“Isn’t that Lucien’s?” Patrick asked.
Carmen shifted her grip, holding the Ka-Bar behind the raised rod. “Not anymore.”
“Did he get the staff?”
“No.”
“Asshole hadonejob.”
Carmen said something rude in Italian that he ignored. Patrick spun on his feet, scanning the area for any signs of the banshee. Amidst the fighting, he caught sight of a body crumpled on the ground near half a dozen tipped-over chairs. He left Carmen to deal with the werewolf and headed toward the banshee.
A zombie lunged at him, broken jaw hanging low over a slashed-open throat, the one behind it still bleeding even though it was dead. Patrick slammed a mageglobe filled with raw magic into the zombies to clear his way forward. Blood and flesh splattered across his shields as he ran, leaping over a couple of tipped-over chairs.
He landed near the banshee, and even before Patrick made it to her side, he knew she was dead. A short sword he’d seen on display earlier for the auction stuck out from the center of her chest. Her eyes were sightless—until they weren’t. The banshee suddenly blinked, and the dead looked back at Patrick.
Steel-gauntleted hands curled like claws as her spine arched, limbs jerking as black magic filled her corpse. Her body twisted and jerked, snapping to her feet with a grotesque twist. The sword shifted in her chest, white outfit stained crimson from the mortal wound.
Patrick conjured up a mageglobe but hesitated to cast a spell into it. He didn’t know what kind of artifact that short sword was or how it would react to magic. Then the zombie opened her mouth, and newly dead or not, necromancy could still bring a fae’s power to life.
She never got the chance to scream.
Dragon fire washed over her with such force her entire body was consumed by it. Patrick threw up his arm to cover his face, the heat vicious even through his shields. He turned his head in time to see Wade cough out a fireball to clear his lungs. Red scales pushed through the skin of his face, neck, and arms, his eyes golden, cut through with reptilian pupils, but otherwise human.
“Zombies aregross,” Wade said.
Patrick groaned. “Then don’teatthem. They aren’t food!”
“I didn’t eat one! They tried to eat me!”
“Zombies don’t eat people. They just want to kill you so their master can raise you.” Patrick wrapped a shield around the zombie banshee burning to a crisp, not wanting to spread the fire to any other part of the building. “Have you seen the Morrígan’s staff?”
“No, I—”
Wade cut himself off, eyes going wide. Then he grabbed Patrick by the arm and yanked him to the side. Patrick’s feet left the ground with the force of the pull, the bones in his elbow joint grinding together beneath Wade’s grip. The pain was better than having the Dullahan’s bone whip slam down against him. Even with his shields, he’d have felt that hit.
Kalid’s skull and spine had yet to break, fortified by Rossiter’s magic. The bone whip cut through the air again, crashing against the shield Patrick raised between them. Rossiter stalked forward, holding his head high to see as he cracked the whip again.
Jono vaulted over two zombies and landed in between them, massive jaws snapping down on Rossiter’s head. It burst like a ripe melon, blood and brain exploding out from between Jono’s teeth. Patrick didn’t know how he got through Rossiter’s shields until he saw the white fire burning in Jono’s eyes.
Not Jono—Fenrir.
The Dullahan collapsed, the bone whip splitting apart, vertebrae clattering to the floor. Fenrir crunched Rossiter’s skull into so many pieces using Jono’s teeth. Then he spat it out, blood coating his fangs.
“Ew,” Wade gagged. “That can’t taste good.”
“You eat demons,” Patrick said, looking past Jono at Cressida.
“As a last resort!”
The roiling hellish magic pouring out of Cressida’s body fought against Spencer’s. She was still trapped in his spell, tendrils of his magic twisting through her flesh and seeking to sever the demon from her soul. Nadine had fought her way to his side, standing outside the shield and doing her best to cut down the zombies and what few werecreatures remained.
That was the problem with the walking dead in a fight like this. When someone died, they could easily be raised and thrust back into the fight, or wandering souls were captured to fill someone else’s body or bones. By Patrick’s count, there were less zombies than there had been after the auction turned into a bloodbath, and the newly dead were staying dead.
He didn’t see Ilya or his followers.
Maybe it was too much to hope the fucker was a body on the ground.
“Hasanyoneseen the goddamn staff?” Patrick shouted.
