The puck looked worried and, for once, not about his clothes. “He raised the dead. I don’t know of any storm spirits that can raise the dead. Yet, he has.”
“Yeah,” I said impatiently, although thankfully only about twenty or so and we’d handled most of them so far. “So did Suyolak.” Suyolak, the pissed-off antihealer.
“Suyolak animated their flesh, not the entire body. It’s different.”
I lived in a world where there were different types of mobile putrid undead flesh. That wasn’t disturbing at all, was it?
I gave a one-shouldered shrug, using my other arm to send the last one flying at Niko, who vaulted him over the edge and zombie playtime was over. The smell, however, was going to linger with me for a while. “Suyolak’s were much harder to deal with. They were fast as hell.” Mounds of amoebalike flesh that moved so quickly you couldn’t avoid them no matter how badly you wanted. Considering how they smelled, much worse than these, that was damn badly. I did wonder where Jack had gotten them though. I couldn’t think of a cemetery near this area. But with him appearing and disappearing, a new development I didn’t care for, he could’ve brought them in from Jersey for all I knew.
“True.” But he didn’t sound entirely convinced. “The mullo were more formidable. More power had to be involved. Perhaps. But it’s still not the behavior of your average storm spirit and he’s annoying enough without a new power. He could be a new species of storm paien.” He peered at the back of my neck. “And no worries. That’s barely a hickey. I doubt a zombie lifestyle is in your future. Although with your fashion sense and ability to sleep twenty hours a day, I know Niko might disagree with me on that.”
“It would be a step up in his ability to function,” Niko said dryly as the sirens wailed in the distance. “We don’t have long. We’ve taken care of Jack’s miniature and slow-moving mob. It wasn’t even worth the time and had no amusement value at all. Now where is Jack himself?”
“Jack is here, betrayer of the Flock. I will take your skin but I will not save you.”
He was above us by nearly twenty feet, a cloud with shadow tendrils stretching out, a hundred—no, a thousand small storms. I already had the MP7 out and pointed up. “Hear that, Nik? Your skin isn’t worth saving now. No Niko-shaped square in his quilt. Maybe you should loofah more? Is that what they call it? A loofah? You know, one of those scrubbing things?”
I’d already pulled the middle part of the trigger to disarm the safety and now eased the trigger down. No single shots for me. I had a forty-round magazine and I didn’t plan on taking a single round home with me.
Robin and Niko had already spread out. Jack was too far for a sword and they’d proved ineffective anyway, but Niko had scooped up the flamethrower, our third use now since we’d bought it. It was nice to get the bang for your buck. He sprayed an astounding plume of flames, the finger of a fiery god, at Jack. That, combined with my armor-piercing rounds had Jack spinning, a small agitated tornado. The rounds seemed to be pushing him back. He might be made of rock or crystal or God knew what but it wasn’t much stronger than armor because he felt it. I could see it in the shudder as I aimed the blast higher toward the glow of his eyes.
Jack decided that was enough. Robin had gone away from the fire and Nik toward it to cover as much of the bridge as possible. Jack, who apparently disliked the armor piercing rounds more than flames, fell on me with the force of a demolished building. Knocking both of my arms outward, the MP7 almost skittered out of my hand, almost being key. My breath exploded from my lungs from the force of his landing. I thought I felt a rib or two crack as well. It wasn’t a good feeling and unfortunately I was familiar with it. The weight of him was the same as the night in my bedroom, not crushingly heavy but immovable. I started to gate, this time hoping to take something important of his with me—something he couldn’t live without, but then hesitated. Niko had said that wasn’t the way. Fight like an Auphe, become an Auphe, kill my brother like an Auphe. I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t want to be that Auphe even more.
“You are not mine to save, but, if I wish, you can be mine to kill. I protect the Flock from wolves and vermin such as you.” He was skinning humans, but I was the wolf at the door in this scenario. That hurt my feelings. Okay, maybe not so much. He was a dick all the same though.
His breath was cold against my face, the frigid cold of altitudes so high oxygen clung there precariously. Not that I could see his mouth behind the shaded mist. Not that I wanted to. There were probably teeth there, the kind that would make a great white suck his fin and cry for his mommy. That tended to be the kind of teeth that I usually found less than an inch from my face.
“Cal, gate! Gate now!”
That was Nik. Nik was telling me to gate. If Nik said it was okay, I was going with that.