Chapter 15

The Dead Dinosaur

Engaging in the weird and somewhat impossible was not that out of the ordinary for a Librarian, but saddling up a reconstructed zombie dinosaur with saddles from a Wild West display was giving even Irene pause. She tried to think of an acceptable way to work that into her report for Coppelia, but every time her brain reached the words zombie dinosaur, it refused to come up with any way to phrase that in a normal sentence.

It shut down entirely when she also had to consider the fact that Waldo Butters stood beside that enormous beast in his polka suit, working the drum strapped to his back by way of moving his feet, creating a beat for the zombie dinosaur to fool it into thinking it was alive.

Which it was not.

'It's the only way I can get anywhere close to the necromancy party,' Harry had explained. 'I've got to have a necromantic field around me, or I'll die, but if I take along the dynamic duo,' he made a vague gesture towards the bodies of Cassius and Grevane, 'I'll be in big trouble with the White Council.'

Apparently animating a dead animal circumvented their no necromancy rule. Technically. If you squinted really hard.

'How close can I get?' Irene asked.

Harry hesitated. 'How close do you need to be?'

That was the question. 'The only time I did this, I was in the same room as Alberich. Kai had warded the building we were in. Technically, if I'm within his wards and Alberich is there too, I should be able to do it.'

Harry thought this through. 'How big is the area you can ward?'

Kai shook his head. 'I could ward the entire city, but that would take too long.' He considered the map of Chicago before them. 'I could do the area around the college, and maybe a few blocks around it. That should have enough books inside to invoke the Library.'

But that too would take more time, and 'Alberich will know what we are up to the moment he sees me.'

That was the problem with recycling an old idea. Alberich surely must suspect that she would at least try to banish him. Of course, the good thing about this was that she knew that the method worked. The trick would be to keep Alberich off her back long enough for it to actually take effect.

Harry grinned. 'I'll be very distracting.'

Irene considered the evidence and agreed that yes, he was certainly going to be distracting.

Part of her had some trouble believing that she was really going to be a part of this.

'If we're lucky, banishing Alberich will be so eye-catching that the necromancers get distracted at a crucial moment,' Harry said.

Irene frowned. 'And that will be enough?'

Harry nodded, but he had lost the grin. 'With the amount of power they'll be drawing in, if their mind isn't in the game, it will backfire and kill them.' He hesitated for a moment. 'And everyone standing too close.'

As if the odds weren't long enough already.

From what Irene understood, the rite the Zombie Squad was about to attempt, wasn't actually a rite, but a spell, designed to draw in all the power they could, only to then consume it, which would give them an immediate ticket to godhood. All the zombies and ghosts, as well as the power of the Wild Hunt and the amounts of fear they had stirred up in Chicago, all of that would piled together in a big circle of clouds, which would then drop a tornado, to be swallowed by the godhood candidate for vast amounts of instant power.

The only good news was that it would take tremendous amounts of concentration and power to pull that off; the slightest distraction could spell disaster.

But if they pulled it off, they would kill everyone in a one mile radius.

Where Irene would be. As well as lots and lots of other unsuspecting people.

I should have taken the book and run.

That would after all have been the Librarian thing to do. Bradamant wasn't exactly wrong when she said that Irene got far too involved in this world's affairs. But Irene had made an agreement. Worse than that, she had made friends, and she found that she just wasn't the type of person who could turn her back and run while her friends faced certain death.

She'd worry about selling this to Coppelia later.

On the plus side, maybe she'd die tonight, which would save her the report writing. There was a silver lining there somewhere.

Irene helped Harry to attach the saddles to Sue's back, then stood back to admire her handiwork. The saddles looked somewhat ridiculous on a dinosaur, and they'd had to use extension cords to make sure they went around her at all, but they would do.

They helped Butters onto Sue's back first, which took a bit of doing, since he was strapped into his polka suit again. 'Ready when you are, Harry,' he said. His face was pale, but determined. He seemed to have found his courage during Alberich's attack tonight.

Good for him.

Now that the time was there, Irene's knees felt a little wobbly. She told herself that was because of the close encounter with the display case and pushed down hard on it. This was not the time.

Harry nodded. He had already expended a lot of energy on the fight and the reconstruction of Sue's body, and he was about to throw around a bit more. He may act like a snarky streak of nothing in a leather duster, but Irene would never underestimate him. She had seen what he could do.

Butters started up the beat. Harry stood in front of Sue, head bowed, staff in his hand, muttering things Irene didn't catch. The air crackled with energy and power. It was cold, and made the hairs on her neck stand on end.

This was not friendly energy.

Beside her, Kai looked a little green. Mouse whined and scratched his paw on the floor.

And then she forgot all about that when the Tyrannosaurus opened her eyes and moved her head. She flexed her muscles, shook her head and roared, as if to establish her presence.

It had worked.

Harry directed her to the doors, which were no match for a dinosaur of Sue's stature. Very soon they were only former doors or, more accurately, pieces of former doors.

Irene didn't even want to begin calculating the amounts of damage they had wreaked on this place. It was probably a good thing that the power was still out and no security cameras could record who exactly had done that.

Kai approached Irene, holding up something for her inspection. 'I found this under the receptionist's desk,' he said. 'It might be useful.'

Irene took it gratefully. 'What receptionist's desk?' It seemed to have been thrashed together with everything else on the ground floor.

'The former receptionist's desk,' Kai grinned. 'Ready?'

No, but she was as ready as she was going to be. That would have to be enough. 'Yes,' she said.

It didn't seem possible, but the weather had worsened whilst they were inside. The rain lashed down in sheets, which hampered visibility. Thunder rolled almost constantly. They were all soaked to the skin in seconds.

Since Irene hadn't really dried out well in the first place, this was not the loss it seemed.

'Do I need to make it worse?' Kai asked.

Harry actually considered it. 'Wait until we are there,' he said. 'Then flood the place.'

On the other hand, it wasn't as if more water was going to get her any wetter than she already was. They might as well go all out.

She held Harry's staff as he climbed onto Sue's back and then handed it back to him.

'We'll lead,' Harry said. 'Stay above us.'

'We are not your personal umbrella, you know.'

The grin returned.

She did a step back and turned to Kai, who had used the time to transform. Irene had seen his Dragon form a few times now, but it still struck her with awe when she saw it. Sometimes, it was easy to forget that he was not just her apprentice, that he was not just as human as she was. When he was like this, there was absolutely no forgetting it.

Mouse flatly refused to go anywhere near Sue. Kai said he could take him onto his back as well, provided they could get him up. Irene was all prepared to give him a leg up – and then to deal with the ensuing hernia – but it wasn't needed. Mouse needed a bit of a run up and then he simply bounded up Kai's scales onto his back, where he lay down like he had done this a hundred times before.

Show-off.

Irene clambered up onto Kai's back after him with decidedly less grace, to the spot behind his shoulder blades where he directed her to sit. The scales were slippery with the rain, and she had some trouble trying to find a spot to hold on.

This amused Kai. 'I will make sure you won't fall,' he said. Irene felt the vibrations of his voice where she touched him. 'Relax.'

Easier said than done. She took a few deep breaths and forced herself to ease her grip a bit, curling her fingers into Mouse's fur instead. Kai shifted and nudged her to a spot where she had a stable seat. It was still slippery, but it was the best she could get.

Kai turned his head to Harry and grinned. 'Try to keep up,' he said.

He pushed off. Just like that they were airborne. Irene had flown before, but always in zeppelins and airplanes. Flying on a dragon's back was something else entirely. In many ways it felt more natural. And Kai was right; she was stable and safe.

If a lot closer to the rain and lightning.

'It won't hit us,' Kai said with the certainty of someone who was personally making sure that it would not.

She relaxed a bit after that.

They rose high, which gave her more of a view than she would have had from the ground. It was not an encouraging sight; some miles to the north the clouds had begun rotating, like they would when a tornado was about to drop. The clouds flashed with lightning, but the colours were poison green and neon blue and blood red, all the kinds of colours lightning did not normally have.

The necromancers had put up an enormous sign giving away their location.

Below them, Sue pulled ahead. Irene had never been to an alternate with dinosaurs before – and she knew they existed in some places – so the speed of the beast took her somewhat by surprise. Kai had to accelerate too to keep up.

Harry's steering technique left something to be desired; they clipped a building and crushed a few cars before Harry finally got the hang of it and properly compensated for Sue's size.

'It's probably best that they don't see you at all,' Irene shouted over the noise of the storm. 'Can you manage that?'

Kai nodded. 'Probably.'

Irene peered to the place under the rotating clouds, but they were too far off yet to see anything useful.

It wasn't a long trip, but the storm and the cold made it feel a lot longer. Irene's teeth chattered and she shivered. She thought longing thoughts of hot showers and warm beds.

She kept squinting and looking, but Kai was the one who saw the danger first. He growled and descended into a dive that had Irene clutch his scales, more in shock than actual necessity. 'What is it?'

Kai didn't bother to reply, but only because she could now see over his head and got a good look herself. Below them the Wardens were trying to keep a veritable hoard of zombies away from a group of children in Halloween costumes. She looked closer, because there were supposed to be only five Wardens, and she counted seven adults with the kids.

'Bradamant and Thomas,' Kai answered the question Irene hadn't asked.

Irene muttered something unrepeatable under her breath. It was too late now to remember that she hadn't told Bradamant what to do when she had delivered her message. She had assumed her colleague would just go back to Harry's apartment. That would have been the sensible thing to do.

Sensible however was not the first word that usually sprang to mind to describe Bradamant's antics.

There was nothing to be done about it now, however, so Irene took a deep breath and focused on matters that she could do something about. She waited until they were low enough and then she raised the megaphone Kai had found to her mouth: 'Wind, blow the zombies away from the children and their protectors. And keep repeating this for as long as the zombies attack.'

There was enough wind to be going around, so that command was easily put into action. The result was a bit like what a leaf blower did, only instead of fallen leaves the zombies were scattered out of the way. Harry arrived a few moments after Kai and Irene did and he sent in Sue to feast on whatever zombies happened across her path.

If this was a normal sort of situation – ha, she should be so lucky – their arrival should have turned the tide of the battle. This was very clearly not a normal sort of situation. The zombies were out in droves. Where they kept coming from, Irene couldn't see, but for every one they tore to pieces – or that made the close acquaintance of Sue's digestive system – another two or three took its place.

It was like something out of a horror movie.

'Get off my back,' Kai said, his voice grim. He landed near the Wardens.

This was not the time to argue, or to remind him of the plan. Kai knew the plan. 'Go get them,' she told him instead, because these were kids. Of course they were going to make sure that the kids were all right.

Mouse was already ahead of her. He had leaped off and hurried to the kids' side, where he took on the function of giant sheepdog, keeping the children together and moving in the right direction, which freed up the Wardens to take on the attackers. Before long, he had frightened boys and girls hanging off him, eager for something to hold.

Irene thought she had better follow, so she slid off Kai after him, rattling a stream of commands through her megaphone over the howling storm, for the ground to open up to create distance between them and the zombies, for the rain to lash the zombies in the face and blind them, for everything in sight to knock itself into the army of undead. This may or may not have included bins and whole picnic tables. She even threw in a mailbox for variety.

Irene wasn't picky right now.

Kai took off again. The storm intensified as he did, which Irene honestly wasn't sure was possible.

Somewhere to her left, Harry and Sue were ploughing through endless zombies. The most Harry needed to do was to direct the dinosaur where she needed to go, but he sent bursts of fire and energy at them for good measure.

The shocking thing was that next to the Wardens, especially Captain Luccio and Warden Morgan, Harry was practically a bumbling novice. They cast their magic with a casual ease, and wielded swords with their other hands with just as much deadly skill. There was an elegance to it that drew the eye.

'Irene, down!' Thomas shouted.

She ducked, and he beheaded the zombie that had been creeping up on her while she was distracted.

It was a good reminder that now was not the time to focus on what everyone else was doing. If she didn't start paying attention, she could wind up dead.

She didn't have any weapons other than the Language, so she put that to good use. She resumed business and commanded the ground to hold the zombies, the wind to keep them away and the trees to fall on them. She even called down the lightning to strike at them, although that only took care of one at a time and wasn't terribly effective otherwise.

The rain grew worse and worse. Visibility was down to a few feet at best. She couldn't see Kai, or Harry and Sue. She could barely see her own companions. But she could see the terrified faces of the children and hear their screams of terror.

Irene came to the conclusion that she really hated necromancers.

There was no time to ask if there was a plan that was more sophisticated than just keeping the attackers off their backs, but they seemed to be moving to the building nearby, so Irene assumed that was the plan and made sure to keep their path there as clear as she possibly could.

Which got easier all the time, as Kai and Sue lay into zombies. Kai alternated between swiping them from the field and calling up the available water to flush them away. Sue simply ripped into them where she could.

At last, at long last, there were no more zombies. Here and there bits floated in the water that now reached to Irene's ankles. Kai landed – and made quite the splash when he did – and Harry steered Sue to join them as well. Not that the Wardens waited for that. They shepherded the children inside, where it was marginally safer than outdoors.

So long as the necromancers didn't complete the spell and killed them all anyway of course.

They all crowded into the hall. Irene wrung out her hair and as much of her coat as she could manage. It didn't make a great deal of difference.

Harry positioned Sue in front of the entrance, then dismounted and helped Butters to do the same. Butters kept up the beat even though the water ran in rivulets down his face and into his clothes. They came in too.

The door had hardly fallen shut behind Harry when Warden Morgan charged forward, slammed his right forearm into Harry's throat and pushed him up against the door, snarling. 'Didn't I tell you, Captain?' he demanded. 'He deals in black magic!' He gestured at the very visibly parked dinosaur outside. 'He consorts with vampires.' He gestured in Thomas's direction. 'How much more evidence does the Council need?'

That gave Irene pause for a bit. Thomas was a vampire? She hadn't noticed anything about him. She ran a mental check of the vampire breeds from Hercule's briefing and ruled out the Black Court immediately. Thomas very much did not look like a corpse. And he wasn't allergic to garlic either. He hadn't tried to drink anyone's blood as far as she could remember, which would make him an emotional vampire, White Court.

But which emotion?

'Let him go, Warden Morgan,' Luccio snapped. 'Warden Dresden, explain yourself.'

Morgan hesitated, but let Harry go. Just as well, Kai was stalking forward with a face like thunder. Thomas too had done a few steps in that direction, sword at the ready, though he halted when Morgan released Harry. He sent a pointed look in Bradamant's direction. She shook her head contemptuously.

It occurred to Irene that she might have missed something.

'The Laws forbid calling up humans,' Harry said, wheezing a bit after his encounter with Morgan. 'Sue is not human.' He made an arm gesture in the direction of his zombie dinosaur, as if inviting them all to look and establish that she was indeed not a human. 'The necromancers are trying to pull off a spell that will kill anyone that comes close if they don't have a necromantic field around them, so I brought my own.'

He could have reminded everyone that he had ridden to everyone's rescue, but Morgan didn't seem the kind of man who was susceptible to that kind of rational argument. During the meeting in McAnally's she'd got the impression that there was a lot of history between them, and none of it was good.

The Captain of the Wardens considered this for a moment and the nodded. 'Stand down, Morgan. He is right.'

Morgan did not stand down. Instead he used his sword to make a stabbing motion in Thomas's direction. 'What about the vampire?'

Thomas didn't look at Harry and Harry didn't look at Thomas. Irene knew that she was missing at least several layers of context, but at least everyone else was in the same boat.

'Thomas is a good friend,' Harry said. He didn't look Luccio in the eyes, but Irene knew that was a wizard thing now. Instead he looked very intently at her forehead. 'We have been friends since before the war. You tell me, Captain, if that has compromised me.'

The silence lasted a few seconds.

'Do you vouch for him?'

Harry nodded. 'I do.'

Luccio narrowed her eyes. 'If he steps out of line, you will be held responsible for it.'

Harry didn't miss a beat. 'No problem.'

Morgan sputtered indignantly, but Luccio cut him off. 'Enough, Morgan,' she said sternly. 'We do not have the time for this.'

Finally something Irene actually agreed with. 'Where are the necromancers?' she asked, trying to drag them back on topic. She couldn't see the rotating clouds from here, but she knew that they were there and she knew what they signified. 'And is Alberich with them? Has anyone seen?'

As much as she hoped that the answer was no, the rational part of Irene's mind knew that the best answer was yes. They had a real chance that she could shield this alternate from his presence permanently. While he was distracted by his latest scheme was simply the best time to do it, because he couldn't focus all his terrifying attention on stopping them. He was as vulnerable here as he was ever going to be.

So she stamped down hard on the terror and looked around the Wardens for answers.

To her surprise, it was Morgan who answered. 'Between the picnic tables,' he reported. 'Alberich is there, as are Cowl and the Corpsetaker. Only Cowl has his drummer with him. The other two are doing their own drumming. Of Grevane and his drummer there is no sign.'

'They aren't coming,' Harry reported. 'They are both dead.' When Morgan narrowed his eyes in suspicion, he added: 'I didn't kill them.'

No, he hadn't. That dubious honour belonged to Kai and Irene. She closed her eyes for a second, but that made the image of Cassius getting crushed under the ceiling she dropped on him replay in exquisite detail, so she opened them just in time to hear Kai claim responsibility for both deaths without blinking.

Morgan opened his mouth, then closed it again.

'In self-defence,' Kai asked. 'And not by means of magic. And even were it so, I am not under your jurisdiction, wizard.' He briefly let the pattern of scales show on his hands and face.

Morgan backed off.

'How many zombies are there between us and them?' Thomas asked.

Morgan glared, probably on principle, but Luccio had given the okay, so he answered: 'Hundreds.'

Kai seemed to hesitate. Irene caught his eye and shook her head. 'No,' she said, softly, just for his ears. 'Remember the plan.'

'I don't like being sent away,' he said. 'It's dangerous out there, Irene.'

She was in fact aware of that. And while she was really not eager to go back out there and fight, Alberich was the Library's responsibility. She had a duty here. And so did Kai. 'We cannot banish Alberich without your help,' she said instead. 'If we can take him out of the game, all his zombies will likely go as well.'

Which just left Cowl and the Corpsetaker, who were not much better. But one crisis at a time. It was so hectic outside that any plans by necessity had to be flexible. Fortunately, Irene was used to having to improvise. It was the end result that counted. The road there could be altered as needed.

Of course, none of her adaptable plans had accounted for an army of spectres rising up through the floor.

Next time: lots of action. And everyone gets wet. Well, wetter.

Reviews would be welcome.