Storm Cursed (Mercy Thompson #11)(95)

“You can call me Wulfe if you want to,” said Wulfe with a smile. “Or you can call me Wizard—but not many do that last to my face.”

I wondered if he felt the slow build of magic that Death, that Patience, was working. But I needn’t have worried.

Wulfe laughed, that horrible boneless laugh, then made a gesture that ended palm out. He used the hand Stefan had cut off again. I wondered if Stefan had cut that one off for a reason.

Patience crumpled around her center, not quite losing her footing, but it looked like a near thing. She screamed, partly out of pain, but I’d wager some of it was anger, too.

“You’re a wizard,” said Magda indignantly. She reached out to grip Patience’s hand. “You used wizard magic to free Elizaveta. You can’t be a witch, too.”

As soon as she touched the other witch, that one quit screaming. I thought that Wulfe should maybe keep them from touching each other. Instead, Wulfe said, “No?”

He made another gesture with that hand. Patience put a hand, palm up, between them, and this time she didn’t scream. But the firelight revealed sweat on her forehead. The tendons of her neck were tense, as if she were making a great effort.

“Babies, help Mama,” crooned Magda. The dragon uncurled and lunged—but so did Adam. He grabbed the dragon by the muzzle and held on.

Cutlass. Adam’s need reached through our bond.

I bolted out from under the box elder and ran for the garden with every ounce of speed I could muster. I’m pretty sure that the only one who noticed me was Elizaveta, because I ran right in front of her—and because that witch was pretty scarily observant.

A step from the cutlass, I changed back to human. I grabbed the blade and brought it across the throat of the boy zombie I’d passed on my way to the house. I hadn’t seen him, just knew that he was running for me. The sharp silver blade snicked through his neck and kept moving as the boy fell.

I felt the force that animated the body break, as if I’d cut through more than flesh and bone. I felt again the likeness to the pack bond—a bare trickle compared to the river of the pack, but both were running water. For a moment, something else lingered where the zombie had fallen. Not a ghost, not a soul, but something tragic and broken. I was pretty sure it was fading, but I couldn’t wait around to find out—Adam was fighting a zombie dragon.

I ran.

No one on my side had died yet. Adam was still wrestling with the zombie. His battle was aided by the fact that the zombie was mostly just trying to get to the witches, and fighting Adam only because he was in the way.

Whatever Wulfe was doing—and it made breathing while I was running like breathing underwater—it kept the witches occupied. Magda had had no chance to change her orders to the dragon. I felt like I was overlooking something, but I’d worry about it sometime when Adam wasn’t fighting a dragon zombie.

I relied on the bonds between us—mate bond and pack bond—to time my move. I did not slacken my speed as I passed the embattled dragon.

I put my other hand, the one that was not holding the cutlass, on Adam’s shoulder. He was braced for it so my weight didn’t disturb his balance as I vaulted up and over, out of the way of the half-hearted swipe of wing. Instead, that strike turned a sturdy wooden table into kindling.

Adam twisted his weight suddenly and the dragon’s head twisted, too. He released the dragon’s muzzle as I slid the cutlass into the soft flesh under the dragon’s jaw, up through its snout. Locking the jaws shut with the sword.

I jumped up as the dragon writhed and Adam knocked the creature away from me. The battle was a long way from over, but Adam could fight now, instead of just trying to keep its mouth safely closed. Triumphantly, I dashed across the patio to stop a handbreadth from Elizaveta. Half laughing in exhilaration, I briefly caught Elizaveta’s gaze, but her attention slid past me and over my shoulder. The firelight brightened on her face for an instant and I saw her pupils flare.

“She’s called them all,” she said.

I whirled.

Of course, I thought, the boy zombie I’d killed was no longer settled under Wulfe’s thrall. That meant they had been called. All of them, a lot more than a hundred.

I could feel them stirring beneath the tug of Magda’s words. Their twisted unnatural state was a sadness that dragged at my heart.

They were running at us—and Elizaveta called out something that sounded like “passion fruit” but equally well could have been something in Russian. Elizaveta could speak English with the precision of a BBC newscaster. But today, her Russian accent was full bore, and that meant I was more than usually likely to misunderstand what she said.

Magic rippled, leaving the air taut with something that felt to my overheated senses like anticipation. A zombie, the first of dozens, made it to the edge of the concrete and ran into an invisible barrier, as did the teeming mass of zombies that followed it. Adam and the dragon had not confined their battle royal to the patio. When Elizaveta had brought up her spell, a warding that followed the edge of the concrete, both Adam and the dragon were on the other side of that barrier.

“They cannot come through my magic,” Elizaveta told me.

Adam’s back hit the barrier hard, and he used the semi-elastic surface to launch a leap that ended with him atop the dragon, which still had the cutlass stuck through its jaws.

Elizaveta saw what I was watching. “Adam should be able to take care of himself,” she said confidently. “He is a splendid beast.”