Page 32 of How to Woo the Undead

A hand ran up his back, and he lurched out of the doorway. Hyacinth peaked around him, Snuffles in one hand, the other still between his shoulder blades. “Sorry. But I did say your name a few times.”

“Did you?” He wheezed, laughing at himself as he side-stepped her and offered her the space needed to step out into the foyer. Yet that tempting hand never left him, in fact, it stayed on him, merely brushing across his arm till her fingers curled around his sleeve.

“What’s Lord Rosemont doing?” she whispered, tugging on the cotton in her hand while she nodded her chin at the front door. Austin leaned over to find their maker looming. His mask on his face, a top hat over his long green hair. Sebastian’s hands were tucked behind him in the small of his back.

“Don’t know,” Austin muttered, leading the charge toward the front. As they passed Smith’s office, the slender slipped out into the hall. Soon, the whole house was loitering inches behind their lich Lord.

“My love?” Dahlia asked as she slid up beside him, her hand brushing up the back of his coat. Silence. It lingered, suffocatingly.

“Sir? What are you staring at?” Austin broke the bubble of silence.

“There is a man on the other side of the fence.” Sebastian turned from the door.

“In this weather? Does he have a death wish?” Melody barked with laughter, leaning against the wall. The entryway glowed brighter with Carl’s flames and the sound of his panting for air bounced off the walls. Austin spared a hand down to the giant fluffball and ruffled his fingers through his heavy fur. Carl licked him in appreciation.

“No, just a divine purpose.” Sebastian growled as he grabbed his trench coat off the rack and pulled it around his body. Austin’s muscles tensed.The priest is back.Clerics tended to be a stubborn infestation. With their divine justice and sense of self-worth, he should have known the man from beyond the fence would come back. Doing so in the middle of a hurricane was a surefire way to get the attention he craved. “Austin, Havershum, with me. The rest of you stay in the house. Smith—”

“Nothing will enter this home, sir.” Smith bowed his head to Sebastian as he ushered Melody, Kevin, and even Dahlia. The lawyer walked them back from the door. Dahlia huffed in protest but when Austin and Havershum looked over their shoulders at their Lady, shaking their heads, she stopped.

“Wait, what’s going on?” Hyacinth asked, attention darting between the lich and the dead man who spared her an apologetic grimace. “Why are you going outside? I thought we weren’t to go outside in the storm?”

“Clerics aren’t good,” Austin nodded at the scars on her chest, and she put a hand over the stitching. “Not for us.”

Austin took the jacket offered to him by Sebastian and pulled it over his body. He followed his maker into the torrential downpour. Havershum floated behind him, keeping himself in the shadows till he was needed. Austin wasn’t sure what he was hoping for, but it wasn’t that the man with the smokey aura and shifting robes would be standing inches outside the fence. Drenched from the rain, and yet unbothered by the funnel cloud that raged past him. It descended upon the forcefield that protected King’s Fall from such magic storms.

There were really only two types of people who could make storms such as the one raging over the haunted woods. Tempest dragons, and they’d have to be pretty old. One of those hadn’t existed in the region for ages, not with Sebastian around. And poltergeists, but they would have needed to be an arch-fiend or an arch-nightmare to gather that kind of potent magic. A regular human or wizard or whoever died out in those woods wouldn’t make a specter powerful enough to conjure that. Whichhopefullymeant the storm was made from clashing magic.And not intentionally created.

Austin watched the hurricane bite into the trees. It spat out the branches and foliage like bones from a carnivore enjoying ribs. Austin held up a hand and deflected one chunk of tree the same size as him from hitting Lord Rosemont. His maker continued, unbothered by the howling winds or the cutting rain. In no time, they stood an arm’s length from the fence. Lightning tore through the sky, showing off the dark, mysterious aura wrappedaround the man. It still gave Austin a strange uneasy feeling in his stomach.

“Hello stranger,” Sebastian bellowed over the storm. “Can I help you? It seems to be a terrible time to try and sell me snake oil.”

The man, with all his hair stuck to his head and lashes heavy with droplets, sneered. “Foul abomination, I’ve come to collect the monster you’ve been harboring.”

Austin shifted forward but Sebastian put an arm out, halting him in his tracks. The cleric flipped his cloak over his shoulder to expose his chest. A golden, gleaming set of light armor. He pulled a short sword from his hip and leveled it at the fence.

“You’re not here to simply try and burn my home to the ground, then?” Sebastian asked above the booming thunder that shook more of the forest loose. The storm roared louder, ripping up something far more embedded in the ground than a random tree. Austin heard its steady cracking until the old tower, a hidden gem within the forest, was torn from its cemented roots. The cracked stone building was now the hurricane’s toy. Austin twisted slightly, bracing for having to punch away a stone wall.

“You and your ilk will burn, don’t you worry.” The cleric’s sword glowed brighter, his blade igniting with pearlescent flames. Rain hissed upon touching it. Steam lifted around the cleric, giving him an eerie glow. “But I’m only here for her.”

“For who?” Sebastian asked.

Austin was prepared for him to say Dahlia. She was The Hungry One, a goddess of madness and untold knowledge. Or there was Melody, the guard dog of the Nightmare Realm, an immortal creature tethered to Persephone, another goddess. Or even Agatha, a banshee who’d stayed in the land of the living even when most would pass on into the afterlife.

“The dead fae girl. Or, at least, sheoughtto have been dead if you and your disgusting bodyguard hadn’t interfered, I would have seen to it that her corpse was ash and her essence purified by His holy magic.” The cleric swung at the fence and was immediately rebuffed. His boots dug trenches into the soggy earth as the rain doubled. Fat buckets of water were poured over their heads. The wind shifted, and suddenly the storm was headed back toward them. Yet the cleric was unbothered about the deadliest storm Austin had seen in a millennium creeping up behind him.

Austin did, however, see red. It painted the slate gray sky, turning it into a bloody mess. It dripped down, poisoning the rain till they were all painted in it. He pushed past Sebastian’s hand to the fence. “You killed her!”

“Apparently not good enough!” The cleric roared louder, lunging at the fence. This time, he didn’t make it close enough to strike. Austin reached through the bars and wrapped his hand around the man’s throat like a gator snaps his jaws around its prey. His fingers were teeth that dug into the man’s jugular.No survivors.

“You…are the monsters…” Austin snarled through gritted teeth. The storm inched closer, its deadly howl ringing in his ears. Austin didn’t flinch at the rain trying to flood his eyes or the slicing of the wind against his cheeks. He wrenched the cleric toward the fence till he cooked the wretch’s face against the enchanted iron bars. The holy man yelled, slapping helplessly against Austin. Rage like he’d never known before unleashed itself from his body as he tuggedharder.

He might have brained the damned priest if he wasn’t taking similar damage himself. The cleric glowed with divine power. It burned his palms till Austin could feel it ignite his muscles. It was worse than the dryad in the laboratory. It carved down tothe bone and purified his undead essence. Austin was forced to unhand his prey.

Sebastian snatched him by the back of his jacket and forced the dead man to stumble backward, nothing but bone left of his palm and the top side of his hand was bubbling fat seared in a hot skillet. Austin hugged his rendered palm to his chest.

Havershum slipped out of the shadows, inspecting the wound with worried, glowing eyes. There was no time to talk about the incredibly rash thing he just did. Sebastian bellowed, “Leave this place and do not return. Your god can not save you from the wrath you’ll face if I find you near my property once more.”

“You’ll burn!” The cleric spat, climbing to his feet. He held a glowing hand to his seared face, healing all the pockets of flesh that were roasted into drippings. “You’ll all burn! I’ll turn this manor into ash. I’ll render you heretics into sacrifices for His holy crusade! And I’ll make sure that bitch stays dead this time. I don’t care how many times I have to kill her!”