Corpsetaker snarled out a spiteful curse, lifted her left arm, and twisted her fingers into a raking claw.
There was a hideous pressure against the image of the granite wall in my mind. It wasn't a single, resounding blow, as I had expected from my training, a kind of psychic battering ram. Instead it was an enormous, steady weight, as if a sudden tide had flooded in to wash the wall away completely.
I thought that pressure would ease in a moment, but it only became more and more difficult to bear. I struggled to hold the image of the wall in place, but despite everything I could do, dark and empty cracks began to appear and spread through it. My defenses were crumbling.
"Delicious," Corpsetaker said, and her voice didn't sound strained at all. "After a century, they're still teaching the young ones the same tripe."
I saw movement beyond Corpsetaker, and Li Xian appeared in the shattered plywood doorway. Half of his face was lumpy and purpled with bruising, and one shoulder had been smashed grossly out of shape. He was bleeding a thin, greenish-brown fluid, and moved as if in great pain, but he came in on his own power, and his eyes were alert.
"My lord," Xian said. "Are you well?"
"Perfectly," Corpsetaker purred. "Once I have his mind, the rest is yours."
His misshapen face twisted into a smile that spread too wide for human features. "Thank you, lord."
Holy crap. It was time to leave.
But my feet wouldn't move.
"You needn't bother, young wizard," Corpsetaker said. "If you take the attention you would need to free your feet, your wall will fail. Just open to me, boy. You will feel less pain."
I ignored the necromancer and tried to think of other options. My mental defenses were indeed crumbling, but any strength of will I spent to move my legs would collapse the defenses entirely. I had to get the pressure off of me for a moment-only time enough to distract Corpsetaker, to give me time to get the hell away. But given that I could barely move at all, my options were severely limited.
Part of the wall began to crumble. I felt Corpsetaker's will begin pouring in, the first trickle from a dark sea.
If I wanted to live, I had little choice.
I reached my thoughts down into the smoldering Hellfire burning in the runes of my staff, and sent it flooding into my mind, into the failing wall that protected me. The cracks in the cold grey granite filled with crimson flame, and where the dark sea of Corpsetaker's will pressed against it there was a screaming hiss of freezing water boiling into a cloud of steam.
Corpsetaker let out a sudden, hollow gasp, and the pressure on my thoughts vanished.
I spun, wobbled, got my balance, and then ran for the back door.
"Take him!" Corpsetaker snarled behind me. "He has the book and the Word!"
There was a sickly ripping, crackling sound, and Li Xian let out a bestial and inhuman howl.
I dashed through the back room of the bookstore, and to the back door. I slammed its opening bar and sprinted through it, out into the alley behind the shop. I heard two sets of feet following me, and Corpsetaker began chanting in a low, growling voice. That hideous pressure began to surge against my thoughts again, but this time I was ready for it, and my defenses fell into place more quickly, more surely. I was able to keep running.
I ran down the alley, and made it maybe thirty yards before a sudden fire exploded through my right calf. I crashed down to the ground, barely holding on to my mental defenses. I dropped my staff and reached down to my calf, to feel something metal and sharp protruding from it. I cut my fingers on an edge and jerked them back. I couldn't get a good look, but I saw a flash of steel and a lot of blood-and Corpsetaker and the ghoul were still coming.
There was no way I could have whipped up any magic to stop them-not with all of my power focused on keeping Corpsetaker from invading my mind. I wouldn't be able to overcome the ghoul physically- even wounded, Xian was quick on its feet, and closing the distance fast.
I drew the.44 and sent three shots back down the alley. Corpsetaker darted to one side, but the ghoul never even slowed down. It flung one too-long arm through an arc, and there was a glitter of steel in the gloomy alley. Something hit me in the ribs nearly hard enough to knock me down, but the spell-covered leather of my duster stopped it from piercing through. A triangle of steel fell to the ground, each point sharpened and given a razor's edge.
"All I needed," I muttered. "Ninja ghouls." I emptied the revolver at Xian. He wasn't ten feet from me on the last shot, and I must have hit him. He jerked, careened off a wall, and stumbled, but he was a long way from down.
Corpsetaker's will continued to erode my defenses. I had to get away from her, or she'd open up my brains like a tin of sardines-and then Xian would eat them.
The three-pointed shuriken still in my calf, I forced myself to my feet through the screaming pain. I seized my staff, hobbling in earnest this time, and struggled toward the end of the alley. My only chance was to make it to the street, to flag down a cab, somehow beg a ride from a passing car, or maybe get some help. I knew there wasn't much hope of any of those things happening, but it was all I had.
I almost got to the end of the alley, the pain in my leg growing steadily worse-and then I abruptly lost track of what was going on.
One moment I'd been busy, I knew. I was doing something important. The next I was just standing there, sort of floundering. Whatever I'd been doing, it was right on the tip of my tongue. I knew that if I could just focus for a second, I'd be able to remember it and get back on track. My leg hurt. I knew that. And my head felt jumbled, the thoughts there, but in disarray, as if I'd gone through a drawer of folded laundry, pulled out something from the bottom, and then slapped the drawer shut again without straightening anything up.
I heard a snarl behind me, and realized that whatever I'd been doing, it was too late to get back on track now. I tried to turn around, but for some reason I couldn't remember how.
"I have it," panted a woman's voice behind me. "Numbers. It's only… He only has numbers."
"My lord," snarled a thick, deformed voice. "What is your command?"
"He doesn't know where the Word is. He is useless to me. The book is in the right pocket of his coat. Take it, Xian. Then kill him."
Chapter Eighteen
I was pretty sure that Corpsetaker was talking about me, and I knew for sure that getting killed was a bad thing. I just couldn't figure out how to go about doing something to stop it. Something about my mind. That it wasn't working right.
A battered-looking man entered my field of view, and I was able to turn my head enough to watch him. Oh, crap, it was Li Xian, the ghoul. I had a bad feeling that he was going to do something unpleasant, but he just stuck his hand in my coat pocket and pulled out the slender copy of Erlking.
The ghoul turned away from me and offered the book to someone out of my field of view.
There was the sound of flipping pages. "Excellent," Corpsetaker said. "Take him back from the street and finish him. Hurry. He's stronger than most. I'd rather not hold him all day."
Oh, right. Corpsetaker was holding my mind captive. That meant that she was in my head. That meant she had beaten my defenses down. Just pulling those thoughts together made me feel stronger. My head started clearing, and as it did the pain in my wounded leg grew more intense.
"Hurry," she said, her voice now strained.
Rough hands seized the back of my coat. I wanted to run, but I still couldn't get everything to respond together. An inspiration seized me. If Corpsetaker was in my head, it meant that she could feel everything I was feeling-such as the burning pain in my leg.