail of smoke rising from his right hand. Someone kissed the wrong end of a flamethrower, and I was guessing they wouldn’t get back up.

“Is that Dell behind him?” Frank asked. “Looks like he’s limping.”

“I’ll check on him,” Sam said. She blurred into motion, carving a path through the shin-high grass. They had a brief exchange before she flickered into motion again. “He’s okay. Twisted ankle. Nothing too bad.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s start this off with some smoke and mirrors.”

“Cara!” Sam said. “Fire it up!”

It started immediately. The air around us thickened like the steam from a hot spring. Then it thickened more, forming an ominous gray thundercloud that began oozing along the ground, billowing out to waist height and then expanding into a ten-foot wall. It drifted out, obscuring our view, and more importantly, the view of our opposition.

The shouts started in the distance, laced with an edge of concern.

“Stand your ground!” said a distant voice.

“Zachariah,” I said as I knelt in a circle of focusing runes carved into the front porch.

“He’s ours,” Carter said. “Art, stay beside me. Don’t get carried away when Damian starts.”

Art nodded. Johann and Betsy exchanged a long glance.

Zachariah. Son of a bitch. The cabin was my home away from it all. My childhood home. Zola’s home. My training grounds. Memories of Sam and Zola and my parents lived in the woods around me. And these bastards dared to set foot near it. I flexed my aura with one sharp exhalation, my necromancy fastening to the wards around me. They began to glow, a sickly yellow-green against the darkness, as my aura began to surge with the steady black-and-white flow of the dead.

I reached out for a ley line. It would be my amplifier. Once it was in my grasp, I anchored it to the southern ward and let my necromancy flow, winding its way into Carter and Maggie and the rest of the ghost wolves. They began to glow, silver at first, then green, and then they became blinding yellow suns.

“My god,” Betsy said. “This is … this is amazing. I can feel again.” She bent down and touched the grass.

I let the power slide back into the circle around me. “That’s what it’s going to feel like,” I said. “Be ready.”

Betsy’s smile fell as the power receded back into my circle. And I felt guilty for taking it away from her.

“Carter,” I said. “If Zola can’t maintain her shield and mask you all at the same time …”

“We are ghosts, my friend.” The werewolf squeezed my shoulder. “We’re already ghosts, but you should have more faith in your master.”

I nodded as he turned away. My faith in Zola was strong, but I knew her better than any of the wolves. She was here to kill Philip, and I shuddered to think what she might have to sacrifice to make that kill.

The mists thickened and turned the entire field into a murky black pit. The Ghost Pack set out into the conjured mists.

I raised my Sight and gasped as electric blue lines arced and sputtered through the gray. The fairies anchored the spell to Zola’s shield, and the lines bent into a circle like a hurricane. I could see the Ghost Pack through it all, and at the far side of the storm, a line of necromancers. Spheres of power hovered and dipped around several of them. It took me a moment before I realized they were summoning power to act like a torch, using the varied corpses and dead things Zola had buried in the area. They kept moving forward.

Foster appeared at my side, seven feet tall with his hand on the hilt of his sword. “They’re in position Damian.”

“Drop it,” I said.

Foster leapt onto the roof. The mists began to thin. Starlight poked holes in the absolute night we’d been buried in a moment before. Tendrils of gray trailed behind Foster, caressing his wings and sword as he landed at my side. His blade flickered in the light of the glowing torches before us. The wards beneath me began to pulse with a hideous deep red-orange I’d never seen in my own workings before. Hellfire. It lit the world from below, casting the faces of my friends in a ghoulish light.

Laughter echoed across the field among shouts of alarm. Zachariah stood twenty yards away, shoulders slumped and his hands on his knees. “Well, you do know how to make an entrance, Vesik.”

I stared at the man.

“You can’t win and I can’t let you leave,” he said. “You shouldn’t have come.”

“We buried a demon where you’re standing,” I said.

He glanced at his feet, a small frown appeared for a moment before his smirk returned. “Oh, did you now? And where are your wolves? Philip is scared of your pet dogs.”

“He should be,” I whispered as I pushed out a torrent of necromancy, which was swallowed by the wards beneath me. The light of hellfire was overcome by the glow of the wards and the grayish light of necromancy.

“Philip grows weak,” Zachariah spat. “I am the rightful leader of this army. I will march our men over the carcass of this world and—”

“Goodbye, Zachariah,” the words escaped me in an incoherent snarl as rage welled up at the thought of this monster living one more second.

His eyes widened as my power lanced out to the Ghost Pack. Each wolf swelled into a blinding sun mixed within the necromancer’s ranks. Zola had been masking their presence the entire time. The only place I’d seen anything like it was Rivercene, where I had trouble perceiving the ghosts around me.

Maggie growled, and her growl rose into a howl as her body broke and grew and fur flowed from her skin. Her claws ripped the life from the nearest necromancer before he even registered what had appeared beside him.

The wolves went to war.

Alan snarled beside me.

“Go,” I said, knowing the bloodlust would be boiling over as he watched his brothers and sisters tear into our enemy. He didn’t need my permission, bloody hell I knew that, but he launched himself forward at that single word. His howl joined the Ghost Pack and I reveled in the cries of our enemies.

Carter and Maggie danced through the necromancers. Tears threatened to blind me as I watched my friends together, devouring the ranks of our enemies. Sense began to return to the survivors as blood and pieces rained down around them. Bodies were torn asunder and smeared across the shields flickering between the wolves and their prey.

Betsy and Art backed Zachariah against the old oak. Lightning thundered from his hands and ricocheted harmlessly off the Ghost Pack.

“What are you?” he screamed. “You should be dead!”

He didn’t see Foster coming. The fairy dive-bombed the necromancer, running his sword through Zachariah’s shoulder. The blade pierced the tree behind him and pinned him in place.

He screamed and pawed at the sword, eyes going wide as he took in the battlefield. The Old Man walked in from the other end of the field. Each step was deliberate. He raised his hand, and shields shattered into a mass of blue sparks. Dell raised his gun and fired one round for each broken shield. He never missed. They took down five men in a span of seconds.

The Old Man laughed and crossed his arms, looking at the carnage like an old friend come home.

“Carter,” I said between clenched teeth as my forearms began to spasm from the effort. “I can’t hold this.”

I didn’t think he was close enough to hear me, but he got the message. Carter wrapped his paw around Maggie’s and they started toward Zachariah. The grass bent beneath their clawed feet. Zachariah’s chest rose and fell in rapid, ragged breaths.

“You let him raise the Destroyer,” Carter said as he reached out to the necromancer.

“Impadda!”
Zachariah cringed as nothing happened but a hiss of pale blue sparks. “What have you done?”

“My sword,” Foster said.

Zachariah stared and the blade in his shoulder and then spat at Foster. He tried to take a swing with his right arm, but Carter caught his hand.

“Get away, wolf,” Zachariah said in a nearly incoherent snarl.

“I will not deny my friend her vengeance,” Carter said. “So we will tear our own from your body.” Carter offered Zachariah’s hand to Maggie.

She bit it off. The necromancer let out a piercing scream, the likes of which I’d never heard. Maggie chewed the hand slowly, smiling as the blood ran down silvery, golden fur. She spit out the bones, one at a time. My stomach churned as she leaned into the man and bit off his ear.

“Now then,” Carter said. “This is going to hurt.” He wrenched Zachariah’s body down, severing his left arm with the sword embedded in it.

The rest of the Ghost Pack circled.

“Goodbye,” Carter said. He punched through the bastard’s ribcage and ripped out his heart. Zachariah was still twitching and trying to scream as Carter started to eat that heart. He’d never scream again. Art ripped out Zachariah’s throat and the Ghost Pack descended, leaving the necromancer’s body in tiny pieces.

I watched his soul start to rise. I wondered if it would dissipate. Would he be sentenced to some dark corner of the Burning Lands for all he’d done?

“Oh,” the Old Man said as he stepped up beside the wolves. “You won’t be getting off so easy, old friend.” He held his arms out before him, palms up. The scars along his hands began to glow, and the light raced up that disfigured patchwork of flesh. The Old Man inhaled and Zachariah’s soul disappeared into his mouth.

I guess we’ll never know where Zachariah was headed.

I laughed to myself and collapsed as I finally released the flood tide of power I’d been channeling.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“W
here’s Sam?” I asked as Alan pulled me to my feet. “She was with Dell.”

Alan glanced at Dell. “Do you know?”

Dell shook his head.

“She went to watch over Zola and the fairies,” the Old Man said. “Frank and Ashley are with them.”

A knot in my stomach loosened just a little.

Intense light rocketed down into the woods to the northeast. I glanced up at the roof and found Edgar with his arm outstretched. I was fairly certain he’d killed something with that strike. James stood to his left, both well below the peak and hidden from anyone to the north.

“They’re at the shield,” Cara said. “Keep your voices down. We move to the east, past the crater.”

I nodded and wobbled a little with my first step as we made our way past the remnants of the old shed. There were a few pieces large enough to identify as part of the roof, or the burnt edge of a door, but most of the structure was buried in the shed’s crater under a layer of brown grass and dead weeds.

We crouched behind the stack of firewood beside the house and watched. The idiots we’d left by the creek were there, circled around Zola’s shield. They unleashed fire and thunder, but their most powerful workings were swept up in the maelstrom of power and sent harmlessly into the air.

A little girl skipped out of the woods on the far side of the shield. Vicky ran at the nearest necromancer and punched through his back. “Philip is here,” she said as she pulled her arm out of the man’s chest and left him to twitch on the ground.

The next cloak spun towards her.
“Tyranno Eversiotto!”
Death and light shot towards Vicky and the ghost smiled. She raised her arm and that bloody sword of light appeared in the path of the necromancer’s spell. The sword absorbed it all and Vicky’s hand started to shake. Then she screamed, her fist opening and the blade disappearing as she stumbled away from the shield.

The necromancer pulled his hood down and Philip Pinkerton smiled like a madman. “Not so strong, little demon.” He stalked toward Vicky as she fell to the ground, cradling her hand. I started to move, but the Old Man clamped down on my shoulder.