Wolves and the River of Stone (34 page)

Philip let out a slow breath. “So resourceful, Adannaya. Come, face me!”

The pepperbox hissed as I drew it. I dropped the shield and fired two quick shots at the nearest rifleman. I heard the dull thud of an impact and the figure barely took a step backwards from the force. “Not more puppets ...” Last year we’d fought puppets. They were zombies, except different in every way that mattered. They were vampiric zombies, fast as hell and able to absorb obscene amounts of damage. Only a dark necromancer or a demon could create them. Philip was so far out of his mind that it made me hopeful Zola wouldn’t be too broken up by his death.

The field stayed quiet except for a handful of cicadas and the distant hoot of an owl. No one moved. I could feel the vampires nearby. I wouldn’t have noticed them if it wasn’t for our little test in the van, and even they stayed still as the muscles tightened in my shoulders. Philip’s head cocked to the side and a tiny smile split his face.

“Welcome to your death.” He dropped to a knee and slammed his palm against a deep furrow in the earth. A surge of electric blue energy poured into the figures he’d carved into the circle. The birds and insects fell utterly silent when the flux of ley line energy suddenly erupted. Even the rustle of leaves was deafening in the stillness that followed.

It didn’t take long for my brain to register what he was doing. “Shit,
runes!”
My hand shifted to my own shield rune and the glassy sphere flashed up around me.

Philip stood and laughed. He looked behind him and it was only then I noticed the string of necromancers all along the river side at his back. My god, how many were there? They all stood at the same time and stepped away from their own glowing runes before they retreated behind Philip. Most of them clustered in the east, but a few stayed spread across the field.

Philip turned his attention back to me, cocked his head to the side again, and said,
“Seditiotto mergo incoleggra.”

Power lanced out from Philip’s circle and burned through the grasses until it met up with all the other circles between him, the river, and the far edges of the field. There was a burst of light at one of the furthest circles and I saw the power dissipate into the air as the necromancer beside it fell over dead.

Philip wore a flat expression as his head turned toward the downed man. “You only stopped one, Adannaya. Can you stop a hundred?”

There was a flash of steel and wings and the puppet I’d shot at fell to pieces. Foster leapt into the air as Aideen and Cara came down on the other puppet. Their swords cleaved through the tactical gear with unnerving ease. I saw several of the necromancers in the circles take a step backwards. Fear. The rest of them weren’t puppets.

Philip turned toward the pile of limbs on the ground and snarled. “God damned Fae, show yourselves!”

A flash of light caught my eyes. It rose and fell behind the line necromancers closest to the river as they searched the scrub for Zola. Something was moving in the water. The surface rippled and swelled, before it receded and swelled again in an ever-increasing roil. Shallow waters began to surge up and over the sheer riverbank. Some of the necromancers turned to stare at the river. I watched as they broke into a run. They started in my direction and a surge of adrenaline pumped through my body, my hand tightening on the shield rune. I could hear some of them laughing as they slowed and stopped in a cluster behind Philip.

A scream tore from the woods off to the east. A white and red demon sprang from the cover of leaves and landed beside the stragglers. It took me a moment to realize it was Vassili, hidden behind a curtain of bloody hair. He punched through two necromancers in quick succession and vanished back into the tree line before the corpses hit the ground.

Another voice thundered across the field from the southeast. “Move in.” It was Carter. Maggie was behind him, her silver fur flashing in the moonlight. Vik and Dominic were a step behind them.

I caught a smirk on Philip’s face as his hand rose and closed into a fist, bringing a massive shield up around his entire group. Carter careened off the edge of it, but Maggie hit head on. She bounced off, fell onto her back, and leapt to her feet. Both of the wolves snarled and swiped at the incandescent dome of force. A tiny ripple and a small burst of sparks were the only response to their attacks.

“You’ll never get through this shield,” Philip said as he nodded toward the river. Why don’t you show me what you plan to do about them?”

“Oh fuck, what are they?” Alan said from right behind me. I only just kept myself from turning around and smacking him for sneaking up on me. Vassili was with him, which meant Sam was still with Hugh, Mary, and Haka.

I glanced toward the river and cringed. “Wights,” I said flatly.

Skeletons were rising in decayed uniforms. Some still had skin hanging from their emaciated bodies. They were armed with swords and bayonets. They pulled their ruined bodies up onto the bank and marched toward us in silence. A few carried the remains of rifles, the wood long rotted from the river water.

Sam would be coming from the west with no idea what was in front of her. She’d be walking right into those things. Dominic and Vik were both engaging the Wights. Bits of bone and flesh and cloth were torn away by the vampires, but no blood seeped from the long-dead men. They continued marching forward, getting further and further from the swollen river.

I ran toward the line of wights, firing a shot at Philip’s shield just for the hell of it. It ricocheted harmlessly into the air. I leveled the gun at the nearest wight and pulled the trigger. Fragments of its skull fell to the ground but the body kept coming. I pulled the second trigger at point blank range and the thing’s spine splintered and collapsed. My hands moved without thought, cracking open the pepperbox and slamming a speed loader home.

The last of the wolves and vampires hit the water-logged skeletons from behind. Armor and pieces flew into the air as strike after strike found its mark. Claws and fangs flashed in the moonlight, but still more of the damned things crawled out of the water.

I held out my staff and said,
“Pulsatto!”
Two of the creatures shattered at the waist, but as soon as they toppled to the ground, their bony fingers found purchase in the grass and crawled toward me.

A pale blur landed on top of them and tore the remnants into unidentifiable pieces. Sam looked at me with her fangs fully extended. Her eyes were as black as the sky. “What are they? Zombies?”

An auburn werewolf grunted, leapt over Sam, and tore another skeleton to pieces. The arms clattered off a tree in the distance. “I think they’re wights.” Blood ran down Hugh’s leg as he stood up from a crouch. Something had gotten a grip on him. “There are more of them to the northeast.”

“Foster?” I asked.

Hugh nodded. “Aideen is with him, and the the cu siths.” His eyes strafed across the shambling dead. “Wights.”

“I think so,” I said. “Zombies wear flesh, these don’t have much.” I vaporized another wight with six quick shots from the pepperbox. Its body jerked and stumbled from the impact before the last bullet took its head off at the neck.

Sam screamed and doubled over as a sword ripped through her back and almost caught my arm.

“Sam!” I bent down to help her before taking out the wight. It reached out with a bayonet and would have clipped me, except for the roar of a black werewolf that landed on its skull and scattered its body to the winds. As fast as Haka had come, he vanished into the horde of wights.

“Pull it out.” Sam shuddered as I grabbed the hilt and tore the blade out of her back. She was standing again a second later, demolishing another skeleton.

I heard screams from the other end of the army of undead and saw Alan’s massive form stumble backwards and fall. A huge ball of light erupted around him and the four wights closing on his fallen form were blasted into the air. I caught a glimpse of Zola, her cloak settled around her shoulders once more, before I turned and crushed another skeleton with an overhead smash from my staff.

I cursed as the wall of undead surged forward again. I saw Dominic pick up one of the larger wights and hurl it back into the river. Mary’s bloody form plowed through the front row of the dead. Something tripped her and she landed beside me in a heap.

“Getting faster, Damian, they’re faster ...”

I spared Philip a look. He was standing with his arms crossed behind his shield, a smirk twisting his face.

“Why in the hell isn’t he attacking us?” I said as I turned my gaze back to the vampire. “Get behind them, Mary. Find Vassili. Get behind the necromancers and take them out. Philip can’t shield them all.”

She nodded and ran to the south.

“Sam!” I said. “Hugh! On me, now!” I pulled the focus out of my belt and started carving a rune into the ground. I drew two quick circles around it and smashed the ferrule of my staff into the center.

Haka got to me first with Hugh on his tail. Sam leapt over a group of wights that were almost breaking into a run. I marveled at how well she could move with her wounds. As soon as she was clear, I moved my hand over the shield rune on my staff. With the extra circles I’d carved into the ground, a torrent of ley line energy flooded my being. I held my hand out as my skin started to blister and my vision narrowed to a gray tunnel. I’d underestimated how fast the power would build and now I was paying for it.
“Incidatto!”

I let my staff fall and broke the circle as soon as the incantation obliterated the closest wights. Pieces of severed swords and bone and armor fell to the ground as a rippling scythe of electric blue power swept through them. I grunted and fell to a knee as the energy left me. “Too much. Shit ...” I felt a hand on my back and my face was pulled up. I almost smiled at the line of worry etched across Sam’s face. Exhaustion felt like it was gnawing at my bones. I could see through the line of wights now. Their ranks were thinning near the river.

As the last of the skeletal creatures cleared the waters, the river surged forward and then receded again. The line of wights thickened around us and I didn’t have a clear view of the river until it rose up high enough to tower above them.

“God dammit, what now?” I said.

The murky water swept forward and covered at least two dozen wights at once. I felt my eyes widen as a translucent arm shot out of a wave and pulled two more wights into the raging waters. The waves receded, revealing the shattered pieces of the swallowed wights.

The river surged again. Only this time, instead of wights, the river bore three screaming water witches into the fray. Nixie held her arms forward with a massive, rotating orb of water between them. I saw her lips move as the orb swept through the ranks of wights like a wrecking ball. Pieces of bodies and armor exploded in the force of each impact. The other water witches followed suit, leveling dozens of wights in the space of a heartbeat.

Nixie launched herself out of the water and smashed her wrecking ball down on the wights near Zola. The ground shook as the bones were ground into it. Nixie’s translucent form turned toward us and called a flood of water to push the entire line of the dead back toward the river. She flowed over the earth and solidified into her alabaster skin a few feet away.

“Is Sam okay?” she said.

“I’m fine,” Sam said from behind me.

“Good, don’t lose your concentration. Wights are not so easy to kill.” Nixie’s eyes locked on my hands and she frowned. “What did you do?”

“It’s nothing. Later. I’m fine.” The blisters on my hands and arms hurt to move, but I didn’t want Nixie or anyone else distracted by the injury.

Hugh laid a claw on Nixie’s shoulder. “The wolves and the water witches. What would my grandfather say?”

Nixie smiled as she slashed through another wight with a casual flick of her wrist. “He’d probably tell you you’re as crazy as the necromancer.”

Hugh’s laugh rumbled out of his chest. “He would at that.”

“They’re pulling themselves back together,” Sam said. The bones were vibrating across the ground. Skeletal fingers clawed at the dirt and rejoined with arms and legs and tiny chips reformed into entire skeletons as we watched.

“Wights are not so easy to kill,” Nixie said as she launched herself into the mass of undead once again. She punched through a tight group of skeletons and ran toward the other water witches. They were battling a larger group of wights where the ground fell away into the river.

“Adannaya!” I heard the yell before I saw who it was. “Adannaya, throw me the hammer!”

I spun to find Mike the Demon bolting from the southern tree line. He smashed through the fence with hardly a pause, dragging the bodies of two necromancers behind him like they weighed nothing. Mike launched himself into the air and slammed the corpses against Philip’s shield. Philip’s other followers stared at the exploded remains sliding down the shield. The demon leap-frogged off the shimmering wall of power and paused for a split second as he hit the ground and then took off toward the wights.

All the necromancers’ attention was on the demon. Vassili and Mary followed behind Mike. The unshielded necromancers never knew what killed them. Three bodies fell to the ground in pieces before the vampires vanished into the shadows once more.

Zola drew the Smith’s Hammer from her belt and didn’t so much as hesitate as she whipped it across the short distance to Mike. The demon caught it at a dead sprint. I saw his mouth move and deep red flames leapt from the hammer. The handle elongated as Mike turned to the side with a two-handed grip and obliterated a wight with an overhead smash. Bits of charred bone and armor pattered away from the now-enormous flaming head of the Smith’s Hammer.