said. “You can free them—”
“Vampire,” called Magda triumphantly over the top of Elizaveta’s voice. “He’s a vampire, Ishtar.”
“Abbot,” purred Death. I mean Patience. Patience is not nearly as scary as Death, right?
The dragon zombie turned its attack to the ground, digging in the dirt at the base of the concrete. Concrete—the kind poured for patios—would not have slowed down a werewolf, and it didn’t slow down the dragon, either. For a zombie, this one was smart.
This is wrong, said Coyote’s voice in my head, and he didn’t mean the way the dragon was burrowing into our zombie-free zone.
There were no words for how beautiful the dragon was—even if it was smaller than I’d expected a dragon to be. The bones of its face were covered by minute scales, each glittering like a gem in the light of the fire. A thousand points of light that blossomed into an iridescent blanket. Delicate, impossibly fragile-looking membranous wings were held out to balance the dragon as it dug. Great purple eyes were fixed on its goal.
I could only imagine what it would have looked like if it had been alive.
This zombie was an abomination.
Wrong.
I raised my hand toward her. Maybe it was by chance, or maybe she had felt me watching her, but she raised her eyes to mine. Hers, not its. There was something looking at me from inside those eyes. Tears gathered in my own eyes at the terrible evil of what had been done to her.
Wood scraped near me and I looked over at the table the dragon had smashed. Abbot crawled out of the shelter he’d found in the broken boards. He was wearing clothing that had once been suitable for meeting the president, but I didn’t think there was a dry cleaner in the world who could repair it now. There was blood smeared around his mouth and down the front of his shirt and pants.
“Vampire,” he said.
And he gathered power, a black mass of crafting. Witch, I thought, not zombie. He strode forward as if he hadn’t just been hiding under a pile of wood, as if he hadn’t gnawed into the senator’s leg when Campbell was tied and couldn’t defend himself. He walked like a warrior wading into a familiar battlefield.
“Wulfe!” I screamed.
Wulfe was too busy with the witches to pay attention. I didn’t know what to do. Wulfe had made it quite clear that once he’d engaged in battle, I was to stay away.
Abbot pulled a knife from a pocket, flicked it open, and cut himself. Then in a gesture that reminded me of Sherwood’s motion earlier tonight, he flung his own blood at Wulfe’s back. I was too far away and it was too dark—the firelight was tricky, full of strong light and shadows—to see if it hit Wulfe.
But it must have. Because when Abbot took all the power he’d gathered and shoved it into his voice, saying, “Vampire,” Wulfe froze.
The two witches stopped their dance midmove. I don’t know what Magda’s face looked like, because I was watching the smile bloom on Patience’s face. Death’s face. Because patience is a virtue and there was nothing good about the expression on her face.
“Oh, vampire,” Magda said. “We haven’t had a vampire like you to play with in a long time. Ours used to be fun, but now she only curls up in a corner and cries.”
And just at that moment, the dragon’s claws broke through the concrete and my attention was forced to a more immediate problem. The zombie ripped a two-foot-square chunk away from the patio and hauled it down.
For a moment I could see a hole, and then it was filled with dragon. She’d misjudged; there wasn’t enough room for her to squeeze through. But she’d already proven that Elizaveta’s circle only went down to the ground, and that the ground and concrete were no match for her. It would only take a moment for her to widen the hole.
I don’t know why I didn’t run screaming. But Coyote’s voice still rang in my head. Also, after all the sadness I felt in seeing this thing that had once been a dragon, there was no room inside me for anything else—not even healthy emotions like terror or self-preservation.
Touch is important in magic.
I reached down and put my hand on her forehead. She couldn’t quite get her shoulders and forelimbs through, but all she would have had to do was twist her head and she could have taken off my arm at the