White Night (The Dresden Files 9)

The fight was still going on all around us, but the main force of ghouls was concentrating on the hard-pressed vampires. We'd bought ourselves a temporary quiet spot, but it couldn't last.

"Harry!" Murphy screamed over the merely horrific cacophony of the slaughter.

I gave her a thumbs-up. I pushed myself to my feet. Someone gave me a hand up and I took it gratefully - until I saw that it was Marcone, dressed in his black fatigues, holding a shotgun in his other hand. I jerked my fingers away as if he were more disgusting than the things fighting and dying all around us.

His cold green eyes wrinkled at the corners. "Dresden. If it's all right with you, I think it would be prudent to retreat back through the gate."

That was probably a very smart idea. The gate was six feet away from me. We could pull up stakes, hop through, and close it behind us. Gates to the spirit world paid absolutely no attention to trivial things like geography - they obeyed laws of imagination, intention, patterned thought. Even if Cowl was back there, he wouldn't be able to open a gate to the same place as mine, because he didn't think like me, feel like me, or share my intent and purpose.

Seeing fallout from the war with the Red Court had convinced me that running when you didn't have to fight was a really great idea. In fact, the Merlin had written a letter to the Wardens directing them to do so, rather than lose even more of our dwindling combat resources. If we hung around much longer, no one was getting out of this abattoir.

Thomas's sword came down on a thrashing ghoul, and he shouted, with desperation bordering on madness, "Justine!" He spun to me. "Harry, help me!"

Leaving was smart.

But my brother wasn't leaving. Not without the girl.

So I wasn't leaving without her, either.

Come to think of it, there were a whole lot of people who didn't need to be here. And, in point of fact, there were some damned compelling reasons to take them with us when we went. Those reasons didn't make it any less dangerous, and they sure as hell didn't make the idea any less scary, but that didn't stop them from existing.

Without Lara's peace initiative (fronted by her puppet father), the White Court would pitch in more heavily with the Reds than they already had. If I didn't get Lara and her puppet out, what was already a grim war with the vampires would quite possibly become an impossible one. That was a damned good reason to stay.

But it wasn't the one that kept me there.

I saw another ghoul tear into a helpless, unresisting thrall, closed my eyes for a second, and realized that if I did nothing to save as many as I could, I would never leave this cavern. Oh, sure, I might get out alive. But I'd be back here every time I closed my eyes.

"Dresden!" Marcone shouted. "I agreed to an extraction. Not to a war."

"A war's all we've got!" I shouted back. "We've got to get Raith out of this in one piece, or the whole thing was for nothing and no one pays you off!"

"No one will pay me off if I'm dead, either," Marcone said.

I snarled and stepped closer, getting into Marcone's face.

Hendricks rolled a half a step toward me and growled.

Murphy seized the huge man by one enormous paw, did something that involved his wrist and his index finger, and with a grunt Hendricks dropped to one knee while Murphy held one of his arms out straight behind him and angled painfully upward. "Take it easy, big guy," she said. "Someone might get hurt."

"Don't move," Marcone snarled - to his men, not to me. His eyes never wavered from mine. "Yes, Dresden?"

"I could tell you to do it or I'd strand you all in the Nevernever on the way home," I said quietly. "I could tell you to help me or I'd close the gate, and we'd all die here. I could even tell you to do it or I'd burn you to ashes where you stand. But I won't tell you that."

Marcone narrowed his eyes. "No?"

"No. Threats won't deter you. We both know that. I can't force you to do anything, and we both know that, too." I jerked my head at the cavern. "People are dying, John. Help me save them. God, please help me."

Marcone's head rocked back as if I'd slapped him. After a second he asked, "Who do you think I am, wizard?"

"Someone who can help them," I said. "Maybe the only one."

He stared at me with empty, opaque eyes.

Then he said, very quietly, "Yes."

I felt a fierce smile stretch my mouth and turned to Ramirez at once. "Stay here with these guys and hold the gate."

"Who are these people?" Ramirez said.

"Later!" I whirled back to Marcone. "Ramirez is with the Council, like me. Keep him covered and hold the gate."

Marcone pointed at several of the men. "You, you, you. Guard this man and hold the gate." He pointed out several more. "You, you, you, you, you, start rounding up anyone close enough to us to get to without undue risk and help them through."

Men leaped to obey, and I felt impressed. I'd never seen Marcone quite like this before: animated, decisive, and totally confident despite the nightmare all around. There was a power to it, something that brought order to the terrifying chaos around us.

I could see why men followed him, how he had conquered the underworld of Chicago.

One of the hired guns cut loose with a burst of fire, still shockingly loud enough to make me flinch. "You know what else?" I asked Marcone. "I don't really need this cave. Neither do you."

Marcone narrowed his eyes at me, then nodded once, and said something over his shoulder to one of the hired guns. "Dresden, I would appreciate it if you would ask the sergeant to release my employee."

"Murph," I complained, "can't you pick on someone your own size?" I took a second to admire Hendricks's expression, but said, "We need him with his arm still attached."

Murphy eased up on the pressure and then released Hendricks's arm. The big man eyed Murphy, rubbing his arm, but regained his feet and his enormous machine gun.

"Harry," Thomas said, voice tight. "We need to move."

"Yeah," I said. "Thomas, Murphy, and..." We needed mass. "Hendricks, with me."

Hendricks checked that with Marcone, who nodded.

"Follow me," I told them. "Stay - What are you doing, Marcone?"

Marcone had accepted a weapon from one of his gunmen, a deadly little MAC-10 that could spew out about a berjillion bullets in a second or two. He checked it and clipped a strap hanging from it to a ring on his weapon harness. "I'm going with you. And you don't have enough time to waste any more of it arguing with me about it."