I was still covered in the blood that had spurted out from the Ramsey shape-shifter’s carotid artery. I focused all my energy and reached out toward Lou, siphoning a bit of his life force. My own wouldn’t work nearly as well-it’s that whole closed-loop feedback thing again.

Lou felt it, and his knees buckled. He whipped his head around and looked at me with disgust. He knew what I was up to, and he didn’t like it.

“Sorry,” I muttered. “Would you rather we both die?”

I wove the life force through the shape-shifter’s blood that was still dripping off my arms. I knew about this spell, but I’d never done it. How could I have? It requires a blood sacrifice. But this time, when I’d cut the shape-shifter’s throat, for all magical intents and purposes, that was exactly what I’d done.

I bound up the blood and the life force and let it flow into Ramsey’s corpse, using every bit of magical energy I possessed. It would leave me helpless on the magical plane, but so what? Talent wasn’t going to affect that shape-shifter anyway. As usual that much effort left me feeling weak and dizzy, but this time I also felt nauseous. I was trembling, and the edges of a panic attack were nibbling at me. Necromancy is more than just dark arts; it’s profoundly disturbing. I suppose after a while you get used to it, but I don’t see how.

But it worked. Ramsey’s corpse stirred and sat up, not slowly, but with a sudden jerk as if its strings had been pulled by a giant puppeteer. It had one good eye left, so apparently it could see. No heart or liver, but that didn’t seem to bother it any. Its head swiveled around with a jerky motion like an animatronic robot. Lou sank down so low he was almost like a black-and-tan puddle on the floor. I stood motionless against the wall, pretending I was a floor lamp.

So far, so good. But the most important part of the spell, and the most difficult, was control. And that was something I’d never learned and never wanted to, thank God. Animating a corpse is one thing; making it do what you want it to is quite another. If I’d had one of those green rune stones, I might have managed it, but they were all gone.

It all depended on timing, and the shape-shifter downstairs did its part perfectly. By this time it had managed to scrape most of the earth off of it, and had transformed itself nearly back to its original form. A loud noise came from the stairs, and the bureau blocking the stairway suddenly splintered, pieces flying off it as the shape-shifter tore it apart like a rotting log.

Apparently Ramsey could still hear, as well. He bounced to his feet, surprisingly spry for someone who was dead, and lurched past Lou and me to confront the threat. When the shape-shifter came through the door, the first thing it saw was a creature as frightening as itself. It stopped dead and made a high keening sound of surprise. I’m not sure what it would have done, but Ramsey left it no choice. He threw himself at the shape-shifter and wrapped himself around it, groping for its throat.

When I’d made the golem out of wood and nails, it was frightening but totally ineffective. The Ramsey corpse was a different matter. He might not have been very strong in life, but he was strong now. And being dead, he didn’t get tired. An all-out attack takes up so much energy that if it doesn’t succeed very quickly, it fails. Arms grow tired, breath becomes labored, and before long you can barely stand upright.

But in the best zombie tradition, Ramsey was tireless. And, of course, immune to injury and pain. The shape-shifter recovered in a second, whipped her long muzzle around, and took a good-sized chunk out of his shoulder. Ramsey ignored it and managed to get his hands around the shape-shifter’s throat. It tried to shake him off, but he was glued to it like the death he was. The shape-shifter brought up its powerful claws and ripped his stomach open. Some fluid gushed forth and long ropy intestines dangled out, but again it made no difference. Ramsey’s hands continued to squeeze the shape-shifter’s throat, cutting off its air. And unlike Ramsey, the shape-shifter was getting tired, especially with no oxygen fueling its high metabolism. Worse, as far as the shape-shifter was concerned, blood flow to the brain was being cut off, and if it couldn’t free itself quickly, it would pass out and never wake up.

It was like a scene in a George Romero film, except the blood and gore was real and the combination of feral stink and reek of blood and meat was overwhelming. I’d thought I could slip past them to freedom while they were occupied with each other, but naturally I’d overlooked something again. The two of them were blocking the stairs, the only exit, and there was no way past them.

The shape-shifter was losing the fight. It finally realized its best defense would be to chew off one of Ramsey’s arms, making it impossible for him to maintain a grip. But it had realized that too late. It was losing focus as its blood-deprived brain began to shut down. Its arms started to flail, and it was biting and snapping at random now, with no clear purpose. They both lost balance, the shape-shifter because it was passing out, Ramsey because there wasn’t that much left of his physical body. As they toppled over, Lou took a running start and leapt over them, doing his hurdler imitation again, landing on the stairs below. I took my cue and tried to do the same, but when my trailing leg knocked against Ramsey, he let go of the shape-shifter’s throat and reached up automatically, grabbing my ankle as I passed. I knew his magically enhanced grip would be powerful, but I’d had no idea. A little more pressure and bone would crumble under his fingers. No wonder the shape-shifter had collapsed.

I had to do something quickly. If Ramsey lost focus on the shape-shifter and concentrated on me instead, not only would that be bad in itself but the shape-shifter might recover as well. Monster and zombie together would be a bit too much to deal with. Already, with the choking pressure removed, the shape-shifter was struggling upward with renewed purpose.

But even though I had no idea how to control Ramsey, I was the one who had animated him. That gave me some magical standing. And blood was the key. I threw my jacket down the stairs, stripped off my blood-covered shirt, and dropped it over Ramsey’s head. That blood had been a vital factor in the animation, and so much of it touching him temporarily overloaded the circuits in whatever now passed for a brain. Ramsey’s hand slackened and he lay motionless, like a falcon that had just been hooded.

I pulled my leg free, scrambled over the two bodies on the floor, and then as I made it to the stairs I reached back and plucked the shirt from Ramsey’s head. Instantly his hand snapped back to the shape-shifter’s throat as he resumed his relentless pressure.

I was tempted to run out the door and get the hell out of there, but I couldn’t just yet. I had to make sure the shape-shifter didn’t survive, and equally important, I had to deactivate Ramsey-if he finished the job, his next step might be to shamble around the neighborhood. There are a lot of strange things that people will shrug off because they couldn’t possibly be true, but a ravaged corpse stalking the streets is not one of them. Even if he didn’t manage to kill anyone, it would open a can of worms that would shake the practitioner community to its core.

So I stood quietly in Ramsey’s pitiful little kitchen, listening to the sounds of thumping and scrabbling coming from up above. Eventually, all sounds stopped, followed by a brief but ominous silence. Then the sound of heavy footsteps stumbling down the stairs.

I was ready. I turned on the water in the kitchen sink, squirted in a good-sized glob from an untouched bottle of dishwashing liquid, and frantically started scrubbing the blood out of my shirt. The water ran pink as it swirled down the drain, and the footsteps from the stairs became slow and hesitant. I used a roll of paper towels to clean off any of it that had spattered on my leather jacket, until both the jacket and the shirt were as clean as I could get them in such a short time. The animating force had been funneled through the blood, and if there was not enough blood left, the force would weaken. When it dropped below a certain threshold it would cease to operate.