Battle Ground

by Jim Butcher

  But these were mortals. People.

  Angels weren’t allowed to gainsay people.

  Listen and his team were thorough. They must have found the safe room, because charges went off again. Then some screams.

  Some very high-pitched screams.

  And gunfire.

  And then the Fomor squads filed out with the same silence with which they’d filed in.

  Listen stopped on the front lawn, next to where I stood in the vision, lifted a radio to his mouth, and said, “Tell her the target has been cleared and confirmed. We’re moving back to the shore to meet the rest of the company.”

  I pushed forward, toward the house, toward the front door, and could see blood running from the second floor, from where the safe room was, and I ran up the stairs to the hidden entrance and found it twisted and torn with the violence of the breaching charges, and behind the door . . .

  I saw them.

  Saw her.

  Charity and the Carpenter kids all lay between Maggie and the door. Even little Harry, who was almost as young as Maggie, had stood in her defense.

  It had been efficient.

  And suddenly I was standing on the shore of Lake Michigan again, cold and more brutally weary than I’d ever been, struggling against Ethniu’s will.

  You see, mortal? the Titan’s voice said in my head. Listen and his people scouted this target thoroughly. They planned countermeasures for all of your kind here. And they planned something in particular for you and the Winter Lady. All those targets in one place just made it too tempting. Ethniu paused, and her mental voice became poisonously sweet. Your child is dead. Your ally and his family are dead. They were destroyed hours ago.

  My stomach dropped out.

  This is the world I bring to you, mortal.

  And then she thought at me again. She showed me the world she desired. A world of blasted cities, of smoke, of tears, of screams. Blood ran in the gutters rather than water. And columns of greasy black smoke rose from altars, from temples, from shrines decorated with skulls and crusted with the blood of sacrifices.

  This is what is coming. And there is nothing you can do to stop it. Just as well that your daughter will not see it, I think. Just as well that you won’t, either.

  And I felt her will gathering again, preparing to shatter mine.

  Everything felt spinny. Empty.

  Bob let out a wordless wail. I could feel my hold on the circle weakening. I could feel the Titan beginning to burst free of the binding.

  Maggie, I thought. I’m so sorry. I should have done more. I should have been there.

  “Dresden!” Marcone screamed from the water. “We’ll never get another chance at this!”

  Ethniu’s will began to rip mine apart. Slowly. Almost sensually. I could feel her pressing against my mind. Pressing inside. She found my pain and my horror and she slithered inside while I gritted my teeth and held on to the Spear for simple support to keep from falling.

  . . . thrumthrumthrumthrumthrumthrumthrum . . .

  I couldn’t get the image of my daughter’s little shattered body out of my head.

  Ethniu’s savaged face twisted into a hideous smile.

  I should have done more, taken more measures to protect you than just leave you with Mou . . .

  My head snapped back up.

  I stared at her for a second.

  And then I clenched my teeth in a sudden wolfish smile.

  “Hey, Bubbles,” I said. “You forgot the dog.”

  Ethniu’s smile vanished. “What?”

  “The dog,” I said. “The dog was with them. Maybe your guys could take him out, maybe not. But it wouldn’t be fast. And they’d only get to my daughter over his dead body. But he’s not there. Question, where is he? Answer, with my daughter. That’s the only place it’s possible for him to be. Ergo, she wasn’t there. She was never there. In fact, none of them were, because the dog’s absence was a message, to me, from the person responsible. This girl I know had places to be this evening. Man, she really has been busy.”

  Ethniu looked baffled.

  I took a deep breath and said, “Honey, you’re fighting faeries. It was staged for your benefit. Wouldn’t be shocked if we went back there and found a bunch of bundles of wood where those bodies were.”

  The Titan’s living eye widened.

  “Listen betrayed me,” Ethniu hissed, spitting in her fury.

  I stared at her for a second. For a second, I almost felt sorry for her.

  Then I sighed.

  “Sure, that’s the takeaway here,” I said. “Nice knowing you.” I set my jaw, kept my will on her, and cried, in a voice that echoed from the vaults of the apocalypse sky, “ETHNIU, DAUGHTER OF BALOR, I BIND THEE!”

  A storm hit my mind. Even after Ethniu had expended such energies, after she had fought so many foes, after she had laid low a high school gymnasium full of supernatural heavyweights, the raw strength of the Titan’s remaining will was overwhelming. It tore at my perceptions, flooding them with random images and smells and sensations. It was like standing in a sandstorm, only instead of inflicting pain, every random grain forced you through an experience, a memory, so disjointed and intense and rapid that there was nothing to focus on, to hold on to. A flash sensation of summer-warmed grass between my toes. Plunging into a pool of chilled water in the hour before dawn. An image of watching warmly over a field worked by people with bronze tools. Another of strangling someone to death with my bare hands. And the images doubled, redoubled, multiplied into thousands of separate impressions all coming at me at once.

  Memories. These were the substance of Ethniu, the pieces of her that railed against my will. She was going to hammer them into my mind as I tried to complete the binding, sandblast my psyche to pieces with an overwhelming flood of impressions.

  I had to get to an image, a moment, that was mine. Me. That was strong enough to hold all the rest together.

  I found one image.

  Maggie, holding on to me with all four limbs, her little heart beating against my chest, while Mouse leaned against me, a solid presence of utter faithfulness and love.

  And that was enough.

  If the Titan shredded away everything else I had, this would be enough to build on. Friends. Family. Love. I focused on that memory, of my girl holding on to me with desperate strength, my fuzzy friend beside us, while her father’s arms held her safe.

  The storm of the Titan’s will raged. But I found myself standing in the eye of the hurricane with the most quiet, defiant smile that had ever landed on my face.

  The world came back to me. I could feel the Spear in my hands again, the broken rock and concrete beneath my feet.

  Ethniu writhed and twisted in the center of the circle of campfire light, coming up off the ground as if gravity had suddenly stopped functioning.

  “Bound, bound, bound!” I called. “Thrice said and done! Begone!”

  The Titan shrieked in outrage.

  My left eardrum exploded. Or maybe imploded. Whatever, it wasn’t there anymore. The world turned into one of those barrel rides where they spin so fast you stick to the wall. Only I didn’t have a wall to lean on.

  I had the Spear of fucking Destiny.

  THRUM THRUM THRUM THRUM THRUM THRUM THRUM

  It was as if I had started some vast and momentous engine.

  “Alfred!” I screamed, and kicked the crystal out into the water of the lake.

  The moment the bloodied crystal hit the water, there was a sound. A deep, deep sound, like a rumbling in earth miles below us. The surface of Lake Michigan went suddenly still—and then began to jump and vibrate like the indicator bars of God’s biggest stereo.

  A light appeared in the water. I don’t mean like a spotlight or a glowing aura. This thing was huge. Hundreds of yards across. And it came through the water at a s
peed so great that it couldn’t readily be estimated.

  But it pushed a bow wave ahead of it. A huge one.

  “Oh crap,” I muttered.

  In the water, Marcone snapped his head toward the wave, then calmly murmured something. He abruptly zipped through the water as though being pulled by a friendly dolphin and attained the shore.

  “Dresden!”

  “Go!” I said. “I’ve got to hold her here!”

  Marcone gave me a look and said, “Of course you do.” He eyed the incoming wave, gold and green and across the entire horizon. Then he muttered something in a language I didn’t know, answered himself in the same language and a different voice, and then said, in English, “No, I don’t have any gopher wood. No one has any gopher wood. I’m not even sure it exists anymore.” Then he shook his head, looked at the ground, and started muttering and drawing in power.

  The wave loomed larger. Ethniu screamed again, but I put my shoulder up against my right ear, so that was fine.

  There was a hideous smell in the air. I looked around and saw broken concrete beginning to melt into slurry while Marcone chanted in some harsh-sounding language.

  The wave loomed up, millions of tons of water, coming at us fast.

  And then the breadth of the wave condensed. Intensified. It built higher and higher in the last hundred yards to shore, focused, piling into a curl a city block wide and towering like a skyscraper.

  For a second, the gold-green tower was poised at apogee, graceful, beautiful.

  And then eyes opened at the top of the wave. Green, furious, hostile, and implacable eyes.

  The wave came down.

  And Demonreach came down with it, great stony hands the size of pickup trucks outstretched.

  That vast wall of glowing green water crashed down over the Titan, who screamed once more.

  And then that huge form, a magical servant of my will, surged through the binding of my will held around the Titan and enfolded her in its vast, implacable form. The Titan fought, but her strength was spent. It was like watching a seal get pulled down by something big and dark and unseen—a desperate struggle with a foregone conclusion. Not because the Titan was strong enough to fight something like Alfred—but because this was what Alfred did. This was the purpose of its creation. Ant lions aren’t all that much bigger or stronger than ants.

  But ant lions kill ants. It is what they do.

  This was what Alfred did.

  I saw Demonreach drag the Titan, screaming and thrashing, into the pitiless waters of Lake Michigan. I felt it when my will prevailed.

  THRUM. THRUM. THRUM. THRUM.

  The Spear quivered in time with my heartbeat. Steady and rumbling, the tactile equivalent of a big rig’s engine.

  The rest of the wave that had hammered the Titan back into the water hit us, icy cold despite the glowing light that infused it. Stinking greyness rose around us, and I was thrown into something hard, the sky and the city whirling overhead, and then there was darkness and cold water all around.

  I started trying to find my way out. I was underwater. There were cold, hard walls. And a ceiling. I was in an enclosed space. I was exhausted. My battered body was so bruised and numb, I could barely tell when I actually touched something. I tried to summon up some of my will, at least enough to bring some light into my staff or amulet, and . . . just couldn’t. There was just nothing there. My tank was on absolute E.

  I tried to find a way out, by feel, in the dark, with the water making me colder and slower, with my lungs slowly beginning to burn.

  Then there were three points of violet light that resolved into the eyes and the rune of Thorned Namshiel.

  I felt Marcone thump my shoulder. Then he fumbled at my hand. I took it, and the Baron of Chicago led me through the darkness, to an opening in the solid barrier surrounding us. I lost some skin but I scraped through, kicked weakly at the water, and eventually got my head above it again.

  Marcone broke the surface at the same time. He started dragging me toward the shore.

  I peered at what looked like an enormous concrete . . . teacup, I supposed, since it was about the same shape, upended, maybe twelve feet across.

  “What?” I asked.

  The waters were rough, waves surging back and forth—but the beach, such as it was, was empty, except for us.

  And a massive form of green-gold light was vanishing, slow and steady, back into the depths of Lake Michigan.

  Marcone slogged onto the shore and made sure I was able to get out of the water.

  “What?” I asked, panting, “The hell. Is that thing?”

  Marcone plopped down on a rock and said, “There’s no reason a concrete vessel couldn’t have handled that wave, structurally speaking. I must have made it too top-heavy, and it rolled on us.”

  “Yeah, well,” I panted, gasping sweet, sweet air. “That’s because you suck. And you’re an amateur. Who sucks.”

  “I didn’t see you doing anything about it.”

  “Yeah, because I was holding the freaking Titan!” I shot back. “I was doing the grown-up stuff.”

  “You just almost killed us both as an unintended side effect of that binding,” Marcone snapped. “And you call me an amateur.”

  “I saved your life from a Titan,” I panted, exhausted. And I think I had picked up a couple of cracked ribs, despite the last-second shield of concrete that had risen to stop most of the force of the wave. “You almost drowned us. Fake wizard.”

  “I just broke down the molecular structure of concrete and then chemically re-formed it inside a mold of pure will, saving both of our lives from that wave in the process.”

  “Fake,” I said. “Sad.”

  Marcone let out a low, weary chuckle.

  My stomach twitched a lot while breaths went in and out of my exhausted body.

  We did not laugh together.

  And he was no less an asshole.

  But we won.

  Chapter

  Thirty-five

  We should move,” Marcone said eventually. “Without Ethniu’s will to counter those of the Ladies, Corb’s forces will break. They’ll run for the water, and we are in their path.”

  He was right, but there was no sense letting him feel that way. And I was too tired to move. “How about you fight them all with your new buddy? Look real good in front of everyone.”

  “You first.”

  I started to say something childish, but there was a particularly loud ripple of water from the shoreline, and both of us came up ready to fight. Some of us more drunkenly than others.

  An ivory sphere a little bigger than a softball, glowing with sullen fire, tumbled out of the waves and onto the beach.

  The Eye.

  Pulsing with power.

  Throbbing with it, really.

  Power that could lay gods and monsters low.

  I glanced aside.

  Marcone was staring at the Eye.

  It lay approximately equidistant between us, down at the waterline.

  It might have been six inches nearer to me.

  He turned and looked at me thoughtfully.

  He looked at the Spear.

  He didn’t move or reach for weapons. No demented angelic eyes appeared on his forehead. He just looked at me.

  I returned the look. I knew what Marcone was. I’d taken his measure, and he hadn’t changed. He was, above all things, a dangerous predator. It was simply his nature. And you don’t let predators know when you’re scared.

  Because I was.

  Marcone the gangster had been bad enough. Marcone the supernatural power broker had been nerve-racking. Marcone the Knight of the Blackened Denarius was a nightmare I had barely considered.

  But it didn’t matter what else you added to it. He was Marcone. And one of these days, he and I would settle things betwee
n us.

  Maybe today. Right here. It would be a good time for him. I was exhausted after that binding, and he had to know it. If he acted, he could eliminate me and gain the Spear of Destiny and the Eye of Balor, all in an evening. In all this confusion, who was to say what had really happened?

  The victor. That’s who.

  Marcone hadn’t survived as long as he had without being able to read faces. And from the look on his, he’d figured out what had been going on in my head. I’d seen his small sharklike smile before. But it was more frightening now.

  Because I wasn’t standing outside an aquarium. I was in the bloody, desperate water with him. And he was more than large enough to rip me to pieces.

  He smiled and stared at with me without blinking while those cold pale green eyes did the math.

  Evidently, the numbers didn’t turn out far enough in his favor to suit him.

  His smile for a second turned almost human, and he said, “Not today.”

  Water lapped on the shore. Shouts and cries and desperate clicks drifted down to us, seemingly from another world.

  “Why?” I asked.

  For a second, a look of contempt touched his face—but then he became pensive. His fingers came to rest lightly against his chest, and then he regarded me more seriously. “Because I am beginning to learn what it means to think in the long term,” he replied, his voice serious. “And time favors me. You and I will face one another eventually. But for now, I think it best you take the Eye for safekeeping, wizard.”

  I scowled. “You’re just yielding the Eye to the White Council?”

  “Do I look like a moron? Certainly not,” Marcone said. “To the Wizard of Chicago. This was, after all, your kill. By the terms of the Accords, you deserve first claim.”

  “We did it together,” I objected warily.

  Marcone’s smile sharpened.

  “Prove it,” he purred, “hero.”

  He twitched two fingers and vanished behind a veil.

  And I sat there in the cold and the damp, exhausted, momentarily safe, and certain in the sinking sensation that the future I was facing had suddenly become about a thousand times more complicated.