Battle Ground (The Dresden Files 17)

But the looting had started, here and there. I saw several window fronts that had been broken out, though not as many as it could have been. Officers were advising people to get home and get off the streets, and we got the fisheye from more than a few uniformed guys as we went by. Murphy made me stop to talk to a couple of the uniforms she knew, and she passed on warnings for the people in law enforcement whom she still had contact with—that this was a Special Investigations problem, and that this was a time for all hands on deck, fully armed tactical teams on standby, right the hell now, and why are you still standing here?

Things hadn’t gotten bad, at least not yet. But there was something in the air that hadn’t been there before—the psychic stench of a widespread terror that was slowly gathering momentum.

The city’s residents had begun to realize that something was very, very wrong.

The firelight, almost alien to mortal cities for a century or more, cast high, deep shadows that made buildings loom threateningly in the night and turned alleyways into pits of blackness. The presence of the police had to be reassuring—but it was also a warning, that things were bad, and that city hall was worried. The people who were walking on the street did so briskly, in tense silence, and tended to move in groups of three or four. I saw very few women out in the open.

I felt myself getting more tense. You couldn’t have fear spreading like this without building up considerable psychological pressure. Sooner or later, that pressure was going to cause something to burst.

They say civilization is a thin veneer over barbarism.

Chicago stood waiting for the first tearing sound.

* * *

* * *

We arrived at McAnally’s Pub to find it . . . well, like always, only a lot more crowded.

Mac’s place was a basement pub underneath an office building. You had to descend concrete stairs from the street to get in, and it featured a constantly irritating combination of a fairly low ceiling and ceiling fans. The entire place was done in old, stained wood, with thirteen stools at the crooked bar, thirteen tables for customers, and thirteen carved wooden columns featuring images mainly inspired by Grimms’ fairy tales.

The usual candles and lanterns burned, lighting the place. Mac’s charcoal grill was alight and covered in the various foods he offered to his customers, and the ale flowed freely.

When we came in the door, nothing happened for a second, and then a cloud of silence began to spread out from my feet until it had engulfed the room. All eyes were on me. These were people who knew who I was.

I could hear whispers. Harry Dresden. Wizard.

I adjusted the strap on the nylon backpack I had taken from the Water Beetle. “Mac,” I said clearly. “Storage room. We need to talk.”

Mac was a lean man around six feet tall with broad-knuckled hands and a shining bald pate, dressed in his usual black slacks, button-down shirt, and spotless white apron. He’d been a friend for a long time. He looked at me and then nodded toward his pantry and office.

Karrin and I walked over and went in. Without a word, I opened up the backpack, took out the little wooden sign, and put it down carefully on his desk.

Mac saw the sign and his eyes widened. He looked at me, his face written heavily with consternation.

“You know what it is,” I said.

Mac rocked back half a pace. He looked from the sign to me. He didn’t quite lick his lips in nervous guilt, but it was pretty clear that he didn’t like that I’d realized what he knew.

“A lot of the Paranetters are here tonight,” I said, “because we put out an alert yesterday and this is one of the designated shelters.”

Mac nodded firmly.

I met his eyes for as long as I dared and said, “What’s coming could kill every one of them. So I need your help.”

Mac looked from me to the sign and back, grimacing.

“Mac,” I said quietly. “Not just anyone would recognize that sign. I mean, it’s just an old piece of wooden board, right?”

His expression became pained and he held up his hands.

“There’s a Titan coming to Chicago,” I said, “with an army, courtesy of the Fomor, to burn the place to the ground. They’ll be here in maybe an hour. There’s no time to get cute. Are you willing?”

He frowned. He stared at the sign for a second and then away.

“Mac,” I said, “there’s no time for this.” I bowed my head, rested the fingertips of one hand against my temples, and began to call up my Sight.

A wizard’s Sight is a powerful tool for perceiving the energies of the universe. It gets called a lot of things, from dream sight to the third eye, but it amounts to the same thing—adjusting your thoughts to be able to perceive magical energies as they move around and through the natural world. The Sight shows you things in their purest nature, reveals fundamental truths about people, creatures, and things that you look at.

A while ago, some of the Outsiders had come looking for trouble at Mac’s.

They’d recognized him.

I didn’t know what Mac was, but it seemed clear that he wasn’t just your average bartender. I figured it was about time we got to know each other a little better.

But before I could look up, Mac pressed my hand gently against my face, making it impossible to open my eyes.

“Don’t,” the mostly mute man said gently. “Hurt yourself.”

He didn’t let me move my hand until I’d released my Sight—and there was no way he should have been able to know that. But he did anyway. Which put him in a relatively small pool of beings—those with a connection to divine knowledge, to intellectus, and given what the Outsiders had called him, I was pretty sure I knew what Mac was now. Or at least what he had once been.

He lowered his hand slowly, his expression resolved. Then he took a step back, pursed his lips, looked at me, and shook his head. After that, he moved briskly, opening a storage cabinet and taking out a small, efficient toolbox. A moment of effort and he’d put a couple of screws in the back of the sign, connected by a strand of wire.

“What is it?” Murphy asked as he worked.

“The placard from the Cross,” I said. “The one that said, ‘Here is the King of the Jews.’”

Her golden eyebrows went up. “From the vault?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“What does it do?”

“It’s embodied intercession. . . . It focuses energy on an individual,” I said. “Something about pouring out the accumulated sins of humanity onto Christ, maybe. Hang it up and it puts up a kind of threshold that will hold off just about anything supernatural, as long as the property’s rightful owner is alive.”