by Jim Butcher
I lifted my head, twisting around enough to see through the crouched limbs of Shaggy Feathers, which seemed to be neither arms or legs, but something that served it as both, like the extremities of a spider. I couldn’t see what it had my wrists pinned with, and I didn’t want to. What I could see was a couple of leaves trembling on a nearby fern, and a gleam of metal from somewhere near the source of the mysterious hiss.
Gas.
The entire strength of this plan is predicated upon attacking the child, not the Archive.
Children have very low body mass, compared to adults.
A toxin dispersed in the air would be far more effective against Ivy than one of the Denarians—or even a grown person. All the bad guys had to do was pick something that caused unconsciousness and skewed heavily toward body mass, and they’d have an ideal weapon to use against her. Tessa and Nicodemus must have had several of their more capable lackeys carry in canisters of the stuff, whatever it was. Then all they had to do was open the cans and wait for her to fall.
My thoughts flashed back to Thorned Namshiel’s spell, the one he’d been carrying out behind his concealing veil. A detail I’d barely noticed at the time suddenly leapt out at me. I’d been worried about what spell he was getting ready. I should have been paying attention to where he was getting ready to cast it—directly underneath a set of large vents. He’d probably been getting ready to set a wind spell in motion, to keep air pumping through the vents and spreading the gas through the Oceanarium.
Could I smell something sort of mediciney? Had the end of my nose gone numb? Hell’s bells, Harry, this is no time either to panic or to suddenly pass out. I had to warn Ivy.
I turned my head back toward her and caught Tessa’s gaze halfway. “Worked it out, did you?” Mantis Girl murmured. “If he speaks,” she said, presumably to Obsidian Statue, “crush his chest.”
A weirdly modulated voice issued from the general area of the androgynous statue’s head. “Yes, mis—”
And then there was a whup and a slap of air pressure against my skin, and Statue’s head—and Shaggy Feathers’s too—exploded in simultaneous eruptions of distinctly different forms of gore. The statue went out like some kind of faulty street-paving machine, splattering black sludge that looked like hot asphalt everywhere in a steadily spurting stream. It flung itself onto its back, then bounded to its hands and knees and started hammering its fists at the concrete. I guess it intended to smash me. I guess without a head, it didn’t know that it was actually six feet away, and digging a hole through the bleachers and into the material beneath.
Shaggy Feathers just fell in a welter of very human-looking, -smelling, and -tasting blood, and maybe three hundred pounds of limp, rubbery muscle landed on my chest.
“Ivy!” I screamed. “Gas! Get clear!”
And then things got noisy.
A series of cracking thumps came down faster than you could rapidly snap your fingers, and Denarians began to scream in pain and rage. I was vaguely aware of them bounding left and right, and saw a muzzle flash from the far side of the Oceanarium. At least I knew where Kincaid had been—getting into a position to kill both demon-taken madmen holding me down with a single freaking bullet, since anything less would have meant my certain death.
“He is nothing!” howled Tessa. “Tarsiel, take the Hellhound! Everyone else, the girl!”
Come on, Harry. Time to pay Kincaid back by getting the kid clear. Somehow. My right hand wasn’t moving much, and my singed left arm didn’t like it, but I heaved and strained and got enough of the dead Denarian off me to let me begin to squirm out from under it. Just as I was about to pull free, a silver coin rolled out from amidst the ruined tentacles that had passed for the thing’s head and dropped toward my face. I jerked my head aside in a panic.
The falling coin missed touching my bare flesh by a hair and bounced off the concrete floor. My left hand moved, faster and smoother than I would have thought possible, snapping the coin from the air on the bounce as smoothly and nimbly as if it had been whole and healthy and not burned and scarred and covered in a leather glove.
I looked between it and my numb-tingling right hand for a quarter of a second.
What. The hell.
That was not normal.
Worry about it later, Harry. I mean, sure, obviously Something Has Happened to you, but now is not the time to get distracted. Focus. Save the girl.
I jammed the cursed relic in my pocket, hoped to God my 501s didn’t have a hole in them, and spun toward Ivy.
I know I’m a wizard, a card-carrying member of the White Council and all. I know I’m a Warden, a certified combat expert of wizardkind, a cop, a soldier—have staff, will kick ass, if you will. I thought I’d seen some real professionals in action, the top of the wizarding game.
I was wrong.
It wasn’t that Ivy was slinging around a ton of power. She wasn’t. But think about this one for a moment: What’s really more impressive? A giant truck rumbling around on a great big old smoking engine? Or a little car just barely big enough to get the job done that’s powered by a couple of AA batteries?
Seven of them were going after Ivy with magic, and she was countering them. All of them.
Magog had charged her as he had me, but she hadn’t slammed him to a stop with a brick wall. She’d trapped him inside some kind of frictionless bubble, and he was spinning uselessly in circles half an inch off the floor, every motion making him spin faster. Whatever additional metaphysical mass he’d brought to the fight hadn’t cramped her style much. Her arms, bobbing and weaving continuously between all the workings she had up, flicked by the field containing him every few seconds and, I swear, struck his whirling snare for no reason other than to impart an additional, nausea-inducing vector to his spin.
Deirdre’s tangle of living locks danced with purple Saint Elmo’s fire, lashing out in a deadly webwork, but Ivy constantly cast out a spinning cat’s cradle of light, tiny, tiny threads of power that did not so much stop any of Deirdre’s attacks as they fouled any one of her locks with others near it, tangling them together into useless clumps—sort of an enforced bad-hair day. On the opposite side of Ivy, Rosanna launched more traditional lances of flame from her open palms, much like the ones I—
—a savage pain went through my skull for a second—son of a bitch—
—but Ivy dispersed them with delicately applied wedges of air, intercepting each burst of fire far enough short of her body to prevent the bloom of heat as they died from scorching her—though the two more physical Denarians who strained to force their way past the barrier of snapping sparks that formed whenever they tried to get close had far less luck. The Hellmaid’s flames scorched them badly.
The sixth, a wizened little thing that looked like a caricature of a woman carved from a dried tree root, seemed to be holding the end of a rope of liquid shadow that curled like a hungry serpent, darting now and then toward Ivy’s head. Ivy faced it down steadily, moving her head calmly in a dodge once, swatting it aside with a little burst of silver energy a second later.
But mostly she faced an amused-looking Tessa, who, apparently just for the fun of it, threw another thunderbolt at her now and again. That told me something right there. It told me Tessa was no punk sorceress. She was White Council material herself, if she could make that much flash and bang while expending that little energy. Either that or she’d been able to hold back one whale of a lot more power than I had when she took her deep breath before the battle. Either way she was a big-leaguer, and Ivy’s response to the attack confirmed it. Each time the Archive turned to fully face Tessa, and each time she dedicated one of her hands entirely to the defensive measure used to stop the incoming spell.
Gulp.
Holy moly. It was one thing to have an academic appreciation that I still had a lot to learn about magic. It was another to see a demonstration of exactly how much I still couldn’t do. In another circumstance it would be humbling. In this one it was freaking terrifying. For maybe
ten seconds I stood there, trying to figure out how the hell to help without getting myself incinerated, skewered, or otherwise obliterated without accomplishing anything.
I felt a little surge of dizziness. The gas levels must be rising. Screw it. The only reason someone hadn’t killed me already was because I was so impotent, at the moment, that nobody gave a damn what I did. I might be able to get the kid to another part of the building, out of the gas—and if someone killed me on the way, I could try to level my death curse on them, maybe get her out of this mess.
So I rushed toward her, trying to use the hot zone and the trapped Magog as shields, and said, “Ivy, come on!”
Something took a swipe at me, and several feet away my gun went off. I ducked, but I guess Tessa wasn’t much of a shot. I didn’t get hit. A second later I grabbed Ivy by the waist and lifted her to my hip.
“Keep clear of my arms, please!” Ivy commanded.
I made sure to. I was getting dizzier, but anywhere was better than here.
“His legs!” Tessa commanded.
I had a feeling that those people tried to do a lot of disturbing things to my pins, but I didn’t stop to watch them try it. I ran for the stairs, trusting the skill of the Archive to keep me mobile. It was a good bet. Ivy murmured and waved her arms the whole while, and I felt her little body tingling with the live current of the energy she was working.
She was using what power she had left for all it was worth, but it wasn’t bottomless. She was running dry. This fight was almost over.
Time, I thought muzzily, panting. We just needed a little more time.
Gravity suggested that I keep on going down, and it seemed an excellent idea. I staggered down the stairs into the lower level, running past the underwater vistas of the whale and dolphin tanks, past the cute penguins and the sea otters, the Denarians in pursuit, their sorceries flashing past us while Ivy shielded us with the last bits of energy in her reservoir. I felt it when she ran dry, and labored to keep my legs moving, to keep ahead of the pursuit.
Then the ground hit me with an uppercut. Everyone else in the Oceanarium suddenly fell sideways.
Or wait. Maybe it was me.
I realized belatedly that, given that I’d been at ground level near that one container, and breathing hard with pain and exertion to boot, I’d probably given myself a nice large dose before I’d ever gotten up. Furthermore, if the gas was heavier than air, there was probably even more of it down here than there had been up in the bleachers.
I had bought us a few seconds. It just hadn’t been time enough.
Ivy landed beside me. She blinked, and her eyes abruptly went wide with panic. She lifted her arms again, but they came up slowly, sluggishly, and her fingers stayed half-closed, like a sleepy child’s.
The black rope-spell wrapped around Ivy’s throat, and dozens of Deirdre’s tendrils twined around her arms and legs. They jerked her out of my sight.
I looked up to find the Denarians standing as a group in the hallway, lit by the eerie blue light coming in from the big tanks. Rosanna stared intently at Ivy for a moment before she shuddered and folded her dark bat wings around herself, shivering as if with cold, and turned away from the scene, her glowing eyes narrowed. She reached into the bag and produced another canister. She offered it to Tessa without being prompted.
Tessa took it, twisted something on the nozzle, and gave Ivy a polite smile. Then she quite literally jammed the nozzle into the little girl’s mouth and held it there.
Ivy panicked and cried out. I saw her kick and twist. She must have bitten her tongue or cut her lip on one of her teeth. Blood ran from her mouth. She bucked and fought uselessly for a few seconds, and then went rag-doll limp.
“Finally,” Tessa said, expelling her breath in irritation. “Could it have been any more annoying?”
“Damn you,” I slurred. I shoved myself up to one knee and glared at Tessa. “Damn you all. You can’t have her.”
“Clichéd,” Tessa singsonged. “Boring.” She tapped her chin with one claw-hand. “Let me see. Where were we when we were so rudely interrupted? Ah!” She stepped closer, smiling cheerily, and lifted my .44.
Just then, I felt the snap of magic rushing back into the Oceanarium as the enormous symbol collapsed and the circle fell.
I took my frustration and rage and turned it into raw force, screaming, “Forzare!”
I didn’t direct it at Tessa and her crew.
I aimed it at the glass wall that was the only thing between all of us and three million gallons of seawater.
The force of my will and my rage lashed out and shattered the wall into powder.
The sea came in with a roar, one enormous impact that felt like the strike of a hammer being applied to every square inch of my body at once.
Then it was cold.
And black.
Chapter Thirty-four
The next thing I knew, I was coughing, and my chest hurt, and my head hurt, and everything else hurt, and I was colder than hell. I choked in a breath and felt my body getting ready to send up everything. I tried to roll onto my side and couldn’t, until someone pulled on my coat and helped me.
Fishy salt water and whatever had been in my stomach came out in equal proportions.
“Oh,” someone said. “Oh, thank You, God.”
Michael, then.
“Michael!” Sanya shouted from somewhere nearby. “I need you!”
Work boots pounded away at a sprint.
“Easy, Harry,” Murphy said. “Easy.” She helped me turn back over when I was done puking. I was lying at the top of the stairs to the lower level. My lower legs were actually on the stairs. My left foot was in cold water to the ankle.
I put a hand to my chest, wincing. Murphy smoothed a hand over my head, brushing hair and water away from my eyes. The lines in her face looked a little deeper, her eyes worried.
“CPR?” I asked her. My voice felt weak.
“Yeah.”
“Guess we’re even,” I said.
“Like hell we are,” she said quietly. “I only spit fruit punch into your mouth.”
I laughed weakly, and that hurt, too.
Murphy leaned down and rested her forehead gently against mine. “You are such an enormous pain in my ass, Harry. Don’t scare me like that again.”
Her fingers found mine and squeezed really tight. I squeezed back, too tired to do anything else.
Something brushed my foot, and I nearly screamed. I sat up, reaching for power, raising my right hand, while invisible force gathered around it in shimmering waves.
A corpse floated in the water, nude, facedown. It was a man I’d never seen before, his hair long, grey, and matted. His limp, outstretched hand had bumped against my foot.
“Jesus, Harry,” Murphy said, her voice shaking. “He’s dead. Harry, it’s okay. He’s dead, Harry.”
My right hand remained where it was, fingers outspread, ripples of light flickering over them. Then they started shaking. I lowered my hand again, releasing the power I’d gathered, and as I did I felt my fingers tingle and go numb once more.
I stared at them, puzzled. That wasn’t right. I was fairly sure that I should be a lot more worried about that than I was at the moment, but I couldn’t put together enough cohesive thought to remember why.
Murphy was still talking, her voice steady and soothing. I dimly realized, a minute later, that it was the tone of voice you use with crazy people and frightened animals, and that I was breathing hard and fast despite the lack of any exertion to explain it.
“It’s all right, Harry,” she said. “He’s dead. You can let go of me.”
That was when I realized that my left arm had pulled Murphy tight against me, drawing her across my body and away from the corpse as I’d gotten ready to do…whatever it was I had been about to do. She was, at the moment, more or less sitting across my lap. Wherever she was touching me, I was warm. It took me a moment to figure out exactly why it was a good idea to let her go. Eventually, though,
I did.
Murphy slid carefully away from me, shaking her head. “God,” she said. “What happened to you, Harry? What did they do to you?”
I slumped, too tired to move my foot out of the water, too tired to try to explain that I’d failed to stop the demons from carrying away a little girl.
After a moment of silence Murphy said, “That’s it. I’m getting you to a doctor. I don’t care who these people think they are. They can’t just waltz into town and tear apart my—” She broke off suddenly. “Hngh. What do you make of this, Harry?”
She took a step down into the water and bent over.
“No!” I snapped.
She froze in place.
“Jesus, those things get predictable,” I muttered. “Silver coin just fall out of the corpse’s fingers?”
Murphy blinked and looked at me. “Yes.”
“Evil. Cursed. Don’t touch it.” I shook my head and stood up. The wall had to help me, but I made it all the way up, thinking out loud on the way. “Okay, we’ve got to make sure there’s no more of these lying around, first thing. I’m already carrying one. We limit the risk. I carry them all for now. Until they can be properly disposed of.”
“Harry,” Murphy said in a steady voice. “You’re mumbling, and what’s coming through is making a limited amount of sense.”
“I’ll explain. Bear with me.” I bent over and found another stained denarius gleaming guiltily in the water. “Moron,” I muttered at the coin, then picked it up with my gloved hand and put it in my pocket along with the other one. In for a penny, in for a pound, ah hah hah.
Damn, I’m clever.
Footsteps sounded, brisk and precise, and Luccio walked into view beside Gard. There was a subtle difference in Gard’s body language toward Luccio, something a shade more respectful than was there before. The captain of the Wardens was wiping her sword clean on her grey cloak—blood wouldn’t stain it, which made it handy for such things. Luccio paused for a moment upon seeing me, her expression carefully guarded, then nodded. “Warden. How are you feeling?”