Battle Ground (The Dresden Files 17)

The major general was still on the job.

Toot-Toot scanned the scene quickly, flashed me a manic grin and a wink, and slid back behind the tombstone. When he emerged a moment later, he held a short sword the size of a small hunting knife in one hand.

And in the other, gripped like a severed head, was an open packet of chopped garlic from Pizza ’Spress.

Toot crouched, still grinning, and a nimbus of blue and violet energy surrounded him—and then he shot like an arrow from a bow at Mavra’s back.

There was a streak of light as Toot flew at her, slashing down with his knife at the dead-tough flesh of her back, the scalpel-sharp blade opening a deep cut.

Into which my little ally plunged his packet of garlic.

Black Court vampires are very, very tough customers. But they pay for it, in some really inconvenient vulnerabilities. You can read about them in Stoker’s book. It’s basically a field guide on how to kill Black Court vampires.

Turns out there’s a pretty good reason vampires are repelled by garlic.

Mavra’s dead flesh burst into silver-white flame.

I mean, it was awkward to see from my angle, but a freaking jet of argent fire shot out of the wound, and the sound of her shriek of agony became the entire world for a few seconds. I guess being set on fire is kind of distracting. I fought the headlock with all of my strength and exploded out of it, drawing in a deep gasp of sweet, sweet air.

Which, instead of turning into the words of an immediate spell, got locked into the helpless autonomic cycle of an oncoming sneeze.

Of all the times, stupid conjuritis, now!?

Mavra thrashed out with one arm, hit me in the back, and clubbed me ten feet. Only the protective spells on my duster kept me from getting broken bones. I got my arms between my skull and the oncoming tombstone or I would have checked out right then and there, bounced, and hit the ground.

I focused, bringing power and image to my thoughts, rapidly gathering energy to put behind the oncoming sneeze.

The unwounded twin whirled her head toward me and hissed.

My chest convulsed into a sneeze that might have torn some muscles somewhere.

I sent power and image out along with it.

And an anvil, black and funny-shaped and half as long as a freaking car, plunged out of the night air and right onto the back half of Tentacles Guy’s noggin.

The plummeting anvil had to have weighed at least a ton. And while you could whale on a Black Court vampire with a baseball bat all day and inflict nothing more than annoyance, that much weight moving at that rate of speed was an entirely different ball game.

Imagine holding up a fully hung suit and dropping it to the floor.

Now add a spray pattern of ink black, ichorous splatter. Plus a big freaking anvil.

Get the picture?

Mavra vanished, screaming into the night, the fog lit weirdly by argent fire in her wake. The healthy twin stared in shock at the anvil—which suddenly collapsed into gelatinous ectoplasm, mixing with whatever was left of Tentacles Guy, who was still, somehow, thrashing. It looked kind of like the inside of a blender.

I swiped a shaking arm over my running nose and wheezed drunkenly, “I told you, you Black Court bastards! Next time, anvils!”

Ramirez, his arms freed, whipped toward the creature mindlessly feeding upon his wounded arm, snarled a word, flicked his other wrist, and suddenly her head just turned into a slurry of water and powder. The remainder of the body started thrashing around silently, spewing ichor everywhere. Carlos gasped as bones in his forearm snapped in the grip of superhumanly powerful hands.

The other twin seized a tombstone, ripped it out of the ground as if it had been a damned dandelion, and flung it at my head.

There was just time to get my shield up, and the tombstone exploded into gravel against it.

By the time I lowered my hand and looked around again, shield bracelet still dribbling green-gold sparks, the twin was gone. So were the bodies of Yoshimo and Wild Bill.

I stumbled over to Ramirez’s side. We wrestled the stupidly powerful strength still left in the dead vampire’s hands, until I finally had to pit what felt like the strength of my whole body against the vampire’s fingers, one at a time. It wasn’t easy on Ramirez, who must have been suffering agonies, but we got it done.

I pulled him back as he cradled his shattered arm, and we watched the corpse thrash itself across the ground.

“They took them,” Ramirez muttered. “They’re going to . . .”

“Nothing we can do for them this second,” I said. I got into the first-aid pack on his belt. In the dark it was a sloppy mess, but I got a pressure bandage over his wrist and got it tightly covered. It had to have hurt like hell on the broken arm, but we had to stop the bleeding. Ramirez clenched his jaw and hissed but gave no other sign of discomfort. I finished and rose. “Come on. We need to back up River and Listens-to-Wind.”

He looked up at me, his face pale, his eyes too shiny and hard. But he grimaced and nodded and lifted his good hand.

I hauled him up, and the two of us had just turned toward where I’d last seen the Senior Councilman and River Shoulders when the same pair walked out of the fog. River’s chest was rising and falling harshly. He sounded like a racehorse and moved as if his entire body was one enormous bruise. He was carrying an unconscious teenage girl in the crook of one arm like an infant—the victim Drakul and company had been preparing to sacrifice. Listens-to-Wind looked unutterably weary, but unhurt.

“What happened?” I asked.

“He left before we could get hurt too bad,” River Shoulders said, his voice pained.

Listens-to-Wind grimaced and reached way, way up to thump a hand against River Shoulders’ shoulder. “Creature like that, you don’t beat it. You win by surviving. We won.”

“Not all of us,” Ramirez said in a harsh voice.

“Drakul sent Chandler through some kind of gate,” I said. “It didn’t look like the usual passage to the Nevernever. It was all neat and symmetrical.” Which meant that Chandler could have wound up anywhere. Or, worse, nowhere. I leaned into the Winter. My voice sounded steady and rational. “No idea of his status. Meyers and Yoshimo are dead. Probably turned.”

The pain was still there. Shock and the Winter mantle might have been numbing it. I didn’t have a whole ton of friends. Losing three of them at once was going to hurt like hell, later. Even thinking about that made my guts quiver and my heart burn with rage.

Listens-to-Wind seemed to shrink a little and closed his eyes. “I think . . . Ah. This wasn’t an alliance for Drakul. Merely a profitable ploy. If we did not arrive in sufficient strength to stop the sacrifice, the enemy has an army at our backs, the city is overrun, and I daresay Drakul would have his choice of potential recruits in the chaos. If we did send those of sufficient power to stop him, Drakul need not go hunting for potent new servants—they have voluntarily identified themselves.”