Battle Ground (The Dresden Files 17)

The word rang out in pure silvery truth, her breath condensed into a Wintry plume.

Ethniu’s will recoiled, shattering like a sphere of immaterial glass.

The Titan roared her fury.

And with a shriek of power meant to unmake the world, Ethniu turned the Eye upon Mab.

Chapter

Twenty-nine

I felt it in my guts and in my soul when the Eye struck Mab.

She sat ramrod straight on the dark unicorn. Even as Ethniu screamed, Mab lifted her left hand, slim and pale, fingers spread evenly in a defensive gesture. Frost gathered upon her, upon the flanks of the unicorn, crusted the ground all around her, even as the horrible power of the Eye washed over Mab.

The sound alone, as those two sources of power met, was enough to drive a strong mind mad. I couldn’t have told you what it sounded like, specifically. It was too huge a noise for that. I can tell you that I started screaming out in pure reflexive protest against that sound, and that my voice was lost in the din. The Winter unicorn reared, trumpeting its defiance, and the dark saber spiraling from its forehead almost seemed to drink in a portion of that fury, while Mab flawlessly adjusted her balance upon its back. The concrete beneath her buckled and shattered into sand. Fire and lightning and wind whirled in a cyclone centered upon her. Bits of her hair, blown wildly by the wind, blackened and disintegrated. The fine mail covering her body was riven by the flood of energy, turning from bright mail to the dark of verdigris, and then tearing as individual rings changed from metal to some kind of blackened residue, leaving smudges of soot over pale skin.

Butters and I were like two men before a flood taking desperate shelter behind a stone.

On pure instinct, I had gathered my shield around us in a half dome that enveloped us entirely. The energy wasn’t even being directed at me—I was just trying to stop some of the random splatter that got past Mab and came in our direction.

Again, I was operating out of my weight class. The mere backwash from the Eye was almost more than I could handle. My shield bracelet heated again, and I knew I was going to have a fresh band of burn scars to go along with the old burns on the hand itself. The effort I put forward to protect us would have killed me on another night. Tonight, the power in the air made it simple, and a dozen layers of my best shielding took the brunt of the wild expenditure of energy without faltering.

I could feel the power of the Eye as it touched my shield, feel the pure, raw, undiluted hate that drove whoever wielded it. This hate wasn’t any mere mortal emotion. This was hate of the original vintage, hate as old as the universe itself, hate as hard and sharp and cold as steel, hate as hot as the fires of Hell, hate so vital, so vicious, so vitriolic, that it surpassed the understanding of my merely mortal mind.

Ethniu hated me. Me, personally, though she did not know me. The Titan hated me, hated me on a level I could not begin to understand. That I walked the earth and drew breath was enough to earn her everlasting fury.

But that was just a shadow of what she felt toward Mab.

That was personal.

Mab, slender and beautiful and deadly on her black unicorn, defying the power of the Eye as it blasted away bits of her hair, as it rent and rendered her armor. Her will manifested around her as cold, pure light, a sphere of diamond radiance that dispersed the most vicious efforts of the Eye, sent power spilling out from her and around her, like a fast-flowing river crashing into an obdurate stone. In that withering light and fury, she was a being of distilled intellect and will, pure determination and cold defiance. In that fury, she was a shadow, an outline, dark and terrible and undeniable, standing against the tide unmoving.

In that moment, I saw with my own eyes why she was called the Queen of Air and Darkness.

And, somehow, she did it. She stopped the Eye. She stood before that undeniable power and was not moved.

The red glare of the Eye faded.

For a long moment, Mab was still, her body clad only in remnants of her mail, in blackened residue and scarlet streaks and burns, her left hand raised and extended in defiance. Smoke rose from her.

Then she fell, suddenly boneless, from the unicorn’s back, collapsing to the ground as if too weak to remain upright.

Ethniu stared forward for a moment before lifting her face to the sky and crying out in vicious, spiteful triumph. She raised her hands and threw them forward, and like puppets directed by her will, the entire Fomor legion groaned and began to pace forward in stomping unison, gathering momentum like a single massive beast.

The silence gave way before the sound of boots tromping upon the ground. Like a tide, the Fomor advanced across the field, eerie signal clicks coming before them like rain before a truly terrible storm. They crossed the open field and there was nothing further to stop them.

And, I realized, nothing to shelter them.

They had marched into the open field.

And in the vaults of my mind, Mab’s voice rang out in sudden exultation. NOW, LADY MOLLY.

From the north, a fresh, chill zephyr swirled down through the city and into the park. Somewhere along the shoreline of Lake Michigan, a gull cried out in sudden excitement.

And music began to play.

At first it was just a few electric guitar notes, almost at random, bouncing among the buildings and echoing over the haze-covered city. Then I recognized the song.

The opening notes of the Guns N’ Roses hit “Welcome to the Jungle” began to echo from the buildings behind us, Slash’s guitar sending those tones bouncing around the concrete and towers, somehow resonating with the steel and stone of the streets and buildings of the city. Chicago herself became the speaker, music ringing off every surface, setting the ground to quivering in resonance.

Chicago. The place that invented the phrase “concrete jungle.”

Molly had chosen just the right song.

The enemy hesitated, eyes shifting left and right, scanning above and below. Fear hit their ranks like a slow, powerful wave, causing steps to falter, formations to stretch and warp.

And then the primal opening vocals and the lead guitar line came in.

And Winter came with them.

Mab’s cohort of personal guardsmen came flying out of the night, as nimble and graceful as if they’d been on wires, and they landed around us, congealed into a formation, and locked shields.

The northern sky split with a sudden rush of wind that carried the dry, frozen clarity of the arctic, and with it came a rush of . . . not snowflakes, so much as frozen chips of arctic clouds, hurled forward in a blinding wave. I had to lift a hand to shield my face and eyes, and when I lowered my arm, figures in armor of blue and green and deep purple hues had appeared in ranks on the street, on low rooftops, crouching on the frozen corpses of automobiles. Each succeeding gust of wind seemed to blow more of them into reality. First by the dozen. Then by the score. Then by the hundred.