Sue tanks Darkhallow blast

I looked around blearily. Every tree in the area was gone, torn off about a foot from the earth. The picnic tables had been torn to splinters. The buildings of the college, especially the museum, looked as if they had been ravaged by a tornado that had torn out great chunks and sections of them.
My ribs hurt. I looked down and saw that I had fallen around Bob the skull and curled my body around him as I had shielded myself. Orange flame flickered to life in the eye sockets.
"Some show, huh?" Bob said. He sounded exhausted.
"You had to go get the dinosaur, eh?" I said. "I figured you'd just grab a handy zombie."
"Why settle for wieners when you can have steak?" the skull said brightly. "Pretty good idea, Harry, talking to me once Cowl sat me on the ground. I didn't want to work for him anyway, but as long as he had the skull... well. You know how it is."
I grunted. "Yeah. What happened?"
"The spell backlashed when you slugged Cowl," Bob said. "Did just a bit of property damage."
I coughed out a little laugh, looking around me. "Yeah. Cowl?"
"Most likely there are little pieces of him still filtering down," Bob said brightly. "And his little dog, too."
"You see them die?" I asked.
"Well. No. Once that backlash came down, it tore apart every enchantment within a hundred miles. Your dinosaur sort of fell apart."
I grunted uneasily.
"Oh," Bob said. "I think that Warden over there is alive."
I blinked. "Ramirez?"
"Yeah," Bob said. "I figured that you were a Warden now and stuff, and that you would probably want me to help out some other Warden. So just before the big bang, I had the dinosaur stand over him, soak up the blast."


Dead Beat, Page 386