White Night (The Dresden Files 9)

No time for any tricks. I whirled my staff, planted the back end against the wheelhouse wall, and aimed the other at the nearest ghoul's teeth. It hit the ghoul with the tremendous power provided by his own supernatural strength and speed. Shattered bits of yellow fangs showered the deck as the ghoul rebounded. The second ghoul leaped straight over his buddy - - and got a really nice view of the barrel of the .44 revolver I'd pulled from my duster's pocket with my left hand. The hand cannon roared, snapping the ghoul's head back, and it slammed into me. My back hit the wheelhouse hard enough to knock the breath from me, but the ghoul fell to the deck, writhing and screaming madly.

I put two more shots into the ghoul's head from two feet away, and emptied the revolver into the skull of the one I'd stunned with my staff. Watery, brownish blood splattered the deck.

By then, three more ghouls were on the deck, and I heard thunk-ing sounds of impact over the side of the ship as two of the ghouls I'd knocked into the water sank their claws into the Water Beetle's planks and began swarming over the sides.

I hit the nearest ghoul with another blast from one of my rings, sending it flying into its companions, but it bought me only enough time to raise my shield into a shimmering quarter-dome of silver light. Two ghouls slammed against it, claws raking, and bounced off.

Then the ghouls coming up the sides of the ship gained the deck, behind the edge of my shield, and hit me from the side. Claws raked at me. I felt a hot pain on my chin, and then heavy impacts as the talons struck my duster. They couldn't pierce it, but hit with considerable force, a sensation like being jabbed hard in the side with the rounded ends of multiple broom handles.

I went down and kicked at a knee. It snapped, crackled, and popped, drawing a scream of rage from the ghoul, but its companion landed on me, forcing me to throw my left arm across my throat to keep him from ripping it out. My shield flickered and fell, and the other ghouls let out howls of hungry glee.

A woman's voice let out a ringing, defiant shout. There was a roar of light and sound, a flash of scything, solid green light, and the ghoul atop me jerked as its head simply vanished from its shoulders, spraying foul-smelling brown blood everywhere. I shoved the still-twitching body off me and gained my feet even as Elaine stepped past me. She whirled that chain of hers over her head, snarling, "Aerios!"

Something that looked like a miniature tornado illuminated from within by green light and laid on its side formed in the air in front of her. The baby twister immediately began moving so much air so quickly that I had to lean away from the spell's powerful suction.

The far end of the spell blew forth air in a shrieking column of wind so strong that, as it played back and forth over the back end of the ship, it scattered ghouls like bits of popcorn in a blower. It also had the effect of ripping the thick, choking smoke away from the stairway leading belowdecks, and I hadn't even realized how dizzy I had begun to feel.

"I can't hold this for long!" Elaine shouted.

The ghouls began trying to get around the spell, more of them climbing the sides after being thrown into the lake again. I couldn't try whipping up a fire - not with all these fine wooden boats and docks and brimming fuel containers and resident boaters around. So I had to make do with using my staff - not using magic, either. That's the beauty of having a big heavy stick with you. Anytime you need to do it, you've got a handy head-cracking weapon ready to go.

The ghouls tried climbing up the sides of the ship, but I started playing whack-a-mole as their heads or clawed hands appeared over the side.

"Thomas!" I cried. "We've got to get out of here!"

I could barely see anything through the smoke, but I could make out the shapes of some of the ghouls clambering up onto the dock - cutting us off from the shore.

"Get the boat loose!" Elaine shouted.

The ghouls' smoking vessel actually cruised into the rear of the Water Beetle, the impact forcing me to grab at the wheelhouse to keep my feet - and to stagger the other way a second later as the Water Beetle smashed into the dock. "Not a chance! He's too close!"

"Down!" Thomas shouted, and I felt his hand shove down hard on my shoulder. I ducked, and saw the blued steel of his sawed-off shotgun as it went past my face. The thing roared, the sound painfully loud, and I was pretty sure I wouldn't hear anything out of that ear for a while. The blast caught the ghoul that had somehow sneaked up onto the top of the wheelhouse and had been about to leap down onto my shoulders.

"Ow!" I shouted to Thomas. "Thank you!"

"Harry!" Elaine shouted, her voice higher, now desperate.

I looked past her and saw that her pet cyclone was slowing down. Several of the ghouls had managed to dig their claws into the deck and hang on, rather than being blasted off the end of the ship.

"This is bad, this is bad, this is bad," Thomas said.

"I know that!" I shouted at him. A glance over my shoulder showed me Olivia's pale face on the stairs, and the other women and children behind her. "We'll never get them out of here on foot. They've got the docks cut off."

Thomas took a quick glance around the ship and said, "We can't cast off, either!"

"Harry!" Elaine gasped. The light began to fade from her spell, the howl of wind dropping, the ugly, heavy smoke beginning to creep back in.

Ghouls are hard to kill. I'd done for two of them, Elaine for a third, but the others had mostly just been made angrier by getting repeatedly slammed in the kisser with blasts of force, followed by tumbles into the cold lake.

Cold lake.

Aha. A plan.

"Take this!" I shouted, and shoved my staff at Thomas. "Buy me a few seconds!" I spun to Olivia and said, "Everyone get ready to follow me, close!"

Olivia relayed that to the women behind her while I hurriedly jerked loose the knots that secured my blasting rod to the inside of my duster. I whipped out the blasting rod and looked out over the side of the ship farthest from shore. There was nothing but thirty feet of water, then the vague shape of the next row of docks.

Thomas saw the blasting rod and swore under his breath, but he whirled my staff with grace and style - the way he does pretty much everything - then leaped past Elaine's fading spell and began battering ghouls.

It's hard for me to remember sometimes that Thomas isn't human, no matter that he looks it, and is my brother to boot. Other times, like this one, I get forcibly reminded about his true nature.

Ghouls are strong and disgustingly quick (emphasis on disgusting). Thomas, though, drawing upon his darker nature, made them look like the faceless throngs of extras in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. He moved like smoke among them, the heavy oak of my staff spinning, striking, snapping out straight and whirling away, driven at the attackers with superhuman power. I wanted to fight beside him, but that wouldn't get us away from this ambush, which was our only real chance of survival.