Chapter 8

Zombie Battle

At least half a dozen dead people stood on the stairs before my door and they didn't look like they were out collecting for charity. We were, for all intents and purposes, besieged.

'Is there a backdoor?' Kai asked.

I shook my head. 'No.' One point of entry unfortunately also meant one exit. 'They can't get in here. I have wards.' And a threshold, but I wasn't kidding myself about that one. I lived in a rented apartment with only my brother, a cat and the world's largest dog. That was hardly the ideal recipe for the kind of threshold that kept out the nasties indefinitely, so I didn't mention it. 'Will the Library wards help?'

Irene hesitated, but shook her head. 'Unless the necromancer is somehow using chaos to conjure them, I don't think so. This magic is native to this place.'

I would like to argue with that. Magic, the real, good kind of magic, comes from life. That is what magic is meant to be. Using darkness and death for such workings is unnatural, a perversion of how things should be. I told Irene as much.

She shook her head. 'Chaos is power that comes from the Fae,' she explained. 'The Fae are the agents of chaos. It never originates in an alternate world. It gets imported. This magic is dark, but it was born right here.'

What an achievement.

That discussion ended when a dull booming sound came from the front door.

Kai peered out the window. 'Are they walking into the wards?'

'That's suicide,' I said. There was a reason you weren't supposed to touch them. I'd made some nasty enemies over the years who had motivation aplenty for wanting to get at me, and I didn't want to give them the chance to sneak up on me in my sleep.

These ones had at least the decency to come at me before bedtime.

'It can't be suicide if you're already dead,' Thomas pointed out sensibly. 'How long can these wards hold?'

Not very long, was the honest answer to that one. My wards were meant to be a deterrent, after which the intruder walking into them would not do it again. Repeated contact would break them down until they gave out. I could put up the kind of wards that would seal us in here, but they wouldn't come down in a hurry, which might become a problem if the necromancer outside decided to set fire to the building.

'Can you do something to strengthen them?' I asked Irene. I had no idea how her particular brand of magic worked – she hadn't explained and I hadn't asked – but there was no denying how effective it was. From what I'd seen, she couldn't call up things out of nowhere – like I could with fire – but she could command things that were already there to do her bidding.

'I can try,' she said. 'Are they within reach of my voice?'

I opened the window a crack. 'They are now.'

Irene planted her feet and spoke, pitching her voice to carry as far as possible: 'Protective wards that are on this house, every spell that shields against intruders, increase your strength by five hundred percent.'

I would have commented on the overkill had the strength of that command not made the energy drain right out of me. It did the same to Irene. We both swayed on our feet like sailors in a storm at sea. Somehow, Irene paid the price because she was the one commanding it to happen, and I paid it because it was my magic she somehow siphoned into the failing wards.

It worked, though.

'We can't do that all night,' Irene said in a matter-of-fact way.

I agreed. We were sitting ducks in here. The smartest option would be to fight our way out, which took the fight away from the other people in the building and would give us more space to manoeuvre.

But I didn't want to. It wasn't much, but this was my home. I wasn't going to be bullied out of it by a bunch of necromancers and their zombie flunkies. This was where I kept my brother, my cat and my dog. This was where I kept Bob too, and it seemed prudent to keep him out of any hands other than my own as well.

Running away wasn't solving anything.

And for all that these necromancers were vastly stronger than I was, I wasn't entirely without resources. Thomas was good in a fight. So was Kai. I bet there was a whole range of skills he had that were specific to him being a Dragon that he hadn't broken out yet. Irene had already proven that she wielded powers that confounded ordinary wizards, even if they were as powerful as Cowl. And I wasn't too bad in a fight myself. We weren't defeated yet.

Kai must have come to the same conclusion; his face was grim, but determined, ready for action. 'How can we stop them?' he asked. 'Could we disrupt the spell?' Going straight for the jugular rather than playing defence. I knew there was a reason I liked him.

Irene nodded. 'If we can stop the beat, would that help?'

'It would free his army from his control, but no one knows what that would do.' As a strategy, it was a bit tricky. 'It could just stop the control. They could stand around waiting for someone to give them directions or they could turn on everything that moves.' Which would be less than helpful.

'Can we disrupt the magic working itself somehow?' Irene asked pensively.

'Maybe,' I said, diving headfirst into uncharted necromancy territory. 'If we can tie up the necromancer on defence. Problem is that he's probably surrounded himself with dozens of undead flunkies. Running water is never good for it either, but I don't think we can…'

Kai had begun to smile. 'How about rain?' he asked. 'Would that help?'

I had no idea where he was going with this. 'It'd have to be a lot. Enough to flood the street to even mildly disrupt anything.' I thought. I hoped.

He smiled some more. 'Not a problem.'

I stared a bit, then decided that I didn't have time for that. The zombies were still throwing themselves at the wards and even with the reinforcement, they wouldn't hold out indefinitely. Time to get moving.

We had a very quick standing-up planning session.

When the wards gave out, we were ready. Irene threw open the door, giving Thomas a good clear shot at the next zombies coming down the stairs. I followed that up with a nice blast of energy that cleared the stairs enough for us to get out and to the top.

Butters slammed the door behind us.

My first response was dismay. There were far more zombies here than I had thought. There was a whole battalion ready that was just standing by for now, in reserve. I was severely outclassed.

Again.

'Kai?'

'On it,' he said. He was standing behind me, so I didn't know what he was doing and over the sound of the beat coming from the car parked on the other side of the street, I couldn't hear him working his brand of magic. If that was what it was.

Standing next to the car were Grevane and an older guy with liver spots. There was something familiar about him, but I couldn't place it.

'Good evening,' said Grevane, as if we were just friendly neighbours who bumped into each other at the mailbox. 'My compliments on your wards. They were stronger than I expected.'

I snorted. 'I like my privacy, but some people just can't take a hint.'

'There is no need for this to become nasty,' said the man who just sent untold of his undead army at my door. We were waving at nasty in the rear view mirror. 'Just give me the Word.'

'Not in my collection at the moment. Could I interest you in some Tolkien instead?'

Grevane snarled. 'Don't play games. I know you found what the Doctor had hidden.'

'I burned the Doctor,' I informed him. As well as some bits of the Forensic Institute, but no need to mention that. The sprinklers would have killed the fire before it got out of hand.

He hadn't known that.

'He's lying,' said Liver Spots with a voice as if someone had stuck a cheese rasp in his throat that all the words had to get past before they came out of his mouth.

'Not lying,' I said, on basic principle, and then pulled the next trick out of my hat. 'I swear, on my power, that I do not have the Word of Kemmler, nor know where it might be hidden.'

Grevane's mouth dropped open.

'Last chance,' I said, glancing up at the sky. 'Get off my lawn.'

Perhaps Grevane had felt the changes in the air as I had. The pressure had changed. The evening started off bright and clear, but now dark, heavy rainclouds were packing together out of nowhere. Thunder rumbled, as if getting warmed up for the main show. Little flashes of lightning were the only source of light, which drew my attention. The whole city had gone dark, which I didn't think was a coincidence, though probably not Kai's doing. It had been dark when we came out, but now it felt more threatening.

Although not necessarily for me.

I could see Grevane waver. My oath on my power took away his whole reason for being here. I didn't have the Word. I didn't know where it was. I had nothing he wanted. He had expended a great deal of power trying to beat my door down for something I couldn't give him even if I wanted to.

Then his eyes landed on Irene.

'Nicely played,' he said. 'Good evening, Miss Winters. Why don't you tell me where your uncle hid the book?'

The thunder came closer. The first rain began to fall.

Irene said nothing.

Grevane's expression darkened. 'Attack!' he ordered his zombies.

At that moment the storm broke. Thunder crashed. Lightning flashed. Rain lashed down. We were soaked in seconds and so was everything else. Puddles formed as I watched, growing into little streams.

It was a storm that could flood a place in minutes.

It didn't do much initially to hamper Grevane, because his zombies obeyed his command to attack without problems. I realised that all this running water would eventually hinder me as well as Grevane, but unlike Grevane, I had back-up that could function in these circumstances.

I threw some fire around, but the effect was limited in the downpour. Some zombies did catch fire, but like the wards on my door, the effect wasn't lasting. It didn't kill them and the drenching rain doused the flames.

I stuck with energy blasts after that, which at least sent them flying, even if they came back like boomerangs.

'Can you clear a path to that car?' Irene shouted in my ear.

Since I was throwing a lot of magic around to keep the zombies off of us, it wasn't much effort to clear the zombies away in the right direction. And these ones were still just the ones Grevane had been throwing at my door. His reserve troops just stood there, waiting to be called into action.

Visibility was poor. The only source of light was the lightning, flashing almost constantly. The rain reduced vision even further.

'Streetlights, turn on!' Irene commanded loudly.

They obeyed even though the electricity seemed to have taken off. I didn't ask how long the effects would last. Hopefully long enough for us to send Grevane and his undead soldiers scarpering.

Kai and Thomas protected our rear with swords. I knew Thomas had some, and apparently Kai knew his way around them. We made slow progress.

'Radio in the car, break! All electronics in the car, break!'

I could have done that myself, probably, but I was too busy trying to keep a horde of zombies off our backs to spare the time.

The radio fizzled out with a shriek that sounded like someone strangled a cat. The beat fell away and even with the thunder crashing and rumbling, it was suddenly very quiet.

The effect on Grevane's flunkies was instantaneous. They stopped. For a few seconds there I hoped that my first theory was right and that breaking the beat would just leave them standing around looking lost.

But that would have been too easy. After several moments they resumed their attempts to kill us with as much enthusiasm as they had when Grevane ordered them to. The only difference was that they turned on Grevane and Liver Spots with just as much passion.

It's the little things in life that can cheer you up.

That is, until the cavalry showed up.

It was a good thing that the weather had already driven everyone not involved in this mess of a battle indoors, because the Civil War-era cavalry of ghosts would have ridden all over them. They would have ridden all over us too if Kai and Thomas hadn't seen them coming in time and dragged Irene and me back to the stairs leading down to my apartment just in time.

The new arrivals were ghosts, both the horses and the riders. They were semi-transparent, emitting a sickly green glow. They didn't make as much noise as such an army should make either, as if they were only half there.

Just a shame they probably weren't only half-lethal too.

Behind them, on a ghost horse, was the Corpsetaker. She had exchanged her pretty student clothes for heavy biker leather, although she had kept her black boots. She had a tom-tom drum suspended from a belt that went over her shoulder, on which she beat out a rhythm with one hand. In the other she had a bared curved sword with a wickedly sharp edge. She steered her horse with nothing but her knees and the force of her will.

Even above the roar of the thunder I could hear her unhinged laughter.

'Strap that holds the drum, break!' Irene shouted as the Corpsetaker went past.

The strap broke, the drum fell and splashed in the growing puddles in the street. There was a street full of zombies and ghosts. And no one had any control over them anymore.

The Corpsetaker screamed in rage. She turned her phantom horse, tugging on the reins with her now no longer occupied hand. The horse was freed from her control, and it didn't want to go.

All around us the battle had become complete chaos. Zombies fought ghosts, Grevane fought a combination of his own flunkies and the Corpsetaker's ghosts, the Corpsetaker had a bone to pick with Irene, but she couldn't get there because her horse didn't obey her and her own army was getting in her way. We were fighting everything that came at us.

The water was rising fast too. The gutters were having trouble dealing with the influx of water. In some places it was now ankle-deep and it began flowing to whatever low point it could find. It was also freezing cold. I could barely feel my feet, and I was having some big trouble getting my magic working as I wanted. But Grevane and the Corpsetaker were having the same trouble. They had lost control of their respective armies, but the armies were moving slower than they had, as if the effort to keep existing on this plane was taking more of their energy. Their attacks were easier to repel.

Which was a problem for another reason, because the Corpsetaker was coming at us, waving her sword over her head as she bore down on us. Kai was probably not her first choice, but he was who was in her way first. He was occupied trying to keep a horde of zombies off Irene's back, so I stepped in. I threw out a shield at an angle, which redirected the Corpsetaker's course to the right and into a lamppost. The Corpsetaker fell off her horse and landed face first in a puddle. I threw some more energy at her to get her out of our immediate vicinity and she disappeared into a gaggle of ghosts a little way away, screaming all the time.

I didn't have the time to see what had happened with her. I didn't see what happened with my own allies, because the next moment I was knocked off my feet and landed on my back in the water. I struck out blindly with my staff, which struck home, because my attacker yelped in pain and surprise.

It didn't last long. My assailant knelt down on my chest – which hurt a lot – and fastened his hands around my throat. They were too warm to belong to one of the conjured lackeys, which was not the good news it might have been.

I blinked the water out of my eyes as I tried to whack him with my staff again, but my aim went wide and I missed.

'Where is it?' Liver Spots demanded.

I didn't have the breath to answer, even if I had known what he was talking about. Spots danced across my vision, so I tried to buck him off before I lost consciousness. One of my manoeuvres made him lose his balance and forced him to let go of my throat. I gasped for air.

The spots disappeared.

Liver Spots howled in rage. 'Where is it? Why isn't it here?'

As far as I was concerned he was still speaking in riddles, but the manic look in his eyes left no doubt that he was very, very serious.

I was too out of breath for a witty retort. Instead I lashed out with my staff again, but the angle was all wrong for using it for magic. Effectively being pinned down in a running stream wasn't helping either.

Besides, Liver Spots didn't need any encouragement to keep ranting. 'It was supposed to be mine. It is mine!'

'Gollum?'

'I am going to kill you! I will see you die!' He drove that point home with a blow to my right wrist that made me let go of my staff. The pain rocked up my arm. 'It is mine! Give it to me!'

Sometimes I am my own worst enemy. 'My precious,' I grinned at him.

Liver Spots was not a fan of Lord of the Rings. He went for my throat again. It should have been easy for me to shake him off – he didn't look very strong – but he fought like a man possessed, simultaneously squeezing and shaking me. Each time he slammed my head to the ground.

At some point I was pretty sure there were two of him.

'Mine! It's mine!'

I still had no idea what he was ranting about.

Then he was gone. One moment he was on my chest, the next a sweep of something scaly and blue sent him flying. Something roared. I could feel it to my bones. Hell, they could probably feel that in Moscow. The world shook. Reality itself shook.

I had never heard or felt anything like it.

I reached for my staff and used that to propel me to my feet again, searching for the new threat and found myself face to face with a real, larger than life Dragon. At first I was convinced there were two of them, but a bit of blinking reduced that down to one again.

It is one thing knowing that one of your new allies is a Dragon, but seeing it is quite another. I had seen the scales and the claws briefly, but since nothing else had happened and Kai certainly looked human, I assumed that Dragons weren't actually big, scaly creatures with wings.

Dragons were, apparently, absolutely big, scaly creatures with wings.

I attributed my knees knocking together to having been banged on the head so many times I lost count.

Liver Spots got up again, still literally foaming at the mouth, all set to leap back at me to pick up where he had left off. It took him a moment to notice the big Dragon behind me. Then even his liver spots went pale.

'Do not touch him again,' said a voice that at the same time both was and wasn't recognisably Kai's. It was so deep it rattled my bones.

Liver Spots had nothing to say. He just whimpered.

'Run,' said Kai. 'Before I change my mind about letting you live.'

Liver Spots took those words at face value and scarpered as quickly as his legs could carry him.

'Harry, can you stand?' Kai asked.

I realised that I was clutching the scales as if my life depended on it. Turned out that my knocking knees were not entirely from awe. My head was still spinning a bit. 'Yes,' I said, meaning no.

Kai grinned. In his Dragon form that involved a lot of teeth. A lot of very big, very sharp teeth. 'Climb on my back,' he said.

I must have hit my head one time too many.

'Climb on my back,' Kai said again.

Everyone dreams of flying. Don't look at me like that, you've done it too. It's embedded in human nature. It's why humans invented airplanes and it is why almost every wizard at some point in his or her career tries to create either the flying broomstick or the flying carpet.

With varying rates of success.

Let's not talk about my own efforts.

I climbed on and, at Kai's direction, settled just behind his shoulder blades. 'Do I need to hold on?'

'You are secure where you are,' Kai informed me.

He took off and suddenly the game had changed. One side was still very much outclassed, but it was no longer my side. We were winning.

Kai swooped up and down, scattering zombies before him as he went. He ripped them apart without breaking a sweat. Others he swatted away like cats do with mice they play with. I blasted away because I could, but it didn't matter much. Kai was the star of this show. We went up and down, sweeping all before us.

Most of the undead soldiers were already losing momentum, because their creator was having trouble with all the distractions and the running water. The Corpsetaker's ghosts had almost disappeared entirely, flushed away by the still-growing stream. She never noticed, because her focus was on trying to take Grevane's head off with her sword. He was trying to keep her off with a chain he flailed around, but she was hammering down blows and at least one of them had hit; blood trickled down Grevane's neck, but he didn't seem to notice.

'Enough!' Kai shouted, which at last got their attention.

They stopped and stared. They had to stare up, because Kai and I hovered at least twelve feet above them.

'Leave,' Kai commanded.

They thought about that for a few seconds.

Kai growled. The world shook again.

They ran. Just like that, they ran. I whooped in victory and only barely resisted the urge to break out into We Are the Champions.

The last of their army dissolved into ectoplasm. It was over.

Kai landed gracefully. I slid not very gracefully back to the ground, where Thomas caught me before I fell into the water again.

'Enjoyed your flight?' he asked, grinning, even though he was covered from top to toe in ectoplasma-ed zombie remains.

'You're just jealous.'

'Of course I am jealous.' He poked me in the chest and I nearly went down again. 'You rode a Dragon.'

I grinned on principle. 'Henceforth, you shall all address me as Sir Harry the Dragon Rider,' I announced. 'Scourger of zombies and scatterer of ghosts!'

Then I promptly fell over again, because my head was still spinning.

Thomas and Kai, now back in human form, assisted me back down the stairs. Thomas knocked on the door. 'Butters, let us in. They're gone.'

It took a subjective eternity and an objective thirty seconds before the door unlocked and Butters, clutching Mouse's fur as though his life depended on it, opened it. 'They're gone?' He peered over our shoulders to check.

'Gone,' I confirmed. I tried to resist again, but what the hell, we had won and the zombies were gone, so I gave them my very best rendition of We Are the Champions.

Butters stared at me. 'What happened to him?'

'Hit his head,' Thomas reported. 'He's concussed.'

I tried to argue the point, but the world kept moving in ways that it definitely shouldn't and I focused on getting back indoors instead.

'Could you look at him?' Kai asked.

Butters rallied and broke out his not-a-real-physician speech, but he directed me to the couch to take a look anyway. Sitting down helped enormously; the room stopped moving like a rubber boat in the middle of the ocean.

Irene closed the door behind her. She didn't have the key, but she had her own kind of magic. 'Door, lock.'

I heard the locks click.

We were all soaking wet. The storm had been easing up when we got back inside, but there was not an inch on any of us that was not drenched, and we had let a minor wave in as we entered. This was one of those times that a hot shower would have been great, because all that rain was icy cold.

Kai followed my line of thought, because he suggested we all take it in turns to shower and change into something dry, at which point I had to explain to him the downsides of wizardry and the effects my presence had on water heaters.

And then Irene smiled smugly.

Right, Librarian magic.

Butters poked at the back of my head, which hurt a lot.

'You have been very lucky,' Butters reported. 'The mantle of your duster got between you and the ground.'

'There are protective spells on the leather,' I said. Saved by my coat. And not for the first time either.

Even that had barely done the job. Butters used a great deal of medical terms, but it all boiled down to me having been one blow away from being next on Grevane's zombie recruitment list. I was instructed to sit down, and not move too much. My body was aching all over, so that was no problem. I was allowed to take a shower and to put at least some rudimentary wards back on the apartment. I was at least still awake enough to remember to put some suitably nasty ones on the door. The next person to try and knock would be in for an unpleasant surprise.

Putting the defences in place took most of my remaining energy. It took some real effort not to blindly stumble into the bathroom when it was my turn to shower.

Irene's Librarian magic at least made it a warm shower.

I should invite Librarians more often.

Being the most battered also entitled me to the comfort of my own bed, so it wasn't all bad.

Like I said, it's the little things that can cheer you up.

Next time: interfering nuisance incoming!

Reviews would be appreciated.