Jim Butcher - Cold Days

Meanwhile, figures aboard the barge fired rifles wildly into the night, though the deck of the thing was actually bobbing with the thrashing of the Outsiders in the water around it. Whoever they were, they struck me as amateurish—though maybe it was only because I’d been exposed to real soldiers before, who were a deadly threat even on the scale of supernatural conflict. These guys weren’t the Einherjaren—but at the end of the day, they still had deadly weapons, and more than one rider and hound had been struck by rounds and bled molten light from their shadow-masked bodies. The piercing screech of the Hunt met with the howls of Outsiders and the crack of rifle fire, and bit by bit, the barge’s hull bled red-hot steel.

But it wasn’t happening fast enough.

With a groan, the barge’s tugboat, this one mounted behind it, began shoving the thing forward through the water and toward the shore of Demonreach.

“I shouldn’t have split us up,” I said. “We didn’t cover twice as many targets. We just got twice as half-assed.”

Karrin made a sputtering sound, then said, “You and math are not friends. Regret later. Lead now.”

“Right,” I said. The barge wasn’t exactly leaping into motion—but it wouldn’t stop on a dime once it got moving, either. “Do you have any more grenades?” I asked Karrin.

“I used them a couple of weeks ago,” she said.

“With Kincaid?” I asked. There was an edge to it. She and the assassin were kind of an item, the last time I looked.

“Harry,” she said, “focus.”

Hell’s bells, she was right. I didn’t need the Winter mantle turning me into a territorial alpha dick right now. I stared at the barge for a long second, pushing that instinct away, and then said to the Hunt, “Join the Erlking! Attack the barge!”

Hounds and riders streamed past us, joining the madman’s wheel of death in the sky, and I lowered my voice, speaking only to Karrin as I reloaded the Winchester. “Get me to the tugboat.”

She gave me a quick, wide-eyed glance, and then seemed to get it. She gunned the motor, sending the Harley shooting past the Erlking’s very large, very threatening, and very distracting formation, as we raced alone toward the chugging tugboat.

She brought us right alongside it, and once again I leapt from the back of the Harley. I hit the side of the tug pretty hard, but was able to get the fingers of my left hand around the top of the rail, and with a few kicks managed to swing myself up onto the deck. I landed in a crouch, clutching the rifle, got my bearings, and headed toward a stairwell that would lead me to the boat’s bridge.

I went up it as quietly as I could, which is pretty damned quiet for a guy my size, Winchester at the ready. The bridge of the tug was big enough to merit its own enclosed space, and I slipped up to the door, took a breath, then ripped it open, lifting the Winchester as I did.

The bridge was empty, the wheel secured with a pair of large plastic ties. There was a piece of paper taped to the wheel, and on it was written in large black marker, LOOK BEHIND YOU.

I started to turn, but a cannonball hit me between the shoulder blades. I flew forward onto the bridge and slammed my head against the Plexiglas forward windows. I fell back from that, stunned, and a heavy weight hit me from the side, slamming me into a bulkhead, which felt almost exactly like being slammed into a steel wall.

I wound up prone, my face to the deck, and once more the heavy weight slammed into me, landing on my back.

And Cat Sith, who had told me not to turn my back on anyone, purred, “Wizard, Knight, fool. Too ignorant even to know how to die properly.” His skin-crawling voice came out in a throaty buzz next to my ear. “Allow me to educate you.”

The reasonable thing to do would have been to whimper or flinch or just freak out and look for the nearest exit. But instead of doing any of those things, I felt a chill settle over my brain, and a very cold, calm part of me studied the situation objectively.

“Join, hide, or die,” I said. I heard the faint echo of the Wild Hunt’s screech in my voice.

“Excuse me?” Cat Sith said.

“You have excellent hearing,” I said. “But I will repeat myself. Join. Hide. Or die. You know the laws of the Hunt.”

“I do know them, wizard. And once I have slain you, the Hunt will be mine to do with as I please.”

“The real Cat Sith wouldn’t be having this conversation with me, you know. He’d have killed me by now.”

A blow struck the back of my head, sharp, painful, but not debilitating. “I am Cat Sith. The one. The only.”

I turned my head slightly and said, “So why do I still have a spine?”

And I threw an elbow at the weight on my back. I connected with something, hard, and slammed it off me. It hit the other wall of the bridge, and I flung myself to my feet in time to see the large, lean form of Cat Sith thrash his tail and bound at me.

I ducked him, moving forward under his leap, and spun, and it left the two of us facing each other across the full length of the bridge.

“Slow,” I said. “I’ve seen him move. Cat Sith is faster than that.”

A hideous growling sound came from the form of the malk. “I am he.”

“Get me a Coke,” I snarled.

“What?”

“You heard me, Mittens. Get me a freaking Coke and do it now. ”

Sith remained in place, as if locked to the floor, though his whole body was quivering, his claws sheathing and unsheathing in rhythm. But he didn’t fly at me, ripping and tearing, either.

“You see,” I said, “Cat Sith is a creature of Faerie, and he swore an oath to Queen Mab to obey her commands. She commanded him to obey mine. And I just gave you a command, kitty. Did Mab release you from her command? Did she suspend the duties of her vassal?”

Sith snarled again, his eyes getting wider and rounder, his tail thrashing around wildly.

“They got to you, didn’t they?” I said. “They jumped you back at the Botanic Gardens while you were covering my exit. Freaking Sharkface was watching the whole thing and he got you.”

Sith began quivering so hard that he was jitterbugging back and forth in place on the floor, his head twitching, his fur standing on end and then abruptly lying flat again.

“Fight it, Sith,” I urged him quietly. “It doesn’t have to win. Fight it.”

For a second, I thought I saw something of Cat Sith’s smug, contemptuous self-assurance on the malk’s face. And then it was gone. Just gone. Everything went away, and the malk stood for a second with its head down. Then it lifted its head and the motion was subtly wrong, something that simply didn’t have the grace I’d seen in the elder malk before. It faced me for a moment and then it spoke, its voice absent of anything like personality. “A pity. I would have been more useful to them as an active, covert asset.”

I shuddered at the utter absence in that voice. I wasn’t talking to Sith anymore.

I was speaking with the adversary.

“Like Mab wouldn’t have figured it out,” I said. “Like she did when you infected Lea.”

“Further conversation is not useful to our design,” Not-Sith said, and then the malk’s form flew at me in a blur.

It was a testament to the power of the Winter Knight’s mantle and the Wild Hunt’s energy that I survived that first leap at all. Sith struck straight at my throat. I got my arms in the way. The black shadow mask of the Hunt over my arms and chest blew apart into splinters, dispersing some of the impact energy of the malk’s spectacular leap, and instead of pulping me against the wall behind me, he just pounded me into it with tooth-rattling force.