Small Favor (The Dresden Files 10)

"You know your way around the station," Michael commented.

"Trains are faster than buses and safer than planes," I said. "I took a plane to Portland once, and the pilot lost his radio and computer and so on. Had to land without instruments or communications. We were lucky it was a clear day."

"Statistically, it's still the safest-" he began.

"Not for wizards it isn't," I told him seriously. "I've had flights that went smoothly. A couple of them just had little problems. But after that trip to Portland..." I shook my head. "There were kids on that plane. I'm going to live a long time. I can take a little longer to get there. Hey, Joe," I said to a silver-haired janitor, walking by with a wheeled cart of cleaning supplies.

"Harry," Joe said, nodding with a small smile as he passed by.

"I've been here a lot lately," I said to Michael. "Traveling to support the Paranet, mostly. Plus Warden stuff." I rolled my eyes. "I didn't want the job, but I'll be damned if I'll do it half-assed."

Michael looked back at the janitor thoughtfully for a moment, and then at me. "What's that like?"

"Wardening?" I asked. I shrugged. "I've got four other Wardens who are, I guess, under my command." I made air quotes around the word. "In Atlanta, Dallas, New York, and Boston. But I mostly just stay out of their way and let them do their jobs, give them help when they need it. They're kids. Grew up hard in the war, though that didn't give them brains enough to keep from looking up to me."

Mouse suddenly stopped in his tracks.

Me too. I didn't rubberneck around. Instead I focused on the dog.

Mouse's ears twitched like individual radar dishes. His nose quivered. One paw came up off the ground, but the dog only looked around him uncertainly.

"Lassie would have smelled something," I told him. "She would have given a clear, concise warning. One bark for gruffs, two barks for Nickelheads."

Mouse gave me a reproachful glance, put his paw back down, and sneezed.

"He's right," Michael said quietly. "Something is watching us."

"When isn't it?" I muttered, glancing around. I didn't see anything. My highly tuned investigative instincts didn't see anything either. I hate feeling like Han Solo in a world of Jedi. "I'm supposed to be the Jedi," I muttered aloud.

"What's that?" Michael asked.

The station's lights went out. All of them. At exactly the same time.

The emergency lights, which are supposed to come on instantly, didn't.

Beside me Michael's coat rustled and something clicked several times. Presumably he was trying his flashlight, and presumably it didn't work.

That wasn't good. Magic could interfere with the function of technology, but that was more of a Murphy effect: Things that naturally could go wrong tended to go wrong a lot more often. It didn't behave in a predictable or uniform fashion. It didn't shut down lights, emergency lights, and battery-powered flashlights all at the same time.

I didn't know what could do that.

"Harry?" Michael asked.

Mouse pressed up against my leg, and I felt his warning growl vibrating through his chest.

"You said it, Chewie," I told my dog. "I've got a bad feeling about this."

Chapter Twenty-three

P eople started screaming.

I reached for the amulet around my neck and drew it forth as I directed an effort of will at it to call forth light in the darkness.

And nothing happened.

I'd have stared at my amulet if I could have seen it. I couldn't believe that it wasn't working. I shook the necklace, cursed at it, and raised it again, forcing more of my will into the amulet.

It flickered with blue-white sparks for a moment, and that was it.

Mouse let out a louder snarl, the one I hear only when he's identified a real threat. Something close. My heart jumped up hard enough to bounce off the roof of my mouth.

"I can't call a light!" I said, my voice high and thin.

A zipper let out a high-pitched whine in the dark next to me, and steel rasped against steel, then rang like a gently struck bell. "Father," Michael's voice murmured gently, "we need Your help."

White light exploded from the sword.

About a dozen things crouching within three or four yards of us started screaming.

I'd never seen anything like them before. They were maybe five feet tall, but squat and thick, with rubbery-looking muscle. They were built more or less along the lines of baboons, somewhere between pure quadruped and biped, with wicked-looking claws, long, ropy tails, and massive shoulders. Some of them carried crude-looking weapons: cudgels, stone-headed axes, and stone-bladed knives. Their heads were apelike and nearly skeletal, black skin stretched tight over muscle and bone. They had ugly, almost sharklike teeth, so oversized that you could see where they were cutting their own lips and-

And they didn't have any eyes. Where their eyes should have been there was nothing but blank, sunken skin.

They screamed in agony as the light from Michael's sword fell on them, reeling back as if burned by a sudden flame-and if the sudden, smoldering reek that filled the air was any indicator, they had been.

"Harry!" Michael cried.

I knew that tone of voice. I crouched as quickly as I could, as low as I could, and barely got out of the way before Amoracchius swept through the space where my head had been-

- and slammed into the leaping form of one of the creatures that had been about to land on my back.

The thing fell back away from me and landed on the floor, thrashing. Its blood erupted into blue-white fire as it spurted from the wound.

I snapped my head around to stare at Amoracchius. More blood sizzled on the blade of the sword like grease on a hot skillet.

Iron.

These things were faeries.

I'd never seen them face-to-face before, but I'd read descriptions of them-including when I had been boning up on my book learning to figure out the identity of the gruffs. Given that this beastie was a faerie, there was only one thing it could be.

"Hobs!" I screamed at Michael as I drew the gun from my coat pocket. "They're hobs!"

After that I didn't have time to talk. A couple of the hobs around us had recovered enough from the shock of sudden exposure to light to fling themselves forward. Mouse let out his deep-chested battle roar and collided with one of them in midair. They went down in a tangle of thrashing limbs and flashing teeth.

The next hob leapt over them at me, stone knife in its knobby hand. I slipped aside from the line of his jump and pistol-whipped him with the barrel of the heavy revolver. The steel smashed into the hob's eyeless face, scorching flesh and shattering teeth. The hob screamed in pain as it flew by, crashing into one of its fellows.