by Butcher, Jim
Time to get creative.
I dropped the shield and simultaneously thrust my staff at the black jelly stuff, snarling, “Forzare!” Pure force tore the dark energy to shreds and continued on down the stairs to strike the Corpsetaker. My aim was bad. The strike only spun her in place and sent her sprawling back into open air.
I took a quick look back at the Lecters and immediately wished I hadn’t. The flames of the candles in the hall had burned down to pinpoints of cold blue light. Once again, the ghosts had assumed forms from nightmares—and they were going totally ballistic on the Big Hoods’ hideout. Something that looked like a blending of a gorilla and a Venus flytrap smashed apart a wooden crate supporting one shrine. A giant caterpillar, its segmented body made of severed human heads, their faces screaming, their tongues functioning as legs, rippled up a wall and began tearing out chunks of concrete where a ledge had been worn, destroying another shrine.
Right. It was working. I just had to keep the Corpsetaker busy until the wild rumpus got finished tearing apart the defenses.
I called up my Sight and vanished to a point twenty feet below the Corpsetaker’s position, reappearing inside solid stone. My eyes couldn’t see a thing, but my Sight wasn’t impaired. I could see dark, violent energy swirling around where I’d last seen the Corpsetaker; nasty stuff. I felt my lips stretch into a snarl as I hefted my staff again and growled, “Fuego!”
Ghost fire roared up through solid matter. In an instant, the dark energy had gathered to oppose my spell, but I sensed more than heard a cry of surprise and pain. The psycho hadn’t expected that one.
Then the dark energy vanished.
I scanned around me wildly and found it reappearing behind and above me. I vanished again, flicking out another strike at the Corpsetaker’s location—only to find that the Corpsetaker had blinked to a new one.
The next sixty seconds or so was a nauseating blur of motion and countermotion. We exchanged spells in solid stone, parried each other hovering in open air above the wraith pit, and leapfrogged each other’s positions throughout the sleeping quarters of the Big Hoods. It was all but impossible to aim, since it required us to correctly guess the next position of the opponent and then hit it with a spell, but I clipped her once more, and she landed a strike of pure kinetic force that slammed into my hip and missed my ghostly genitals by about an inch.
Twice she darted into the hallway to attack the Lecters, but I stayed on her, forcing her to keep moving, keep defending, allowing her only time enough to throw quick jabs of power back at me.
I wasn’t her match in a straight-up fight, but this was more like some kind of hallucinatory variant of Whac-a-Mole. Maybe I couldn’t take her out, but I could damned well keep her from stopping the Lecters. If she turned her attention from me, I was wizard enough to take her out, and she knew it. If she went all-out on me, I could stand up to her long enough to let the Lecters finish their project—and she knew that, too.
I could feel her rage building, lending her next near-miss a hammering edge that jolted my teeth right through my shield—and I laughed at her in reply, making no effort whatsoever to hide my scorn.
I shrugged off another jab, letting it roll off my shield. And then Corpsetaker vanished and reappeared at the far end of the hallway, at the door to the old electrical-junction room. The very last of the ward flames burned there, at one final, unspoiled shrine. The Corpsetaker faced the Lecters, who were already moving toward her, lifted her hand, and spoke a single word filled with ringing power: “Stop.”
And the Lecters did. Completely. I mean, like, statue-still.
“Screw that!” I called out and raised my staff, drawing upon my own will. “Go!”
There was a sudden strain in the air between the Corpsetaker and me, and I felt it as a physical pressure against my right hand, in which I brandished my staff. Corpsetaker’s upraised palm wavered slightly as our wills contended down the length of the hallway. I pushed hard, grinding my teeth and simply willing the Lecters to finish the job. I leaned forward a little and shoved out my staff, envisioning the Lecters tearing down the last of the little shrines.
My will lashed down the hallway and blew the hood back from the Corpsetaker’s face. Maybe she was wearing the form of one of her victims. Maybe I was getting a look at the real Corpsetaker. Either way, she wasn’t a pretty woman. She had a face shaped like a hatchet, only less gentle and friendly. Both cheeks were marked with what looked like ritual scars in the shape of spirals. Her hair was long and white, but grew in irregular blotches on her scalp, as if portions of it had been burned and scarred. Her skin was tanned leather, covered in fine seams and wrinkles, and there was a lizardlike quality to the way it loosened around her neck.
But her eyes were gorgeous. She had eyes a shade of vibrant jade like I had never seen this side of the Sidhe, and her eyelashes were long, thick, and dark as soot. As a young woman, she must have been a lean stunner, dangerously pretty, like a James Bond villainess.
Our eyes met and I braced myself for the soulgaze—but it didn’t happen. Hell’s bells, I had my Sight wide-open, enough to let me see the flow of energy straining between our outstretched hands, and it still didn’t happen. Guess the rules change when you’re all soul and nothing else.
The Corpsetaker watched me for a moment, apparently not particularly straining to hold my will away. “Again you meddle in what is not your concern.”
“Bad habit,” I said. “But then, it’s pretty much what wizards do.”
“This will not end well for you, boy,” she replied. “Leave now.”
“Heh, that’s funny,” I said. I was straining. I tried to keep it out of my voice. “For a second there, it sounded like you were telling me to go away. I mean, as if I would just go away.”
She blinked twice at me. Then, in a tone of dawning comprehension, she murmured, “You are not brilliant. You are ignorant.”
“Now you done it. Them’s fightin’ words,” I drawled.
The Corpsetaker tilted her head back and let out an eerie little screech. I think that, to her, it was laughter.
Then she turned, swiped a hand at the last shrine, and demolished it herself.
The wards came down all around us, energy fading, dispersing, settling abruptly back down to earth. I could see the massive currents of power begin to unravel and disperse back out into the world. Within seconds, the protective wards were gone, as if they’d never existed.
The Corpsetaker made that shrieking sound again and vanished, and in the sudden absence of her will I almost fell flat on my face. I caught myself by remembering that I could now officially scoff at gravity, stopped falling halfway to the floor, and righted myself again.
The wards were down. Murphy and company would be crashing the party at any moment.
And . . . for some reason, the Corpsetaker now wanted them to do it.
Right.
That couldn’t be good.
Chapter Forty-six
I let go of my Sight and went up the final flight of stairs, the ones that led from the junction room up to the street entrance—and found them stacked with Big Hoods. I blinked for a fraction of a second when I saw them. I’d practically forgotten the real-world thugs under the Corpsetaker’s control. All the power we’d been throwing around in the duel had been ghostly stuff. The Big Hoods had no practical way to be aware of it.
How odd must the past couple of minutes have been from their point of view? They’d have felt the wave of cold, seen candles burning suddenly low, and then heard lots of boards and candles and paints being smashed and clawed down, while the concrete and stone walls were raked by invisible talons and the candles were smacked up and down the halls and stairways.
There were at least a dozen of them on the stairs, and they had guns, and there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it. For a second, I entertained notions of setting the Lecters on them, but I rejected the idea in a spasm of nausea. I’d seen what the killer spooks had done to the wolfwaffen. If I turned t
hem loose, they’d deal with the Big Hoods the same way—and the Big Hoods, at the end of the day, were as much the Corpsetaker’s victims as her physical muscle—and once you turned loose a force that elemental, you almost had to expect collateral damage. I didn’t want any of it to splash onto Murphy and company.
“Okay,” I told the Lecters. “Go back downstairs and help Sir Stuart and his boys out against those lemurs. After that, defend Mort.” The Lecters’ only response was to vanish, presumably to the main chamber. Good. Mort had still been conscious the last time I’d seen him. He could tell them what to do if they needed any further direction.
Meanwhile, I’d do the only thing I could to take on the Big Hoods. I’d play superscout for Karrin’s team.
I vanished to outside the door to the stronghold and found several forms crouched there. Evening traffic was rumbling by on the bridge overhead, though the street running below it was deserted, and the space beneath the bridge was entirely shadowed. I ignored the darkness and saw Murphy next to the door, rummaging in a black nylon backpack. She was wearing her tactical outfit—black clothing and boots, and one of Charity Carpenter’s vests made of Kevlar and titanium. Over that was a tactical harness, and she had two handguns and her teeny assault rifle, a little Belgian gun called a P-90. It packed one hell of a punch for such a compact package—much like Murphy herself.
Next to her, against the wall, were three great, gaunt wolves—Will, Andi, and Marci, from the color of their fur. Next came Molly, in her rags and armor, sitting calmly against the wall with her legs crossed. Butters brought up the rear, dressed in dark colors, carrying his gym bag, and looking extremely nervous.
I went over to him and said, “Boo.”
The word emerged from the little radio in his pocket, and Butters jumped and said, “Meep.”
“Meep?” I said. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Butters muttered. “Keep your voice down. We’re sneaking up on someone here.”
“They already know you’re here,” I said. “There are about a dozen gunmen on the other side of that door.”
“Quiet!” Murphy hissed. “Dammit, Butters!”
Butters held up the radio. “Dresden says they’re right on the other side of the door.”
“Now he shows up,” Murphy muttered. “Not when we’re planning the entry. Give me the radio.”
Butters leaned across Molly and tossed the radio underhand. Molly just sat, smiling quietly. Murphy caught the radio. “So, what can you tell us—?” She hesitated, grimaced, and said, “I keep wanting to add the word over to the end of sentences. But this isn’t exactly radio protocol, is it?”
“Not really,” I said. “But we can do whatever makes you happy. Over.”
“No one likes a wiseass, Harry,” Murphy said.
“I always enjoy seeing you in gunmetal, Ms. Murphy,” I continued. “It brings out the blue in your eyes. Really makes them pop. Over.”
The wolves were all wagging their tails.
“Don’t make me bitch-slap you, Dresden,” Murphy growled. But her blue eyes were twinkling. “Tell me what you know.”
I gave her the brief on the interior of the hideout and what was waiting there.
“So you didn’t get this necromancer bitch,” she said.
“That’s one hell of a negative way to put it,” I replied, grinning. “Who’s a grumpy pants tonight? Over.”
Murphy rolled her eyes at Butters and said, in exactly the same tone, “So you didn’t get this necromancer bitch.”
“Not yet,” I said. “Pretty sure her ghost troops are done for, but I need to get back downstairs and see. Just wanted to give you the rundown. You remember how to get to the basement?”
“Down the stairs, through the hole in the wall, fifty feet down a hall that turns left, down more stairs.”
“Yeah, you got it,” I said.
“Uh,” Butters said. “Point of order? There’s a locked door and a bunch of guys with guns between here and there.”
Molly stood up. “They won’t have guns,” she said calmly.
Butters frowned. “Uh. Dresden just said . . .”
“I heard him,” Molly replied. “They’re going to empty their weapons at you the moment they see you in the doorway.”
“Okay. As plans go, I can’t be the only one who has a problem with that,” Butters said.
“Illusion?” I asked Molly.
She nodded.
Murphy frowned. “I don’t get it. Why that? Why not push them back with fire or make them all go to sleep or something?”
“Because this is the bad guys’ home,” I said. “They have a threshold.”
Molly nodded. “Any spell that goes through gets degraded down to nothing. I can’t push anything past the door. If I go in without being invited, I won’t have any magic to speak of. Without an invitation, Harry can’t cross the threshold at all.”
Murphy nodded. “So you’re going to give them a target at the door. Makes sense.” She frowned. “How were you going to get back in, Harry?”
I stood there for a second with my mouth open.
“Well, crap,” I muttered. “Over.”
Murphy snorted. “God, it really is you, isn’t it.” She turned back to her bag and took out a small black plastic hemisphere of what had to be explosives of some kind. She pressed it onto the door’s surface right next to its lock. “No problem. I’ll invite you in once the door’s down.”
“Doesn’t work like that,” I said. “Got to be an invitation from someone who lives there.”
Murphy scowled. “Nothing’s ever simple with you, Dresden.”
“Me? Since when have you been Polly Plastique?”
“Kincaid showed me how,” Murphy said without any emphasis. “And you know me, Dresden. I’ve always been a practical girl.” She pressed a little device with a couple of tines on it through a pair of matching holes in the bowl, turned a dial, and said, “Get clear. Setting for ten seconds. Whatever you’re going to do, Molly, have it ready.”
My apprentice nodded, and everyone but me and Murphy backed down the wall from the door.
I waited until they were done moving away before I said, “Murph, these gangers . . . They’re victims, too.”
She took a breath. Then she said, “Are they standing right by the door?”
“No. Five or six steps down.”
She nodded. “Then they won’t be in the direct line of the blast. This is a fairly small, shaped charge. With a little luck, no one will get hurt.”
“Luck,” I said.
She closed her eyes for a second. Then she said, “You can’t save everyone, Dresden. Right now, I’m concerned with the man these victims are torturing and holding prisoner. They’re still people. But they come right after him and everyone here on my worry list.”
I felt a little guilty for making an insinuation about Murphy’s priorities. Maybe it was too easy for me to talk. I was the one the Big Hoods couldn’t hurt, after all. I wasn’t sure how to say something like that, though, so I just sort of grunted and mumbled.
“It’s okay,” Murphy said very quietly. “I get it. Your perspective has changed.”
I stared down at her for a moment. Then I said, “Not about some things.”
“Relationship ambivalence from beyond the grave,” she said, her mouth turning up at the corners. “Perfect.”
“Karrin,” I began.
“Don’t,” she said, cutting me off. “Just . . . don’t. It doesn’t matter now, does it?”
“Of course it matters.”
“No,” she said. “You are not Patrick Swayze. I am not Demi Moore.” She touched a switch on the little box and it started ticking. “And this sure as hell isn’t pottery class.” She moved a couple of yards down the wall, pressed her hands up over her ears, and opened her mouth. Molly, Butters, and the wolves all did more or less the same thing. It looked . . . Well, they’d have been insulted if I said anything, but it looked darned cute on the wolves, them all crouc
hed down with their chins on the ground, folding their ears forward with their paws. I’m sure any real wolf would have been shocked at the indignity.
I stayed where I was standing, right in front of the door. I mean, what the hell, right? When was I going to get a chance to see an explosion from this angle again?
I was a little disappointed. There was just a huge bang, a flash of light, and then a cloud of dust, which was pretty much descriptive of most of the explosions I’d seen. Though I was glad no one had actually been watching me. I flinched and hopped back about a foot when it went off.
When the dust cleared enough to see through, the door swung freely on its hinges. Murphy stuck her foot around the corner and kicked it all the way open, then gestured to Molly.
Molly murmured and closed her eyes, then lifted her hand. Abruptly, there were two Murphys crouched by the door. The one nearest it was chewing gum. Noisily. She stood up with her P-90, flicked on the little flashlight under the barrel, and stepped around the corner, the gun pointing down the stairs.
Gunfire erupted. The gum-chewing Murphy dropped to one knee and started shooting, the assault rifle chattering in two- and three-round bursts. It was noisy as hell for about five seconds, and then there was silence. Gum-chewing Murphy withdrew back around the corner. Once she was out of sight of whoever was inside, she vanished.
The real Murphy stood up then and pitched an object down the stairs. A moment later, there was an eye-searing flash of light and thunder.
“Go, go, go!” Murphy called, and swung to point her gun down the stairs with just a portion of her upper body and face exposed to possible fire, while the rest of her body was hidden behind the wall. The three wolves rose and plunged through the dusty doorway in a single blur of motion.
Wolves in general get underestimated in the modern world—after all, humans have guns. And helicopters. But back in the day, when things were more muscle powered, wolves were a real threat to humans, possibly the number-two predator on the planet. People don’t remember that wolves are far stronger, far faster, and far more dangerous than human beings. That humanity taught wolves to fear and avoid them—and that without that fear and advanced weaponry, a human being was nothing more than a possible threat and a potential meal. A wolf with no fear could tear several human beings apart. A wolf with no fear and an intelligent mind directing it to work in close concert with teammates was a force of freaking nature, more or less literally.