flesh and withdrawing a tiny figurine resembling a white ape. The ghoul spoke a single activating word and the ape's mouth opened, unleashing a torrent of frigid air at Scorch. Yeti's Breath was a powerful spell – with an accompanying stench so rank that it would make a carrion imp retch – and within seconds Scorch's flame had been extinguished and the demon was encased in a thick shell of ice. As strong as she was Scorch couldn't break free of her frozen prison and all she could do was stand there, literally frozen in place, as the ghoul grinned and started running toward the exit, the autograph book – which was singed around the edges a bit but otherwise undamaged – clutched in her hand.
I saw a blur of movement on my left and heard more than felt a rush of wind as something moved past me at a high rate of speed. Tavi was a mixblood, a shapeshifter who'd chosen to have his natural abilities augmented by genetic engineering at Doctor M's House of Pain. In his case the enhancement was rather clever: the lyke was a hybrid of mongoose and cobra, though he steadfastly refused to tell anyone which wereform he'd been born with originally. Tavi still wore his Nehru jacket and pants, but his limbs had become lean and sinuous and his hands and face were covered with a mixture of mammal fur and reptilian scale. His head was shaped like that of a mongoose with a cobra's hood and fangs. The overall effect worked surprisingly well, far better than many mixbloods who look like something out of Darwin's worst nightmares. In his wereform Tavi moved with a liquid grace that was beautiful to see and which had no doubt served him extremely well in his former career as a thief.
Though much of the crowd had managed to get away from Scorch and the ghoul there were still enough audience members in the way that Tavi was forced to detour around them and while he did so with great velocity it slowed him down just enough to give the ghoul time to prepare for his attack. Once again she plunged her hand into her side, only this time she brought out a small black sphere and dashed it to the floor. The sphere was glass and shattered on impact, releasing a black liquid substance that rapidly spread into a thin coating about two feet wide and three feet long. Tavi was moving too fast to avoid the black liquid and he ran right into it. The instant Tavi's feet came in contact with the tar-like goo they stuck fast; unfortunately momentum carried the rest of his body forward. The sound of breaking bone cut through the air as Tavi's ankles snapped and the lyke screamed in agony as he pitched forward and slammed face-first into the floor. Lykes are tough and they heal damn fast, but they still feel pain and Tavi was suffering quite a bit of it then. Still, he raised his head, opened his mouth wide, and spat a stream of venom directly into the ghoul's eyes. I expected to hear the ghoul scream then, but all she did was reach up to wipe the venom from her eyes and then continued running toward the exit. Tavi tried to pull free of the black substance that had hold of him, but it was no use. He was stuck fast.
Two of our team were down and the ghoul – or whoever it was hiding behind a ghoul's guise – hadn't broken a sweat. The Midnight Watch hadn't exactly covered itself in glory so far.
I hadn't stopped moving toward the ghoul, but running isn't something my zombie body is good at. The best I can manage is a sprightly shuffle that, while more than a little embarrassing, manages to get me from point A to point B faster than walking. But the ghoul was running full out and she was running at an angle away from me. Devona was heading for her as well, but the ghoul was moving away from her too. Fortunately for our team the direction the ghoul had chosen led her directly toward Bogdan. The warlock's specialty was the materialization of physical objects and not just any object but precisely what he needed most at any given moment. When he'd first joined the Midnight Watch I asked him how he knew what objects he might need – and for that matter, where they came from – and with a smile and a wink he give me the same answer for both questions. 'I don't know. I simply work my magic and trust in Providence.'
Have you ever heard such crap?
Bogdan lost no time in appealing to Providence then. He gestured with his right hand and a metallic fan appeared in his fingers, each gleaming section sharp as a razor. With an unnecessarily theatrical flick of his hand Bogdan spread the fan out and then flung it toward the rapidly approaching ghoul. The sections of the fan separated as they flew toward the ghoul, becoming a dozen deadly missiles.
It was a neat trick and I might have applauded if the ghoul hadn't simply ducked and rolled beneath the blades. The ghoul came up onto her feet and continued running without breaking stride, leaving Bogdan's fan blades flying toward innocent bystanders. One of the blades flew in my general direction and I intended to ignore it until I saw that it was heading toward the verman server who'd spoken to me earlier, the one who was missing half of his left ear. Without thinking about it I flung myself forward and intercepted the blade. It thunked into my side just below my right armpit, slid neatly between a couple of ribs and stayed there. I felt nothing beyond a slight pressure – one of the advantages of being dead – and I managed to keep my balance and avoid falling, which was good. If I break any bones, it doesn't hurt, but it can impair my mobility and I needed to remain ambulatory if we were going to have any chance at stopping the ghoul from getting away with Scream Queen's voice.
The verman looked at me with an expression that seemed thoughtful, almost appraising in a way, but I didn't have time to deal with him right then. I had a ghoul to catch.
Bogdan had been thrown off by his miss and he'd stood gaping with horror as his fan blades struck several audience members. Given the fact that none of those wounded were human, the damage wasn't anything they couldn't heal sooner or later, so Bogdan was able to forget about them and refocus his attention on the ghoul. Unfortunately he wasn't able to do so in time to stop her from reaching him and delivering a solid punch to his throat. The warlock's eyes bulged, his face turned red, and his mouth opened wide but he wasn't able to breathe in. The blow had crushed his trachea. Gasping ineffectively, his red face already starting to shade toward purple, Bogdan fell to his knees and slapped his hands to his throat. He closed his eyes and his lips began to move soundlessly as he worked a healing spell. His specialty might be the conjuring of useful objects, but he knew enough basic magic to heal himself. But doing so meant he wasn't going to be anymore help in stopping the ghoul – not that he'd been much help as it was.
Sinsation's bouncer decided to enter the fray then and the monster surged through the crowd toward the ghoul, moving with a speed and grace that was shocking given his enormous size. His face sported a savage grin and there was cold delight in his eyes. He'd literally been born to bust heads and now he had another chance to fulfill his life's purpose. For one of the repurposed dead it didn't get any better than this.
I'm not territorial. If Frankie Jr could get the job done, more power to him. All I cared about was making sure that the ghoul didn't get away with Scream Queen's voice.
The ghoul noted the monster's approach – no big feat; considering his size, he was damned hard to miss – and she reached into her body and pulled out a tiny metal disk. With a quick flick of her wrist she sent the object sailing toward the bouncer. The disk struck him on the forehead, right on the scar line, and stuck to the flesh as if covered with glue. Crackling tendrils of electricity shot forth from the disk's metal surface, spreading outward to surround the monster's head in a cage of miniature lightning.
The bouncer stopped running toward the ghoul, his body spasmed several times, and then lines of smoke curled forth from his nostrils. His eyes rolled over white and for an instant the monster stood there, white-eyed and stiff-legged, and then the giant collapsed to the floor with a sound like a dozen bags of cement dropped from a half-mile up.
Frankenstein monsters are born of electricity and if you can overload the energy matrices of their central nervous system it's like flipping their off switch, a fact the ghoul was obviously all too aware of.
Four down and – since she's far faster than I am – it was Devona's turn at the ghoul.
Half-vampires aren't as swift as their full-blooded relatives, but they're a damn sight faster than humans, let alone a shuffle-gaited zombie, and Devona managed to reach the ghoul when she was within a dozen feet of the exit. Devona's stronger than a human, but she's not trained in hand-to-hand combat, and physical confrontation doesn't suit her personality. What she is trained in, however, is security magic. And that meant she'd taken the precaution of having a special enchantment placed on all of Sinsation's exits earlier that day, an enchantment she now activated by speaking a phrase in a language I didn't understand, but which I recognized as the ancient tongue of the Bloodborn. The edges of the main entrance began to glow and a red mist rose from the floor in curling crimson tendrils, rapidly rising upward to completely block the doorway. The spell was simple: the red mist would prevent Scream Queen from passing through. To anyone else, the mist would be nothing more than that, easily passable, but to the banshee singer – or to anyone trying to force her physically through the doorway – the mist would feel solid as rock. How do you keep someone from abducting your client? Make sure she's physically incapable of leaving the premises. Of course, the ghoul wasn't carrying Scream Queen, just her voice, but I assumed the principle would be the same.
Evidently the ghoul made the same assumption – or maybe she simply assumed the red mist would do something nasty to her if she tried to go through it – for she came to a stop and spun around to face Devona.
