Turn Coat (The Dresden Files 11)

"Toot!" I screamed over the roaring chaos. "Go after the flankers!"

A tiny trumpet added its own notes to the din, and the Pizza Patrol zipped out into the woods, two or three of the little faeries working together to carry fresh Roman candles. They gleefully kept on with the fireworks, sending the little sulfurous balls of flame chasing the grey men trying to slip around us through the shadows, marking their positions.

Lara let out a piercing call and came up to my side, gun in hand, snapping off snarling bursts every time a target presented itself. I pointed to either side and said, "They're getting around us! We've got to stop them from taking Mai and Injun Joe from behind!"

Lara's eyes snapped left and right, and she said something to her sisters in ancient Etruscan, the tongue of the White Court. One of them went in either direction, vanishing into the dark.

A grey man came crashing out of the flame twenty feet away from me, blazing like a grease fire. He showed absolutely no concern for the flame. He just sprinted forward and leapt at me, hands spread wide. I made it up to my knees and braced one end of my quarterstaff against the ground, aiming the other at the grey man's center of mass. The staff struck it, but not squarely. It twisted to one side at the impact, bounced off the ground, took a fraction of a second to reorient itself on me-

And erupted into a cloud of ectoplasm as rounds from Lara's gun took its head apart.

The next attacker was already on the way, out in the darkness beyond the firelight. I came to my feet and on pure instinct snapped off another blast of fire at the empty air twenty feet beyond Lara and about ten feet up. There was nothing there as I released the blast, and I knew it, but as the fire hissed through the falling rain, it illuminated the form of a grey man in the midst of a spectacular leap that would have ended at the small of Lara's back. The blast struck him and hammered him to one side so that he came down like a burning jet, crashing across a dozen yards of ground before dissolving into flame-licked mounds of swiftly vanishing transparent jelly.

Lara didn't see the attacker until he'd tumbled past. "Oh," she said, her voice conversational. "That was gentlemanly of you, Dresden."

"I've been known to pull out chairs and open doors, too," I said.

"How very unfashionable," Lara said, her pale eyes gleaming. "And endearing."

Ebenezar stumped up to us, staff in hand, his eyes narrow and flickering all around us while Wardens continued to send blasts of power hammering into targets. Off in the woods behind us, submachine guns chattered. Apparently Lara's sisters were still hunting the grey men who had gotten around us.

"We've got one Warden down," Ebenezar said.

"How bad?"

"One of those things came out of a tree above her and tore her head off," he said.

I tracked a slight motion in a nearby treetop and swiveled to point a finger. "Sir, up there!"

Ebenezar grunted a word, reached out a hand, and made a sharp, pulling motion. The grey man who had been clambering toward us was seized by an unseen force, ripped out of the tree, and sent sailing on an arc that would land it in Lake Michigan a quarter of a mile from the nearest shore.

"Where is the second group?" Ebenezar asked.

I thought about it. "They're at the dock, at the edge of the trees. They're closing on Mai and Injun Joe." I glanced at Lara. "I think the vampires have been holding them off."

Ebenezar spat a curse. "That summoner is still out there somewhere. His pets won't last long in this rain, but we can't afford to give him time to call up more. Can you find him?"

I checked. There was so much confusion and motion on the island that Demonreach had trouble distinguishing one being from another, but I had a solid if nonspecific idea of where Binder was. "Yeah." I sensed more movement and pointed behind us, to where a trio of grey men had managed to close on a pair of Wardens who were standing on either side of a still, red-spattered form on the ground. "There!"

Ebenezar stopped talking to make another swift gesture, spoke a word, and one of the approaching grey men was suddenly and literally pounded flat by an invisible anvil. Ectoplasmic ichor flew everywhere. The two Wardens, warned by the magical strike and now facing even odds, made short work of the remaining two.

Ebenezar turned back to me and said, "Shut down that summoner, Hoss. I'm taking the Wardens back to support Injun Joe and Mai. Let's go, vampire."

"No," Lara said. "If Binder is nearby, then so is my sweet cousin Madeline. I'll stay with Dresden."

Ebenezar didn't argue with her. He just snarled, made a fist, and lifted it up, and Lara let out a short, choking cry and rose up ten feet into the air, her arms and legs snapping down straight, locking her body into a rigid board.

I put a hand against his chest. "Wait!"

He glanced at me from beneath shaggy grey brows.

"Let her down. She can come along." Ebenezar had no way of knowing that I wasn't out there alone. Georgia and Will were lurking nearby, and could be at my side in a couple of seconds if necessary. Between the two of them, they had accounted for three grey men, too. I tried to put that knowledge behind a very slight emphasis in my tone and told him, "I'll be fine."

Ebenezar frowned at me, then shot a glance out at the woods and gave me a reluctant nod. He turned back to Lara and released her from the grip of his will. She didn't quite manage to fall gracefully, and landed in a sprawl that gave me a great look at her long, intriguingly lovely legs. The old man eyed her and said, "You just remember what I told you, missy."

She rose to her feet, her expression unreadable-but I knew her well enough to know that she was furious. My old mentor had just insulted her on multiple levels, not the least of which was pointing out to her exactly how easy it would be for him to make good on his previous threat. "I'll remember," she said, her tone frosty.

"Wardens!" Ebenezar said. "On me!" The old man broke into a woodsman's lope, a shuffle-footed, loose-kneed gait that managed unpredictable terrain well and covered ground with deceptive speed. The four remaining Wardens fell into a wedge shape behind him and they moved out heading south, back toward the docks and the confrontation with whoever had come forth from the Nevernever with his own army.

Lara turned to me and nodded her head once, gesturing me to lead. I tried to fix Binder's presence firmly in mind, and was certain he was ahead of us and to the north, probably trying to circle widely around the scene of the battle with his minions. I started out through the woods again, pushing myself to move faster.