Proven Guilty (The Dresden Files 8)

A wailing, whistling shriek of rage and frustration split the air behind us. I checked out the window, and found the Scarecrow pursuing us. When Thomas reached an intersection and turned, the Scarecrow cut across the corner, bounding over a phone booth with ease, and slammed into the back quarter of the van. The noise was horrible and the van wobbled, tires screeching and slithering while Thomas fought to control the slide.

The Scarecrow shrieked and slammed the van again. The wounded Mouse added his battle roar to the din.

"Do something!" Thomas shouted.

"Like what?" I screamed. "It's immune to my fire!"

Another crunch blasted my ears, rocked the van, and sent me sprawling over Rawlins.

"We're going to find traffic in a minute!" Thomas called. "Figure something out!"

I looked frantically around the van's interior, trying to think of something. There was little enough there: Glau's briefcase, an overnight bag containing, presumably, Glau's shower kit and foot powder, and two flats of expensive spring water in plastic bottles.

I could hear the Scarecrow's heavy footsteps outside the van, now, and a motion in the corner of my eye made me look up to see its blazing, terrifying eyes gazing into the van's window.

"Left!" I howled at Thomas. The van rocked, tires protesting. The Scarecrow drove its arm through the van's side window, and its long fingers missed me by an inch.

Do something. I had to do something. Fire couldn't hurt the thing. I could summon wind, but it was large enough to resist anything but my largest gale, and I didn't have the magical muscle to manage that, exhausted as I was. It would have to be something small. Something limited. Something clever.

I stared at the bottled water, then thought of something and shouted, "Get ready for a U-turn!" I shouted.

"What?" Thomas yelled.

I picked up both flats of bottles and shoved them out the broken window. They vanished, and I checked out the rear window to see them tumbling along in our wake, still held together by heavy plastic wrapping. I took up my blasting rod, pointed it at them, and called up the smallest and most intense point of heat I knew how, releasing it with a whispered, "Fuego."

The rear window glass flashed; a hole the size of a peanut suddenly appeared, the glass dribbling down, molten. Bottles exploded as their contents heated to boiling in under a second, spattering that whole section of road with a thin and expensive layer of water.

"Now!" I hollered. "U-turn!"

Thomas promptly did something that made the tires howl and almost threw me out the broken window. I got an up-close look at the Scarecrow as the van slewed into a bootlegger reverse. It reached for me, but its claws only raked down the van's quarter panel, squealing as they ripped through the paint. The Scarecrow, though swift and strong, was also very tall and ungainly, and we reversed directions more quickly than it could, giving us a couple of seconds' worth of a lead.

I gripped my blasting rod so hard that my knuckles turned white, and struggled to work out an evocation on the fly. I'm not much of an evocator. That's, the whole reason I used tools like my staff and blasting rod to help me control and focus my energy. The very thought of spontaneously trying out a new evocation was enough to make sweat bead on my forehead, and I tried to remind myself that it wasn't a new evocation. It was just a very, very, very skewed application of an old one.

I leaned out the broken window, blasting rod in hand, watching behind us until the Scarecrow's steps carried it into the clump of empty plastic bottles in a shallow puddle.

Then I gritted my teeth, pointed my blasting rod at the sky, and reached out for fire. Instead of drawing the power wholly from within myself, I reached out into the environment around me-into the oppressive summer air, the burning heat of the van's engine, from Mouse, from Rawlins, from the blazing streetlights.

And from the water I'd spread in front of the Scarecrow.

"Fuego!" I howled.

Flame shot up into the Chicago sky like a geyser, and the explosion of sudden heat broke some windows in the nearest buildings. The van's engine stuttered in protest, and the temperature inside the van dropped dramatically. Lights flickered out on the street, the abrupt temperature change destroying their fragile filaments as my spell sucked some of the heat out of everything within a hundred yards.

And the expensive puddle of water instantly froze into a sheet of glittering ice.

The Scarecrow's leading foot hit the ice and slid out from under its body. Its too-long limbs thrashed wildly, and then the Scarecrow went down, awkward limbs flailing. Its speed and size now worked against it, throwing it down the concrete like a tumbleweed until it smacked hard into a municipal bus stop shelter.

"Go, go, go!" I screamed.

Thomas gunned the engine, recovering its power, and shot down the street. He turned at the nearest corner, and when he did the Scarecrow had only begun to extricate its tangle of limbs from the impact. Thomas hardly slowed, took a couple more turns, and then found a ramp onto the freeway.

I watched behind us. Nothing followed.

I sagged down, breathing hard, and closed my eyes.

"Harry?" Thomas demanded, his voice worried. "Are you all right?"

I grunted. Even that much was an effort. It took me a minute to manage to say, "Just tired." I recovered from that feat and added, "Madrigal pushed me into that thing and bugged out."

Thomas winced. "Sorry I wasn't there sooner," he said. "I grabbed Rawlins. I figured you'd have told me to get him out anyway."

"I would have," I said.

He looked up at me in the rearview mirror, his eyes pale and worried. "You sure you're all right?"

"We're all alive. That's what counts."

Thomas said nothing more until we slid off the highway and he began to slow the van. I busied myself checking Rawlins. The cop had kept going in the face of severe pain and even more severe weirdness. Damned heroic, really. But even heroes are human, and human bodies have limits you can't exceed. Everything had finally caught up to Rawlins. His breathing was steady, and his wounded foot had swollen up so badly that his own shoe held down the bleeding, but I don't think a nuclear war could have woken him.

I ground my teeth at what I had to do next. I set my deformed left hand on the floor of the van at the angle Lasciel had shown me and let my weight fall suddenly onto it. There was an ugly pop, more pain, and then the agony subsided somewhat. It was a giddy feeling, and my hand looked human again, if bruised and swollen.

"So," I said, after I had worked up the energy. "It was you following me around town."