by Jim Butcher
Over on the eastern edge of the roof, Mab, Lara, the Senior Council, Vadderung, the Erlking, and the Summer Lady had gathered together in a silent group, with River Shoulders looming over them in the back. They were staring out at the night, now lit by more fires, and the wind coming off the lake brought us the distant scent of burning rubber and black smoke.
I looked down at the shadow being cast in front of me. The long, billowing outline of the duster. The slender length of my staff. The outline of my head, with my ears sticking out a little, my hair a mussed mess.
I’d been doing this for a while. The duster and the staff and the attitude. I mean, you’d think I’d have grown up at some point. But I was, in a lot of ways, still that dumb kid opening up his own private investigations business, all those years ago.
Across that roof stood some of the greatest monsters, legends, even gods of our world. They were staring out at the night, standing together.
They were frightened.
Underneath the calm, the steady action, the relentless calculation, the superhuman power—they were frightened. Them.
And I was just me.
I took a deep breath.
My sneakers squeaked as I paced across the roof and joined them.
The Erlking nodded to me as I stopped by his elbow. “They’re moving now,” he reported. He nodded out toward the original explosion. “Hear that?”
The gunfire had increased to a frantic pace. Heavier ordnance was going off from time to time. Maybe grenades or something? I wasn’t all that familiar with the practicalities of military weapons in action.
The Erlking directed my attention to the north and south. “There, that dark space, that’s where my troops are. They’re forcing the Fomor to move around them, to the north and south. See the fires?”
I looked. He was right. Fires had begun to burn in a path around the embattled position.
“There’s too many of them,” I breathed.
The Erlking nodded. “For the time being. Do not be distracted. This battle is not about Corb or his forces. It is about Ethniu.”
“Right,” I said, watching the fires spread through my city, lighting more and more of it, and bringing with them a pall of smoke. “Right. Be cool.”
My stomach hurt, and I realized, dimly, that somewhere deep down I was furious. Foes had come to harm my neighbors, my city, my home. There could be no fires too hot to devour them. And I was just standing there, doing nothing.
My knuckles ached as I gripped my staff.
“Contact!” shouted one of the Einherjaren.
Without hesitation, Vadderung pointed at another of the eternal soldiers, standing near him. The man lifted one of those grenade launchers with the big cylinder like a giant revolver to his shoulder and aimed it up. He fired three times, phoont, phoont, phoont, and within a few seconds a number of flares were falling from high above, showering light onto the neighborhood around the castle.
There were bipedal forms out there, shadows really, stalking down the streets, sidewalks, yards, moving stealthily—freezing in place where the light fell on them, while the shapes moving in the deeper shadows seemed to become that much more furtive and agitated.
“Ready stations,” called Marcone’s voice. “Prepare to fire.”
I turned to see the Baron of Chicago walk briskly onto the roof, flanked by Gard and Hendricks. He ignored me as he walked past to stand beside Vadderung. “An assault force?”
“Light infantry, I think, Baron,” Vadderung said, squinting his eye out at the night. “Their forward elements. Scouts. They haven’t shown us their strength yet.”
Marcone nodded. “Hold fire unless the enemy engages us,” he said to the nearest of the Einherjaren, and one of the tallest. The man nodded and passed the order down the line.
“Wait,” I said. “What?”
From down the street, my street, I heard the sound of shattering glass.
Someone screamed. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. It was high-pitched and desperate. The human voice rang out surprisingly loud in the stillness of the night.
That was a person. Terrified.
Someone who lived on my street.
I heard the frantic panic fire from a pistol, maybe someone’s revolver. A scream, something that sounded too harsh and brassy to be human. There was a long, drawn-out howl, then a flash of light, and I saw something red and flickering hit a car about a hundred yards down the street. There was a breathless quarter second, and then the car went up in a fireball as its gas tank exploded.
I could see figures, furry or fur-clad, rushing toward the open front doors of one of a row of rental houses. There were few supernaturally significant thresholds to speak of on such properties, little protection from the powers of darkness.
My stomach twisted in fear and rage. Every instinct in my body urged me forward. The predator’s territoriality within the Winter Knight’s mantle was in complete accord, the need for violence, to defend my territory, to rend my foes, pulsing through my veins with every heartbeat.
“There,” I said, and pointed a shaking hand. “We have to help them.”
“That is not our role in this fight,” said Vadderung.
Another scream came down the street. This time there was no mistaking it.
It was a child’s voice, a single high-pitched note.
“Hoss,” said Ebenezar warningly.
I couldn’t see. My vision was narrowing to a tunnel. My chest heaved.
I looked to my left. In the tunnel of my vision, Mab was a slender, pale white light, her eyes bright, feline, narrowed. She watched me.
“We have to help them,” I said, louder and harder.
Mab’s teeth showed.
“We can’t,” Ebenezar said. “Hoss, there’s too many of them. We can’t commit until we know.”
I stared around the rooftop. Then I said, “To hell with all of you.”
And I did something I’d been working every day for months not to do.
I let the Winter mantle do its thing.
I went off the roof in a leap, windmilling my arms and legs. I hit the ground, let my body break my fall at its natural bending points, dropped into a forward roll, and came up running, moving as quick and sure as any creature of the wild.
There was a heavy thud, and a thousand pounds of River Shoulders landed next to me, an eager growl bubbling in his chest that sounded freaking tectonic. Ahead of me, another car exploded, part of the fireball catching one end of the rental house and enveloping it in flames. Indistinct inhuman figures leapt in through the front door.
And me and a genuine, honest-to-God Bigfoot let out simultaneous roars of rage, one way more impressive than the other, and launched ourselves at the invaders.
Chapter
Nine
I caught their scent at about sixty feet.
It was a wild, fierce smell, something that hit my hindbrain and set the hairs all along my spine up straight. Ever smelled a predator’s den? There’s the musk of the creature’s odor, mixed in with the scent of urine, a little bit of rotten meat, and the faint sweetness of marrow with the rasping dryness of cracked bone.
That same predator reek hit me as we closed in on the invaders—figures with massive, fur-outlined bodies and gnarled, muscular limbs. I got a good look at the first of them as we hit the sidewalk outside the embattled home.
It looked almost human. Skin the color of wet ashes. Six and a half feet tall, maybe, with the lean, ropy muscle of someone who can cover a lot of ground in a hurry. Its hair was a mane, ferocious and long, with feathers and claws bound in among it. The horns of a stag either grew from its skull or had been bound there somehow. A heavy mantle of furs over a long cloak of the same gave its lean torso some kind of protection, and it carried a long spear of some blackened metal in its hands.
Even as we closed, t
he creature had whirled toward us, bringing the tip of the spear up. There was a low howling sound, and a flicker of reddish light gathered around the creature’s hands. The light flashed up the shaft of the spear, hitting a number of pictographs etched into the metal along the way, each exploding in a sequential flash. I had about enough time to realize that a projectile was coming my way, and then the tip of the spear glared scarlet and I flung myself to the side.
There was a shrieking, howling sound, and a chunk of asphalt half the size of a garbage can flew up into a spray of scorched, blobby, flaming road material ten yards behind me.
I hit the ground at a roll, tried to come up running, and tripped on the damned Warden’s cape. I half strangled myself and fell.
River Shoulders had me covered. Even as the creature’s spear tracked toward me, the Sasquatch simply took a bounding stride, lowered a shoulder the size of an off-road tire, and ran into the thing.
If the creature had been standing in front of a train, it might have been better off. About half a ton of supernaturally powerful muscle hit the creature in a concentrated burst of precisely aimed energy as focused and directed as that of any martial artist. The creature’s body went rag doll, flying back from the impact in an explosive crackling of breaking bone—only to hit against a large old oak standing stolidly in the house’s front yard despite severe trimming to allow for power lines.
The shape that fell to the ground at the base of the tree was kind of . . . amorphous.
River Shoulders turned toward the front of the house and let out a roar that literally shattered the first-floor windows, a primal scream—and, the Winter mantle told me, a challenge that could not be ignored, not by foes as primally bound as these.
There was a faint sound to one side, and my eyes snapped forward to see a second of the creatures, this one larger and better-muscled than the first, ease around the corner of the house, outside of River Shoulders’ view, and raise its spear to aim at the Sasquatch’s back.
I drew without thinking, from a prostrated position, tightening my abs and aiming slightly to the right of my right foot. I had a great sight picture and lined up the dots of the big .50-caliber revolver and squeezed the trigger without once thinking a single thought. The bullet went through the creature’s right cheekbone, holy crap, and came out somewhere behind where its right ear would have been . . .
. . . and the thing whirled toward me, shrieking in fury, lips peeling back from a row of nightmare needle teeth, and leapt at me, its black spear lashing toward me.
Hell’s bells.
That should have been terrifying.
But the Winter mantle didn’t really do fear. Instead, I felt myself noting that the thing was damned stupid to leap in the air and go ballistic like that. Had it come toward me low to the ground, serpentine, I might have had a hard time shooting it, since it could have changed direction unpredictably. Up in the air like that, it was at the mercy of Newtonian physics, and it was a simple matter to predict where it would be at any given time.
I put the second round through its upper neck at ten feet, and rolled to the side. It crashed heavily to the grass where I’d been, and kind of flopped onto the sidewalk in front of the house, twitching in hideous spasms and making gurgling sounds as it died.
I came to my feet, regained my staff, and staggered as River Shoulders’ scream was answered by multiple throats from inside the house—brassy cries that could not possibly be entirely human ones.
Wooden window frames and the pieces of glass that still hung in them exploded outward from the house as somewhere between six and ten creatures came screaming out at us. We had, apparently, been fighting the skinny little ones so far, because these things must have massed twenty percent more than either of the first two and looked taller and stronger to boot.
“Dresden! These are Huntsmen! Kill them quickly!” River shouted. He bounded toward a figure as it came screaming out the front door of the house. One of his huge hands slapped the head of the Huntsman’s spear aside. The other seized the Huntsman’s furry neck and squeezed.
Imagine a toddler having fun with his banana. It was like that, but redder.
“I don’t know what that means!” I screamed. I barely had time to clear my shield bracelet and raise a shield before three of them opened up on me with the howling, flaming thunder of those black spears. Fire and force enveloped my shield and made the air hot and too full of smoke and choking gas to breathe. I had to stagger back out of it. The Huntsmen didn’t let being blinded by a cloud of smoke slow them down. Those spears howled and sent concussive force and fire splashing against my shield—or missing me completely, and hitting the houses across the street.
River came sailing through the air and landed behind my shield in a crouch to be able to keep his head at the same level as mine. He dropped something messy out of his right hand—the Huntsman’s grey corpse, minus its head. “Look,” he said.
I did. Right before my eyes, the corpse withered and shrank away, deflating as if it had been a skin filled with air. I could sense energy rushing out of it, something moving almost too quickly to be sensed at all.
And the other Huntsmen screamed again, in primal fury. Louder.
“Each that falls gives its strength to its packmates,” River Shoulders snarled. “Quickly!”
He turned to one side and leapt, fifty freaking feet in a single bound, both huge fists coming down on a Huntsman better than seven feet tall. He didn’t strike twice. When River Shoulders hit something, it went down and it stayed there. Without slowing, he bounded forward into the smoke, even as the pack howled again.
A Huntsman emerged from the smoke and leapt over my shield like it was on wires. I kept the shield held out toward its packmates back in the smoke, tracked it with the big Smith & Wesson, and started pulling the trigger as it landed and whirled with its spear.
The first round hit it center mass, and the big, slow bullet staggered it, even if it didn’t make it blink. It snarled and thrust the spear at me, but I’d gained enough time to shoot again, and before it could commit its weight to the thrust, the second round hit it lower and must have gotten its spine, because it dropped limp to the ground—
—and sank the fingers of one hand into the dirt and drove the spear at my face with the other, screaming.
I ducked and slapped the head of the spear with the barrel of the revolver, throwing up sparks. Then I recovered my aim and sent my last round through its forehead from five feet away. Its head snapped back and then flopped limply into the dust, its body already desiccating and draining away.
And the pack screamed. Louder. Deeper. Harder.
I holstered the gun and darted to one side, dropping the shield and trying not to gag and choke in the smoke. I tripped over a bundle of furs and loose skin, the remains of a Huntsman that River had apparently gotten. I recovered my balance in time to see a freaking icon of a Huntsman, nearly a foot taller than me and rippling with muscle, emerge from the smoke, whirling its heavy metal spear like it was a parade marshal’s baton and swinging it at my head.
There was no blocking that kind of force. It would have shattered my staff if I’d tried. I ducked and backpedaled and barely sensed the second Huntsman close in on my flank in time to fling myself out of the way. Its spear came down close enough to slice through the bottom hem of one of the legs of my jeans and to leave a cut in the side of the sole of my shoe.
Two more Huntsmen emerged from the smoke, enormous and terrifying. One hefted its black spear and hurled it at me. The other simply lunged, hands outstretched, filthy nails like talons spreading wide.
The spear hit me in the left shoulder. When its tip met the ensorcelled leather of my duster, there was a sudden shower of sparks as the energies in the weapon and the garment met and clashed. The impact was vicious, like getting slugged with a weighted bat, and it spun me to one side in an explosion of neutral white-noise sensation
that the Winter mantle substituted for pain.
One of the Huntsmen flung itself at me in a human-spear attack and hit me in the right biceps. Right about the same time, the one with the bad nails came flying at me from not quite the opposite angle. Only it hit me in the shins.
I went down, hard.
There was an explosion of sensation that would have left me stunned and breathless without the Winter mantle’s influence. As it was, I kept enough awareness to twist on the way down and keep from getting any broken bones—and once I’d hit, kept my breath, drew in my will, and shouted, “Repellere!”
Naked, unseen force exploded out of me in a half sphere, a wave of thick, heavy energy that lifted the Huntsmen from their feet and flung them a dozen feet back through the air. They twisted and bent in graceful arcs as they went, and every damned one of them landed on all fours like some kind of big ugly cat.
I was on my feet by the time they were, but my shoulder wasn’t working so good. I was pretty sure it had been dislocated.
One of the Huntsmen made a sound like a wild boar, and the others moved, clearing to one side as it lowered its spear and readied another blast.
I cross-drew the coach gun from its scabbard, thumbed back the hammers as I raised it, and let him have it with both barrels of Dragon’s Breath.
Dragon’s Breath is a specialty shotgun ammunition. It normally consists mainly of hard pellets of magnesium.
But Molly’s people had added white phosphorus into these rounds.
Twin fireballs bellowed from the coach gun and splattered the top half of the lead Huntsman in a cloud of white-hot pellets of burning magnesium and white phosphorous.
The burning metal didn’t stop burning just because it had been buried deep in the thing’s flesh, and the Huntsman and a five-foot circle of grass around it burst into flames, sending up a squealing scream from the creature that felt like it could burst my eardrums. It thrashed horribly, staggering in a small circle before falling to its hands and knees.