Death Masks (The Dresden Files 5)

Thomas poked a finger at it. "What does it do?"

I caught his wrist before he could touch it, and pushed his hand away. "It kills. Hence the name deathstone, you half-wit."

"Oh," Thomas said, nodding with drunken sagacity. "It looked cool when it gacked that little thing, but so what? It's a bug zapper."

"If you disrespect this thing it's going to get you killed," I said. "It would kill anything living exactly the same way. Anything. It's not from our world."

"It's extraterrestrial?" asked Susan.

"You do not understand, Miss Rodriguez," Ortega said quietly. "Mordite is not from this galaxy or this universe. It is not of our reality."

I had reservations about Ortega's presence on the home-team roster, but I nodded. "It's from Outside. It's - congealed antilife. A chip of this stuff makes nuclear waste look like secondhand smoke. Being near it draws the life off you bit by bit. If you touch it, it kills you. Period."

"Precisely," said the Archive. She stepped forward to look at both Ortega and me. "An enchantment binds the particle in place. It is also sensitive to applied will. The duelists will face each other, the mordite between them. Will it toward your opponent. He with the greatest force of will controls the mordite. The duel will end when it has devoured one of you."

Gulp.

The Archive continued. "Seconds will observe from first and third bases, facing their duelist's opponent. Mister Kincaid will ensure that no undue interference is perpetrated by either second. I have instructed him to do so with extreme prejudice."

Thomas wobbled a little and eyed the Archive. "Eh?"

The girl faced him and said, "He'll kill you if you interfere."

"Oh," Thomas said cheerfully. "Gotcha, punkin."

Ortega glared at Thomas and made a disgusted sound. Thomas found something else to look at and backed a prudent step away.

"I will monitor both duelists to ensure that no energies are employed on their behalf. I, too, will resolve any infractions with extreme prejudice. Do you understand?"

Ortega nodded. I said, "Yeah."

"Are there any questions, gentlemen?" the Archive asked.

I shook my head. Ortega did too.

"Each of you may make a brief statement," said the Archive.

Ortega drew a band of black and silver beads from his pocket. Without making an effort, I could feel the defensive energies bound up within them. He regarded me with casual mistrust as he bound the bracelet to his left side and said, "This can end in only one way."

In answer, I fished one of the antivenom potions from my pocket, popped the top, and slugged it down. I burped and said, "Excuse me."

"You've really got class, Dresden," Susan said.

"Class oozes out my every orifice," I agreed. I passed her my staff and rod. "Hold these for me."

"Seconds, please retire to your positions," said the Archive.

Susan put her hand on my arm, fingers clenching tight for a second. I reached up and touched her hand. She let go and backed away to third base.

Thomas offered to high-five Ortega. Ortega glared. Thomas smiled a Colgate smile and swaggered over to first base. He drew a silver flask of something from his hip pocket on the way, and took a sip.

The Archive looked back and forth between me and Ortega. She was standing on the pitcher's mound, next to the floating glob of chilling energy, so she was a shade taller than Ortega and a shade shorter than me. Her face was solemn, even grim. It didn't sit well on a child who should have been getting up for school in the morning.

"Are you both resolved to this duel?"

"I am," Ortega said.

"Uh- huh." I nodded.

The Archive nodded. "Gentlemen. Present your right hands, please."

Ortega lifted his right arm, palm faced toward me. I mirrored him. The Archive gestured, and the mordite sphere floated up until it hovered precisely halfway between Ortega and me. Tension gathered against my palm, an invisible and silent pressure. It felt vaguely like holding my hand against a recirculating outlet in a swimming pool-it was a tenuous thing, that felt like it might easily slide to one side.

If it did, I'd get to see the mordite up close and personal. My heart skittered over a couple of beats, and I took a deep breath, trying to focus and ready myself. If I was Ortega, I'd want to open up with everything I had in the first heartbeat of the contest and end it almost before it began. I took a couple of deep breaths and narrowed my focus, my thoughts, until the pressure against my hand and the deadly darkness a few feet away from it were all that existed.

"Begin," said the Archive. She backed quickly toward home plate.

Ortega let out a shout, a battle cry, his body dipping slightly, hips twisting, shoving his hand forward like a man trying to close a vault door with one arm. His will flooded toward me, wild and strong, and the pressure of it drove me back onto my heels. The mordite sphere zipped across three of the four feet between it and me.

Ortega's will was strong. Really, really strong. I tried to divert it, to overcome it and stop the sphere. For a panicked second I had nothing. The sphere kept drifting closer to me. A foot. Ten inches. Six inches. Small tendrils of inky darkness drifted out from the cloud around the mordite, reaching out blindly toward my fingers.

I gritted my teeth, hardened my will, and stopped the thing five inches from my hand. I tried to mount up some momentum of my own, but Ortega held strong against me.

"Don't draw this out, boy," Ortega said through clenched teeth. "Your death will save lives. Even if you kill me, my vassals at Casaverde are sworn to hunt you down. You and everyone you know and love."

The sphere came a bit closer. "You said you wouldn't harm them if I agreed to the duel," I growled.

"I lied," Ortega said. "I came here to kill you and end this war. Anything else is immaterial."

"You bastard."

"Stop fighting it, Dresden. Make it painless for yourself. If you kill me, they will be executed. By surrendering, you preserve them. Your Miss Rodriguez. The policewoman. The investigator you apprenticed under. The owner of that bar. The Knight and his family. The old man in the Ozarks. The wolf-children at the university. All of them."

I snarled, "Buddy, you just said the wrong thing."

I let the anger Ortega's words had ignited flood down through my arm. A cloud of scarlet sparks erupted against the mordite sphere, and it started creeping the other way.

Ortega's face became strained, his breathing heavier. He didn't waste any effort on words now. His eyes darkened until they were entirely black and inhuman. There were ripples, here and there, under the surface of his skin-the flesh mask that contained the vaguely batlike monster those of the Red Court really were. The monstrous Ortega, the true Ortega, stirred underneath the false human shell. And he was afraid.