Ghost Story (The Dresden Files 13)

bone could not possibly have expressed. His eyes slowly widened.

“You . . .” he said slowly, “are mocking me.”

I whistled through my teeth. “Guess the real Bob made you from the slow bits, huh?”

The blue lights flared brighter, and I felt heat on my face even from six feet away. “I am the real one,” he said in a hard, distant tone. “The true creation of the Master. Finally shed of my weakness. My doubt. Freed to use my power.”

“Guess he threw in a little of his narcissism, too,” I drawled—but I met his gaze with my own and felt an odd little smile turn up the sides of my mouth.

The skull’s jaws slowly parted like a snake preparing to strike. “You who are barely more than an apprentice—you will die for mocking me.”

“Yeah. But I will never, ever throw in with you,” I snarled back. “I will never be like you or your precious Master or that nutball Corpsetaker. So take your offer of a relationship and shove it up your schutzstaffel.”

Evil Bob’s eyelights blazed and he wrenched at the staff.

He really was a lackey. A real mastermind wannabe would have boned up on the Evil Overlord list. He’d felt so confident in his power (okay, maybe not without reason) that he’d spent a moment talking to me instead of just moving on. Worse, he’d given me a chance to start lipping off to him, and that comes so naturally to me that I don’t really need to consciously consider it anymore, except on special occasions.

So, what with my brain being unoccupied and all, I’d had the opportunity to realize a fundamental truth about the Nevernever. Here the spiritual becomes the material. Here spiritual power is physical power. Strength of mind and will are as real as muscle and sinew.

And I was damned if some blurry photocopy of the thoughts and will of some dusty-ass, dead necromancer was going to take me out.

If he hadn’t made with the stupid recruiting speech, if I hadn’t had my choices laid out in such stark relief in front of me, if I hadn’t been reminded of who I was and of those things for which I’d lived my life . . . maybe Evil Bob would have killed me then and there.

But he had reminded me. I did remember. I spent my lifetime fighting the darkness without becoming the darkness. Maybe I had faltered at the very end. Maybe I had finally come up against something that made me cross the line—but even then, I hadn’t turned into a degenerate freakazoid of the Kemmler variety. One mistake at the end of my life couldn’t erase all the times I had stood unmoved at the edge of the abyss and made snide remarks at its expense.

They could kill me, but they couldn’t have me.

I was my own.

And when Evil Bob shoved the staff at my chest, I drew upon the surge of fierce joy that truth had inspired, upon the will that had been dinged and dented but never broken, and fell back with the motion, digging the tip of the staff into the concrete as if it had been soft mud, and used the momentum to fling Evil Bob over me.

His unbreakable grip didn’t falter—and he arced overhead and then back down while I wrenched at the staff, helping his forward momentum instead of fighting it.

He hit the floor of the trench like a big fascist meteor. The noise was incredible. The impact shattered the concrete for twenty feet in every direction. Chips and shards went flying. Dust flew up in a miniature mushroom cloud. I was flung back by the shock wave of impact—with my staff still gripped firmly in my hands.

“Booya!” I drunkenly howled from the ground. I choked a little on the dust as I staggered back to my feet, my heart pounding, my whole body alive with strain and adrenaline. I stabbed a pointing finger toward the impact crater. “That’s right! Who just rocked your face? Harry fucking Dresden! That’s who!”

I coughed a little more and leaned against the side of the trench, panting until the world stopped feeling all spinny, grinning a wolf’s grin as I did.

And then gravel made a soft rustling sound from inside the dust cloud. A form appeared, just an outline, limping slowly. It came a few feet closer, and I recognized Evil Bob by the rising glow of his eyelights. The skull became visible a second later, and though I could see