by Jim Butcher
My staff hadn’t been made to produce light, but it was a flexible tool, and I sent more Hellfire through it as I lifted it overhead to light our way, sending out red-orange light in the shape of the runes and sigils carved into the staff out over the darkness.
And, just as I did, I realized what else the darkness would do.
It would force the humans to produce light.
Specifically, it would draw the response from wizards that being sunk into darkness always did. We called light. By one method or another, it was the first thing any wizard would do in a situation like this one. We’d do it fast, too—faster than anyone without magic could pull out a light of his own.
So, as my staff lit up, I realized that I had just declared my exact position to every freaking monster in the whole freaking cavern. The darkness had been a trap designed to elicit this very response, and I had walked right into it.
Ghouls let out howls of fury and surged toward me through a hundred rune-shaped scarlet spotlights that glinted on their bloodied fangs, their talons, those horrible, hungry, sunken eyes.
Guns roared all around me, splattering the nearest ghouls into black-blooded slurry. It wasn’t enough. The creatures simply surged forward, being torn apart, until Murphy’s gun clicked empty.
“Reloading!” she screamed, ejecting the weapon’s magazine, hopping a step back as the ghoul she’d only wounded continued toward me.
Marcone’s gun roared and that ghoul went away, but when he pumped the weapon it clicked on an empty chamber. He dropped it for the little submachine gun clipped to his harness, and for a second or two it cut through ghouls like a scythe, ripping in a great horizontal swath—and then it ran empty.
I stepped forward as another wave of ghouls bounded over those the gunfire had held off.
Murphy and Marcone had bought me time enough for the spell I’d been forming in my mind to meet with my will and congeal into fire. I whirled the staff overhead, and then brought it down gripped in both hands, striking its end to the stone floor as I cried, “Flam-mamurus!”
There was a crackling howl, and fire ripped its way up out of the stones of the floor. It rippled out from the point of impact in a line running thirty or forty yards in either direction, a sudden fountain of molten stone that shot up in an ongoing curtain ten or twelve feet high, angled toward the ghouls charging us from the far side of the cavern. Blazing liquid stone fell down over them, among them, and the oncoming tide of screaming ghouls broke upon that wall of stone and fire with screams of agony and, for the first time, of fear.
The wall held off fully half the ghouls in the cavern and screened us from Vittorio’s sight. It also provided all the humans with plenty of light to see by.
“Hell’s bells, I’m good,” I wheezed.
The effort of the spell was monumental, even with the Hellfire to help me, and I staggered, the light vanishing from the runes of my staff.
“Harry, left!” Murphy screamed.
I turned my head to my left in time to see a ghoul, half of its body a charred ruin, slam Hendricks aside as if the huge man had been a rag doll, and throw itself at me, while two more leaped over the group from behind, and tried to follow in its wake.
I was pretty sure I could have taken the ghoul, provided he wasn’t much heavier than a loaf of bread and had no idea how to use those claws and fangs. But just in case he was heavier than he looked and competent at ripping things apart, I flung up my shield bracelet.
It sputtered into life for a second, and the ghoul bounced off it—and the effort it cost me nearly made me black out. I fell.
The ghoul recovered and thrashed toward me, even as I saw Thomas appear from the ranks of vampires and thralls and attack its two companions from behind. My brother’s pale face was all but glowing, his eyes were wide with fear, and I hadn’t ever seen him move that fast. He hamstrung both of the other ghouls with the blades in his hands—well, if hacking through three-quarters of the leg, including the thick, black thighbones, could be considered “hamstringing.” He left them on the ground while other Raiths tore them to pieces. Thomas leaped at the lead ghoul.
He wasn’t fast enough.
The ghoul came at me with a dreadful howl. I didn’t have enough energy left to lift my body up off the floor and face my killer head-on.
Fortunately, I did have energy enough to draw the .44 from my duster pocket. I’d like to tell you that I waited till the last second for the perfect shot, coolly facing down the ghoul with nerves of steel. The truth is that my nerves were pretty much shot, and I was too tired to panic. I barely got the sights lined up before the ghoul’s jaws opened wide enough to engulf my entire head.
I never consciously pulled the trigger, but the gun roared, and the ghoul’s head snapped back before it crashed into me. There was pain and I suddenly couldn’t breathe.
“Harry!” Thomas cried.
The weight vanished from my chest and I sucked in a breath. I got my left hand free and pounded at the ghoul with the .44.
“Easy!” Murphy shouted. “Easy, Harry!” Her small, strong fingers caught my wrist and eased the gun out of it. I dimly realized that I was lucky it hadn’t gone off again while I was thrashing around with it.
Thomas flung the ghoul off me, and it landed in a heap. The back upper quarter of its head was gone. Just gone.
“Nice shot,” Marcone noted. I looked back to see him lifting a pale and sweating Hendricks, getting one of the big man’s arms over his shoulder and supporting his weight. “Shall we?”
Thomas hauled me to my feet. “Come on. No time to rest now.”
“Right,” I said. I raised my voice and called, “Lara, get them moving!”
We started toward the gate, keeping the curtain of molten fire on our flank. It was hard just moving one foot in front of the other. It took me a while to notice that Justine was under one shoulder, supporting part of my weight, and that I was walking amidst the thralls, near the White King and his guard.
The vampires were still the outer guard, spread out over a half circle, in what amounted to a running battle. Only we weren’t running. It was more of a steady walk, made all the more eerie by hellish light and shadow and desperation. Murphy’s gun chattered several more times, and then fell silent. I heard the throaty bellow of my .44. I checked my hand and sure enough, my gun wasn’t there.
“Leave them!” I heard Lara snap, her cold silver voice slithering around pleasantly in my ear. “Keep the pace steady. Stay together. Give them no opening.”
We walked, the vampires growing more desperate and less human as the fight went on. Ghouls roared and screamed and died. So did Raiths. The cold subterranean air of the cavern had grown greenhouse hot, and it felt as if there weren’t enough air left in the air. I panted hard, but it never seemed to get enough into my lungs.
I kept lifting one foot and putting it back down again, numbly noticing that Marcone was behind me with Hendricks, doing the same thing.
I glanced to my left and saw the fiery fountain of molten stone beginning to dwindle. It hadn’t been an ongoing spell I had to keep pumping power into. That’s the beauty of earth magic. Momentum. Once you get it moving, it doesn’t slow down very quickly. I’d poured fire magic into all that stone and forced it to expand out of the earth around it. It had simply taken this long for the spell to play out.
But that’s exactly what had happened. The spell was beginning to play out. Much as I had.
The curtain lowered slowly, thinning and growing less hot, and I could see ghouls behind it, ready to attack. I noted, idly, that they would be able to rush right into our group of dazed thralls, wounded gangsters, and weary wizards, with nothing much to oppose them.
“Oh, God,” Justine whimpered. She’d noticed, too. “Oh, God.”
The ghouls had all seen the curtain lowering. Now they rushed forward, to the very edge of the fading curtain, seemingly uncaring of the molten stone on the floor, dozens of them, a solid line of the creatures just waiting for the first chan
ce to bounce over and eat our faces.
A blast of green light flashed down the line. It went completely through two ghouls, leaving them howling on the floor, severed a third ghoul’s arm at the shoulder, and continued on through the white throne, leaving a hole the size of a laundry basket in its back.
Ramirez had been waiting for them to line up like that.
He stood, his weight on one foot, at the far end of the lowering wall of flaming stone, on the ghoul side, arms akimbo. They whirled toward him, but Ramirez started lifting his arms alternately from his hip to extend before him, the motion like that of a gunfighter in the Old West, and every draw flung more silent green shafts of deadly light through the ghouls.
Those nearest him tried to rush forward for the kill, but Ramirez had their measure now, and he wasn’t content to leave a single gaping hole, trusting that it would incapacitate them sufficiently. He hurled blast after hideously ruinous blast, and left nothing but a scattered pile of twitching parts of the first ghouls to rush him, and those beyond them suffered nearly as greatly. Fresh-spilled black ichor rushed back and forth across the cavern floor until it looked like the deck of a ship pitching on a lunatic sea.
“What are you waiting for, Dresden?” Ramirez shouted. “One little bit of vulcanomancy and you get worn out!” A particularly well-aimed bolt tore the heads from a pair of ghouls at once. “How do you like that?”
We all began hurrying ahead. “Not bad,” I slurred back at him, “for a virgin.”
His rate of fire had begun to slacken, but the gibe drew a fresh burst of ferocity out of Ramirez, and he redoubled his efforts. The ghouls howled their frustration and bounded away from the wall of fire, out of its treacherous light and away from the power of the Warden of the White Council ripping them to shreds.
“It hurts!” bellowed Ramirez drunkenly, flinging a last pair of bolts at a fleeing ghoul. “Ow! Ow, it hurts! It hurts to be this good!”
There was a hiss of sound, a flicker of steel, and one of Vitto Malvora’s knives hit Ramirez’s stomach so hard that that it threw the young man off his feet and to the ground.
“Man down!” Marcone shouted. We were close enough to the gate that I could see the pale blue light that spilled through it. Marcone waved his hand through a couple of signals and flicked a finger at Ramirez, then at Hendricks. The armed men—mercenaries, they had to be; no gang of criminal thugs was so disciplined—rushed forward, taking charge of the wounded, seizing Ramirez and dragging him back toward the gate, roughly pushing and shoving the thralls ahead and toward the gate.
I went to Ramirez, staggering away from Justine. The knife had hit him in the guts. Hard. Ramirez had worn a Kevlar vest, which wasn’t much good for stopping sharp, pointy things, though it had at least kept the knife’s hilt from tearing right into the muscle and soft tissue. I knew there were some big arteries there, and more or less where they were located, but I couldn’t tell if the knife was at the right angle to have hit them. His face was terribly pale, and he blinked his eyes woozily as the soldiers started dragging him across the floor, and his legs thrashed weakly, bringing his own left leg up into his field of view.
“Bloody hell,” he gasped. “Harry. There’s a knife in my leg. When did that happen?”
“In the duel,” I told him. “Don’t you remember?”
“I thought you’d stepped on me and sprained my ankle,” Ramirez replied. Then he blinked again. “Bloody hell. There’s a knife in my guts.” He peered at them. “And they match.”
“Be still,” I warned him. Vampires and thralls and mercenaries were falling back through the gate now. “Don’t move around, all right?”
He began to say something, but a panicked vampire kicked his leg as he went past. Ramirez’s face twisted in pain and then suddenly slackened, his eyes fluttering closed. I saw his staff on the ground and grabbed it and pitched it through the gate after him, the men carrying him as the fight behind me got closer, while most of the retreating vampires still fought off the determined assault of the ghouls.
“How long?” I heard Marcone demand of one of the soldiers.
The man checked his watch—an expensive Swiss stopwatch, with springs and cogs, not some digital thing. “Three minutes, eleven seconds,” the soldier said.
“How many charges?”
“Six doubles,” he replied.
“Hey,” I snapped at Marcone. “Cutting it a little close, huh?”
“Any longer and they wouldn’t accomplish anything,” Marcone replied. “Can you walk?”
“Yes, I can walk,” I snapped.
“I could get someone to carry you,” Marcone said, his tone solicitous and sincere.
“Bite me,” I growled, and called, “Murphy?”
“Here!” Murphy called. She was among the last of those retreating from the ghoul onslaught. Her boxy little Volvo of a gun was hanging by its strap on one shoulder, and she held my .44 in both hands, though it looked almost comically overlarge for her.
“Ramirez has got a knife in the stomach,” I said. “I need you to look after him.”
“He’s the other Warden, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s already through the gate.”
“What about you?”
I shook my head and made sure my duster was still covering most of me. “Malvora is still out there. He might try to kill our gate, or try some other spell. I’ve got to be one of the last ones through.”
Murphy gave me a skeptical look. “You look like you’re about to fall over. You in any shape to do more magic?”
“True,” I said, and offered her my staff. “Hey, maybe you should do it.”
She gave me a hard look. “No one likes a wiseass, Harry.”
“Are you kidding? As long as the wiseass is talking to someone else, people love ’em.” I gave her half a smile and said, “Get out of here.”
“How are we getting back out again?” she asked. “Thomas led us there, but…”
“He’ll lead you back,” I said. “Or one of the others will. Or Ramirez, if some idiot doesn’t kill him trying to help him.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather you did it, Harry.” She touched my hand, and departed through the broad oval of the gate. I saw her hurry through ankle-deep snow beneath what looked like sheltering pine trees to Ramirez’s side, where he lay limply on his cloak. The thralls looked confused, which of course they would be, and cold, which, given their wardrobe, of course they would be.
“That’s all of ours!” shouted the soldier to Marcone. “Two minutes, fifteen seconds!”
He had to shout. The nearest of the ghouls were about ten feet away, doing battle against, for lack of a more clichéd term, a thin white line of Raith, including my brother with his two blades spinning.
“Go!” Marcone said, and the soldier went through. Marcone, a fresh shotgun in hand, stepped up next to me. “Dresden?”
“What are you hanging around for?”
“If you recall,” he said, “I agreed to extract you alive. I’m not leaving until I have done so.” He paused and added, “Provided, of course, that it happens in the next two minutes.”
From where I was standing, I could see three two-brick bundles of C4, detonators thrust into their soft surfaces, each fitted with old-fashioned precision timepieces. They were simple charges on the floor. The other three must have been shaped charges affixed to the cavern walls. I had no idea how much destruction was going to be wrought by them, but I didn’t suppose it would be much fun to be there when they went boom. Alas, that the poor ghouls would most likely be staying for the fireworks.
“Thomas!” I called. “Time to go!”
“Go!” Thomas shouted, and the other vampires with him broke from their line and fled for the gate, except for one, a tall female Raith who…
I blinked. Holy crap. It was Lara.
The other vampires fled past me, through the gate, and Thomas and his sister stood alone against the horde of eight-foot ghouls. Stood against it,
and stopped it cold.
Their skin gleamed colder and whiter than glacial ice, their eyes blazed silvery bright, and they moved with blinding speed and utterly inhuman grace. His saber fluttered and slashed, drawing a constant stream of blood, punctuated by devastating blows of his kukri.
(Ah, right, that was the name of that inward-bent knife. I knew I’d remember it eventually.)
Lara moved with him, trailing her damp, midnight hair and shredded silk kimono. She covered Thomas’s back like a cloak hung from his shoulders. She was no weaker than her younger brother, and perhaps even faster, and the wavy-bladed short sword in her hand had a penchant for leaving spills of ghoulish entrails in its wake. Together, the pair of them slipped aside from repeated rushes and dealt out deadly violence to one foe after another.
Ultimately, I think, their fight was futile—and all the more valiant and astonishing for being so doomed. No matter how lethal Thomas and Lara proved to be, or how many ghouls went screaming to the floor, their black blood continued to slither back into their fallen bodies, and the ghouls that had been taken down continued to gather themselves together to rise and fight again. Most of those who reentered the fight with renewed vigor and increased fury remained hideously maimed in some way. Some trailed their entrails like slimy grey ropes. Others were missing sections of their skulls. At least two entered the fray armless, simply biting with their wide jaws of vicious teeth. Beside the beauty of the brother and sister vampires, the ghouls’ deformed bodies and hideous injuries were all the more monstrous, all the more vile.
“My God,” Marcone said, his voice hushed. “It is the most beautiful nightmare I have ever seen.”
He was right. It was hypnotic. “Time?” I asked him, my voice rough.
He consulted his own stopwatch. “One minute, forty-eight seconds.”
“Thomas!” I bellowed. “Lara! Now!”
With that, the pair of them bounded apart, apparently the last thing the ghouls had been expecting, and dashed for the gate.
I turned to go—and that was when I felt it.