fingers, I noted, were flexible, like a pianist’s—even on the hand that I’d seen Stefan cut off.
Subtle magic infused the air and the atmosphere attained that odd hollow quality that I associated with the full moon dance. Pack magic sealed the sound on such nights so that only the wolves and their prey could hear the howls of the hunt.
The ogre stepped out of the shadows, shadows that hadn’t been there because we were out in an open field where there was nothing but knee-deep alfalfa, carrying an eight-foot-long wooden fence post in one beefy hand. It brought the post smashing down on Wulfe—who took two steps to the side without ceasing his magic-making.
I had never seen an ogre in its real form before. I’d met one at Uncle Mike’s, but I’d only ever seen her in her human guise—tall, slim, and disapproving of the chaos of the birthday party we’d been celebrating. Tad’s fourteenth, as I recalled.
This ogre was eight feet tall and weighed in at probably four hundred to five hundred pounds. A stiff ruff of bright orange hair ringed its neck and then rose up the back of its head, giving the appearance of a cross between a Mohawk and the crest of a cockatoo. There were seams in its skin, tidily stitched up. One ran across its forehead. One looped its left arm—and as soon as I noted that, I could see that its left arm was a little longer and the wisps of hair growing on the forearm were dark brown. Stitches ringed both legs just below the knee . . . right where Sherwood’s leg had been taken off, I thought with a chill.
That pet who had killed the master-zombie maker that Wulfe had been so disturbingly impressed with. I wondered if it had been a werewolf.
Like, presumably, Wulfe’s stolen zombie, this one had no smell of rot. If I hadn’t had the past couple of weeks to get a good taste of what zombies smell like, I wasn’t sure I’d have picked the ogre out as a zombie. And it had used magic to conceal itself.
Mindful of Zee’s assessment of my capabilities, I drew my cutlass but took up a stance just behind and to the left of Wulfe.
“Always happy to shield a lady,” said Wulfe, a little breathlessly.
“I figure that when it’s occupied smashing you to jelly, I might get a lucky shot at its eye,” I responded. “I don’t care how tough a creature is, I’ve never seen one shake off a cutlass in its eye.”
“Okay,” said Wulfe cheerfully. “Happy to oblige by distracting the ogre with my grisly remains.”
After that first attack, though, the ogre didn’t get another chance at Wulfe. I’d seen Zee fight before. And I’d seen Tad. But I’d never seen them fight together, armed with their favorite weapons.
It hurt a little. Somewhere in my head, I had Tad pictured, always, as the bright-eyed, brash, and self-assured little boy who’d run his father’s garage by himself for weeks. His mother had just died from cancer and his father, the immortal smith, had tried to drink himself to oblivion. Tad was capable, cheery, confident—and ten years old in my head, until that fight.
He had a pair of hatchets, one in each hand, and a bigger axe strapped to his back. The tunic rippled light so it was difficult to keep track of him, so I mostly saw him in snatches of still movement—midleap six feet in the air throwing one of the hatchets. That hatchet ended up in the ogre’s left elbow. The next time I caught a glimpse of him, he was rolling on the ground to get beneath the stroke of that big fence post. He was beautiful and deadly—and decidedly not an innocent, if competent, ten-year-old boy.
If Tad was shadow, then Zee was sunlight. His sword blazed orange and red and hissed as it drew dark lines on the ogre’s skin, howled when it slid through flesh and bone. Zee didn’t drop his glamour, and it would have been odd for someone who didn’t know who and what he was to see an old man moving with such grace and power. He didn’t appear to move fast or use any particular effort. He’d step back and the fence post would slide by his face—not by inches but by millimeters. He simply moved his hand and his sword would cut through the ogre’s knee joint as if it were cheese, leaving the ogre’s severed flesh burning