Battle Ground (The Dresden Files 17)

I lowered the boarding plank and shambled down to join her on the dock. “What do you see?” I asked quietly.

“Spirits,” she said. “Messengers, I think. Hundreds of them.”

“Martha Liberty,” I said. “She’s in tight with the loa. She’ll have them watching for the Fomor.”

“More than that,” she murmured. “Angels of death . . .” Molly stared sightlessly toward the city for a long moment in cat-eyed silence. Then she shivered.

“What is it?” I asked.

“We should get moving,” she said. “We need to get back to the castle.”

I eyed her. Her face was blank, distant.

Lara Raith strode out onto the deck of the Water Beetle. The battle had done for her change of clothing. She’d had to make do with some of Thomas’s stuff, stored in the ship’s cabin—leather-look tights and a big white Byronic poet’s shirt. My brother was not above embracing the classic stereotypes. The pale skin of her arms, where I could see it, was covered with dark, vicious bruises and round, mostly closed wounds, courtesy of the kraken.

Lara noticed me looking. “Not one quip about hentai, Dresden.” She glanced at Molly and nodded. “Thank you for the assistance.”

“It is no more than is due you under the mutual defense stipulations of the Accords,” Molly replied in a rather frosty tone.

Lara stared at Molly carefully for a moment before inclining her head. “Ah. Of course.”

Something like real anger flickered over Molly’s face for a second and then was gone.

I glanced back and forth between them.

I hate it when I miss things.

“We need to coordinate with the rest of the Accorded nations immediately,” Lara said to Molly.

“I concur.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You guys do that. There’s something I have to do first.”

Lara blinked. “As I understand it, Dresden, you may have a role to play tonight. And you have seen to it that I have an additional vested interest that you survive to do so. That being the case, I will not countenance you traipsing around the city alone.”

This could get complicated. Lara had already used two of the favors owed her by the Winter Court, but apparently, she had one remaining on credit with Mab. If she cashed it in, I wasn’t sure I would be able to stop myself from cooperating.

I liked it way better when I could just be openly defiant, rather than being forced to resort to reason.

“Hey,” I said, “do you hear that?”

Lara cocked her head. “Hear what?”

“Exactly,” I said. “It’s quiet. Barely after midnight. There’s time.”

“Time for what?” she demanded.

“To warn them,” I said. “The community in Chicago. Someone has to let them know what’s going on. Take me half an hour. Don’t bother arguing.”

Lara’s expression flickered with exasperation and her jawline twitched. “Empty night, Dresden. Why must you make everything more complicated?”

“It’s kind of my best feature,” I said.

“It should be done,” Molly observed, her tone remote. “If you will excuse me, there is something that requires my immediate attention.”

She took a step forward and vanished into a curtain of cold wind and mist that whipped about her and then dispersed, leaving only empty dock in its wake. I blinked and tried to look as if that was something I had been expecting to happen for at least ten minutes.

Lara shook her head. “I won’t try to stop you from fulfilling an obligation of Winter, if that’s what this is,” she said.

Ah. On her way out, Molly had set up cover for me. “That’s as easy a way to explain it as any,” I said.

“I need you alive if I’m to save my brother. I would feel better if you weren’t going alone.”

There were footsteps on the gangplank and Murphy said, “He isn’t.”

I looked up to see Murph in her tactical gear. If you didn’t know what to look for, you almost couldn’t tell she’d been crippled, when she was standing still like that.

“I don’t doubt your loyalty to him, Ms. Murphy,” Lara said. “Only your current limits. Time is critical. He needs to move.”

“She’s not going to slow me down,” I said. “You and Freydis should hit the castle. Riley was assembling your people when we left. They’ll need you.”

“Very well,” she said. “But don’t waste time. The Fomor could appear at any moment.”

“Aw,” I said, “you’re worried about me.”

Her smile had a little poison in it. “Yes. Which we will discuss, when time serves.” She raised her voice and called, “Freydis.”

The Valkyrie came up the stairs from the cabin and vaulted lightly to the dock. Lara nodded, murmured, “Good luck,” and then the two of them darted off toward the city, Lara in the lead, running in almost complete silence. They were out of sight in seconds.

Murphy exhaled slowly. “Hey, Harry?”

“Yeah?”

“My everything is broken,” she said frankly. “How the hell am I going to keep up with you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Um. Work with me, here.”

She arched an eyebrow at me.

* * *

* * *

Murphy gripped the edges of the shopping cart with both hands as I ran, pushing it down the middle of the street. “If you tell anyone about this, Dresden,” she said, “I will murder you slowly. With dental implements.”

I leaned down and kissed her hair. “Now, now. If you’re good, we can get you a piece of candy at checkout.”

“Goddammit, Dresden.”

I grinned, and then the wheels of the shopping cart hit a crack in the road and Murphy hissed in pain. I tried not to flinch in sympathy and to pilot around the rougher bits that I could see.

Murphy could limp along, but there was no way she could have moved through the city quickly enough to keep up. I could have carried her, but it would have bounced her around even worse than the shopping cart. So we just had to make do.

It wasn’t hard to move, really. The cars that had died on the streets blocked them to vehicular traffic, but there was plenty of room to maneuver around them for pedestrians, bicycles, and lanky wizards pushing shopping carts.

CPD had come out in force, armed and armored to the teeth. There were at least four officers posted at every major intersection, where they had lit the streets with road flares and trash-can fires. It didn’t make the streets less dark or threatening, really, but it did the most important thing it could have done—it threw a spotlight on the police officers themselves. If you were looking around outside that night, practically the only thing you could see reliably was the police in their uniforms and badges, standing their posts at each intersection. They were showing the flag for civilization and law, reassuring people that there were still boundaries that would be defended.