Skin Game

Eighteen

Tearing through drywall is a surprisingly noisy process. It breaks with loud crunching, snapping noises. Ghouls have been known to claw their way through inches of stone mausoleum wall to get to a nice rotten corpse to eat, and they had very little trouble with drywall and wood, their claws and hunched shoulders ripping through it at a steady pace.

We had maybe sixty seconds, at most, before they would be romping through the wall and into the building on either side of us.

“They’re coming,” Harvey gasped. “They’re going to get us. What do we do?”

My own heart was beating a lot faster than it had been a moment ago. Ghouls were no joke. And a close, confined space like this was the worst possible situation in which a wizard could take them on. My spell-armored duster wouldn’t be of much help when one of them was chewing on my head. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve faced danger. When your life is under threat and you know it, you’re scared, end of story.

Fear-real, silvery, adrenaline-charged fear-rocketed through me.

“Um,” I said, not panicking. “We. .”

I was going to say “back up.” I really was. But Tessa was staring at me with a smug, gloating expression on her face, and I was suddenly infuriated. Tessa was special. The last time I’d seen her, she’d put a good man in the hospital for months and left him permanently maimed. It was a miracle, literally, that he’d lived at all.

She hurt my friend.

The Winter surged up inside me in time with my rage, and I suddenly put a much higher priority on the fact that I still owed her for that.

“Get behind me and stay close,” I growled instead.

“What?” Harvey blurted.

I had the satisfaction of seeing Tessa’s gloating expression falter for a fraction of a second, tipped off by something in my face, maybe, before I dropped my shield, extended my staff in my right hand, called upon Winter, and snarled, “Infriga!”

A howl of arctic air billowed out onto the display floor, blanketing every object in it-the floor, the ceiling, and the walls-in an instant layer of flash-frost. The sudden shift in temperature condensed the air into frozen mist, a fog thick enough to cut visibility to five or six feet-a situation that would be much more to the advantage of the team with fewer members, making it harder for the enemy to coordinate their superior numbers.

I strode forward through the fog, closing the distance on Tessa so that I could get her in sight again before she recovered and started maneuvering on me. In a perfect world, I would have found her frozen into a block of bitterly cold Winter ice-but she was a sorceress, and not a dime-store amateur, either. As I came in sight through the fog, I saw her stumbling back, her foremost insect-arms crossed in a defensive gesture, her image blurry on the other side of a C-shaped wall of ice that had not quite managed to engulf her entirely.

I gestured with the staff and snarled, “Forzare!”

The frozen wall exploded into chunks and shards of knife-edged, crystalline ice, as deadly as a cloud of shrapnel. She tried to fling herself to one side, but stunned by the intensity of the attack, she didn’t account for the ice-coated tile floor beneath her legs-floor that provided me with footing as sure and solid as a basketball court. Insect legs skittered wildly, and the ice tore into her chitin-covered body, sending splatters of dark green ichor everywhere, even as the mantis-head half slithered up over her human face, swallowing it down again. Hotly glowing green eyes opened above the insectoid mantis-eyes of Tessa’s demonform, blazing with immortal rage, and as the swirling mists closed around them, the eyes of Tessa’s patron Fallen angel were all that I could see of her.

“Hey, Imariel!” I snarled. “I got some for you, too! Fuego!”

As I spoke the words, I hurled the fusion of my will and elemental flame through my staff, imbuing the spell that ran through it with the silver-white fire of Creation itself. A basketball-sized comet of blazing soulfire soared through the air like a chord of triumphant choir music and detonated upon those glowing eyes in thunder and fury, in steam and even more mist. The eyes vanished in time with a teakettle scream of hellish fury and a thunderous crash of shattering brick from the far end of the building.

That bought me a little time, at least. I whirled and dragged Harvey behind me just as the quickest or luckiest of the ghouls loomed out of the mist and flung itself bodily at my head.

No time for a spell. No need for one. With the full power of Winter still singing through my limbs, I whirled my heavy oaken quarterstaff and met the leaping ghoul with a strike that used the full power of my arms, shoulders, hips, and legs. I struck it across one shoulder, and there was a wet, sickening crack of breaking bone and limbs being torn out of joint. I hammered the ghoul to the floor with the same blow, as if it had been an overeager kitten jumping at me, and drew a yowling shriek of surprised anguish from it as it landed.

My mind flashed to a pair of young wizards, brother and sister, tormented to death by ghouls on my watch, a few years back-and I remembered that I owed them a debt, collectively, as well. I kicked the downed ghoul hard enough to send it sliding away over the icy floor, and though it was already taxing my reserves to call up that kind of power, I again unleashed Winter, snarling, “Infriga!”

The ghoul had no defenses against that kind of magic. An instant later, there was a white, vaguely ghoul-shaped block of ice where the creature had been. The block kept sliding, grinding over the icy floor. .

. . and fetched up against the clawed feet of the other three ghouls.

The three stared at the block of ice for a startled quarter-second, and then, as one, fixed me with hate-filled eyes and let out snarls of utter fury.

Yikes.

Time slowed down as they crouched to spring toward me.

Entombing one ghoul in ice was one thing. Doing it to three of them was something else entirely. If I took the time to take out one of them, the other two would be upon me almost before the words had left my lips, and four ghouls minus two ghouls is two ghouls too many. When you’re outnumbered as badly as I was, inflicting two-to-one casualties is just another way to say that you lost and got eaten.

I had to change the footing of this fight.

The ghoul on my left was a shade faster than his two fellows, and I sprang to my left, drawing him with me, creating a little more space between him and his companions. As his clawed feet left the ground, I gestured with my staff, calling upon Winter again and shouting, “Glacivallare!”

With a shriek, a sheet of ice a foot and a half thick rose from floor to ceiling in a ruler-straight line cutting diagonally across the sales floor. The ice clipped the lead ghoul’s heels as it shot upward, slamming into the ceiling in front of the other two with an ear-tearing grinding noise.

My timing had been solid. It was a one-on-one fight again. I felt a surge of triumph.

That lasted for maybe a quarter of a second, and then the leaping ghoul hit me like a professional linebacker. Who was also a hungry cannibal.

He slammed into me hard enough to break ribs, and I had to hope that the crackling sound I heard was shifting ice. We went down hard, with me on bottom, my duster now sliding over the hard surface, dispersing some of the energy of the hit.

The ghoul knew exactly what it was doing. I’d tangled with them a few times before, and in a fight, ghouls are mostly all unfocused ferocity and brute strength, ripping and tearing at whatever they can reach. This one didn’t do that. He got both hands on my staff, wrenching it aside with that hunched, fantastic strength, and ducked his head in close, going for my throat, for the immediate kill. I knew enough about hand-to-hand fighting to recognize technique and discipline when I saw it. It was the difference in fighting a furious drunken amateur and taking on a trained soldier or a champion mixed martial artist.

Over the years, I’d picked up some technique of my own, from Karrin and the others. I provided an instant’s resistance against the ghoul’s wrenching of my quarterstaff, then released it as I doubled up my body, pushing the ghoul up as hard as I could with my legs, trying to shove him to one side.

I didn’t fling him off me or anything, but simultaneously taking his balance and giving him a solid impetus in a new direction let me dump him to the ice just as his jaws began to snap closed on my throat. I felt a flash of sensation there as his weight vanished, and I rolled frantically in the opposite direction, using the momentum of the push to get me going.

I came to my feet, a hair faster than the ghoul warrior, already reaching for a fire spell in my mind-but without the aid of my staff to focus the energy of the spell more efficiently and effectively, I was a shade too slow getting it together. The ghoul came back to his feet, his claws digging at the ice, and promptly came at me with my own damned staff, whirling it like he knew how to use it.

I let out a yelp and started dodging. If we’d been standing on the street, he’d have tenderized me into a pulpy mess that he’d barely need to chew. But we weren’t standing on the street. We fought in the frozen arctic air of the little store coated in Winter ice. The ice betrayed him at every movement, forcing him to constantly keep his balance in check, while to the Winter Knight it was as smooth and safe as a dance studio’s floor. I ducked around empty clothes racks, dumping a couple of them at the ghoul as he came at me, hoping to knock him down, and changed direction constantly, hoping to open the gap between us or force him to lose his balance. All I needed was a portion of a second to bring another spell into play and end the fight.

Problem was, the ghoul knew it. He came at me smart and fast and balanced, and as long as he could keep doing it, he had me in a stalemate. All he had to do was hold me until his friends either ripped through the wall or loped around it, and I was done.

Stars and stones, I was missing my force rings right about then. And my blasting rod, and shield bracelet, and every other little magical craft tool I’d ever designed. But when my lab and its accompanying gear had been destroyed, it had severely cut down my options on what I could manufacture-and being stuck out on the island the whole winter with harshly limited resources, limited by what my brother could round up and bring on a boat, I’d not yet had a chance to set up anything as elaborate and as extensively personalized as a new lab. I’d managed the staff and the wooden skull, working at a laboriously glacial pace, but practically all I’d had to work with was a small set of knives and some sandpaper left over from the construction of the Whatsup Dock.

Preparation! Dammit, Harry. The key to survival as a wizard is preparation!

I could hear sledgehammer blows being delivered to my ice wall, and though I couldn’t see it in the fog, I could hear the change of pitch in each impact, as the ice began to crack and shatter.

“Oh God!” Harvey shouted in a panic. I couldn’t see him either, and I’d forgotten about him for a second. He was probably right where I’d left him, within a few feet of the wall, and able to see exactly what was happening.

The other two ghouls were coming through.

Something inside me started screaming along with poor Harvey.

It was time for a desperate risk.

I abruptly shifted direction and charged the warrior ghoul.

My staff flickered at my head. I raised my left arm to block, trying to take the blow on the meaty muscle of my forearm. Though I didn’t feel any pain, the impact sent a flash of white light across my vision. My duster’s sleeve caught some of the blow, but not much. Its defensive spells were really meant to slow and disperse fast-moving objects like bullets, or to stop the penetration of sharp things. A big blunt instrument had no subtlety, but it was merry hell to defend against.

I found myself inside the quarterstaff’s reach, and promptly slammed my head against the end of the ghoul’s muzzle. He let out a yowl of surprise and anger, his forward momentum abruptly stalled, and I followed up with a one-armed push using every bit of muscle the Winter mantle could muster.

The ghoul staggered back several steps and then his feet went out from under him!

Hope sparked and kindled will. As the ghoul fell, I let out a triumphant howl of “Infriga!”

Winter howled into the little store for the fifth time in maybe sixty seconds, blanketing the fallen ghoul warrior in absolute cold and boiling fog. I panted frantically for a couple of seconds, until the fog boiled away enough to let me see the warrior ghoul in its frozen sarcophagus.

“Harvey!” I croaked. “Harvey, sound off!”

“Oh God!” Harvey sobbed. “Oh God!”

“Yeah, or that,” I muttered, and hurried toward the sound.

I reached him just as the other two ghouls pounded their way through the wall. Harvey let out a shockingly high-pitched squealing sound and scrambled in helpless panic on the slippery ice.

I raised my frost-coated right hand, gathered my will for another spell-

— and found a patch of white blankness in front of my eyes. I blinked and suddenly I was sitting on the ice next to Harvey, wondering how I’d gotten down there.

Winter, I realized. I called up too much power, too fast, with too little chance to rest. I’d burned up my reserves of magical energy, to the point where it threatened to rob me of consciousness. But even now, I didn’t feel magically exhausted.

Of course you don’t feel it, dummy. You’re the Winter Knight.

I blinked a couple of times, and then looked down at my left arm, which was sending me some sort of odd, pulsing sensation.

My duster’s sleeve was being distended from the inside by something pointy. It took me an effort of conscious observation and logical processing to realize that it was my own broken arm.

A seven-foot section of the ice wall suddenly shattered and fell to the floor with a groan.

I shoved myself to my feet with my good arm as the other two warrior ghouls came through the opening.

No magic.

No weapons.

No options.

I set my teeth in a defiant, futile snarl and the ghouls pounced.