not like the zombie, which had been darkened by fire. This thing looked fresh out of the box new, without a mark on it. The black was a shiny, lustrous gleam of a color, like the paint on a luxury car, or the patina of black pearls. It was broken up into a thousand small scales—if the size of a medieval shield is considered small—that shaded to gray and then to white on its belly, getting smaller and tighter as they went, down to maybe the size of my fist.
I shouldn’t have been able to see it so well from this distance, but I guess my hawk charm was still functional. Because I was getting a perfect view of round, wicked black eyes reflecting the lamplight like golden suns. And of fangs longer than my body. And of a tongue flicking out in between them, as if testing the air, looking for . . .
Something.
My stomach gave a lurch, but I didn’t have time to decode the message it was sending before the burning zombie lunged. How it had hoisted itself up Mount Rubble I didn’t know, and didn’t care. I put two bullets in what was left of its brain and kicked it back into the other two, who were also clumsily headed up. More of the creatures turned their heads my way, as if on a string, drawn to the echoing sound of the bullets.
But not the main event. It just stayed where it was, swaying back and forth and occasionally striking down at . . . nothing, as far as I could tell. But it wasn’t nothing.
Please God, I thought fervently. Please, just one time. Just this one, fucking time, don’t let it be—
Goddamnit!
The creature turned suddenly and I spotted Louis-Cesare, clinging to the side of its neck, just under the great hood, with a sword in his hand. He clearly intended to use it to chop off the head. Which would have been fine, which would have been great, except that that wasn’t going to work, and where the hell had I put—
“Where he come from?” Lantern Boy shrieked, spotting him, too, and then clapped a hand over his mouth, not that it mattered at this point.
“He does that,” I muttered, searching frantically through my jacket.
“Does what?”
“It’s called the Veil. He goes . . . dim,” I explained—badly, but who had time for—
A muffled scream from Lantern Boy had me looking up, just in time to see my lover hit the far wall of the great chamber, hard enough to leave a Louis-Cesare shaped divot in a cavorting goddess. I didn’t know who she was, but she had a tambourine in her hand and was wearing a ton of golden spangles, each of which appeared to be made out of actual gold and was as long as a spear. Which became a problem when Louis-Cesare fell to the ground and they stabbed down on top of him.
He was a master; they wouldn’t kill him. But they could pin him for a second, and a second was all that thing needed. And if there was anyone else still able to help, I didn’t see them.
In a split second, I spotted hairy chested Rashid, his bald head gleaming in the torchlight, his body writhing on a spear half buried in solid rock. Nearby was bearded Bahram, on his feet but wrestling with half a dozen energetic looking zombies. Zakarriyyah was also still standing, in front of a pile of the wounded, defending them alone with a single sabre. Even That Bitch had gotten in on the act, with twin daggers in her hands and a snarl on her pretty face, as she stared down two partially burnt corpses.
But no one else had been crazy enough to take on the main event, no one but my husband. Who was about to pay for it. The huge, hooded head reared back, the fangs descended, the body lunged—
And was hit by a double barrage of bullets as I sped across the floor, a bright red crotch rocket between my thighs, a defiant scream on my lips, and two .44 Magnums in my hands.
The bullets didn’t hurt it; I hadn’t expected them to hurt it. The damned thing had survived a funeral pyre and come out shiny and spit polished. But they got its attention.
Oh, boy, did they get its attention.
And goddamn, the creature was fast. It didn’t so much stop its lunge as change direction, almost quicker than my eyes could