Jim Butcher - Dresden files:Side jobs

Faced with a pair of murderous werewolves, the knife-wielding turtleneck slid to a sudden, uncertain halt.

In the sudden silence that followed, the sound of me slapping a fresh magazine into the P-90 and racking the first round into the chamber was a sharp trio of clicks. Pop. Click-clack.

See, Nothing? I thought. I can make ominous noises, too.

I brought the weapon back up and snarled, "Lose the knife."

The turtleneck hesitated for half a second, eyes darting left and right, then released it. The steel chimed as the knife hit the floor.

I kept the weapon on him, the trigger half pulled. Yeah, it wasn't the safe, smart way to operate, but frankly I wouldn't lose any sleep if I accidentally shot this guy. He was just too damn fast to give up any advantage at all.

"There were five of them," I said to the wolves. "How many did you handle, including the one that was on me?"

The more lightly colored wolf let out two precise, low barks.

"I got two," I said. "That leaves this one and the big guy."

A complex sequence of clicks and pops drifted through the air, and the lights went out, plunging the warehouse into perfect darkness.

Instinctively, my finger tightened on the trigger, and I sent a burst of rounds out almost before the lights were gone. But I was literally shooting blind against a foe who had supernatural reflexes and had also known, thanks to those damn clicks, what was about to happen. I heard the rounds hammer through the far wall.

The wolves snarled and started forward-the warehouse wasn't a light-tight darkroom, and a wolf's eyes actually see better in near darkness than in full light. The gloom was no obstacle to them. But I seized handfuls of fur and hissed, "Wait."

Their momentum dragged me several inches forward before they slowed down, but I said, "The growths on the wall spray out acid, at least seven or eight feet. Don't get suckered in close to one. The big guy has something like a gun. Go."

The wolves bounded out from beneath my hands, leaving me alone in the darkness.

Clicks and pops continued to bounce around the empty space of the warehouse, impossible for me to localize. They were an ongoing thing, every couple of seconds, and I couldn't shake the idea that they were coming closer and closer to me.

Even as I crouched there, defenseless and hating it, my hands were scrabbling at the pouch on my tac vest. If there was too much magic running amok, flashlights might not be reliable. Magic screws up technology when there's too much of both of them around, and you don't take chances with something as important as being effectively struck blind. I'd prepared the tac vest with this kind of situation in mind.

I opened the pouch and pulled out a flare, popping the pull cord, which struck it to life as I did. Red light glared into the darkness, and I lifted the flare over my head and out of my own vision in my left hand. I held the P-90 in my right. The small weapon could be fired in one hand, no problem, and while it wouldn't be as accurate, I could still send bursts downrange almost as well as I could two-handed.

The pops and clicks continued, everywhere and nowhere. I had no idea where Will and Marcy were, and Nothing and the other turtleneck had an awful lot of shadow to hide in. I realized I was essentially sitting in the middle of an open floor under a spotlight, a perfect target for Nothing and his weird little urchin-gun, and I retreated toward the caged prisoners.

"Georgia," I said, crouching down beside her. I studied the door of the cage, and found that the thing wasn't even locked. It had a ring for a padlock on it, but the door's mechanism was simply cycled closed. I spun it open and pulled open the cage door. "Georgia. Can you move?"

She lifted her head and stared at me grimly. Then she turned her body and leaned forward, moving as though underwater, and slowly began to crawl out of the cage. I hurried to Andi's cage and opened that door as well-but the girl did not so much as blink or stir a finger when I urged her to get out. So much for reinforcements. I felt useless. I couldn't go out there into the dark to join Will and Marcy in the hunt. I'd be worse than useless, stumbling around out there. They'd be forced to take their attention from their attack in order to protect me.

"Murphy," Georgia said. "M-Murphy."

I hurried to her side. "I'm here. Are you hurt?"

She shook her head. "N-n-no… L-listen." She lifted her head to meet my eyes, her neck wobbling like a paraplegic's. "Listen."

Clicks. Pops. Once, a hackle-raising snarl. The whishing sound of an urchin flying through the air, and the sharp pong of its hitting a metal exterior wall.

"The guards," Georgia said. "Sonar."

I stared at her for a second, and then clued in to what she was talking about. The clicks and pops had sounded familiar because I had heard them before, or something very close to them-from dolphins, at the Shedd Aquarium. Dolphins sent out sharp pulses of sound and used them to navigate, and to find prey in the dark.

I dropped the flare on the ground well away from Georgia and began unscrewing the suppressor on the P-90. "Will! Marcy!" I shouted, unable to keep the snarl out of my voice. "They're about to go blind!"

Then I pointed the weapon up and off at an angle that I thought would send the rounds into the nearby lake, flicked the selector to single fire, and began methodically triggering rounds. The second clip had been loaded with standard, rather than subsonic, ammo, and without the suppressor to dampen the explosion of the propellant, the supersonic rounds roared out, painfully loud. The flash at the muzzle lit the entire warehouse in strobes of white light. I didn't fire them in rhythm or any particular pattern. I had no idea how actual sonar worked in biological organisms, but I'd taken several nephews as a pack to see the Daredevil movie, and rhythmic sounds seemed to create a more ordered picture than random bursts of noise.

As I worked my way through the fifty-round magazine, I could all but hear Dresden's mockery, his voice edged with adrenaline, the words coming through a manic grin, as I'd heard several times before. Murph, when you're reaching out to movie concepts that involved millions of dollars in special effects for your tactical battle plan, I think you can pretty safely take that as an indicator that you are badly out of your depth.

But as the last round left the gun, I heard one of the turtlenecks screaming in pain-a horrible cry that ended abruptly. And then the warehouse fell silent again-only to be invaded by another steady series of rhythmic clicks.

And this time they were definitely getting closer.

I unclipped the P-90 and set it aside. I had only the two clips for the weapon. But my Sig came into my hand with the smooth familiarity of long practice, and I moved, away from Georgia and the other prisoners, around behind the empty cages that had been meant for Will and Marcy. I nearly screamed when I kicked a dead body and found the other turtleneck lying in a pool of viscous blood-apparently the other bad guy Will and Marcy had seen to.

Some instinct warned me I was in danger, and I dropped flat. Another sea urchin projectile streaked over me; a second struck a bar in the empty cage and slammed into its floor, acid chewing at the steel. Then there was a third whispering projectile that rushed away from me.

A wolf began to scream in agony-horrible, horrible high-pitched screams.

Nothing had just pulled the same trick I had-shooting at me and enticing one of his other enemies into the open as he did, then spinning to fire at an unexpected moment. Will or Marcy had just paid a horrible price for their aggression.

I came to my knees with a cry of fury and flung my flare. It went high into the air, spinning, spreading red light wide and thin around the inside of the warehouse. I saw a massive black form ahead of me, turning, the tube of his projectile weapon swinging back toward me.