Chapter 18

Thanks to Lucy's GPS and Isaiah's directions, we had no trouble finding the field outside Oakdale where he'd buried his pack's remains.

Even if we hadn't known the exact location, though, I could have guided us there once we were close. My dark magic roiled, making my stomach churn and my skin crawl, even as it pulled me toward the wolves' grave. I squashed the sensation with my own magic, though the queasiness remained.

The streets of Oakdale were silent and deserted at three in the morning. Now that I knew to look for them, I noticed supe lights among the streetlights, their bluish tint giving the empty streets an eerie, otherworldly glow.

The field was adjacent to an abandoned salvage yard. Lucy parked her jeep near a couple of motorcycles and cars. I wondered if they'd belonged to members of the pack.

I reached for my door. "Stay in the jeep," Lucy said. "This is a League investigation."

"I know how not to contaminate a crime scene."

"I'm not asking you." She unbuckled her seatbelt. "Stay put."

"If this is because of what happened at the roadhouse with that bloody T-shirt, I've got that under control."

She opened her door. "Whatever magic you've got that likes these things has been prickling since we rolled into town. I have no idea what you're capable of. If you lose control again like you did back at Hawthorne's, I'll have to do whatever needs doing to protect myself and others. That includes the use of deadly force, which I don't want to use since I kinda like you, and because I really do not like paperwork. So please stay in the damn jeep. " She got out.

"Can Malcolm go with you to look around and watch your back?" I asked as she reached to close her door.

She thought about it, then nodded. "Okay. Come on, Malcolm."

"Go on ahead," he told her. "I'll catch up."

Lucy shut her door, took a heavy rucksack from the back of our vehicle, and headed out across the field, picking her way through the grass by our headlights. To my surprise, her skin was pearlescent in the jeep's supe lights, similar to the ghosts we'd seen along the road on the way to Oakdale. She'd said she was part dead, whatever that meant, so I supposed that shimmery glow confirmed it.

"I'm sorry for what I said about your magic," Malcolm said to me when she was out of earshot. "I know you're mad about it and you probably don't want to talk right now, but I wanted to tell you that, at least."

"Apology accepted. We'll have time to talk about it later. Go spy for me and see what you can find out about what killed the werewolves."

"Roger that. Honk if you need us." He zipped away to join Lucy.

My new cat-dragon seemed to have gone back to sleep. I set her basket on the driver's seat and dug into one of the travel bags we'd brought from Hawthorne's. It contained a large refillable bottle of water emblazoned with the roadhouse's logo, several sandwiches wrapped in paper, an apple, an orange, and various snacks—some of which I recognized, and some I didn't.

I ate a sandwich and an apple as Daisy and I watched Lucy and Malcolm investigate the wolves' grave. Lucy's gear bag included a camp shovel, which she used to unearth some of the remains. She and Malcolm studied what they'd uncovered, and she took pictures of the grave with her phone.

I unwrapped the other sandwich and ate it too while I waited. Despite the nausea caused by proximity to the grave, I was famished. When the sandwich was gone, I tore open a bag of chips.

Daisy nudged my shoulder. I patted her head. The growly snoring continued from the basket.

"I think I'll have to name her Sleepy," I told Daisy. "I wonder if she sleeps as much as a regular cat. Or maybe she sleeps as much as a regular dragon. I really have no idea what to expect from a cat-dragon. What do they eat? Will she need a litter box?"

Daisy snuffled.

"Hey, it's a real question," I protested. "Speaking of which, do you need to do your business? I'm not allowed in the crime scene, but I could at least stretch my legs."

She walked to my side of the back seat and waited by the door. I took that as a yes.

I got out and opened Daisy's door. She jumped out, gave herself a brisk shake, walked about ten feet away, and relieved herself in the grass near a large truck.

I ached all over, and my eyes burned with tiredness. Blast it, when had I gotten to the point where I couldn't stay up for a measly thirty-six hours without feeling like death? I'd hoped the food would give me energy, but instead I just felt more hungry, and no less tired.

Maybe it was all the sitting I'd done today, stiffening up my muscles after the beating I took falling through the mirror and getting tossed around by the failed tracking spell. I walked around the jeep several times, then did some stretching even though it hurt. Daisy stayed next to me, alternating between scanning the darkness for potential threats and watching me as I tried to wake up without the benefit of coffee.

The back of my neck prickled. Since Caleb's attack infected me with the shifter virus, my spidey senses had gotten sharper. My instincts told me someone was watching us. It might just be the people in the houses across the street, but if it wasn't, we could be in trouble.

I rubbed the back of my neck and crouched next to Daisy. "Do you see anyone out there watching us?" I murmured.

Daisy studied our surroundings, her eyes golden and ears forward, but she seemed calm. If something was lurking around, she wasn't aware of it. That should have made me feel better, but it didn't.

I got up and leaned against the jeep. My thoughts went to Torryn's pronouncement that I would have to cut the dark magic from my body. What blade or magic could do that? Magic wasn't a tangible thing, like a tumor or bullet—even dark magic. The sorcerer Mira? had stolen my magic in a black magic ritual, but I couldn't duplicate that feat even if I wanted to. Well, perhaps I could , if I studied the ritual, but I wouldn't, because it required a human sacrifice. I would die a hundred horrible deaths and never consider committing that kind of atrocity.

Beyond the apparent impossibility of cutting the magic out, Sean's suggestion the sorcerer power might be useful in killing Moses had stuck in my head. I knew better than anyone how difficult but necessary it was to kill my grandfather. If there was a way to use this blasted dark magic to get at Moses, I owed it to everyone to find out for sure before I tried to cut myself open, especially on the word of one little witch.

Finally, Lucy covered up what she and Malcolm had been looking at and re-packed her little spade. She stuck a flag in the ground to mark the spot for her colleagues, shouldered her gear bag, and headed back to the jeep, talking with Malcolm. I tried not to feel a little jealous at their closeness, but failed. It wasn't like me to be possessive of Malcolm. Damn it, I was tired, hungry, and perilously close to irritable.

I ate the last of my crackers as they approached and stuffed the empty package into my jeans pocket. Lucy went around to stow her gear bag in the back of the jeep, her face expressionless. I recognized the look of a law enforcement officer with her emotions on lockdown.

"What did you find?" I asked Malcolm as he floated back and forth at my side.

"A big mess, just like Isaiah described," he said heavily. "Be glad you didn't see it. It looked like someone dropped them in a food processor. Hard to tell what's missing now, with the remains all jumbled up, but we didn't see any hearts or livers."

"What else?" I prodded.

Lucy slammed the jeep's back door, startling me. I rubbed my arms. I wasn't usually a jumpy person, but this place was getting to me.

Malcolm looked even more grim. "Lucy thinks one of the women might have been pregnant, but the fetus was torn out and eaten too."

"Jeez." My stomach lurched. "What are these things?"

"We call them gravelings." Lucy came around to my side of the jeep, cleaning her hands with a wet wipe. "It's really a catch-all term for creatures from the Underworld. They come in all shapes and sizes. They're nasty, merciless, and bloodthirsty. They're incredibly difficult to kill because they're fast, armed with more teeth and claws than you'd think possible, and formed from some kind of primordial ooze and dark magic."

"So what's the bad news?" Malcolm asked dryly.

Lucy's laugh was short, almost like a bark. "They're most active at night, hide during the day, and are single-minded about slaughtering. The more violent their prey, the better they like it. You can't reason with them—you kill them."

"So we follow the trail to wherever they're coming from, kill the ones we find along the way, and shut the door," I said. After we got our hands on Mariela, anyway.

" We are doing no such thing," Lucy informed me. "This is a League problem, not a civilian problem."

I shrugged. "Deputize me or something."

Lucy crossed her arms. " Deputize you? What do you think this is, the Wild West?"

I spread my hands to indicate our surroundings. "This is more like the Wild West than the Wild West was. This place isn't broken—it's crazy."

"Hey," she protested, then paused. "Okay, fine, I'll give you that one. But I can't protect you and fight gravelings and shut that door."

"You won't have to protect us. I know you might not think so, but I'm kind of a bad-ass back home, and as soon as I figure out how to make my magic work, I'll be one here too. Malcolm can hold his own in a fight. Daisy is…whatever she is. I'm not sure what that cat-dragon can do, but Torryn seemed to think she'll come in handy too." I took a deep breath and let it out. "I know you prefer to work alone, and I'm sure there's a good reason for that, but sometimes you need a team."

"Wow…if the old Alice could have heard you say that," Malcolm said. "And it's true—she is a bad-ass," he added. "Her magic is kinda wonky here, and so is mine, but we're not liabilities. You don't have to protect us. Alice is right; you need a team. There are a lot of those critters running around, and there will be more and more getting up here until we get that door closed. We can save lives if we work together."

Lucy pinched the bridge of her nose. "As you've probably guessed, I have some trust issues with partners and teams."

I waved my hand. "I am literally the poster girl for trust issues. But you know what you can usually trust? Your gut. What does your gut tell you about us?"

She studied us. I brushed cracker crumbs off my shirt. Daisy showed Lucy her teeth, her eyes glowing. Malcolm gave her a ridiculously charming grin and floated back and forth.

Lucy sighed. "Get in the jeep." She headed around to the driver's side.

I opened the back door for Daisy to jump inside, then shut it and opened my own. "Hey, can I have one of those Guardian badges, since I'm your deputy?"

She gingerly moved the cat-dragon's basket from her seat to the floor on the passenger side. "Don't push it, Alice."

And that was when the gravelings attacked.

Monsters .

I'd fought a number of supernatural creatures in my life and held my own, but at the sight of the swarm of pitch-black, toothy, snarling creatures emerging from the darkness to converge on us, my brain locked up in terror. They were the worst nightmares given form, ranging from the size of a house cat to eight feet tall, and there were dozens of them, gnashing their teeth and howling for blood.

Monsters! my conscious mind screamed.

Fortunately, my subconscious knew what to do and my instincts kicked in, so I didn't just stand frozen in place half inside the jeep like some kind of dunce. Which was fortunate, because otherwise my new alliance with Lucy might have been the shortest partnership of all time.

If anyone living nearby heard the gravelings' howls, they stayed inside their homes—much as they'd probably stayed inside while Isaiah's pack died.

I guess I knew now what had been watching us from the darkness, hidden from all of us, even Daisy.

My own magic was still unusable. I reached for the sorcerer power thrumming in my bones. Dark magic erupted through my skin and from my hands to form my whips. The rush of power was pure pleasure, and twice as potent as the magic I'd used fighting the werewolves at the roadhouse. I'd been reluctant to use the magic then, but this time, I didn't fight to rein it back because I figured I needed the boost of energy to have a chance against the gravelings, and because it felt so good .

I had a fraction of second to worry about what that meant before the gravelings were on top of us and survival was the only thing that mattered.

They didn't fight like wolves; they fought like mindless things driven by a desire to slaughter and eat. In a way, that made fighting them easier, because there was no plan to their attack, unlike the wolves.

Lucy was right: they were very, very hard to kill, as I discovered when I lopped two legs off one and severed a third of its body from the rest, and still it half-crawled, half-jumped at me, trailing innards and thick, stomach-turning black gloop. A larger one chomped down on its injured buddy, tossed it into the air, and gulped it down before eating the parts I'd cut off earlier.

Malcolm slashed at the creatures with razor-thin blades of air magic, flitting so quickly I couldn't track him with my eyes. Why he could use his natural magic and I couldn't, I didn't know. On the other side of the jeep, Lucy was swearing a blue streak and slicing through the gravelings' leathery flesh. We cut and hacked and slashed as fast as any of us were capable of, but within moments it was painfully clear there were too many of them, and too few of us.

Something big knocked me aside. Daisy leaped from the jeep, having scrambled over the front seat. Golden magic swirled as she tripled in size. The collar Lucy had put on her when we'd first met—had it really only been this morning?—disintegrated.

She raised her head and howled, as she'd done when the lotoru tried to attack us. Her howl was deafening. I wondered what local residents thought about the sound.

The gravelings paused for a split second, as if some part of their primal brains recognized a bigger predator, but their drive to kill and eat us won out—much to our dismay, and Daisy's delight.

She'd fought like a wolf against the wolves that ambushed us at Hawthorne's. Even twenty feet tall, she'd attacked the demon Lord Orias as a wolf.

Against the gravelings, my wolf became a glorious nightmare.

Enormous teeth bared, she launched herself into the midst of the horde and tore through them, leaving nothing but twitching body parts and black gloppy mess in her wake.

"Please don't eat them!" I shouted at her, slicing a four-foot ball of teeth and claws into four pieces with my whips. I had no idea what graveling flesh and blood might do to her. Maybe nothing—or maybe something very bad.

Daisy snarled back at me before shredding a very large creature that bellowed and spurted oily black gloop as it died. Whether that snarl was an acknowledgement or defiance, I couldn't tell.

I realized I didn't hear Lucy's sword cutting its way through graveling flesh anymore. "Lucy, you okay?" I yelled, taking the head off another creature. It was gobbled up quickly by a larger one, just before that one died in Daisy's jaws.

Lucy staggered around the side of the jeep, splattered with black gloop and sword in hand. She had a couple of small bite or claw wounds, but seemed otherwise unhurt. She took in the sight of Daisy, blinked, and then waded into the fray as if there wasn't an enormous wolf with bright golden eyes and magic swirling around her ripping gravelings to shreds ten feet away.

A small creature landed on my back and tore into the shoulder already injured during my trip through the mirror. I screamed and lashed at it, but missed. Its teeth and claws shredded my back, shoulder, and arm as it growled and hissed.

Suddenly my attacker was gone—ripped away from me by some unseen force. I staggered against the jeep and turned just in time to see the thing struggling and screeching in midair, held in the talons of a gray-and-scarlet dragon about the size of a house cat, with emerald green eyes and surprisingly powerful little wings.

"Holy cat-dragon," Malcolm said in awe.

My cat-dragon promptly ripped its prey in half, tossed the parts aside, and landed on my non-injured shoulder. Tiny claws dug into my skin as her wings folded in. She perched on my shoulder, perfectly balanced, and let out a growly, throaty purr.

Daisy and Lucy dispatched the last of the gravelings, who were in the process of trying to eat their fallen comrades. To my surprise—and disgust—the gravelings' bodies dissolved, their flesh turning to puddles of black goo even as we watched. The smell defied description. Soon there would be nothing left but the gloop and the stench, or maybe even just the stench.

Breathing hard, Lucy locked gazes with Daisy, who was large enough at the moment to look the Guardian in the eye.

"I know you can understand me," Lucy said to Daisy. I edged closer, my dark magic crackling on my skin. "You fought to help protect us, and I'm grateful."

Daisy inclined her head slightly.

"Behave yourself, though," Lucy added. "Don't assume that collar was my only way of reining you in."

Daisy showed her teeth, but in the friendly grin she'd shown Joey at the roadhouse, rather than in a threatening way. Interesting that certain kinds of threats she took as friendly chatter, while others were deadly serious. I had yet to figure out how she decided which were which.

I let my whips spiral back into my arms and let go of the dark magic. My shoulder screamed and hot blood ran down my arm. I was suddenly aware of a half-dozen other small wounds I hadn't noticed in the heat of battle. And I was famished again.

The cat-dragon lifted off from my shoulder and returned to her basket in the jeep. As she landed, her wings folded in, violet magic swirled, and a gray kitten stared up at me with emerald eyes. She lifted a goop-splattered paw and licked it primly.

"My life is weird," I said.

Lucy snorted. "Welcome to the club, Deputy."