Battle Ground (The Dresden Files 17)

The octokongs kept relentless fire against my shield as I went down, and to my shock another dozen of the things came swarming along the walls and roof of the ramp, staying out of the line of fire of the original trio as they kept shooting.

Behind them came a sphere of wavery aqua light. In the haze, I could make out a tall, slender, frog-faced form at the center of the sphere. One of the Fomor themselves, then, driving his charges forward. The shape lifted a hand and sent a crackling bolt of green lightning crashing against my shield.

That one was some serious sorcery. I held it off, but it took a gasp of effort and energy to keep the shield in place.

My leg twitched when I tried to make it work, which was better than a moment before, but not good enough to get me out of this one. “Butters, get clear!” I screamed.

“Not yet!” he said. “Hold the shield!”

My ears picked out running footsteps from up the ramp—no, from the opposite ramp, the one leading up the other side of the parking garage.

I saw the shielded Fomor abruptly turn, just as an enormous, friendly voice boomed, “Hello!”

And the haze of battle vanished, burned away by an aurora of silver-white light around a curved, gleaming Sword. Sanya, Knight of the Cross, six and a half feet of muscle, dark-skinned and graceful, whipped the shining form of Esperacchius through an arc, and it was as if the Sword itself cleared and cleaned the air before it as it moved. It struck through the Fomor’s arcane shields as if they had not existed, and before the foe could shriek, its head had jumped from its shoulders.

The big man’s teeth shone white against his dark skin as he lobbed something calmly down among the octokongs and darted smoothly to one side in a sweep of white cloak.

“Grenade!” I screamed, and sent more power into the shield.

A second later, there was a sound you could chew, it was so thick, and a wash of power smashed against my shield, overloading what the bracelet could handle and scorching my wrist.

Octokongs tumbled from the walls, wounded, stunned, some of them dying.

Sanya let out a roar and reappeared, charging them, flanked on both sides by a pair of enormous wolves—Will Borden and the Alphas.

“Now, you stay down, Harry,” Butters snarled.

And with a clarion shriek of choral fury, Fidelacchius’s blade of pure light sprang to life in his hands, and Butters zipped up the ramp, his cloak flying behind him.

Between the werewolves and the Knights, it took maybe ten seconds.

Then there was a low rumble behind me, and Karrin Murphy appeared, wearing her motorcycle jacket and riding her old Harley, sticking out her good leg to support it as she brought the bike to a growling halt.

I eyed the motorcycle. Then her. “How?”

“Like I don’t keep this old baby behind wards,” she said. “The Ordo Lebes did it for me years ago. And bikes are the only things that can get through the streets.” She checked around her and then up the ramp. “Come on. There’re more of them coming up from the lake.” She drew a radio out of her pocket, turned it on, and said into it, “This is Valkryie. I’ve got Booster Gold.”

“Hey,” I objected.

“Roger that, Valkryie,” came a calm voice over the radio. Marcone. “Be advised that Winter One has chosen her ground. All remaining forces in the north will rally at Wrigley. The enemy command has turned south. I recommend—”

The world went red again. Scarlet light flooded the night and left us in deep shadow. Murphy’s radio went up in a shower of sparks. The quivering roar that followed the blast of the Eye was less savage this time. Ethniu was farther away.

“Son of a bitch,” Murphy swore in annoyance. She tossed the radio aside and reached into her coat pocket for a second. “My bike is old enough not to care much about magic, and our radios at command and control are shielded, but the field units aren’t lasting long.” She took a battery out of her other pocket and started popping it into the unit.

“I told you,” Butters said. He shrugged out of a backpack that he’d been wearing under the cloak. “They don’t have enough vacuum tubes.”

“We can’t stay here,” Sanya said, nodding to the corpses of the octokongs and the Fomor.

Even as he did, I saw one of the dead octokong’s wounds begin to . . . bubble. Its dark blood began to boil up out of the wounds with little hissing sounds, and a stench, dizzying in its intensity, began to fill the air of the ramp. The corpse actually quivered with the intensity of the chemical reaction, bits of flesh liquefying and sloughing off.

Murphy nodded, her nose wrinkling, and said to me, “Can you walk?”

“Kind of,” I said. My leg muscles tightened when I told them to, but when I tried to stand on it, the limb still buckled limply.

She nodded and said, “Get on the bike. We can’t stay here. CPD is bringing everyone they can get to the heart of the Loop and trying to evacuate.”

I got to my feet and staggered to the Harley. I swung my hurt leg over in a burst of tactile white noise, and Murphy turned the bike around toward the exit on the back side of the parking garage, opposite the lake.

“Just curious. How long did you stay at Mac’s?” I asked.

“Long enough to get everyone organized,” she said. “There’s no point discussing things with you once you get all chivalrous.”

I opened my mouth in annoyance and then closed it again. “You shouldn’t be here,” I said.

“Yeah, well, tough.”

I leaned my chin down onto her hair and closed my eyes. I felt her weight shift as she pressed her shoulder blades against my ribs. It was just for a moment, and for that moment I let myself feel. Intense relief at seeing her well. Intense fear at knowing that she was in danger. And pain. Loss. Terror. Confusion. Bewilderment. For a moment, I struggled against the sense that what was happening, all around me, could not be happening, could not be real.

But it was real.

Karrin found my hand and squeezed, hard.

I leaned my cheek against her hair and whispered, “Yoshimo and Wild Bill are dead. Probably Chandler, too. Black Court. And I don’t know if Ramirez or my grandfather made it out of the garage.”

She let out a breath and whispered back, “Oh, Harry.”

My stomach quivered. My eyes burned with tears that could not be given form if I was to hold it together. Which I had to do. There was no time to break down, no time for tears.

War leaves you precious little time to be human. It’s one of the more horrible realities about it.

I nodded, just enough so that she could feel my chin move, and the moment was over.

The four wolves loped easily forward, two taking places on our flanks, and two more ghosting silently out ahead of us, and Sanya and Butters came trotting along behind, keeping the pace, while I worked on preventing my hurt leg from just bouncing along the ground. It was recovering from the blow, stunned muscles sluggishly regaining sensibility, but for the moment I was pretty gimpy.