Jim Butcher - Dresden Files Omnibus

by Jim Butcher

  After seeing the incredible quickness of the other not-quite-humans, I’d been waiting for the dodge. As soon as his feet left the floor, I spun to my left, opening fire the instant the end of the barrel was clear of the prisoners. Bullets hissed through the air like a great scythe—and in the edge of my vision, I saw the turtleneck I’d wounded seconds before. He’d come charging toward me while I’d aimed at his buddy, and the sudden turn took him by surprise. There was no aiming involved—it was a brute-force approach. I emptied the rest of the clip at him and prayed I could leave him no safe space in which to dodge.

  St. Jude gets a lot of business, but sometimes he comes through. The hissing, puffing little gun spat out a line of deadly projectiles and intersected the turtleneck’s path, tearing a row of five or six holes across his upper body. The turtleneck screamed and went down.

  But the one who’d leapt over me dropped back down, adjusting swiftly to the situation, and then whipped the hooked knife across my belly.

  Almost anyone else in town would have been killed. The knife struck with enormous power, and its blade was sharp. Standard Kevlar-style body armor wouldn’t have done a damn thing to stop it. I’d stopped wearing the standard stuff, thanks to one too many exciting outings with Dresden. I wore a double-thickness vest now—and sandwiched between the layers of antiballistic fabric was a corselet of tightly linked titanium rings, manufactured for me by one of Dresden’s friends, the wife of a retired Fist of God.

  The knife sliced right through the Kevlar. It split a ring or three, but then the tip caught in the titanium. Instead of spilling my intestines upon the ground, the superhumanly powerful blow wound up dragging me along and flung me across the concrete floor. I went down into a roll and spread out the force of the fall, coming back up to my feet, already having released the empty magazine from the P-90. I was reaching for the fresh one when another turtleneck abruptly closed in on me from behind and slipped a slim, iron-hard arm around my neck.

  I barely got a hand inside the loop of his arm before he could lock the choke on me, and I twisted like an eel to get out. His strength was far superior to mine, but then, whose wasn’t? Even in grappling, strength isn’t absolutely everything. The turtleneck might have been faster than I, but I had the advantage of experience. My timing was good enough to let me sense the opening, the lack of pressure in the weakest part of his hold, and I managed to writhe out of his grip—only to have a forearm smash down across my shoulders, driving me to the floor.

  As I went down, I saw that the turtleneck with the knife was only a few steps away. I’d never escape a pair of them.

  I didn’t have time to get another magazine into the P-90, so I rolled with it and smashed the heavy polymer stock of the weapon into the nearest turtleneck’s kneecap.

  He screamed and seized me by the neck of the leather jacket, shaking me like a doll.

  At which point Will and Marcy gave Nothing’s companions an object lesson as to why werewolves instill terror in mortal hearts and minds.

  There was a flash of dark fur, a snarl, a horrible, tearing sound, and the turtleneck screamed. He started listing to one side, and I realized that one of the werewolves had just severed the hamstring of the turtleneck’s unwounded leg. We both went down. I twisted out of the leather jacket, though I had to drop the P-90 and let it hang from my harness to do it, and rolled free of the turtleneck. An instant later, a second, slightly lighter brown form, teeth gleaming, darted past the fallen turtleneck and ripped out what would have been the jugular vein on a human being.

  Apparently, it was close enough for government work. The turtleneck thrashed in dying agony as mucuslike red blood bubbled from the gaping wound.

  And suddenly there were two beasts from the nightmares of mankind standing on either side of me, facing the enemy. They were wolves, one large and dark, the other slightly smaller and lighter, but both heavily laden with muscle and thick fur, and their golden eyes burned with awareness—and fury.

  Faced with a pair of murderous werewolves, the knife-wielding turtleneck slid to a sudden, uncertain halt.

  In the sudden silence that followed, the sound of me slapping a fresh magazine into the P-90 and racking the first round into the chamber was a sharp trio of clicks. Pop. Click-clack.

  See, Nothing? I thought. I can make ominous noises, too.

  I brought the weapon back up and snarled, “Lose the knife.”

  The turtleneck hesitated for half a second, eyes darting left and right, then released it. The steel chimed as the knife hit the floor.

  I kept the weapon on him, the trigger half pulled. Yeah, it wasn’t the safe, smart way to operate, but frankly I wouldn’t lose any sleep if I accidentally shot this guy. He was just too damn fast to give up any advantage at all.

  “There were five of them,” I said to the wolves. “How many did you handle, including the one that was on me?”

  The more lightly colored wolf let out two precise, low barks.

  “I got two,” I said. “That leaves this one and the big guy.”

  A complex sequence of clicks and pops drifted through the air, and the lights went out, plunging the warehouse into perfect darkness.

  Instinctively, my finger tightened on the trigger, and I sent a burst of rounds out almost before the lights were gone. But I was literally shooting blind against a foe who had supernatural reflexes and had also known, thanks to those damn clicks, what was about to happen. I heard the rounds hammer through the far wall.

  The wolves snarled and started forward—the warehouse wasn’t a light-tight darkroom, and a wolf’s eyes actually see better in near darkness than in full light. The gloom was no obstacle to them. But I seized handfuls of fur and hissed, “Wait.”

  Their momentum dragged me several inches forward before they slowed down, but I said, “The growths on the wall spray out acid, at least seven or eight feet. Don’t get suckered in close to one. The big guy has something like a gun. Go.”

  The wolves bounded out from beneath my hands, leaving me alone in the darkness.

  Clicks and pops continued to bounce around the empty space of the warehouse, impossible for me to localize. They were an ongoing thing, every couple of seconds, and I couldn’t shake the idea that they were coming closer and closer to me.

  Even as I crouched there, defenseless and hating it, my hands were scrabbling at the pouch on my tac vest. If there was too much magic running amok, flashlights might not be reliable. Magic screws up technology when there’s too much of both of them around, and you don’t take chances with something as important as being effectively struck blind. I’d prepared the tac vest with this kind of situation in mind.

  I opened the pouch and pulled out a flare, popping the pull cord, which struck it to life as I did. Red light glared into the darkness, and I lifted the flare over my head and out of my own vision in my left hand. I held the P-90 in my right. The small weapon could be fired in one hand, no problem, and while it wouldn’t be as accurate, I could still send bursts downrange almost as well as I could two-handed.

  The pops and clicks continued, everywhere and nowhere. I had no idea where Will and Marcy were, and Nothing and the other turtleneck had an awful lot of shadow to hide in. I realized I was essentially sitting in the middle of an open floor under a spotlight, a perfect target for Nothing and his weird little urchin-gun, and I retreated toward the caged prisoners.

  “Georgia,” I said, crouching down beside her. I studied the door of the cage, and found that the thing wasn’t even locked. It had a ring for a padlock on it, but the door’s mechanism was simply cycled closed. I spun it open and pulled open the cage door. “Georgia. Can you move?”

  She lifted her head and stared at me grimly. Then she turned her body and leaned forward, moving as though underwater, and slowly began to crawl out of the cage. I hurried to Andi’s cage and opened that door as well—but the girl did not so much as blink or stir a finger when I urged her to get out. So much for reinforcements. I felt useless. I couldn’t go out
there into the dark to join Will and Marcy in the hunt. I’d be worse than useless, stumbling around out there. They’d be forced to take their attention from their attack in order to protect me.

  “Murphy,” Georgia said. “M-Murphy.”

  I hurried to her side. “I’m here. Are you hurt?”

  She shook her head. “N-n-no … L-listen.” She lifted her head to meet my eyes, her neck wobbling like a paraplegic’s. “Listen.”

  Clicks. Pops. Once, a hackle-raising snarl. The whishing sound of an urchin flying through the air, and the sharp pong of its hitting a metal exterior wall.

  “The guards,” Georgia said. “Sonar.”

  I stared at her for a second, and then clued in to what she was talking about. The clicks and pops had sounded familiar because I had heard them before, or something very close to them—from dolphins, at the Shedd Aquarium. Dolphins sent out sharp pulses of sound and used them to navigate, and to find prey in the dark.

  I dropped the flare on the ground well away from Georgia and began unscrewing the suppressor on the P-90. “Will! Marcy!” I shouted, unable to keep the snarl out of my voice. “They’re about to go blind!”

  Then I pointed the weapon up and off at an angle that I thought would send the rounds into the nearby lake, flicked the selector to single fire, and began methodically triggering rounds. The second clip had been loaded with standard, rather than subsonic, ammo, and without the suppressor to dampen the explosion of the propellant, the supersonic rounds roared out, painfully loud. The flash at the muzzle lit the entire warehouse in strobes of white light. I didn’t fire them in rhythm or any particular pattern. I had no idea how actual sonar worked in biological organisms, but I’d taken several nephews as a pack to see the Daredevil movie, and rhythmic sounds seemed to create a more ordered picture than random bursts of noise.

  As I worked my way through the fifty-round magazine, I could all but hear Dresden’s mockery, his voice edged with adrenaline, the words coming through a manic grin, as I’d heard several times before. Murph, when you’re reaching out to movie concepts that involved millions of dollars in special effects for your tactical battle plan, I think you can pretty safely take that as an indicator that you are badly out of your depth.

  But as the last round left the gun, I heard one of the turtlenecks screaming in pain—a horrible cry that ended abruptly. And then the warehouse fell silent again—only to be invaded by another steady series of rhythmic clicks.

  And this time they were definitely getting closer.

  I unclipped the P-90 and set it aside. I had only the two clips for the weapon. But my Sig came into my hand with the smooth familiarity of long practice, and I moved, away from Georgia and the other prisoners, around behind the empty cages that had been meant for Will and Marcy. I nearly screamed when I kicked a dead body and found the other turtleneck lying in a pool of viscous blood—apparently the other bad guy Will and Marcy had seen to.

  Some instinct warned me I was in danger, and I dropped flat. Another sea urchin projectile streaked over me; a second struck a bar in the empty cage and slammed into its floor, acid chewing at the steel. Then there was a third whispering projectile that rushed away from me.

  A wolf began to scream in agony—horrible, horrible high-pitched screams.

  Nothing had just pulled the same trick I had—shooting at me and enticing one of his other enemies into the open as he did, then spinning to fire at an unexpected moment. Will or Marcy had just paid a horrible price for their aggression.

  I came to my knees with a cry of fury and flung my flare. It went high into the air, spinning, spreading red light wide and thin around the inside of the warehouse. I saw a massive black form ahead of me, turning, the tube of his projectile weapon swinging back toward me.

  The Sig was faster.

  I had already slid into a Weaver stance, and I slammed out a trio of shots, swift, steady, and practiced, all aimed at the upper torso, to avoid any chance of hitting one of the wolves. I know at least one of the shots scored a hit on Nothing. The flare landed, still blazing. I saw the black outline of his silhouette twist in agony, then heard a quavering grunt escape him. He moved away from the flare and out of my vision. An instant later, I saw a wolf leap across the scarlet pool of light, and I started squeezing out more rounds from the Sig. I staggered them just as I had the shots from the P-90, hoping to blind Nothing as the wolf attacked.

  The magazine emptied in a few seconds, though I hadn’t meant to fire that many shots. The excitement of the fight was making it hard to stay level. I ejected the empty mag, slapped in a fresh one, and pulled a second flare from my tac vest, bringing it to hissing life as I started forward, my gun extended.

  I could hear Nothing fighting with a wolf. His voice emanated from his huge chest, a basso growl of rage every bit as angry and animalistic as the snarls of the wolf fighting him. I used the sound as my guide and rushed forward. The other wolf kept on screaming in agony, its shrieks slowly changing and becoming more and more eerily human.

  The scarlet light of the flare fell across Nothing and the wolf-version of Will just as Nothing flung the wolf to the concrete floor with bone-jarring force. Will let out a shriek of pain, and bones popped and crackled—but he retained enough awareness to roll out of the way as Nothing sent one huge foot stomping down at his skull.

  I started putting rounds into Nothing’s chest from maybe fifteen feet away.

  I was shooting one-handed and was hyped up on adrenaline. It wasn’t an ideal state for marksmanship. But I wasn’t trying for points on a target—this was instinct shooting, the kind of accuracy that comes only with endless hours of practice, with thousands and thousands of rounds sent downrange. It takes a lot of work to make that happen.

  I’d worked.

  I was using a 9mm weapon. The rounds were on the small side for real combat—and Nothing was on the other end of the combat universe from small. He turned toward me, and I saw he no longer had the projectile tube—or two of the fingers on the hand that had been holding it. One of the wolves had tried for his throat and evidently had torn open the fine cloth of the sweater’s neck, because I could see his gills flaring as he charged me.

  Shots struck home in his torso. I was aiming for the heart, which few people realize is fairly low in the chest, a couple of inches below the left nipple. I hit him with every shot, six, seven, eight… .

  It takes an attacker about two seconds to close a gap of thirty feet and get within range for a strike with a knife or fist. Nothing was about five feet closer than that. Eight shots, all of them hits, was damn solid combat shooting.

  It just wasn’t enough.

  Nothing plowed into me like a runaway truck, sending me sprawling. We both hit the concrete. Pushing against him, I barely managed to keep his weight from coming down on my chest so that it came down somewhere around my hips instead. He seized my right hand and squeezed.

  Pain. Tendons tearing. Bones cracking. He shook his arm once, and my Sig went tumbling away.

  I didn’t hesitate. I just doubled up, leaning toward him, and rammed the blazing end of the flare into the open flap of his gills.

  He screamed, louder than a human being could have, and both hands flew to his throat to clutch at the flare. I got a leg free and kicked him in the chin, hard, driving down with all the power of my leg behind a crushing heel. I heard something crack, and he screamed, flinching. I freed my other leg and scrambled away from him, clutching awkwardly at my right ankle with my left hand.

  Nothing tore the flare out, his pale eyes nearly luminous with rage, and came after me, roaring.

  I had never been more frightened in my life. I couldn’t get to the damn holdout gun before he reached me, so I did the only thing I could. I ran, blind, into the dark, and he came after me like a rabid locomotive.

  I knew I didn’t have much room left. I knew that I would hit a wall in a few seconds, and that then he’d have me. I could only pray that the shots I’d put in him were more serious than his re
action to them indicated—that he was already bleeding massively, and that the extra few seconds would be enough time to let him die.

  But somewhere inside, I knew better.

  I was playing out of my league, and I had known that from the beginning.

  Beautiful light suddenly fluoresced in front of me—the acid growths on the walls. I slammed to a stop in front of the weird clumps of material and saw little tendrils and orifices on the growths tracking and orienting on me.

  I turned to face Nothing.

  He came in, insanely huge, insanely strong, and roaring in a terrible fury.

  But terrible fury alone doesn’t win fights. In fact, it can be a deadly weakness. In the second it took him to reach me, I touched the center of calm in myself, earned with endless hours of practice and discipline. I judged the distance and the timing. It felt as if I had forever to work out what I would need to do.

  And then I did to Nothing exactly what I’d done to Ray.

  As he closed, I ducked under his huge hands, spinning to sweep my right leg across his right foot, just as it was about to hit the floor. Preternaturally strong though he may have been, gravity pulled him just as hard as it had Ray, and his joints operated in exactly the same fashion. His right foot was driven to tangle with his left, and he went smashing forward into the wall.

  Into the growth.

  Into the spurting cloud of acidic spray that erupted from it, aiming at me.

  I rolled away to one side, frantically, but I needn’t have worried. Nothing’s vast bulk shielded me from the acid spray. I turned over and backed away awkwardly on my butt and my left hand, staring at Nothing in sheer fascination.

  He didn’t scream. I think he was trying. The acid must have torn his throat apart, first thing. He sort of recoiled, staggering, and fell to his knees. I could see his profile dimly in the distant light of the flare and the glow of the acid fungus. It … just dissolved; seeing it was like watching time-lapse photography of a statue being worn away by wind and rain. Fluids pooled around his knees. He took several agonized breaths—and then there were sucking sounds, as the acid ate into his chest wall. And then there were no sounds at all.