White Night (The Dresden Files 9)

Ramirez's head appeared at the hole in the wall. He had dark brown fluid spattering one side of his face. "Captain, get down!"

Bullets hissed down, making whistling, whipping sounds as they kicked up dirt a foot to Luccio's right, and the report of the shots reached us half a second later.

Luccio didn't waver or slow. She threw her right hand out, fingers spread. I couldn't see what she'd done, but the air between us and the slope of the mountain above suddenly went watery with haze. "Where?" she shouted.

"I've got two wounded ghouls here!" Ramirez shouted. "At least two more upslope, maybe a hundred and twenty meters!"

As he spoke, one of the other Wardens rolled around the end of the broken wall, pointed his staff Upslope, and spat out a vicious-sounding word. There was a low hum, a sudden flash, and a blue-white bolt of lightning snarled up the side of the mountain in the general direction of the shots. It struck a boulder with a roar and shattered it to gravel, the sight bizarre through the haze Luccio had conjured.

"Watch it!" Ramirez screamed. "They took two of our kids!"

The other Warden shot him a horrified look, and then dove for cover as more gunfire spat down the mountain. He let out a short, clench-toothed scream and grabbed at his leg, and one of the kids not far from him gasped, clutching at her cheek.

"Dammit," snarled Luccio. She slid to a stop and raised her other hand, and the haze in the air became a rippling blur of moving color that made the entire mountainside look like some enormous, desert-themed Lava lamp.

Shots began to ring out, singly, as the attacker fired randomly into the haze. Each one made trainees cringe and gasp. "Trainees stay down!" Luccio trumpeted. "Stay still. Be quiet. Do not give your position away by sound or movement."

Bullets struck the ground near her feet again as she spoke, drawing the fire to herself, but she didn't flinch, though her face had already broken out in a sweat with the strain of holding up the broad obscurement spell.

"Dresden," she said between gritted teeth. "Only one of those things is keeping fire on us. He's pinning us down while the other escapes with hostages. We must protect the trainees foremost, and we can't help the wounded while we're still taking fire."

"You hold the haze and keep them hidden," I said, drawing a shot and a puff of dirt of my own. I sidestepped judiciously. "Shooter's mine."

She nodded, but her eyes showed something of wounded pride as she said, "Hurry. I can't hold it for long."

I nodded to her and looked up the mountainside - and then I shook my head and drew up my Sight.

At once, my vision cut through Luccio's bewildering haze as though it had never existed. I could see the mountainside in perfect detail - even as it was in turn partially veiled by the vision my Sight granted me, which showed me all the living magic in the world around us, all the traces of magic that had lingered before, including dozens of imprints made in the past few days, and hundreds of ghostly glimpses of particularly strong emotional images that had sunk into the area during its heyday. I could see where the girl who now lay shuddering with a bullet in her had tried to call up raw fire for the first time, near a scorch mark upslope. I could see where a grizzled man, desperately addicted to opium and desperately broke, had shot himself more than a century ago, and where by night his shade still lingered, leaving fresh imprints behind.

And I could see the little coiling cloud of darkness that formed the inhuman energy of the attacking ghoul, running hot on the emotions of battle.

I marked the ghoul's location, lowered my Sight, and took off at a dead sprint, bounding up the slope and bouncing back and forth in a wavering line. It's damned hard to hit a target like that, even one growing steadily closer, and even with Luccio's haze to cover me, I didn't want to get shot if I could possibly avoid it. It was hard going, uphill, rough terrain, but it hadn't had time to get hot yet, and I practiced running regularly - though admittedly, I did it to give me the option of running away from bad guys more ably, not toward them.

More shots rang out, but none of them seemed to come near. I kept my eyes locked on the spot on the slope where the ghoul lay shooting, probably behind cover. I couldn't see a thing through the haze, but as soon as it began to clear I would present the ghoul with a clear target, either as I came through or when Luccio's power faltered and the spell fell. I had to get closer. I didn't have my blasting rod or staff with me, and without them to help me focus my magic, the range and accuracy of any spell I could throw at the ghoul would be drastically reduced. That's why I had to get closer before I took my shot. I couldn't hold a shield against bullets and attack at the same time - and the ghoul had to be taken out. I'd get only one shot, and if I missed I'd be an easy target.

I ran, and watched, and began to gather the power to throw at the ghoul.

The haze abruptly cleared as I bounded over a patch of scrub growth.

The ghoul crouched behind a rock maybe twenty yards upslope, his face only barely distended as he held mostly to his human shape while employing the human weapon - a freaking Kalashnikov. Thank God. The weapon was tough and serviceable, but it wasn't exactly a sharpshooter's tool. If he'd been toting something more precise, he probably could have inflicted a lot more damage than he had.

I was over to one side, and the ghoul was squinting hard down the rifle's sights, so that I was only a flicker of motion in the periphery of his focus. It took him a second to recognize the threat and whip the weapon toward me.

I had time, and I threw out my hand and my will, and snarled, "Fuego!"

Fire bellowed forth from my right hand - not in a narrow beam, a jet of tightly focused energy, but in a roaring flood, spilling out from my fingertips like water from a garden sprayer. A lot of it, way more than I had intended. The fire got the ghoul, all right - and the ground for twenty feet around him in every direction - more on the uphill side of him. The roar of flame gave way to a hideous shriek, and then a steady, chewy silence shrouded by black smoke. A low breeze, a herald of the day's oncoming heat, nudged the smoke away for a moment.

The ghoul, now in its true form, lay outstretched on the scorched earth. It had been burned down to little more than an appallingly blackened skeleton, though one leg retained enough muscle matter to continue twitching and thrashing - even then, the creature was not wholly dead. It didn't surprise me. In my experience, ghouls hadn't done much that wasn't disgusting. There was no reason to expect them to die cleanly, either.

Once I was sure it wasn't getting back up, I scanned the mountainside, looking for any other sign of movement, but found nothing. Then I turned and hurried back down the slope to the encampment.