I scanned the warded area, but it was impossible to tell who it was.That was one reason necros were so scary; their power was invisible—right up until something lurched out of the dark at you.Something that couldn’t feel pain, and that had no sense of self-preservation, as there was nothing left to preserve.
“Okay,” she said.“Okay.That explains why your slip-up earlier didn’t bring the necros down on our heads.They’re already fighting another of our kind for control, maybe more than one, and so far, they’re winning.But not for long.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, because that last comment had been vicious.“And that means?”
“Run!”Jen said, and released me.
I felt it when her power pulsed through my borrowed body, tearing me away from the puppet strings of that other master, and sending me stumbling because there was something wrong with this corpse.Whoever had raised it was as slipshod as the dark usually was and hadn’t bothered with a fresh one.Buddy boy here was literally dropping pieces as I scurried across the floor, staying low because all hell had just broken loose.
Somebody shouted a warning, somebody else let loose a volley of bullets, and half a dozen zombies suddenly crashed into the beleaguered wards, almost running me down.And adding their stench to the miasma staining the air, which was already bad enough to make a zombie retch.And then a full dozen joined them, coming from all directions, as Jen ripped them away from their masters’ control and threw them at the straining pens.
They started looking like flypaper, with bodies sticking to them everywhere, outlined by a field of sparks.Only these bodies were burning and melting and sizzling and yet stillpushing.Until—
Yeah.Shit-tier wards, too, I thought, as several abruptly failed, letting fiery zombies, screaming people, and transforming Weres scatter everywhere, trampling me.Yet I somehow managed to fight my way through the crowd to the first truck in line.
I dove underneath before I fell apart entirely, something that wasn’t likely to take long, as Jen was busy, meaning that she wasn’t doing much to help hold this bag of bones together.So I didn’t waste any time.And one good thing about zombie bodies, I discovered, was that they are massively strong.
I’d always heard stories about mothers lifting a car off their trapped child or people doing other impossible-for-a-human feats when under extreme duress, but had never seen it.Maybe because the brain usually refused to allow it, as such an action could literally strip muscles from bone and do other permanent damage.But zombies don’t have that concern.
They don’t have an independent brain, just orders from headquarters, which I guessed was currently me.Because when I used my borrowed superhuman strength to grab the old, brittle fuel lines near the hose clamps and twist, and pull, andwrench,there was no hesitation at all.Not even when one of the clamps gave way, and the hose cracked, spilling gasoline everywhere from the still-running truck.
But I guessed the driver noticed, because shortly after the engine faltered and failed, somebody grabbed one of my legs and—
“Crap,” I said, as I was jerked out from under.
And the next second, I was on fire, courtesy of a shitty fireball that wasn’t thrown so much as slammed down into me by a furious mage.Which would have been bad except that I couldn’t feel it, and the puddle of fuel spewing out of the broken lines went up along with me.Spilling flames onto the mage since I was splashing them around and sending as much burning liquid at him as possible.
He staggered back and tried to shield, but that’s hard when you can’t concentrate, like when a blazing zombie lurches up, grabs your arms, and doesn’t let go.The mage was screaming and beating at me, and I was holding on and head-butting him with my burning cranium because why the hell not?And then he screamed and went down and stayed there, although not because of me.
But because some of the potion bombs he’d had on his belt had cracked from the heat and eaten through his body, leaving half of him jerking violently and the other half quietly sizzling.
And that, boys and girls, is why you properly ward your equipment, I thought, and grabbed one of his guns.
But I couldn’t fire it because my fingers no longer functioned well enough, or were there at all in some cases.So I threw it with superhuman strength at a passing dark mage and— Okay.
That worked.
I managed to take down two more of his friends with the burning one’s stash, using knives and another gun as projectiles, before I hit a mage who actually had shields up and knew what he was doing.But he was distracted, as there was a full-on zombie war happening now, between Jen and whatever allies she’d managed to find, and the dark necros.And while I couldn’t tell who was winning, the wards were losing, and spilling more and more people, including the hairy kind, into the battle.
Most were scattering everywhere, with some even climbing over the merrily burning hulk of what had been the lead truck and was now a giant metal boulder blocking the convoy.But some of the Weres had taken exception to being caged and were sticking around, jumping the dark mages.And while they didn’t know magic, they knew how to fight.
My guy was so busy looking around in terror that my latest knife attack just bounced off his shields, with no retaliation.Not until I started throwing whatever was left of the fallen mage’s potions at him, before the fire stopped my arms from working by the simple expedient of eating away at them up to the elbows.Which was when I lurched up and started kicking the bombs instead, and he began screaming because they were getting through his shields now, some of that stuff being better than the crap-tier wards that had been used to contain it.
It was a race to see which of us would dissolve first, but I had an advantage: I was already dead.And then so was he, keeling over in a smoking puddle of blood and black gunk that immediately began crawling all over him and consuming what remained of his flesh, which was a shame.Jen could have used that, I thought, right before another mage appeared in front of me, knocked me down, and crashed a boot through my burning skull—
And my consciousness slammed back into my real body, just in time to look up and finally spot Jace.
Being held against the chest of the dark mage leader, who had a knife to his throat.
Chapter Ten
The change was immediate.A second ago, I had been gleefully laughing even as fire consumed me and a boot ground me into powder.Because I couldn’t be hurt, I couldn’t be killed, and I was already very, very dead.
But Jace wasn’t.And something came over me, seeing him clutched in the arms of a monster with a human face, that had Caleb giving a grunt and releasing me.He’d been holding onto my body while my brain took a flit about the room, but he let go because he thought I was about to Change.
I didn’t outwardly.But something feral was suddenly looking out of my eyes.I could feel it, and the dark mage could see it, because he clutched Jace a little tighter.
“I’m glad we understand each other,” he said.“They say there is nothing in the world more desperate than a mother when her child is threatened.And this one,” he pressed the knife in a little, letting the smell of Jace’s blood flood my senses.“This one is yours, yes?”
