Jim Butcher - Dresden Files Omnibus

by Jim Butcher

  He caught it deftly by the handle. I saw the minor shifts in shadow on his neck as his shoulders tensed up. “Remember. You’ve got iron.”

  I didn’t sneer at him, because what would be the point? But I did roll the nail back and forth between my fingers, and heard it scraping on ice.

  I looked down and found that ice had condensed out of the water in the air and formed over my fingertips. I put the nail between my teeth so that I could hold up my fingers. As I watched, icicles began to form, guided by raw instinct, stretching out from my fingertips. I flexed my fingers a few times, and saw the edges form, the ice hard and razor sharp. Nice.

  I debated. Armor, too? Too heavy. This needed to happen fast. Besides, I wouldn’t want the armor to be in the way for what would come after. That was going to be the good part.

  “Time to play,” I said around the nail. I took four steps, building up to a run, and leapt into the air toward Maeve. Fifty feet. No problem. It was glorious, the freedom, the certainty, and I could not imagine what had made me so squeamish about embracing Winter in the first place.

  Bad things kept happening to me. It was high fucking time I started happening to them.

  Maeve must have sensed something at the last instant, despite her focus on Demonreach. I was a fraction of a second away before she moved with the serpentine quickness of the Sidhe, throwing herself to one side. My claws missed her throat by inches. They did slice off one of her dreadlocks, and it whirled through the air as I hit the ground, legs absorbing the shock as my feet dug into the muddy ground near the lighthouse.

  There was an instant of complete shock from Maeve’s coterie, and I used it to slice at the Redcap’s eyes just as Fix landed on the rawhead’s shoulders and overbore the creature, sending it toppling forward to the ground.

  I felt my claws hit. The Redcap screamed and reeled away from most of the blow, darting back, brushing past one of the Sidhe from the Botanic Gardens, behind him. The Sidhe had a blank, confused look on his face as he tried to fight his way out of the concentration of supporting Maeve in her suddenly interrupted spell. No time to think. Claws of bloody ice flashed at him, and I opened his throat to the windpipe. He went down with a choked scream, and I stepped on his chest to fling myself at the two behind him, one a twisted figure inside a droopy grey cloak and hood, the other a lean, gangling thing with the head of a boar, covered in tattoos and bone beads.

  I stomped a foot down onto the cloak, slammed my clawed hand into the body behind it, and ripped out something ropy and hot and slippery. The boar-headed thing tore at my body with its tusks, and I felt bright, distant pain on my ribs. I drove a foot up between its legs in a kick that lifted it six inches off the ground, and took off an ear and half its face with my claws.

  I sensed Fix at my back and heard him grunt, “Down!”

  I dropped to my knees and bounced back up again. In the time I was down, his sword flicked out over my head, drove into the chest of the boar thing, and whistled out again, taking heart’s blood with it.

  Then there was a roar, a sound that came from something truly enormous, and someone slammed a tree trunk into my lower back. It took me off my feet and sent silver pain through my body. I landed in a roll and came up to mostly steady feet, one hand supporting some of my weight, the other up in a defensive posture.

  It was the rawhead.

  Rawheads are parasites, creatures that assemble bodies for themselves out of the bone and blood of freshly dead beings. They were more common when every farm and village did some slaughtering each day, back before grocery stores and fast food. As I noted before, this one was enormous, bigger than a couple of large steers, twelve feet tall and weighing at least a ton. The cloak had been torn from it, and now it looked like a bizarre sculpture of bones of various creatures, drenched in fresh blood. It had the skull of something big, maybe a hippo or a rhino, and luminous lights danced in the empty eye sockets. It drew in a huge, wheezing breath and roared again.

  Fix was picking himself up off the ground, bounding up as if he hadn’t been hurt at all—but the Redcap and four other Sidhe were stalking toward him with weapons drawn. Fix faced them squarely, blade in hand, a small smile on his plain face.

  “My, my, my,” Maeve said. She stepped around the leg of the rawhead into sight, giving me a frankly appraising stare. “Who would have thought you would dirty up so well, wizard? I mean, the claws, the blood, the eyes.” She shivered. “It gets to me. I’ve always had a thing for bad boys.”

  I smiled around the nail. “Funny. Because I’ve got something for you, too.”

  “Yeah?” she asked, and licked her lips. “You finally gonna nail me, big guy? You’ve been so coy.”

  “I’m done teasing,” I said.

  Maeve slipped both hands behind her back, arching her body, thrusting her chest toward me. It wasn’t a particularly impressive chest, but it was well formed, and pale, and lovely, and hidden beneath entirely too much bikini for my taste. A snarl bubbled up out of my throat.

  “That’s right,” Maeve said, her wide eyes unblinking. “I know what you’re feeling. The need to fight. To kill. To take. To fuck.” She took a pair of slow steps toward me, making her hips shift back and forth. “This is right. It’s exactly what you should be feeling.”

  I flexed the fingers of my free hand and prepared to strike. She just had to come a little closer.

  “Can you imagine this all the time, wizard?” Maeve purred. Steel began to ring out, back where Fix was. But I ignored it. Two more steps. “Can you imagine feeling this strong all the time? Can you imagine being so hungry?” She took another step, and another deep breath. “And feeding that hunger. Sating it. Quenching it in flesh and screams.”

  She slid her left hand out from behind her back and ran her palm slowly over her stomach and side. “This flesh. I would not give it to you. I would fight, dare you to do your worst. You could unleash your every aching need. And that would just be the beginning.”

  I was breathing hard now, though I hadn’t been a moment before. My eyes had locked onto the interplay of muscle and skin over her vulnerable belly. The claws would tear through her guts so easily there. Or I could use my teeth. Or just my tongue.

  “Sex and violence,” Maeve purred. She had taken a couple more steps toward me, but I wasn’t sure when. Or why it mattered. “Hunger and need. Take me, here, on this ground. Don’t give me pleasure, wizard. Just take. Let it out, the beast inside you. I wish you to. I dare you to.” Her fingers popped the snap on the little shorts. “Stop denying yourself. Stop thinking. This feels right.”

  Hell, yeah, it did. Maeve might have been one of the Sidhe, and fast, and have all kinds of magic powers, but she wasn’t stronger than me. Once I took her to the ground, I could do as I pleased with her. I felt my mouth water. Some might have come out of one corner.

  Maeve stepped closer yet and breathed, “You came for my throat, didn’t you?” She let her head tilt bonelessly to one side, and slid her hand up her lithe body to push her hair back and away from her neck. Her hips were making small, slow shifts of her weight, a constant distraction. Her throat was lean and lovely. “Here it is. Come to me, my Knight. It’s all right. Let it out, and I will make everything worth it.”

  Her throat. I had wanted it for something, I thought. But now I just wanted. That would be how to do it. Set my teeth on her throat while I took her. If she struggled—or didn’t struggle enough—I would be able to start ripping my way toward the blood.

  “This is how it is supposed to be,” Maeve purred. “Knight and Lady, together. Fucking like animals. Taking what we please.” Her mouth turned up into a smile. “I thought you’d never let it in. Let it in deep, where I could touch.” Her lovely face took on a feigned, youthful innocence. “But I can touch it now, can’t I?”

  I growled. I’d forgotten how to do whatever that other thing was. All I could think about was the need. Claim her as a mate. Take whatever I pleased from her. Make her mine.

  Except…

/>   Wait.

  A fluttering surge of pure terror went through me, and it was energy enough to let me rip the Winter from my thoughts, to push it back. It didn’t want to go. It fought me every inch of the way, howling, filled with raw lust for flesh and for blood.

  My ribs suddenly ached. My head spun a little. I suddenly needed that hand on the ground to keep my balance.

  Maeve saw it the second I regained control. Her eyelids lowered almost closed, and she breathed, “Ah. So close. But perhaps there is still time. Is that your staff, wizard, or are you just happy to see me?”

  I bared my teeth and said, “Maeve…”

  “This is perfect,” she said. “In one night I’m going to unleash the Sleepers, slay a starborn, put an end to this troublesome mortal city, and begin a war between Summer and Winter. By the time the real assault on the Gates begins, Winter and Summer will be hunting one another in the night, and be so busy gouging out one another’s eyes that they’ll never see what is coming—all thanks to me. And you, of course. I couldn’t have done this at all without you.”

  She leaned a little closer as she spoke that last, and I ripped at her throat with my ice claws.

  I was exhausted, and it was slow, entirely lacking in the focused power and precision I’d felt under the influence of Winter. She bobbed her head back a fraction of an inch, and the swipe missed and sent me down into the dirt.

  Maeve let out a little peal of laughter and clapped her hands. Then she flicked a couple of fingers negligently toward me and said to the rawhead, “Tear him to pieces.”

  The rawhead took two lumbering steps forward and reached down toward me with bony, bloody claws.

  But before it could grab me, there was a rush of footsteps, and a four-legged form consisting entirely of what looked like mud slammed into its rearmost leg.

  The mud creature hit the rawhead hard. The power of its impact cracked bones and blew the leg out from beneath the rawhead. The fae giant bellowed a ground-shaking roar. A ton of bloody bones fell, and the mud creature, white teeth flashing, kept after it.

  Snarling.

  And a nimbus of blue light gathered around its muddy jaws.

  I looked up to see more mud creatures rushing up the hill, though the others were bipedal, of various sizes and shapes. The first one to reach me drew a steel sword from a muddy scabbard and went after the rawhead as well, falcata being used with the brutal power strikes normally employed with a freaking ax. Silver eyes flashed in the blobby, mud-covered face.

  Thomas.

  Maeve snarled and stepped toward me, bringing her right hand out from behind her back. She gripped a tiny little automatic in her fingers, though God only knew where she’d been concealing it. She half lifted it, but before she could shoot, gunshots rang out, sharp and clear. One of them hit the ground maybe three feet away, and Maeve bolted aside, vanishing behind a veil as she went.

  The smallest mud figure came to my side, lowering a mud-covered P90. She hooked a little hand beneath one of my arms, her blue eyes reddened and blinking rapidly. With surprising strength, she dragged me back from the rawhead while Thomas and Mouse fought it.

  The others hurried up to join Karrin, and while Karrin covered us, muddy Mac got a shoulder underneath me and with a grunt of effort picked me up in a fireman’s carry.

  “Come on,” Karrin said. “The cottage.”

  While she kept her P90 at the ready and Mac toted me, the other two mud figures, Sarissa and Justine, hurried along beside us. A moment later Mac dumped me gently, more or less, onto the floor of the cottage. Karrin kept her gun pointed at the door.

  “Karrin,” I managed to gasp.

  Her eyes didn’t waver from the door. “Got tired of waiting on you. I’m here.”

  I spit the nail out of my mouth and into my hand. “How?” I asked. Then I eyed them all and said, “Mud. You covered yourselves in mud.”

  “Everywhere,” she confirmed. “Nostrils, eyes, ears, everywhere the light could touch. We figured out that if you completely covered something, it could make it through that wall. God, I’m going to shower for a week.”

  Oh, that was clever. The defense mechanism wasn’t a thinking being, capable of making judgment calls. It was simply a machine, albeit one made of magic, a combination detector and bug zapper. By covering themselves with mud, they’d tricked it into thinking they were of the island.

  Outside the cottage, the rawhead bellowed, and Mouse’s snarling battle bark rang out defiantly.

  “This is insane,” Sarissa breathed.

  “The stones of the cottage have protections on them,” I said. “Not sure how well they work, but they should help.” I looked back at Karrin. “Where’s Molly?”

  “Out there, playing Invisible Girl.”

  There was the sound of a heavy impact, and Mouse let out a terrible, pained-sounding yelp.

  Then it was quiet.

  Karrin’s breathing started coming faster. She resettled her grip on the weapon.

  “Oh, God,” Sarissa said. “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.”

  I would have gotten terrified, too, but I was just too tired for it to stick.

  There was no warning, nothing at all. The rawhead shoved its arm into the cottage, seized Karrin by the gun, and hauled her out. The weapon barked several times as she went.

  And then it got quiet again.

  “We have to run,” Sarissa said in a whisper. “Harry, please, we should run. Open a Way into the Nevernever. Get us out of here.”

  “I’ve got a feeling we wouldn’t like the part of the Nevernever this place borders,” I said.

  “Oh, Sir Knight,” Maeve called from outside. “Come out, come out, wherever you are, you and everyone with you. Or I’m going to start playing with your friends.”

  “Hey, why don’t you come in here, Maeve?” I called back. “We’ll talk about it.”

  I waited for an answer. I got one a minute later. Karrin let out a pained, gasping sound.

  “Dammit,” I muttered. Then I started to climb to my feet again. “Come on.”

  “What?” Sarissa asked. “No. I can’t go out there.”

  “You’re about to,” I said quietly. “Mac.”

  “We go out,” Mac said, “she’ll kill us.”

  “If we don’t, she’ll kill us anyway. Starting with Karrin,” I said. “Maeve likes hurting people. Maybe we can string her along until…”

  “Until what?” Sarissa asked. “Sunrise? That’s hours away.”

  Justine put her hand on Sarissa’s shoulder. “But we’ll stay alive a little longer. Where there’s life, there’s hope.”

  “You don’t understand,” Sarissa said. “Not for me. Not for me.”

  Karrin let out another gasp of pain and I ground my teeth.

  “Sarissa,” I said, “we don’t have a choice. Lily just about roasted the top off the hill in a moment of pique. Maeve can do worse. If we stay in here, she will.”

  “Die now, or be tortured to death in a few hours,” she said. “Those are our choices?”

  “We buy time,” I said. “We buy time so that I can think and maybe figure some way for us to get out of this clusterfuck. Now get up, or so help me I’ll carry you out there.”

  A flash of anger went through Sarissa’s eyes. But she got up.

  “All right, Maeve!” I called. “You win! We’re coming out!”

  I held up my hands, palms out, and walked out of the meager makeshift protection of the ruined cottage.

  Chapter

  Fifty-one

  Maeve was enjoying her victory tremendously.

  She stood on a pile of stone fallen from the lighthouse, next to the Summer Lady and her coterie, who were still focused upon restraining Demonreach. On the ground in front of her lay Thomas, Karrin, and Mouse. Mouse had been hog-tied and his muzzle held shut with thick bands of what looked like black ice. He wasn’t struggling, but his deep, dark eyes were tracking everyone who moved. Karrin sat with her hands tied behind her back, scowling so feroci
ously that I could see the expression even through the mud. And my brother lay on the ground, bound up like Mouse was, but it didn’t look like he was conscious.

  The rawhead loomed over them, minus one of its arms. The arm lay over on the ground, a jumble of brittle, cracked bones held together by withered strands of some kind of reddish fiber. The rawhead didn’t have an expression to read, but I thought the glow of its eyes looked sullen and satisfied. The Redcap was standing off to one side. Half of his face was a bloody mess, and he had only one good eye now. He was holding Karrin’s P90 casually, with much of the mud knocked off of it. Next to him, two of the Sidhe held Fix’s arms behind his back. The Summer Knight had a bruise blackening the entire left side of his face, running right to the hairline.

  But Molly was not visible.

  So. I might have been dealt a bad hand, but I still had a hole card out there somewhere.

  Maeve hopped down from the fallen stones, still holding that little automatic in her hand, and smiling widely. “You made it interesting, Dresden. I’ll give you that. Your merry band is just so”—she kicked Karrin in the small of the back, drawing nothing but a hard exhale—“feisty.” She eyed the people standing with me. “Now let’s see. Who do we have here?”

  Maeve made a gesture with one hand, and the air suddenly felt thick. Mud started plopping off of everyone covered in it, as if it had begun to rain again and gotten wetter and runnier. “Let’s see, let’s see,” she murmured. “Ah, the bartender. Irony, there. Getting a good view, are you?”

  Mac stared at Maeve without speaking.

  “Please allow me to make sure you don’t get bored. This is a participation sport,” Maeve said, and shot him in the stomach.

  Mac grunted and rocked back onto his heels. He stared at Maeve, his expression completely impassive. Then he exhaled a groan and fell to one knee.

  “Oh,” Maeve said, her eyes glittering. “That just never gets old.”

  Justine made a quiet sound and went to Mac’s side.

  Maeve’s eyes fastened on her. “And the vampire’s crumpet. Luscious little thing, aren’t you? And so close to Lady Raith. You and I are going to have a long talk after this, darling. I just know you’re going to start to see things my way.”