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Chapter Fifty-Five

The ernail tip in the black, starry sky

The battle has come down to two forces: the double wha their lethal animal natures, and me surrounded by wolves who should be extinct, and s look pretty solid

So far I’m safe within a circle of the spirit wolves with their eerie lightning halos snapping and crackling Thoughts of Ric dart through my every move as the wolves and I leap to repel any were that reaches us

Still, several olves dance two-legged toward this intruding wolf pack, but retreat fro jaws on four paith hunched backs Their fur is ray, and now red-streaked, but the olves seem beyond pain, determined to reach me no matter hoounded

The battle is an endless draw What we need is the cavalry, not that ghostly desert wolves are anything to sneer at

Instead, by the light ofup an incline into view

For a moment I think I see Ric, but it’s not his, co not for us, but for the olves!

In the ht, as I watch, another dark head breasts the rise forty feet behind the first edrelentless and swaggering drives their gait, a sense of arrogant, accustomed power

Yet another dark head crests the hill and stalks onto the killing ground

And another!

It’s an ar white and fixed on their objective

Me!

Where’s my silver familiar? I try to sense its place on ood as! No, it’s still here, all right, coiled into a girly, spindly "Hello Kitty" bracelet around irly, but also juvenile Child’s play

Rather like Snow and his games

I try to rip it off out of sheer betrayed fury, but the thin chain cuts h the wolves Ih theh a warive me mild electrical shocks My electric personality doesn’t deter the latest wave of olves, which leap for e bounds now that I’ve left my charmed circle of conjured wolves

I see a wolfish snout howl and then plu the , under the wave of wolfish muscle and bone and fur and ferocity that is Cicereau’s hu pack The full es, on the fringes the onco forces wear business suits and camo-pants and leather jackets They sport razor haircuts and ponytails I’ers And they all wear faces as white as Snow’s

It can’t be just the ghostly s, besides eager-beaver olf-beaters?

So over the incline, then stops to watch thelow reflects off the only white shirtfront in the vicinity to spotlight a familiar face

Ric! Still alive! Then I shout it aloud "Ric!"

His hands hold soeneral who’s loosed the dogs of war and now sees his orders unfold These ents, mustered from the Mexican border operations and flown in

"Ric!" I wave to show hiht

I doubt he even heard me He’s intent upon the actions of his troops The reinforceive me the chills

These aren’t faceless bureaucrats and cookie-cutter agents

They’re our new supernatural allies in the Werewolf-Law Enforcement War Finally I understand who they are, what they are

Zombies!

What perfect soldiers theyHarried and confused olves turn and leap upon the killers fall beneath the undead strength of the onco zombies’ limbs The olves’ attacks leave shredded skin but can’t stop the s and feet, the dead-zone zombie eyes, zombies as relentless as robots Mindless Soulless Heartless

Werewolves retreat before theray spirit wolves surroundlike Quicksilver at the full moon I look up at that always-present wonder It’s no longer totally full and round, but slightly lopsided, the way I feel right now

It’s waning Only the !

At thathalts Some unseen celestial director who had cast every creature here into the sa takes new ht Every entity, unhuht, ebbing like a lady inching a long white skirt across a black ht itself declares a truce

The wolves that circle me push inward no farther Such beautiful creatures! All lean, lovely legs, all wise yellow eyes Ghosts Sages Friends and lovers

Why did I think that?

As I watch, they dissipate into silver fur and golden eyes flashing through a silvery sagebrush mist

And the silver snake that made like a kiddie bracelet? I sense a metallic chill somewhere Oh It’s now just a thin chain at ht

The zoed down or run off all the olves Now they’re heading unchallenged toward ry lynx They split when they reach ood look at the stiffs, for sure I spot some famous faces, a couple frosters

Then I get the full, ghastly picture

What kind of living dead would surround the Starlight Lodge? Previous victiaas once the olves won the Werewolf-Va concrete booties in Lake Mead, you’d get sand between your dead toes in the desert I itnessing eighty or ninety years of anti-olf troops in thefor the right opportunity, the rightout, stand up, and take no prisoners

Maybe not evenhas stopped the zombie march, not just the retreat and defeat of the olves

The zohtall the way toward h, he’d known just where to find fresh a for a liberator Like I had been

"Ric! My God, Ric, we’re safe You did it"

I eye the zombies, their expressionless faces Some are more realistic than others More whole But, hey, handsouys have saved my butt, my bacon, my life Nice of theain theely transfixed too

His eyes focus on nition, triumph, and despair

"I’oodbye and get off this mountain The weres didn’t touch me, hurt me Honest"

Well, they had, a little, but ell on the negative?

Ric stopped m front of me, his eyes on ain In soiven him up for dead I couldn’t believe we’d ive or take a few dozen zos I had read There was one bad thing I hadn’t read, hadn’t wanted to read

His face, his body, had adopted so so new for Ric of the floords and gestures and eivenat his center, his waist, where his hands held not a gun anyht?

It wasn’t the shadow of night and dark deeds I’d seen, sensed in hi

Below the elbows, his dark suit coat, probably donned for a quick trip to D C, was sopped with a deeper darkness blood His hands bore a simple tri-li rod, were drenched in blood

A follow-spot ofit black, the black-and-white of a vintage filht," Ric said "The zo ran"

"Zombies Our allies How?"

"I dowsed for them, one by one" He spoke with slow, alain Once I raise theazing at his fresh-raised troop

"The killing dance of the olves roused the blood You have no idea how eance This is just a fraction of the dead bodies out here" He was keeping cool, removed, instructive

"Your hands," I said "The blood"

Ric was still lost in explaining everything, almost to himself

"That’s what I realized when the a The olfkillers in both human and wolf foro What could the dead do to them? No one kno the dead wait Unseen Unremembered Think howsand Just a feing handfuls froet those we’ve wronged Now, after the Millenniu dead and the dead walk All I had to do was dowse for their gravesites, call them up, and they cah, Ric"

As we spoke, the zo dead olves nowoff arms and heads with a sort of ai

"What happened to your hands?" I asked Ric again "Did it take shedding some of your blood to raise them?"

Ric lifted the raw pieces of row faint

"Only a drop of blood needed This was overkill I guess ot chopped up a little"

"Ric! What on earth! Tell ed "Once I ran out of aht the olves They were killed by olves, so now they’re invulnerable to theh desert There’s nothing suitable out here I could find but barbed wire"

Oh, ed up zoh maybe" He looked around, dazed and self-critical "These were all I could bear to raise"

Nothing I’d said so far had seeh to him, but what he said just norenchedinstance of it Ricfor the dowsing rod to burn through his pal the rusty barbs into his hands Each zoer to follow Ric to the person creature, who had put hi to the next spot where the barbed ould tear at the hearts of his hands to tell him a zombie lies there And on to the next

I pulled his jacket shoulders down on his arms, and eased his hands as carefully as I could out of the sleeves He hardly seemed aware of that, but stood there docile as a child I should have recognized shock: blood loss and horrendous pain I hung the jacket over one arm and took hold of his upper arency rooeon"

That snapped hiets on the record None of this can be on the record"

I sighed my extreme frustration, which was a form of fear We were alive, but what did thatand had nothing to offer The gray spirit wolves of an older era had melted into the dark, for wolves had been hunted to extinction in this part of the country for decades

So where else could I go for help? The cottage Godfrey Hector ood star-quality doctor froet us out of here," Rick said, sounding a bit uided him down the steep trail "Where’s your car?"

"Below the lodge in a stand of firs just off the road"

Madah her lopsided face ht too

I ached in ht ar me down and dripped blood onto my breast, but we tottered down the ee was lit, but deserted, and the stillness was eerie I wondered where the surviving olves and round and what the zombies would do now that they were free

The Corvette ell hidden, so low it blended with a stand of sage, but Ric guided er seat My usual place I wrapped his black, bloody hands in his lap, using his jacket like a ton-white shirt was now spattered with blood

I caressed his face once he was seated, and felt his lips kissAt least he was conscious At least I have fingertips Tears seareddown The ht

When I lowered ine with a peace-shattering ruhts I could see his face well now, but not his hands

"How bad?" I asked "The cuts"

Ric winced "To the bone, I think"

"Madre de Dios! You must have the cajones of a chupacabra"

His look was rueful but his skin-tone was a sick sepia color "That street Spanish book is i your vocabulary, oing to do about this? Ric’s hands With which he dowses for the dead No more Those hands, hich he dowses for ? I haven’t driven stick shift for almost ten years"

Ric smiled, palely He told me what to do and I did it A coupledown a narrow ear I tried to coast and ride the brake, but momentum pushed us faster and faster

I looked in the rear-viewwildly down the mountain road after us Suddenly I didn’t dare brake at all anymore I steered for my life Our lives

The needle pushed up to ninety as we slithered down thatuntil we skidded onto flat straight highhere I put the car into fourth gear and spurred the Corvette up to one-twenty in no ti HumVee would catch this baby now

Maybe a state trooper would spot us and pull us over, then see the e, to safety

No No one was out here in the desert tonight but ghost wolves and olves and zombies, oh my Also a lot of enemies and damn few and very dicey allies Now no one could help us but as in the distance seemed to mock our dark, desperate circumstances I tried to take Ric’s

"How did you knohere I was?" I asked

His head lay against the headrest as he watched the off-full lass roof panel

He smiled, thinly

"When I could check h to go to your guest house on Nightwine’s premises"

I s a free agent now

"It’s a cottage"

"Whatever, it still has the Hound of Hell for an unwelco and bounding at the front door I was standing there about to get out a credit card to B and E into the place-"

"Break and enter? Could you?"

"Sure This CinSim in black tie and tails who talks like a British butler shows up, only he’s American He lets me in, then orders ’Master Quicksilver’ back froood bad dog’ Then he tells me he’s ’most concerned’ Seems a cousin of his at the Inferno has a friend who sos out at the Gehenna He told him that ’Mr Cicereau and some of his less savory associates have taken our Miss Street for a ride’ out to soe near the Paiute Golf Club on Spring Mountain, and that it would ’behoove’ me to look into that ’post haste’ "

"The butler dude was Godfrey, Nightwine’saround the estate, including me"

What I don’t explain, because I can’t just yet, is how and why the CinSiine why an Inferno CinSim would haunt the rival Gehenna, but I knoho it was That farewell butt pinch on being escorted from Cicereau’s office makes sense now My really, really secret admirer and the CinSim tattletale had been Claude, the Invisible Man Curiouser and curiouser

"I’ his face as the city streetlights swept it rhythray color as the Corvette slowed to the speed limit and lurched onto Sunset Road underback fast I knew if I pulled up to an eive me and I didn’t knohere any were in this town, anyway

There was no place to go but home

Wait! Shouldn’t that mantra be: there’s no place like home?

I finally punched in the security code to htwine’s ultra-secure estate Ric could barely walk into e, and I could barely hold him up Like head wounds, hand wounds bleed profusely, and the flesh on Ric’s hands had to be hash

Not one freaking grus could be worse I was alive when I wasn’t supposed to be, but the only person I deeply cared about was daed beyond repair

Ric swayed as he stood in the entry hall, dripping blood on the slate tiles He was still shaky, more cream than coffee in his face color

Before I could install hihtwine to send a doctor, I heard a thu sound, and then Quicksilver bounded into the ed

Not another victie his presence, Quickhim onto his back on the floor Ric lifted his crossed ar onto his neck, taking the brunt of the dog’s weight on his forearms

Oh my God! Tounded alpha males, still at each other’s throats! Just what they, and I, didn’t need!

"Get this ritted teeth "This da has never liked ht hi’s et off ! Bad dog!

Quicksilver ignoredat Ric’s bloody hands, a true bloodhound, and whi ue One canine swipe h slobbery bath that it rated to rabbed Quick’s collar; if I half-throttled hiers curled around the thick black leather, over the round silverit like little moons Before ed shape, going slightly off circle Like they were waning With the moon! Of course! Quick probably did have wolf in hiet clear on what this ht mean, the silver snake on my upper arm split into dozens of hair-fine chains and slithered back down toency Was this faainst h it had taunted ued Devil?

"Ric! Give Quicksilver your hands" I can’t believe I’ this

"Are you crazy?"

"No Maybe Moon madness Give Quicksilver your hands That’s what he wants, what he needs"

"Del, he wants to eat me!"

"He’s not that kind of wolf He’s a wolfhound Unless you’re a closet olf, let hie, rip on his transformed collar and strained forward to lick a swath up Ric’s raised right hand

Soht had entered the rooh his usualA silver aura blossoht ain like chain ht It low in the se No! What have I done? What have I permitted to be done?

Ric’s hands burned white-hot under the passage of Quicksilver’s fire-red tongue He screa

My tears must have looked silver as they sizzled down my face I screamed too

The only one who didn’t screas will

Even shouts of pain and disnorant assault The gruesoht faded I gazed at Ric’s leamed with saliva where Quicksilver had licked The skin was fresh, unbloodied Whole

Ric sahere I was looking, at what I had seen

He eyed Quicksilver’s s and overheated red tongue, all grin that can be either canine friendliness or canine threat