Battle Ground (The Dresden Files 17)

And then she turned in a wave of silken hair and starlight and strode out of the Bean and onto the battlefield.

“Hell’s bells,” I muttered after her.

I didn’t hear it, of course. But my mind provided me with a perfect reproduction of Murph’s drily amused chuckle.

I turned back to Murph’s remains and touched her cheek with the backs of the fingers of my left hand. Then paused.

Her Sig, her favorite handgun, was still riding in its shoulder holster beneath her coat.

Heroes are traditionally buried with their arms.

But this fight was still going.

I took the gun from its holster, very gently. It wasn’t a large weapon, but it fit my hand nicely enough as a backup.

“Backup,” I said. “You mind if I borrow her for a while?”

Murph couldn’t say anything.

But with a whisper, where I’d moved it to get the gun, her coat fell open a little more, showing the spare magazines she had prepared.

“Thanks, Murph,” I whispered.

I took the magazines and Backup.

And then I stalked out to fight for the city.

Chapter

Twenty-five

I walked out of the Bean and into the soundtrack of a B horror movie: The Fomor forces didn’t use drums to send signals in the haze.

They used clicks.

I supposed that made sense. Drums wouldn’t sound like much underwater. But two rocks banged together are two rocks banged together. I just hoped that they weren’t enough like dolphins to be able to see through the haze using the clicks, too. I didn’t think so, since dolphins had an absolutely enormous biological investment in their natural sonar, but I’d had unpleasant surprises before.

I strode through the ranks of the Sidhe cohort, and this time there were no games. They made a path for me with crisp precision. But I could sense their eagerness as I passed by. The Winter Court makes very little distinction between sex and violence. Their confrontation with me earlier had been foreplay, but now they were ready for the main event.

Normally, before a big fight, I felt as intensely as they did, if differently. The adrenaline. The fear. The eagerness to get it over with.

This time I didn’t.

It wasn’t that I didn’t feel anything. I felt plenty. I just couldn’t care too much about it, in the face of my loss. That was dangerous, both for me and for the people I was protecting. Battles are not graded on a curve, ever. You survive or you don’t. And everyone you’ll ever face in a battle to the death is undefeated.

I had to get my head into the game.

I strode across the park to the pavilion, where Sanya and the volunteers waited, and as I went, the scarlet-hazed air filled with eerie clicks that sounded hideously organic. They came echoing through the heavy air, from multiple directions, north and south alike.

The Alphas fell in around me as I came to the volunteers, and Butters appeared from the haze to silently take up a position behind me and to my right, where he could watch my back. Or stab me in it if I went all monstery, I supposed.

Good.

“Harry,” Sanya said cheerfully. One of the volunteers, damned if it wasn’t Randy, was busy wrapping a bandage around the big Russian’s head, to secure the pad over his torn and bloodied ear. “You are just in time, da?” He gestured out at the unseen sources of the clicks. “What kind of monster you think we get to kill now?”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “If it bleeds, we can kill it. And they all bleed. Let’s go.”

“Da,” Sanya said firmly, and raised his voice as Randy finished with the bandage. “All right, everyone! Offense, time for us to make them sorry! Defense, stay here and kill anything that comes from the north!”

Sanya’s chosen officers started calling out to their groups, and they began to spread out in a line, facing east. The officers weren’t being subtle about it. They physically shoved people into position. There were a lot of worried faces on that line. I could feel their fear, the kind that makes your limbs feel hollow and your forehead bead in a cold sweat.

But through the banner, I could also feel their determination, and the aggression radiating off that hideous unicorn that was seeping into them. They were terrified and furious and ready to spill blood.

Sanya came up beside me.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Sanya snorted.

“Thanks,” I said. I lowered my voice. “They’re amateurs. If we run into enough trained professionals, like Listen and his people, they’re going to be slaughtered.”

Sanya gave me the side-eye. “You think they do not know that?” He clapped a hand to my shoulder. “We all must die, Dresden. There is no shame in dying for something worthwhile.”

“I’d rather the Fomor died for something they thought was worthwhile, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Hah,” he said, grinning. “Da. That is plan. And it is time.”

I held up a hand, sharply. “Wait.”

Reports came in from the malks, through my banner. They were once again out ghosting through the haze. I tasted stagnant seawater on my tongue, there was so much of the scent in the air. Malks were not, on the whole, very bright—too much of their brain was devoted to bloodshed. But my scouts’ estimates were not optimistic, and in some cases almost fearful.

Grimalkin, I thought. I need an accurate assessment of enemy position and numbers.

The Elder malk’s reply came buzzing through my head in his creepy, creepy voice. They are legion. Between five and seven thousand. They march west through the park.

Holy crap.

There was no way for about eight hundred amateurs with shotguns to fight that and win.

Unless . . .

“Dammit,” I said. “They’re coming right at us. We have to beat them to Columbus. It’s a double-wide separated roadway, and it’s at ground level, maybe fifteen feet lower than the park. There’s a pedestrian bridge across. The bridge is higher than the park and it will give them a firing position down onto our people, as well as an easy way across Columbus—otherwise, they’ll have to climb straight walls under heavy fire.”

“Destroy bridge?” Sanya asked.

“And hold the line for as long as we can, do all the damage we can,” I said.

Sanya took a deep breath and then looked at the volunteers. “Da,” he said quietly. “Then we must move quickly.”

“Yeah,” I said. Then we jogged out in front of the volunteers, and I called, “Follow me!”