by Jim Butcher
“Knock-knock,” I said.
Drakul frowned down at me and arched an eyebrow.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “Here I am facing death and telling you a knock-knock joke. Why would I do such a thing?” I gave him the best grin I could while clenching my teeth. “Eternity is a long time to wonder about a punch line. Knock-knock.”
“Who,” said Drakul, in his mellifluous accent, his eyes narrowed, “is there?”
“Thousand-pound gorilla,” I rasped.
“Thousand-pound gorilla who?” asked Drakul.
And River Shoulders roared and hit him with a twelve-foot-long concrete obelisk.
One second, Drakul loomed over me. The next there was an enormous sound and an explosion of shattering concrete that left half a dozen little cuts on my face, and Drakul was nowhere to be seen. The weight vanished from me so abruptly that for a second I thought I was levitating off the ground. I was suddenly dizzy, and my vision narrowed to a tunnel.
“Now, that,” I gasped, “is comedy.”
River Shoulders roared and bounded after Drakul, jumping with all four limbs.
Drakul, for his part, tumbled calmly, and if his shoes had cost more than some vehicles I had driven, they held up well enough as he dug them into the grass to arrest his momentum and bring himself to a controlled halt among tumbling fragments of concrete. He was wearing, I kid you not, a tuxedo under the long black cloak.
And he looked annoyed.
River Shoulders lowered his shoulder to slam into Drakul, but the big guy might as well have been trying to ram water. Drakul took a step and vanished, out from in front of the charging Sasquatch and to one side—where he crouched and swept his arm out at shin height to the Sasquatch, catching River Shoulders’ enormous leg in the crook of his elbow and arresting its momentum as Drakul rose to his feet. The Sasquatch went forward in a sprawl, which he could not turn into a controlled roll before crashing through two enormous side-by-side tombstones.
River Shoulders began to rise and then sank back to the earth with a groan.
Hell’s bells.
Drakul turned toward River Shoulders with his knife, and I saw what was coming in my head as clearly and sharply as if I was remembering it. The Forest People aren’t exactly wizards. They just sort of live their lives so steeped in the world of magic that they just do it, the way a fish swims or a bird flies. Their aura of life energy is especially dense and potent, constantly absorbing power from the natural world around them.
Which would make the big guy a great big tank of nitrous for Drakul’s necromantic summoning, if the master of the Black Court could spill River’s blood to fuel the spell.
I grabbed my staff and brought it to bear, feeling the seething energy stored within its runes and sigils vibrate to life. The staff began to glow with green-gold light, even as I reached out to a portion of the energy stored within it, stirring it, urging it to glow even more brightly. I wanted him to see this one coming.
“Hey!” I shouted. “You! Ugly!”
Yeah, yeah. Not my best insult work. But you know. It’s the thought that counts.
Drakul turned to look at me and froze for a second as if in surprise, presenting a fleeting instant of vulnerability.
“Forzare!” I shouted.
As I began the word, Drakul took a step to one side and vanished.
I whipped my still-glowing staff toward River Shoulders and this time unleashed my will along with the word. “Forzare!”
A glowing column of green-gold light, flickering and ephemeral as the aurora borealis, lashed across the ground between me and River Shoulders—
—and caught Drakul right in the breadbasket as he reappeared standing over River Shoulders’ head with his knife.
The column of power hit Drakul with the energy of a speeding train engine. It blew back his hair and his clothing, ripping the latter to tatters, and sent him hurtling into the side of a marble mausoleum with such force that it sent a spiderweb of cracks through the stone.
Then there was the cry of an eagle from somewhere up above us, defiant and mocking, and the sweltering summer air was split by a sound so loud and a light so bright that it robbed me of my breath. The image of a bolt of blue-white lightning coming down in a nearly vertical column was burned onto the backs of my eyelids. It hit Drakul like a giant’s sledgehammer, pounding him to the ground—and a second later, a bear, a goddamned Kodiak grizzly, just plummeted out of the sky, landed on Drakul, and started slamming sledgehammer paws down onto the pale being’s skull.
Elders of the White Council don’t screw around, either, and Listens-to-Wind knew how to make an entrance.
I staggered, catching my balance on my staff. The lightning had left my eyes dazzled. The thunder had left my ears ringing. I couldn’t hear, couldn’t see any of my companions except for River Shoulders. I hurried to his side, and even as I did, River shook his head groggily and began to push himself up.
“That’s cheating,” the Sasquatch rumbled, and his voice was angry, terrifying. River came to his feet in a single fluid motion, gathering with him a small tidal wave of magical energy that suddenly crackled and sparkled with static in the air around him. He screamed and slammed both fists down onto the earth, sending out a wave of raw power that I couldn’t have matched at my best—just as the Kodiak bear let out a roar of pain and went flying away and to one side.
Drakul came to his feet, a marble statue clad in scorched shreds of black and white. He whirled toward River Shoulders, smiled, took a step to one side—
—and collided with empty air with an audible sound of impact.
Drakul blinked, this time clearly surprised, and recoiled in the other direction—only to rebound again, as if from the surface of a fun-house mirror maze. He turned toward the Sasquatch, dark eyes narrowing.
“Okay, Mister Dancy Pants,” growled River Shoulders. “Now, let’s see how tough you are.”
Drakul’s black eyes glittered with an almost sexual intensity, and his sudden, wide smile was utterly unnerving. “I like this game much better,” he said in something like a purr. And he laughed, taking slow steps back. As he did, without a whisper of power evident in the air, the graveyard began to fill with fog, as swiftly and rapidly as if he’d pulled down a cloud on top of us. The laughter lingered behind him like the Cheshire cat’s smile.
The Kodiak rolled to its feet and padded over to us. Somewhere along the way, in the sudden fog, Listens-to-Wind took its place. The old man padded to us and put his back to ours, his eyes and senses clearly focused outward, over the rims of his spectacles. Listens-to-Wind never looked excited, but tonight his dark eyes glittered brightly.
“Mister Dancy Pants?” I asked River Shoulders.
The Sasquatch shrugged. “Better than ‘Hey, you, ugly.’”
Listens-to-Wind made a soft hissing sound that commanded silence. River Shoulders listened to him, so it seemed like maybe it would be wise for me to do it, too.
So I heard the last few deep thuds of heavy paws striking the ground, and a great black nightmare wolf, a creature out of prehistoric nightmares, taller than me at the shoulders and weighing more than many cars, plunged into our group.
I dove out of the great wolf’s path and only got my ankles clipped as I went. It spun me a hundred and eighty degrees before I hit the ground, still spinning.
I looked back over my shoulder to see the form of the vast wolf overbear River Shoulders and ride him to the ground. The Sasquatch roared and slammed his fists into the Drakul-wolf, but the beast shrugged the blows off, fangs seeking River’s throat.
I twisted and lifted my staff, preparing a blast of force that would push the wolf off River Shoulders.
And an arm like a bar of cold iron slipped around my throat, as swift and lithe as a young serpent.
My air was cut off immediately. I couldn’t make a sound. I struggled, but
I felt like a child trying to fight an adult. Within seconds, I was off-balance and being dragged silently away among the tombstones.
I saw Listens-to-Wind turn into a friggin’ bison and charge the great wolf’s flank before the fog swallowed them all, and I had time to realize that neither of them had seen me being taken.
And, in all the fog, neither had anyone else.
I was alone.
“Dresden,” Mavra hissed. Her voice sounded almost as pleasant as beetles devouring desiccated flesh. “I have so been looking forward to seeing you again.”
Chapter
Thirteen
Thanks to the Winter mantle, I am stronger than most, by which I mean, most professional wrestlers. Strong as I am, though, my strength still falls within the normal parameters of humanity. I might be pretty far along that bell curve, but I’m still on the same graph.
Black Court vampire strength is on the same graph as military vehicles and construction equipment.
Mavra dragged me as effortlessly as if I’d been leashed to a bulldozer, and the arm around my neck might as well have been made of carbon steel. I thrashed and kicked, and not only was it futile; she didn’t even take notice of it. I was able to gasp in a few precious wisps of air during the struggles, but probably not enough to make up for the loss of the struggle itself.
I wanted to panic. But panic wouldn’t help me survive.
So I fastened my grip on that implacable arm and held on tight, trying to take the pressure off my neck, and otherwise ceased doing anything but fighting for air. The struggle behind me was a nearly silent one, broken only by the sounds of impacts, weight scrambling on the grass, and harsh exhalations.
Mavra dragged me silently through the graveyard in the fog, until we found other dark, silent forms beneath the branches of a spreading tree.
And on the ground at their feet were more figures.
Wild Bill. Yoshimo. Ramirez.
Wild Bill and Yoshimo were a mess of blood that looked wet and black in the dim light.
Ramirez was still alive. He was on his knees, and one of the Black Court elders, the one with the tentacle spell, held Carlos’s wrists pinned behind his back.
“Where is the drum?” demanded Tentacles Guy as Mavra approached.
“Welcome, Mavra,” Mavra said in a light, mocking rasp. “You were right about how they would respond to the threat, Mavra. The Master was wise to trust you, Mavra.”
Yoshimo had died with her eyes partly open. They stared. She didn’t look like a young woman anymore. She looked like a broken, discarded machine.
Tentacles Guy bared bloodied teeth and hissed. “We must finish preparing these and go to the Master’s aid.”
Mavra hissed a little laugh. “If you wish to disturb his recreation, by all means.”
One of the two twin corpse-vampires was on the ground. It looked like a chunk of mass that might have weighed thirty pounds in a living being was just missing from one of the twins’ abdomens. Ramirez’s blasts, probably. Its mouth was covered in fresh blood, and there were slurping, sucking sounds coming from the open wound, as blood and matter shifted and slowly renewed the missing mass. It was staring steadily, hungrily, at Ramirez.
The other twin pointed at me. “Give it to my sister. She must restore herself.”
“His blood is not for the likes of you or me,” Mavra replied calmly. “Starborn are for the Master.”
Both twins hissed at Mavra, who appeared to take no notice of them.
Wild Bill had gone down fighting. His rifle and sidearm were both gone. So was his trademark knife. The skin was gone from his knuckles, and there was something black and sludgy on his open mouth. He’d gone down swinging, with bits of his enemy literally between his teeth.
“The drum!” Tentacles Guy insisted.
“This was never about raising an army, fool,” Mavra hissed. “It was about acquiring new blood for the stars and stones. Let Corb and Ethniu thrash about and draw the ire of the mortals upon themselves. We will be well positioned to rule the rubble.” She pointed a finger at Ramirez. “Give her that one to eat.”
Tentacles Guy stared at Mavra harshly. Then he dragged Ramirez over to the wounded twin. Ramirez fought against Tentacles Guy, with just as much to show for it as I had with Mavra. The other twin stretched out Ramirez’s arm and raked rotten nails across his wrists, tearing open flesh and veins with all the precision and subtlety of an ox-driven plow.
Ramirez screamed.
The downed twin fastened her rotting lips over the wound in his arm.
My friends were dead and dying.
And these . . . things . . . wanted to make of their remains a home for more monsters.
Sickness and rage filled me.
Power rushed in with them.
Mavra’s grip on my neck tightened like something driven by hydraulics, and suddenly there was nothing but blind, furious sensation filtered through the Winter mantle in a tsunami of confusing sensory input that became its own agonizing analogue of prosaic pain.
“The Master won’t mind drinking you at room temperature, Dresden,” she chided me. The universe blurred, and suddenly the floor rose to give me a full-body hug. It blew the wind out of me in an exhalation not even Mavra’s strength could shut off entirely and left me lying stunned.
“Pendejos,” Ramirez snarled. I could feel the air tighten as he drew in power.
The other twin’s hands shot out as he did, dragging his face to hers. Her milky-white eyes widened as she locked gazes with Ramirez. My friend let out a furious, despairing scream as her psychic assault began. Yeah. The Black Court had a method for dealing with the potential devastation of a wizard’s death curse—tough to put together a spell when someone is trying to climb into your brain and redecorate.
The vampires watched the dying man intently, slipping into a corpselike, absolute stillness as they did.
Carlos tried to scream again. It came out weaker.
There was nothing I could do.
And then something wispy and violet poked out from behind a tombstone twenty feet away.
Someone had seen me.
The major general was still on the job.
Toot-Toot scanned the scene quickly, flashed me a manic grin and a wink, and slid back behind the tombstone. When he emerged a moment later, he held a short sword the size of a small hunting knife in one hand.
And in the other, gripped like a severed head, was an open packet of chopped garlic from Pizza ’Spress.
Toot crouched, still grinning, and a nimbus of blue and violet energy surrounded him—and then he shot like an arrow from a bow at Mavra’s back.
There was a streak of light as Toot flew at her, slashing down with his knife at the dead-tough flesh of her back, the scalpel-sharp blade opening a deep cut.
Into which my little ally plunged his packet of garlic.
Black Court vampires are very, very tough customers. But they pay for it, in some really inconvenient vulnerabilities. You can read about them in Stoker’s book. It’s basically a field guide on how to kill Black Court vampires.
Turns out there’s a pretty good reason vampires are repelled by garlic.
Mavra’s dead flesh burst into silver-white flame.
I mean, it was awkward to see from my angle, but a freaking jet of argent fire shot out of the wound, and the sound of her shriek of agony became the entire world for a few seconds. I guess being set on fire is kind of distracting. I fought the headlock with all of my strength and exploded out of it, drawing in a deep gasp of sweet, sweet air.
Which, instead of turning into the words of an immediate spell, got locked into the helpless autonomic cycle of an oncoming sneeze.
Of all the times, stupid conjuritis, now!?
Mavra thrashed out with one arm, hit me in the back, and clubbed me ten feet. Only the protective spells on my duster
kept me from getting broken bones. I got my arms between my skull and the oncoming tombstone or I would have checked out right then and there, bounced, and hit the ground.
I focused, bringing power and image to my thoughts, rapidly gathering energy to put behind the oncoming sneeze.
The unwounded twin whirled her head toward me and hissed.
My chest convulsed into a sneeze that might have torn some muscles somewhere.
I sent power and image out along with it.
And an anvil, black and funny-shaped and half as long as a freaking car, plunged out of the night air and right onto the back half of Tentacles Guy’s noggin.
The plummeting anvil had to have weighed at least a ton. And while you could whale on a Black Court vampire with a baseball bat all day and inflict nothing more than annoyance, that much weight moving at that rate of speed was an entirely different ball game.
Imagine holding up a fully hung suit and dropping it to the floor.
Now add a spray pattern of ink black, ichorous splatter. Plus a big freaking anvil.
Get the picture?
Mavra vanished, screaming into the night, the fog lit weirdly by argent fire in her wake. The healthy twin stared in shock at the anvil—which suddenly collapsed into gelatinous ectoplasm, mixing with whatever was left of Tentacles Guy, who was still, somehow, thrashing. It looked kind of like the inside of a blender.
I swiped a shaking arm over my running nose and wheezed drunkenly, “I told you, you Black Court bastards! Next time, anvils!”
Ramirez, his arms freed, whipped toward the creature mindlessly feeding upon his wounded arm, snarled a word, flicked his other wrist, and suddenly her head just turned into a slurry of water and powder. The remainder of the body started thrashing around silently, spewing ichor everywhere. Carlos gasped as bones in his forearm snapped in the grip of superhumanly powerful hands.
The other twin seized a tombstone, ripped it out of the ground as if it had been a damned dandelion, and flung it at my head.