Ravenous (35 page)
It was just like lighting a huge candle, a trick she had done a hundred times with the snap of her fingers. The drop cloth had been the first to go. Then the stairway carpet. Stray newspapers. With all the paints and solvents Raglan had left inside, the rest was a foregone conclusion.
Holly worked most of her magic from the blasted front lawn, where the house couldn't reach her. Power flowed, liquid and graceful. The hardest part was shutting off her mind to the house's screams. Mad and evil though it was, it was still conscious.
Sadly, fire was the only sure way to disrupt the half-opened portal. Fire disturbed the flow of energy. It also had the potential to attract a lot of attention. Holly conjured a glamour to hide the fact that a house was burning in plain view. At the same time she set wards to keep the blaze contained. The only evidence of the fire was a faint smoky smell she couldn't seem to banish. The neighbors would wake up to a vacant lot and a pile of ash.
Ben stood quietly by, as if he had lost the will to move. He just stared. Then she realized he was staring at something specific down the street, his face washing an interesting shade of white.
Holly turned.
Werewolves
.
They poured down the street in a silent, furry river, shadows punctuated by the flare of hunters' eyes. Muscled haunches worked as they ran, their flowing lope eating ground with the speed of nightmares. The wolves were big but lean, their legs almost delicate. Their thick coats were mostly gray, but there were black wolves and tawny ones, chocolate brown and white. All were red-tongued and brush-tailed; all had fierce ivory teeth. When they reached Holly and Ben they stopped of one accord, eerie and noiseless.
Only the huffing of their breath made them seem more than a dream.
One came to Holly, its nails clicking on the pavement. A gray one. Male. Not the largest, but clearly the one in command. It sat, ears forward.
"We have a prisoner," said Holly.
With a lupine grin, Perry scanned Ben's face with feral yellow eyes.
Running with wolves exceeded Holly's fitness plan. It was like sprinting for the bus, except it went on forever. She just couldn't keep up.
After a few frustrating blocks and a doggy huddle, the pack split into three. The largest group ran ahead. One group escorted Ben in the opposite direction, to be placed, she presumed, in a metaphorical and perhaps literal doghouse. Perry and a handful of others stayed with Holly, slowing their pace to a brisk trot as they went to rendezvous with Queen Omara.
Their journey took them back to the main part of the campus. It seemed unreal. Holly had just been up there taking classes, but she'd never been to this part of the grounds. She did her best to orient herself, recognizing the Arts Building behind her and the main lawns rimmed by the dormitories straight ahead. Their destination was a small playing field at the south end of the lawns. There Queen Omara had made her headquarters.
Long before they reached it, though, they had to stop. The wolves and hounds had formed a security cordon, marking a wide perimeter. Holly and her escort were thoroughly sniffed before they were allowed to cross. The pause was fine with Holly, who bent over, hands on knees, to catch her breath and nurse the stitch in her side. Perry butted his nose against her.
"Just a minute." Holly gasped, straightening. "Iron endurance isn't one of my superpowers."
Perry bumped her again, making a doggy whine. Holly switched her attention from her aching lungs to the world around her. She began plodding forward. Now she could see the pale-faced Undead pacing the near the goalposts, making the scene look like some avant-garde sportscast with no color and less dialogue.
The creepiness quotient was in hyperdrive. The vamps seemed to be already in battle mode, moving with the sliding grace of predators, forming into shadowy clots to talk, point, and shake their heads.
What are they doing
? They all seemed to be facing north, watching for something.
Holly turned, and it was then that she saw that the enemy had arrived. The changeling army, complete with their packs of ghouls, emerged from between the dormitory buildings, a rolling wave of grotesquerie.
Not possible
! She had kept her senses open to the ley lines. She hadn't felt any portals besides the one in the house.
But here they were.
Perry tensed, his tail going bushy. He began running for the bleachers, barking at Holly to follow. She froze for a split second, adrenaline overloading her nerves.
Oh, no, oh, no, no, no
! Then she sprang after him, legs pumping. The ground seemed suddenly alive with hazards, the grass bunching up to catch her feet. She had never run so fast.
The changelings came faster. They came in force, nearly beating Holly to the safety of the front lines. The wolves and hellhounds swarmed them, but numbers were against the werebeasts. For every changeling there seemed to be at least three ghouls.
Holly's eyes searched the field ahead. There was no sign of Alessandro, but she spotted Omara. The queen had thrown aside her coat, and the bright green silk of her long shift caught the cloud-mottled moonlight. Omara was on her cell phone, yelling into it. It sounded as though she were calling for reinforcements.
Perry and Holly reached the battle area, three of the changelings hard on their heels. Holly scrambled up the bleachers, praying the height would buy her safety long enough to figure out how to use her powers effectively. She couldn't just blast into the crowd without taking out friend as well as foe.
The battle had begun. Where was Alessandro?
Merda.
The guardsman ran from the Flanders house with the speed and cunning of a fox. A hundred yards beyond the house he had given Alessandro the slip, demonstrating an uncanny ability to hide where there was no real cover. Evidently the Castle guard had been granted extraordinary powers of their own.
Alessandro flew to the top of a bus shelter, his boots landing lightly on its metal framework. He scanned the south campus, searching for the gleam of the guardsman's metal breastplate. From his vantage point the lawn looked like dark water, the ring of campus lights a glittering shore. He listened, hearing distant music, the wind in the trees, but no sound of running feet. He could smell werebeasts and, from farther off, the scent of movie-house popcorn. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Which was magic in itself. The fey were at work. If he relaxed the focus of his eyes, he could see the faint blue glow that showed that a building had been magically sealed. Humans would find excuses not to leave—they would sleep longer, have another latte, or find their conversation too compelling to abandon. The north campus was covered, and the blue glow crept toward the first of the dormitories. They fey were working south.
As he looked toward the dorms, he saw what he had been looking for—the momentary flash of a tattooed sword arm flickering in and out of the shadows. Alessandro leaped into the air with an audible whoosh.
He landed in a crouch and ran hard. The dormitories had irregular walls, deep entrances, a thousand places an enemy could hide. Garbage rustled in the wind, faking the sound of a footfall, the whisper of a drawn sword.
There!
Alessandro had his blade in hand, ready. The guardsman wheeled from the shadows, the whole weight of his motion in the stroke. Their blades crashed in a two-handed parry, the shock vibrating clear to Alessandro's spine.
Where is the book
? The guardsman must have set it down somewhere to free his hands for the fight. He set the thought aside. Danger gave the moment clarity, a still calm that cleared his senses of extraneous detail. The guardsman thrust; Alessandro melted out of reach, turning and driving back in with a blow of his own. His blade slid off the breastplate, skimming the man's bare arm. He smelled the spurt of blood, the sharp scent honing the moment.
Injury upped the ante. The guardsman fought back, thundering a rain of blows against Alessandro's defenses. Alessandro was forced to retreat a few steps, surprised at the guard's enormous strength. He ducked under humming metal, trying to get inside the man's defenses, but every time he was blocked.
The guardsman swung again, a furious blow that drove Alessandro even farther back. Dodging behind a bicycle rack, the guardsman snatched up
The Book of Lies
and whirled away, bolting across the lawn.
Alessandro sped after him. As the guardsman angled close to one of the dorms, four changelings converged out of nowhere, pouncing on the guard. They fell into a snarl of bodies, the guardsman shaking them off like a hound shedding water, breaking the neck of one—but he had to use both hands for that.
He dropped the book.
Alessandro was right there, cleaving a changeling in two, but another crept behind him, waiting till Alessandro raised his arms to slide a silver knife between his ribs.
Pain arched clear to the roof of his mouth, the silver flying inside him like acid, vibrating on every nerve. His vision went black. He dropped his sword, fell to his knees with a violent curse.
Breath failed Alessandro as he groped for the hilt of the knife. It slid from his flesh in a gush of blood, leaving him sick and sweating. He retched into the grass, lungs flailing for air. A fraction higher and the blade would have pierced his heart.
The two surviving changelings scuttled across the lawn with the book, the guardsman in pursuit. The skirmish was over in the matter of a minute.
Alessandro picked himself up. He felt like cracked glass, fissures of white-hot nerves spidering out from where the knife had thrust. Blood coursed from the wound, taking his strength with it. If he got help he would recover, but the blade had been silver. Healing would be slow.
"Score one for the bad guys." Macmillan sauntered into Alessandro's field of vision, materializing from thin air. Alessandro lunged at Macmillan, but the demon cop danced away, his laugh taunting. "Hey, you might be fast, but I'm barely even here."
Alessandro held the wound in his side, feeling wetness ooze between his fingers. "What do you want?"
Macmillan waved a hand. He looked oddly transparent, even in the darkness. "Nothing that tattooed goof hasn't already accomplished. We have the book. The queen's champion is wounded and stalled outside enemy lines. I'm pretty much done for the night. After years of mopping up after criminals, it's kind of nice being on the winning side for a change. Basically I'm just here to gloat."
"You haven't won yet."
"Oh, suck it up, vampire. There's no way you're pulling a victory out of this mess." The detective turned his back, apparently intending to simply walk away.
"Is that it? Has Geneva eaten your entire soul?"
"What? You want us to have a buddy moment and save the day?" Macmillan looked back, the horror in his eyes belying his light words. "The worst part of this, Caravelli, is that with every passing minute I lose a piece of what made me human. There's nothing left but the impulse to feed. Thank whoever you pray to that vampires don't smell like food."
Macmillan held up his hands, showing their translucence against the dormitory lights. "You see, I haven't eaten in a few hours. I can't last that long. She tells me it gets easier the longer you're a demon, but right now… God, I hate this part."
Alessandro stared at Macmillan, forgetting his own pain in a wash of revulsion. He'd seen this before, but it never got any more pleasant to look at.
The detective's hands were knotted with dark veins, the ropy, engorged ridges so thick and black they seemed the very absence of light. They seemed to flow with darkness, bubbling and pulsing until the flesh between vanished.
Now wholly shadows, Macmillan's fingers crumbled into blackness like a dry, rotted leaf succumbing to the wind. He was powdering into a mist, powerless, a shade, a nothing. His hands, his feet, and his arms fell away, nothing left but a blot against the empty night air. Then, mercifully, he was gone.
Gone somewhere to envelop an unsuspecting victim and drain his soul. How many would it take before he could resume his own form again? Or that of some creeping or scurrying beast?
Alessandro felt sick. A mere handful of days before, Macmillan had been a good man doing honorable work. This was what it meant when a demon ate your soul.
But whether he meant to or not, Macmillan had given him a warning:
The queen's champion is wounded and stalled outside enemy lines
. Alessandro was the wounded champion. The enemy wasn't there yet, but he'd better hurry to avoid getting caught on the wrong side of the battle.
Alessandro started off at a slow jog, as fast as his wound would allow. When he got near the Arts Building, he leaped to a low balcony, then to the third-floor roof. The exertion tore at his side, but the improved view was worth it. Macmillan's tip had been good.
But Alessandro was too late.
In the parking lot behind the dormitories, a series of yellow school buses were disgorging ghouls and changelings. Buses? It was clever. There was no hint of magic to tip their hand, and no one would ever expect the enemy to arrive in something so mundane. Of course, this was just the advance guard. They would have to use a portal for an army large enough to take the whole town.
But this is enough to keep us distracted while they get down to business
.
