Battle Ground (The Dresden Files 17)

“Pathetic,” Ethniu purred to Titania. “I don’t need the Eye of Balor to deal with a goblin with delusions of grandeur, a starved, emaciated old god, and a little girl playing at being a queen.”

And with a casual motion, she slammed the Summer Queen’s head into the earth at her feet, leaving the rest of her limp body awkwardly sticking out.

I stared. Just stared.

One-Eye wasn’t moving.

The Erlking’s skeleton had begun twitching. Nerve fibers and ligaments were beginning to regrow on the blackened bones. It was like watching stop-motion capture of creeping ivy. But it would take him hours to recover.

Titania was down.

Titania.

Even Mab had been TKO’d.

Ethniu looked around at the three fallen opponents and let out a little-girl giggle, a sound that was frightening in how hysterical it sounded.

And her balance wobbled.

Not a lot. But she wavered.

She showed weakness.

The Winter mantle in me suddenly focused on the Titan and licked its chops.

The fight had cost her something. Though she might be powerful and well equipped and tough as hell, the Titan still had limits. And if she had limits, then she could be pushed beyond them.

She could be beaten.

It could be done.

Ethniu hadn’t even glanced at me. She paced over toward One-Eye’s fallen form, making a softly reproving clicking noise with her mouth. “I warned you, fool. Look at what the mortals have made of you. We needed their terror. Never their love.” She shook her head and leaned down, reaching out.

One-Eye gripped an ash-hafted spear in his right hand. Flickers of blue-white electricity played over its head.

“You are barely sustained by the faith of children,” Ethniu murmured. “While I am made stronger every time they cry out in fear in their sleep. Every time they feel a moment of dread after they turn out the light. We were never meant to be their protectors. We were meant to be what lurks in the dark.” She lifted the spear and studied it with narrowed eyes for a moment. “The mortals have become arrogant, in their well-lit world. Proud. Boastful. It is time to remind them of their insignificance.”

She lifted the spear into the air, narrowed her eyes, and suddenly it became a blazing thunderbolt in her hands, ready to be hurled at any who might dare oppose her.

So, naturally, of course, she turned to me. Lightning crackled overhead, seemingly eager to get started. Armies fought in the background, and the riders of the Wild Hunt screamed and blew horns, dark and horrible shadows against the lightning flickering between clouds overhead.

And Murph was gone.

It looked and sounded and felt like the end of the world.

“Starting,” the Titan said, her beautiful face framed in brilliant blue-white glare and heavy shadow, “with you, little wizard. Empty night, but your breed is annoying enough to be worth killing.”

I’d just been proximate to a divine beatdown and smiting.

I’d just been struck by lightning.

My snark projectors were out of alignment. But that was no reason not to try.

Heck, every insult was essentially a different way of saying the exact same thing.

“Yeah?” I wheezed. “Well. You suck.”

Ethniu stared at me for a few seconds.

Then she tilted her head back and laughed. It was . . .

Giddy. Pure. It came right up out of her belly in a kind of brittle-sounding joy.

It didn’t sound right. At all.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Oh,” Ethniu sighed. “Me.” She shook her head. “Having a conversation with a talking cockroach. I suppose congratulations are in order, insect. I’ve actually noticed that I’m killing you. I’ll even enjoy it a little.”

And she stepped forward and lifted the bolt of living lightning over her head.

Chapter

Thirty-one

My body was still shorted out enough that I couldn’t move much. And I’d seen the kind of power that spear put out. Without the supercharged atmosphere, I couldn’t put up a defense sufficient to the task of defeating it. Maybe if I’d been able to keep her talking for a minute, I could have recovered enough to at least attempt to run away.

But I could see it in her face and in every line of her bronzed form: She wasn’t going to be swayed or denied or distracted. She’d had her own brief moment of weakness after battling several immortals, and now she was back on task—a task she’d been planning for thousands of years.

There wasn’t much I could do.

That was when it was too much. Everything. The injuries. Not so much the physical ones. I had seen too much for one night.

Lost too much.

That was when I broke.

When you’re in that kind of condition, your brain does weird things. I didn’t feel scared or angry or upset anymore. I felt like a bystander, a member of the audience. Once you realize your ticket has been punched, you see things differently. I could see everything that was happening around us. It didn’t really involve me any longer.

The Winter Lady’s charge had been met by a wall of sorcery from Corb and his inner circle, and they’d stopped her and her trolls’ charge, ba-dump-bump, cold. Molly’s army’s furious strike had stalled short of cutting the Fomor’s legion in twain, simply lacking the mass it needed to finish the deadly stroke. Even as I watched, I saw Winter troops being pushed back, cut down. One of the trolls fell, its head a smoking ruin, as King Corb lowered his staff and howled triumph. A bolt of green lightning shattered upon the Winter Lady’s flank. I saw it scorch flesh to bone, saw her ribs burned black, saw her stagger a step and then turn like Juggernaut, relentless and unstoppable, and keep fighting as another troll fell, nearly crushing her.

Winter’s momentum had stalled in the sultry summer night. And the Fomor legion, terrified and furious, smelled blood and began smashing their way into the forces of Winter, killing with wild abandon.

The last defenders of Chicago were falling.

And from the south, where our allies had been holding the enemy, came the long, low blare of a Jotun’s horn, sounding the attack.

I couldn’t see, through the armies and the park and the smoke, what was happening to the south. But the Jotun horn sounded again, nearer.

Our allies there had fallen. The second arm of the enemy force was sweeping toward us.

And when it arrived, they would crush whatever resistance was left.

My city was falling.