Dead Beat (The Dresden Files 7)

Rodriguez sighed. "I've heard a lot about you. Watched you at that Council meeting. My gut says you're okay. It was worth checking out."

"And you soulgazed her. That was some fast thinking. And good shooting."

"I'm brilliant as well as skilled," he said modestly. "It's a great burden, all of that on top of my angelic good looks. But I try to soldier on as best I can."

I let out a short, rough laugh. "I see. I hope I won't embarrass you, then."

"Did I not mention my nearly godlike sense of tolerance and forgiveness?" Sue gathered speed and I turned her down the street. "Hey," he said. "The bad guys are back that way."

"I know," I said. "But they're expecting an attack from that direction. I'm going to circle the block, try to come in behind them."

"Is there time?"

"My baby can move," I told him. Sue broke into her run, and the ride smoothed out.

Ramirez let out a whoop of pure enjoyment. "Now this is cool," he said. "I can't even imagine how complicated this must have been."

"Wasn't complicated," I told him.

"Oh. So summoning up dinosaurs is actually very easy, is it?"

I snorted. "Any other night, any other place, I don't think I could have done it. But it wasn't complicated, either. Lifting up an engine block isn't complicated. It's just a lot of work."

Ramirez was silent for a moment. "I'm impressed," he said.

I didn't know Ramirez very well, but my sense of him told me that those were words he was not in the habit of uttering. "When you do something stupid and die, it's pathetic," I said. "When you do something stupid and survive it, then you get to call it impressive or heroic."

He let out a rueful chuckle. "What we're doing right now..." he said. His voice softened and lost its edge of brash arrogance. "It's pathetic. Isn't it?"

"Probably," I said.

"On the other hand," he said, recovering. "If we survive it, we're heroes. Medals. Girls. Endorsements. Cars. Maybe they put us on a cereal box."

"Seems the least they could do," I said.

"So we've got two of them left to take down. Who do we hit first?"

"Grevane," I said. "If he's holding a bunch of zombies as guard dogs, he isn't going to have a lot of attention to spare for defensive spells, or for throwing anything else at us. We hit him fast, hopefully put him down before he can try anything. He handled a chain like he knew how to use it when I saw him fight Corpsetaker."

"Ugh," Ramirez said. "Nasty. Anyone who knows their way around a kusari is a tough customer."

"Yeah. So we shoot him."

"Damn right, we shoot him," Ramirez said. "This is why so many of the younger members of the Council like the way you do things, Dresden."

I blinked. "They do?"

"Oh, hell, yes," Ramirez said. "A lot of them were apprentices when you were first tried after Justin DuMorne's death, like me. A lot of them are still apprentices. But there are people who think a lot of what you've done."

"Like you?"

"I would have done a lot of those things," he said. "Only with a lot more style than you."

I snorted. "Second one we'll hit calls himself Cowl. He's good. I've never seen a wizard stronger than he is, and that includes Ebenezar McCoy."

"A lot of guys who hit hard have a glass jaw. Bet he's all offense."

I shook my head. "No. He's just as good at protecting himself. I nipped a car over on top of him and it barely slowed him down."

Ramirez frowned and nodded. "How do we take him down then?"

I shook my head. "Haven't thought of anything good. Hit him with everything and hope something gets through. And if that wasn't enough, he's got an apprentice with him, called Kumori, who seems personally loyal. She's probably strong enough to be on the Council herself."

"Damn," Ramirez said quietly. "She pretty?"

"She keeps her face covered," I said. "No idea."

"If she was pretty, I'd just turn on the Ramirez charm and have her eating out of my hand," he said. "But I can't take chances with that kind of power if I'm not sure she's pretty. Used recklessly, it could endanger innocent bystanders or land me in bed with an ugly girl."

"Can't have that," I said, turning Sue around another corner. I checked the vortex. The slender, spinning psuedo-tornado was more than halfway to the ground.

"All right then," Ramirez said. "Once we're past Grevane, I'll take on the apprentice. You go for Cowl."

I glanced back at him with an arched eyebrow.

"If we ignore Kumori she'll be free to take us both out. One of us has to counter her. You're stronger than me," he said, his tone matter-of-fact. "Don't get me wrong. I'm so damned good that I make it look easy, but I'm not stupid. You have the best shot at taking Cowl down. If I can drop the apprentice, I'll help. Sound like a plan?"

"Sounds like a plan," I said. "I just wish it sounded like a winning plan."

"You got a better idea?" Ramirez asked me cheerfully.

"No," I said, and I turned Sue down the street that would hopefully let us attack the necromancers from the rear.

"Well, then," he said, his smile ferocious. "Shut up and dance."

Chapter Forty-two

The campus of the college consisted of only a few buildings-a couple of dorms, a couple of buildings with classrooms, the Mitchell Museum, and an administrative office. The area between them was a nicely kept lawn, too small to look like a park, but larger than you'd want to mow every week. At the center of the area, directly in front of the museum, picnic tables had been overturned onto their sides around a large circle open to the skies above. I slowed Sue's steps for a moment, to try to get some kind of idea of what we had to contend with.

Standing in silent ranks around that circle were Grevane's style of undead-very solid, very physical, though there were relatively few of them in the half-rotted or desiccated condition of the corpses that had attacked my place. These undead looked like they might still have been saved by a snappy EMT. They all looked like Native American tribesmen, just as Corpsetaker's specters had, though the styles of clothing and weaponry were slightly different.

One other thing was different, too: These undead radiated a kind of hideous, ephemeral cold, and their skin almost seemed to glow with its own pale, horrible light. I could sense the raw power that lay within them, even from a hundred yards away. These undead were different from those that had attacked the Wardens, as different as an old pickup truck was from a modern battle tank. These zombies would not be so easily destroyed as those others, and were likely to be far stronger, far faster.