by Jim Butcher
The energy rushed out of me and into the spell, wrapping tight around the string and pressing against Murphy. A wave of goose bumps rippled up her arm, and she drew in a sudden sharp breath. “Whoa.”
I looked at her sharply. “Murph? You okay?”
She blinked down at her hand, and then up at me. “Wow. Yeah.”
I nodded, and took my pentacle out of my shirt. I wrapped it around my left hand, leaving the five-pointed star lying against my knuckles. “Okay, we’re pushing our luck enough. Let’s hope this works and get the hell out of here.”
“Wait, you don’t know if it will work?”
“It should work. It ought to. In theory.”
“Great. Would it be better to stay here?”
“Heh, that’s a joke, right?”
Murphy nodded. “Okay. How will we know if it works?”
“We step outside the circle and if we don’t drift into Lala Land,” I said, “we’ll know it worked.”
She braced her charmed hand on the butt of her gun. “That’s what I love about working with you, Dresden. The certainty.”
I broke the circle with a shuffle of my foot and an effort of will. It scattered with a pressured sigh, and the grey mist slid forward and over us.
It glided over my skin like a cold and greasy oil, something foul and cloying and vaguely familiar that made me want to start brushing it off. It writhed up over my arms, prickles of distraction and disorientation crawling over my limbs. I focused on the pentacle on my left hand, the solid, cool weight of it, the years of discipline and practice that it represented. I pushed the clinging mist away from my sensations, deliberately excluded it from my perception by sheer determination. A ripple of azure static flickered along the chain of my amulet, flashed around the pentacle, then faded, taking with it the distraction of the mind fog.
Murphy glanced back at me and said, voice low, “You okay? You looked shaky for a second.”
I nodded. “I got it now. You okay?”
“Yeah. Doesn’t feel like anything.”
Damn, I’m good—sometimes. “Go. Out through the garden center.”
Murphy had the gun—she walked in front. I kept my eyes open on our flanks as she headed down an aisle. We passed a customer and an employee, down a side aisle, pressed against a wall where they’d apparently tried to avoid the mist. Now they stood with faintly puzzled expressions on their faces, eyes not focused. Another shopper, an old man, stood in an aisle, swaying precariously on his feet. I stopped beside him and said quietly, “Sir, here, sit down for a minute,” and helped him sit down before he fell.
We went past another slackly staring employee, her blue smock marked with dirt stains and smelling of fertilizer, and headed for the doors leading out to the garden center.
My memory screamed a sudden alarm at me, and I lurched forward, diving past Murphy and out into the mist-shrouded evening within the chain-link boundaries of the garden center. A hard, sudden weight hit me, driving my thighs and hips down to the floor. My head whiplashed against it a moment later, complete with a burst of phantom light and very real pain.
I rolled, as the employee we’d just passed reversed her grip on a wickedly sharp set of pruners and stabbed them down at me. I oozed to one side in a sluggish dodge. The steel tips of the tool tore through my shirt and some of my skin before biting into the concrete. I kept rolling and kicked at the woman’s ankles. She avoided me with a kind of liquid agility, and I looked up into the human face of the ghoul assassin from the rain of toads. The Tigress.
She didn’t look particularly pretty, or particularly exotic, or particularly anything. She looked like no one in particular—medium height, medium build, no flattering curves, no outrageous flaws, no nothing. Medium-brown hair, of unremarkable cut and length. She wore jeans, a polo top, the Wal-Mart smock, all very normal.
The gun she started drawing from under the smock commanded attention, though—a revolver, snub-nosed, but it moved with the kind of weight that made me think high-caliber. I started trying to pull a shield together, but the defense I’d been holding against the mist and the blow to my head tangled up the process, slowed me down—not much, but enough to get me really dead.
Murphy saved me. As the Tigress brought the gun to bear on me, Murphy closed with her, trapping the ghoul’s gun arm with her own and doing something with her left hand as she twisted her body at the hips, her strong legs spread wide.
Murphy was a faithful practitioner of Aikido, and she knew about grappling. The Tigress let out a shriek. Not a girly wow-does-that-hurt shriek, but the kind of furious, almost whistling sound you expect from a bird of prey. There was a snapping, popping sound, then a clap of thunder, the roar of a discharged gun at close quarters, the sudden sharp smell of burnt powder, and the revolver went skittering free.
The ghoul stabbed the pruners at Murphy, but she was already on the way out, grunting with effort, her entire attack one circle that sent the Tigress stumbling away into a stand of large potted ferns.
Murphy spun to face the ghoul. She took a shooting stance and snarled, “Get on your face on the floor. You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent.”
The ghoul changed. Skin tore at the corners of her mouth as it dropped open and gaped nightmarishly wide, canines lengthening as her lips peeled away from her teeth. Her shoulders jerked and twisted, hunching up and growing wider at the same time, her clothes stretching out while her body grew more hunched. Her fingers lengthened, talons extending from the tips until her hands were spread as wide as the lawn rakes on a display behind her, and a fetid smell of decay and worse flooded out.
Murphy’s face went bloodless as she stared at the transformation. If she’d been dealing with an armed thug, I think she would have been fine. But the ghoul wasn’t and she wasn’t. I saw the fear come surging up through her, winding its way into her through the scars a maddened ghost had left on her spirit the year before. Panic hit her, and her breath came in strangled gasps as a demon from a madman’s nightmare clawed its way free of the bushes, spread its talons, and let out a rasping, quivering hiss. Murphy’s gun started quivering, the barrel jerking erratically left and right. I struggled to get on my feet and back into the game, but my ears still rang and the constant pressure of the mist slowed me down.
The Tigress must have seen the terror that held Murphy. “A cop, eh?” the ghoul rasped, drool foaming between its teeth, dribbling down its chin. It started slowly toward Murphy, claw tips dragging along the floor. “Aren’t you going to tell me that I have the right to an attorney?”
Murphy let out a small, terrified sound, frozen in place, her eyes wide.
It laughed at her. “Such a big gun for a sweet girl. You smell sweet. It makes me hungry.” It continued forward, laughter still kissing every word, its distorted, inhuman voice continuing in a steady murmur, “Maybe I should let you arrest me. Wait until we’re in the car. If you smell that good, I wonder how good you taste.”
I guess the ghoul shouldn’t have laughed. Murphy’s eyes cleared and hardened. The gun steadied, and she said, “Taste this, bitch.”
Murphy started shooting.
The ghoul let out another shriek, this one full of surprise and pain. The bullets didn’t drive her back. That’s for comic books and TV. Real bullets just rip through you like lead weights through cheesecloth. No gaping, bloody holes appeared in the ghoul’s chest, but sudden flowers of scarlet sprayed out from her back, covering the potted ferns with bloody dewdrops.
The ghoul threw her arms up and recoiled, turning, screaming, and threw herself at the ferns.
Murphy kept shooting.
The ghoul stumbled and dropped down amid the ferns, still kicking and struggling wildly, knocking pots over, breaking others, scattering vegetable matter and dirt all over the floor.
Murphy kept shooting.
The gun clicked empty, and the ghoul half-rolled onto her ruined back, the stolen blue smock now ripped with huge holes and soaked through with blood. The ghoul
choked and gagged, scarlet trickling out of her mouth. She let out another hiss, this one bubbling, and held up her hands in supplication. “Wait,” she rasped. “Wait, please. You win, I give up.”
Murphy ejected the clip, put in a fresh one, and worked the slide on the gun. Then she took a shooting stance again and sighted down the barrel, her blue eyes calculating, passionless, merciless.
She didn’t see the sudden shadow against the mist to her right, huge and hulking, backlit by emergency lights at the other end of the garden center. I did, and finally shoved my dazed self back to my feet. “Murph!” I shouted. “To your right!”
Murphy’s head snapped around, and she darted to her left, even as a garden hoe swept down and shattered against the concrete where she’d been standing. The ghoul scrambled back through the ferns and vanished into the mist, leaving blood smeared everywhere. Murphy backpedaled and shot at the form in the mist, then ducked as another arm swept a shovel in a scything arc that just missed her head.
Grum the Ogre rolled forward out of the mist, in his scarlet-skinned, twelve-foot-tall hulking form, a shovel clenched in one fist. Without slowing a step, he scooped up a twenty-gallon ceramic pot and threw it at Murphy like a snowball. She scooted behind a stack of empty loading palettes, and the pot exploded against them.
Magic would be useless against the ogre. I looked wildly around me, then seized a jumbo-sized plastic bag of round, tinted-glass potting marbles. “Hey!” I shouted. “Tall, red, and ugly!”
Grum’s head spun around further than I would have thought possible with a neck that thick, and his already beady eyes narrowed even more. He let out a bellowing roar and turned toward me, his huge feet slamming down on the concrete.
I tore open the bag and dumped it out toward him. Blue-green marbles spread over the floor in a wave. Grum’s foot slammed down on several as he advanced, and I hoped for the best. Grum continued toward me unslowed, and when his great foot lifted, I saw small circles of powdered glass on the ground.
I snarled a curse and ran deeper into the garden center, Grum’s footsteps heavy behind me. I heard Murphy shoot again, a pair of shots, and tried to keep a mental count of her rounds. Four, in the new clip? Did she have another reload? And how many rounds did that Colt hold anyway?
A sharper, more piercing report cracked through the area—rifle fire. Murphy’s Colt barked twice more, and she called, “Harry, someone’s covering the exit with gunfire!”
“Kinda busy here, Murph!” I shouted.
“What the hell is that thing?”
“Faerie!” I shouted. Grum was already trying to kill me, so there was no point in being diplomatic. “It’s a big, ugly faerie!” I started swiping things off of shelves to crash in the aisle behind me. I’d gained some distance on Grum, but it could be that he just needed time to gather momentum. I heard him snarl again, and he took a swing with the shovel in his hand. He was short of me, but it whooshed loudly enough to make me flinch.
I looked wildly for something made of steel to throw at the ogre or to defend myself with. The mist kept me from seeing more than a couple of yards ahead of me, and from what I could see, I was just heading deeper and deeper into the plant-vending area. The smell of summer-heated greenery, of fertilizer and mild rot, filled my nose and mouth. I rounded the end of the aisle and ducked through a narrow gate and out from under the canopy top that gave shade to this part of the garden center, into a roofless area bounded by a high chain-link fence and filled with young trees and greenery standing in silent rows.
I looked around wildly for a way out into the parking lot at large, and checked how close the ogre was, flicking a glance back over my shoulder.
Grum stopped at the gate to the fenced area and, with a small smile on his lips, swung the gate shut. As I watched, he covered his hand with a plastic trash bag, and bent the latch like soft clay. Metal squealed and the gate fastened shut with no more effort than I would need to close a twist-tie.
My heart fell down through my stomach, and I looked around me.
The chain-link fence was at least nine feet high, with a strand of barbed wire at the top, meant to stop incursions of baby-tree nappers, I guessed. A second gate, much bigger, stood closed—and the latch had been twisted exactly like the other, warped closed. It was a neat little trap, and I’d been chased right into it.
“Dammit,” I said.
Grum let out a grating laugh, though I could barely see anything but his outline, several yards away in the mist. “You lose, wizard.”
“Why are you doing this?” I demanded. “Who the hell are you working for?”
“You got no guess?” Grum said. There was a note of casual arrogance to his voice. “Gee. That’s too bad. Guess you go to your grave not knowing.”
“If I had a nickel for every time I’d heard that,” I muttered, looking around me. I had a few options. None of them were good. I could open a way into the Nevernever and try to find my way through the spirit realm and back into the real world somewhere else—but if I did that, not only might I run into something even worse than I already had in front of me, but if I got unlucky I might hit a patch of slower time and not emerge back into my Chicago for hours, even days. I might also be able to melt myself a hole in the fence with conjured flame, providing I didn’t burn myself to a cinder doing it. I didn’t have my blasting rod with me, and without it my control could be shaky enough to manage just that.
I could probably pile a bunch of baby trees, loading palettes, sacks of potting soil, and so on against the outer wall of chain-link fence and climb out. I might get cut up on the barbed wire, but hell, that would be better than staying here. Either way, there was no time to waste standing around deciding. I turned toward the nearest set of young trees, picked up a couple, and tossed them against the fence. “Murphy! I’m stuck, but I think I can get clear! Get out of here now!”
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. I
t’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.