Hold Me Closer, Necromancer - Lish McBride [99]
“I can’t help you much without blood, and there will be plenty of that with the ritual. Two birds, one stone, James. The defenses will hold until then.”
Brid threw Michael into the wall to the side of us. He bounced back from it and hurled himself at her like nothing had happened.
“Take care of it,” Douglas said to the cat.
“But—”
Douglas made a slashing motion with his free hand. “Take care of it!”
The cat gave a final flick of its tail before jumping off the bookcase and morphing back into the black-and-silver blur. It shot up the stairs.
Douglas twirled the knife in his hand. “We’d better get started.”
26
Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting
A howl issued from the other side of the house. The hair on the back of Ramon’s neck stood up in reaction. The group around him tensed. “What does that mean?” he whispered.
“It means,” Sean said, dropping into a runner’s crouch, “get ready.”
Ramon clutched his board. He put one hand on the ground and leaned forward, matching Sean, who gave him a wink and a grin before turning his head back toward the house. Bran didn’t smile but held himself in a similar position.
A sharp yip echoed, and the group was off. Ramon ran after them, feet slipping in loose leaf cover and dirt. Though he had never tried out for track, he knew he was pretty fast. You don’t spend years skateboarding and not learn how to run from cops. But this group outstripped him easily. Two dozen or so wolves pulled to the front, their people following in their tracks. He wondered if they had the same number of people flanking the other side of the house. Sean and the rest seemed to trust the wolves, letting them run without orders or direction, the whole group moving in unison. The image made him think of a flock of birds flying in formation.
Ramon quickly fell to the back. As he watched them leap over bushes and fly across the grass, he wondered if they were cyborgs. Humans just couldn’t do that stuff. He made the sound effect from The Six Million Dollar Man under his breath as he kept on after them.
A gout of flame came out of nowhere and burned the grass in a swath next to him. Ramon twisted away from it but managed to stay his feet. When he looked up he saw a shiny black blur tearing about like a hummingbird. The blur banked and unleashed another line of fire at the approaching group. As it slowed, he could actually make out what the blob was—a dragon. Only about the size of a housecat, the dragon produced a stream of flame ten times its size. The group scattered but kept moving forward.
A shattering crunch of a noise split across the lawn as the statues cracked open. Very living cargo spilled out from under the left over pebbles and dust. The lions leapt onto a few of the wolves, rolling them away from the group. The fights continued to the sides, blood and dust flying.
The Greek statues were even more terrifying. Ramon watched as the minotaur lifted up a wolf and hurled it. Seconds later, three other wolves pulled it down. It stood back up and shook them off like they were puppies. Ramon wasn’t sure what the nymphs were doing, and he didn’t want to know. The gladiators from the bas-relief he’d seen earlier began to shimmy down the columns. So Douglas hadn’t just been eccentric with his décor. “Heads up!” Ramon shouted. A few of the men looked up and saw the gladiators. They howled and took off, dodging swords and slamming into shields. The effect was chaotic but, at the same time, handled with a practiced precision. Sean and his group were well trained, that was obvious.
Ramon saw one of the wolves get pulled into a hedgerow when it got too close. He heard it howl, but he couldn’t see what happened to it. One of the men ran over and pulled it out. The wolf was bloodied but still alive.
The tiny dragon continued to swoop down, swiping at their eyes with one of its four taloned feet. Ramon heard a few yelps of pain, but not many. One huge, gray wolf leapt at the dragon, snapping at it with its jaws. The wolf missed, but the move forced the dragon to fly higher. This