by Butcher, Jim
Murphy’s voice floated to me, directionless in the fog. “Where are you?”
“Hell’s bells, Murph! Get out!”
Her gun barked twice more. “Not without you!”
I threw more stuff on the pile. “I’m a big boy! I can take care of myself!” I took a long step up onto the pile, and tested my grip. It was enough to let me reach the top. I figured I could pull myself up and worry about the barbed wire when I got there. I started climbing out.
I was looking at a faceful of barbed wire and pushing at the fence with my toes when I felt something wrap around my ankles. I looked down and saw a branch wrapped around my legs. I kicked at it irritably.
And then as I watched, another branch lifted from the pile and joined the first. Then a third. And a fourth. The branches beneath my feet heaved and I suddenly found myself hauled up into the air, swinging upside down from my heels.
It was an awkward vantage point, but I watched as the trees and plants and soil I’d thrown into a pile surged and writhed together. The young trees tangled their limbs together, growing before my eyes as they did, lengthening and growing thicker to become part of a larger whole. Other bits of greenery, clumps of dirt, and writhing vines and leaves joined the trees, whipping through the air apparently of their own volition and adding to the mass of the thing that held me.
It took shape and stood up, an enormous creature of vaguely human shape made all of earth and root and bough, twin points of brilliant emerald-green light burning in its vine-writhing, leaf-strewn head. It had to have been nine or ten feet tall, and nearly that far across. Its legs were thicker than me, and branches spread out above its head like vast horns against the background of luminous mind fog. The creature lifted its head and screamed, a sound of tortured wood and creaking limb and howling wind.
“Stars and stones, Harry,” I muttered, my heart pounding, “when will you learn to keep your mouth shut?”
Chapter Twenty
“Murphy!” I screamed. “Get clear!”
The plant monster— No, wait. I couldn’t possibly refer to that thing as a “plant monster.” I’d be a laughingstock. It’s hard to give a monster a cool name on the spur of the moment, but I used a name I’d heard Bob throw out before.
The chlorofiend lifted me up and shook me like a set of maracas. I focused on my shield bracelet, running my will, bolstered by sudden fear, through the focus. My skin tingled as the shield formed around me, and I shaped it into a full sphere. I was barely in time. The chlorofiend threw me at a post in the chain-link fence. Without the shield, it would have broken my back. I slammed into it, feeling the energy of the shield tighten around me, spreading the impact over the whole of my body instead of solely at the point of impact. The shield transferred a portion of the kinetic energy of impact into heat and light, while the rest came through as an abrupt pressure. The result was like a sudden suit of oven-warmed elastic closing on me, and it felt about three sizes too small. It knocked the wind out of my lungs. Azure and argent light flashed in a vague sphere around me.
I didn’t bounce much, just fell to the concrete. The shield gave out a more feeble flash when I hit. I got up off the ground and dodged away from the chlorofiend, but it followed me, slapping aside a stand of wooden tomato stakes with one leafy arm. Its glowing green eyes blazed as it came. I ran up against the fence at the back end of the lot, and the chlorofiend’s huge fist smashed down at me again.
I lifted my shield bracelet against it, but the blow tossed me a dozen feet, down the length of fence and into a set of huge steel partitioned shelves holding hundreds of fifty-pound bags of mulch, potting soil, and fertilizer. I lay there dazed for a second, staring at an empty aisle display proclaiming in huge scarlet lettersWEED-B-GONE ONLY 2.99!!! I clutched at the display and got to my feet again in time to duck under the chlorofiend’s fist as it punched at my head.
It hit one of the metal shelves instead of me, and there was a shriek of warping metal, a creaking yowl of pain from the fiend, and a burst of sizzling smoke. The creature drew its smoking fist back and screeched again, eyes blazing even brighter, angrier.
“Steel,” I muttered. “So you’re a faerie somethingorother too.” I looked up at the enormous shelves as I ran down the length of them, and a second later I heard the chlorofiend turn and begin pacing after me. I started gathering in my will as I ran, and I allowed the physical shield to fall, leaving me only enough defense to keep the mist from blitzing my head. I would need every bit of strength I could muster to pull off my sudden and desperate plan—and if it didn’t work, my shield wouldn’t protect me for long in any case. Sooner or later, the chlorofiend would batter its way through my defenses and pound me into plant food.
I pulled ahead of it, but it started gaining momentum, catching up to me. As I reached the end of the row, the end of the steel shelves, I turned to face it.
Hell’s bells, that thing was big. Bigger than Grum. I could see through it in places, where twists of branches and leaves were not too closely clumped with earth, but that didn’t make it seem any less massive or dangerous.
If this didn’t work, I wasn’t going to last long enough to regret it.
Most magic is pretty time-consuming, what with drawing circles and gathering energies and aligning forces. Quick and dirty magic, evocation, is drawn directly from a wizard’s will and turned loose without benefit of guide or limit. It’s difficult and it’s dangerous. I suck at evocation. I only knew a couple that I could do reliably, and even they required a focus, such as my shield bracelet or blasting rod, to be properly controlled.
But for doing big dumb things that require a lot of energy and not much finesse, I’m usually fine.
I lifted my arms, and the mist was stirred by a sudden rush of moving air. The chlorofiend pounded closer, and I closed my eyes, pouring more energy out, reaching for the wind.“Vento,” I muttered, feeling more power stir. The chlorofiend bellowed again, sending a jolt of fear through me, and the winds rose even more.“Vento! Vento, ventas servitas!”
Power, magic, coursed through my outstretched arms and lashed out at the night. The wind rose in a sudden roar, a screaming cyclone that whirled into being just in front of me and then whirled out toward the heavy metal shelving.
The chlorofiend screamed again, nearly drowned out by the windstorm I’d called, only a few yards away.
The enormous, heavy shelves, loaded with tons of materials, let out a groan of protest and then fell, toppled over onto the chlorofiend with a deafening din that ripped at my ears and shook the concrete floor.
The chlorofiend was strong, but it wasn’t that strong. It went down like a bush under a bulldozer, shrieking again as the steel shelves crushed it and burned into its substance. A foul greyish smoke rose from the wreckage, and the chlorofiend continued to scream and thrash, the shelves jerking and moving.
Exhaustion swept over me with the effort of the spell, and I glowered down at the fallen shelves. “Down,” I panted, “but not out. Dammit.” I watched the shelves for a moment and decided that the chlorofiend probably wouldn’t shrug it off for a few minutes. I shook my head and headed for the gate into the enclosure. Hopefully, Grum hadn’t twisted things up so badly that I couldn’t get out.
He had. The metal latch on the gate had been pinched into a mess by his talons. They had scored the metal in sharp notches, like an industrial cutter. Note to self: Don’t think steel can stop Grum’s fingernails. I checked above and decided to risk climbing the fence and getting through the barbed wire.
I had gotten maybe halfway up the chain-link fence when Murphy limped out of the mist on the other side, her gun pointed right at me.
“Whoa, whoa, Murph,” I said. I showed her my hands and promptly fell off the fence. “It’s me.”
She lowered the gun and let out her breath. “Christ, Harry. What are you doing?”
“Texas cage match. I won.” From behind me, the chlorofiend let out another shriek and the shelving groaned as it shifted. I gulped and looked
back. “Rematch doesn’t look promising, though. Where have you been?”
She rolled her eyes. “Shopping.”
“Where’s Grum and the ghoul?”
“Don’t know. The ghoul’s blood trail went out, but someone shot at me when I followed it. Haven’t seen the ogre.” She blinked at the gate’s latch. “Damn. Guess he shut you in here, huh?”
“Pretty much. You get shot?”
“No, why?”
“You’re limping.”
Murphy grimaced. “Yeah. One of those bastards must have thrown a bunch of marbles on the floor. I slipped on one. It’s my knee.”
“Oh,” I said. “Uh.”
Murphy blinked at me. “Youdid that?”
“Well, it was a plan at the time.”
“Harry, that’s not a plan, it’s a Looney Tune.”
“Kill me later. Help me out of here now.” I squinted up at the barbed wire. “Maybe if you get a rake, you can push it up for me so that I can slide between it and the fence.”
“We’re twenty feet from the hardware department, genius,” Murphy said. She limped back into the mist, and returned half a minute later carrying a pair of bolt cutters. She cut a slit in the chain link fence and I squeezed through it while the chlorofiend thrashed, still pinned.
“I could kiss you,” I said.
Murphy grinned. “You smell like manure, Harry.” The smile faded. “What now?”
The trapped monster’s thrashing sent several smaller shelves toppling over, and I rubbernecked nervously. “Getting out is still first priority. That thing is down, but it’ll be coming before long.”
“What is it?”
“Chlorofiend,” I said.
“A what?”
“Plant monster.”
“Oh, right.”
“We need to get out.”
Murphy shook her head. “Whoever was covering the exit out front can probably see the other doors too. A silhouette in a doorway is a great target. It’s just like a shooting range.”
“How the blazes did they see you through the mist?”
“Is that really important right now? They can, and it means we can’t go out the front.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right. The main exits are covered, that thing is in the garden center, and ten to one Ogre Grum is watching the back.”
“Ogre, check. What’s his deal?”
“Bullets bounce off him, and he shakes off magic like a duck does water. He’s strong and pretty quick and smarter than he looks.”
Murphy let out a soft curse. “You can’t blast him like you did the loup-garou?”
I shook my head. “I gave him a hard shot once already. I may as well have been spitting on him.”
“Doesn’t look like we have much choice for getting out.”
“And even if we do, Grum or that plant thing could run us down, so we’ll need wheels.”
“We have to go through one of them.”
“I know,” I said, and headed back into the store.
“Where are you going?” Murphy demanded.
“I have a plan.”
She limped after me. “Better than the Looney Tune one, I hope.”
I grunted in reply. No need to agree with her.
We both realized that if this plan wasn’t better than the last one, then, as Porky Pig would say, That’s all, folks.
Chapter Twenty-one
Three minutes later Murphy and I went out the back door, and Grum was waiting for us.
He rose up out of the shadows by the large trash bins with a bull elephant’s bellow and stomped toward us. Murphy, dragging a leg and wrapped somewhat desperately in a plaid auto blanket, let out a shrill cry and turned to run, but tripped and fell to the ground before the ogre.
I kept my left hand behind my back and lifted my right. Flame danced up from my cupped fingers, and I thundered, “Grum!”
The ogre’s beady eyes turned to me, glittering. He let out another rumbling snarl.
“Stand thee from my path!” I called in that same overdramatic voice, “lest I grow weary of thee and bereft thee of thy life!”
The ogre focused wholly on me now, striding forward, past the whimpering form of Murphy. “I do not fear thy power, mortal,” he snarled.
I lifted my chin and waved my fire-holding hand around a bit. “This is thy last warning, faerie dog!”
Grum’s beady eyes grew angrier. He let out a harsh laugh and did not slow down. “Feeble mortal trickster. Thy spellfire means nothing to me. Do thy worst.”
Behind Grum, Murphy threw the auto blanket off of her shoulders, and with one rip of the starting cord fired up her shiny new Coleman chain saw. She engaged the blade with a hissing whirr of air and without preamble swung it in an arc that ended precisely at the back of Grum’s thick, hairy knee. The steel blade chewed through the ogre’s hide as if it was made of Styrofoam. Blood and bits of meat flew up in a gruesome cloud.
The ogre screamed, his body contorting in agony. The scarlet skin around the injury immediately swelled, darkening to black, and tendrils of infectious-looking darkness spread from the wound up over the ogre’s leg and hip within the space of a breath. He swept one huge fist at Murphy, but she was already getting out of his reach. The ogre’s weight came down on the injured leg, and Grum fell to earth with a heavy thud.
I started forward to help, but everything was happening fast, and my movements felt nightmarishly slow. The ogre rolled to his belly at once, maddened at the touch of the iron in the chain saw’s blade, and started dragging himself toward Murphy faster than I would have believed with just his arms, talons gouging into the concrete. She hurried away from him, limping, but Grum slammed one fist down on the concrete so hard that half a dozen feet away, she was jarred off balance and fell.
Grum got hold of Murphy’s foot and started dragging her back toward him. She let out a hollow gasp, then twisted and wriggled. She slipped out of her sneaker and hauled herself away from the ogre, her face gone white and drawn.
I ran up behind Grum, pulling my left hand out from behind my back, the fingers of my right hand still curled around the flickering flame I’d shown the ogre. A large yellow-and-green pump-pressure water gun sloshed a little in my left fist. I lowered it and squeezed the trigger. A stream of gasoline sprayed out all over Grum’s back, soaking the ogre’s skin. Grum whirled toward me halfway through, and I shot the gasoline into his eyes and nose, eliciting another scream. He bared his fangs and glared at me through eyes swollen almost shut.
“Wizard,” he said, hardly understandable through the fangs and the drool, “your spellflame will not stop me.”
I turned my right hand slowly, and showed Grum the burning can of Sterno I’d been palming. “Good thing I’ve got this plain old vanilla fire, then, huh?”
And I tossed the lit can of Sterno onto the gasoline-soaked ogre.
Hamstrung and blazing like a birthday candle, Grum screamed and thrashed. I skipped back and around him, helping Murphy up to her feet as the ogre slammed himself against the ground and then against the back wall of the Wal-Mart. He did that in a frenzy for maybe twenty seconds, before uttering an odd, ululating cry and hurling himself at a deep shadow behind a trash bin—and vanished, the light from the flames simply disappearing.
Murphy got up only with my help, her face pale with pain. She could put no weight at all on her wounded leg. “What happened?”
“We whipped him,” I said. “He packed up and headed back to Faerie.”
“For good?”
I shook my head. “For now. How’s your leg?”
“Hurts. Think I broke something. I can hop on the other one.”
“Lean on me,” I said. We went a few paces, and she swayed dangerously. I caught her before she toppled. “Murph?”
“Sorry, sorry,” she gasped. “Hopping, bad idea.”
I helped her back down to the ground. “Look, stay here, against the wall. I’ll get the Beetle and pull it around here to you.”
Murphy
was in enough pain to keep her from arguing. She did draw her gun, switch the safety on, and offer it to me. I shook my head. “Keep it. You might need it.”
“Dresden,” Murphy said, “my gun has been about as useful as fabric softener in a steel mill tonight. But someone out there has a rifle. If they’re using one, it’s because they’re a human, and you don’t have most of your magic stuff with you. Take the gun.”
She was right, but I argued anyway. “I can’t leave you defenseless, Murph.”
Murphy hauled up the leg of her jeans and pulled a tiny automatic from an ankle holster. She worked the slide, checked the safety, and said, “I’m covered.”
I took the Colt, checked the chamber and the safety, more or less by reflex. “That’s acute little gun there, Murph.”
She scowled at me. “I have small ankles. It’s the only one I can hide there.”
I chanted, teasing, “Murphy’s got a girl gun, Murphy’s got a girl gun.”
Murphy glowered at me and hauled the chain saw to within easy reach. “Come a little closer and say that.”
I snorted at her. “Give me a couple minutes,” I said. “I’ll tell you it’s me. Some of these bad guys can play dress up—so if you aren’t sure who it is . . .”
Murphy nodded, pale and resolved, and rested her hand on the gun.
I drew a deep breath and walked through the mist around the side of the building and toward the front parking lot. I kept close to the wall and moved as quietly as I could, Listening as I went. I gathered up energy for the shield bracelet and held my left hand ready. I held the gun in my right. Holding a pair of defenses focused around my left hand, I would have to do all my shooting with my right. I’m not a very good shot even when I can use both hands, so I just had to hope that no sharpshooting would be required.