Wolves and the River of Stone (20 page)

I hadn’t noticed Foster leave, but he came down from above with a swift strike across the front werewolf’s shoulder as the wolf started to shift. A bloody arm twirled away as the werewolf howled and stumbled to the side. Foster struck again. He went low, removed a leg at the knee, spun with an obscene grace, and cleaved the wolf’s head in two. Another wolf appeared at the edge of the northern woods. Foster charged the wolf and followed him into the dense tree line.

The two surviving attackers stopped dead as a figure of rock rose from the earthworks beside us in a circle of blue flames. Aeros pounded the ground as he materialized, and roared with the voice of a god as he was born once more into our world. He smacked his fist into his granite chest. Carter fell back beside me as the impact rattled the entire area like an earthquake. Aeros’s voice was a booming, gravelly, grind. “You dare assault my followers, dog?”

The Alpha’s confidence broke as a line of worry etched itself across his forehead an instant before he shifted forms. He was smart enough to retreat into the glen. The other werewolf, the fully formed hulk, just watched as Aeros picked up a paving stone from the crest of the earthworks and threw it hard enough to turn the wolf’s head into a fine mist.

A beam of deep red light flashed from inside the glen and my jaw slackened as the light hit Aeros. He stumbled and fell backwards in a flailing avalanche of granite. I cursed and hoped Zola had gotten out of the way. I couldn’t see her.

I changed the grip on my staff, placing my left hand just below the shield rune so I could have it up in a heartbeat. “Move it,” I said as I led Carter toward the break in the earthworks.

I heard a voice before I saw the attack.
“Incursotto!”
My hand slid over the shield rune on my staff and tightened in a death grip on it. The flowing glassy sphere of the shield flared around me a heartbeat before a jagged bolt of power tore across it. Sparks of energy flared in yellow-orange fireworks. The bastard was in the woods to the south and I couldn’t see him.

“
Damian!”

“Sam!” I said. “Watch yourself!”

The necromancer who attacked me never had a chance. Sam leapt out of a nearby tree and came down in the shadows. I saw the hooded body of the necromancer as Sam forced him toward the light. His face was shadowed, but his screams were clear as day. Sam tore out his throat with one savage bite, dug her hands beneath his ribcage, and bared his heart to the world with a horrific series of snaps.

Two more cloaks came out of the woods behind Sam. Vik and Dominic were a split second behind her. They flowed over the earthworks in a visceral display of carnage.

“Damian!” Dominic said. “Carter! It’s a huge trap! We’re not prepared for this!”

“Just keep your wards on,” I said as I dropped my shield. “Keep your fucking wards on, Dominic.”

He came to a halt beside me and nodded once before his eyes went wide. “Get down!”

Dominic slapped me to the ground just before he dove in the other direction. The impact with the ground knocked the wind out of me. I was gasping as a wave of force tore through the earth between us, sending a cascade of dirt and rock into the air. The next thing I heard was the angry bark of a panda bear. Something screamed and died with a gurgle a moment before Happy came tearing down the path behind us with another necromancer’s head caught in his jaws. Happy didn’t even pause. He headed straight for Aeros.

The ground shook as something exploded on the other side of the glen. A fireball lit the skies deeper in the eastern woods, near where Hugh and Alan should have been. Enormous branches spun through the air and crashed down on top of the earthworks and trees groaned as they shattered and collapsed in the woods.

I heard Carter yell and I found him further down the northeastern side of the glen. I ran at him and could hear him better as I got closer.

“– wrong with you, Emily?” He had a werewolf by the throat. “Why are you
doing
this?”

The small, black wolf laughed as it scratched at Carter’s arms. The wolf must have been Emily. “Weak little
Carter,”
she said between snarls. “We’ll kill you and eat your bitch.”

Carter looked away as he snapped Emily’s neck, tore off her head in one vicious strike, and let the body drop to the ground. He released a howl so full of agony my eyes burned. Fighting started deeper in the woods. I could hear the vampires tearing something apart in grunts and screams. The noise was growing and Carter didn’t see the first zombie shambling out of the woods.

“
Carter!”
I screamed as the rotten corpse fell on him. It had its teeth in his arm before I could even think. All hesitation left me, and I sent my aura forward, searching for the strands keeping that godforsaken zombie alive. I found dozens of sickly orange bonds and severed them all as I found them. No matter how many I severed, Carter was still struggling beneath the zombie. I cursed, focused my necromancy, grabbed onto the unnatural thing with my aura and tore the body apart with its own cursed life force.

Pieces exploded across the grass as I came to know Jack Summers to an intimate degree. I knew what a good man he’d been, a school teacher, a loving father. The worst thing he’d ever done was drive away from the scene of an accident after he hit a parked minivan. He’d died trying to save his wife in a fire, died with her name on his lips. And I tore him to bloody bits. I ground my teeth and turned my attention to the werewolf.

Carter gasped and rolled onto his knees. He was cradling his left arm. I knew he’d heal fast, but he was going to be prey for a little while.

The earth shook again as Aeros regained his feet. I heard the rocky figure laugh as two zombies fell on his legs. He punched toward the ground and the first disappeared in a spray of gore. I didn’t wait to see what happened to the next one. I was too busy trying to figure out what the hell to do about the new werewolf bearing down on us from the east. I put myself between it and Carter as it raced across the steep grassy wall of the earthworks, galloping on all fours.

I turned the pepperbox toward the wolf a second before Carter growled, “Damian, it’s Hugh.”

“Son of a bitch.” My finger flashed off the trigger and I took a deep breath.

Hugh’s voice sounded even more like a growl than Carter, “Zombies, dozens. How did they do this?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “They could’ve been burying them for months and we wouldn’t know it.”

Another wolf ran up behind Hugh, low to the ground. He was huge with dark brown and black fur and traces of white around his feet and claws. His voice was deeper than Hugh’s. “They’re herding us toward the glen.”

“Alan?” I said.

The wolf nodded. His ears rotated to the right and then flicked forward. “They’re here. I’ll slow them down.”

I glanced toward the opening on the earthworks. “Fine by me. Kill the necromancers and the zombies go away. This wasn’t a warded trap. The power is tied to someone nearby.”

“Then they die,” Sam said. I turned to find my sister flanked by Dominic and a very bloody Vik. The smile on Vik’s face almost curdled my blood.

My heart tripped over itself as I felt the air rush by my head and power was dragged across my aura, all to the roar of a distant tornado. “Zola?” I said as I looked back toward Aeros. “Bloody hell, get the fuck
down!”
The sound alone triggered my memory, like a god taking a deep breath, as the incantation gathered power from every dead thing in a mile radius. If the vampires didn’t have their amulets, they would have been used up like so much kindling. A few figures dropped out of the shadows behind us. Zombies were caught in the unholy tidal wave, the meager life force torn from their bodies.

The thunderclap felt like it shook the world as Zola unleashed hell. I’ll never know how many creatures died in that instant. The west wall of the earthworks shattered and erupted a hundred feet into the air as the trees nearby splintered and burned in an enormous flash fire. The fire roared forward in a spiraling cyclone, and then dispersed so fast debris was still falling when the flames went out. Zola would be hiding. That incantation would have wiped her out. I could just barely see the peak of an enormous glassy shield inside the glen. It was too big, far too big to be powered by any necromancer, even a gifted one.

“Philip’s here,” Aeros said. Before anyone else spoke, Aeros roared and charged through the new opening in the glen’s western wall. I could see a glowing panda behind him with streaks of red and brown across his face and paws. I swear I saw a little girl giggling on his back.

“Move, now!” Dominic said.

Our group ran up the earthworks as something crashed through the woods nearby. I glanced toward the trees behind us as we came up the incline. More zombies. Dozens of them. I cursed again and my brain raced to figure out how that was possible. Either Zola’s incantation hadn’t killed them all, or one of our enemies had shielded some of them.

I vaulted over the peak of the earthworks behind the vampires. The boulders forming Aeros’s feet were covered with a thin gore, destruction and carnage on vulgar display all around him. The rock god laughed as a werewolf launched itself at his face. His huge fists slammed together on the top of the wolf. Legs fell to the ground with nothing but mush attached to them.

A black-cloaked figure stepped toward us from the opposite side of the glen, stopping at the edge of the blackened earth. The figure threw back his hood and revealed himself. Philip Pinkerton. It was still odd, seeing someone you’d only seen in old yellowed photographs up until that very week. His round face contorted as he took another step toward Aeros and the rage continued poisoning his aura. I caught a smirk above a strong chin as he moved through the torchlight glittering from the silver highlights of his cloak. Philip’s eyes stayed hidden in the shadows of a prominent, sloped forehead. His hands were gloved and his voice was deep as he held his right arm toward Aeros and said,
“Inimicus Deleotto!”

A thick white beam, two feet in diameter, burned across the field and hit Aeros on the left side of his chest. It spun the monolith around and he crashed face first into the collapsed earthworks with a monstrous grunt. Aeros didn’t move much and I almost laughed at the fact I was worried about a demigod.

I’d been distracted too long. I heard another incantation behind me. I turned fast enough to see Zachariah come out of the woods with more zombies. His face was covered in scabs and his nose was swollen. I didn’t even get a shield up before a wave of force smacked me in the gut and sent me tumbling down the hill, into the glen. I kept a death grip on my staff and my pepperbox until I came to a stop at the feet of another necromancer. I could see his eyes in the weak light, a pale gray like my own. He raised a dagger and opened his mouth. I shot him in the head before he could do anything else.

There was another flash of white light and I turned to find the vampires battling a group of werewolves near the peak of the northeastern earthworks. Shadows snarled and rolled and died in the silvery moonlight. Philip turned toward them and watched. His face curled into a sneer as he turned back to me.

“Vampires, Vesik?” He laughed. “You bring vampires to fight necromancers? It would have been quicker to shoot yourself in the head.”

Philip’s sneer faltered as he raised his hand toward Vik and nothing happened. “No,
no.”
He turned in a circle and the red-black rage rippling off his aura burned my senses. His scream tore through the night like a ragged wound,
“Adannaya!”

I heard Zola’s laugh before I saw her. She was standing rigid as a centurion at the peak of the southern wall. The zombies crested the hill behind me with Zachariah in the lead. Zola held her knobby cane out toward them and said,
“Modus Ignatto.”
Flames scorched the air over my head. I saw Zachariah dive outside the glen once more as the wall of fire ate through a huge number of zombies. My head swung back to Zola in time to see her shoulders slump after the massive effort. Her cane was smoking from the energy she’d pulled through it. Zola laughed and turned back to Philip. “Ah’ve been studying, love.” She spat the last word. “Ah’ve been studying since we ran into your horde, you bastard.”

Vik broke away from the werewolves as Carter and Hugh joined them. Vik dove at Philip with his fangs extended and a snarl disfiguring his face. Philip barely moved a finger and Vik’s body looked like it hit an invisible wall. Philip waved his hand again and whispered something. Vik shot backwards like he’d been hit by a car. “Your wards can’t stop everything, Adannaya.” Philip’s face was stone, but the rage in his aura still flooded the glen.

I raised my gun and shot Philip just for the hell of it. It careened harmlessly off his cloak. “You’re an asshole,” I said.

He turned to me and laughed. He started to speak, but he screamed instead. His eyes widened as two translucent arms burst through his thigh. My skin crawled with pins and needles when I saw the little ghost running away from the dark necromancer with blood all over her arms. What the hell?

Zola didn’t miss a beat. She leveled the head of her knobby cane at Philip.
“Magnus Eversiotto!”
The cane shook and blackened and she screamed as the nearby ley lines tore through her body. A thick white beam erupted from the cane and lanced into the earth a few feet from Philip. The grass laid flat as the incantation surged above it. Truckloads of dirt and debris rocketed into the air an instant later. I saw a glimpse of a shield flash around Philip at the center of the explosion. The shield was almost lost in the roaring debris cloud, pummeled by rock and dirt and bodies. The force was enough to lift the shield and Philip off the ground and slam them into the edge of the earthworks behind him.