Staked (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #8)(78)
That’s not a man, I realize. That’s a damn vampire. We’re being attacked by vampires. Fecking Siodhachan!
I shift back to human, take off after him, and then I recite the words of unbinding before he can get out of range. The vampire comes apart with a wet sound as the elements of his body forcibly separate, and I pivot immediately to give the wolf pack some help behind the house.
Siodhachan said that we might get some vampire blowback from whatever he was doing, but I didn’t expect anything like this. Guns, I mean. I haven’t figured out how to ward against those. Or people with a basic understanding of tactics. You don’t have to get into the house and pass my wards when you can shoot from outside them and get everyone to come to you. It’s not in the nature of werewolves to sit behind walls: You poke them and they’re going to hit back. Shoot them and they won’t rest until they have your entrails in their teeth.
By the time I round the corner of the house, most of the gunfire has died down: It’s close quarters fighting now, because the pack has streamed out of the house to make a meal out of whoever ruined dinner. Magical sight tells me there are six vampires and one human against fourteen werewolves all told, when you count the parents and translators and the visiting pack leaders. I don’t think they expected to be outnumbered two to one; you’d have to be daft to think that would work out well. I think they were expecting just me and Greta, maybe a couple more.
The werewolves are all bleeding and completely savage. The vampires didn’t use silver bullets, so all they did was make the wolves crazy. The only way to beat them is through silver or to tear them up physically. It can be done, and it already has: One wolf is down and not moving, two legs ripped completely off and its lower jaw missing. He’s undergoing his final shift, what Greta calls the “termination clause” of lycanthropy—for all the shit ye have to endure while ye live, at the end it at least gives ye back your humanity. It’s Nergüi, Tuya’s father, lying there. Damn it.
Two vampires are down and the rest are surrounded. I recognize the wolf forms of Sam, Ty, and Greta, but the rest are a mystery to me since I’ve never sparred or run with them before. There was just that one brief time with the trolls, and I never figured out who was who.
Sam, Ty, and Greta have formed a hunting group with a fourth wolf that might be Hal Hauk—he’s the biggest of the big dogs. They’re masterful, surrounding, nipping, timing their springs at the vampire so that he hardly has a chance to land a blow before he loses a chunk of flesh somewhere else. Once he goes down, he doesn’t get up; teeth lock on the throat and tear it. Then it’s on to the next target. The three other vampires are surrounded by less-experienced wolves; they might take longer to go down, but it’s inevitable. The human is backpedaling away, shouting at the vampires in some sort of spitting language, and it’s him the leaders target next.
Something’s dodgy about him. He’s acting like he’s the boss of their party, but I see nothing in the magical spectrum that would explain why six vampires were taking his orders. I turn off the sight as I get closer, and he’s dressed strangely too. Not a commando outfit or any sort of modern warrior gear; he’s wearing a suit with a brightly colored scarf thing around his neck.
I see the moment where he counts four wolves coming and understands that this is the end for him and in the next instant his grim determination to take somebody with him. I’m too far away to do anything; all I can do is pray he won’t be successful. The first big wolf leaps at him; he raises that gun of his, crying out in defiance, and shoots it point-blank down the wolf’s throat. The bullet explodes through the back of the head and the big wolf goes down, completely still. In the next instant Greta takes the man down and ends him before he can take another shot. Sam and Ty get in there and help tear him apart, even though he’s dead now and there are still three vampires standing.
I can help with that part, so I do, not wanting any other wolves to get hurt. One by one, I unbind the surrounded vampires, then finish off the fallen ones. None of them will rise again. But this doesn’t calm those younger werewolves down like I think it will. They are still far beyond the horizon of calm, and when they spot me standing there naked with a pumping heart and meat on my bones, they come after me to have a bite.
“Bollocks,” I say. I could handle a few of them, maybe, but not nine, and not without hurting them seriously. I can’t fly away as a kite with me torn shoulder muscles, but bears can climb trees much better than wolves. Maybe I can climb high enough to keep me out of reach of their jaws. I shape-shift and muster what speed I can for the nearest ponderosa. The brass on me claws should help me climb three-legged.
Once I reach the tree, it’s grand for a couple of seconds. I get up maybe five feet off the ground, but me arse is still low-hanging fruit for the pack. Claws and teeth sink in; I shake a couple loose, but one will simply not let go, and I have to haul him or her up with me. Without the claws anchoring me to the tree and the strength it lends, I wouldn’t have been able to do it, and I make a mental note to buy Creidhne a beer.
Once I get me arms and chest around a branch high enough off the ground to be safe, I have to figure out how to get rid of the wolf attached to me arse. The simplest solution, which I use, is to shape-shift back to human. Part of that expansive backside just flows right over and between those teeth, and suddenly there’s not enough purchase for him to hold on. The wolf falls but takes a mouthful of me backside with him. The wee pack of young wolves collects around the base. They leap up to reach me but can’t quite make it.