Promise: Caulborn #2 by Nicholas Olivo Read Free Book Online Page B

were gone, their contents piled up into glimmering mounds in the center of the room. Herb and Megan gasped when they saw the piles of gold and silver coins lying on the ground; a few of them came up to Megan’s waist. The gold Nazi bricks had been stacked into two Jenga-like towers that must’ve been three feet tall each.
    “This is more what I had in mind for a treasure room,” I said to Cather.
    Cather grinned proudly. “Oh, Vincent, that you could smell the metal as I can.” He inhaled deeply through his nose. “It is so sweet, like cinnamon and honey and roast mutton all in one.”
    “Mutton smells sweet?” I asked.
    “To me, yes.”
    I was about to ask another question when the temperature in the room dropped about forty degrees. The lights in the room dimmed until my companions were just shadows. “Ah,” Cather said flatly. “Here we go again. Now, Mr. Wallenby, this would be your time to shine. I’m certain you won’t disappoint me. Why, I’ll even pay you with that copy of Falstaff I heard you plotzing over.”
    A spiral of pale blue light crackled into being over one of the piles of gold. The light bulbs in the room shattered as a thunderous boom exploded in my ears. As my eyes adjusted to the blue light, the spiral spun faster and faster, tiny arcs of electricity crackling from its center. The light sparkled and reflected off the piles of metal, leaving shimmering motes in my vision. “Hmm,” Cather remarked. “That’s new.”
    Herb’s eyes glowed orange as he scratched his chin. “This goes beyond the standard treasure guardian. Something this big had magic of its own before it was slain.”
    “Can you handle it?” Megan asked. Her transdimensional pocket cannon appeared in her right hand. She seemed to have conjured it unconsciously; she’d know that her weapons wouldn’t hurt ghosts.
    “I’ll certainly try,” Herb replied, and began making complicated gestures in the air with his hands. As his fingers flickered through what I assumed was necromantic sign language, red characters began to form in the air. I didn’t recognize the language, but I’d seen enough bindings done before to know that Herb was essentially building a word or phrase that he’d use to banish whatever was coming through that spiral.
    He didn’t get a chance to finish. With several of the characters strung together, a hideous shriek exploded from the spiral and a form surged through, crashing into the gold pile below. Gold bricks exploded in all directions. I tried to bring up a shield, but a brick caught me in the stomach and knocked me over. I heard Herb cry out. Great. The one guy among us who had a chance of dealing with this kind of problem had been—
    I froze as I rolled over and surveyed the scene. Megan was on the ground, blood running from her forehead. A gold brick lay a few inches from her, one of its corners coated in red. My mouth went dry. If Megan didn’t come through this “fine,” Orcus would haul me down to Tartarus and I’d never come back. Herb threw himself between the creature and Megan, his fists raised. He renewed his invocation, his voice angry, the translucent characters pulsating with a hateful scarlet light.
    I’d taken the creature as some sort of zombie at first, but now, with the added light from Herb’s glowing spell, I could see the creature had the glowing red eyes of a wight. Lovely.
    Without giving it a chance to adapt to its surroundings, I sent two fireballs Liu Kang style, one high, one low. The first staggered the wight back, and the second took its legs out from under it. I cast holy light, illuminating the chamber in pale blue.
    Cather joined the fray, striding up to the undead and delivering a solid left hook. The creature’s head rocked, and it fell to the ground, but was back on its feet a moment later, slicing out at Cather with black nails as sharp as razors. Cather casually blocked with his left forearm, and while the wight’s attack shredded the sleeve of