Battle Ground (The Dresden Files 17)

I looked back over my shoulder to see the form of the vast wolf overbear River Shoulders and ride him to the ground. The Sasquatch roared and slammed his fists into the Drakul-wolf, but the beast shrugged the blows off, fangs seeking River’s throat.

I twisted and lifted my staff, preparing a blast of force that would push the wolf off River Shoulders.

And an arm like a bar of cold iron slipped around my throat, as swift and lithe as a young serpent.

My air was cut off immediately. I couldn’t make a sound. I struggled, but I felt like a child trying to fight an adult. Within seconds, I was off-balance and being dragged silently away among the tombstones.

I saw Listens-to-Wind turn into a friggin’ bison and charge the great wolf’s flank before the fog swallowed them all, and I had time to realize that neither of them had seen me being taken.

And, in all the fog, neither had anyone else.

I was alone.

“Dresden,” Mavra hissed. Her voice sounded almost as pleasant as beetles devouring desiccated flesh. “I have so been looking forward to seeing you again.”

Chapter

Thirteen

Thanks to the Winter mantle, I am stronger than most, by which I mean, most professional wrestlers. Strong as I am, though, my strength still falls within the normal parameters of humanity. I might be pretty far along that bell curve, but I’m still on the same graph.

Black Court vampire strength is on the same graph as military vehicles and construction equipment.

Mavra dragged me as effortlessly as if I’d been leashed to a bulldozer, and the arm around my neck might as well have been made of carbon steel. I thrashed and kicked, and not only was it futile; she didn’t even take notice of it. I was able to gasp in a few precious wisps of air during the struggles, but probably not enough to make up for the loss of the struggle itself.

I wanted to panic. But panic wouldn’t help me survive.

So I fastened my grip on that implacable arm and held on tight, trying to take the pressure off my neck, and otherwise ceased doing anything but fighting for air. The struggle behind me was a nearly silent one, broken only by the sounds of impacts, weight scrambling on the grass, and harsh exhalations.

Mavra dragged me silently through the graveyard in the fog, until we found other dark, silent forms beneath the branches of a spreading tree.

And on the ground at their feet were more figures.

Wild Bill. Yoshimo. Ramirez.

Wild Bill and Yoshimo were a mess of blood that looked wet and black in the dim light.

Ramirez was still alive. He was on his knees, and one of the Black Court elders, the one with the tentacle spell, held Carlos’s wrists pinned behind his back.

“Where is the drum?” demanded Tentacles Guy as Mavra approached.

“Welcome, Mavra,” Mavra said in a light, mocking rasp. “You were right about how they would respond to the threat, Mavra. The Master was wise to trust you, Mavra.”

Yoshimo had died with her eyes partly open. They stared. She didn’t look like a young woman anymore. She looked like a broken, discarded machine.

Tentacles Guy bared bloodied teeth and hissed. “We must finish preparing these and go to the Master’s aid.”

Mavra hissed a little laugh. “If you wish to disturb his recreation, by all means.”

One of the two twin corpse-vampires was on the ground. It looked like a chunk of mass that might have weighed thirty pounds in a living being was just missing from one of the twins’ abdomens. Ramirez’s blasts, probably. Its mouth was covered in fresh blood, and there were slurping, sucking sounds coming from the open wound, as blood and matter shifted and slowly renewed the missing mass. It was staring steadily, hungrily, at Ramirez.

The other twin pointed at me. “Give it to my sister. She must restore herself.”

“His blood is not for the likes of you or me,” Mavra replied calmly. “Starborn are for the Master.”

Both twins hissed at Mavra, who appeared to take no notice of them.

Wild Bill had gone down fighting. His rifle and sidearm were both gone. So was his trademark knife. The skin was gone from his knuckles, and there was something black and sludgy on his open mouth. He’d gone down swinging, with bits of his enemy literally between his teeth.

“The drum!” Tentacles Guy insisted.

“This was never about raising an army, fool,” Mavra hissed. “It was about acquiring new blood for the stars and stones. Let Corb and Ethniu thrash about and draw the ire of the mortals upon themselves. We will be well positioned to rule the rubble.” She pointed a finger at Ramirez. “Give her that one to eat.”

Tentacles Guy stared at Mavra harshly. Then he dragged Ramirez over to the wounded twin. Ramirez fought against Tentacles Guy, with just as much to show for it as I had with Mavra. The other twin stretched out Ramirez’s arm and raked rotten nails across his wrists, tearing open flesh and veins with all the precision and subtlety of an ox-driven plow.

Ramirez screamed.

The downed twin fastened her rotting lips over the wound in his arm.

My friends were dead and dying.

And these . . . things . . . wanted to make of their remains a home for more monsters.

Sickness and rage filled me.

Power rushed in with them.

Mavra’s grip on my neck tightened like something driven by hydraulics, and suddenly there was nothing but blind, furious sensation filtered through the Winter mantle in a tsunami of confusing sensory input that became its own agonizing analogue of prosaic pain.

“The Master won’t mind drinking you at room temperature, Dresden,” she chided me. The universe blurred, and suddenly the floor rose to give me a full-body hug. It blew the wind out of me in an exhalation not even Mavra’s strength could shut off entirely and left me lying stunned.

“Pendejos,” Ramirez snarled. I could feel the air tighten as he drew in power.

The other twin’s hands shot out as he did, dragging his face to hers. Her milky-white eyes widened as she locked gazes with Ramirez. My friend let out a furious, despairing scream as her psychic assault began. Yeah. The Black Court had a method for dealing with the potential devastation of a wizard’s death curse—tough to put together a spell when someone is trying to climb into your brain and redecorate.

The vampires watched the dying man intently, slipping into a corpselike, absolute stillness as they did.

Carlos tried to scream again. It came out weaker.

There was nothing I could do.

And then something wispy and violet poked out from behind a tombstone twenty feet away.

Someone had seen me.