by Jim Butcher
“You know your way around the station,” Michael commented.
“Trains are faster than buses and safer than planes,” I said. “I took a plane to Portland once, and the pilot lost his radio and computer and so on. Had to land without instruments or communications. We were lucky it was a clear day.”
“Statistically, it’s still the safest—” he began.
“Not for wizards it isn’t,” I told him seriously. “I’ve had flights that went smoothly. A couple of them just had little problems. But after that trip to Portland…” I shook my head. “There were kids on that plane. I’m going to live a long time. I can take a little longer to get there. Hey, Joe,” I said to a silver-haired janitor, walking by with a wheeled cart of cleaning supplies.
“Harry,” Joe said, nodding with a small smile as he passed by.
“I’ve been here a lot lately,” I said to Michael. “Traveling to support the Paranet, mostly. Plus Warden stuff.” I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t want the job, but I’ll be damned if I’ll do it half-assed.”
Michael looked back at the janitor thoughtfully for a moment, and then at me. “What’s that like?”
“Wardening?” I asked. I shrugged. “I’ve got four other Wardens who are, I guess, under my command.” I made air quotes around the word. “In Atlanta, Dallas, New York, and Boston. But I mostly just stay out of their way and let them do their jobs, give them help when they need it. They’re kids. Grew up hard in the war, though that didn’t give them brains enough to keep from looking up to me.”
Mouse suddenly stopped in his tracks.
Me too. I didn’t rubberneck around. Instead I focused on the dog.
Mouse’s ears twitched like individual radar dishes. His nose quivered. One paw came up off the ground, but the dog only looked around him uncertainly.
“Lassie would have smelled something,” I told him. “She would have given a clear, concise warning. One bark for gruffs, two barks for Nickelheads.”
Mouse gave me a reproachful glance, put his paw back down, and sneezed.
“He’s right,” Michael said quietly. “Something is watching us.”
“When isn’t it?” I muttered, glancing around. I didn’t see anything. My highly tuned investigative instincts didn’t see anything either. I hate feeling like Han Solo in a world of Jedi. “I’m supposed to be the Jedi,” I muttered aloud.
“What’s that?” Michael asked.
The station’s lights went out. All of them. At exactly the same time.
The emergency lights, which are supposed to come on instantly, didn’t.
Beside me Michael’s coat rustled and something clicked several times. Presumably he was trying his flashlight, and presumably it didn’t work.
That wasn’t good. Magic could interfere with the function of technology, but that was more of a Murphy effect: Things that naturally could go wrong tended to go wrong a lot more often. It didn’t behave in a predictable or uniform fashion. It didn’t shut down lights, emergency lights, and battery-powered flashlights all at the same time.
I didn’t know what could do that.
“Harry?” Michael asked.
Mouse pressed up against my leg, and I felt his warning growl vibrating through his chest.
“You said it, Chewie,” I told my dog. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
Chapter Twenty-three
People started screaming.
I reached for the amulet around my neck and drew it forth as I directed an effort of will at it to call forth light in the darkness.
And nothing happened.
I’d have stared at my amulet if I could have seen it. I couldn’t believe that it wasn’t working. I shook the necklace, cursed at it, and raised it again, forcing more of my will into the amulet.
It flickered with blue-white sparks for a moment, and that was it.
Mouse let out a louder snarl, the one I hear only when he’s identified a real threat. Something close. My heart jumped up hard enough to bounce off the roof of my mouth.
“I can’t call a light!” I said, my voice high and thin.
A zipper let out a high-pitched whine in the dark next to me, and steel rasped against steel, then rang like a gently struck bell. “Father,” Michael’s voice murmured gently, “we need Your help.”
White light exploded from the sword.
About a dozen things crouching within three or four yards of us started screaming.
I’d never seen anything like them before. They were maybe five feet tall, but squat and thick, with rubbery-looking muscle. They were built more or less along the lines of baboons, somewhere between pure quadruped and biped, with wicked-looking claws, long, ropy tails, and massive shoulders. Some of them carried crude-looking weapons: cudgels, stone-headed axes, and stone-bladed knives. Their heads were apelike and nearly skeletal, black skin stretched tight over muscle and bone. They had ugly, almost sharklike teeth, so oversized that you could see where they were cutting their own lips and—
And they didn’t have any eyes. Where their eyes should have been there was nothing but blank, sunken skin.
They screamed in agony as the light from Michael’s sword fell on them, reeling back as if burned by a sudden flame—and if the sudden, smoldering reek that filled the air was any indicator, they had been.
“Harry!” Michael cried.
I knew that tone of voice. I crouched as quickly as I could, as low as I could, and barely got out of the way before Amoracchius swept through the space where my head had been—
—and slammed into the leaping form of one of the creatures that had been about to land on my back.
The thing fell back away from me and landed on the floor, thrashing. Its blood erupted into blue-white fire as it spurted from the wound.
I snapped my head around to stare at Amoracchius. More blood sizzled on the blade of the sword like grease on a hot skillet.
Iron.
These things were faeries.
I’d never seen them face-to-face before, but I’d read descriptions of them—including when I had been boning up on my book learning to figure out the identity of the gruffs. Given that this beastie was a faerie, there was only one thing it could be.
“Hobs!” I screamed at Michael as I drew the gun from my coat pocket. “They’re hobs!”
After that I didn’t have time to talk. A couple of the hobs around us had recovered enough from the shock of sudden exposure to light to fling themselves forward. Mouse let out his deep-chested battle roar and collided with one of them in midair. They went down in a tangle of thrashing limbs and flashing teeth.
The next hob leapt over them at me, stone knife in its knobby hand. I slipped aside from the line of his jump and pistol-whipped him with the barrel of the heavy revolver. The steel smashed into the hob’s eyeless face, scorching flesh and shattering teeth. The hob screamed in pain as it flew by, crashing into one of its fellows.
“In nomine Dei!” Michael bellowed. I felt his shoulder blades hit mine, and the light from the great sword bobbed and flashed, followed by another scream from a hob’s throat.
The hob wrestling with Mouse slammed the huge dog to the floor and rose up above him, baring its fangs.
I took a step toward it, jammed the revolver into its face, screamed, “Get off my dog!” and started pulling the trigger. I wasn’t sure what hurt the hob more—the bullets or the muted flashes of light from the discharge. Either way it recoiled so hard that it flung itself completely off of Mouse, who came to his feet still full of fight. I grabbed him by the collar and hauled him back with me until I felt Michael at my back again.
The hobs withdrew to the shadows, but I could still hear them all around us. As bright as Michael’s sword was, I should have been able to see the ceiling far overhead, but it spread out for only twenty feet or so—far enough to keep the hobs from leaping onto us in a single bound, but not much more than that.
I could hear screams still, drifting through the interior of the station. I heard a
gun go off, something smaller than my .44, the rapid shots of panic fire. Whoever was packing was presumably shooting blindly into the dark. Hell’s bells, this was going to turn into a real mess if I didn’t do something, and fast.
“We’ve got to get out of the open,” I said, thinking out loud. “Michael, head for the ticketing counter.”
“Can’t you clear the way?” Michael asked. “I can cover you.”
“I can’t see in this crap,” I said. “And there are other people in here. If I start tossing power around I could kill somebody.”
“Then stay close,” Michael said. He moved out at a stalk, sword held high over his head, ready to sweep down on top of anything stupid enough to come leaping at him. We went over two dead hobs, both of them covered in blue flames that gave off barely any light but consumed the bodies with voracious rapidity. I heard a scuffle of claws on the floor and shouted a wordless cry.
Michael pivoted smoothly as a hob armed with a pair of stone axes rushed into the light of the holy sword. The dark faerie flung one of the axes at Michael on the way. My friend slapped it aside with a contemptuous flick of his sword, and met the hob with a horizontal slash that shattered its second ax and split open its torso all the way back to its crooked spine. The hob dropped, spewing flame, and Michael kicked its falling body back into its companions, scattering them for a moment and gaining us another twenty feet.
“Nice,” I said, keeping close, trying to watch the bobbing shadows all around us. “You been working out? You look good.”
Michael’s teeth flashed in a quick smile. “Wouldn’t speaking give these creatures a fine means of tar—” He broke off as Amoracchius flicked in front of my face, deflecting a tumbling stone knife. “Targeting us,” he continued.
Me and my big mouth. I shut up the rest of the way to the ticketing counter.
I led Michael around behind it and all but tripped over the form of a wounded man in a business suit. He let out a choked scream of pain and clutched at the bloodied cloth over his lower leg. There was the broken shard of a stone blade still protruding from the man’s leg.
“Harry,” Michael said, “keep moving. They’re gathering for a rush.”
“Okay,” I said. I knelt down by the wounded businessman and said, “Come on, buddy; this is no place to be sitting around.” I grabbed him underneath the arms and started backpedaling down the counter. “There’s a doorway back here somewhere, goes to the rear area.”
“Perfect,” Michael said. “I can hold that for as long as you need.”
The wounded man struggled to help me, but mostly all he did was make it harder to move him. He was making continuous sounds of terror and pain. I was glad that we had the barrier of the counter between us and the encroaching hobs. I didn’t particularly care to find out what getting hit with a sharp stone ax felt like.
We reached the door behind the ticketing counter, which was closed. I jiggled the handle, but it was apparently locked. I didn’t have time for this crap. I lifted my right hand and focused on one of the energy rings I wore. There was one of them on each finger, a band made of three rings woven into a braid. The rings stored energy, saving back a little every time I moved my arm, and allowing me to unleash that stored energy all in one spot.
I brought my will to bear on the door as I lifted my hand in a closed fist, focusing the energy of the rings into as small an area as I could. I hadn’t designed them for this kind of work. They’d been made to shove things roughly away from me before they could rip my face off. But I didn’t have a lot of time to waste putting together something neater.
So I aimed as best I could, triggered the ring, and watched it rip the doorknob, the lock, and the plate they were all mounted in right out of the door, to send them tumbling into the room beyond. Unimpeded by any of those pesky metal security fittings, the door swung inward.
“Come on!” I said to Michael, seizing the wounded man again. “Mouse, lead the way.”
My dog padded through the doorway, crouched low and with his teeth bared. I practically walked on his tail as I came in behind him, and Michael was all but treading on the wounded man’s bloodied leg.
As the light from Amoracchius illuminated the room we entered, it revealed the harried customer-service rep we’d seen a few minutes before. She knelt on the floor, crucifix in hand, her head bowed as she frantically recited a prayer. As the light fell over her she blinked and looked up. The white fire of the holy sword painted the tear streaks on her face silver as her mouth dropped open in an expression of shock and stunned joy. She looked down at her crucifix, and back up at him again.
Michael took a quick glance around the room, smiled at the woman, and said, “Of course He’s there. Of course He listens.” He paused, then admitted, “Granted, He doesn’t always answer quite this quickly.”
There were other people in the room—the customers she’d been trying to find a hotel room for. When things had gone dark and scary she had somehow rounded them up and gotten them into the room. That took a lot more moxie than most people had. I also noted that she had been kneeling between the customers and the doorway. I liked her already.
“Carol,” I said, sharply enough to make her tug her gaze from Michael, who now stood in the doorway, holy Sword in hand. “Carol, I need you to give me a hand here.”
She blinked and then nodded jerkily and rose. She helped me drag the wounded man over to where the others were seated against the wall. “H-how did you know my name?” she stammered. “Are y-you two angels?”
I sighed and tapped a fingernail on the name tag she wore. “I’m sure as hell not,” I said. I jerked my head at Michael. “Though he’s about as close to one as you’re ever likely to see.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Harry,” Michael said. “I’m just a—” He broke off and ducked. Something solid whizzed past him and slammed a hole the size of my head into the drywall above us. Bits of dust rained down, and frightened people cried out.
Michael slammed the door shut, but without, you know, all those pesky metal security fittings, it swung open again. He slammed it closed and leaned one shoulder against it, panting. Something struck the door with a heavy thump. Then there was silence.
I ripped open the wounded man’s pant leg along the seam. The knife had hit him in the calf and he was a bloody mess, but it could have been worse. “Leave it in,” I told Carol, “and make sure he stays still. That’s close to some big veins, and I don’t want to open them trying to take it out. Stay close to him and keep him from trying to take it out. Okay?”
“I…Yes, all right,” Carol said. She blinked her eyes at me several times. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”
“Me either,” I responded. I rose and went to stand beside Michael.
“Those things are quite a bit stronger than I am,” he said in a low rumble that the people behind us couldn’t hear. “If they rush this door I won’t be able to hold it shut.”
“I’m not sure they will,” I said.
“But you’re here.”
“I don’t think they’re after me,” I said. “If they were, they wouldn’t be going after everyone else, too.”
Michael frowned at me. “But you said they were faeries.”
“They are,” I said. “But I don’t think this was supposed to be a hit. There are too many of them for that. This is a full-blown assault.”
Michael grimaced. “Then there are people in danger. They need our help.”
“And they’re going to get it,” I said. “Listen, hobs can’t stand light. Any kind of light. It burns them and it can kill them. That’s why they called up this myrk before they came in.”
“Myrk?”
“It’s matter from the Nevernever. Think of it as a cellophane filter, only instead of being around a light, it is spread all through the air. That’s why we couldn’t see the light from my amulet, and why the muzzle flash of my gun was so muted. And that’s how we’re going to take them out.”
“We get rid of the my
rk,” Michael said, nodding.
“Exactly,” I said. I raked my fingers back through my hair and started fumbling through my pockets to see what I had on me. Not much. I keep a small collection of handy wizarding gear in the voluminous pockets of my duster, but the pockets of my winter coat contained nothing but a stick of chalk, two ketchup packages from Burger King, and a furry, lint-coated Tic Tac. “Okay,” I said. “Let me think a minute.”
Something slammed into the other side of the door and shoved Michael’s work boots a good eighteen inches across the floor. A claw flashed through the opening at me. I got out of the way, but the sleeve of my coat didn’t. The hob’s claws ripped three neat slits in the fabric.
Michael lifted Amoracchius in one hand and drove its blazing length through the sturdy door. The hob screamed and pulled away. Michael slammed the door shut again and jerked the weapon clear. Dark blood sizzled on the holy blade. “I don’t mean to rush you,” he said calmly, “but I don’t think we have a minute.”
Chapter Twenty-four
“Dammit!” I swore. “This is my only winter coat!” I closed my eyes for a second and tried to focus my mind to the task. A myrk wasn’t like other forms of faerie glamour. Those could create appearance, and could simulate emotional states related to that appearance. The myrk was a conjuration, something physical, tangible, that actually did exist and would continue to do so as long as the hobs gave it enough juice, metaphorically speaking.
Wind might do it. A big enough wind could push the myrk away—but it would have to be an awful lot of wind. The little gale I’d called up to handle Torelli’s hitters would barely make a dent in it. I could probably do something more violent and widespread, but when it comes to moving matter around, you don’t get something for nothing. There was no way I’d be able to maintain that kind of blast long enough to get the job done.