a reflex action as immutable as pulling your arm away from a searing-hot pan handle. He shifted his weight and I pushed up, adding every ounce of muscle I had to aid the movement. He pitched off me, rolling, and I followed him, letting go of the staff and looping the main body of the jumper cable around his neck. He thrashed and tried to get away, but I had gotten onto his back and locked my legs around his hips. I grabbed the cable in both hands and hauled back on it with everything I had.
It was over pretty quick, though it didn’t feel like it at the time. Boz thrashed and struggled, but as heavily muscled as he was, he wasn’t flexible enough to get his arms back and up to reach where I was on his back, so he couldn’t pull me off. He tried to break away, but between the cable and the grip of my legs, he wasn’t able to shake me off. He tried to get his fingers in beneath the jumper cable, but though he managed to get in a couple of digits, I was pulling too hard and was more than strong enough to outmuscle one of his fingers.
I don’t care how crazy you are; when your brain doesn’t get oxygen, you go down. Boz did, too. I held the choke for another ten seconds to make sure he wasn’t playing possum on me, and then for fifteen. Then twenty. Someone was snarling a string of curses and I hadn’t realized it was me. The simple sensation of straining power, of primal victory, surged through me like a drug, and only the coup de grace remained.
I ground my teeth. I’d killed men and women before but never when I’d had an alternative. I might be a fighter, but I wasn’t a killer, not when there was a choice. I forced myself to let go of the cables, and Boz flopped to the ground, entirely limp but alive. I had to roll him off one of my legs, pushing with my other heel, but he finally went, and I shambled upright, breathing hard. Then I turned to Mort and started untying knots.
He watched me with wary eyes. “Dresden. What you’re doing . . . being in the flesh like that. It isn’t right.”
“I know,” I said. “But no one else was going to do it.”
He shook his head. “I’m just saying . . . it isn’t good for you. Those spirits, the ones I’d been sheltering—they weren’t any different from any other ghost when they got started. Doing this . . . It does things to you long-term. You’ll change.” He leaned a little toward me. “Right now, you’re still you. But what you felt there, at the end—it grows. Keep doing this and you won’t be you anymore.”
“I’m almost done,” I told him, jerking the ropes clear as fast as I could. It took a bit. They’d strung him up pretty carefully, distributing his weight across a lot of rope. I guess Corpsetaker hadn’t wanted to spend several hours getting her limbs back under control once Mort cracked.
He groaned and tried to sit up. It took him a couple of attempts, but when I tried to help him, he waved my offer away.
“Can you walk?” I asked him.
He shuddered. “I can damned well walk out of here. Just give me a minute.”
“I don’t have it,” I said. “I’ve got to move.”
“Why?”
“Because my friends are up there somewhere.”
He sucked in a breath.
“I know,” I said with a grimace. Then I rose, grabbed my staff, and started walking toward the stairs.
“Stu,” I heard Mort say. “You know knots, right?”
I glanced back and saw Sir Stuart nod. Mort nodded back and started gathering up the coils of rope I’d pulled off him. He beckoned to Sir Stuart. “Come in. I don’t want the man mountain there getting up and finishing what he started.”
I almost hesitated, to make sure Mort was all right, but I’d spent too much time down here already, and I could feel the hectic buzz of my fatigue growing by the moment. I had to get upstairs.
There was only one reason Corpsetaker would have taken down her own wards as she had. She wasn’t limited to such a small sampling of humanity now, when it came to seizing a new body. She’d wanted people to come inside her lair.
It would give her more variety to choose from.
I rushed up the stairs, praying