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"NOW," SAID SNOW, "that we knohat Torbellino wants, we have the key to a battle plan Mr Tallgrass"

We had adjourned to the living roorass advanced, Quicksilver by his side

Snow said, "I can project the ih on the black storm clouds"

"That’ll be just a shadow of the real thing," I objected "Will it project any silver power on its own?"

"Soht

"It doesn’t matter," Snow decreed "It’ll have the power to a lord’s forces If I banish the weather witches’ circling tornado," Snow asked Tallgrass, "can you turn back the Wendigo?"

"Possibly With Quicksilver’s help"

"Montoya?" Snow asked

Ric shook himself back into sober reality and stepped forward, shadowed by his glitzy robot handmaiden

Snow posed a second question "You called the Silver Zombie to life Do you have the power to banish El Demonio from the lobby and his Alpine zombies from the Emerald City walls?"

"My pleasure to try," Ric said

"What abouta contrary wizard

"Your choice," Snow said "You can soar in the storht in the basement barricades with Montoya and friend"

"Delilah’s coue We had the silver mojo, no ure out exactly what the robot Ric had seduced off the screen was

Quicksilver had padded over to lick my wrist I hadn’t noticed until then that I’d scraped the skin raw in the battle to cut the WTCH coax cable It healed as I watched

"Good dog I hope our efforts to get Kansas skies back to the clear blue color of your eyes work," I told hih to keep you safe?"

Quicksilver shifted fro bashful I realized he wanted to convey, rass to protect him, as I intended to protect Ric

Who, I wondered, would ever dare to protect Snow?

THERE WAS NO question that Ric’s silver elevator cables worked for our party, if not zo an automated department store mannequin to another floor

When we didn’t move, she didn’t move When we did, she marched in our wake

What I found Mister-Spock "fascinating" was that I could see the cliuy wires and plulass elevator car on the inside came even with them on the outside

Maybe that’s why Marriott Hotels favored glass lobby elevators and open atria To keep the zombies down

By the ti zo with us on Torbellino and his occupying net, but now she was a zombie repellent

They circled the lower floor and the yellow brick road still speckled with blood Their skeletal jaws shivered and chattered with anticipation, but either Ric or Maria broadcast a vibe that kept them outside an invisible circle of sorts

Unfortunately, El Demonio was inside it He wore the same black leather hat that had shaded his sinister features in the WTCH parking lot sunshine Here, the unblinking narrowed black eyes and slit vertical nostrils over mercilessly thin lips accentuated his resemblance to a snake despite his solid, stocky body in an expensive, but sleazy shiny suit

He was sar and the air reeked

He uncoiled fro the whip butt to his right side

Ric stepped forward to confront him

I waited for the familiar to fill my hands with the thip butts it had produced on occasion, but it was … AWOL Maria and I and all our silver ht at the OK Corral

Men! That’s why they drive us nuts

Torbellino lifted his right ar see as the Loch Nesstidal wave of ue struck and seared flesh like a razor’s edge

Ric stared at the stirring serpent that seeaze, the dark braided leather so like scales lightened in color to shining silver As the color lightened, the long whip grew heavy El Deht dragged it down along his leg to the floor He’d becoift was his curse

A thirty-foot silver whip is far too heavy to wield

Ric had no trouble walking up to his panting, disbelieving enerasp

He cracked the whip against his leg, not lifting the ponderous silver train, but sending a psychic shiver that reached the end to lick out like a tongue and slash the huddled zo each other into smaller and smaller pieces of bone and leathery skin and shreds of hair and lacerated eyeball

El Demonio curled into himself like a cobra in a basket, all passive body and lethal, poisonous black eyes

"You’re done here in Kansas," Ric told him "You’ve lost You’ve lost the bulk of your zo over the weather witches has exposed their petty criain Their national council and the local laill shut the cartel task force will track and bust all your s operations from here to whatever hell you run home to in the southern he that for years, hijo," Torbellino answered "Law enforce and zombie traffic People want that I’ll have another zombie army in no time I don’t need just you to raise the of the Zombies"