“I think he can smell what I am,” Nicky said, keeping his voice low and as nonthreatening as he could.
“He’s more afraid of shapeshifters than humans; interesting,” I said.
“Don’t go all Mr. Spock on us, Anita. This isn’t interesting, it’s dangerous,” Zerbrowski said.
“It’s both,” I said.
“Add scary to that, and you’re about right,” Domino said, still at the graveside. He was watching out into the trees, trying to keep attention on the other ghouls, and trusting that Nicky would handle the one closest to me. He was right; there were four of them still out there, and they might not be as obedient as this one.
“Okay, but now what do I do with it?”
“Dawn is less than half an hour away, Anita. The ghouls will run for cover as the light comes,” Manny said.
“I don’t believe they came from this cemetery; if we let them tunnel in here to hide from the sunlight, they’ll start feeding on the bodies buried here. They need to go back where they came from.”
“And where is that?” Manny asked.
I looked at the ghoul. “Maybe he’ll play Lassie for me,” I said.
“What does that even mean?” Zerbrowski asked; he sounded nervous. I guess we all were, but he usually hid it better.
“Show us where your cemetery is,” I said. The ghoul blinked at me.
“Too complex,” Nicky said.
“If you say Is Timmy down the well, I’m going to punch you later, just so you know,” Zerbrowski said.
“Go back to your own cemetery.”
It made a sound low in its throat, halfway between a growl and a purr. I didn’t understand the sound.
I repeated my order.
It made the sound again, but this time it went up and down the scale, and there was more trill to it. There was an answering noise from the dark here, there, over there, so that the whole pack made the noise back and forth at each other.
“What are they doing?” Susannah asked.
“It doesn’t sound threatening,” I said, but knew I sounded less than absolutely certain, because I wasn’t certain. I was so far outside my comfort zone that I just didn’t know. Ghouls didn’t act like this, and they sure as hell didn’t obey me. I’d been chased through my share of graveyards by the damn things. They were animalistic scavengers that would turn into opportunistic predators if they found something wounded enough. I’d heard them growl, howl, chitter, scream, but never this up-and-down, half-questioning noise.
“Not to complicate things,” Zerbrowski said, “but won’t the zombie have an issue with sunlight, too?”
“Shit,” I said.
“Will it burn in sunlight like a vampire?” Nicky asked.
“No,” I said, “but zombies hide from the light.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Some of them fall into a vampire-like torpor once the sun rises. Flesh eaters are smart enough to find cover before dawn sometimes.”
“Will this one die at dawn like a vampire?” Zerbrowski asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re saying that a lot tonight,” he said.
“I’ve noticed.”
“Order them to go back to their cemetery again, Anita.”
“I tried, Manny.”
“Make it more of an order,” he suggested.
I looked at the ghoul in front of me and said, “I order you to go back to the cemetery you crawled out of tonight.”
“Think dog, not person, Anita,” Nicky said.
“How would you word it?”
He was quiet for a minute, and I almost said, See, not so easy, but he said, “Do they burn in daylight like a vampire?”
“No, but they hide from daylight, so it doesn’t feel good. They can come out at dusk before it’s truly dark; most vampires can’t.”
“If dawn comes and they aren’t near their tunnels, what do they do?” he asked.
“Take shelter until dark.”
“Look around, Anita, where can they hide? It’s going to be light soon.”
I looked for a shed, or a mausoleum, and found a tomb that rose above the others in the distance. I motioned toward it. “They might be able to hide in there.”
“Are they strong enough to break into it?”
“Oh, yeah.”
The ghoul looked at me, his crimson eyes doing that flat shine again as if reflecting light I couldn’t see. It made a different noise higher in its throat and started backing away. I had a sense of movement out among the graves, and knew it was the other ghouls.
“What are they doing?” Domino asked.
The one in front of me got very low to the ground and sort of groveled, and then it began to crawl backward away from us. It kept looking at Nicky and then Domino and the two exterminators in their fire suits, as it tried to keep all the dangers in sight. It stopped and groveled again, but that was always aimed at me.
“The others are at the mausoleum,” Nicky said.
I glanced up and could see the others like gray shadows skulking around the huge stone. The ghoul in front of me made an abrupt, sharp almost-growl that made the hair at the back of my neck stand up, and then he turned and crept out among the tombstones, using them for cover the way a lion used the long grass.
“Don’t shoot it,” I said.
“No, we’ll burn them out once daylight comes,” Susannah said.