The old wolf was a smart bastard, smart enough to figure out that when the magic was up, guns didn’t bark. Still, he stayed away from the pasture and went for the easier target instead, a ten-year-old girl picking pears from the ground in the orchard while her parents were on ladders harvesting the fruit.
A dog’s job was to put itself between the threat and the human. The two dogs with the harvesters did their job.
Hugh and the shapeshifters had found the first dead hound at the edge of the woods. The second was here. Now it was up to human Dogs to settle the score.
“Heartbeat,” Sharif whispered.
Hugh reached out with his magic. The dog was a mess, torn and bitten, but a faint, barely-there heartbeat shivered in his chest. Hugh concentrated. This would be complicated.
He knitted the organs together, repairing the tissue, sealing the blood vessels, mending the flesh like it was fabric, muscles, fascia, and skin. The two Dogs by his side waited quietly.
Finally, he finished. The dog raised his head, turned in the brush, and crawled toward them. Sharif scooped the hundred and twenty-pound hound up like he was a puppy. The dog licked his face.
“Blood loss,” Hugh said. “He won’t be walking for a bit.”
“I’ll carry him,” Sharif said. His eyes shone, catching the light.
“We’re only a mile in. Take him back and catch up,” Hugh told him.
The werewolf turned smoothly and ran into the woods, silent like a shadow, the huge dog resting in his arms.
Karen took the lead and they followed the scent trail deeper into the woods.
If he never saw another rhododendron bush until his next life, it would be too soon, Hugh decided. The damn brush choked the spaces between trees and getting through it wasn’t exactly a cakewalk.
They pushed their way through the latest patch. The endless rhododendron finally thinned out. Old woods stretched before them, the massive oaks and hemlocks rising like the thick columns of some ancient temple, cushioned in greenery.
A shadow flittered between the trees, trailing a smear of foul magic. An undead.
The day was looking up. Hugh grinned and pulled his sword out.
The undead dashed right and stopped.
Another smear appeared on the left. Two. If it was Nez’s standard rapid reconnaissance party, there would be a third, each piloted by a separate navigator.
Karen waited next to him, her anticipation almost a physical thing hovering in front of her.
“Happy hunting,” Hugh said.
She unbuckled her belt with the knife sheath on it, unzipped her boots, and gave a sharp tug to her shirt. It came open. She dropped it on the forest floor. Her pants followed. A brief flash of a nude human, then her body tore. New bones sprang up out of flesh, muscle spiraled up them, sheathing the new skeleton, skin clothed it, and dense gray fur burst from the new hair follicles. The female werewolf opened her monstrous jaws, her face neither wolf nor human, swiped her knife from her clothes, and sprinted into the woods to the left.
Hugh went in the opposite direction, toward the foul magic staining the leaves. The smear hovered still for a moment, then moved north. Run, run, little vampire.
Another vampire to the far right, closing in fast. The undead moved in silence. They didn’t breathe, they didn’t make any of the normal noises a living creature made, but they couldn’t hide their magic. The foul patina of undeath stood out against the living wood like a dark blotch.
The front bloodsucker played bait, while the one on the right would close in from the flank and try to jump him. They didn’t realize he could feel them. This wasn’t the Golden Legion. The Masters of the Dead would’ve just met him two on one. These were likely journeymen, piloting younger vampires. The undead were damn expensive, and the older they were, the higher the price tag ran.
Didn’t want to risk the budget, cheapskate? It will cost you.
Hugh ran through the forest as fast as the terrain would let him, jumping over the fallen branches. Let’s play.
The ground evened out. Hugh sped up.
The bloodsucker in front of him darted in and out of the brush, flirting.
Hugh dashed forward, pretending not to feel the undead gaining from the right.
Trees flew past. The flanking vamp was almost on him.
The first bloodsucker jumped over the trunk of a fallen tree. Hugh tossed his sword into his left hand, planted his right on the rough bark, and vaulted over it.
The undead from the right leapt at him before he landed, as he knew it would. The vamp came flying out of the bushes. Hugh braced and rammed the reinforced gauntlet on his right hand into the bloodsucker’s mouth, taking the full weight of the vamp. The fangs sank into leather and met the core of hard steel. The bloodsucker hung still for a precious half-second as the surprised navigator processed the aborted leap. A half-second was just long enough. Hugh sank his sword between the undead’s ribs, slicing through the gristle and muscle to the heart. The oversized sack of muscle met the razor-sharp point of the blade and burst, as only undead hearts did, spilling blood inside the undead’s body cavity. Hugh jerked the sword free, shook the vamp off his hand like it was a feral cat, and swung. The blade cut in a broad powerful stroke. The undead’s head rolled into the bushes. The whole thing took less than a couple of breaths.
Fun.
With any luck, the journeyman piloting the vamp didn’t break connection. When a vampire died under a navigator’s control, the pilot’s brain insisted that it was the navigator himself who had died. Most became human vegetables. A few lucky ones survived but they were never the same.
Behind him, the undead magic swelled.
Hugh spun, ready to meet the attack.
The vamp charged, red eyes blazing.
A white blur cut between him and the undead and turned into Elara, her hand locked on the bloodsucker’s throat.
What the hell was this?
The undead shuddered in her grip. It should’ve torn her in two by now.
Elara looked into its eyes and opened her mouth. “Let go.”
The vamp’s eyes flared with ruby light as the navigator bailed. Elara squeezed. He felt the faint flicker of power, a silvery veil snapping to the vamp’s hide from her fingers. Old magic licked Hugh’s senses, awakening some long-forgotten instinct buried under layers of civilization. The hair on the back of his neck rose.
The bloodsucker went limp. She released it, and it crumpled to the ground. She picked up the skirt of her green dress and stepped over it.
Exactly the same as the first time with the tikbalang. His pulse sped up. He had no idea how she did it, and he had to find out before she did it to him.
Elara tilted her head. She’d braided her hair and wrapped it into a complicated knot on the back of her head. Stray wisps escaped here and there, shining when they caught a ray of sun falling through the leaves.
Hugh straightened, resting the blade of his sword on his shoulder. “Wife.”
“Husband.”
It had been a week since their last fight. She’d been conveniently busy. Hugh had a feeling she was avoiding him. The fun question was, did she do it because she didn’t want to fight or did she do it because she looked at him a half a second too long when he stood near naked in front of her that time in the bedroom?
“You came to help me. How charming,” Hugh drawled.
“That’s me. Delightfully charming.”
A distant howl echoed through the forest. Karen had caught her prey.
“Is there something you needed?” he asked.
“We got a call from Aberdine.”
Magic was a funny thing. Sometimes it killed the phone lines, other times they worked. It mattered who made the call.
“I’m aflutter with anticipation. What did the phone call say?”
“There are sheriffs riding here from the county. I told you this would happen, and it did.”
For a second, Hugh saw red, then he wrenched himself under control with an effort of will. “What did you do?”
“I did nothing,” Elara said, her voice bitter. “Now we look guilty. They will expect us to greet them together. Try to keep up.”