I ripped my hand away and trudged to the window. It was an effort to put one foot in front of the other. Everything light inside me felt like it was being sucked out.
I glanced back at Astrid to find her staring glassy-eyed at the ceiling. I’d seen that look before on Skander Rameros inside the Dominion prison. She was being drained.
Ward. Ah shit.
The Dominion mages trained for years in the art of magical extraction. They used it as one of their defences against the criminal supernaturals. They also sold the same magic bound to wards for security. As a human, the draining wouldn’t affect me as badly as it did a supernatural. Still, it felt like my limbs were made of anvils.
I was halfway to the window when a series of voices speared through the house. They sounded gargled. Their speech was unintelligible and desperate. But sometimes you don’t need words to communicate. I felt their ravening hunger as surely as I felt the fear turning my limbs into liquid.
It’s interesting how shitting your pants can light a fire in your butt. I forced myself to glance out the window and regretted it immediately. My gaze landed first on the monolith gravestones and statues in the cemetery across the street. The clichéd mist hung around the base of the gravestones as gnarled, leafless trees twined their branches to create a dappled barrier to the moon. The moon itself had a sickly green tinge to it. My attention was dragged to movement on the ground. The bare patches of earth outside could hardly be called a lawn. Never mind the outlines of the runes that had been burned into the earth. All of it faded into the background as a few dozen grey bodies lumbered closer to the house.
I’d learned about ghouls in Demonology 101. As always, seeing the image of something in a textbook was vastly different to watching it scamper toward you like a demented crab. Though they were humanoid, ghouls picked up speed by running on all fours. Right now they were hauling ass towards us. Their skin radiated faintly with an unhealthy grey glow. It was said that they had come into being as a result of necromancers turning to demonic means of controlling their power. While they weren’t overly quick for supernaturals, it was the other aspect of their being that caused the sweat on my back to turn cold. They fed on flesh and devoured everything, including bone. Sometimes, when the job was small enough, they were the cleanup crew. I liked my bones exactly where they were.
I had just completed the protection circle around the house when a hairless ghoul leaped from the driveway directly onto the window in front of me. They weren’t good at climbing, but the stupid bars on the windows allowed them purchase.
It looked right at me. The thing’s mouth was a red slash that opened wide. I watched dumbfounded as its jaw unhinged like a snake’s. It tried to chew through the wall, and in turn, my circle. I whimpered and clutched at my head as those spiny, blood-caked teeth scraped against the circle. Undead energy rolled through me. It made nausea tie up my insides in knots. Unlike my bone-witch magic which left a neutral magical footprint, undead magic was like sludge. It caked everything in despair. I understood that was how the ghouls hunted for fresh meat. They trapped their prey with lethargy and ate them alive.
Another ghoul thudded against the side of the house. The one hanging on the window used its heavily muscled arms to drag its body up so that its clawed feet could give it better traction. And then it began to pry the metal bars away. The sound in my ears was nothing to the mental tearing in my mind.
I cowered and turned away. Stumbling over to Astrid, I found her semi-conscious. “We need to go!” I shouted. I felt everything through a layer of fog. Beneath it my heart was racing at an unnatural speed. I tripped twice trying to get Astrid to stand. She blinked heavily. Every now and then her eyelids would snap open and I’d get a shot of hope. But then they would slide closed again. I’d succeeded in bracing my shoulder under her arm when the angle made me waver. As dead weight, I was never going to be able to drag her anywhere. Not for the first time, I cursed my inability to wield high magic. If I could teleport or create a portal, we would be okay. Then again if I was a mage, I’d be halfway drained by now.
“Astrid,” I pleaded. “You have to walk.”
Not that I had any idea where we would go. Still, I tried. That lasted about two steps before we went crashing back down to the floor. In that moment, a dozen sets of teeth tried to gouge holes in my circle. Blue and black light flickered all around us. My knees buckled. On the floor, I clutched my head and tried not to scream.
I wasn’t thinking straight when I approached the window again. A ghoul’s neck was as powerful as any other limb. Once they got a lock jaw on something, they would never let go. So why weren’t they tearing into my circle at a greater speed? The ghoul at the window had pried out three of the bars. Two more and it would be able to squeeze inside. Shit!
I was about to turn around and look for a weapon when my attention was drawn to a pocket of what I thought was empty air. The image wavered. And then I saw him. The same figure that had branded me between dimensions. He was moving in this direction but at an unhurried pace.
The ghoul bellowed something awful-sounding to my ears. It heaved against the bars. It kept looking behind me at Astrid. How much strength would it get from eating a Nephilim?
Panicked, I tried
