Battle Ground (The Dresden Files 17)

“What kind of sneak attack?”

“The sneaky kind!” Toot-Toot shouted. “They used veils and got around behind the lines and now they’re in the park, and they are Up To Something!”

I frowned. “What park?”

“Up ahead!” Toot-Toot said. “On this road! You’ll go right past it!”

My already quivery stomach got cold.

“Toot,” I said, thinking furiously and drawing out the word. “That’s . . . not a park. That’s Graceland Cemetery.”

And, dimly over the sound of all the footsteps in motion, I heard the thrumming thud of a large drum in the distance.

My eyes widened.

Hell’s bells.

I broke out of line and sprinted ahead until I reached the old man’s side. “Hey,” I said. “You hear that?”

Ebenezar glanced at me, frowning, but then turned his attention to the distance. “War drum?”

“No,” I said grimly. “That’s coming from Chicago’s most notorious graveyard. Toot says they slipped in under veils.”

“Necromancy,” he spat. “Stars and stones. How many zombies could they get out of it?”

“About fifty hectares’ worth of zombies?” I said, a little exasperated. “A lot. And they’d swarm Marcone’s people in minutes.”

The old man snarled. Necromancy is the gift that keeps on giving. The same spell that animated corpses could be expanded to sweep up freshly made bodies as well. New corpses weren’t as good for the work, but they’d be more than a match for the citizenry. It would mean death in a geometric progression.

The old man scowled furiously for maybe half a minute. I let him think. It’s important to think when things are going crazy, if you want to take the smartest action to get them sane again.

“Okay, Hoss,” he said heavily. “We don’t know how strong these practitioners are. But we know what’s going to happen to our allies if we don’t support them. So I’m taking the big guns ahead to relieve the pressure on the troops.”

“Got it,” I said.

He spoke in the slightly heavy tones of someone who is thinking through a problem as he speaks about it. “Practitioners means the Council needs to counter them. You’ve fought necromancers before. You’ve fought in that graveyard before. You’re the best person here for the work.” He grimaced and spat. “Dammit. You’ve got the job.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Take the Wardens and the Sasquatch.”

There was a huge fluttering sound, and I let out a little shriek and flinched, and it took me a second to sort out that an absolutely enormous, shaggy old raven had swooped down and landed firmly on my shoulder.

“Um,” I said.

“Caw,” said the raven.

Ebenezar scowled. “You are just damned useless in a military situation,” he said to the raven. “No discipline at all.”

“Redneck!” cried the raven. “Caw!”

Ebenezar waved a grumpy hand at the raven. “Fine. Take the Indian, too. Silence that drum.” He put a hand on my arm and met my eyes. “Hoss. Do not pull your punches tonight.”

“That’s always been my biggest problem,” I said, spreading my hands. “All this restraint.”

I broke away from him and dropped back to the rear, where Ramirez was laboring along while the other Wardens flanked him and kept worried expressions when he wasn’t looking.

“Okay, kids,” I said. “We’ve got problems.”

I explained the situation.

“Yes!” Wild Bill said. “Necromancers!”

I eyed him. “Seriously?”

“I like shooting zombies,” he drawled. “That’s all. I got a patch and everything.”

“Well, the idea is to stop them before they get the zombie horde rolling,” I said.

“Aw,” he said, disappointed, “that ain’t half as much fun.”

“Dammit, Bill.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “We’ll get it done.”

“River,” I said.

The Sasquatch nodded. “Can’t stand necromancers. Make the earth scream.”

“We gotta move fast.” I nodded at Ramirez and winced. “Sorry about this, man.”

Carlos looked from me to the Bigfoot. He was having enough trouble keeping up that he spoke in a gasp. “Dammit. Do it.”

“Give him a hand?” I asked River.

The Sasquatch promptly scooped Ramirez up. He could carry the man sitting on his palm under one arm with no more effort than a farmwife toting a basket of eggs.

The raven on my shoulder squawked and took off into the night air.

“All right, Toot,” I said. “Show me.”

* * *

* * *

Graceland is, in many ways, Chicago’s memory. The graves there mark the resting places of titans of industry, holy men, gangsters, politicians, near saints, and madmen and murderers. Tales of tragedy, of vast hubris, of bitter greed and steadfast love, are represented in the markers that stand over the graves of thousands. Statuary, mausoleums, even a small replica of an ancient Greek temple stand in stately silence over the lush green grass.

And yet the walls around the cemetery are there for a reason. The shades of many of those folk walk the graveyard at night and are the source of thousands of whispered tales that make skin creep and flesh crawl.

I’d been one of them once. I had a grave waiting for me in Graceland, kept open by force of whatever contract a deceased foe had prepared for me.

There was no time to go around to the gates. We went over the wall of rough stone behind a large mausoleum and gathered in the sheltering darkness behind it. Toot descended to the ground, something I’d seen him do only occasionally, and the aura of light around him dimmed and went out.

“This way, my lord!” Toot rasped in a low, dramatic tone. “They are near Inez’s statue.”

I grunted. The statue was a local legend. It went missing from time to time, and it came back just as mysteriously. There were often sightings of a little girl in Victorian dress skipping among the headstones when the statue was gone. And I knew it had once been used as a conduit by Queen Mab, when her physical form had been busy keeping mine alive, just as the spirit of Demonreach had inhabited a statue of Death that dwelt not far away.

Graceland is the repository of Chicago’s greatest dreams and darkest nightmares. There is a power there, dark and potent—and I could feel it stirring and swirling in the air, like oil being heated over a fire and becoming steadily more liquid, quicker to move, to shape. The sound of the drum continued, a stalwart tempo. It would do a lot to mask the sounds of our approach, especially if we stepped in time to the beat.