Not On My Patch: a Young Wizards Hallowe'en Story by Diane Duane Read Free Book Online Page B

she’d constructed, and dashed the pumpkin down hard on the ground.
    It smashed. From inside it, an explosion of orange-golden light splashed out for yards around, then surged back and started to gather around the wet, smashed pieces. And a sound slowly began to build: like the earth shaking, like the sea crashing somewhere nearby—something growling.
    A swirling shape started to mass up into the air between the wizards and the zombies. It was round, and orange, and it got bigger and oranger every minute. It was beach-ball sized, pop-tent sized, garage-sized. And it kept growing.
    Nita stood there, fists clenched, feeding the spell power as Kit fed it through to her from himself and Dairine and Ronan. She staggered a little with the tension of managing such a big feed all by herself. Not too fast, or it’ll burn out early. Not too slow, or it’ll collapse. Keep it steady—
    The shape got bigger, swirled, coalesced, started to solidify. It was a pumpkin, massively ribbed, hugely and perfectly globular, a pumpkin the size of a house, a truly great pumpkin, growing and shouldering up against the dark sky. The snapped-off vine place at the top of it started to go green again, started to grow more vines down around it—tendrils of verdant light that snaked away in all directions as they reached the ground under it, then started to boost its shape a little clear of the ground. Then slowly eyes started to show from under the skin, shining through it as if the pumpkin was lit from inside. Glowing, glaring eyes, they got brighter, burned flaming orange, fixed on the zombies, grew brighter. And then a dreadful fanged mouth tore open, full of orange fire, and the awful face turned itself up toward the risen harvest moon and roared.
    You go, Jackie! Nita thought, and concentrated on keeping herself upright and holding onto her connection with the spell so that the power feed would keep running. But it was hard to concentrate when events around them were approaching a level of weird unusual even by wizardly standards. The gigantic pumpkin-shape had been lifting itself up on an ever-thickening set of vines of light that were curling out from it, twining themselves in among the vines in the pumpkin patch, spreading fast until the whole place was all one expanse of throbbing dark-green fire. And then the giant pumpkin came down so hard the ground shook with it. Nita wobbled and put out a hand to keep her balance: Kit caught it from behind her, steadying her, as the dark green fire spreading in the field started suddenly going pale in places; golden, then orange—
    The remaining pumpkins scattered across the field, the ones that hadn’t been big enough or the right shape or otherwise perfect enough to be picked and sold, were now lighting up from inside as if every one of them had its own candle… and, very quickly, much more than just a candle. Eyes opened, that interior light streaming out. Jaws opened, every one of them fanged. Every pumpkin began pushing itself up off the weedy dirt on ever-stronger vines. And every one looked at the staggering zombies and growled.
    Jackie, now taller than some of the trees around the field, glanced around with slow fierce exaltation at the crowd of its people gathering around it, burning. And then, with one accord, they turned their attention to the zombies…
    Jackie roared again so that the sky shook with it, a truly monster-movie-ish roar, and the pumpkins charged.
    All hell broke loose— or at least what might have been mistaken for events in one of those dark outer spheres of existence where the Lone Power’s minions normally prefer to congregate. The whole field turned into a mad vista of snarling mouths, eyes full of devouring fire, roaring shapes that started to purposefully herd the zombies, piling up on one another and hemming them in out of view.
    Then the serious screaming began.
    Dairine came up behind Nita, staring. “What is going on in there??” she said.
    But her tone of