Battle Ground (The Dresden Files 17)

“Bob!” I screamed, and seized the Spear, holding its point up above me.

The cloud of campfire sparks swirled in a helix up around the Spear, touched the blood at the tip like a hound picking up a scent. I whirled the Spear in a circle, gathering up the substance of the spirit around it along with my will, and murmured, “Ventris cyclis!”

Wind and spirit flew toward the Titan, too swiftly to be seen as more than a single blur of light that whipped thrice counterclockwise about the Titan and then settled into place, a whirling cyclone of motes of light, a solid bar of my will that encircled her.

Thrumthrumthrumthrumthrumthrum.

I sent my will into the Spear, my own power flooding out along with Bob, infusing his essence, just as my will could have infused a circle of chalk or silver.

Ethniu staggered as the lights surrounded her, shielding her eyes—and then she let out a choking sound and screamed in denial as the circle closed around her.

Wizards are the gatekeepers, the defenders of this world. Or at least we are when we’re at our best. And if some immortal thing rolls in here from Somewhere Else, we can say something about it. We can pit our will against them. We might not win, but with a proper channel and a circle of power, we can make them stop to fight us.

The circle closed on Ethniu, and suddenly I found myself pitted against the mutilated will of a Titan.

There was a horrible pressure, a whole-body crushing agony, as if I had suddenly blinked to the floor of the sea. And that was what it was like, with the force of that mind pressing against mine—like trying to hold off the weight of the tide.

But the sea had tried to wash my mind away before now, and I knew the secret of facing the will of supernatural beings. I might be nothing but a grain of sand on the shore of that ocean—but pound as it might, the ocean couldn’t destroy that grain of sand. Not if it was stubborn enough to hold together. Though the ocean might wash the sand here and there, might batter and rage at it, when the ocean’s rage is gone, and the waters once more serene, the sand will remain.

So I took the pressure. Though my head felt like someone was trying to squeeze my brains out through my nose, I kept my will on the Spear, on the circle.

The snarling rage of the furious, terrified Titan filled my head. Literally. Her voice was echoing off the surface of my skull, deafening and inescapable and really, really uncomfortable.

“Mortal,” she snarled. “Do you think you can pit your will against mine?”

“Obviously,” I muttered. “That’s why you’re in a circle, genius.” I took a slow breath and in that deep, echoing voice called, “Ethniu, daughter of Balor! I bind thee!”

The Titan wailed and shook her head violently, spittle and slime and worse spraying everywhere. She thrashed and suddenly there was a hideous power raking at the circle.

Bob screamed in agony. The sparks began to fly apart.

“No!” I said, and sent my will rushing into the Spear, out along the stream of sparks still connected to it like some kind of bizarre whirling lasso. I fed power and will to the familiar spirit, fighting the pressure from the Titan, binding together his immaterial substance and preventing her from tearing it apart.

“Insect!” Ethniu hissed, flinging herself from the edge of the circle and pacing back and forth in it like a frantic big cat. “The advantage of immortality is that one can take the time to be thorough. Do you think we did not plan for this?”

“Yeah, kinda,” I said, “or you wouldn’t be stuck in my circle. Ethniu, daughter of Balor, I bind thee!”

Ethniu didn’t scream this time.

She smiled.

And then she . . . thought at me.

The lake and everything else went away.

And I found myself standing on a quiet lawn in a darkened neighborhood I knew well.

I was in Michael Carpenter’s front yard.

The lights were out. And the sky was beginning to fill with dust and smoke and the red glare of the Eye. But I could still see the moon a little. This was earlier in the evening.

She was showing me a memory.

And I watched, as Listen and maybe thirty or forty of his turtlenecks advanced into the yard in full tactical gear. They came in, in multiple stacks, heading for Michael’s front door, the kitchen door, the garage, and the door to the backyard.

I watched as, in a handful of seconds, the men set breaching charges on the door, blew it, and went in.

Michael Carpenter, stolid in his blue plaid work shirt, was waiting for them, shotgun in hand.

He wasn’t really a gunfighter. He was retired now.

It was over quickly.

They left his body in the entry hall and walked over it. Enemies, mortal enemies, twisted people but still people, flooded into his house to the chattering thumps of suppressed weapons. I knew there were angels on guard at Michael’s house. I knew they would have burned any supernatural attacker with the fires that ravaged Sodom and Gomorrah.

But these were mortals. People.

Angels weren’t allowed to gainsay people.

Listen and his team were thorough. They must have found the safe room, because charges went off again. Then some screams.

Some very high-pitched screams.

And gunfire.

And then the Fomor squads filed out with the same silence with which they’d filed in.

Listen stopped on the front lawn, next to where I stood in the vision, lifted a radio to his mouth, and said, “Tell her the target has been cleared and confirmed. We’re moving back to the shore to meet the rest of the company.”

I pushed forward, toward the house, toward the front door, and could see blood running from the second floor, from where the safe room was, and I ran up the stairs to the hidden entrance and found it twisted and torn with the violence of the breaching charges, and behind the door . . .

I saw them.

Saw her.

Charity and the Carpenter kids all lay between Maggie and the door. Even little Harry, who was almost as young as Maggie, had stood in her defense.

It had been efficient.

And suddenly I was standing on the shore of Lake Michigan again, cold and more brutally weary than I’d ever been, struggling against Ethniu’s will.

You see, mortal? the Titan’s voice said in my head. Listen and his people scouted this target thoroughly. They planned countermeasures for all of your kind here. And they planned something in particular for you and the Winter Lady. All those targets in one place just made it too tempting. Ethniu paused, and her mental voice became poisonously sweet. Your child is dead. Your ally and his family are dead. They were destroyed hours ago.

My stomach dropped out.