Dammit. He was right.
"Fine. Follow my lead and stay close. We're going to go round up Lord Raith and get him and everyone else we can out of here before - "
Marcone abruptly raised his shotgun and put a blast through one of the nearer fallen ghouls that had begun to move. It thrashed, and he put a second shell into it. The ghoul stopped moving.
That was when I noticed that the black ichor that spewed from the ghouls was on the ground...
... and it was moving.
By itself.
The black fluid rolled and ran like liquid mercury, gathering together in little droplets, then larger gobs. Those, in turn, ran over the floor - uphill, in some cases - back toward broken ghoul bodies. As I watched, bits of missing flesh ripped from the ghouls began to fill in again as the ichor returned to their bodies. The one Thomas had beheaded actually came crawling back over the floor, having regained some of the use of its legs. It was holding its head up against the stump of its neck with its one arm, and the ichor was flowing from both the severed head and the stump, merging, reattaching it. I saw the ghoul's jaws suddenly stretch, its eyes blink and then focus.
On me.
Holy crap.
Time. We didn't have much time. If even the gutted and mangled ghouls could get back up again, there was no way the vampires were winning this one. The best they could hope for was to run - and when more vamps ran, more ghouls would be free to overwhelm us. Or possibly they'd do something even more disgusting than they already had, and we'd all puke ourselves to death.
"This just can't get much more disturbing," I muttered. "Follow me."
I gripped my staff in both hands and charged ahead, into the mass of maddened vampires and ghouls, to save one monster from another.
Chapter Forty
I sprinted toward the little knot of struggling vampires around the White King, while dozens of uber-ghouls ripped into the leading families of the White Court. I slipped on some slimy ichor, but didn't fall on my ass. For me, that's actually pretty good.
I noted more details on the way, and started trying to think ahead of the next few seconds. Assuming we got to the White King in one piece and convinced Lara to team up and follow us, then what? What was the next step?
At least a dozen ghouls bounded out the tunnel, heading up that long slope to the cave's entrance. They'd be in a good position to stop Lara's mortal security forces from pushing through the tunnel to rescue the King. Stopping a charge over open ground with firearms is one thing. Using a gun to charge a large, deadly, powerful predator in close quarters is a different proposition entirely - and not a winning one.
Naturally, the ghouls in the tunnel would also be in position to intercept anyone who tried to flee, which meant that we had to leave through the gate, which meant that if Ramirez and Marcone's men lost it, we were screwed. And that meant that if Cowl was over there and saw what was going on, he would hardly sit by doing nothing.
I might be able to counter him if I were defending the gate. My skills aren't fine, but I'm pretty strong, and I'm good at adapting them on the fly. Cowl had cleaned my clock in two fights already, but slowing and delaying him wasn't the same as trying to wipe the walls with him. Even if I couldn't be a real threat to him, personally, I could tie him up long enough to hold the gate until we could skedaddle.
Ramirez couldn't. He was a dangerous combat wizard, but his skills just weren't strong enough or broad enough to pose a significant obstacle to Cowl. If Cowl - or Vitto, for that matter - saw what was going on, and the ghouls concentrated on the gate...
The shrieks and roars of the struggle on our right suddenly got louder, and I saw the resistance around Lord Skavis and his henchmen suddenly buckle. The horrible glee of the ghouls rushing into the opening was almost more terrifying than the carnage that followed. I caught a glimpse of Vitto Malvora in the middle of the mess, shoving a ghoul toward a wounded vampire, snarling at others, giving orders. The largest of the ghouls were with Vitto.
"That vampire has the strongest and largest of those creatures with him!" Marcone called to me as we ran. "He'll hit any pockets of resistance with them, use them as a hammer."
"I can see that," I snapped. "Murphy, Marcone, cover our right. Hendricks, Thomas, get ready to go in."
"Go in where?" Hendricks asked.
I took my staff in hand, focused on the fight raging around the White King, and called up my will and Hellfire. "In the hole I'm about to make," I growled. "Get them out."
"They're mostly... eating now. But the second we start to break them free," Marcone cautioned from behind me, "these others are going to come after us."
"I know," I said. "I'll handle it."
I felt something warm press up against my lower back - Murphy's shoulders. "We'll make sure that - " Her voice broke off suddenly, and that boxy little submachine gun chattered in three quick bursts, punctuated by a single throaty roar from Marcone's shotgun. "Holy crap, that was close."
"Another," Marcone warned, and the shotgun blasted again.
The air horn in Justine's hand started blaring more desperately.
"Harry!" Thomas shouted.
"Go!" I shouted at Thomas and Hendricks. Then I leveled the staff at the nearest clump of the enormous ghouls and shouted, "Forzare!"
My will lashed out, leashed to Lasciel's Hellfire, and rushed upon the ghouls, exploding in a sphere of raw force that blazed with flickers of sulfurous flame. It blew them up and outward like extras on the set of The A-Team, flying in high arcs. Some of them flew right through the falling curtain of water behind the throne and into the abyssal depths below. Others slammed hard into the nearest wall, and still others fell among the frenzied ghouls now finishing off Lord Skavis and his retainers.
Thomas and Hendricks charged forward. My brother had slipped his shotgun into a sheath over one shoulder, and now wielded his saber in one hand and that inward-bent knife in the other. The first ghoul he reached was still staggered from the blast that had sent his companions flying, and Thomas never gave him a chance to recover. The saber removed its arm, and a scything, upward-sweeping slash of the crooked knife struck its head from its shoulders. A vicious kick to the small of its back crunched into its spine and sent the maimed, beheaded creature flying into the next in the line.
Hendricks came in at Thomas's side. The big man could not possibly overpower one of the ghouls, despite all the muscle, but he did have an important factor on his side: mass. Hendricks was a huge man, three hundred pounds and more, and once I saw him hit the ghouls, I no longer had any doubts about whether he had played football. He hit an unbalanced ghoul in the back, knocking the creature sprawling, slammed the stock of the huge gun into the neck of a ghoul who turned to follow Thomas's motion, then ducked a shoulder and slammed it into the stunned creature's flank, sending it sprawling.