"To the lawn, we'll start with an exterior perimeter and fall back inside if necessary," Bones said. "Zero, you gather the humans and put them in the holding cells below, since they're the most reinforced. Feel free to use physical means to make any reluctant ones obey, especially her mother."
I would have replied with something rude, but this wasn't the time. We filed outdoors in a precise manner, setting up formation around the house. Hand signals were used once we were outside, the vampires and ghouls moving with a speed any military leader would love to command. Of course, they predated most military leaders. Practice did make perfect.
The frigid wind made me shiver. Yes, it was extremely cold, but it wouldn't kill me and hypothermia was something I didn't have to worry about. I was half vampire, after all, so my blood wouldn't know how to freeze. It didn't stop me from wishing I could be as impervious to it as my companions, though. Vampires and ghouls might not like the cold, but I was the only one whose teeth were chattering.
"All right, luv?"
Bones asked it while not taking his gaze off the trees in front of him. We were dead center in front of the house, and hopefully that wasn't prophetic.
I gritted my jaw to still it. "It'll go away when the action starts."
There was movement at my side. Tate slid next to me without a word, shouldering Spade aside.
"Leave him," Bones interjected when Spade was about to shove him back. "It's what he's good for."
Tate might have replied with something, I won't ever know. His mouth opened...but then the first of the mysterious figures cleared the trees and stopped his rejoinder. Bones stiffened, turning as cold and hard as any of the icicles on the roof. Spade let out a low hiss, and someone muttered something that sounded like a prayer.
"Sweet Christ," I whispered, a new freeze settling in me. "What is that?"
It was Mencheres who answered, coming up behind us and raising his voice to be heard above the thing's sudden snarl as it began to run, its mouth snapping obscenely from half-rotted lips.
"That," he replied, "is the grave."
Chapter Thirty
IN OLDER MOVIES, ZOMBIES LOOKED ALMOST comical. The newer films pegged them better-the insanity of eyes bulging out and flesh hanging in rancid layers over a frame hunched from hunger. Some were more decomposed than others, bones visible in places as they staggered forward. But all of them had one thing in common; they were ravenous, and we were food.
When the first one was visible, Mencheres appeared as stunned as the rest of us were. After his cryptic statement, however, he began to curse in a manner so unlike him that it broke my attention from the oncoming horde.
"Never in all my foulest imaginings did I believe she would do such a thing," he finished with. "There will be payback for this, perhaps not by me or anyone here, but one day she will account for such a deed."
That didn't sound good. In fact, it sounded like an epitaph.
Bones shook Mencheres's shoulder with a hard tug. "We don't have time to ponder Patra's capacity for evil. These things"-a short nod to the ones only about two dozen yards away. "Can they be killed?"
Mencheres lost his glazed expression and his features hardened. He placed his hand over Bones's.
"No."
The single word was delivered without emotion. Mencheres seemed to steel himself even as he squeezed Bones's hand before dropping his own.
"They cannot be killed," he continued, unsheathing his sword with a slicing noise. "Nor do they feel any pain or even need eyes to see us. They are drawn to us by her will alone."
He strode forward with a command for everyone else to stay back. The things were only a few feet from him, moving at a loping run now. They seemed to grow more crazed by his nearness. Horrible grunts came from them.
"They have been pulled from the ground," Mencheres continued, sidestepping one with a speed it didn't have, "and they will not return to it until the spell is broken. We cannot run. Every grave within a hundred miles would empty as the dead came after us, and they would kill anything in their path."
His sword moved so fast I couldn't follow it with my gaze. In disbelief I saw the things leap at him with almost equal speed. Where the f**k did their shuffling go? Oh,shit!
Mencheres hacked in that same blur. Pieces of them started to fly in all directions as his blade outraced their sudden, incredible tempo. "We must hold them off and find what object she used for this spell," he went on in that same level tone. "It would have to be something of hers, perhaps carried by one of the prisoners, or planted by Rattler. If we find it and destroy it, they will die. Until then, no matter how much damage they sustain, they cannot rest."
What he meant was sickeningly illustrated as he spoke. Mother of God, even the limbs he'd severed crawled in our direction. A headless body stumbled closer, and the unattached cranium chewed with demonic intentness at Mencheres's foot until he kicked it away. Now that was scary. Still, when they were dismembered, the creatures were certainly less dangerous. Maybe there was a chance.
"Send three people back in the house to search," Mencheres called out, whirling to intercept more of the forms as they approached. "It will probably be something small, easy to disregard. Destroy it with any means possible.
"Tick Tock, Annette, Zero, go," Bones ordered with a jerk of his head, pulling out his own sword.
They darted back into the house without pause, except for Annette. I saw her stop and stare at Bones before she disappeared into the house. I stared at him as well, for the same reason. Thinking this was the last time I'd see him.
"If I thought for a moment you'd listen, it would be you going inside," he almost sighed. "Yet I know better. I love you, Kitten. There's nothing on this earth or under it that can change that."
I didn't have time to reply, but it wasn't necessary. Every fiber of me shouted it back at him even as he raised his voice and addressed the four dozen people also drawing out their swords.
"Patra unleashed death on us, mates. Let us return the gesture with our compliments!"
Bones strode forward with measured, lethal steps to meet the new wave of ghastly invaders. Four dozen against untold hundreds? I knew the odds of our survival. So did everyone who gripped a blade and advanced with him, myself included.
"We are not helpless." Bones's voice was never more controlled. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was chipper. "Many times in our lives we've been powerless, but not this night. Right now we have the power to choose the manner in which we die. If you have been a master of nothing else in all your days, you are now a master of this moment. And I for one am going to give such an answer to this insult that others will dearly regret not being by my side to see it!"