“Report!”
“Half the ghouls circle the castle to come from the rear!” he said. “Some of the scary vampires are going with them! The walking corpses send their slaves at the front gates!”
I glanced at Bear. “Explosives, you think?”
“What I would do,” Bear confirmed.
“Tell Basil and his people to get back from the entry gate,” I snapped to Toot. “Hold them at the inner door.”
“My lord!” Toot whistled, pointed, and several of the Little Folk zipped off into the castle, staying low.
“Bob!” I called.
Blue light whirled across the rooftop as the spirit of intellect sped through the enchanted stone of the castle to appear at my side like the splash of an immaterial flashlight. “Here!”
“Show me what’s going on,” I said, and placed a hand flat to the stone.
There was a dizzying sensation, and my eyes burned as if I were walking through a pall of smoke and began to water. I squinted through it—and could suddenly seethroughthe stone of the castle as if it had become as clear as glass.
Toot’s report was accurate. Maybe half the ghouls had peeled off to circle to the rear of the castle, and several Malvora vampires, armed with concealable firearms, had gone with them. There was a back door there, but it was built out of the same stone as the rest of the castle, sealed into place with enchantments that made it damned near as tough as the walls around it, and would be too heavily fortified to open without a serious amount of explosives, which they did not appear to have. That crew would have to climb to the roof and try to win entry to the castle from up here. It would take them a moment to get into position, so they were the secondary problem.
At the front gates, seven or eight Renfields were approaching. The gargoyles had indeed transformed the wooden front gate of the castle to a single slab of thick stone that still bore the wood-grain marks of the gate, filling the open area and flush against the castle stone, ruined steel hinges bent and torn. Interestingly, from an academic standpoint, I couldn’t see through the newly transformed stone—but I had a good angle from up here and could clearly see the Renfields shuffling forward and dumping their backpacks on the ground in front of the gates.
The ghouls and Malvora in front of the castle had proceeded to the walls, keeping well clear of either side of the gate. The Malvora kept upa suppressive level of gunfire on the battlements, preventing me from standing up and throwing my usual stuff or return gunfire at them. Meanwhile, the Black Court had withdrawn several paces, to the yards on the far side of the street, unnaturally still shadows in their black shrouds, to wait for what came next.
I reported to Bear what I saw as I saw it.
“They’re trying to coordinate it,” Bear said, as if we were eating sandwiches after pankration practice instead of lying on the stone with bullets going by a foot and a half over our heads. “They’ll blow the gate. Black Court goes in on the ground floor. Ghouls and Malvora will come up the walls and come in from the roof, all at once.”
“This plan seem kind of simple to you?”
“Simple’s good,” Bear said. “Less to go wrong. They were counting on having a lot of screaming mortals around to cover them, too.”
“Probably work,” I admitted, “if I hadn’t had warning and it was just me. Major General,” I said, “who could make it in time?”
He told me.
“No kidding?” I said. “Where?”
“A block to the north, my lord,” he piped.
“Get over to them. Tell them to come in as soon as they hear the front gate go,” I said.
“My lord!” Toot snapped and zipped away like an arrow from a bow.
I waved at Fitz and Matias and shouted to them, “There’s going to be an explosion! We’re going down the stairs not long after! Get into the doorway and hold the stairs!”
Fitz shouted something mostly lost in the gunfire, but Matias, flinching as a ricochet went somewhere near him, held up his thumb in acknowledgment.
“Bob,” I said, “I want the energy from the blast contained to just the gates. Absorb as much of it as you can.”
“Uh,” Bob said. “If I do that, the gates are going to come down.”
“That’s the idea,” I said. “Get to it.”
“Will do, boss!” Bob said, and the blue light zipped off through the transparent stone of the castle. As he did, the stone became real and opaque again, and my eyes stopped burning.
Bear was frowning at me. “You want them inside.”
