Battle Ground (The Dresden Files 17)

Then octokongs and Huntsmen reached the fight, following in the wake of the Jotnar’s charge. Massive fire poured down from the skyscraper across the street, but it couldn’t stop them from coming forward. Momentum turned against the Einherjaren. Three more of them went up in explosions, laughing like madmen as the blasts took foes with them into death.

But there were more Fomor than there were Einherjaren.

The tide turned.

Just as it did, the world suddenly went silent, as if reality had taken a deep breath and held it. There was a low quiver in the concrete beneath my feet, a hideous pressure in the air, and then, from the direction of the lake, a column of red-white energy, pure power, hammered into the skyscraper where Marcone’s fire teams were wreaking havoc on the enemy and slewed across it in a path of utter ruin.

The building shattered like a toy.

I stood staring in pure shock as the power of the Eye of Balor tore apart a modern skyscraper as if it had been built from balsa wood. Windows shattered. Steel melted and ran like water. The building groaned in agony and then simply collapsed in upon itself in a roar and a wash of fire and smoke and a vast storm of rising dust.

In seconds, an edifice that had required the hands and wills of thousands of men and women had been reduced to smoke and rubble.

Ethniu had taken the field.

The Last Titan had come for Chicago.

I staggered as the cloud of dust billowed over us, and then recoiled again as, seconds later, the broad, ugly form of a Jotun congealed out of the dust and let out a roar, raising its axe high over the parking garage in both hands.

“Run!” screamed the old man.

And then the vast flaming axe crashed down into the ceiling above us and shattered the world.

Chapter

Sixteen

There was no time.

I gave Ebenezar a push, getting him out of the way of falling stone. Ramirez had had the same idea, pulling from the other side, and had more momentum than I did. They got clear.

Several tons of concrete plus one Jotun-sized axe came crashing down toward me.

Someone hit me in the hip like a linebacker, legs driving. The impact lifted me off my feet and carried me to one side as the roof came down with a roar and a wash of dust and smoke. I covered my head with my arms and rolled in the direction that seemed away from all the falling stuff, dimly aware of someone else with me doing more or less the same thing.

By the time I had wits enough to look around me, I found myself at the edge of a ragged hole in the parking garage’s floor leading to the level below.

Next to me, covered in grey dust and a white cloak, was Butters in his sports goggles. The wiry little guy wore tactical gear and one of Charity Carpenter’s armored vests, this one made with titanium scales fixed to a Kevlar undergarment. His shock of black hair stood up every which way, dust coating it almost entirely.

“Holy smokes!” he said. “Was that a giant with a flaming axe?!”

“Butters!” I said.

The little guy blinked at me through the dust on his goggles and flashed me a huge and sudden grin. “Hey,” he said, “I just straight up saved your life! That’s Sir Waldo to you, buddy.”

Outside the parking garage, the Jotun roared. Shadows shifted through the dust and smoke as the thing drew back that axe and swept it around in a horizontal arc. Both of us threw ourselves as flat as we could, still shielding our heads with our arms as the weapon smashed through the parking garage like a wrecking ball.

Chunks of concrete zinged around like shot from some unthinkably large cannon. One piece hit my thigh, through the spell-armored leather of my duster. It was like taking a glancing blow from a sledgehammer, and not even Winter’s disregard for pain could block all of it, and I let out a shout that was at least fifty percent pure surprise.

“Fall back!” Ebenezar was roaring in the background. “Regroup at the next block!”

Butters bounced back to his feet. The little guy was never going to be physically intimidating, but the past few months of training with the Carpenters to be a Knight had made him quick and tough as nails. “Come on!”

One of my legs was just sort of hanging there uselessly, but I managed to struggle to the other one, holding on to my staff with both hands, coughing and choking on the dust in the air.

The world gasped and went scarlet again, red light flooding through the haze of war. The air screamed with unnatural power as the Eye of Balor unleashed raw destruction upon the city, and my heart took a terrified flutter. I had only once before witnessed destructive power on that order of magnitude, and that had been at the will of the Fallen Angel himself—and even then it had been carefully constrained, used for a purpose.

Ethniu had no such restraints.

The air and the ground shook as another building, out there in the haze, came crashing down.

Butters staggered over to me and got enough of himself under my arm to help me move forward. “What was that?”

“Magic superweapon,” I gasped. We hurried for the ramp down to the first level. I couldn’t tell who was left in the garage—the choking haze was just too damned thick. “Bunch of us came up here to back up Marcone’s people. Guess we provided enough resistance that Ethniu had to break out the big guns.” I coughed, spat, and said, “What are you doing here? Mister Sunshine arrange for you to be where you’re needed?”

“Uh . . .” Butters said, drawing the sound out. “Now, don’t be mad, Harry.”

“What?” I asked, and I might have sounded a little grumpy.

“Me and Sanya kind of wound up by Mac’s place,” he said.

“Butters,” I said warningly.

“We took a vote,” he said.

We had just made it to the bottom of the ramp when I heard a sound behind me and I looked back to see a trio of octokongs come . . . sort of slurping across the ground, teeth bared in a furious mutant-gorilla grimace, weird weapons in hand.

I threw up my shield bracelet, rammed my will through it, and brought up a dome of sparkling green-gold light, easily seen in the haze and dust, just as their weapons began to fire.

I had been questioning the enemy’s wisdom in handing all the octokongs what amounted to shotguns. But I hadn’t been thinking. In the chaos of a city on fire, within the limited visibility of the smoke and darkness, nobody could see very well—and certainly not well enough for reliable precision shooting. “Firing thataway” with a shotgun was probably just about as close to accurate as it would be possible to get.

I dropped my staff, reached for my own coach gun in its scabbard, remembered that the staff had been helping support me, and fell hard against Butters, who grunted and crashed to a knee.