Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson #7)(97)

It struck me as odd that in that dark basement, where every surface was blackened from the fire, I had no trouble seeing the web that held the ghosts captive. But the darkness of the net was different than just the lack of light.

The ghost that approached Frost had one of his sticky strings of magic wrapped around his neck, and that string was pulsing. Marsilia had started to relax, her hand on the bar less tense.

I stood up, but it was too late. Frost struck, his jaw hanging at an odd angle, but he moved so fast it was difficult to track. He grabbed the ghost and ate him. Not with his physical mouth. It was as if his body turned into a giant mouth and engulfed the ghost. To my sight, Frost's body flared - and then he stood up, wiping his own blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. The damage Marsilia had done to him was just gone.

She struck again, but he was faster than he'd been. As if the ghost had more than merely repaired him. He grabbed the bar and ripped it from her hands - and she was the one in retreat.

The fighting had started out loud. Shamus roared and screamed. Bodies make noise when they are flung on the floor. Not just the sound of floor and flesh, but grunts and cracks as bones broke. The metal bar added a new dimension to the noise. There was a rhythm to it as he drove Marsilia back toward me, and I realized he was just playing with her.

I couldn't help her with him. I had to trust that she was strong enough, good enough to protect herself, because I had another job - there were thirteen more ghosts in the room. And I had to figure out a way to keep Frost from eating them all. One of them was right next to me. I grabbed her by the wrist. My hand started to pass through, but I focused my sight on her and she became more solid, just as Peter had.

"Tell me your name," I said to her, giving my command that borrowed-from-Adam Alpha wolf push.

"Janet," she told me, her voice vibrating up my arm.

"Janet," I told her. "Leave."

She tried, but Frost's net held her. Her eyes were terrified. I tried stripping the net from her with my hands, but it didn't work. She wasn't pack, so I couldn't use pack magic to free her.

I pulled Zee's sword out and invoked its larger form. For Zee and Tad, Hunger had been a black long sword. For me, it turned into a plain-bladed katana with a gaudy red-and-purple hilt.

It didn't do anything to the net, though I had the feeling that in sunlight, when a vampire's magic would be at its weakest, it would have been able to eat the magic that bound the ghost. I even tried stabbing her with it. I felt it taste her briefly, and she looked even more terrified, if that were possible. But when I pulled the sword back, she was still there, encased in Frost's trap. I talked the reluctant sword back into its smaller form and stuck it back in my coat pocket.

The clank, clank, clank of the iron bar stopped suddenly, and I looked up to see it arc over the wall of the basement and safely out of useful range. Marsilia popped her shoulder back into joint without so much as a grimace and reengaged Frost. Without the bar, he was not so overwhelming - but she was still hurt. And then he reached out, almost casually, and ate another ghost. It was quick, and I was too far away to do anything about it - even if I could have figured out how. He smiled at me before he hit Marsilia in her damaged shoulder.

Desperate, I pulled my lamb-and-dog-tag necklace off my neck. Armed by my faith, the symbol of the Lamb of God had defended me against vampires. Maybe it would work against vampiric magic.

"Please, dear Lord," I said. "Let this work."

Then I pressed it against the net - which shrank away from the little golden lamb, twisting, curling, and lessening until the ghost stood free. I touched the lamb to her forehead, and said, "Janet. Be at peace."

She vanished in a bright flash of light.

"Yes!" I shouted in triumph and more than a little awe. My little lamb had outperformed Zee's sword.

From across the room, Stefan smiled at me.

"Holy symbols, Batman," I told him. "We have help."

I went after the ghosts, trying to avoid the fighting. It was more difficult than it might have been because Frost had heard my exclamation as well, and he kept trying to get to me. Marsilia redoubled her efforts to keep him away. I had to give up on two of them because Frost got too close. I was under no misconception about how fast Frost could kill me, not after seeing the damage he and Marsilia had been exchanging.

I had just freed a man wearing a dark blue suit and a Gryffindor tie when Asil's shout made me turn to see Frost right on top of me. Then Wulfe smashed into him like a freight train, if a freight train had been thrown by a Chinese vampire.

"Sorry, sorry," said Wulfe calmly to Frost as I sprinted across the room away from them. "But you need to watch what you're doing, or you're going to get hurt by your own teammates."

I pulled another ghost around and asked him his name without looking at his face because I was using the lamb to destroy Frost's magic.

"Alexander," he said.

My gaze jerked up, and I looked at Peter's killer. Why couldn't he have been one of the ghosts Frost had eaten? "You killed my friend," I told him.

"Yes," he sighed. "Werewolf, you know. Dangerous and evil."

"No," I told him. "Alexander Bennet. Dangerous and stupid."

"Are you arguing with a ghost, Mercy?" asked Wulfe in an interested voice from somewhere on the far side of the basement from me. "Good for you."