Turn Coat (The Dresden Files 11)

Listens-to-Wind's mouth opened in sudden surprise and understanding. He looked down at his ink-stained fingertips, and then up at Peabody.

Peabody may not have seen the man turn into a grizzly, but he was bright enough to know that Injun Joe was getting set to adjust another relative ass-to-ears ratio. The little secretary took one look around the room, and then at my dog. The expression went out of his face.

"The end," he said, calmly and clearly, "is nigh."

And then he flung his spare pot of ink onto the floor, shattering the glass.

Mouse let out a whuffing bark of warning, and knocked Molly backward off of the bench as a dark cloud rose up away from the smashed bottle, swelling with supernatural speed, tendrils reaching out in all directions. One of them caught a Warden who had leapt forward, toward Peabody.

It encircled his chest and then closed. Everything the slender thread of mist touched turned instantly to a fine black ash, slicing through him as efficiently as an electric knife through deli meat. The two pieces of the former Warden fell to the floor with wet, heavy thumps.

I'd seen almost exactly the same thing happen once before, years ago.

"Get back!" I screamed. "It's mordite!"

Then the lights went out, and the room exploded into screams and chaos.

Chapter Forty-eight

The truly scary part wasn't that I was standing five feet away from a cloud of weapons-grade deathstone that would rip the very life force out of everything it touched. It wasn't that I had confronted someone who was probably a member of the Black Council, probably as deadly in a tussle as their members always seemed to be, and who was certainly fighting with his back to the wall and nothing to lose. It wasn't even the fact that the lights had all gone out, and that a battle to the death was about to ensue.

The scary part was that I was standing in a relatively small, enclosed space with nearly six hundred wizards of the White Council, men and women with the primordial powers of the universe at their beck and call-and that for the most part, only the Wardens among them had much experience in controlling violent magic in combat conditions. It was like standing in an industrial propane plant with five hundred chain-smoking pyromaniacs double-jonesing for a hit: it would only take one dummy to kill us all, and we had four hundred and ninety-nine to spare.

"No lights!" I screamed, backing up from where I'd last seen the cloud. "No lights!"

But my voice was only one amongst hundreds, and dozens of wizards reacted in the way I-and Peabody-had known they would. They'd immediately called light.

It made them instant, easy targets.

Cloudy tendrils of concentrated death whipped out to strike at the source of any light, spearing directly through anyone who got in the way. I saw one elderly woman lose an arm at the elbow as the mordite-laden cloud sent a spear of darkness flying at a wizard seated two rows behind her. A dark-skinned man with gold dangling from each ear roughly pushed a younger woman who had called light to a crystal in her hand. The tendril missed the woman but struck him squarely, instantly dissolving a hole in his chest a foot across, and all but cut his corpse in half as it fell to the floor.

Screams rose, sounds of genuine pain and terror-sounds the human body and mind are designed to recognize and to which they have no choice but to react. It hit me as hard as the first time I'd ever heard it happen-the desire to be away from whatever was causing such fear, combined with the simultaneous engagement of adrenaline, the need to act, to help.

Calmly, said a voice from right beside my right ear-except that it couldn't have been there because bandages covered that side of my head completely, and it was physically impossible for a voice to come through that clearly.

Which meant that the voice was an illusion. It was in my head. Furthermore, I recognized the voice-it was Langtry's, the Merlin's.

Council members, get on the ground immediately, said the Merlin's calm, unshakable voice. Assist anyone who is bleeding and do not attempt to use lights until the mistfiend is contained. Senior Council, I have already engaged the mistfiend and am preventing it from moving any farther away. Rashid, prevent it from moving forward and disintegrating me, if you please. Mai and Martha Liberty, take its right flank, McCoy and Listens-to-Wind its left. It's rather strong-willed, so let's not dawdle, and remember that we must also prevent it from moving upward.

The entire length of that dialogue, though I could have sworn it was physically audible, was delivered in less than half a second-speech at the speed of thought. It came accompanied with a simplified image of the Speaking Room, as if it had been drawn on a mental chalkboard. I could clearly see the swirling outline of the mistfiend surrounded by short blocks, with each block labeled with the names of the Senior Council and drawn to represent a section of three-dimensional dome that would hem the cloudy terror in.

Hell's bells. The Merlin had, in the literal length of a second and a half, turned pure confusion into an ordered battle. I guess maybe you don't get to be the Merlin of the White Council by saving up frequent-flier miles. I'd just never seen him in motion before.

Warden Dresden, the Merlin said. Or thought. Or projected. If you would be so good as to prevent Peabody from escaping. Warden Thorsen and his cadre are on the way to support you, but we need someone to hound Peabody and prevent him from further mischief. We do not yet know the extent of his psychic manipulations, so trust none of the younger Wardens.

I love being a wizard. Every day is like Disneyland.

I ripped off my ridiculous stole, robe, and cloak as I turned toward the doorway. The frantic motions of panic made the two or three light sources that had not been instantly snuffed into independent stroboscopes. Running toward the room's exit was a surreal experience, but I was certain that Peabody had planned his steps before he'd begun to move, and he'd had plenty of time to sprint across the room in the darkness and leave the auditorium.

I tried to think like a wizard who had just been outed as Black Council and marked for capture, interrogation, and probable death. Given that I had been fairly sure it was going to happen to me over the past few days, I'd already given consideration to how to get out of Council HQ, and I figured Peabody had taken more time to plan than I had.

If I was him, I'd rip open a Way into the Nevernever and close it behind me. I'd find a good spot to get out, and then I'd make sure it was prepared to be as lethally hostile to pursuers as I could make it. The centuries upon centuries of wards placed upon the Edinburgh tunnels by generations of wizards, though, prevented any opening to the Nevernever from inside the security checkpoints, so Peabody would have to get through at least one Warden-manned security gate before he enacted his plan.