A figure hurtled from the deck of the boat to land in a tigerish crouch on the little area of open deck at the rear of the Water Beetle Water Beetle. Even as I watched, its features, those of an unremarkable man in his midthirties, began to change. His jaws elongated, face extending into something of a muzzle, and his forearms lengthened, the nails extending into dirty-looking talons.
He faced me, shoulders distorting into hunched knots of powerful muscle, bared his teeth, and let out a shrieking roar.
A ghoul. A tough, dangerous opponent, but not impossible to beat.
Then more figures appeared on the deck of the other ship, half veiled by the thick smoke. Their limbs crackled and contorted, and a dozen more ghouls opened their mouths in earsplitting echo of the first.
"Thomas!" I shouted, half choking on the smoke. "We've got a problem!"
Thirteen ghouls flung themselves directly at me, jaws gaping and slavering, talons reaching, eyes gleaming with feral bloodlust and rage.
Fucking boats boats.
Chapter Twenty-One
I have, in general, not had fun during my service as a Warden of the White Council. I have taken no enjoyment whatsoever in becoming a solider in the war with the Vampire Courts. Doing battle with the forces of... have, in general, not had fun during my service as a Warden of the White Council. I have taken no enjoyment whatsoever in becoming a solider in the war with the Vampire Courts. Doing battle with the forces of...
I was going to say evil, evil, but I'm increasingly unsure exactly where everyone around me falls on the Jedi-Sith Index. but I'm increasingly unsure exactly where everyone around me falls on the Jedi-Sith Index.
Doing battle with the forces of things trying to kill me, or my friends, or people who can't protect themselves is not a rowdy summer adventure movie. It's a nightmare. Everything is violence and confusion, fear and rage, pain and exhilaration. It all happens fast, and there's never time to think, never any way to be sure of anything.
It's awful, really-but I do have to admit that there's been one positive thing about the situation: I've gotten in a lot of extra practice at combat wizardry.
And ever since New Mexico, I had absolutely no reservations about ripping ghouls apart with it.
The nearest ghoul was the closest threat, but not the greatest opportunity. Still, if I didn't lay the smack down on him in a hurry, he'd rip my head off, or at least tie me up long enough for his buddies to mob me. Ordinarily, I'd have let him eat a blast of telekinetic force from the little silver ring I wore on my right hand, the one that stored up a little energy every time I moved my arm, and which was useless after being employed.
I couldn't do that, because I'd replaced the single silver ring with three circles of silver fused into a single band, each with the same potential energy as the original silver ring.
Oh. And I had one of the new bands on every finger of my right hand.
I raised my staff in my fist, baring the rings to the ghoul, and as I triggered the first ring snarled, "See ya!"
Raw force lashed out at the ghoul, flung him off the end of the Water Beetle, Water Beetle, and slammed him against the front of the ship blocking us in with enough force to break his back. There was a rippling crack, the ghoul's battle cry turned into an agonized scream, and he vanished into the cold waters of Lake Michigan. and slammed him against the front of the ship blocking us in with enough force to break his back. There was a rippling crack, the ghoul's battle cry turned into an agonized scream, and he vanished into the cold waters of Lake Michigan.
The first of his buddies was already in the air, boarding the Water Beetle Water Beetle just as the first had. I waited a half second, timing the arc of his jump, and before his feet touched down, I hit him just as I had the first one. This time, the ghoul flew back into a pair of its buddies, already in the air behind him, and dropped all three of them into the drink. Ghouls five and six were female, about which I did not care in the least, and I swatted them into the lake with two more blasts. just as the first had. I waited a half second, timing the arc of his jump, and before his feet touched down, I hit him just as I had the first one. This time, the ghoul flew back into a pair of its buddies, already in the air behind him, and dropped all three of them into the drink. Ghouls five and six were female, about which I did not care in the least, and I swatted them into the lake with two more blasts.
So far, so good, but then four of them all leaped together-probably by chance, rather than design-and I knocked down only two of them. The other two hit the deck of the Water Beetle Water Beetle and flung themselves at me, claws extended. and flung themselves at me, claws extended.
No time for any tricks. I whirled my staff, planted the back end against the wheelhouse wall, and aimed the other at the nearest ghoul's teeth. It hit the ghoul with the tremendous power provided by his own supernatural strength and speed. Shattered bits of yellow fangs showered the deck as the ghoul rebounded. The second ghoul leaped straight over his buddy- -and got a really nice view of the barrel of the .44 revolver I'd pulled from my duster's pocket with my left hand. The hand cannon roared, snapping the ghoul's head back, and it slammed into me. My back hit the wheelhouse hard enough to knock the breath from me, but the ghoul fell to the deck, writhing and screaming madly.
I put two more shots into the ghoul's head from two feet away, and emptied the revolver into the skull of the one I'd stunned with my staff. Watery, brownish blood splattered the deck.
By then, three more ghouls were on the deck, and I heard thunking sounds of impact over the side of the ship as two of the ghouls I'd knocked into the water sank their claws into the Water Beetle Water Beetle's planks and began swarming over the sides.
I hit the nearest ghoul with another blast from one of my rings, sending it flying into its companions, but it bought me only enough time to raise my shield into a shimmering quarter-dome of silver light. Two ghouls slammed against it, claws raking, and bounced off.
Then the ghouls coming up the sides of the ship gained the deck, behind the edge of my shield, and hit me from the side. Claws raked at me. I felt a hot pain on my chin, and then heavy impacts as the talons struck my duster. They couldn't pierce it, but hit with considerable force, a sensation like being jabbed hard in the side with the rounded ends of multiple broom handles.
I went down and kicked at a knee. It snapped, crackled, and popped, drawing a scream of rage from the ghoul, but its companion landed on me, forcing me to throw my left arm across my throat to keep him from ripping it out. My shield flickered and fell, and the other ghouls let out howls of hungry glee.
A woman's voice let out a ringing, defiant shout. There was a roar of light and sound, a flash of scything, solid green light, and the ghoul atop me jerked as its head simply vanished from its shoulders, spraying foul-smelling brown blood everywhere. I shoved the still-twitching body off me and gained my feet even as Elaine stepped past me. She whirled that chain of hers over her head, snarling, "Aerios!" "Aerios!"
Something that looked like a miniature tornado illuminated from within by green light and laid on its side formed in the air in front of her. The baby twister immediately began moving so much air so quickly that I had to lean away from the spell's powerful suction.
The far end of the spell blew forth air in a shrieking column of wind so strong that, as it played back and forth over the back end of the ship, it scattered ghouls like bits of popcorn in a blower. It also had the effect of ripping the thick, choking smoke away from the stairway leading belowdecks, and I hadn't even realized how dizzy I had begun to feel.
"I can't hold this for long!" Elaine shouted.
The ghouls began trying to get around the spell, more of them climbing the sides after being thrown into the lake again. I couldn't try whipping up a fire-not with all these fine wooden boats and docks and brimming fuel containers and resident boaters around. So I had to make do with using my staff-not using magic, either. That's the beauty of having a big heavy stick with you. Anytime you need to do it, you've got a handy head-cracking weapon ready to go.
The ghouls tried climbing up the sides of the ship, but I started playing whack-a-mole as their heads or clawed hands appeared over the side.
"Thomas!" I cried. "We've got to get out of here!"
I could barely see anything through the smoke, but I could make out the shapes of some of the ghouls clambering up onto the dock-cutting us off from the shore.
"Get the boat loose!" Elaine shouted.
The ghouls' smoking vessel actually cruised into the rear of the Water Beetle, Water Beetle, the impact forcing me to grab at the wheelhouse to keep my feet-and to stagger the other way a second later as the the impact forcing me to grab at the wheelhouse to keep my feet-and to stagger the other way a second later as the Water Beetle Water Beetle smashed into the dock. "Not a chance! He's too close!" smashed into the dock. "Not a chance! He's too close!"
"Down!" Thomas shouted, and I felt his hand shove down hard on my shoulder. I ducked, and saw the blued steel of his sawed-off shotgun as it went past my face. The thing roared, the sound painfully loud, and I was pretty sure I wouldn't hear anything out of that ear for a while. The blast caught the ghoul that had somehow sneaked up onto the top of the wheelhouse and had been about to leap down onto my shoulders.
"Ow!" I shouted to Thomas. "Thank you!"
"Harry!" Elaine shouted, her voice higher, now desperate.
I looked past her and saw that her pet cyclone was slowing down. Several of the ghouls had managed to dig their claws into the deck and hang on, rather than being blasted off the end of the ship.
"This is bad, this is bad, this is bad," Thomas said.
"I know know that!" I shouted at him. A glance over my shoulder showed me Olivia's pale face on the stairs, and the other women and children behind her. "We'll never get them out of here on foot. They've got the docks cut off." that!" I shouted at him. A glance over my shoulder showed me Olivia's pale face on the stairs, and the other women and children behind her. "We'll never get them out of here on foot. They've got the docks cut off."
Thomas took a quick glance around the ship and said, "We can't cast off, either!"
"Harry!" Elaine gasped. The light began to fade from her spell, the howl of wind dropping, the ugly, heavy smoke beginning to creep back in.
Ghouls are hard to kill. I'd done for two of them, Elaine for a third, but the others had mostly just been made angrier by getting repeatedly slammed in the kisser with blasts of force, followed by tumbles into the cold lake.
Cold lake.
Aha. A plan.
"Take this!" I shouted, and shoved my staff at Thomas. "Buy me a few seconds!" I spun to Olivia and said, "Everyone get ready to follow me, close!"
Olivia relayed that to the women behind her while I hurriedly jerked loose the knots that secured my blasting rod to the inside of my duster. I whipped out the blasting rod and looked out over the side of the ship farthest from shore. There was nothing but thirty feet of water, then the vague shape of the next row of docks.
Thomas saw the blasting rod and swore under his breath, but he whirled my staff with grace and style-the way he does pretty much everything-then leaped past Elaine's fading spell and began battering ghouls.
It's hard for me to remember sometimes that Thomas isn't human, no matter that he looks it, and is my brother to boot. Other times, like this one, I get forcibly reminded about his true nature.
Ghouls are strong and disgustingly quick (emphasis on disgusting disgusting). Thomas, though, drawing upon his darker nature, made them look like the faceless throngs of extras in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. He moved like smoke among them, the heavy oak of my staff spinning, striking, snapping out straight and whirling away, driven at the attackers with superhuman power. I wanted to fight beside him, but that wouldn't get us away away from this ambush, which was our only real chance of survival. from this ambush, which was our only real chance of survival.
So instead of rushing to his aid, I gripped my blasting rod, focused my will, and began to summon up every scrap of energy I could bring to bear. This spell was going to take a hell of a lot of juice, but if it worked, we'd be clear. I reminded myself of that as I stood frozen, my eyes half closed, while my brother fought for our lives.
Thomas outclassed any single ghoul he was up against, but though he could cause them horrible pain, a bludgeoning tool was not a good weapon for actually killing them. He would have had to shatter several vertebrae or break open a skull to put one of them down. Had he stopped to take the focus he would need to finish off a single ghoul he'd temporarily disabled, the rest would have swarmed him. He knew it. They knew it, too. They fought with the mindlessly efficient instinct of the pack, certain that they could, in a few moments, wear down their prey.
Check that. It wouldn't even take that long. Once that smoke rolled in again, we'd last only a minute or three, breathing hard in exertion and fear as we all were. The gunfire and shrieking would have prompted a dozen calls to the authorities, as well. I was sure I would be hearing sirens any minute, assuming the ear my brother had left intact was pointed that way. It was at that point that I realized something else: Someone was still on the boat pinning the Water Beetle Water Beetle against the dock. Someone who had brought the ghouls over, who had been lying in wait near Thomas. Ghouls are hell on wheels for violence, but they don't tend to plan things out very well without outside direction. They certainly do not bother operating under a smoke screen. So whoever was driving the other boat probably wasn't a ghoul. against the dock. Someone who had brought the ghouls over, who had been lying in wait near Thomas. Ghouls are hell on wheels for violence, but they don't tend to plan things out very well without outside direction. They certainly do not bother operating under a smoke screen. So whoever was driving the other boat probably wasn't a ghoul.
Grey Cloak, maybe? Or his homey, Passenger.
That's when I realized something else: We didn't have even those couple of minutes it would take for the smoke to strangle us. Once the mortal authorities started arriving, whoever was in charge of the ghouls was sure to goad them into a more coordinated rush, and that would be that.
A ghoul's flailing claw ripped through Thomas's jeans and tore into his calf. He lost his balance for a second, caught it again, and kept fighting as if nothing had happened-but blood a little too pale to be human dribbled steadily to the Water Beetle Water Beetle's deck.
I clenched my teeth as the power rose in me. The hairs on my arms stood up straight, and there was a kind of buzzing pressure against the insides of my eardrums. My muscles were tensing, almost to the point of convulsing in a full-body charley horse. Stars swam in my vision as I raised the blasting rod.
"Harry!" Elaine gasped. "Don't be a fool! You'll kill us all!"
I heard her, but I was too far gone into the spell to respond. It had to work. I mean, it had worked once before. In theory, it should work again if I could just get it to be a little bit bigger.
I lifted my face and the blasting rod to the sky, opened my throat, and in a stentorian bellow shouted, "Fuego!" "Fuego!"
Fire exploded from the tip of the blasting rod, a column of white-hot flame as thick as my hips. It surged up into the smoke, burning it away as it went, rising into a fiery fountain a good twenty stories high.
All magic obeys certain principles, and many of them apply across the whole spectrum of reality, scientific, arcane, or otherwise. As far as casting spells is concerned, the most important is the principle of conservation of energy. Energy cannot simply be created. If one wants a twenty-story column of fire hot enough to vaporize ten-gauge steel, the energy of all that fire has to come from somewhere. Most of my spells use my own personal energy, what is most simply described as sheer force of will. Energy for such things can also come from other sources outside of the wizard's personal power.
This spell, for example, had been drawn from the heat energy absorbed by the waters of Lake Michigan.
The fire roared up with a thunderous detonation of suddenly expanding air, and the shock wave from it startled everyone into dead silence. The lake let out a sudden, directionless, crackling snarl. In the space of a heartbeat the water between where I stood and the next dock froze over, a sudden sheet of hard, white ice.
I sagged with fatigue. Channeling so much energy through myself was an act that invited trauma and exhaustion, and a sudden weakness in my limbs made me stagger.
"Go!" I shouted to Olivia. "Over the ice! Run for the next dock! Women and children first!"
"Kill them!" shouted a man's voice from the general direction of the attacking ship.
The ghouls howled and leaped forward, enraged to see prey making good their escape.
I leaned on the rail and watched Olivia and company flee. They hurried over the ice, slipping here and there. Crackling protests of the ice sounded under their feet. Spiderweb fractures began to spread, slowly but surely.
I gritted my teeth. Even though Lake Michigan is a cold-water lake, this was high summer, and even in the limited space I had frozen, there was an enormous amount of water that had to be chilled. Imagine how much fire it takes to heat a teakettle to boiling, and remember that it works both ways. You have to take heat away away from the kettle's water if you want to freeze it. Now, multiply that much energy by about a berjillion, because that's the amount of water I was trying to freeze. from the kettle's water if you want to freeze it. Now, multiply that much energy by about a berjillion, because that's the amount of water I was trying to freeze.
Olivia and the women and children made it to the far dock and fled in a very well-advised and appropriate state of panic.
"Harry!" Elaine said. Her chain lashed out and struck a ghoul that had slipped by Thomas.
"They're clear!" I cried. "Go, go, go! Thomas, we is skedaddling!"
I stood up and readied my shield bracelet.
"Come on," Elaine told me, grabbing my arm.
I shook my head. "I'm the heaviest," I told her. "I go last."
Elaine blinked at me, opened her mouth to protest, then went very pale and nodded once. She vaulted the rail and ran for the docks.
"Thomas!" I screamed. "Down!"
Thomas hit the deck without so much as looking over his shoulder, and the ghouls closed in.
I triggered the rest of the kinetic rings: all of them at once.
Ghouls tumbled and flew. But I'd bought us only a little time.
Thomas turned and leaped over the side. I checked, and saw that Elaine had reached the other dock. Thomas bounded over the ice like something from one of those Japanese martial arts cartoons, leaped, and actually turned a flip in the air before landing on his feet.
I didn't want to come down too hard on the ice, but I didn't want to wait around until a ghoul ate me, either. I did my best to minimize the impact and started hurrying across.
Ice crackled. On my second step, a sudden, deep crack snapped open beneath my rearmost foot. Holy crap. Maybe I'd underestimated the energy involved. Maybe it had been two two berjillion teakettles. berjillion teakettles.
I took the next step, and felt the ice groaning under my feet. More cracks appeared. It was only twenty feet, but the next dock suddenly looked miles away.
Behind me, I heard ghouls charging, throwing themselves recklessly onto the ice once they saw my turned back.
"This is bad, this is bad, this is bad," I babbled to myself. Behind me, the ice suddenly screeched, and one of the ghouls vanished into the water with a scream of protest.
More cracks, even thicker, began to race out ahead of me.
"Harry!" Thomas screamed, pointing over my shoulder.
I turned my head and saw Madrigal Raith standing on the deck of the Water Beetle, Water Beetle, not more than ten feet away. He gave me a delighted smile. not more than ten feet away. He gave me a delighted smile.
Then he lifted a heavy assault rifle to his shoulder and opened fire.